The Palgrave Handbook on Rethinking Colonial Commemorations 3031286081, 9783031286087

Table of contents :
Foreword
Warning
Terminology
Acknowledgements
Contents
Notes on Contributors
List of Images
Chapter 1: Introduction
“Carry a Song/Disrupt an Anthem”
Brave Disruptions
An Overview of Part I: Recognition and Remembering
An Overview of Part II: Resistance and Reimagining
An Overview of Part III: Removal and Rectification
References
Part I: Recognition and Remembering
Chapter 2: Memorials to Settler-Colonialism in Australia: Racism, Colonialism and White Power
Introduction
The Global Colour Line
A Brief Note on Race and Racism
Whiteness and White Privilege as Hegemonic
Colonialism and Commemoration
Homage to Empire and Western Civilisation
Homage to Empire and Western Civilisation
The Benign Empire: The ‘Discovery’ of Australia
Neoliberal Right-Wing Thinktanks: Sites for the Reproduction of Colonial Racist Discourses as an Important Front in the Reactionary Fight Back
Conclusion
References
Chapter 3: Koro and the Statue: Disrupting Colonial Amnesia and White Settler Sovereignty in Aotearoa New Zealand
The Story of Koro and the Statue
The Spectacle of Protest
The Sovereignty Wars
Pukehinahina: Gate Pā
Enduring Symbols of White Supremacy
Hamilton’s Removal: Narratives of White Possession
Bicultural Limitations: Prescribing the Limits of Māori Protest
Conclusion: Ko Te Kai a Te Rangatira, he Kōrero—Conversation is the Sustenance of Chiefs
Glossary of Māori Terms
References
Chapter 4: Space and Place: Cultural Heritage and Colonial Commemoration at Australian Tertiary Institutions
Introduction
Heritage and Identity at Australian Tertiary Institutions
Commemorative Names
Australia’s Most Radical University
A University in the North
Commemorations as Colonial Imaginings
Conclusion
References
Chapter 5: Toppling the Racist Anglo-Saxon Politics of Cecil Rhodes
Introduction
The Cultural Production of the Anglo-Saxon Race through the Rhodes Scholarship
The Unbearable Whiteness of Cecil Rhodes
Memorialising Rhodes
Conclusion
References
Chapter 6: The Dark Side of Canadian History: A Two-Eyed Seeing Approach
A Global Reckoning
Understanding a Two-Eyed Seeing Approach
The Relevance of Canadian Colonial Commemorations in the Twenty-First Century
How Cultural Genocide Unfolded in Canada
John A. MacDonald from a Two-Eyed Seeing Approach
Conclusion: The Legacy of Sir John A MacDonald and the Indian Residential Schools
References
Chapter 7: “This Is Not a Day for You”: Indigenous Australians and the ‘Disruption’ of Anzac Day
Introduction
Situating Anzac Day as a Colonial Commemoration
‘The Rules Are the Rules’: Bla(c)k Bodies as ‘Disruptive’
‘Irrespective of Race, Culture or Religion’: Indigenous Cultures as ‘Disruption’
‘A Misuse of Anzac Day’: Indigenous Warfare as Disruption
Towards a Conclusion
References
Chapter 8: Reflections on Representation, Remembrance and the Memorial
Introduction
Conversation
References
Chapter 9: Lest We Forget: The Tunnerminnerwait and Maulboyheenner Saga
Introduction
What’s in a Name?
Move'em Out!
The Myall Creek Massacre
All Out Warfare
End Game
Judge Willis
Legal Manoeuvrings
Carnival Time
The Campaign
Conclusion
References
Chapter 10: Unwanted Endeavours and the Reconstruction of Cook’s World
Introduction
Always Was, Always Will Be, Aboriginal Land
Redfern and Waterloo: The Bla(c)k Heart of Sydney
Unwanted Endeavours
Constructing a ‘Pleasing’ Home in Captain Cook’s World
Tūranganui-a-Kiwa: The Long-Standing Place of Liwa in Waterloo on Gadigal Country
Replacing Cook’s World
Glossary of Māori Words and Terms
References
Chapter 11: How Churches Are Framed and Presented in the Contemporary Sámi Homeland of Finland to Maintain Colonial Discourses
Introduction
The Indigenous Sámi People in Contemporary Finland
Framing
Indigenous Methodologies
The Ohcejohka/Utsjoki Church
The Bielbajávri/Pielpajärvi Wilderness Church
Analysis
Conclusions
References
Chapter 12: Colonial Histories and Artefacts: Which Way Gender?
Introduction
Museums and Gendering
The Gendered Stories we Tell
Kinships: The Burden of Proof and the Colonial Project of Gender
Returning our Bodies; Listening
Who Curates?
Which Way Gender?
Conclusions
References
Chapter 13: Monumental Copper and Coal: The Case for Including Extractivism in the Rethinking of Colonial Commemorations
Introduction
Copper in the Colonial Archive
A Material Critique of Bronze Statuary
Monuments to Coal and Coal Mining
Towards a Critique of Extractivist Monuments
Conclusion
References
Part II: Resistance and Reimagining
Chapter 14: Holding Dissonance, While Disrupting Narratives
Introduction
Background
Personal Beliefs
Silence and Pragmatism: Women’s Suffrage and Rights
Violence: Colonial Dispossession and Racism
The Legacy of Queensland-Based Legislation
The Legacy of Federal Legislation
Reckoning with Legacy and Disrupting Social Narratives
Conclusion
References
Chapter 15: Reason and Reckoning: Provocations and Conversations About Re-imagining Samuel Griffith’s University
Introduction
Narrative #1: Dr Fiona Foley, Recasting Colonial Legacies
Silence Is Complicity
Narrative #2: Debbie Bargallie, Breaking the Racial Contract: Facing Uncomfortable Truths
Narrative # 3: Bronwyn Carlson, ‘You Can’t Handle the Truth’: Settler Refusal to Engage with Facts
Narrative #4: Fiona Nicoll, The Art of Reckoning: Re-imagining Samuel Griffith’s University
Signposting or the Matter of Symbolism
Re-evaluating Griffith’s Legacies
Making Ambiguous Law
Making Racial Law
Can We Handle the Truth?
The Role of the Arts in the Space and Time of Truth Telling
Turning off Settlers’ Drive: After Griffith’s University
References
Chapter 16: Comedic Interventions: Toppling Monuments and Dismantling Myths in Rutherford Falls
References
Chapter 17: Confederates and Colonial Commemoration in the United States: Collective Memory and Counter-histories
Introduction
Theoretical and Methodological Concerns
I. The Architecture of Monuments, Memorialisation and Forgetting
How Does the Architecture of Monuments and the Story of Memorialisation Colonise Landscapes of Memory (Authentic or ‘the Real’)?
II. Social and Political Narratives of Erasure
Which Social or Political Narratives Depend Upon Erasure of Individual Counter-narratives That Might Better Describe Colonialism and Racial Regimes?
III. Trauma vs. Catharsis
What Is the Purpose of Enshrining Continual Trauma, Seeking Catharsis or Attempting to Re-direct Historical Memorialising?
IV. Counter-narratives and Collective Stories
How Can Counter-narratives Reconstruct Collective Stories That Enable New Social Engagements Through Monuments, Artefacts and Oral Histories? Can We Externalise Memory to ‘Prompt the Body’ to Remember in Ways That Are More Productive?
V. From Catharsis to Critical Debate
How Are Monuments or Memorials, in General, Dedicated More to Nostalgia and Catharsis than to Critical Debate?
Commemorative Moments and Case Studies
Bringing Down Confederate Statues in New Orleans
Conclusion
References
Chapter 18: The Art of Daniel Boyd: Decolonising Banks and Cook, Challenging Colonial Commemoration
Introduction
The Stealing of Cultural Artefacts and Knowledge
Sir No Beard
‘We Call Them Pirates Out Here’
‘Floating Forest’
Conclusion
References
Chapter 19: Asserting Indigenous Agencies: Constructions and Deconstructions of James Cook in Northern Queensland
Introduction
Contested Place
Place as Socially Organised
Cook’s Town?
The ‘Giant’ of Sheridan Street
Toppling the ‘Giant’
Monuments and Contested Place
Recollecting, Recreating and Redefining Reconciliation
Conclusion
References
Chapter 20: Futuring Ruins: The Grassroots Design Activism of the Department of Homo Affairs
Introduction
Grassroots Design Activism: Inviting Us in Using Humour and Pleasure
Department of Homo Affairs (DOHA)
Resist Racist Replicas and Turn Back the Float
Colonial Virus: Do You Have It? (Image 20.6)
Stopping the Spread of the Colonial Virus
Pleasure Activism Countering Rigid Radicalism and Paralysis
Conclusion: Design Activism as a Politics of Prefiguration and Everyday Practice
References
Glossary of Terms
Chapter 21: ‘It’s Just Always Been There’: Rutherford Falls, Monuments and Settler Colonial Hegemony
Introduction
Background
Hegemonic Settler Colonial Narratives
Recognising Settler Privilege
Indigenous Voices and Decolonisation
Deterritorialised Digital Media
Conclusion
References
Part III: Removal and Rectification
Chapter 22: The Need for Context: Archaeology’s Contribution to the ‘Statue Wars’
Introduction
Why Monuments Matter
The Debate and the Need to Preserve Context
The Statue Parks
Memento Park, Hungary
Grutas Park, Lithuania
Park of Arts, Russia
Discussion
Conclusion
References
Chapter 23: Dis-Placing White Supremacy: Intersections of Black and Indigenous Struggles in the Removal of the Roosevelt Statue at the American Museum of Natural History
Introduction
The Spatial Politics of Monumentality and the Remaking of Commemorative Landscapes
Solidarity and Making Worlds Together
The Roosevelt Equestrian Statue as a Focal Point for Black and Indigenous Counter-Monumental Struggle
Conclusion
References
Chapter 24: Edifying: The Deathscapes Project and the Landscape of Settler-Colonial Monumentality in Australia
Introduction
Bloody Foundations, Lethal Presents
Monumentalising Colonial Violence
Edifying in the Shadow of the Law
‘1788 Shame’: Historical Accounting and the Death in Custody of Ms. Dhu
Dreams of Freedom: Inquest for Mr. Fazel Chegeni Nejad
‘Incompatible with survival’: The Death in Custody of Mr. David Dungay
Edifying Topographies
The Monumental Carceral Fortresses of the Settler State: Long Bay Gaol
The Round House—Rottnest Carceral Monument Complex
Coda: Edifying in Fremantle
References
Chapter 25: The Problem and Potential of Anti-Black Monuments in Museums
Introduction
Black Communities and Anti-Black Monuments: An Historical Overview
From Monumental Space to Museum Object
Towards an Ethic of Care
References
Chapter 26: Local Empire: George Frampton’s Leeds Queen Victoria Memorial
Introduction
Part I
Making a Local Imperial Icon
Geographic Local: The Monument and Leeds
Spatial Local: The Monument in Leeds
Part II
Temporal Local: Revisionist Approaches in the Twenty-First Century
Artist Responses to the Leeds Monument
References
Chapter 27: The Struggle Continues Down South: Dismantling of Colonial Monuments and Symbols of Colonialism and White Supremacy
Introduction
Data from the Cases
South Africa
Malawi
Botswana
Zimbabwe
An Explanation of Heightened Activism, Outcomes, and Cases
The Assertion and Ideological Affirmation of African Identity and the Effort to Reclaim African Indigeneity
The Unfinished Politics of Self-Determination and Building New Symbols of Unity
The Discourse of Healing from the Disease of Racism, Ethnocentrism, and the Lingering Trauma of Settler Colonialism and Imperialism
Discussion
Conclusion
References
Chapter 28: Standing Strong: The Renaming of Toronto Metropolitan University
Introduction
Process, Principles, and Project Design
History and Legacy
Community Engagement
Learning and Unlearning
Making Recommendations
Report
Renaming
Moving Forward, Guided by Our Values and Principles
References
Chapter 29: The ‘Crowther Reinterpreted’ Project
Introduction
How Long Has There Been Protest Against the Crowther Statue, and Who Has Been Involved in the Push to Address It?
How Did You Arrive at the Decision to Conduct an Interpretation Project?
How Did You Determine Who You Should Consult With, and How?
How Did You Choose the Artists and Their Installations?
Tell Us About the First Work—Truth Telling by palawa Visual Artist Allan Mansell—Which Was on Display from April to June 2021 (see Image 29.1)
The Second Work—The Lanney Pillar—Was a Collaboration by Filmmaker Roger Scholes and Trawulwuy Writer and Curator Greg Lehman, and Was on display from June to August 2021 (see Image 29.2)
The Third Work—BREATHING SPACE by trawlwoolway Artist Julie Gough—Was on Display from September to October 2021 (see Image 29.3)
The Final Work—Something Missing by palawa Artist Jillian Mundy—Was on Display from Mid-November 2021 to Mid-January 2022 (see Image 29.4)
How Did You Go About Consulting with Members of the Public?
For Those Who Are Against the Crowther Statue Being Kept on Display in Franklin Square, What Were They Wanting Done About It?
For Those Who Want to Keep the Crowther Statue on Display in Franklin Square, What Were Their Arguments for Leaving It Alone?
How Did You Decide What the Proposed Permanent Outcome Should Be for the Crowther Statue?
What Was the Proposed Permanent Outcome for the Crowther Statue?
Was the Proposal Accepted?
What Have Been the Strengths of the Crowther Reinterpreted Project?
What Have Been the Challenges of the Crowther Reinterpreted Project?
Is There Anything You Wish You Had Done Differently?
What Are the Lessons Learnt, that You would Want to Pass On to Another Community?
References
Chapter 30: You Can Handle the Truth: Aboriginal Peoples, Colonial Commemorations and the Unfinished Business of Truth-Telling
Introduction
‘You can’t erase/rewrite history’
‘Just get over it and move on’
‘You don’t get to decide—it’s owned by the people’
‘You can’t judge someone by today’s standards’
‘You’re wrong—they didn’t even do those bad things’
‘But Aboriginal people did bad things too’
‘You’re just being divisive—haven’t you got more important things to worry about?’
‘But even Aboriginal people don’t all agree it should be removed’
‘We need to keep the statue so people can learn from it’
‘Removing the statue won’t change anything’
References
Index

Citation preview

The Palgrave Handbook on Rethinking Colonial Commemorations Edited by  Bronwyn Carlson · Terri Farrelly

The Palgrave Handbook on Rethinking Colonial Commemorations

Bronwyn Carlson  •  Terri Farrelly Editors

The Palgrave Handbook on Rethinking Colonial Commemorations

Editors Bronwyn Carlson Department of Indigenous Studies Macquarie University Macquarie Park, NSW, Australia

Terri Farrelly Department of Indigenous Studies Macquarie University Macquarie Park, NSW, Australia

ISBN 978-3-031-28608-7    ISBN 978-3-031-28609-4 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-28609-4 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

This collection is a commemoration of its own. It is dedicated to all the authors who contributed chapters and to all the people behind the stories they have shared. It is dedicated to those who were not able to contribute chapters but who have stories that need to be heard. And to all the people behind those stories. It is dedicated to all the lives lost as a result of the impacts of colonisation, and to the resulting heartbreak and the feelings of hopelessness that continue to be a heavy burden on the lives of many. This collection is also dedicated to resistance and agency. To the strength and courage it takes to expose a problem, and to take on the challenge of finding a solution. To the grace shown by all who keep up the fight. And to our futures.

Foreword

Standing beside the Mount Isa Highway, 43  kilometres from Cloncurry in Queensland, a distinctive monument pays homage to the Kalkadoon people whose warriors fought perhaps the biggest battle to take place against government forces on the Australian colonial frontier. It is modest but striking, featuring the bearded face of an Aboriginal man, his brow furrowed as he looks intently into the distance. The combative showdown between the Kalkadoon fighters and an army of well-armed settlers, local police and native troopers in late 1884 at what became known as Battle Mountain was, according to local oral history, the climax of years of simmering conflict between traditional custodians and invaders. Consistent with the pattern of post-European invasion frontier conflict across the continent, a long cycle of violence stemming from resistance to pastoral dispossession (Indigenous stock theft, white ‘justice’, retaliatory spearings and disproportionately escalated punitive reprisal) eventually culminated in the epic battle between hundreds of the Kalkadoon warriors and the colonial gunmen. At least 200 of the Aboriginal resistance fighters were killed as they charged down the mountain in wave after wave. It is said that they threw rocks at their enemy once they had slung all of their spears. According to Monuments Australia (2021), the modest monument to the Kalkadoon was dedicated in 1988—the 200th anniversary (the bicentenary) of invasion—‘to highlight Aboriginal history in the Bicentenary Year’. A novelist mate of mine who had recently visited Battle Mountain sent me a photograph of the Kalkadoon monument. As it happened, he did so during a protracted time of righteous outrage from a cabal of politicians and reactionary commentators over some relatively minor vandalism to public statues in Sydney dedicated to British men Lachlan Macquarie and James Cook, both perpetrators of extreme violence—and murder—against the Indigenous people of this continent.

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That the Kalkadoon monument was ever dedicated at all (and especially during the white-washing orgy of Australian self-love that was the bicentenary) seems remarkable today. In Australia, after all, there are still far more public monuments honouring animals than either Indigenous people or women. That it is still standing is even more remarkable given the many and varied attempts to obliterate it. Indeed, the photograph my friend sent me depicted the monument after it had, as he put it, provided “Queensland-style sporting opportunities to local shooters”, the face pocked where bullets had struck it and, therefore, ironically, newly symbolically imbued with unintended historical poignancy and context, given Queensland was the bloody stage for this continent’s most excessive frontier violence (Daley, 2019). The repeated vandalism of the Kalkadoon monument (including in 1992 when somebody went to the trouble of destroying it completely with gelignite) barely registers a national chord. Yet when somebody daubs ‘murderer’ or ‘change the date’ on the statues of colonial heroes like Cook and Macquarie the prime minister—in this case Malcolm Turnbull—cannot wait to condemn such a ‘cowardly, criminal’ act as ‘deeply disturbing act of Stalinism’. (One must wonder how he would have viewed the post-Soviet destruction of statues of Stalin himself, though nobody ever seemed to challenge him to ponder such.) Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people had long taken offence—and objected to—the monumental-isation of colonisation (in all of its many forms) before the daubing of paint on those statues of Cook and Macquarie. Non-­ Indigenous people (with exceptions, of course) have tended to traverse Australia’s rural and urban landscape unfazed—or even blithely unaware—of how colonisation and its celebrated milestones have been built into the topography. And, so it is that as you travel about the country you will find, in almost every suburb or country town, monuments and nomenclature dedicated to white European colonists and, even more prolifically, shrines to the military personnel killed in the First World War. 25 April 1915 and the 1st Australian Imperial Force’s participation in the disastrous cock-up that was the British mission to invade an obscure finger of the Ottoman Empire is the ‘invasion’ (though never by that name) that Australia does embrace and celebrate as the formative moment of Australian birth (as opposed to the First Fleet’s 1788 arrival and violent dispossession of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples upon which the Australian federation was built; the other unspeakable invasion). Ken Inglis, in his remarkable book Sacred Places—War Memorials in the Australian Landscape (1998), demonstrates how the eulogisation of Anzac in the landscape was a continuation of a colonial pattern of Australian memorialisation that wilfully ignored Indigenous figures. Inglis recounts how one of the earliest colonists in Victoria, James Dawson, in 1884 found his neighbouring landowners decidedly reluctant to assist him in erecting a monument in Camperdown Cemetery to record the death of the purportedly las local Aborigine, Wombeetch Puyuun. The old man was

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eventually buried in un-consecrated ground and Dawson had to stump-up most of the money himself, after his request was met with excuses that Dawson reportedly found contemptible, given they came from men whose impressive Estates were only theirs, thanks to the wholesale expulsion and massacre of Aboriginal people. Inglis writes how Dawson surmised that his neighbouring landowners were inhibited in contributing to the monument by a sense that it would be interpreted as evidence of their lack of humanity. One explained to Dawson, “I decline to assist in erecting a monument to a race of men we have robbed of their country”. Dawson’s monument was an aberration of its time. Getting on to a century-­ and-­a-half later, it is fair to say that it remains shamefully so today. “Aborigines were nowhere commemorated by the monumental form most attractive to Europeans in the nineteenth century, the statue. The public effigy in stone or bronze was an exercise in veneration, a tribute to the great or at least the highly esteemed, and no black could be accorded such honour”, Inglis (1998, pp. 25–26) writes. Typical of that monumental form most attractive to the European colonists in their newly stolen land is that (now more controversial) bronze statue of James Cook in Sydney’s Hyde Park, the great man’s eyes fixed imperiously into the distance as he holds his telescope. It bears the inscription “Discovered this territory 1770”. Indigenous activists had long taken exception to this statue of Cook who is, continent-wide, probably the most memorialised (in bricks, mortar, statuary and nomenclature) person in the Australian landscape. Protesting against it in 1874 when the statue was first erected would have fallen on deaf colonial ears given that Australia was (white) pioneering-ahead on the fallacious belief (as espoused by the likes of Dawson) that the colonies were witnessing the extinction of a race—in Sydney where the statue stands, specifically the people of the Eora Nation. Indeed, the statue was the scene of significant Indigenous protest during the 1988 bicentenary when Black activists converged on Sydney on Australia (Invasion) Day to counter the recreation of the arrival of Arthur Phillip’s tall ships. It has been a natural and obvious occasional rallying point for protest since. Yes, this statue has long been the touchstone of cultural combat. And yet it was not until 2017 that a large-scale, divisive media and cultural debate (the so-called statue wars) erupted around the monument after the journalist Stan Grant (2017), an Indigenous man, wrote about how understandably offensive he found it. Context is everything when it comes to tabloid conflagration, of course. And the context of Grant’s article (an unrelated controversy in the United States of America over Donald Trump’s deliberately provocative defence of Confederate statues) proved potently incendiary. Not to mention further testimony to the enduring power of American cultural imperialism. Instructively, renewed media attention had been paid to Australian colonial statues (or statues of increasingly controversial colonial figures) the previous year. This

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coincided with the 200th anniversary of Governor Lachlan Macquarie’s murderous Appin massacre and amid growing challenges to monuments in the United Kingdom—not least that dedicated to Cecil Rhodes at Oxford—that honoured slavers and other assorted bastards of British history. So, the critical attention dedicated to Australian statues of colonial heroes—or monsters, depending on where you come from—has been cyclical and inconsistent. But there is no denying 2017 and the Grant article was a flashpoint—a moment from which the monumentalised, the statue-d, the re-named, Australian landscape would be critically reevaluated and reassessed like never before. Some statues will, I would say, inevitably fall, as they have in other parts of the world—not least in some parts of the US (where civic leaders have backed public sentiment in removing Confederate statues), and the UK where people have taken it upon themselves to topple stone and brass effigies of slavers. Since 2017 the debate has broadened and gained more mainstream social, media, cultural and political traction. The fringes of the Right would, predictably, use it as fuel to reignite the bonfire—or bonfire—of vituperative Howard Government-era ‘black armband’ culture war. But there is a sense—as even conservative MPs back decisions to strip federal electorates named in honour of mass killers of Indigenous people, as the future of public statues honouring the same people is re-assessed, as the country gradually reverts to what it was called before Europeans began colonising it with their nomenclature as well as their guns and disease—that a national reckoning is underway. The discussion is heading towards a point of critical mass. Unique, challenging books like this—which considers the Australian colonial monumental experience in the context of a global movement that demands many public monuments and statues be re-evaluated according to the racial, historical and humanitarian values of the present rather than the past—play an important role. As Australia prevaricates on the 2017 call from Uluru for Voice, Treaty, Truth, the process by which our buildings, institutions, public spaces and monuments came to embody a triumphal history of brutal oppression might seem incidental to even the most progressive non-Indigenous people. But a refusal to confront, critique and re-evaluate our landscape in this context is the visual equivalent of deliberately turning a deaf ear to Indigenous sensibilities over the constant reminders of violent dispossession and their manifestation in today’s generational trauma with all its associated economic, social, health and lifestyle disadvantages. For the landscape, of course, was undeniably colonised as comprehensively as the continent’s ‘history’ and the way it was taught to enduring Indigenous nations and invader/settler descendants. “As a boy in school, I was taught that my forefathers were unintelligent and inhuman, while my white friends were taught that their forefathers were great explorers, builders, inventors, and our saviours”, writes Thomas Mayor (2021) in his book, Dear Son—Letters and Reflections from First Nations Fathers and Sons.

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What, I wondered as I read this, did the boy Thomas Mayor—and so many other Indigenous children—think when he travelled about the place amid all those statues, landmarks and buildings dedicated to the white explorers, builders, inventors and saviours? What about those dedicated to murderers? Did he and all the other Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children wonder where were the statues dedicated to Indigenous leaders—their heroes and resistance fighters? A non-Indigenous person who is not overly concerned with—or even cognisant of—Australia’s dark, violent frontier history may traverse the continent without much consideration for the way it has been renamed or for the monuments to the oppressors and killers of Indigenous people. Eight places in Queensland alone are named Skeleton Creek. There are Skull Creeks in Gippsland, the Northern Territory and Western Australia. Victoria has a Murdering Gully, Queensland a Skull Hole and there is a Massacre Waterfall in central-west New South Wales. So, what’s in a name? In many places the original Indigenous names have been overlaid with these malevolent new names, not to commemorate the deaths of First Nations people who had been there for millennia—but to celebrate the very acts of murdering them. In a 2017 radio interview, Bronwyn Carlson, the co-editor of this book, described her emotional reaction to these statues in terms that would, perhaps, typify those of other Indigenous people. Carlson told ABC Radio National: My first instruction that Captain Cook discovered Australia was in 1970 when I was six years old. Throughout my education, I was constantly reminded of Cook’s prowess, as a navigator and as saviour of sorts who brought civilisation. I was also taught that Aboriginal people were the remnants of a prehistorical culture. The implication was that Aboriginal people would not be around in a modern Australia or that we should be grateful to Cook and those who came afterwards for bringing a more ‘superior’ culture to our lands and ‘saving’ us. Most [Australians] don’t give this a second thought because of the fact [they think] we do not exist (or should not). Wollongong, where I live, has three plaques dedicated to the first attempted landing of Cook. Such is the dedication to the arrival of the British that the second landing town is literally called Seventeen Seventy! Every aspect of our environment is littered with admiration for the ‘founding fathers’ … One of the ongoing problems is that Australians are taught that colonial violence is somewhere in the past—hundreds of years ago— and they cannot stomach the fact that it is recent and ongoing.

There it is again: the not wanting to know—or at least acute reluctance to be reminded of—how Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people were, in the long-ago words of Dawson, ‘robbed of their country’ and, for many tens of thousands, their lives. It is fitting that Professor Carlson is a driving force behind a book that will play such an important part in the re-evaluation of Australia’s topography of colonial commemoration. For after that radio interview the

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backlash—including from some of her (anonymous) Macquarie University Indigenous Studies students—was swift and savage. Some made the effort to write to her. One wrote: Sick and tired and [sic]the nonsense you peddle and try and teach. While there are those dumb enough to fall for what you say, I’m not one of them. Sieg Heil Captain Cook. May you be erected on campus with a big thank you for discovering this great nation and saving this nation from 40,000 years of nothingness. (cited in Daley, 2018)

Instructively it is the questioning of—and the challenge to—Cook’s reputation that would seem to inspire such unashamed bigotry. Cook, the great ‘discoverer’ to some, the Neil Armstrong of his generation, perhaps, he who dared sail into the unknown where Here Be Dragons, is, conversely, understandably, the colonial bogeyman in both Indigenous myth and reality—the doorman for British invasion in 1788, for the land theft and for the shootings, poisonings, massacres and stolen children that colonisation ushered in. For good or bad Cook’s image—the regal nose, broad mouth, chiselled chin and firm jaw set beneath the flowing hair and triangular admiralty commander’s hat—is as ubiquitous an image in our cultural and emotional consciousness as it is in public statuary. The Indigenous visual artist Jason Wing demonstrated this unequivocally with his 2013 bronze, ‘Captain James Crook’. Here the statue’s face is covered with a balaclava, bank-robber-style. It is unmistakably Cook. Cook, ever divisive, loathed or lionised in Australia, inspires strong emotional reactions. Precisely how strong was again demonstrated to me in early 2021 when somebody vandalised a modest memorial to the Tasmanian Nuenonne woman Truganini, on Bruny Island, south-east Tasmania. The effort the vandal made to deface Truganini’s memorial (defaced several times previously) by using stencil and paint to impose Cook’s image upon it indicates considerable political and emotional premeditation. It is up there with the dynamiting and repeated shooting of the Kalkadoon warrior. And resonant of what happened to the statuary likeness of resistance fighter Yagan on the banks of the Swan River in Perth which has twice been beheaded (with potent symbolism, you’d have to say, given the actual warrior’s head was hacked off upon his death in 1833 and sent to England as a trophy). There was no broad public outcry when the Kalkadoon warrior was shot and blown up. No sudden rush to the ideological trenches over Yagan’s repeat decapitation. The vandalism of the monument to Truganini, one of the most important—and compelling—women in post-invasion Australian history, was nowhere near enough to spark another round of the ‘statue wars’. It scarcely made the local paper. No. For that, it seems, you have to daub paint on either Cook or Macquarie in Hyde Park.

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Perhaps this should not surprise. Almost from the moment of the First Fleet’s arrival in Warrane (Sydney Cove) did the vandalism of Eora Nation culture—including monuments—begin. Peter Myers, a member of the Sydney Opera House design team, has written of how the fleet arrived in a primordial city replete with its own monuments: There are recorded sightings of shell monuments 12 metres high along the water’s edge (… equivalent to the height of the southern podium of Jørn Utzon’s Sydney Opera House). Can you imagine how many thousands of years of gathering and accumulation [of shells] went into their making? (cited in Daley, 2018, para. 44)

The early fleets needed lime for mortar. They demolished these giant middens and used the shells to found their houses and public buildings, jetties and roads. The colonial city took its very shape from these ancient monuments whose relics are still about. The tension between the ancient civilisation and the emergent colony remains, therefore, omnipresent in Sydney. Just as it exists between the Indigenous landscape, storied for sixty thousand years and counting of Indigenous civilisation and all of the adornments to the supposed superior modernity imposed on it—the statues dedicated to colonisers and murderers, the universities and streets and parks and harbours bearing their names. This book will no doubt, as intended, inspire new debate—fresh arguments—about colonial commemorations. When does a colonial-era statue or memorial or one which commemorates a colonial figure, have an intrinsic historical value? Should they all be moved to a statue museum (as is the case in some parts of the former Soviet Union where USSR statues have been relocated to historical museological-style parks) so that they can be afforded the context to be understood as products of a different time and era? Should they be added-to with new plaques to explain, for example, that John Batman was really a syphilitic grifter and killer of Tasmanians rather than the benevolent supposed treaty-maker so much history (and so many plaques) had cast him as? Should other statues simply be toppled and demolished? Should consideration be given to re-naming institutions such as Macquarie University and James Cook University? In my view—yes to all the above. Here in Sydney, where we tread daily upon the trashed monuments of the Eora Nation, is the best case in point for a toppling. It is the statue of Lachlan Macquarie, regarded by so much history as the great civiliser, but who oversaw the Appin massacre in which Aboriginal people were slaughtered, hung from trees and decapitated, while their children were taken to his “native institution” in Parramatta. For besides being a murderer, Macquarie also set an insidious precedent when it came to stealing Aboriginal children. “He was a perfect gentleman, a Christian and supreme legislator of the human heart”, reads the inscription associated with the statue.

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Given all that was known about Macquarie when this statue was dedicated in 2013, such sentiment is unjustified. The statue, given it is barely eights years old, has no historical raison d’etre or merit. It does not reflect a pervasive (if objectionable view) from the past—just a ridiculous historically lazy, incoherent and fallacious contemporary one. Removing it would seem to be less an act of Stalinism than of historical truth-telling. Bring it on. Statues like Yagan, and the Kalkadoon warrior- and the Truganini-­ monument, have stood, been resurrected from attempted destruction, and remained resolutely alone and in symbolic opposition to the thousands of public places, streets and monuments honouring white colonists, infamous and famous. Some, it is difficult not to conclude, were planned and erected as small acts of defiance against dominant non-Indigenous (or, indeed, anti-Indigenous) culture at a time when doing so might have been regarded as close to seditious. Nowhere is this more evident to me than the Bathurst district, stage for the war that claimed hundreds of Indigenous lives (many due to mass poisonings) after Governor Thomas Brisbane declared martial law in 1824. Proclaimed by Macquarie in 1815, Bathurst is a wonderland for the history tragic. Majestic, finely preserved buildings line boulevard-like thoroughfares that are divided by towering streetlamps. Monuments to the war-dead (those who died for Queen and country overseas, that is) and memorials to white explorers distinguish the grand public spaces. The most distinctive is in King’s Parade. It features the surveyor George Evans—recorded by so much history as a ‘discoverer’ and opener-up of the Bathurst Plains—his gaze fixed regally across all that the white man took. He towers above an Indigenous man who crouches at his feet. The symbolism holds no subtlety. It is the enlightened white discoverer dominating the unenlightened savage. A little outside town, meanwhile, there is a sprawling livestock property that has been in the possession of the Suttor family since 1822. It is the oldest continuous commercial business on the continent. The Suttors were, unpopularly for among their neighbours and Brisbane’s soldiers, great friends of the local Wiradjuri, not least the warrior leader Windradyne. Even during the Bathurst War of the 1820s, when other landholders conspired with the Brisbane’s redcoats and militia hunting parties to murder the local custodians, the Suttor property Brucedale was a safe haven for the Wiradjuri. When Windradyne died in 1829 in an intertribal fight, his family buried him at Brucedale. He remains there today. The local Wiradjuri, including his direct descendants who still live about Bathurst, are free to come and go from Brucedale which is now farmed by the seventh-generation Suttor, David. Mid-last century Suttor’s grandmother dedicated a brass plaque to Windradyne, close to his grave on a far corner of Brucedale.

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While it bears the incorrect date of Windradyne’s death, its sentiment is sincere and profound. THE RESTING PLACE OF WINDRADYNE, ALIAS ‘SATURDAY’ LAST CHIEF OF THE ABORIGINALS FIRST A TERROR, BUT LATER A FRIEND TO THE SETTLERS. DIED OF WOUNDS RECEIVED IN A TRIBAL ENCOUNTER, 1835 ‘A TRUE PATRIOT’

But the most striking feature for me is the date of dedication—25 April 1954. Anzac Day. Dedicated 36  years after the Great War ended in a district that endured hundreds of First World War fatalities and casualties, the date of dedication is surely no coincidence but rather a subtle act of defiance to highlight the tension long extant, but little discussed back then, on who gets to be commemorated. It is hard to walk past as a leitmotif for all that this book will bring further into the open. Sydney, Australia

Paul Daley

References Daley, P. (2018, Autumn). Heroes, monuments and history. Meanjin Quarterly. https://meanjin.com.au/essays/heroes-­monuments-­and-­history/ Daley, P. (2019, March 4). As the toll of Australia’s frontier brutality keeps climbing, truth telling is long overdue. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/ australia-­news/2019/mar/04/as-­the-­toll-­of-­australias-­frontier-­brutality-­keeps-­ climbing-­truth-­telling-­is-­long-­overdue Grant, S. (2017, August 18). America tears down its racist history, we ignore ours. ABC News. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-­08-­18/america-­tears-­down-­its-­ racist-­history-­we-­ignore-­ours-­stan-­grant/8821662 Inglis, K. (1998). Sacred places: War memorials in the Australian landscape. Miegunyah Press. Mayor, T. (2021). Dear Son: Letters and reflections from First Nations fathers and sons. Hardie Grant. Monument Australia. (2022). Kalkadoon & Mitakoodi people. Monument Australia. https://monumentaustralia.org.au/display/91231-­kalkadoon-and-­ mitakoodi-­people

Warning

Readers are advised that this book may contain images, names and descriptions of deceased persons, as well as their artwork. This book also contains descriptions of traumatic events and locations that have special meaning, as well as words and phrases that may cause distress and/ or offence. Please note that such content has only been included to illustrate the nature of the acts committed and the attitudes of particular individuals or social groups, and to describe particular historical periods. In the case of such content, we warn the reader that these details may cause distress. All due care has been taken to ensure that the content of this book is accurate and current at the time of writing. We apologise if there are any unintentional errors or omissions. The editors also wish to emphasise that this collection is not a history project and does not attempt to provide a definitive list or history of colonial commemorations nor people’s efforts to address them. Many of the people, topics and issues mentioned in this book warrant being the subject of books in their own right. Instead, we simply seek to draw attention to the courageous efforts and hard-earned achievements of communities and individuals who continue to work to promote rethinking and disruption of problematic colonial commemorations. This collection of examples also serves to identify potential pathways for others as they contemplate how to address existing colonial commemorations and/or the creation of new ones.

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Terminology

For some of the peoples discussed in this collection, such as Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, there is no universally agreed terminology for referring to the many diverse groups located across the continent colonially referred to as Australia and surrounding islands. For this reason, in this collection, we have left it to the contributing authors to choose their preferred terminology. However, where possible, we have encouraged the identification and description of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples by country (e.g., Dharug) if appropriate. Although attempts have been made to ensure these are correct, the authors acknowledge that terms and spellings may differ, and we apologise for any offence this may cause. We have also capitalised the ‘B’ when talking about Black Americans, Africans and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, recognising that the term ‘Black/Bla(c)k’ signifies both a history and a racial identity. Black with a capital ‘B’ is about making human those who have long been categories as non-­ human. We have deliberately chosen not to capitalise the ‘w’ for white as a political act to decentralise whiteness.

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Acknowledgements

This collection was compiled on the unceded lands of the Dharawal people. Both editors also work on the unceded lands of the Wallumattagal people of the Dharug Nation on whose homelands Macquarie University is built. In 2022 Macquarie University renamed their North Ryde campus Wallumattagal campus—a step in the right direction. The stories of events and achievements that this collection contains have occurred on numerous other unceded lands of Indigenous clans and nations, not just within the borders of the continent colonially known as Australia, but elsewhere across the globe. Across these lands Indigenous clans and nations have maintained their connection to country/homelands while fighting a battle to address the lawlessness that began with colonial invasion. We admire and respect that commitment and wish to acknowledge the efforts and the cost to Indigenous peoples. We would like to acknowledge the authors who have contributed chapters to this collection. Special thanks to Tlingit/ Unangax̂ artist Nicholas Galanin (Yéil Ya-Tseen) for allowing us to use an image of the work Shadow on the Land, an Excavation and Bush Burial, 2020, on the cover. Thanks also to our amazing colleagues in the Department of Indigenous Studies, Macquarie University, particularly Dr Peita Richards and Grace Slatyer who worked on the final shaping of the collection. And of course, thanks to Palgrave Macmillan for helping us on this journey.

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Contents

1 Introduction  1 Bronwyn Carlson and Terri Farrelly Part I Recognition and Remembering  11 2 Memorials  to Settler-Colonialism in Australia: Racism, Colonialism and White Power 13 Noah Bassil 3 Koro  and the Statue: Disrupting Colonial Amnesia and White Settler Sovereignty in Aotearoa New Zealand 33 Pounamu Jade Aikman and Mahdis Azarmandi 4 Space  and Place: Cultural Heritage and Colonial Commemoration at Australian Tertiary Institutions 53 Zac Roberts and Jessica U. Binet 5 Toppling  the Racist Anglo-Saxon Politics of Cecil Rhodes 75 Mandisi Majavu 6 The  Dark Side of Canadian History: A Two-­Eyed Seeing Approach 87 John Terry Ward 7 “This  Is Not a Day for You”: Indigenous Australians and the ‘Disruption’ of Anzac Day101 Rachel Caines

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8 Reflections  on Representation, Remembrance and the Memorial127 Brook Garru Andrew, Marcia Langton , and Jessica Neath 9 Lest  We Forget: The Tunnerminnerwait and Maulboyheenner Saga151 Joseph Toscano 10 Unwanted  Endeavours and the Reconstruction of Cook’s World173 Innez Haua 11 How  Churches Are Framed and Presented in the Contemporary Sámi Homeland of Finland to Maintain Colonial Discourses193 Inker-Anni Sara 12 Colonial  Histories and Artefacts: Which Way Gender?203 Sandy O’Sullivan and Madi Day 13 Monumental  Copper and Coal: The Case for Including Extractivism in the Rethinking of Colonial Commemorations217 Nikolas Orr and Nancy Cushing Part II Resistance and Reimagining 239 14 Holding  Dissonance, While Disrupting Narratives241 Amy Young, Ana Borges Jelinic, Elena Marchetti , and Patrick O’Leary 15 Reason  and Reckoning: Provocations and Conversations About Re-imagining Samuel Griffith’s University263 Fiona Foley , Debbie Bargallie , Bronwyn Carlson , and Fiona Nicoll 16 Comedic  Interventions: Toppling Monuments and Dismantling Myths in Rutherford Falls297 Jeff Berglund 17 Confederates  and Colonial Commemoration in the United States: Collective Memory and Counter-histories319 Ricardo Guthrie

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18 The  Art of Daniel Boyd: Decolonising Banks and Cook, Challenging Colonial Commemoration339 Prudence Gibson 19 Asserting  Indigenous Agencies: Constructions and Deconstructions of James Cook in Northern Queensland351 Bronwyn Fredericks and Abraham Bradfield 20 Futuring  Ruins: The Grassroots Design Activism of the Department of Homo Affairs383 Clare M. Cooper 21 ‘It’s  Just Always Been There’: Rutherford Falls, Monuments and Settler Colonial Hegemony401 Tristan Kennedy Part III Removal and Rectification 417 22 The  Need for Context: Archaeology’s Contribution to the ‘Statue Wars’419 Claire Baxter 23 Dis-Placing  White Supremacy: Intersections of Black and Indigenous Struggles in the Removal of the Roosevelt Statue at the American Museum of Natural History437 Wil Sahar Patrick, Reuben Rose-Redwood, and CindyAnn Rose-Redwood 24 Edifying:  The Deathscapes Project and the Landscape of Settler-Colonial Monumentality in Australia461 Suvendrini Perera and Joseph Pugliese 25 The  Problem and Potential of Anti-Black Monuments in Museums485 Modupe Labode and Tsione Wolde-Michael 26 Local  Empire: George Frampton’s Leeds Queen Victoria Memorial505 Rebecca Senior

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27 The  Struggle Continues Down South: Dismantling of Colonial Monuments and Symbols of Colonialism and White Supremacy527 Michelle A. Harris and Eric E. Otenyo 28 Standing  Strong: The Renaming of Toronto Metropolitan University543 Rachel DiSaia, Catherine Ellis, and Joanne Okimawininew Dallaire 29 The  ‘Crowther Reinterpreted’ Project557 Bronwyn Carlson, Terri Farrelly, Judith Abell, and Jane Castle 30 You Can Handle the Truth: Aboriginal Peoples, Colonial Commemorations and the Unfinished Business of Truth-Telling573 Bronwyn Carlson and Terri Farrelly Index597

Notes on Contributors

Judith Abell  is a hybrid practitioner, trained in architecture and fine arts. She currently commissions art for the City of Hobart, while maintaining a freelance practice that fuses her skills in design, writing and art. Having worked in architecture practice for 10 years and as a professional artist for 15 years, Judith now works in a sphere where she needs all of her skills to advocate for, seek funding for and project manage the implementation of public art for her city’s spaces. Importantly, everything that she does in this role has a public outcome.Judith has been writing about architecture, art, design and performance for over 20  years and has had articles published in Houses, Artichoke, Landscape Architecture Australia, Mezzanine, Monument, Realtime, Artlink, Assemble Papers and Australian Art Collector. She is the current Arts Features editor for Island Magazine, a national literary publication produced in Tasmania. Pounamu  Jade  Aikman is of Ngāti Apakura, Ngāti Maniapoto, Ngāti Wairere, Ngāti Awa, Te Arawa, and Ngāi Te Rangi descent. As an independent Māori scholar, his work explores the continuum of settler colonial violence in Aotearoa New Zealand and the ongoing impact of settler colonisation upon Indigenous communities more broadly. He gained his PhD from the Australian National University in 2019, where he examined the historic and contemporary over-policing of Ngāi Tūhoe in Te Urewera, in New Zealand’s Bay of Plenty region. In this, his research examines the broader struggle of Indigenous sovereignty vis-à-vis the settler colonial state, and the tensions of right and might that rest at the heart of this. His current Fulbright project through Harvard University and the University of Hawai’i explores this theme across Indigenous landscapes in the United States. Pounamu’s broader research interests include Indigenous relationships to land and environment; Indigenous and Māori masculinities; discursive representations of Indigenous peoples throughout colonial encounters; colonial racisms and the clash between colonial and Indigenous epistemologies.

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Brook  Garru  Andrew  is a Wiradjuri Celtic Australian artist, curator, and writer. He was artistic director of NIRIN, the 22nd Biennale of Sydney (2020). He is currently Enterprise Professor of Interdisciplinary Practice, Faculty of Fine Arts and Music; and director, Reimagining Museums and Collections at the University of Melbourne. Mahdis Azarmandi  is a Senior Lecturer in Educational Studies and Leadership at the University of Canterbury. After obtaining her PhD from the National Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Otago, she held a position as Assistant Professor at DePauw University. She has also taught in Germany and Denmark. Her research looks at anti-racism and colonial amnesia in Aotearoa New Zealand and Spain. She has published on the politics of memorialisation in Spain as well as on the absence of race critical research in the field of Peace Studies. She is one of the editors of the book Decolonize the City! Zur Kolonialität der Stadt—Gespräche | Aushandlungen | Perspektiven. Her research interests are anti-racism, critical race and whiteness studies, memorialisation and decolonisation. Debbie Bargallie  is a descendent of the Kamilaroi and Wonnarua Aboriginal peoples of the Liverpool Plains and Upper Hunter Valley regions of New South Wales, Australia. She is an associate professor (principal research fellow) with the Griffith Centre for Social and Cultural Research, Griffith Criminology Institute and Griffith Institute for Educational Research at Griffith University, Queensland. Debbie is a critical race scholar. She has been the recipient of the prestigious Stanner Award 2019 for her doctoral thesis manuscript. Her book Unmasking the Racial Contract: Indigenous Voices on Racism in the Australian Public Service (2020) was published in June 2020. Bargallie’s postdoctoral research focused on fostering critical racial literacy as anti-racist praxis in Australian institutions to enhance understandings of the ways that race and racism functions. Noah Bassil  is Associate Professor of Politics and International Relations in the School of Social Sciences at Macquarie University, Australia. Noah’s intellectual work has always focused on the structural and systemic legacies of colonialism and neoliberal capitalism as the basis for understanding contemporary politics. Historical analysis is the foundation on which he explained the conflict in Darfur, Sudan, that broke out in the early 2000s. That interest in the Darfur conflict led to the publication of his PhD as a book titled The Postcolonial State and the Civil War in Sudan as well as a number of other publications on colonialism, racism, Africa and the Middle East. Claire  Baxter  is from Melbourne, Australia, and has completed a MLitt in Conflict Archaeology and Heritage at the University of Glasgow in 2019 with a dissertation on the topic of contextualising relocated monuments. She spoke at events for the History Council of Victoria and Australian Centre for Public History on the topic of contested monuments in 2020; has presented at the 2019 Postgraduate Conference in Conflict Archaeology in Glasgow, 2021

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Australian Historical Association Conference, 2021 Unwanted Histories Conference in The Netherlands, and Swansea University’s 2021 Contested Histories workshop; and has published a commentary in the Public History Review. Jeff  Berglund  is Professor of English at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, Arizona. Berglund’s research and teaching focuses on Native American literature, comparative Indigenous film, and U.S. multi-ethnic literature. His books include Cannibal Fictions: American Explorations of Colonialism, Race, Gender, and Sexuality (2006), Sherman Alexie: A Collection of Critical Essays (co-editor, 2016), Indigenous Pop: Native American Music from Jazz to Hip Hop (co-editor, 2016), The Diné Reader: An Anthology of Navajo Literature (co-editor, 2021), and Indigenous Peoples Rise Up: the Global Ascendancy of Social Media Activism (co-editor with Bronwyn Carlson, 2021). Jessica  U.  Binet  is a Master of Research candidate in the Department of Anthropology at Macquarie University. She has a particular interest in the construction of public histories and temporalities, with broader interests in archaeological and anthropological theory. Her current research is exploring the relationship between Palaeolithic archaeology, anthropology and museum spaces in their perpetuation of the ‘primitive’ trope. Ana  Borges  Jelinic  is a Brazilian-Australian research-practitioner working mainly in the area of migration and violence against women. She graduated in psychology with Honours at PUC-SP, Brazil. She holds post-graduation qualifications from Griffith University and the University of Queensland (UQ), including her PhD awarded in 2020. For over a decade, she has been a member of Women’s Community Aid Association’s management board and a practitioner working with migrant survivors of gendered violence. In 2022, she was the recipient of the Andrew Little Award for teaching excellence. Abraham  Bradfield  is a research officer with the Office of the Pro-ViceChancellor (Indigenous Engagement) at the University of Queensland. Grounded in anthropology, social sciences and critical Indigenous studies, Abraham applies a cross- and transdisciplinary approach to his research to explore themes relating to colonisation, identity and the intercultural. He remains committed to developing and implementing morally responsible research that challenges colonial power structures and encourages new habits of thought and praxis. Rachel Caines  is a cultural historian of race, gender and identity in the British Empire, with a particular focus on the First World War. She is undertaking her PhD at the Institute of Humanities and Social Sciences at the ACU. Her thesis analyses depictions of masculinity in First World War propaganda posters. Her Master’s dissertation, which explored the acknowledgement of Indigenous First World War service in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand, was awarded a Dean’s Commendation for Research Masters Excellence in May 2020.

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NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

Bronwyn  Carlson  is an Aboriginal woman who was born on and lives on D’harawal Country in NSW, Australia, and is the head of the Department of Indigenous Studies, Macquarie University. She is the recipient of several Australian Research Council grants, and her articles on the topics of Indigenous cultural, social, intimate and political engagements on social media, and colonial monuments and truth-telling have appeared in many publications. Bronwyn is the author of The Politics of Identity: Who Counts as Aboriginal Today? (2016), the co-author of the book Monumental Disruptions: Aboriginal People and Colonial Commemorations in So-Called Australia (2023), and co-editor on a number of edited collections focusing on Indigenous activism on social media and Indigenous futures. She is the founding and managing editor of the Journal of Global Indigeneity and is the director of The Centre for Global Indigenous Futures. Bronwyn is a member of The Australian Sociological Association (TASA) and a member of the editorial board for the Journal of Sociology. In 2020 she was elected as a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities. Jane Castle  received a Bachelor of Architecture from the University of New South Wales (UNSW) in 1997. Following this she worked for PTW Architects in Sydney and then for Green Park Associates, a London-based investment company working across offices in Japan, India, Bangladesh and the UK, including the design and build of a school for high school students in Tamil Nadu, India. On returning to Australia, Jane completed a Master of Architecture degree while lecturing at the UNSW. In 2005 she moved to Tasmania to initiate and implement the City of Hobart’s Public Art Program and has subsequently developed the Creative Hobart strategic framework which guides diverse creative programs that activate public spaces and engage residents and visitors to Hobart. Clare  M.  Cooper  is a Lecturer in Design Computing, where she teaches visual communication, design futuring, interaction design and design theory. Her research and pedagogy is informed by two decades of professional design practice, workshop facilitation, design activism and the performing arts. Nancy  Cushing is Associate Professor of History at the University of Newcastle in beautiful Awabakal and Worimi country. An environmental historian whose interests range from coal mining to human-other animal relations, she was co-editor of Animals Count: How Population Size Matters in AnimalHuman Relations (2018). Her interest in monuments stems from research into environmental aspects of coal mining, including air pollution in Smoky City (2015), co-authored with Howard Bridgman. Paul Daley  is a Sydney-based author and journalist whose books have been shortlisted in leading Australian literary awards, including the Prime Minister’s History Prize. He has won a number of journalism prizes including two Walkley Awards, for investigative reporting and Indigenous journalism. He is a feature writer and columnist for The Guardian. His latest novel, ‘Jesustown’, is about

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colonial violence and the theft of Indigenous material culture, including ancestral human remains. Joanne Okimawininew Dallaire  is Elder (Ke Shay Hayo) and Senior Advisor on Indigenous Relations and Reconciliation at Toronto Metropolitan University (TMU). Dallaire’s career as an educator and counsellor has spanned over three decades, including work for Health Canada, the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto, and many First Nations and social service agencies. At TMU, Dallaire is chair of the Aboriginal Education Council and cochair of the Truth and Reconciliation Strategic Planning Group. She has led numerous educational events and ceremonies and has provided input to make the curriculum more reflective of Indigenous knowledge and culture. In 2020–2021, she co-chaired the Standing Strong (Mash Koh Wee Kah Pooh Win) Task Force. Madi Day  is a Murri researcher who studies whiteness, heterosexuality, settler colonialism and gender. They are also passionate about research with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander LGBTQI+ communities, and research responses to gendered violence. They are currently completing their PhD by publication on coloniality, gender and heterosexuality at the Department of Indigenous Studies at Macquarie University. Rachel  DiSaia  has fifteen years of academic administration and leadership experience and is currently the director of Next Chapter Implementation and Coordination at Toronto Metropolitan University (TMU). With an MEd in Higher Education Theory and Policy from the University of Toronto, Rachel has an in-depth understanding and extensive experience in equity and inclusion work, project leadership, strategic planning and policy development and interpretation. Rachel served as Engagement Manager for TMU’s Standing Strong (Mash Koh Wee Kah Pooh Win) Task Force and then led and coordinated the implementation of the task force’s recommendations, including the university renaming project. Catherine  Ellis  is an Associate Professor in the Department of History at Toronto Metropolitan University (TMU). Her research explores political ideas, problem-solving and decision-making in modern and imperial Britain. In 2020–2021, she co-chaired TMU’s Standing Strong (Mash Koh Wee Kah Pooh Win) Task Force, which addressed the history and legacy of the university’s former namesake, Egerton Ryerson. She also served on the university’s Renaming Advisory Committee. Terri Farrelly  is a settler scholar working in the Department of Indigenous Studies, Macquarie University. Her work has been dedicated to Aboriginal suicidologies and addressing racism and discrimination through truth-telling. Together with Professor Bronwyn Carlson, Terri has co-authored the book Monumental Disruptions: Aboriginal People and Colonial Commemorations in So-Called Australia (2023).

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Fiona Foley  is an Associate Professor at the University of Queensland. Her publication titled Biting the Clouds: A Badtjala Perspective on the Aboriginals Protection and Restriction of the Sale of Opium Act, 1897 was published in 2020. Biting the Clouds was awarded the Queensland Premier’s Award for a Work of State Significance in September 2021. Fiona Foley was awarded The Inaugural Monica Clare Research Fellowship 2020 by the State Library of Queensland. This opportunity resulted in the publication Bogimbah Creek Mission: The First Aboriginal Experiment, released 4 November 2021. Her new photographic series on this subject titled The Magna Carta Tree was received with significant interest and featured in a major retrospective exhibition called Veiled Paradise at QUT Art Museum, 2021 (touring to McClelland Gallery  +  Sculpture Park, Victoria and Hervey Bay Regional Gallery, Queensland). Foley exhibits regularly in Australia and internationally. Her major public art commissions include Bluewater Trail Public Art, Mackay (2008), Black Opium, State Library of Queensland (2006), Witnessing to Silence, Brisbane Magistrates Court (2004), The Lie of the Land, Melbourne Museum (1997), and Edge of the Trees, Museum of Sydney (1995). Bronwyn Fredericks  is a Professor and the Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Indigenous Engagement) at the University of Queensland. She has over 30 years of experience working with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities, Indigenous health organisations, NGOs, universities and government agencies. Her research is grounded within the political reality of Indigenous peoples’ daily lives, exemplifies her commitment to social justice and improves Indigenous health and education outcomes. Prudence Gibson  is an author and academic at the School of Art and Design, University of NSW, Sydney. She is lead investigator of an Australian Research Council grant in partnership with Sydney’s Royal Botanic Gardens Herbarium. Her recent books are Janet Laurence: The Pharmacy of Plants (NewSouth Publishing 2015), The Plant Contract (Brill Rodopi 2018) and her forthcoming book with NewSouth Publishing, The Plant Thieves, will be published in April 2023. Ricardo  Guthrie  is Associate Professor of Social Justice at Fisk University, and has researched and taught extensively on Afro-Diasporic culture and Indigenous consciousness between Blacks in the US and Africa since 1976, when he was involved in the African Liberation Support Committee and the anti-apartheid/divestment movement. A member of the Working Group on Emergent Indigenous Identities, he published a chapter, ‘Reading Radmilla: The Semiotics of Self (Black and Navajo),’ in The Politics of Identity (UT— Sydney Press: 2013). Recently, he was named the Arizona Public Humanities Scholar (2022), and an Arizona Informant Newsmaker of the Year (2021). In 2020 he edited a YA book: Malcolm X (Capstone Press), written by Ebony Joy Wilkins.

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Michelle A. Harris  is a Professor in the Department of Africana Studies and the School of Social Welfare, and she directs the Institute for Global Indigeneity at the University at Albany, (SUNY). She previously taught at Northern Arizona University. Innez Haua  is Aotearoa Māori, a daughter of the Pacific, a descendent of iwi; Ngāti Porou, Ngāi Tāmanuhiri, Rongowhakaata, Te Aitanga-a-Māhaki and Ngāti Kahungunu. Currently, she is gratefully residing on the unceded lands of Biddegal country. She is a lecturer and PhD candidate in the Department of Indigenous Studies at Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia. Her research focus includes Indigenous diasporas, Indigenous cultural sustainability and the entangled histories and futures of Indigenous peoples and cultures. Tristan  Kennedy is the Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Indigenous) at Monash University. He is interested in Indigenous peoples’ experiences of digital global citizenship and translocalism and Indigenous peoples’ futures in academia. His most recent research, with funding from Facebook Australia, culminated in an industry report titled “Indigenous Peoples’ Experiences of Harmful Content on Social Media”, which addresses the identification of negative and harmful content as well as the creation of digital counter-­narratives by Indigenous peoples. Tristan is a founding member of the newly established Centre for Global Indigenous Futures. Modupe  Labode  is a public historian who holds a Bachelor’s Degree in History from Iowa State University and Doctorate in History from Oxford University. Modupe is a curator in two divisions at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History: political and military history, and cultural and community life. Her area of concentration is African American social justice history. Marcia Langton  is a descendant of the Yiman and Bidjara nations of central Queensland. She is an anthropologist and geographer, and since 2000 has held the Foundation Chair of Australian Indigenous Studies at the University of Melbourne. Mandisi  Majavu  is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Political and International Studies at Rhodes University. His research investigates the political history of racial formation in South Africa. Majavu’s scholarship investigates the intricacies of racial formation across space and time, ranging from white racism and racial formation in South Africa to anti-black racism in Australia and New Zealand, from white missionaries and Christianity in nineteenth-century South Africa to race and liberalism. He focuses on the way in which these narratives intersect. Dr. Majavu is the author of the book Uncommodified Blackness (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017). Elena  Marchetti  is Deputy Head of School (Research) in the Griffith Law School, Griffith University, and the co-lead of the Disrupting Violence Beacon. She is also the deputy chair of the Queensland Sentencing Advisory Council.

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NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

Elena completed her PhD in 2005 on how the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody considered the experiences of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women whose deaths in custody were investigated by the Royal Commission. Since completing her PhD, she has been the recipient of two prestigious Australian Research Council Fellowships: an Australian Research Fellowship that considered the impact of using Indigenous sentencing courts for partner violence offending; and a Future Fellowship that aims to explore different ways of evaluating Indigenous-focused criminal justice programmes. She is the author of a number of articles, chapters and reports in the areas of Indigenous justice, Indigenous sentencing courts and intersectional race and gender analyses of legal processes. Her book titled Indigenous Culture, Courts and Partner Violence was published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2019. Jessica Neath  is a non-Indigenous Australian of settler descent with a PhD in Art History. She is currently a Research Fellow in the Wominjeka Djeembana Indigenous Research Lab in the Faculty of Art, Design and Architecture at Monash University. Fiona Nicoll  is a Professor in the Political Science department at the University of Alberta and an adjunct professor at RMIT in the Digital Ethnography Research Centre. She has a track record of working with Indigenous leaders, artists and academics, through social history curation, collaborative arts projects, teaching and joint research projects over two decades in Australia and Canada. As the founding editor and current co-editor of Critical Gambling Studies, she facilitates knowledge transfer on the politics of Indigenous gambling in Australia and North America as well as the role of arts in creating and transforming knowledge relations, within and across conflict zones in settler-­ colonial states. Patrick O’Leary  has worked in the area of gendered violence as social worker and now as a researcher for over 25 years. Since 2004, O’Leary has held numerous senior posts at universities in Australia and the United Kingdom. He has worked internationally and domestically on domestic violence and child protection issues. O’Leary was commissioned as an Expert Academic Advisor to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse and has served as a senior research fellow with UNICEF’s Office for Research. Most recently, he was a member of the Queensland Women’s Safety and Justice Taskforce examining coercive control and women’s experience of the justice system in relation to sexual violence as well as women’s experience as offenders. At Griffith University, he has been the academic lead for the Violence Research and Prevention Program (VRPP) and MATE Bystander Project. Currently he is co-leader of the Disrupting Violence Beacon at Griffith University and is the chair of the Clinical Advisory Committee for Survivors and Mates Support Network (SAMSN), a lead national organisation supporting male survivors of child sexual abuse. O’Leary’s work is internationally recognised and his work is

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widely cited in high-quality journals. He is the co-editor of International Social Work since 2018. Sandy O’Sullivan  is a Wiradjuri transgender/non-binary person and a professor in the Department of Indigenous Studies at Macquarie University, where they are a 2020–2024 ARC Future Fellow, with a project titled Saving Lives: Mapping the Influence of Indigenous LGBTIQ+ Creative Artists. The project explores the unique contribution of queer artists to understand how modelling complex identities contributes to the wellbeing of all First Nations’ peoples. Since 1991 they have taught and researched across gender and sexuality, museums, the body, performance, design and First Nations’ identity. Sandy was the inaugural director of the Centre for Collaborative First Nations’ Research at Batchelor Institute. They recently completed an internationally focused ARC program examining the representation and engagement of First Nations’ Peoples across 470 museums and Keeping Places. In 2020 they completed an ARC Linkage mapping creative practice across the Barkly Region of the Northern Territory (Creative Barkly). Sandy works across both industry and the academy and completed a national review of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander dance and theatre makers for the Australia Council for the Arts. In addition to the Saving Lives program, they are currently leading a project with the national organisation Parents of Gender-Diverse Children to develop an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander-focused toolkit for parents, carers and service providers. In addition to their academic work, Sandy has been a musician, performer, writer, and sound artist since 1982 holding national and international arts residencies. Nikolas Orr  is an early career historian trained in global history at the Centre for the Study of Violence at the University of Newcastle, Australia. He also holds degrees in Art History and Fine Art (Sculpture). His current work takes a transnational perspective on iconoclasm and its intersection with monuments and colonialism. His research has appeared in the English Historical Review, Index Journal, Virtual Creativity and the Griffith Journal of Law & Human Dignity as well as in chapters in edited volumes with Routledge and Brill. He has presented papers at conferences and symposia throughout Australia and in Portugal and New Zealand. Eric E. Otenyo  is a Professor in the Department of Politics & International Affairs, Northern Arizona University (NAU), Flagstaff, Arizona. He is a current NAU Diversity Fellow. He previously taught at the University of Nairobi, Kenya, and at Illinois State University, Normal. Suvendrini Perera  is John Curtin Distinguished Emeritus Professor at Curtin University, Australia. She is the author/editor of nine books, including, most recently, Mapping Deathscapes: Digital Geographies of Racial and Border Violence (2022), coedited with Joseph Pugliese.

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Joseph  Pugliese  is Professor of Cultural Studies at Macquarie University, Australia. His most recent books are Biopolitics of the More-Than-Human: Forensic Ecologies of Violence (2020) and Mapping Deathscapes: Digital Geographies of Racial and Border Violence (2022) coedited with Suvendrini Perera. Zac  Roberts  is an Aboriginal scholar from the South Coast of New South Wales, Australia. His research interests centre on Indigenous histories, with a particular interest in interrogating the unspoken space of Indigenous narratives within the broader national history of Australia. Zac is currently a PhD candidate in the Department of Indigenous Studies at Macquarie University, where he is researching the relationship between Indigenous and Jewish communities in Australia since 1788. CindyAnn  Rose-Redwood is an Associate Teaching Professor in the Department of Geography at the University of Victoria. Her research examines the social experiences of international students in higher education settings, the social geographies of immigrant communities in North American cities, and the Caribbean diaspora. She is lead editor of the book, International Encounters: Higher Education and the International Student Experience (2019), as well as associate editor of the Journal of International Students and the International Journal of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education. Reuben  Rose-Redwood  is Professor of Geography and associate dean academic in the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Victoria. His research examines the intersections of cultural landscape studies, critical toponymies, and the politics of mapping, among other topics. He has published various works on the role that place naming plays in the making, unmaking, and remaking of cultural landscapes. He is co-editor of a number of books, including The Political Life of Urban Streetscapes: Naming, Politics, and Place (2018), and is managing editor of Dialogues in Human Geography. Wil  Sahar  Patrick  is a PhD student in the Critical Geographies Research Collaboratory at the University of Victoria. He is interested in studying the cultivation, maintenance, and defence of political infrastructures for the development of emancipatory spaces and decolonisation in North America and Central Asia. His doctoral research explores the monumentality of settler colonial infrastructure in Canada and how infrastructures produce settler colonial space by analysing controversies over the commemorative monumental landscape and state infrastructure projects. His research in Central Asia explores local self-governance in Afghanistan and Tajikistan and critiques of current imposition of Western frameworks for theorising politics in the region. Inker-Anni Sara  is Associate Professor of Journalism at the Sámi University of Applied Sciences, Guovdageaidnu, Norway. In recent years, Sara has worked for the master’s programme in Sámi Journalism from an Indigenous perspective. Currently, Sara focuses on media transparency, Indigenous journalism,

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and strategic communication related to the planned Arctic Railway. Sara seeks to link the theme of the Arctic Railway to the broader research interests in the Sámi media, especially the meaning of the Sámi media for the Sámi public debate and democratic process in the Sámi society. Her research interests are also in Sámi media systems, Indigenous participation, and consultation. Rebecca  Senior  is a Henry Moore Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Nottingham, UK. Her research explores British imperial monuments as both physical and ideological relics of empire, specifically how they facilitated imperial perspectives through visual culture. Her book project, Allegories of Violence, presents a new imperial-­critical history of the British empire as it was told through its monuments and introduces allegory—the representation of immaterial concepts as images—as a networked visual apparatus of empire. Joseph  Toscano  received a Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery from the University of Queensland in 1976 and a Doctorate of Medicine from the University of Melbourne in 1986. He continues working part-time looking after the medical needs of people with traumatic spinal cord paralysis. He has broadcast at Community Radio 3CR since 1977 and currently hosts the programmes Anarchist World This Week, Radical Australia and Talk Back with Attitude. Dr. Toscano is currently the Convenor of the Tunnerminnerwait and Maulboyheenner Commemoration Committee, Ellen José Memorial Foundation, The Anarchist Media Institute, Peter Norman Commemoration Committee, Reclaim the Radical Spirit of the Eureka Rebellion Celebrations, Public Housing—Everybody’s Business and the West Papua Rent Collective. He is also the Registered Officer of Public Interests Before Corporate Interests (PIBCI), a new and emerging political party. John Terry Ward,  a Métis and Non-Status Indian from the Algonquin territory of Kitchi-Sibi, is pursuing a PhD in Education at the University of Ottawa. His specialisation is Indigenous wholistic knowledge, ethics, disabilities, and uncovering past injustices impacting Indigenous peoples in Canada. John has worked in the area of history and research for the majority of his life, while engaging with First Nations, Inuit and Métis peoples in bridging knowledge systems for a greater good within reconciliation efforts. John is empowered by traditional wholistic knowledge as a way of building dialogue among Indigenous peoples within a colonial perspective. He enjoys wood, bone, and antler carving, as well as birch bark making and teaching youth, and above all passing on knowledge, and sharing who we are to make a difference for the next generation. Tsione  Wolde-Michael is a Curator of African American Social Justice History at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History. Her work focuses on creating innovative approaches to community engagement, collections management, heritage preservation, and exhibitions including the landmark Slavery and Freedom show at the National Museum of African American History and Culture. Her international work through the Slave Wreck’s Project

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has included assignments in South Africa and Mozambique to recover firstknown objects from underwater slave ship wrecks and work with local public history institutions to reinterpret colonial collections. Tsione’s decade-long experience in the field of public history also extends to digital media and online exhibitions, curating visual art, writing for academic publications, teaching, and lecturing around the country. Her current projects include a special joint Smithsonian-­wide initiative to document the history of the Black Lives Matter movement. She holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Women and Gender Studies from Macalester College and a Master’s Degree in History from Harvard University, where she is a PhD candidate in the same field. Amy Young  is an experienced researcher with technical skills in programme evaluation and review, literature review, and a range of qualitative and quantitative research and evaluation methodologies. She has a passion for promoting children’s rights, participation and protection, and addressing domestic and family violence. She has strong stakeholder management and programme execution skills and has worked as a research assistant on diverse projects. These have included projects focused on domestic and family violence, child protection, violence against children in Afghanistan, school age care in Australia and child protection in Indonesia. Young completed her PhD focusing upon child rights and child participation in Brunei Darussalam, under the supervision of Professor Patrick O’Leary, Dr. Jennifer Boddy and Professor Mohamad Abdalla. Topics covered in this research include juvenile justice, child protection, gender, children with special needs, citizenship and access to education. Young’s recent work has included qualitative research with men who use violence, and women and child survivors of domestic violence. Young has courseconvened research methods courses at both an undergraduate and postgraduate levels.

List of Images

Image 2.1

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Image 6.2 Image 6.3 Image 6.4 Image 8.1

Image 8.2

Image 8.3 Image 8.4

Front view of Captain Cook statue in Hyde Park Sydney: as described, the white explorer stands proud, high above all, declaring the greatness of himself and his race and the ‘discovery’ of the land all around him. (Photography: Noah Bassil) 19 Rear view of Captain Cook Statue in Hyde Park Sydney: This celebrates Cook as discoverer. So even from the back, we are reminded of Britain’s right to rule the land. (Photography: Noah Bassil)20 Parliament Hill, Ottawa, Ontario—Footwear, clothing, and personal items placed in memory of the children who never returned home from the Indian Residential Schools, November 19, 2021. (Photograph by John Terry Ward) 93 Statue of John A. MacDonald, Parliament Hill, Ottawa. Sculptor: Louis-­Philippe Hébert. (Photograph by John Terry Ward) 94 John A. MacDonald from a two-eyed seeing approach 95 Centennial Flame, Parliament Hill, Ottawa—personal items placed in memory of the victims of the Indian Residential Schools. (Photograph taken by John Terry Ward. 98 Ricky Maynard, A Free Country from the series Portrait of a Distant Land, 2005. Silver gelatin print, 43.0 × 41.7 cm image; 60.7 × 50.5 cm sheet. (© Ricky Maynard. Image courtesy of the artist)132 Uncle Max Eulo begins the day with a smoking ceremony in front of artist Brook Andrew’s Travelling Colony caravan, Yabun, Victoria Park, Sydney, Thursday, 26 January 2012. (© Photograph by Jamie James. State Library of New South Wales) 134 Timmy Timms, Mistake Creek Massacre, 2000. Natural pigments on linen canvas. 150 × 180 cm. (Art Gallery of New South Wales. © Timmy Timms/Copyright Agency 2022) 137 Judy Watson, pale slaughter, 2015. Pigment, paint, pastel, watercolour pencil on canvas, 179 h × 96 w cm. (National Gallery of Australia. © Judy Watson. Image courtesy of the artist) 140

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Image 8.5 Image 8.6 Image 8.7 Image 9.1

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Image 15.1 Image 15.2 Image 15.3 Image 19.1 Image 19.2 Image 19.3 Image 19.4

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Shiraz Bayjoo, film still from Ile de France, 2015. HD Film. (© Shiraz Bayjoo. Image courtesy of the artist) 142 Annual memorial walk at the Myall Creek Memorial, New South Wales, June 2017. (Photo: Jessica Neath) 143 Corina Marino addressing the working group for the Blacktown Native Institute, RR.Memorial Forum, Thursday 28 June, RMIT Design Hub. (Photo: Brook Andrew) 148 Dr. Carolyn Briggs AM—Boon Wurrung Elder, Chairperson and Founder of the Boon Wurrung Foundation and Patron of the Tunnerminnerwait and Maulboyheenner Commemoration Committee, 2018. (Photograph: Charandev Singh) 169 Dr. Joseph Toscano—Convenor Tunnerminnerwait and Maulboyheenner Commemoration Committee, 2019. (Photograph: Brendan Bonsack) 170 Piece of art from Ellen José’s 2003 exhibition titled ‘A Fact Is a Fact Is a Fact Is a Fact—Up Yours Windschuttle’ that launched the campaign, photographed at the Standing by Tunnerminnerwait and Maulboyheenner Memorial, Melbourne, 2016. (Photograph: Joseph Toscano) 171 Standing By Tunnerminnerwait and Maulboyheenner, memorial created by Brook Andrew and Trent Walter, 2016. Public art commissioned for City of Melbourne. (Photograph: Joseph Toscano)171 The ‘newspaper stands’ section of the Standing By Tunnerminnerwait and Maulboyheenner memorial created by Brook Andrew and Trent Walter, 2016. Public art commissioned for City of Melbourne. (Photograph: Joseph Toscano) 172 Settlers’ Drive. Shepparton. (Photograph by Fiona Nicoll) 283 Archie Moore, 14 Nations, 2014. (Photograph by Fiona Nicoll) 291 Archie Moore, United Neytions, 2018. Sydney International Airport. (Photograph by Fiona Nicoll) 292 Endeavour River, Cooktown Queensland, 2019. (Photograph: Bronwyn Fredericks) 357 Cooktown, Queensland, 2019. (Photograph: B. Fredericks) 359 Cooks Monument, Cooktown, Queensland, 1888, designed by Colonial Architects Office, manufactured by Hobbs & Carter. (Photograph: Bronwyn Fredericks) 360 Drinking Fountain of Cooks Monument, Cooktown, Queensland, 1888, designed by Colonial Architects Office, manufactured by Hobbs & Carter. (Photograph: Bronwyn Fredericks)361 Cooks Monument Plaque, Cooktown, Queensland, 1888, designed by Colonial Architects Office, manufactured by Hobbs & Carter. (Photograph: Bronwyn Fredericks) 362 Aunty Rhonda Dixon-Grovenor alongside her daughter, Nadeena Dixon, a Gadigal, Yuin, Wiradjuri artist and activist addressing the crowd at the Stop All Black Deaths in Custody rally at Belmore Park, 6 June 2020. (Photo used with permission from photographer Paul Gregoire and Aunty Rhonda Dixon-Grovenor) 384

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DOHA’s FRAGILE sticker (front and back) handed out at the BLM rally in Djarrbarrgalli, 5 July 2020. (Author’s own photos, used with permission of DOHA) 385 Travis De Vries, Cook Falling, Tear it Down (2019). (Reproduced with permission from the artist) 386 DOHA in action: ‘We stopped them in their tracks at various points along the parade, with the aim of turning back the unwelcome float’ (DOHA, 2018). Members of DOHA jump the security fences in mock-Federal Police costume and masks to chaperone a mock-Endeavour replica and holding a banner reading, ‘TURN BACK THE FLOAT! JUSTICE FOR REFUGEES’. (Photo taken on Gadigal land at Taylor Square, Darlinghurst, during the 2018 Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras. Photo used with the permission of DOHA and photographer Alex Davies) 390 ‘If you see something, say something’. DOHA’s photocopied flyer that was distributed during the 2020 Sydney Mardi Gras parade (front and back). (Courtesy of DOHA, 2020) 391 Black Lives Matter public mourning gathering in Djarrbarrgall, Sydney, 5 July 2020. (Author’s own photo) 392 ‘Colonial virus: do you have it?’ DOHA distributed this poster design digitally and in public paste-ups on walls and poles on Gadigal Wangal lands between August and September of 2020. https://decoloniseproject250.wixsite.com/mysite Accessed October 21, 2020. (Courtesy of DOHA) 394 The Equestrian Statue of Theodore Roosevelt (sculptor James Earle Fraser, unveiled in 1940) and the enactment of white supremacist monumentality at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. (Courtesy of photographer Edward H. Blake, as modified by Wikimedia Commons, 2015) 438 Deaths in Custody Watch Committee’s projection of Ms. Dhu’s image in the city centre, Boorloo 2017. (Photo: Michelle Bui) 468 Protest march on the anniversary of Ms. Dhu’s death in custody, Forrest Place, Boorloo, (Perth), 4 August 2015. (Photo: Marziya Mohammedali)469 Saying Their Names, Walyalup (Fremantle), June 2020. Projection by Steve Aliyan. Photo: Anonymous. (Reproduced with permission) 481 George Frampton, Queen Victoria Memorial, 1905, Leeds, England. Bronze and Portland stone. (Photograph: Author) 506 Town Hall, Victoria Square, Queen Victoria Statue unveiling, 27 November 1905. (Photograph. By kind permission of Leeds Libraries, www.leodis.net) 508 At the Woodhouse Moor location: George Frampton, Queen Victoria Memorial, 1905, Leeds, England. Bronze and Portland stone. (Photograph: Author) 509 Detail of Leeds City Crest: George Frampton, Queen Victoria Memorial, 1905, Leeds, England. Bronze and Portland stone. (Photograph: Author) 511

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Image 26.5 Image 26.6 Image 26.7 Image 26.8 Image 26.9 Image 29.1

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Detail of Peace: George Frampton, Queen Victoria Memorial, 1905, Leeds, England. Bronze and Portland stone. (Photograph: Author)512 Detail of Industry: George Frampton, Queen Victoria Memorial, 1905, Leeds, England. Bronze and Portland stone. (Photograph: Author)513 Detail of Kolkata figure of Queen Victoria: George Frampton, Queen Victoria Memorial, 1902, Kolkata, India. Bronze and Portland stone. (Photograph: Author) 514 Detail of Leeds figure of Queen Victoria: George Frampton, Queen Victoria Memorial, 1905, Leeds, England. Bronze and Portland stone. (Photograph: Author) 515 Detail of graffiti on Peace: George Frampton, Queen Victoria Memorial, 1905, Leeds, England. Bronze and Portland stone. (Photograph: Author) 519 Allan Mansell, Truth Telling, 2021. Mixed media installation at the William Crowther statue, Franklin Square, nipaluna (Hobart), lutruwita (Tasmania). Courtesy of City of Hobart and the artist. Photograph: Andrew Wilson 562 Roger Scholes and Greg Lehman, The Lanney Pillar, 2021. Mixed media installation at the William Crowther statue, Franklin Square, nipaluna (Hobart), lutruwita (Tasmania). Courtesy of City of Hobart and the artist. Photograph: Andrew Wilson 564 Julie Gough, BREATHING SPACE, 2021. Construction by Stuart Houghton. Timber, poster (digital file) installation at the William Crowther statue, Franklin Square, nipaluna (Hobart), lutruwita (Tasmania). Courtesy of City of Hobart and the artist. Photograph: Andrew Wilson 565 Jillian Mundy, Something Missing, 2021. Film, viewing enclosure made from repurposed materials, television screen, blackboard paint and chalk installation at the William Crowther statue, Franklin Square, nipaluna (Hobart), lutruwita (Tasmania). Courtesy of City of Hobart and the artist. Photograph: Andrew Wilson566

CHAPTER 1

Introduction Bronwyn Carlson

and Terri Farrelly

“Carry a Song/Disrupt an Anthem” Commemorations are reminders. They aim to serve as permanent, tangible markers—a link between present and past generations—committing people and events to memory and assigning them importance, meaning and purpose. … They help us mould how we remember the past, and shape how we view the future. Essentially, what we choose to commemorate reflects what we as a society value. … They express a particular version of history and enforce what society deems memorable and significant. … This facilitates not only what is to be remembered, but what is to be forgotten, selectively shifting certain parts of history. … The reasons they are revered by some can be the very reasons they are offensive to others. (Carlson & Farrelly, 2023, pp. 1–2)

On the front cover of this book there is a striking image of an art installation by Nicholas Galanin (Yéil Ya-Tseen), a Tlingit/Unangax̂ multi-disciplinary artist and musician from Alaska, titled Shadow on the Land, an Excavation and Bush Burial, 2020. The work had been commissioned for the 22nd Biennale of Sydney, 2020, and was installed on Cockatoo Island, a UNESCO World Heritage Site located in what is known today as Sydney Harbour. The installation essentially consisted of a grave for a famous statue of Captain James Cook, located in Hyde Park, Warrane (Sydney). The Cook statue consists of a bronze figure perched high on a stone pedestal, arm raised theatrically to the sky, with a large inscription below declaring, “DISCOVERED THIS TERRITORY

B. Carlson • T. Farrelly (*) Department of Indigenous Studies, Macquarie University, Macquarie Park, NSW, Australia e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 B. Carlson, T. Farrelly (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook on Rethinking Colonial Commemorations, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-28609-4_1

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1770”. The ‘grave’ consists of an excavation into the earth, in the style of an archaeological dig, cut in the unmistakable shape the actual Hyde Park statue would cast—as we have previously written—“the embodiment of the shadow of capitalism, environmental degradation and destruction that colonisation and all of its consequences continue to cast on Indigenous lands” (Carlson & Farrelly, 2023, p. 63). The dig is surrounded by yellow fencing and archaeological tools—a reference to how colonial commemorations such as the Hyde Park Cook statue are protected. The staging of an archaeological dig is “used to contradict the definition of ‘discovery’ that the Hyde Park statue falsely claims. … Digging into the soil exposes evidence of the past, a long-storied past, and Earth’s oldest civilisation” (Carlson & Farrelly, 2023, pp. 63–64). This work, and others by Galanin, including the 2020 exhibition at the Peter Blum Gallery in New York titled Carry a Song/Disrupt an Anthem, have been a particular inspiration for compiling this book. Shadow on the Land, an Excavation and Bush Burial, 2020, opened in early March 2020, coinciding with the lead up to the official celebrations of the 250th anniversary of Cook’s arrival on the east coast of what is now colonially known as Australia (which were later put on hold due to the COVID-19 pandemic). Following the murder of George Floyd on 25 May 2020 in the US city of Minneapolis, the Black Lives Matter protests across the globe challenged numerous colonial commemorations—statues of so-called heroes of Empire and supporters of the slave trade, monuments to ‘explorers’ who were also murderers and thieves, and placenames given to places that already had names. This made Galanin’s work depicting the ‘burial’ of the Cook statue all the more profound. It was thought-provoking and encouraged truth-telling. Galanin had spent nearly two years working on the design, visiting Warrane and consulting closely with Indigenous peoples from across the continent colonially known as ‘Australia’. Galanin’s people also share a troubled history with Cook, who travelled up into Anchorage, Alaska, on his third and final voyage, ‘discovering’ and renaming many of the Indigenous inlets and disregarding the Alaskan Indigenous knowledge and connections with the land: We share similar colonial struggles with racism, erasure, and other disparities implemented and upheld by colonial governments. … The conversation surrounding monuments and statues which today often represents one-sided history of mainly white men responsible for genocide, rape, slave trade, etc., has been ongoing amongst our communities. (Galanin in Rami, 2020, para. 2)

Galanin had originally intended to install the work in Hyde Park—to excavate the actual shadow cast by the Cook statue itself—however was unable to gain approval. Galanin believes this turned out to be fortuitous, as the provision of the excavation of the shadow in the absence of the actual statue itself enables the observer to perceive a future where the statue might be removed— a future where the voices of Indigenous communities impacted by ongoing colonial violence are heard and such commemorations can be addressed (Rami, 2020). Galanin also notes the irony that his ‘burial’ of the Cook statue ended

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up being installed on Cockatoo Island, a place stolen from Aboriginal peoples by the colonisers and used as a convict prison. Over many decades debate has raged around the world about the meaning of many commemorations, and what place and space they should continue to occupy. Thanks to the advent of social media and overage provided by journalists and news outlets, the protests over recent years have gained an increased public awareness, inspiring what we have previously framed as a ‘global reckoning’ over racial injustice (Carlson & Farrelly, 2022, p. 13). For example, in the United States of America, this debate has largely centred around statues commemorating Confederate Civil War figures erected in the segregation era as part of an attempt at white supremacist domination over Black communities, symbolising institutionalised racism and Black disenfranchisement (Carlson & Farrelly, 2023). Protests have also focused on commemorations of Christopher Columbus, the so-called discoverer of America and perpetrator of brutality against Native American peoples. For example, a nineteenth-century commemoration known as the ‘Early Days’ statue in San Francisco, depicting a Native American person at the feet of a Spanish cowboy and a Catholic missionary, was finally removed in 2018 after a 30-year battle. On this continent, protests have typically targeted monuments to ‘explorers’, such as Captain James Cook, claiming ‘discovery’, and to ‘founding fathers’ who were also responsible, either directly or indirectly, for the dispossession and massacre of numerous Aboriginal peoples. In Aotearoa/New Zealand, protests also targeted statues of Cook and other colonial ‘heroes’, as well as the returning of Māori names to places such as Tūranganui-a-Kiwa which had been renamed ‘Poverty Bay’ by Cook. In Canada, some protests have focused on monuments honouring historical figures who had pivotal roles in encouraging and rewarding the massacre of First Nations peoples, and the forcible removal of First Nations children to be imprisoned in the notorious ‘Residential School’ system, in a deliberate attempt to permanently break their connections to culture, language and family. In South Africa as well as the United Kingdom, this reckoning has been fuelled by the #RhodesMustFall movement, protesting against the commemoration of the notorious white supremacist and British imperialist Cecil Rhodes. In the United Kingdom, some protests centred particularly on commemorations of slave traders, culminating in the highly publicised toppling and rolling into the harbour of the Bristol statue of Edward Colston. However, discontent with colonial commemorations is not a recent phenomenon. In fact, as we have noted, “the toppling of statues is nothing new, and neither are these debates” (Carlson & Farrelly, 2023, p. 8). For as long as humans have been erecting monuments, we have also taken them down. Roman emperors erased the names and images of their predecessors. The French Revolution resulted in the destruction of monuments to the monarchy. Following the death of Francisco Franco in 1975, many towns in Spain removed statues of the dictator. In 1993, a home for removed statues from the communist period was opened in Budapest, Hungary, known as ‘Memento Park’. Other similar sites opened in Moscow (Fallen Monument Park in 1996) and

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Lithuania (Grutas Park in 2001). In 2003, the United States Army televised its toppling of the statue of Saddam Hussein in Baghdad. Across the world, colonial commemorations no longer reflect the values of many of the societies they were once created in. For many Indigenous and Bla(c)k1 communities, they are reminders of an era that actively sought to exclude and even eradicate them, and their continued presence is evidence of attempts at ongoing oppression. From an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander context, colonial commemorations have an agenda of Black erasure and white permanence (Birch, 2005). They attempt to remove evidence of thousands of years of Aboriginal presence and to claim settler ownership, marking territory on Aboriginal Country, and memorialising sites to proclaim a significance they are simply not entitled to (Birch, 2020). Aboriginal scholar Tony Birch (2020) encourages a new way of observing colonial commemorations: to consider each one in terms of its relationship to the way colonial society covets Country, and how it works to write a new mythological story of Country. The protection and continued presence of such commemorations serve to protect and uphold that mythological story—a story that erases Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander presence and creates a fiction of white permanence. There are many potential solutions for addressing problematic colonial commemorations—not just removal—depending on so many factors unique to each one, including the history of the person or event being commemorated, its context, the provision of interpretation, and who was involved in its creation. In many locations, people have worked together to decide and act on the future of some existing commemorations, as well as to acknowledge and honour individuals and events that had not yet received deserved recognition. This collection of chapters explores these efforts from across the world, particularly from Indigenous and Bla(c)k communities, to ‘decolonise’ and dismantle colonial commemorations, and to ‘Indigenise’ and assert the continuation of their cultures—to both, Galanin’s 2020 exhibition “Carry a Song” and “Disrupt an Anthem” suggests.

Brave Disruptions While many Indigenous and Bla(c)k efforts to remove, rectify and/or re-­ imagine colonial commemorations have had the support of other allies such as non-Indigenous and white community members, very often they have faced fierce opposition. In so-called Australia, to challenge colonial commemorations is to challenge the myth of peaceful settlement. It is to assert the presence of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples on this continent before the invasion of white settlers. It is to draw attention to the fact that white settler occupation of this continent is only very recent. To do so can result in hate 1  A note on terminology and in reference to the use of ‘Black’ and ‘Blak’ see, https://www.smh. com.au/national/blak-black-blackfulla-language-is-important-but-it-can-be-tricky-­20210826p58lzg.html

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mail, abusive phone calls and threats to your personal safety and that of your children. It can result in attacks on your credibility and professional integrity, even your identity. Typical accusations include being called a troublemaker, deliberately divisive, a terrorist and an ungrateful liar (see Carlson & Farrelly, 2023). You will very likely be positioned, particularly by the ‘whitestream’ media (Johnson, 2011) and government ministers, including prime ministers, as being part of a very insignificant minority with no real public support or momentum, and therefore also irrational and probably crazy. If you are an Indigenous or Bla(c)k person, you are also likely to be accused of being ridiculous for wasting time on this when there are so many other ‘more important’ problems in your community to worry about. Challenging colonial commemorations takes courage. The purpose of this edited collection is to honour this courage and provide a platform for not only scholarly but also general public conversations about the relevance and appropriateness of colonial commemorations—conversations that are commonly marginalised from beyond the dominant discourse. This collection seeks to promote stories of how communities have worked, and continue to work, to rethink these commemorations. It makes no claim of being representative of a particular region, nor representative of what is happening around the whole world. It also makes no claim of being representative of all the modes of resistance enacted against colonial commemorations. Instead, this collection is the response to an open invitation put out through our domestic and international networks to share stories of movements from around the world, particularly from Indigenous and Bla(c)k communities, to remove, rectify and re-imagine colonial statues, monuments, memorials and other commemorations. The focus was not on geographical range but on the people involved and their stories of resistance. However, we managed to receive contributions from a wide range of locations: Aotearoa/New Zealand, Australia, Canada, South Africa, Norway, the United Kingdom and the United States of America. The voices heard in this collection come from a mix of established and emerging authors—Indigenous, Bla(c)k and settler allies. The list of contributors includes not just academic scholars and postgraduate students, as is usually the case with an edited collection, but also includes activists, artists, journalists, historians, architects, designers, curators, anthropologists, geographers and a general practitioner who is also an anarchist. Their backgrounds and contributions submitted for this collection are indicative of the intersections of a wide and diverse field of interest in this debate. The range of responses to the issue of rethinking colonial commemorations have been grouped under the following three themes: Recognition and Remembering; Resistance and Re-Imagining; and Removal and Rectification.

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An Overview of Part I: Recognition and Remembering The first part of this collection presents stories that fall under the theme of ‘Recognition and Remembering’—stories about raising awareness, truth-­ telling and gaining long-withheld recognition, representation and remembrance. In Chap. 2, politics and international relations scholar Noah Bassil contextualises the current debate across the continent of Australia around ‘colonial memorialisation’ within the larger struggle against colonialism, arguing that colonial commemorations are bound to economic and political inequality, which itself is reliant on racist cultural order. In Chap. 3, Māori scholar Pounamu Jade Aikman and educational studies and leadership scholar Mahdis Azarmandi similarly describe the role of colonial commemorations in Aotearoa in upholding settler supremacy and the need to subjugate Māori, perpetuating a ‘deliberate misremembering’. In Chap. 4, Aboriginal historian and Indigenous Studies scholar and PhD candidate Zac Roberts and anthropology Masters candidate Jessica U. Binet interrogate the relationship across the continent of Australia between Indigenous peoples and tertiary institutions named for colonial figures, arguing that such institutions are sites not only of colonial commemoration but also colonial violence. In Chap. 5, political and international studies scholar Mandisi Majavu contributes to the political discourse that spurred the Rhodes Must Fall movement by interrogating the memorialised legacy of Cecil Rhodes, which is argued to be an attempt at ongoing sanitising of the history of violence and exploitation enacted by Rhodes against African people. Chapter 6 is contributed by PhD candidate John Terry Ward, a Métis and non-status Indian from Algonquin Territory, Canada, and examines the growing awareness of the dark side of history relating to John A.  MacDonald, Canada’s first prime minister who was also an instigator of cultural genocide. Chapter 7, by cultural historian Rachel Caines, details the positioning of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander efforts to be recognised for their armed service and included in official Anzac Day commemorative events as ‘disruptions’. In Chap. 8, Wiradjuri Celtic Australian artist, curator and writer Brook Andrew, together with Yiman and Bidjara anthropologist and geographer Marcia Langton and settler art history scholar Jessica Neath, reflect on the international comparative research project ‘Representation, Remembrance and the Memorial’, that centred on the memorialisation of the Australian Frontier Wars, and explore the possibility of representing the magnitude of both Indigenous loss and survival in a national memorial, or memorials. Chapter 9, by general practitioner, anarchist and activist Joseph Toscano, describes the work of the Tunnerminnerwait and Maulboyheenner Commemoration Committee, of which Toscano is a convenor, to establish a Frontier Wars monument in Naarm (Melbourne) to honour the lives of Tunnerminnerwait and Maulboyheenner, two resistance fighters from lutruwita (Tasmania) who were publicly executed in 1842. In Chap. 10, Māori Indigenous Studies scholar and PhD candidate Innez Haua recounts the design and construction of a housing estate in Warrane (Sydney) that was built

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to honour the voyages of James Cook, paying homage to ‘discovery’ while also erasing and re-writing Aboriginal peoples, lands and cultures. In Chap. 11, Sámi journalism scholar Inker-Anni Sara examines how churches are presented and framed in the Sámi homeland of Finland to maintain colonial discourses. Chapter 12, contributed by Aboriginal scholars Sandy O’Sullivan and Madi Day, explores how genders and bodies are presented and assigned imposed meaning in the colonial museum. In Chap. 13, historians Nikolas Orr and Nancy Cushing extend the rethinking of colonial commemorations to encompass the role of statues in extractivist economies, examining the substances from which they are made, and arguing that debates about their future should also consider the harm industries and practices to extract such substances have enacted to lands, waters and climate.

An Overview of Part II: Resistance and Reimagining The second part of this collection presents stories of protest, resistance and disruption, and of reinterpretation and reimagining. Chapter 14 emerges from the ‘Reason and Reckoning: Provocations and Conversations’ symposium, orchestrated by K’gari artist and scholar Fiona Foley, held in 2022 at Griffith University, Queensland, and is compiled by scholars Amy Young, Ana Borges Jelinic, Elena Marchetti and Patrick O’Leary, who share a research interest in violence against women. It examines the social narratives inherent in the rulings and writing of Samuel Griffith and how they reinforce racial and gendered discrimination, for the purpose of identifying how they can be disrupted. Chapter 15 emerges from the same symposium, and is a compilation by Fiona Foley, Kamilaroi and Wonnarua critical race scholar Debbie Bargallie, Aboriginal scholar and co-editor of this book Bronwyn Carlson, and international critical race scholar Fiona Nicoll. It relates to the problematic legacy of Sir Samuel Griffith and the naming of universities commemorating colonial figures in general. In Chap. 16, English and Native American literature scholar Jeff Berglund presents an overview of the United States television comedy series Rutherford Falls (2021), which boasts the largest staff of Native/Indigenous writers in Hollywood, as well as a large cast of Native characters actually played by Native actors, and centres around efforts to remove a statue of a fictional colonial founding father. In Chap. 17, social justice scholar Ricardo Guthrie reviews the ongoing role Confederate monuments in the United States have in impairing collective memory and explores how the global Black Lives Matter protests of 2020 fostered solidarity and encouraged a new dialogue for rethinking colonial commemorations. Chapter 18, by art and design scholar Prudence Gibson, celebrates the art of Aboriginal artist Daniel Boyd, whose work aims to tell the truth about Australian colonial mythologising of British ‘explorers’, exposing instead the reality of invasion, theft, exploitation and enslavement. In Chap. 19, by Aboriginal scholars Bronwyn Fredericks and settler researcher Abraham Bradfield, the varying outcomes resulting from protest against colonial commemorations of Captain James Cook are explored, including the reassertion of

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Indigenous agency, and the contribution truth-­telling can make to presenting a shared history and fostering conciliation. Chapter 20, by design activism scholar Clare M. Cooper, explores the role of design in participatory and context-responsive grassroots activism with a particular focus on the work of the performance and research collective, the Department of Homo Affairs. Chapter 21, by Noongar sociologist Tristan Kennedy, also focuses on the television comedy series ‘Rutherford Falls’, exploring the value of its contribution to a global rethinking of colonial commemorations.

An Overview of Part III: Removal and Rectification The third and final part of this collection presents stories of dismantlement, removal, relocation and rectification. In Chap. 22, archaeologist Claire Baxter explores the benefits and disadvantages of the relocation of monuments. In Chap. 23, geography scholars Wil Patrick, Reuben Rose-Redwood and CindyAnn Rose-Redwood explore the intersections of Black and Indigenous struggles against colonial commemorations through a particular focus on the removal of the Roosevelt statue at the American Museum of Natural History. Chapter 24, by cultural studies scholars Suvendrini Perera and Joseph Pugliese, describes the ‘Deathscapes: Mapping Race and Violence in Settler States2’ project, which explored the ‘bloody foundations’ underpinning colonial commemorations, and examines how some of these commemorations have become sites that, as a result of Indigenous resistance and naming, have made tangible the link between past and present forms of settler violence. In Chap. 25, Smithsonian National Museum of American History curators Modupe Labode and Tsione Wolde-Michael deliberate over the potential as well as the pitfalls of relocating anti-Black monuments in museums. Chapter 26, by monuments, art history and allegory scholar Rebecca Senior, analyses the critical dismantling of colonial commemorations through ‘visual vandalism’ interventions by artists, activists and citizens, with a particular focus on the Queen Victoria Memorial in Leeds created by George Frampton. In Chap. 27, sociologist Michelle A. Harris and politics and international affairs scholar Eric E. Otenyo examine the global movement to dismantle colonial commemorations and symbols of colonialism and white supremacy through examples drawn from the South African region, highlighting how for African societies, previous struggles for self-determinism have provided the foundation for these latest uprisings. In Chap. 28, project coordinator Rachel DiSaia and history scholar Catherine Ellis, with Elder and Senior Advisor Joanne Okimawininew Dallaire, describe the efforts of the Standing Strong (Mash Koh Wee Kah Pooh Win) Task Force and the resulting project of changing the name of Ryerson University to Toronto Metropolitan University, which was successfully achieved in 2022. Chapter 29 consists of an interview by ourselves, the editors, with Public Art Coordinator Judith Abell and Cultural Programs Coordinator Jane Castle from City of Hobart, 2

 See, https://www.deathscapes.org

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describing the ‘Crowther Reinterpreted’ project, where a series of interpretive truth-­ telling art installations and community consultation was utilised to inform a proposal for a permanent solution for a problematic colonial commemoration. And following on from this, we, the editors, provide the final story in Chap. 30, which in the spirit of truth-telling, consists of a response to the top ten most common reasons given for why contested colonial commemorations should not be removed.

References Birch, T. (2005). “Death is forgotten in victory”: Colonial landscapes and narratives of emptiness. In J. Lydon & T. Ireland (Eds.), Object lessons: Archaeology and heritage in Australia (pp. 186–200). Australian Scholarly Publishing. Birch, T. (2020, October 20). ‘Who needs monuments’: Memorials and colonial violence in Victoria: Black Fire III, webinar, Melbourne School of Discontent: The Black Fire Lectures, videoconference. Carlson, B., & Farrelly, T. (2022). Monumental changes: History isn’t always written by the victors. From the European South, 10, 11–24. Carlson, B., & Farrelly, T. (2023). Monumental disruptions: Aboriginal people and colonial commemorations in so-called Australia. Aboriginal Studies Press. Johnson, D.  M. (2011). From the tomahawk chop to the road block: Discourses of savagism in whitestream media. American Indian Quarterly, 35(1), 104–134. Rami, T. (2020, June 19). It’s funeral time for colonial monuments. Vulture. www. vulture.com/2020/06/nicholas-­galanin-­shadow-­on-­the-­land.html

PART I

Recognition and Remembering

CHAPTER 2

Memorials to Settler-Colonialism in Australia: Racism, Colonialism and White Power Noah Bassil

Introduction This chapter is not written by a person of Indigenous or Black heritage. My Lebanese father lived in colonial Ghana as a member of the Arab comprador class, and I grew up with stories of how he lived through colonialism in African and then Ghanaian independence. His stories include both racist and sympathetic representations of Ghanaian people. My mother is also Lebanese but I was born and raised in the colonial settler state of Australia. Growing up, I experienced racism and I have researched and written about racism in different contexts for over a decade and a half. I understand myself as a child of colonialism even though my relationship to it, some might say, has been distant. On another level, my life intersects with colonialism, and like all of us, it has been entirely moulded by the legacies of colonialism and the dominant ‘whiteness’ that determines all aspects of all of our lives. Someone who has not lived as a ‘non-white’ will likely dismiss this claim as hyperbole, a massive exaggeration among other forms of dismissal that non-whites face almost every time they raise the spectre of white supremacism and privilege, racism and the pervasiveness of the legacies of colonialism in the contemporary world. I suspect it is because of my intimate relationship with colonialism that I have such a strong appreciation of the post-colonial. I fervently believe that colonial structures

N. Bassil (*) Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW, Australia e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 B. Carlson, T. Farrelly (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook on Rethinking Colonial Commemorations, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-28609-4_2

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and power relations remain prevalent today and that colonialism continues to have a significant intellectual and personal impact on all of us. This chapter situates the controversy over colonial memorialisations, such as statues, in the broader history and politics of settler-colonialism in Australia. In May 2015, students at the University of Cape Town started a protest to remove the statue of British coloniser Cecil Rhodes. Within a year, what became known as the ‘Rhodes Must Fall’ campaign had spread across South Africa to the UK, the US and Australia. While the students in Cape Town were successful and the statue came down, in many other places memorials to those responsible for slavery, colonisation, dispossession, torture and murder remain in place. Rhodes Must Fall has been well studied now and others in this collection of chapters will have much to say about the statue controversy. The colonial dimension has also been well studied and retold. What this chapter aims to contribute is to place colonialism, in particular settler-colonialism in Australia, in the context of Empire, European power, white supremacy and the ways that existing powers react to challenges from below. In particular, in Australia and likely elsewhere, the prevailing order is predicated and defended by a racial order and historical colonial mythology. The defence of the British Empire and colonialists who built white Australia is an opportunity to decipher racism in Australia and identify the extent that racism and the commemoration of colonialism are embodied in ‘whiteness’ and ‘white privilege’. The political message from this chapter is that the move to delegitimate the history of colonialism requires an understanding of the broader structures of power on which colonialism relied and which have survived the formal disintegration of colonial empires. These structures maintain the legitimacy of the statues and tell us where and how the emancipatory struggle must be fought. Unless you have lived on the other side of it (i.e., of colonialism and racism), it is difficult to understand how pervasive and hegemonic white power feels. I still have early memories of other children highlighting my non-white differences, and my efforts to escape them and remake myself as a member of the dominant ‘race’. Even before my earliest recollections, the need to ‘fit’ in heavily marked my existence. My birth name, Noah was changed by my parents to Noel on advice from the nurse and doctor who delivered me. They told my parents, desperate themselves to be accepted in their new home country, that Noah was not an appropriate name and Noel would be better for an Australian kid. Twenty years later, I made the decision to discard Noel and take the name my parents first intended for me. Ever since, I have been Noah. The Noah I became has been far more willing to assert himself. I now possess cultural and economic capital, allowing me to escape many of the disadvantages of the unequal and discriminatory colonial order. Whether I am Noel or Noah, I still exist in a place and a time where colonialism and the legacies of colonialism are resilient, remain powerful material structures that bestow advantages on some and disadvantage others, and produce ways of thinking that those in power utilise to legitimate and delegitimate depending on who speaks and what they speak about. This chapter is about all of these things and also about me and my resistance to the colonial order in which I continue to live.

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The Global Colour Line This chapter is not a particularly theoretical chapter. Yet what I have written is informed by a range of theories by the Italian Marxist intellectual and activist of the 1920s and 1930s Antonio Gramsci, whose concept of hegemony has been influential across multiple disciplines; the Palestinian-American scholar Edward Said, whose ground-breaking study titled Orientalism (1978) examined the power of western ideas as a form of domination over the Middle East; and Black American scholar W.E.  B. Du Bois’ notions of white privilege as ‘public or psychological wage’, among others. In addition, in 1903 Du Bois articulated in his analysis of international affairs what many subjugated peoples of America, Asia, Africa and the Pacific experienced on a daily basis: the “problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line—the relation of the darker to the lighter races” (Du Bois, 2015, p. 29). Just over 100 years later, as so many events of recent times have vividly demonstrated, not least the murder of George Floyd in 2020, this problem remains as pertinent to the twenty-first century as it did to Du Bois at the outset of the twentieth. Du Bois is an influential figure in so many ways, whether as a revisionist historian challenging dominant narratives of the post-Civil War Reconstruction or as a sociologist producing empirical work demonstrating the manifold ways that racism structures the lives of Black Americans. Du Bois’ insights have been translated more recently into efforts to explain the reasons for the continuing inequalities between ‘racial’ groups and the resistance, including state and non-state forms of sanctioned violence, that the dominant white ruling class perpetrate on challenges to the neo-colonial racist order. And therein lies the problem that Du Bois identified over 100 years ago and which we live with today. The efforts to remove public memorials to colonialism, and their defence, are also located in the same history that Du Bois identified in 1903 when, across the Pacific, the newly sovereign Commonwealth of Australia had just legislated the White Australia Policy. This policy, as Australian historians Marilyn Lake and Henry Reynolds argue in their study of the politics of race at the turn of the twentieth century, institutionalised Australia as a white nation in an era of Empire. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, China and Japan were seen as threats to white power (Lake & Reynolds, 2008). About 120 years later, Japan is a western ally and Britain has been replaced by the US as the leader of the white world. China has been reinvented as a major threat. Black Americans still face major obstacles in many parts of the country to their right to vote. Indigenous peoples, in Australia and all over the world, remain dispossessed and marginalised. As this chapter will argue, the statues erected to memorialise the colonial project and those who, in the words of the Martiniquan psychologist and Marxist intellectual Frantz Fanon, “behaved like real war criminals in the undeveloped world. Deportations, massacres, forced labor and slavery were the primary methods” (Fanon, 2005, p. 65) remain as reminders of the colour line and the legacies of Empire.

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A Brief Note on Race and Racism Race and racism, Theodore Hall reminds us, in his highly influential The Invention of the White Race (2012), are two distinctive phenomena, and the question of biology, that is, whether races exist or not, should be left to biologists. Whether one believes in races or not is irrelevant for explaining racism. Races might well exist and we all believe in their equality. Or, they have no basis in scientific fact, and theories of superiority and inferiority of one race over another are prevalent. As it is, I stand firmly on the side of those who believe that (a) races do not exist and (b) that race and racism, following from Eric Williams (1944), did not beget slavery but were instead ‘consequences of slavery’. Eric Williams’ ideas that racism against Black Africans was constructed to support and sustain slavery in the colonies disrupted the dominant view that racism towards Africans was a natural and eternal circumstance. Ali Mazrui (1975), famed Kenyan political scientist and public intellectual, similarly differentiated between Arab relations in Africa with those of European colonialism with the point that while Arabs perceived that Africans were ‘black’, Europeans ascribed inherent negative characteristics to that ‘blackness’. In my view, the weight of academic opinion and historical evidence leads to convincingly conclude that the construction of races, and its instrumentalisation as a way of categorising people as different, emerges in the seventeenth century, develops rapidly in the eighteenth century, becomes a key component of the projection of European power in the nineteenth century and, returning to Du Bois, is pervasive in the twentieth century. What the studies of numerous scholars, Eric Williams and Ali Mazrui among others, show is that the viewpoint, popular in some circles, that all societies are at all times racist cannot stand the test of historical analysis. Instead, race and racism are modern phenomena emerging alongside European expansion, conquest and colonialisation of the non-western world.

Whiteness and White Privilege as Hegemonic Aileen Moreton-Robinson (2004, p. iv) defines whiteness as “the invisible norm against which other races are judged in the construction of identity, representation, subjectivity, nationalism and the law”. In this sense, I refer to whiteness as a form of what Antonio Gramsci defined as ‘hegemony’. Hegemony, for Gramsci, was more than domination; it encompassed a matrix of political, economic and cultural structures. Gramsci’s notion of hegemony enlarges the sphere of domination from the oppressive apparatus of the state to include civil society in the production and reproduction of knowledge, entertainment and everyday cultural practices, such as heritage (Gramsci, 1971). The importance of acknowledging the powerful force of ideology cannot be underestimated. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, writing about capitalism in the nineteenth century, understood the vital significance of ideology in producing and protecting dominant relations at the political and economic levels

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(Marx & Engels, 1974, p. 64). However, while their understanding of ideology as domination was a substantial breakthrough, they fell short of fully comprehending the powerful creative force of ideas and the importance of the institutions that constructed them for ameliorating class differences and conflict. Gramsci’s intervention and invention of hegemony did (Bates, 1975). Whiteness as a category and white privilege as a status arise because political and economic power reside with ‘whites’, and being white bestows ‘privileges’ to those who are deemed ‘white’. However, in the Gramscian sense, hegemony requires another level of domination. This level is achieved when an idea of ideology becomes so entrenched that it is an incontestable, or nearly incontestable, ‘norm’. Regardless of whether one views people who are white or non-­ white as better or the same as each other in merit and character, there is a prevalent, or hegemonic, idea that they are from different races. As a result, race, as Teresa J.  Guess, who writes about ‘white identity’ as a social norm (2006, p. 654) posits, is “a social fact in which the social and political significance of whiteness plays a critical role” (italics in original). Whiteness and white privilege operated as ideological tools of colonialism and colonial power. Conquest and control, economic dispossession and exploitation of colonised land and labour, and the ideology of the white man’s superiority and right to rule over non-whites developed symbiotically in the three hundred years following Columbus’ landing in Cuba. Art, architecture, science, literature and music delivered this message to whites and non-whites alike on a daily basis. The colour line was a physical barrier as Frantz Fanon highlighted in 1952 and which, he emphasised, was reinforced by a metaphysical one that reminded non-whites each and every day that they were lesser humans (Fanon, 1986). Statues, paintings, memorials to the colonials, of all kinds, were components of the colonial order, and white privilege and power. Those images whether sculpted in stone or painted in water colour served colonialism then and as they stand among us in 2022, continue to serve colonial power now. History is not about remembering the past—it is chiefly about how we order the present. Imperial historian Richard Drayton writing on colonial commemorations (2019, p.  665) asks, “In a world that has rejected colonial domination and white supremacy, is it not time to reorder our cities and museums?” Drayton asks a question with much merit and I share his convictions. However, he is mistaken on a key point. We are yet to live in a world that has rejected colonial domination and white supremacy. Or, more accurately, some have rejected it and others long for it, celebrate it and actively seek its return. Later in this chapter, I will refer to a contemporary intention that still exists for reviving Empire and celebrating western superiority. Thus, I will argue that the problem is that the contemporary world system is not post-colonial, post-imperial or post-racial. As Vijay Prashad, Director of the Tricontinental: Institute of Social Research, so penetratingly put during his speech at the Glasgow Climate Summit in December 2021, “colonialism is a permanent condition”. Powerful, influential forces continue to celebrate

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colonial domination and white supremacy. The statues of Cecil Rhodes, Herbert Kitchener, Winston Churchill, James Cook, Lachlan Macquarie and countless others who led, profited from and ruled over us are a reminder that the colonial order remains intact in Australia and other settler-colonial nations. The content in this chapter is entirely in line with Vijay Prashad’s challenge to his mostly white audience at the Glasgow Climate Summit to cogitate that colonialism is not in the past, it is a permanent condition (cited in Wandering Mind, 2022). I ask ‘white’ readers of this chapter to contemplate that for much of the world’s population, colonialism is not the glorious past; for those that were colonised it was never glorious and sadly, even today, it is not in the past.

Colonialism and Commemoration Edward Said explained in detail how material control over the Orient rested on a system of “making statements about it, authorizing views of it, describing it, by teaching it, settling it, ruling over it: in short, Orientalism as a western style for dominating restructuring, and having authority over” (1978, p.  10). In showing us this system of reimagining and, thus, dominating the Orient, Said opened a door already partly ajar, thanks to earlier scholars such as Anouar Abdel-Malek and Frantz Fanon. Said’s argument that colonialism was justified by a dominating intellectual and cultural system as a component of colonial conquest and subjugation shifted notions of western superiority were long-­ held views passed down from the ancients or post facto justification for conquest. Said’s ground-breaking work on the Orient has been adapted to other colonial contexts such as Valentin Mudimbe’s The Invention of Africa (1988), Ronald Inden’s Imagining India (1990), and in the Australian context, by historian Bain Attwood (1992). In his explanation of the construction of Africa and Africans, Mudimbe describes how colonialists “have all tended to organize and transform non-­ European areas into fundamentally European constructs” (1988, p.  1). The importance of identifying this aspect of colonialism with respect to the issue of colonial commemorative statues is an obvious one and one that I will return to later in the chapter. For now, what I want to focus on is Mudimbe’s shrewd assessment of the ways that European colonialists reorganised the lands they conquered and controlled. Mudimbe’s thorough account is best quoted in full: [I]t is possible to use three main keys to account for the modulations and methods representative of colonial organization: the procedures of acquiring, distributing, and exploiting lands in colonies; the policies of domesticating natives: and the manner of managing ancient organizations and implementing new modes of production. Thus three complementary hypotheses and actions emerge: the domination of physical space, the reformation of natives’ minds, and the integration of local economic histories into the Western perspective. These complementary projects constitute what might be called the colonizing structure, which completely embraces the physical, human and spiritual aspects of the colonizing experience. (1988, p. 2)

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The focus of this chapter is the statue controversy with specific reference to the settler-colony of Australia. It is argued that in Australia, like many other settler-colonies, statues are a component of the colonial methodology. Statues dominate the physical landscape; they remind the native of the power and prestige of the white coloniser and replace local histories with narratives formulated by the coloniser (Images 2.1 and 2.2). Orientalism spoke of the European invention of the Middle East and the many Arab peoples who live across an expanse as large as the continent we know today as Australia. Mudimbe brought Said’s ideas to the invention of Africa. Bain Attwood’s adoption of Orientalism into the Australian context is

Image 2.1  Front view of Captain Cook statue in Hyde Park Sydney: as described, the white explorer stands proud, high above all, declaring the greatness of himself and his race and the ‘discovery’ of the land all around him. (Photography: Noah Bassil)

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Image 2.2  Rear view of Captain Cook Statue in Hyde Park Sydney: This celebrates Cook as discoverer. So even from the back, we are reminded of Britain’s right to rule the land. (Photography: Noah Bassil)

referred to as Aboriginalism (1992). Aboriginalism, as with Orientalism, is a discourse that homogenises and ‘others’ those that it describes, in this case, the Indigenous peoples across what is today Australia. Aboriginalism, according to Attwood, has three dimensions. The first is Aboriginal Studies. Second is the invention of ontological and epistemological differences between Aborigines and non-Aborigines. Third, Aboriginalism is the institutions that administer, manage and continue to produce definitions of Aboriginality. As Carlson (2016) has shown, the contestations over Aboriginal identity cannot be disentangled from colonial racism and the continuing, persistent and pervasive power of colonial discourses that discipline the challenges to markers of Aboriginality. Whatever approach one takes to understand the ways that

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Europeans comprehended the world they encountered and the people they colonised, enslaved, killed and controlled, there is a dominant episteme from roughly the middle of the seventeenth century that defined the ‘West’ as superior and the ‘Rest’ as inferior (Hall, 1996, pp. 211–212). This brings me to the central argument and the contribution this chapter makes. In short, to say that the struggle to prevent the removal of colonial statues, even the most seemingly innocuous ones, cannot be distanced from significant efforts in recent decades to ensure the continuity of the colonial structure despite the countless challenges to dismantle it. Orientalism, Said argued, was an ideological system produced for, by and in the process of colonialisation. In Culture and Imperialism (1993), written almost two decades after Orientalism, Said also challenged the perception that colonialism had been relegated to the dustbin of history. His reflections that the nostalgia for empire was more than longing for the past and that it was imperative to “look carefully and integrally at the culture that nurtured the sentiment, rationale, and above all the imagination of empire. And we must also grasp the hegemony of the imperial ideology” (1993, p. 12) is a reminder that this issue of statues has to be placed within the context of power relations at the national and international levels. Colonial statues work in multiple ways to continue the legacy and sustain the hegemony of colonialism and empire in the contemporary world. They dominate the landscape. They are a reminder of the power of the white ‘race’. They are not exactly panopticons, in the sense that French philosopher Michel Foucault describes the insidiousness of certain forms of surveillance, but they serve a similar function of preserving the dominant order. They are powerful significations of the belief in the ‘bequest’ of empire. James Cook as discoverer. Joseph Banks as classifier. Lachlan Macquarie as builder. Queen Victoria as the Empress who ruled over all. Each a signifier to all who see them prior to the arrival of the British, this land was not known, named, owned. Also, each of them a signifier of the power of white civilisation and a reminder of the contemporary relevance of the colour line, especially in settler-colonies established by the erasure of Indigenous people, society and history. Fanon describes the colour line in the colony. He speaks of the power of the coloniser, militarily and economically. For Fanon, the geographical layout of the colony is a crucial component of domination. He sees statues as an integral component of this matrix of domination because the “statue of the general who carried out the conquest, the statue of the engineer who built the bridge” (2005, p. 50) are integral to the way that the ‘settler makes history’ and because he constantly refers to the history of his mother country, he clearly indicates that he himself is the extension of the mother country. Thus the history which he writes is not the history of the country which he plunders but the history of his own nation. (Fanon, 2005: 50)

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If we think for a moment of the statues that dot the Australian landscape to white explorers of a country that had been inhabited for 100,000 years and in this time explored, settled, explored and settled again and again, the ludicrousness of the white man’s claims to have discovered and explored this continent are revealed for all to see. Yet, it is not ludicrous. That the white man discovered and explored this land remains the dominant motif because the lens through which the Australian story is viewed only recognises white achievements and white history. Even today, after decades of challenging this representation of Australian history, rather than withering away, it is continuously articulated, defended, empowered. Numerous scholars have identified a link between white superiority and the British Empire. The Empire was often justified as a ‘white man’s burden’. Lake and Reynolds (2008) detail the connection between white privilege, overt and preponderant racism and ownership of the world as components of the motif of Empire, most specifically in the imperial outposts of Australia, Canada and South Africa. There may have been pragmatic opposition to overt settler-­ colony white supremacism from imperial agents in London as they tried to manage ‘coloured’ subjects across the Empire and from Japan on the rise. Nonetheless, what Lake and Reynolds also show is that at the centre or the peripheries of Empire, white people believed the world belonged to them. Edward Said (1993) makes a similar point in Culture and Imperialism and goes further to connect British belief in Empire to the position that the US takes in its dealings with the world today. US foreign policy was crafted in the forge of Europe’s expansion westward, the extermination of the Indigenous population, the domination of enslaved Americans and the ‘othering’ of Latin Americans. Maybe no one person exemplified white, European supremacism better than New York Times journalist John O’Sullivan, who in 1845 (pp. 5–6) wrote that “our manifest destiny to overspread the continent which Providence have given us”. In what must be nothing less than delusion, O’Sullivan also asserted in an earlier piece celebrating the destiny of the American nation for ‘greatness’ that “nor have the American people ever suffered themselves to be led on by wicked ambition to depopulate the land, to spread desolation far and wide” and, in an age of slavery, that America was the land of “individual freedom, of universal enfranchisement … the grand exemplar of correlative equality” (1839, p. 427). The British aimed to conquer the world in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, impelled by a similar egoism and paternalism. The British claimed to spread the benefits of commerce, Christianity and civilisation to those it believed knew nothing of these things (Barry, 2008). The US makes similar claims but, today, the new imperial power bestows the gifts of democracy and ‘Big Macs’. As much as some things change, some stay the same. Whether ‘manifest destiny’ or the ‘white man’s burden’, British and US claims to possess the lands of other peoples and to lead the world are based on white superiority. White supremacy and the racist attitudes towards peoples of colour everywhere are undoubtedly intrinsic dynamics of Empire, both the

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British and the US. Statue controversies in England and the US in the twenty-­ first century have brought the issue of Empire out in the open. In both countries, political leaders have compelled people to view challenges to colonial and confederacy memorials, such as the statues of Churchill or the flag of the racist US South, as attacks on nation, white race and decency, among other signifiers of white superiority. Leaders such as British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison have defended colonial statues by evoking symbols and signifiers of Empire, the superiority of the white race and nostalgia for the past (meant as a time when the darker peoples of the world knew their place). Trump’s campaign slogan ‘Make America Great Again’ has ambiguous meanings. However, for many of his supporters it is a reference to the time when whiteness bestowed upon people significant privileges; when jobs for whites were plentiful and when the US was understood as a ‘white’ country. While Trump has denied that his slogan has a racist dimension, the extent that his supporters have equated American decline with immigration, civil rights and ‘woke culture’ has been remarkably evident. At the centre of this equation is that white people are under assault from non-whites. The same fears that white settler-colonies had in the nineteenth century of losing control of the world are evident in the contemporary debates about the removal of commemorations to the ‘heroes’ of colonialism. The notion of western civilisation sits astride Empire and white supremacy. Western civilisation is inherently the history of the imagined white peoples as told by white people today. The creation of the myth of a single, unbroken and ever-progressive western or European history emerged sometime in the seventeenth or eighteenth centuries. The myth served the European expansionist projects occurring at the time and the creation of a hierarchy of peoples with Europeans, particularly Anglo-Germanic peoples, at the apex. This chapter highlights the extent that this continuity of white supremacy, global hegemony of non-white peoples and Empire is etched in the landscape. That Empire as an idea was and is based on the hegemony of ideas of white supremacy and the rights of white peoples to possess and rule the land reveals the extent that the imagery of Empire and celebration of its past perpetuates uneven power relations today. Racism and inequality were core components of the British Empire and are inscribed in the expansion and rise to power of today’s only imperial power. Statues and imagery of British monarchs are not innocent homages to the Imperial past but serve to reify the idea of Empire, white power and western civilisation. They serve to legitimate continuing unequal domestic and international power structures, dispossession of indigenous peoples and racism. Not only do they normalise the past, as historian Bruce Scates (2017, para. 2) argues, statues that celebrate colonialism and Empire, “By occupying civic space … serve to legitimise narratives of conquest and dispossession, arguably colonising minds in the same ways white ‘settlers’ seized vast tracts of territory”.

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Homage to Empire and Western Civilisation Homage to Empire and Western Civilisation Doug Sutherland was Lord Mayor of Sydney in the 1980s, at a time when the City of Sydney Council was looking for an unwanted statue of Queen Victoria. They found one in Dublin that they subsequently brought over and installed on the corner of George and Druitt Streets at the entrance of the Queen Victoria Building. This corner is one of the busiest in Sydney, leading down to Darling Harbour and the main shopping and business districts of Australia’s largest city. Sutherland was Lord Mayor of Sydney from 1980 to 1987. He was also a founding member of the Australians for Constitutional Monarchy (ACM), which was formed to rally against the growing movement calling for Australia to become a Republic. The group’s rationale, as stated on its website is “To preserve, to protect and to defend our heritage: the Australian constitutional system, the role of the Crown in it and our Flag” (ACM, 2022, para. 2). Another well-known supporter of the group, who is a founding member, is former Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott. Tony Abbot’s views on a range of issues, especially with regard to Indigenous Australians, and the superiority of European and British culture are on record. In 2014, Abbott stated that “[T]he arrival of the First Fleet was the defining moment in the history of this continent. … It was the moment this continent became part of the modern world” (Dingle, 2014, para. 3). His amnesia about Australia’s past is telling. Abbot is, in several ways, symbolic of the way that the memory of Empire has almost entirely abrogated its racist past. In a 2004 speech at the University of New South Wales titled ‘The Brother Countries’ in honour of Sir Robert Menzies (who once said that ‘Australia is British to its bootstraps’), Abbot stated that “Race has rarely been central to any of the English-speaking national identities” (Abbot, 2004 p. 10). Abbot, as discussed in the following section, is also one of Australia’s most prominent champions of ‘western civilisation’ and the superiority of the ‘West’, which, whether he consciously knows it or not, means European and white, and whether he is aware of it or not, race is central to his own identity. Queen Victoria reigned at a time when the British ruled the world. That 65-year period from 1837 to 1902 marked the high tide of British power. In those years, the British built an Empire that spanned the globe and where it was said the ‘sun never sets’. The queen was described as a self-proclaimed anti-­ racist with numerous accounts praising her for her treatment of several African and Indian ‘subjects’ (Caine, 2016). Even if one accepts that Victoria and her husband Albert strongly supported the abolition of slavery and treated non-­ Europeans with compassion, Victoria’s reign covered a period of immense expansion of the Empire into Africa, Asia and throughout the Pacific. This expansion came at a vast human and material cost for the conquered, while, at the same time, immensely enriching the Royals and the British ruling class. According to Indian economist Utsa Patnaik’s study published by Columbia

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University Press, Britain ‘plundered’ the equivalent in today’s terms, of $45 trillion from India (Patnaik & Patnaik, 2021). The figures that Patnaik calculates are, as ever with such numbers, disputable and, to a certain extent, the exact amount is unimportant. What is most relevant is that Britain’s power and its wealth were inextricably connected to colonialism. Despite, attempts— numerous and by generations of scholars, who have represented colonialism as the ‘white man’s burden’ and a cost to the Crown and British state—there is a large body of work that proves very forcefully that colonialism created an immense amount of wealth and propelled the industrial revolution and capitalist expansion (Amin, 1978; Galeano, 2009; Rodney, 2018). Marx, viewing colonialism from his home, the metropole in the mid-nineteenth century, saw clearly the extent that capitalist wealth, especially British riches “comes dripping from head to foot, from every pore, with blood and dirt” of the conquered non-European world (1867, par. 1550). British wealth and the extravagance of the Empire cannot be divorced from the dispossession of Indigenous peoples across the globe, the vast profits from the slave trade and slavery in the Caribbean and the Americas, the conquest and control over Africa, Asia, the Pacific and the Middle East, and the heinous trade that left millions starving in India and many more suffering from opium addiction in China. The images above are but a tiny fraction of the representations attributable to British colonialism. The blood spilt in the building of ‘Empire’ is regularly justified, abstracted or dismissed by a range of commentators, whether on the ‘right’ or not. One pertinent example of this type of abstraction, amnesia or just wilful ignorance of the portrayal of Empire relates to the perpetuation of the myth that James Cook ‘discovered’ what is today the country of Australia, in 1770.

The Benign Empire: The ‘Discovery’ of Australia William Allingham, British-Irish poet who viewed the statue of Cook that now stands in Hyde Park before it left London wrote, “The bloodless conqueror, viewing sea and land” (Long, SMH, 13 Jan, 1934). Allingham’s words expressed the popular view at a time when ‘white man’s burden’ was used to justify the conquest and oppression of Indigenous peoples across Asia, Africa and the Pacific. Cook’s voyages were not ‘bloodless’ at all. Putting aside the arguments, valuable as they are, that the voyages paved the way for centuries of trauma for Indigenous peoples in the Pacific, New Zealand and Australia, Cook and his crew drew blood on numerous occasions. In Australia, Cook documented his shooting of an Indigenous man moments after setting foot on what is today called Botany Bay and the violence his crew perpetrated all the way up the East Coast. His crew were also responsible for the killing of nine Maori. Cook was not, as he is often portrayed, a man of peace. That view continued to exist even in a period when the colonised were on the rise and when the British Empire was concurrently at its apex and heading

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towards its end. That similar beliefs can be located in a Quadrant article in 2020 is more than symbolic of the extent that the white superiority espoused to justify and sustain Empire in the nineteenth and into the twentieth century continues to shape popular attitudes in the twenty-first century. The attachment to the belief that the British Empire was driven by the common good is a standard claim by many detractors of the move to pull down the statues. Commentator Tom Switzer and politician Jacinta Nampijinpa Price in a commentary for the influential right-wing thinktank the Centre for Independent Studies (CIS), which was also republished in the Sydney Morning Herald, titled ‘Censoring history makes the past impossible to grasp’, make it clear they believe that this continent is a better place due to colonisation, which, they argue, was ‘inevitable’ and furthermore that “British settlement was a far better outcome than other possibilities” (Switzer & Price, 2020, para. 13). Alongside the myth of a ‘benign empire’ is the ‘discovery’ legend that continues to be peddled by the ‘western civilization’ cheer squad. Cook was not even the first European to set foot on the continent now known as Australia. William Dampier landed on the west coast in 1606. Traders and fishing boats from Indonesia and Papua New Guinea were very likely in regular contact with the Indigenous people of the north of the country centuries prior to Cook’s landing at Botany Bay. Whether Chinese Admiral Zheng mapped Australia in 1421 or not is really beside the point and says more about the white Australian preoccupation with the British ‘discovery’ myth. Because, regardless of Indonesian trading or fishing vessels, Chinese fleets or other European navigators arriving before Cook, Indigenous people have lived on the continent for between 60,000 and 100,000  years. Scholars Bronwyn Carlson and Terri Farrelly argue that the “claim of being the first fails to acknowledge that this continent had already been explored and settled by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people … prior to the arrival of any white settlers” (2022, p. 5). Carlson and Farrelly also draw on historian Mark McKenna’s retort that the only thing remarkable about the discovery narrative is that anyone still finds it controversial that Cook did not discover Australia. That there is a controversy over this historical issue is an indication of the extent that conservatives see Australian history through a narrow white lens and as a battleground on which to rally segments of the polity to their cause. Not only do Switzer and Price put forward the same argument of British historian and apologist for Empire Niall Ferguson (2008), that British colonisation was history’s most uplifting force, they also make the claim that Australia owes its existence to James Cook (Switzer & Price, 2020). In such claims, from Abbott, the CIS and others associated with defending colonial statues, the embeddedness of the tropes of white superiority and white man’s burden are strikingly clear.

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Neoliberal Right-Wing Thinktanks: Sites for the Reproduction of Colonial Racist Discourses as an Important Front in the Reactionary Fight Back In the lead up to the Australian Bicentenary in 1988, the other most influential right-wing thinktank in Australia, the Institute for Public Affairs ran a campaign that countered the increasing amount of evidence of the cruelty and suffering experienced by Indigenous peoples resulting from the British settlement of Australia 200 years earlier. Articles such as John Hirst’s ‘Blackening our Past’ (1988/1989) and Hugh Morgan’s ‘The Guilt Industry’ (1988) appeared in the IPA Review. These articles signalled the beginning of a campaign by the IPA to undermine Indigenous rights. Claims made include Indigenous rights advocacy as a form of separatism and racism (see ‘Race has no Place’, 2019), and they label any criticism of European treatment of Indigenous peoples as anti-westernism and anti-white racism. Hugh Morgan, appointed to the IPA Council in 1978, was one of the country’s foremost critics of advocates for Indigenous rights claiming that Australia had been highjacked by the ‘guilt industry’. Morgan’s mining interests are well known and numerous critics have understood the connection between his economic interests and his political interventions against Indigenous claims, especially land claims. Like the Centre for Independent Studies, the IPA is a right-wing thinktank closely connected to the Murdoch press, key political and business leaders in Australia, such as former Australian Prime Ministers John Howard and Tony Abbott. The IPA’s main source of funding is mining magnate Gina Rinehart, who has been reported to donate millions of dollars a year to the thinktank (Secombe, 2018). The entanglement of certain economic and political interests and the ‘culture wars’ is a complex issue that should not be reduced to class war (Abjorensen, 2009). However, despite this, class is at the centre of the battlelines over cultural debates, which are only really cultural for those not economically and politically marginalised by race. The controversy surrounding statues and memorials to colonialism are a significant component of this wider struggle to push back against challenges to white privilege, white power and the prevailing status quo at the national and global levels. In another dimension of this struggle, the IPA and the CIS have been at the forefront of a campaign to correct what they view as the deficiencies of university humanities curriculum in regard to the depiction of ‘Western civilisation’. While not a new front in the ‘culture wars’, the idea received new impetus in Australia, when on his death in 2014, the private health and media magnate Paul Ramsay endowed AUD$3.4 billion of his fortune for the establishment of the Ramsay Foundation. One directive of the foundation was to create a new organisation to promote the teaching of the great books of western civilisation. The Ramsay Centre for Western Civilisation was launched in 2017, according to former Australian prime minister and Ramsay Centre board member Tony Abbott, to represent Paul Ramsay’s commitment to the belief that history was a narrative “starting with the cradle of civilisation and moving through Greece

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and Rome to the story of England and the birth of the modern world, its triumphs and travails” (2018, para. 5). He added in the same article that Ramsay was, and for that matter the Ramsay Centre, was not “merely about Western civilisation but in favour of it” (italics in original) (2018, para. 14). Much of the discourse from the IPA, the CIS and other right-wing organisations, such as the Murdoch press, proselytised the Ramsay Centre as a necessary correction to the interminable march of ‘cultural Marxism’ and anti-westernism across the humanities in Australia. Commentator Renee Gorman, writing for the IPA in June 2018, lamented the University of Sydney’s rejection of a Ramsay Centre-funded degree in western civilisation as a left-­ wing conspiracy concluding that: The Ramsay Centre’s goal, although noble, does not look like it will be achievable within the walls of once great, but now crumbling higher education institutions that have become infected and overgrown with left-wing group think and dogmatic academics. (Gorman, 2018, para. 15)

The reference to ‘infected’ in Gorman’s article is reminiscent of the language common in discourses of race especially in relation to the threat that infection to racial purity poses. Homi Bhabha writes in a new forward to The Wretched of the Earth that in the colonial situation “the racialised person is seen as a threat, an infection, a symptom of social decline” (2004, p. xx). While the use of this term in the article does not refer to race, the defence of western civilisation as separate and identifiable historical entity reifies notions of difference on which racism was, and is, constructed. Gorman states this explicitly with the claim that “We live in a western nation” (Gorman, 2018, para. 7). The sense of western superiority evident in Abbott’s 2018 Quadrant article is present in Gorman’s article and also weaved into Bella d’Abrera’s commentary, which also laments the University of Sydney’s position vis-a-vis the degree in western civilisation as evidenced by the claim that: The chance to learn something different by returning to the great literature, art and music of Western civilisation would be like offering them a choice between a sumptuous buffet or a bowl of gruel. (d’Abrera, 2019b, para. 21)

Bella d’Abrera is named as the director of the Foundations of Western Civilisation Program at the IPA and has written in this capacity for The Australian and the Spectator and appeared on Sky News and the Bolt Report. While not as influential as Lord T.B. Macaulay, who stated in 1835 that “I have never found one among them who could deny that a single shelf of a good European library was worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia. The intrinsic superiority of the Western literature” (1835, para 10), d’Abrera’s comments reflect the same racist attitude almost two centuries later. The superiority of the ‘west’ is deeply embedded in the right-wing discourse of protagonists for a degree in western civilisation. Hidden among

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protestations that the study of the ‘classics’ of the ‘west’ is not racist and counterclaims from the same people that opponents are responsible for reverse racism is a belief that the ‘west’ is a singular and identifiable, and innocent, identity. The ideas of western superiority appear regularly in d’Abrera’s IPA publications that either champion ‘western civilisation’, attack the intellectual left or ‘white-­ wash’ settler-colonialism in Australia. In one such article, d’Abrera (2019a) portrayed nineteenth-century Australia as an ‘outpost of Western Civilisation’ and of ‘the conservative Enlightenment’, which she claims is evident from the high sales of the works of Adam Smith, John Locke and David Hume in nineteenth-­century colonial Australia. d’Abrera constructs a narrative of history where the ‘colonists were well-read and highly literate’ and where “individual liberty … has been debated, tried and tested” (d’Abrera, 2019a, paras. 3–4). A complete absence of all the cruelties, dispossession and racism on which modern Australia was also built characterises this article and all of d’Abrera’s commentary. This is no accident and in doing so, d’Abrera perpetuates the idea of ‘western supremacy’ and beneath this is the enduring and barely concealed trope of white superiority long attached to the celebration of western civilisation. Statues such as those dedicated to Cook as discoverer, Macquarie as builder, Queen Victoria as Empress similarly function to erase colonial atrocities and 230  years of dispossession, exploitation, alienation and dehumanisation suffered by Indigenous peoples. As they bestride the landscape, standing tall above those who walk past, sit below them or stop to view them, they preserve a particular view of history and of the identity of the makers of history as white and almost always male. Arguments that they are reminders of a history we all must know are pretence for preserving narratives of white superiority. As I’ve tried to show above, statues that commemorate colonisers, colonialism or Empire sit within a matrix of cultural and political edifices that support the prevailing social order. Tearing down the statues to colonialism is a worthy project. Yet, regardless of its symbolic importance, it is but one front in a much wider campaign to decolonise the future.

Conclusion Did the removal of the statue of Cecil Rhodes at the University of Cape Town (UCT) do what objectors to that process argue it would do, that is, erase history? Possibly it did erase the historical myth that Rhodes was a man worthy of commemoration. However, the legacies of colonialism and apartheid remain despite this move. Poverty remains a huge problem and inequality continues even if some proportions of the African population are enjoying the material benefits of post-Apartheid era. References to South Africa’s problems are not meant to devalue the efforts of the students and the activists at UCT. There is much symbolic value of the victory at UCT of the Rhodes Must Fall campaign. The toppling of Edward Colston’s statue in Bristol and the renaming of Colston Hall were also moments of symbolism that resonated well beyond

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their localities. In Australia, some progress has been made, as explored in other chapters in this collection. However, Australia as a settler-colonial nation has deeply embedded structures and power relations infused with racism, post-coloniality, capitalism and patriarchy that “shape and limit the conditions and possibilities” of contemporary political struggles (Gonzalez, 2018, p. 248). Placing the question of the removal of statues within the history of colonialism, white superiority and privilege is imperative if that struggle, worthy as it is, can be more than symbolic. Situating these efforts in the history of the struggle against the colour line and as part of the challenge to the power relations that constructed the divided settler-colonial state could empower the movement against inequality and oppression to not only clear the landscape but to go further and decolonise the future.

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Mudimbe, V. (1988). The invention of Africa: Gnosis, philosophy, and the order of knowledge. Indiana University Press. O’Sullivan, J. (1839). The great nation of futurity. The United States Magazine and Democratic Review., 6, 426–430. O’Sullivan, J. (1845). Annexation. The United States Magazine and Democratic Review, 17(5–6), 9–10. Patnaik, U., & Patnaik, P. (2021). Capital and imperialism: Theory, history and the present. Monthly Review Press. Rodney, W. (2018). How Europe underdeveloped Africa.. Verso. Said, E. (1978). Orientalism. Routledge and Kegan Paul Ltd.. Said, E. (1993). Culture and Imperialism. Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. Scates, B., 2017. Monumental Errors: How Australia Can Fix Its Racist Colonial Statues. The Conversation. https://theconversation.com/monumental-­errors-­how-­ australia-­can-­fix-­its-­racist-­colonial-­statues-­82980 Secombe, M. (2018, July 28–August 3). ‘Rinehart’s secret millions to the IPA’. The Saturday Paper. https://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/news/politics/2018/07/ 28/rineharts-­secret-­millions-­the-­ipa/15327000006616#hrd Switzer, T., & Price, J. (2020, June 15). Censoring history makes the past impossible to grasp Sydney Morning Herald. https://www.cis.org.au/commentary/articles/ censoring-­history-­makes-­the-­past-­impossible-­to-­grasp/ Wandering Mind. (2022, January 5). For you colonialism is a permanent condition [Video]. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nzY9GtWdBwo Williams, E. (1944). Capitalism and slavery. The University of North Carolina Press.

CHAPTER 3

Koro and the Statue: Disrupting Colonial Amnesia and White Settler Sovereignty in Aotearoa New Zealand Pounamu Jade Aikman and Mahdis Azarmandi

The Story of Koro and the Statue In 2018, kaumātua (elder) Taitimu Maipi stained in red a bronze statue of Captain John Hamilton, a mid-nineteenth century colonial soldier erected in the centre of the city named after him (Stuff, 2018). Koro (term of address for a male elder)1 Taitimu then struck the statue with a hammer several times and, in 2020, threatened that if the local council did not remove it, he would (Radio New Zealand, 2020a). But to frame his actions as vandalism, as media and local government have done, obscures from view the much larger and globally critical conversation about the role of colonial figures in upholding narratives of white supremacy and dominance in countries like Aotearoa New Zealand. Cityscapes are replete with colonial statues (see Radio New Zealand, 2020c), and using koro Taitimu’s story as an example, we discuss in this chapter the 1  ‘Koro’ is a common term of address for a male elder in te ao Māori (the Māori world), and we adopt it here as an expression of respect.

P. J. Aikman (*) Harvard University & University of Hawai’i, Wellington, New Zealand M. Azarmandi University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 B. Carlson, T. Farrelly (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook on Rethinking Colonial Commemorations, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-28609-4_3

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white discursive responses to protests against colonial monuments in the Aotearoa New Zealand context. We argue that colonial statues forcibly uphold a whitewashed and colonially sympathetic view of history that seeks to maintain the supremacy of the settler state. In examining how acts of so-called vandalism both rupture and nurture ‘bi-­ cultural conversations’, we highlight the typically rigid response of white New Zealand sensibilities to debates over the nature of protest, and what such protest should look like. Framing acts of protest around statues as vandalism reflects a broader refusal to engage in conversations about what the statues represent in Aotearoa. For us, this amounts to a form of white ignorance (Mills, 1997) and ‘deliberate misremembering’, as preeminent Māori legal scholar Moana Jackson (2019) describes, that remain central to the maintenance of white supremacy and the settler state itself. Yet acts of ‘vandalism’ against colonial statues are useful interruptions, opening up space for critical conversations about white supremacy in contemporary Aotearoa New Zealand society. We emphasise the importance of ongoing conversations about colonisation and its embodiment in monuments and statues in this way, beyond the dichotomy of leaving monuments intact or removing them outright.

The Spectacle of Protest Protest has long been used by Māori and other sovereign Indigenous peoples to draw attention to the colonial injustices they have suffered (Harris, 2004). For Māori, it has been an effective way to emphasise the continuity of colonial violence and wrongdoing that continues to shape Indigenous existence today. From 1881 at Parihaka in Taranaki, where Te Whiti-o-Rongomai and Tohu Kākaki and their followers peacefully resisted the Crown’s confiscation of land in the Taranaki region (Binney, 2011; Ministry for Culture and Heritage, 2019a; Riseborough, 2002), to the 1977 occupation of Takaparawhā (Bastion Point) in Auckland in protest of the government’s unjust sale of ancestral land (Harris, 2004), direct action in response to colonial injustice has been a hallmark of Māori protest. This continues today, with occupations by organisations like Save Our Unique Landscape (SOUL) in 2016 at Ihumātao (Fernandes, 2019; Haunui-Thompson, 2019), and Protect Pūtiki, on Waiheke Island in 2021 (Gibson, 2021). These protests all respond to the same originary injustice: the theft and usurpation of Māori land. It is within this context that koro Taitimu’s story of protest must be read, for in striking and painting the statue of Hamilton, he was invoking a history of colonial oppression that continues to live and breathe in the present. That history is shaped by the sovereignty wars of the mid- to late-nineteenth century and is central in understanding why the statue of Hamilton is saturated in colonial politics of erasure.

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The Sovereignty Wars John Hamilton was a colonial soldier and captain of the naval vessel Esk. He was ordered to New Zealand in the mid-1860s to support the Crown’s forces in wrestling sovereign authority from Māori (McCauley, 2020). These bloody conflicts over land have been variably termed the ‘land’, ‘New Zealand’ or ‘Māori’ wars, but as Jackson describes, they are better understood as wars for sovereignty. This term “…more aptly recognises them as colonising wars to take power” (Jackson, 2016) and draws attention to the Crown’s belligerence therein. Māori sovereignty and self-determination—tino rangatiratanga, or unqualified autonomy, sovereignty, and chieftainship—had been enshrined in Te Tiriti o Waitangi2 earlier in 1840.3 Through Te Tiriti, rangatira (ennobled chieftains) had granted the Crown a subordinate authority in their lands— kāwanatanga, or governorship—to govern over settlers (many of whom were, at the time, wildly lawless). This provision was fatally4 mistranslated in the English version, stipulating that Māori ceded to the Crown “all the rights and powers of sovereignty” (Orange, 2012). These concepts, kāwanatanga versus sovereignty, are fundamentally irreconcilable, and are the principal source of the bloody conflicts that followed. The majority of rangatira did not sign the English manuscript, where the mistranslation lay, and were both exercising and fighting for the sovereign authority penned both by themselves and the Crown in Te Tiriti two decades prior. The Crown—and proponents of the settler state more broadly (see Mather & Leaman, 2017)—has instead relied consistently on the fallacy of ‘sovereignty ceded’ as its raison d’être. This was a preposterous suggestion for rangatira at the time and remains so today: I’m not aware, at any time, the King of England waking up and saying ‘… I don’t want to be [the] King of England anymore, I’ll go and ask the King of France to make all our decisions.’ Yet we’ve been taught to believe, that on the sixth of February 1840, every Māori in the country suddenly woke up and said ‘We don’t want to make our own decisions anymore; we’re going to ask a fat lady in London we’ve never met to make them for us.’ That is such a gratuitous lie and insult, that I’m amazed the Crown still has the effrontery to promote it. (Jackson et  al., 2016, p. 5)

The Waitangi Tribunal, a permanent commission of inquiry that hears breaches of Te Tiriti made by the Crown, reiterated in 2014 that Māori did not cede sovereignty in 1840:

2  This is the Māori language version of this document, known in English as the Treaty of Waitangi. 3  New Zealand’s purported ‘founding document’ between representatives of Māori and the Crown, the English version of which is the Treaty of Waitangi. 4  And, arguably, purposefully.

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[Rangatira] did not cede their authority to make and enforce law over their people and within their territories. Rather, they agreed to share power and authority with the Governor. (Waitangi Tribunal, 2014, pp. 526–527)

The government outright dismissed this finding soon after (Independent Working Group on Constitutional Transformation, 2018, p. 55). The Crown’s wilful ignorance of what Te Tiriti really guaranteed and active promulgation of the myth that Māori ceded sovereignty “remains the most egregious of all of the Crown’s breaches of Te Tiriti” today (Independent Working Group on Constitutional Transformation, 2018, p. 101). The sovereignty wars exemplify this flagrancy, in brazenly disregarding the sovereign authority of Māori articulated and consecrated in Te Tiriti.

Pukehinahina: Gate Pā The 1864 British attack of Pukehinahina (Gate Pā) in Tauranga was one of the many theatres of battle during the sovereignty wars (see Keenan, 2012), and is where Hamilton was deployed to. On April 29, British artillery bombarded the pā (fortified village) for eight continuous hours (McCauley, 2020), and in doing so, “lull[ed themselves] into assuming … its capture [would be] relatively straightforward” (O’Malley, 2016, p. 342). Yet inside, Tauranga Māori had fortified Pukehinahina with anti-artillery bunkers (Ministry for Culture and Heritage, 2019b) and were strategically concealed within to avoid detection. Hamilton led the charge to storm the pā, only to fall prey to the barrage of fire from Māori hidden out of sight. A panicked frenzy ensued and, in the chaos, Hamilton was killed (Waikato Times, 1922, p.  13). ‘[J]ust minutes’ after storming the pā, the British hastily retreated (O’Malley, 2016, p. 342). Writing in 1922, the Waikato Times renders Hamilton a fallen hero who, in the execution of colonial duty, found ‘a death of glory’: A braver officer than Captain Hamilton could not have been found to lead them on … The gallant Hamilton sprang upon the embankment, waved his sword in the air, and shouted, ‘Follow me, men!’ Scarcely had the words passed his lips when a bullet struck him on the head, the sword dropped from his hand, and he fell to rise no more … (Waikato Times, 1922, p. 13)

The British fell to a catastrophic defeat at Pukehinahina, considered one of the “most disgraceful episode[s] in the history of the British army” (O’Malley, 2016, p.  342). Dying minutes into the battle of Gate Pā, Hamilton would never set foot in the town that would eventually take his name. It is here that the story of Captain Hamilton abruptly ends, with him being later buried in Tauranga, some 100 kilometres from his namesake city.

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Enduring Symbols of White Supremacy Yet it is what Hamilton symbolises that has remained so enduringly powerful: that New Zealand was, and remains, a white settler possession, secured by the valiant efforts of white men.5 Aboriginal scholar Aileen Moreton-Robinson describes this as the ‘possessive logics’ of patriarchal white sovereignty, which produce and maintain taken-for-granted knowledge in settler colonial states like Australia and New Zealand (Moreton-Robinson, 2015, p. xii). In Aotearoa, part of this common-sense knowledge is that Māori ceded sovereignty to the Crown and were brought out of their ‘savage’ ways by the civilising presence of the British (see Ballara, 1986, pp. 39; 140). Pukehinahina, as one of many battles during the sovereignty wars, contributes to this narrative, as a constituent part of the story of New Zealand’s consolidation as a white possession. Here, the valour, courage and ‘gallantry’ of white men is extolled as the heroic virtue from which Māori—as ‘heathen savages’—were saved. Solidifying New Zealand as a white possession necessarily involved the usurpation of the primary economic base—land—through any means possible (see Brooking, 1992, 1996, 2014). To achieve this and to ‘punish’ Māori fighting for their sovereign independence during the wars, parliament passed the interlocking legislation of the New Zealand Settlements Act and Suppression of Rebellion Act in 1863. The Suppression of Rebellion Act framed Māori as ‘rebels’, and prescribed confiscation as punishment for such rebellion (Waitangi Tribunal, 2009, p. 295). This was triggered through the Settlements Act, which allowed the government to confiscate the ‘land of any rebellious tribe’ (Waitangi Tribunal, 2009, p. 161). The result was a colossal seizure of more than four million acres of Māori land across the Waikato, Taranaki and Bay of Plenty (Ministry for Culture and Heritage, 2021), firmly setting the foundations for settler-colonial society. The Crown prevailed over Māori through force of arms and legal duplicity (see Binney, 2009), and a ‘relentless settler hegemony’ emerged (O’Malley, 2016, p. 601). The upshot of this was the consolidation of white settler sovereignty in New Zealand at the expense and erasure of tangata whenua (literally, ‘the people of the land’, a metonym for ‘Māori’). This narrative of valour, strength and white supremacy was forged in bronze in Hamilton’s effigy. It mattered little that his actions at Gate Pā were short-­ lived or even unremarkably foolhardy. It is what he symbolised that matters: white supremacy and Crown domination over Māori and their ancestral lands. Hamilton, and the city that bears his name, endures as a colonial emblem of this violent will to subjugate. It was this incarnation of Hamilton ‘as a hero’ that koro Taitimu was protesting against (see Perry, 2020; Stuff, 2018). Other ‘heroes’ of the sovereignty wars that remain today and uphold narratives of white settler supremacy include the stone memorial to Colonel Marmaduke 5  We also recognise the role of white women’s reproductive labour in simultaneoulsy maintaining the settler state and displacing Indigenous peoples and their sovereignties, as part of patriarchal white sovereignty.

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Nixon in Ō tāhuhu, Auckland, glorified for his role in attacking and murdering Ngāti Apakura (my ancestors) and other Māori at Rangiaowhia in 1864, an undefended pā which was a “place of refuge for many women, children, and elderly men” during the wars (O’Malley, 2016, p. 294); the Zealandia statue in Auckland, a memorial that “pays tribute to the imperial … soldiers who fought for Britain during the wars” (Radio New Zealand, 2020c); and the statue of George Grey, New Zealand’s governor at the time who oversaw the mass confiscation of Māori lands, particularly in the Waikato (Radio New Zealand, 2020c). The reverence for Hamilton and what he symbolised, in evoking this white supremacist past, is equally evident in the commissioning of the statue itself. The statue was a gift in 2013 from the Waikato-based Gallagher Group, a farming technology giant, in celebration of their 75-year milestone as a company (Lynch, 2013). The business and founding family, the Gallaghers, made their fortune through fencing and other farming-related technologies. Its CEO, Sir William Gallagher, has caused controversy in the past for his views on Te Tiriti, publicly claiming that Te Tiriti “was a rort” and “[t]here is no doubt [Māori] gave up sovereignty [in 1840] … and now we have these bloody reparations going on” (Mather & Leaman, 2017, paras. 3 & 5). Although his claims have been systematically debunked by historians (see Maitland & Manch, 2017), such inflammatory remarks are not uncommon in New Zealand, promoted by those such as conservative lobbyists Don Brash and Hobson’s Pledge6 (Hamilton, 2017). ‘Sovereignty ceded’ is the common-sense knowledge and taken-for-granted truth of people such as Brash, where, in 1840, Māori suddenly gave up their right to determine their destinies as they saw fit and acquiesced this fundamental right of being and existence to a geographically and spiritually distant monarch. Repeating these claims (as these groups often do) underscores that New Zealand was, and remains, a white settler possession. The Gallagher Group’s commissioning of the statue in 2013, and its later instalment in Hamilton’s city centre, physically materialised this ontological perspective. This is why, for many Waikato Māori, glorifying colonial-era figures in statue form is a reminder of the devastating effects of British injustice (Radio New Zealand, 2020b). In this way, colonial statues like Hamilton forcibly uphold a version of historical memory that is a reflection of the dominant colonial narrative, all the while maintaining the supremacy of the settler state. The remembrance of Hamilton as a hero relies on the ‘misremembering’ of settler colonialism’s inherent violence (Jackson, 2019, para. 33). But as philosopher Charles Mills (2007) points out in his work on epistemic ignorance and racism, this reframing of memory is not accidental but a deliberate ‘social forgetting’ and denial of the past. It is this management of memory and memorialisation that makes such denials possible (Azarmandi, 2016; Mills, 2007). 6  An ultra-right wing lobby group which regularly campaigns against what they see as ‘special rights’ for Māori.

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Writing in the aftermath of the 2019 Christchurch terror attack, on the connection between white supremacy and colonisation, Moana Jackson similarly emphasised that: in [New Zealand], there has been a deliberate misremembering of history that has obscured the reality of what colonisation really was, and is. It has replaced the harsh reality of its racist violence and its illegitimate usurpation of power with a feelgood rhetoric of Treaty-based good faith and Crown honour. (Jackson, 2019, para. 33)

His latter comment refers to contemporary political language in New Zealand, which focuses on the Crown’s ostensible ‘partnership’ with Māori in governance affairs but often amounts to token gestures and empty rhetoric (see Jackson et al., 2016; Ngata, 2020; Snelgar, 2020). This is not a form of ‘cultural amnesia’, whose wording suggests a degree of reduced culpability, but a form of ‘wilful forgetting’ and ‘white ignorance’ (see Mills, 1997, p. 48). The story of Hamilton’s statue embodies these reflections as a tale of deliberate misremembering and social forgetting central to maintaining the settler-­ colonial state. Mills’ exploration of racial ignorance in memory and testimony is helpful to expose the limits of debates that frame protest against colonial monuments as ‘vandalism’ and ‘destruction of property’. He outlines how white ignorance is manifested and perpetuated by five dimensions of cognition: perception, conception, memory, testimony and motivational group interest (Mills, 2007). As he argues: [O]n matters related to race, the Racial Contract prescribes for its signatories an inverted epistemology, an epistemology of ignorance, a particular pattern of localized and global cognitive dysfunctions (which are psychologically and socially functional), producing the ironic outcome that whites will in general be unable to understand the world they themselves have made. (Mills, 1997, p. 18)

With this in mind, the colonial monuments and their re-framing in public discourse highlight the knowledges and histories that have been, and remain, (wilfully) ignored. The usurpation of Māori land by the Crown that gave rise to numerous white farming empires is exemplary of this. It is not trivial, then, that the Gallagher Group is a farming-based manufacturing corporation. Farming remains a critical export industry in New Zealand and has long been central to the economic-colonial project. As critical Cultural Studies scholar Joseph Pugliese has noted in his work on state violence: The Latin etymology of the terms ‘colony’ and ‘colonial’—colonia—evidences the modalities of power over life that intertwine the concept of ‘a farm’ and ‘a public settlement of Roman citizens in a hostile or newly conquered territory.’ In the prehistory of political power, the expropriated space of a conquered country

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is inscribed with the genocidal extermination of the ‘useless wild’ animals and the enslavement of those that can be put to human use. (Pugliese, 2013, p. 39)

Huge tracts of ancestral lands in the Waikato region—including where the city of Hamilton stands today—had been confiscated by the Crown under the Suppression of Rebellion Act (see Swarbrick, 2015). The generational enrichment of white farming families that followed was achieved through this act of forced dispossession (or ‘conquering’). This power over life meant the power of settlers to take away life from Māori, in usurping the principal economic base (see also Foucault, 2003). In servicing the massive colonial farming market that has since arisen in the Waikato, and New Zealand more broadly, the Gallagher Group has profited from this ‘power over life’ for now over 80 years. Their 75-year celebrations in 2013, through the commissioned statue of Captain Hamilton, indelibly tethered the violence of this colonial past to the present. Its defacing by koro Taitimu ruptured this link, surfacing the undercurrent of colonial racism and injustice upon which the city was founded. His act disrupted this narrative, adding to larger debates about the role of colonial statues in New Zealand.

Hamilton’s Removal: Narratives of White Possession Koro Taitimu first protested the statue in 2018. In 2020, he threatened to “tear the Hamilton statue down” (Radio New Zealand, 2020c, para. 5), after which the local iwi (sovereign Ma ̄ori nation), Waikato Tainui, formally requested its removal. On June 12, the Hamilton City Council agreed, with mayor Paula Southgate commenting that “many locals shared Maipi’s view that the statue was culturally offensive” (Radio New Zealand, 2020a, para. 4). Yet this view was not unanimous, with deputy mayor Geoff Taylor simultaneously commenting that merely threatening to remove the statue should be grounds enough for prosecution: “I think Taitimu Maipi who made the threats against the statue should be prosecuted, given that this was his second offence, having damaged the statue in 2018” (cited in Preston, 2020, para. 4). This inflammatory response, in presuming guilt when no physical act had yet been committed, illustrates the lengths that will be taken in maintaining white-settler sovereignty and possession.7 Moreton-Robinson describes this as an excessive desire to invest in reproducing and reaffirming the nation-state’s ownership, control, and domination. [W]hite possessive logics are operationalized within discourses to circulate sets of meanings about ownership of the nation, as part of commonsense knowledge, decision making, and socially produced conventions. (Moreton-Robinson, 2015, p. xii)

7  This is further exacerbated by the fact that criminal liability in common law jurisdictions (such as New Zealand and Australia) is based upon the combination of mens rea (‘the guilty mind’) and actus reas (‘the guilty act’); not mens rea alone, as the deputy mayor seems to infer.

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Taylor’s remark reaffirmed the sanctity of white ownership and control of New Zealand, where the mere hint of the statue’s removal was enough to spark such a reaction. We must keep in mind that the statue is a physical manifestation of the colonial conquest of Māori, and the possibility of its uplifting forced into the open an existential conversation about the nature and being of the settler state itself. Indeed, koro Taitimu’s protest caught news headlines both at national and international levels (see Anderson, 2020; Tarabay, 2019). “And I think Tainui has been a little calculated in choosing this time of hysteria following an outrageous crime in the US [(the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officer, Derek Chauvin (see Roy, 2020)] to push the case for renaming the city and some street names” (cited in O’Dwyer, 2020, para. 7), Taylor continued, alluding to Waikato Tainui’s efforts at reappraising the colonial impact of place names in the city. He went on to say that he “will listen to the entire city[,] not just one group” (cited in O’Dwyer, 2020, para. 8), in an attempt to diminish the gravity of this conversation and deflect attention away from it, by retreating to mores of democratic representation and responsibility. Together, Taylor’s commentary is exemplary of the operation of white possessive logics in New Zealand, reaffirming ongoing white settler sovereignty at the expense of Māori. Moreton-Robinson writes of the logics of white possession as necessarily involving “perpetual Indigenous dispossession” (Moreton-­ Robinson, 2015, p. xi), which is at play here both by shoring up the settler state and denying the constitutive nature of colonial violence to the present-­ day realities of its existence. Returning to Mills, positioning Hamilton as a hero and a celebrated memorable figure necessarily relies both on white ignorance and wilful misinterpretation of the past. Mills describes these as cognitive dysfunctions that allow white people to ‘unsee’ race and its impact (2007). Whiteness, he argues, brings with it a “cognitive model that precludes self-transparency and genuine understanding of all social realities”, which allows white people to live in a “racial fantasyland, [or] a ‘consensual hallucination’” (Mills, 1997, pp.  18–19). Colonial amnesia involves a ‘not knowing’ that is inherently linked to racial positionality, and is “in turn based on the erasure of colonial violence and its continuity in (state) acts of self-preservation through institutionalised modes of remembering and forgetting” (Azarmandi, 2016, p. 66). Writing about the impact of colonial monuments, scholar Mahdis Azarmandi (Azarmandi & Hernandez, 2017) points out that memories of the colonial past shape national identity in the present. As sites of commemoration, monuments cannot be reduced to fixed and static objects and should rather be understood as active and flexible processes. Not only do they represent a particular type of body as worthy of remembrance (white, male, heterosexual), but also show who is, and who can be, imagined as part of the city and nation. She writes: [I]f commemoration is understood as a fluid cultural practice, the ways in which we engage such public remembrances allow different possibilities to interrogate

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the relationship between what is being remembered and how it is narrated for the construction of a national imaginary. (Azarmandi & Hernandez, 2017, p. 7)

As such, we need to ask, “who remembers, and with what effects?” (Leroux, 2010), as well as “how do we respond?”, when such monuments are challenged. That is, what are the effects of proscribing who and how we can protest and resist these sites of memory? The commemoration of colonial figures, such as Hamilton, not only renders invisible colonial relations of power but also reveals its complicity in the production of white ignorance by policing the boundaries of dissent in the present.

Bicultural Limitations: Prescribing the Limits of Mao ̄ ri Protest In 2018, following koro Taitimu’s protest, Hamilton City Councillor Garry Mallet responded in a media interview saying, “[W]hen you lose the rule of law you get close to going to the jungle” (cited in Marae, 2018, 0:28 min). He also suggested that had it been anyone else, they would likely have received a harsher response from police than just a warning. When asked if he could see koro Taitimu’s perspective, Mallet went on to say “I’d call him a thug” (cited in Marae, 2018, 1:58 min). In the same story, then deputy mayor Gallagher— of the farming empire Gallagher family no less—added that opposing views of the statue “should not be expressed by ways of vandalism against public property” (0:58 min) but rather by upholding “mutual respect” (cited in Marae, 2018, 4:27 min). These responses imply that there are right and wrong ways of expressing dissent, positioning koro Taitimu’s actions as outside of the law, and beyond respectable ‘white’ forms of protest. Mallet’s comments, in particular, display serious racial undertones by referring to the protest as taking society back to the ‘jungle’, a space seen as opposite to civilisation. In the same interview, Mallet scoffs at the idea of restoring the original Māori name for the area to Kirikiriroa, opining that it “is a very, very insignificant part of our entire city” (cited in Marae, 2018, 5:11 min). The protest, carried out in broad daylight by an elderly man, is further characterised by Mallet as the actions of a ‘thug’. Here, resistance to settler colonialism is presented as disruptive, aggressive and disturbing the peace, rather than recognised as a response to white settler-colonial violence. Historian Richard Hill (2015) points out that concepts of control and notions of ‘law and order’ have historically not been extended to colonised populations. By contrast, it is the rule of law itself that is used to maintain colonial control over oppressed people. Reflecting on the role of colonial police, Hill goes on to argue that their purpose was less the prevention of crime and more to do with being a tool of colonial control (2015). He emphasises how patrol, surveillance and control are part and parcel of the colonial social order in what Azarmandi describes as “making police violence a system treatment of

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colonized subjects, rather than simply a casual phenomenon” (2016, p. 162). An insistence on rule of law and respectability thus functions to position certain forms of dissent as outside of the realm of the politically acceptable. Internationally, the response to colonial and confederate monuments has been framed by rejecting the methods of protest, by framing them as acts of needless violence and vandalism. This is exemplified in the characterisation of koro Taitimu by white politicians, especially in Mallet’s depiction of him as a ‘thug’. Repeatedly describing his, and similar protests, through the lens of vandalism, ascribes a criminal element that detracts from the larger conversation about the ongoing impacts of colonisation on Māori and Indigenous peoples more broadly. This subjectifies Māori as inherently criminal—an enduring product manufactured by and through the settler gaze (see Aikman, 2019), and exemplified through the Suppression of Rebellion Act’s depiction of Māori as ‘rebels’—and reduces the legitimacy of these critiques in the eyes of white New Zealand. Koro Taitimu’s protest, and the public’s response, highlights the tension inherent in New Zealand’s positioning of itself as a ‘bicultural’ nation. State-­ sponsored biculturalism, in this context, is a contradictory phenomenon. It acknowledges the presence of Indigenous people and, to some degree, the history of colonialism (Azarmandi, 2017; Bell, 2006), while simultaneously erasing the constitutive role of colonial conquest in building and maintaining New Zealand cityscapes. Yet the current notion of biculturalism disregards histories of violence and their ongoing impact on the present, by presenting itself as a framework of partnership between parties of equal power. Sociologist Avril Bell (2006) critiques such limited understanding of biculturalism in her work on colonialism, arguing that: biculturalism problematically works to keep the two peoples [Māori and Pākehā] apart and paradoxically perpetuates the lacuna constituting Pakeha identity. Both these gaps are achieved through biculturalism’s neglect of the colonial history of Maori [sic] and Pakeha [sic] “entanglement”. (p. 254)

According to Bell, this shift in rhetoric about the Treaty of Waitangi8—itself once declared a ‘legal nullity’ and irrelevant to state law by then Chief Justice Prendergast in 1877 (Belich, 1996, p. 193)—serves different ends for Pākehā̄ and Māori. While Māori have gained an “avenue (albeit limited) for … redress of colonial injustices”, for Pākehā, this shift signals a break from Britain. More importantly, “the concept of Treaty partnership … provides some degree of moral right to Pākehā presence in Aotearoa New Zealand” (Bell, 2006, p. 257). In this way, state-sponsored biculturalism thus presents Māori and Pākehā as two different ‘cultures’ of equal value and status, and assumes in there an achieved bicultural, postcolonial cityscape to be celebrated. 8  In terms of the state’s framing of the treaty (the English version), and not the specificities of what rangatira agreed to in Te Tiriti (the Māori language version).

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Bell (2006) highlights how these framings of biculturalism neglect power imbalances on the one hand and, on the other, draw a sharp line between these parties rather than framing them as ‘entangled’. Opponents of biculturalism argue that Māori receive ‘special treatment’ and advocate for a colour-blind approach to political governance under the pretence and rhetoric of democratic equality. Official approaches to biculturalism remove from view colonial ties to Britain, justifying a moral right for settler presence. Yet other conservative critiques instrumentalise these discourses to suggest Māori are the recipient of unearned privilege (Meihana, 2015). Mallet, for example, insisted that had anyone else protested in the way koro Taitimu did, they would have received a harsher punishment rather than “the warning [the police] effectively gave him” (cited in Marae, 2018, 1.29 min). With racially charged undertones, Mallet implies that koro Taitimu was somehow not held to the same standard as everyone else. He goes on to dismiss the implication of racism by insisting that “pink, yellow, orange, brown, white … I don’t care he should be treated as the law suggests he should be treated” (cited in Marae, 2018, 1.44 min). This assumption is especially troubling, given both the disproportionate impact of racism on Indigenous populations in the criminal justice system (Tauri, 2019) and the wider context of colonial amnesia that denies grievances over the statue have anything to do with local histories of settler-colonial violence. These framings of biculturalism, whether they seek to erase the continuity of settler-colonial violence or suggest that striving towards redress equates to separatism and preferential treatment, open up space for critical conversation. Monuments communicate ideas and assumptions we have about the past, shaping how the nation orients itself towards its own history. As George Tsai observes, this is particularly so “when [such] symbols are deployed in ways that do not involve the provision of reasons—symbols are a powerful tool for shaping the beliefs and attitudes of citizens” (Tsai, 2016, p. 321). In his work on civil disobedience and monuments in the Australian context, Ten-Herng Lai uses the example of Captain Cook statues to explain how monuments speak ‘indirectly’, but also in the “name of the people” (2020, p.  605). When a monument states, for example, that “Captain James Cook Discovered Australia 1770”, “[tourists] viewers can reasonably infer that Australians hold such a belief and honor Captain Cook accordingly” (2020, p. 605). Similar to Lai, philosopher George Tsai’s work on state symbolic power highlights how the expressive power of the state makes it harder to reject or challenge the message of its public symbols (Lai, 2020; Tsai, 2016). In the case of Hamilton’s effigy, its strategic emplacement in the middle of the city normalises this ‘expressive power of the state’, (literally) centring the statue and what it symbolised in the heart of commercial and political power. Here, Hamilton’s statue enjoyed considerable publicity, but resistance to the statue only became part of broader public conversations after it had been vandalised by koro Taitimu. Therefore, as Lai argues, the way in which public memorialisation is ‘communicated’ is different from how Indigenous, individual or minoritised communities may be able to access speech or be able to express dissent.

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Koro Taitimu’s actions make visible how colonialism continues to shape the sociopolitical realities for colonised peoples in the here and now. As such, the protest against Hamilton’s statue is not simply a challenge to the legacies of colonialism, which in itself suggests these are mere remnants of past injustice that linger in the city, but rather a concerted way to make visible these colonial injustices. It is a way of ‘speaking back’ to a continuation and constant restructuring of historical colonial structures, which have maintained differential hierarchies of power and difference since British colonisation began in New Zealand. As Lai argues: State-sponsored political symbols, therefore, tend to bypass our rational scrutiny, and is thus harder to reject. In addition, while individual hearers may want to disagree with what the state says, as state speech presumes to speak in the name of one’s fellow citizens, without further evidence indicating otherwise, it is reasonable for an individual to come to have the belief that such views are widely endorsed. (2020, p. 606)

Suggesting, as Gallagher has, that dissent to the statue should have been expressed in mutually respectful ways, disregards the vastly unequal relations of power between the settler state and Indigenous people. Insisting on upholding the ‘rule of law’ also works to delegitimise and discredit colonial grief in the present. The fact that the statue was erected as recently as 2013 with little to no public consultation demonstrates that accessing speech (that is, the ability to express approval or rejection of the statue) was unequally distributed. Koro Taitimu’s actions thus prised open discussion about the past and its impact on the present by means of public provocation. They claim back space to speak when Māori have been deliberately unheard or silenced. As Lai writes: when official acts of confrontation, removal, or recontextualization fail to take place, political vandalism may sometimes be permissible or even obligatory, as it can serve as fitting counter-speech that prevents or mitigates the objectionable things state-sponsored tainted political symbols do. (Lai, 2020, p. 603)

Taking red paint and a hammer to the statue exposes the limited access to express Indigenous dissent within the confines of settler colonialism and patriarchal white sovereignty. Lai describes these acts as ‘political vandalism’, observing that in instances where an interlocutor remains silent about ongoing forms of harm: one’s silence actually contributes to part of the harm that is done through presuppositions, and one can thus be held at least in part morally responsible for the harm. […] Their silence, or in many cases our silence provides the conditions upon which the indirect speech is accommodated. (Lai, 2020, p. 610)

To write off protests such as koro Taitimu’s actions as ‘criminal’ or ‘uppity-­ Māori’ contributes to the ‘deliberate misremembering’ of colonial history in

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Aotearoa (Jackson, 2016, 2019). Diminishing the credibility of protests, such as koro Taitimu’s, through recourse to vandalism and criminality achieves just that by bringing into question the validity of this critique of colonial statues. The cumulative effect of this is the reproduction of the colonial status quo, writing off a past saturated in Crown violence and conquest and the shoring up of white settler sovereignty.

Conclusion: Ko Te Kai a Te Rangatira, he Kōrero— Conversation is the Sustenance of Chiefs Remembering and memorialising the past is a complex process and, in a settler colonial society like New Zealand, it is exacerbated by politics of white possession and ignorance. However, reckoning with the violence of a colonial past does not infer a dichotomy of leaving monuments intact or simply removing them (see Vincent O’Malley in Radio New Zealand, 2020a). It rather necessitates critical conversations about the role of white supremacy in the establishment and maintenance of settler-colonial states. While worldwide movements have seen numerous colonial-era statues toppled, such as the effigy of Egerton Ryerson, architect of Canada’s violently racist residential schools (Al Jazeera, 2021), and the Early Days statue in San Francisco, graphically depicting Native American submission to colonisation (Associated Press, 2018), these conversations must be ongoing, for the legacy of colonisation lives on and through the continued suffering of Indigenous peoples today at the hands of the settler state. Māori experiences of institutional racism exemplify this across, for example, education (Berryman & Eley, 2018, pp. 106; 116–117; MacDonald, 2018; Walters, 2018a, 2018b), healthcare (Came, 2013; Jansen et al., 2008, p. 17) and criminal justice (Department of Corrections, 2007, p. 4; Jackson, 1987; Workman, 2011). These inequities are symptomatic of a white supremacist society premised on the inferiority of Māori. Endeavouring towards a decolonial reality entails addressing the root causes of these symptoms—patriarchal white sovereignty—of which statues are concretised embodied symbolic forms. Protests such as koro Taitimu’s are pivotal in this process, in rupturing the capillarising nature of white possession and sovereignty and emphasising the continued impacts of colonial injustice tangibly felt today. Bodies of Indigenous knowledge, stored in the collective memory of oral histories, are similarly key to this disruption. As Māori sociologist Joanna Kidman has commented on the remembering of the past in relation to colonial statues, “Māori memory is stored in waiata [(songs, chants)], whakairo [(ornamental carving)] and pepeha [(tribal sayings and recitation of genealogy)] … it comes across in whaikōrero [(formal oratory)]” (cited in Donovan, 2020, para. 11). As stories told by and from the perspectives of Māori, that more eloquently recount the suffering caused by colonisation, oral histories are critical to challenging the politics and narratives of place and white possession embodied in statues like that of Hamilton. Whether sharing these stories from kuia

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(grandmother, woman elder) to mokopuna (grandchild) or protesting against colonial statues, these actions are continually needed for decolonising the cityscapes of Aotearoa.

Glossary of Māori Terms Iwi: sovereign Māori nation Kaumātua: elder Kāwanatanga: governorship Koro: term of address for a male elder Kuia: grandmother, woman elder Mokopuna: grandchild Pā: fortified village Pepeha: tribal sayings and recitation of genealogy Rangatira: ennobled chieftains Tangata whenua: literally ‘the people of the land’, a metonym for ‘Māori’ Tino rangatiratanga: unqualified autonomy, sovereignty, and chieftainship Waiata: songs, chants Whaikōrero: formal oratory Whakairo: ornamental carving

References Aikman, P. J. W. E. (2019). Terra in our mist: A Tūhoe narrative of indigenous sovereignty and state violence. PhD thesis. Australian National University. https:// openresearch-­repository.anu.edu.au/handle/1885/164804 Al Jazeera. (2021, June 7). Statue of Canada residential schools architect toppled in Toronto. Al Jazeera. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/6/7/ statue-­of-­canada-­residential-­schools-­architect-­toppled-­in-­toronto Anderson, C. (2020, June 12). City of Hamilton in New Zealand removes statue of British naval captain. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/ jun/12/city-­of-­hamilton-­in-­new-­zealand-­to-­remove-­statue-­of-­british-­naval-­captain Associated Press. (2018, September 15). San Francisco statue that some call racist is removed. Associated Press News. https://apnews.com/article/north-­america-­us-­ news-­ap-­top-­news-­ca-­state-­wire-­san-­francisco-­4bedce9b193c489ea1d44f28fcd1 28f5 Azarmandi, M. (2016). Commemorating no-bodies–Christopher Columbus and the violence of social-forgetting. Somatechnics, 6(1), 56–71. Azarmandi, M. (2017). Colonial continuities-a study of anti-racism in Aotearoa New Zealand and Spain. PhD thesis. University of Otago. Azarmandi, M., & Hernandez, R.  D. (2017). Colonial redux: When re-naming silences—Antonio Lopez y Lopez and Nelson Mandela. Borderlands e-journal, 16(1), 1–27. Ballara, A. (1986). Proud to be white?: A survey of pakeha prejudice in New Zealand. Heinemann.

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Belich, J. (1996). Making Peoples. Penguin Books. Bell, A. (2006). Bifurcation or entanglement? Settler identity and biculturalism in Aotearoa New Zealand. Continuum, 20(2), 253–268. Berryman, M., & Eley, E. (2018). Gathering and listening to the voices of Māori youth: What are the system responses? In R. Bourke & J. Loveridge (Eds.), Radical collegiality through student voice: Educational experience, policy and practice (pp. 103–126). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-­981-­13-­1858-­0_7 Binney, J. (2009). Encircled lands: Te Urewera, 1820–1921. Bridget Williams Books. Binney, J. (2011). Story: Māori prophetic movements—ngā poropiti. Te Whiti and Tohu—Parihaka. Te Ara: The Encyclopedia of New Zealand. https://teara.govt.nz/ en/maori-­prophetic-­movements-­nga-­poropiti/page-­4 Brooking, T. (1992). “Busting up” the greatest Estate of all: Liberal Maori land policy, 1891–1911. New Zealand Journal of History, 26(1), 78–98. Brooking, T. (1996). “Use it or lose it” unravelling the land debate in late nineteenth-­ century New Zealand. New Zealand Journal of History, 30(2), 141–162. Brooking, T. (2014). Richard Seddon: King of God’s own: The life and times of New Zealand’s longest-serving prime minister. Penguin Books. Came, H. (2013). Beginning to address institutional racism within the public health sector: Insights from a provider survey. Hauora—Everyone’s Right, 2013(38, Autumn/Winter), 1–4. Department of Corrections. (2007). Over-representation of Ma ̄ori in the criminal justice system: An exploratory report. Policy. Donovan, E. (2020, June 17). The Detail: Tearing down statues—And revisiting our histories. Radio New Zealand. https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/the-­detail/300036295/ the-­detail-­tearing-­down-­statues%2D%2Dand-­revisiting-­our-­histories Fernandes, K. (2019, July 26). Ihumātao land battle: A timeline. Radio New Zealand. https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/395281/ihumatao-­land-­battle-­a-­timeline Foucault, M. (2003). Society must be defended: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1975–76 (D. Macey, Trans., 1st ed.). Picador. Gibson, A. (2021, July 15). Waiheke Island marina developer “pleased” after police action. https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/waiheke-­island-­marina-­developer-­ pleased-­after-­police-­action/SI6DLQ6KDADAVTT257K35PZAKA/ Hamilton, S. (2017, November 28). Treaty of Waitangi denialism: A long, dark and absurd history. https://thespinoff.co.nz/society/28-­11-­2017/ treaty-­of-­waitangi-­denialism-­a-­long-­dark-­and-­absurd-­history/ Harris, A. (2004). Hı ̄koi: Forty years of Māori protest. Huia Publishers. Haunui-Thompson, S. (2019, July 24). Explainer: Why Ihumātao is being occupied by “protectors.” Radio New Zealand. https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/te-­manu-­ korihi/395121/explainer-­why-­ihumatao-­is-­being-­occupied-­by-­protectors Hill, R. (2015). Coercion, Carcerality and the Colonial Police Patrol. Presented at the Practices of Order: Colonial and Imperial Projects Conference, University of Copenhagen. http://www.victoria.ac.nz/stout-­centre/research-­units/security-­ and-­surveillance-­research-­unit/security-­and-­surveillance-­publications/Coercion,-­ Carcerality-­and-­the-­Colonial-­Police-­Patrol.pdf Independent Working Group on Constitutional Transformation. (2018). He Whakaaro Here Whakaumu mo ̄ Aotearoa: The Report of Matike Mai Aotearoa. Independent Working Group on Constitutional Transformation. https://nwo.org.nz/wp-­ content/uploads/2018/06/MatikeMaiAotearoa25Jan16.pdf

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Jackson, M. (1987). The Maori and the criminal justice system: A new perspective | he Whaipaanga Hou (study series 18). Department of Justice. Jackson, M. (2016, September 17). Moana Jackson: Facing the truth about the wars. E-Tangata. https://e-­tangata.co.nz/history/moana-­jackson-­facing-­the­truth-­about-­the-­wars/ Jackson, M. (2019). The connection between white supremacy and colonisation. E-Tangata. https://e-­tangata.co.nz/comment-­and-­analysis/the-­connection­between-­white-­supremacy/ Jackson, M., Brown-Davis, S., & Sykes, A. (2016, May 6). Decarceration, not prison; justness, not justice; constitutional transformation, not treaty settlements. Space, Race, Bodies II: Sovereignty and Migration in a Carceral Age, University of Otago. Jansen, P., Bacal, K., & Crengle, S. (2008). He Ritenga Whakaaro: Māori experiences of health services. Mauri Ora Associates. Keenan, D. (2012). Gate Pā, Tauranga. In Te Ara Encyclopedia of New Zealand. https://teara.govt.nz/en/new-­zealand-­wars/page-­7 Lai, T.  H. (2020). Political vandalism as counter-speech: A defense of defacing and destroying tainted monuments. European Journal of Philosophy, 28(3), 602–616. Leroux, D 2010. The Spectacle of Champlain commemorating Québec. Borderlands, 9(1). http://www.borderlands.net.au/vol9no1_2010/leroux_champlain.htm Lynch, J. (2013, March 11). Captain Hamilton’s statue given to city. Stuff. https:// www.stuff.co.nz/waikato-­times/8406879/Captain-­Hamiltons-­statue-­given-­to-­city MacDonald, L. (2018). Silencing and Institutional Racism in Settler-Colonial Education. Thesis. Victoria University of Wellington. Maitland, T.  A., & Manch, T. (2017, November 29). Experts deconstruct Sir William Gallagher’s Treaty of Waitangi claims. https://www.stuff. co.nz/national/education/99318500/exper ts-­d econstr uct-­s ir-­w illiamgallaghers-­treaty-­of-­waitangi-­claims Marae. (2018). Kaumatua attacks “racist” colonial statue to prove his point—Is he right? https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=276379846307558 Mather, M., & Leaman, A. (2017, November 27). Sir William Gallagher claims Treaty of Waitangi cover-up. Stuff. https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/99247542/ sir-­william-­gallagher-­claims-­treaty-­of-­waitangi-­coverup McCauley, D. (2020). John Fane Charles Hamilton, 1820–1864. https://debbiemcc a u l e y a u t h o r. w o r d p r e s s . c o m / b i o g r a p h i e s -­b y -­d e b b i e -­m c c a u l e y / john-­fane-­charles-­hamilton-­1820-­1864/ Meihana, P. N. (2015). The paradox of Maori privilege: historical constructions of Maori privilege circa 1769 to 1940. PhD thesis. Palmerston North: Massey University. Mills, C. W. (1997). The racial contract. Cornell University Press. Mills, C. W. (2007). White ignorance. In S. Sullivan & N. Tuana (Eds.), Race and epistemologies of ignorance (pp. 26–31). Suny Press. Ministry for Culture and Heritage. (2019a). Invasion of pacifist settlement at Parihaka: 5 November 1881. New Zealand History. https://nzhistory.govt.nz/ occupation-­pacifist-­settlement-­at-­parihaka Ministry for Culture and Heritage. (2019b). War in Tauranga—Gate Pā. In New Zealand History. https://nzhistory.govt.nz/war/war-­in-­tauranga/gate-­pa Ministry for Culture and Heritage. (2021). Māori land loss, 1860–2000. https://nzhistory.govt.nz/media/interactive/maori-­land-­1860-­2000#:~:text=In%201860%20 M%C4%81ori%20held%20about,been%20bought%20by%20the%20Crown

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Moreton-Robinson, A. (2015). The white possessive: Property, power, and indigenous sovereignty. University of Minnesota Press. Ngata, T. (2020, May 13). Moana Jackson and treaty partnership. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EzPZjcTFolo O’Dwyer, E. (2020, June 22). Deputy mayor calls for kaumātua to be prosecuted over Captain Hamilton statue. Stuff. https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/121902535/ deputy-­mayor-­calls-­for-­kaumtua-­to-­be-­prosecuted-­over-­captain-­hamilton-­statue O’Malley, V. (2016). The great war for New Zealand: Waikato 1800–2000. Bridget Williams Books. Orange, C. (2012). Story: Treaty of Waitangi. In Te Ara Encyclopedia of New Zealand. https://teara.govt.nz/en/treaty-­of-­waitangi/page-­2 Perry, N. (2020, June 12). New Zealand city removes statue of its ‘murderous’ namesake. Associated Press News. https://apnews.com/article/race-­and-­ethnicity-­ n e w -­z e a l a n d -­i n t e r n a t i o n a l -­n e w s -­a s i a -­p a c i f i c -­d e a t h -­o f -­g e o r g e -­f l o y d -­ dc79b51c4e17317c174fc4863072686f Preston, N. (2020). Hamilton deputy mayor Geoff Taylor wants man who threatened to attack statue charged. New Zealand Herald. https://www.nzherald.co.nz/kahu/ hamilton-deputy-mayor-geoff-taylor-wants-man-who-threatened-to-attack-statuecharged/5EFZEGK5LNMNEKFKRQFJLROCFA/#:~:text=%22I%20think%20 Taitimu%20Maipi%20who,damaged%20the%20statue%20in%202018.%22 Pugliese, J. (2013). State violence and the execution of law: Biopolitical caesurae of torture, black sites, drones. Routledge. Radio New Zealand. (2020a, June 12). Controversial statue of Captain John Hamilton has been removed. Radio New Zealand. https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/te-­manu-­ korihi/418833/controversial-­statue-­of-­captain-­john-­hamilton-­has-­been-­removed Radio New Zealand. (2020b, June 12). Waikato-Tainui welcome removal of Hamilton statue. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3NyjtHqHpL8 Radio New Zealand. (2020c, June 13). Controversy over NZ colonial statues long-­ standing. Radio New Zealand. https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/418937/ controversy-­over-­nz-­colonial-­statues-­long-­standing Riseborough, H. (2002). Days of darkness: Taranaki, 1878–1884. Penguin Books. Roy, E. A. (2020, June 1). Thousands in New Zealand protest against George Floyd killing. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/01/thousands-­in-­new-­zealandprotest-­against-­george-­floyd-­killing Snelgar, K. (2020). Transformation, not tokenism. E-Tangata. https://e-­tangata. co.nz/comment-­and-­analysis/transformation-­not-­tokenism/?fbclid=IwAR1MrtSZ OHfTvVZLPWHr6NCvG_5bqiyWX5ovVYQe0mG6H9c4Cwxm4iK44VU Stuff. (2018). Captain Hamilton statue vandalised in Hamilton’s main square. Stuff. https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/106691019/captain-­hamilton-­statuevandalised-­in-­hamiltons-­main-­square Swarbrick, N. (2015). Confiscation of Māori land. In Te Ara Encyclopedia of New Zealand. https://teara.govt.nz/en/map/27791/confiscation-­of-­maori-­land Tarabay, J. (2019, December 2). How Charlottesville’s echoes forced New Zealand to confront its history. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/02/ world/asia/new-­zealand-­maori-­hamilton-­statue.html Tauri, J. (2019). Indigenous perspectives and experience: Maori, crime control, and social harm. In T. Bradley & R. Walters (Eds.), Introduction to criminological thought (pp. 183–204). Auckland.

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Tsai, G. (2016). The morality of state symbolic power. Social Theory and Practice, 42(2), 318–342. Waikato Times. (1922, May 2). Commander J.F.C. Hamilton, p. 13. Waitangi Tribunal. (2009). Te Urewera pre-publication. Part 1.. Waitangi Tribunal. http://www.waitangi-­tribunal.govt.nz/scripts/reports/reports/894/84B63F0641BF-­4B53-­A974-­32F3BE8C2D01.pdf Waitangi Tribunal. (2014). WAI1040: He Whakaputanga me te Tiriti: The declaration and the treaty: The report on stage 1 of the Te Paparahi o Te raki inquiry. Waitangi Tribunal. Walters, L. (2018a, October 31). NZ’s unequal education system. Newsroom. https:// www.newsroom.co.nz/2018/10/30/298677/nzs-­unequal-­education-­system Walters, L. (2018b, November 7). Our racist education system. Newsroom. https:// www.newsroom.co.nz/2018/11/06/308935/our-­racist-­education-­system Workman, K. (2011). Māori over-representation in the criminal justice system—Does structural discrimination have anything to do with it? Rethinking Crime and Punishment.

CHAPTER 4

Space and Place: Cultural Heritage and Colonial Commemoration at Australian Tertiary Institutions Zac Roberts

and Jessica U. Binet

Introduction On 27 August 2018, the University of Sydney was placed on the State Heritage Register of New South Wales (NSW). Located on the lands of the Gadigal people, the University of Sydney was established in 1850 and is Australia’s oldest tertiary institution. In a media release announcing the listing, NSW Heritage Minister Gabriel Upton acknowledged Gadigal land, stating that “the site has a long-standing cultural heritage” with Gadigal people “living in the area and using the rich landscape” (NSW Department of Planning, Industry and Environment, 2018, para. 2). This acknowledgement appears to be the extent of Gadigal recognition, as the listing itself is primarily based on the historical and cultural significance of the buildings that constitute the university campus and surrounds (NSW State Heritage Inventory, 2021). As such, the acknowledgement serves as one of many examples of tokenistic representations of Indigenous cultural heritage within broader narratives of Australian state-building. The role tertiary institutions play in national histories is an integral aspect of the construction and reception of national identities. As centres of learning, education and research, the institution’s physical architecture is often the focal

Z. Roberts (*) • J. U. Binet Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW, Australia e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 B. Carlson, T. Farrelly (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook on Rethinking Colonial Commemorations, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-28609-4_4

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point of commemoration and protection. By prioritising colonial-built heritage over the intangible Indigenous histories enmeshed in the unceded Country on which they are constructed, an epistemological loop is formed whereby the establishment of the institutions themselves creates the only histories and heritage that academies are willing to recognise and celebrate. In colonised countries like Australia, these institutions often bear the name of colonial figures. Through this naming process, institutions acquire the burden of this colonial history while ignoring the implications of invoking such a legacy. When considered through the lens of cultural heritage and nation-building, it is clear that these legacies, histories and heritage processes require further attention. An overarching definition of cultural heritage is difficult to designate, as what counts as heritage is contingent on local knowledge, history and culture. During the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, heritage was primarily associated with Western ideas of preserving the past (Simpson, 2018). From the middle of the twentieth century, nostalgia for the past led to the growth of public museums and heritage sites, and in 1946 the Venice Charter was established for the purpose of providing an international framework for the conservation of historically significant buildings (Lennon, 2014). While the Venice Charter itself is now considered to be outdated due to Modernist views that push for the preservation and conservation of historical buildings over reconstruction (Hardy, 2008; Khalaf, 2021), the ideas of protecting, conserving and indeed celebrating heritage have been adopted in various ways by countries around the world. In Australia, the most notable adoption is The Burra Charter (2013). First adopted in 1979, The Burra Charter provides guidance for the conservation and management of heritage places in Australia that is based on the knowledge, experience and expertise of Australian members of the International Council of Monuments and Sites (The Burra Charter, 2013). Described as an ‘unsung achievement of Australian cultural history’ (Hanna, 2015b), The Burra Charter is scarcely known outside of heritage circles; however, it exerts an immense amount of influence on historic environments, both within Australia and internationally (Hanna, 2015a; Lesh, 2017). The Burra Charter uses the term ‘Cultural Significance’ synonymously with ‘Cultural Heritage’, defining it as: aesthetic, historic, scientific, social or spiritual value for past, present or future generations. Cultural significance is embodied in the place itself, its fabric, setting, use, associations, meanings, records, related places and related objects. Places may have a range of values for different individuals or groups. (The Burra Charter, 2013 Article 1)

The final line of this definition is telling: the value attributed to a place will differ, depending on the individual or group. In many cases, this is reflective of

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that individual or group’s cultural background, informed by their specific ontologies. For settler colonial states, this means that the value attributed to various places is informed by the settler group, resulting in the cultural heritage of colonised groups being discarded or pushed to the periphery. Heritage, or cultural heritage then, is intimately woven with notions of individual and nation-state identity. Heritage plays an important role in the national narratives perpetuated by governing states. Commemoration and memorialisation of these narratives occur in various ways, notably through statues of colonial figures, monuments and buildings dedicated to or named after colonial figures, or days chosen to commemorate historical events related to colonial history (Daley, 2018; Reynolds, 2021). These often function to legitimise the chosen narrative of the colonising group and work at the expense of the colonised peoples’ heritage, values and histories. Like other Indigenous, First Nations, and historically marginalised peoples from around the world, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples have fought back against colonial commemorations from the beginning of the colonial occupation of the Australian continent. On 26 January 1938, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people gathered in what was known as the ‘Day of Mourning’ to counter the celebrations being held for the “150th anniversary of the whitemen’s seizure of our country” (Patten & Ferguson, 1938, p. 1). Each year there is an increased number of debates, both public and private, regarding the validity of celebrating the national holiday ‘Australia Day’ on January 26 (Onus, 2021), and the question of whether statues like those of explorer James Cook and early coloniser Lachlan Macquarie should remain standing in Hyde Park in Sydney (Scates, 2017; Sentance, 2020). These conversations occur within and around the process of truth-telling that aims not only to reconfigure the way Australia engages with its national history but also to acknowledge and celebrate the strength and resilience of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and cultures (Mencevska, 2020; Reconciliation Australia, 2019; Reynolds, 2021). In this chapter, we aim to unravel some of these processes and issues in relation to tertiary institutions in the settler colony of Australia. We draw on our combined backgrounds in history, archaeology, anthropology and Indigenous Studies to argue that because of settler privilege and colonial imaginings, the heritage and significance of Indigenous communities and places are sidelined in favour of colonial histories. As a result, the institutions themselves become sites of colonial commemoration and colonial violence. We also acknowledge that these conversations are global in nature, with Indigenous, First Nations and marginalised communities calling for a revision of heritage, and for the renaming of institutions, monuments and commemorations in many countries around the world (e.g., Haynes, 2021; Matthews, 2021; Miki, 2020; Ndlovu-­ Gatsheni, 2018). While the focus of this chapter remains on the settler colony of Australia, it forms part of a much larger discussion.

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Heritage and Identity at Australian Tertiary Institutions Nationalism and the promotion of national identity are most often accepted as the fostering of an imagined community that is built on a shared sense of belonging, but manifests into material entities (Anderson, 1991). National identities, as imagined identities, are frequently contested and deeply contextual (Anderson, 1991; Austin & Fozdar, 2016). In a global sense, the past is utilised for the formation of national identity, focusing on specific cultural ties and historical landscapes, grounding a nation in both time and space. However, the construction of a national past proves problematic for settler colonial states like Australia, as the state’s so-called antiquity has its origin at the fixed point of colonial invasion in 1788. As this is a defined point with a specific date, the nation cannot have a romanticised notion of imagined continuity stretching back into so-called antiquity without including the heritage and history of Indigenous communities. For the settler colony of Australia, it is argued that Australians themselves are both overly concerned about the nation’s identity and confused over what that identity is in practice (Castles et  al., 1998; Hage, 1998). The topic of national identity was, and is, part of Australia’s so-called History Wars. This ideological debate centres on two opposing visions of the Australian nation and its history (Fordham, 2015). It is largely separated along the political poles and debates the focus of Australian history. The History Wars are used by the political left to circulate moral ideas regarding the injustices faced by Indigenous peoples and the ties between Australia’s national identity and its treatment of the Indigenous population (Fordham, 2015). The political right, however, suggests that the left have misrepresented and exaggerated the suffering of Indigenous peoples and have therefore rewritten history; that focusing on Indigenous narratives of history fragment a collective national history; and that no apology is necessary for the history of Australia because contemporary people hold no responsibility for injustices of the past (Fordham, 2015). As an ongoing series of debates about the practice and teaching of Australian history, the discussion inspired through these debates gives power and inspiration to the collective understanding of the nation’s past, and how this is presented in a national history and identity (MacIntyre & Clark, 2013; Sammut, 2017). History becomes politicised, with many academics, politicians and everyday Australians arguing passionately—and ideologically—about the significance of the past, the ideal of the ‘fair go’, Indigenous dispossession, and what to teach the nation’s children (MacIntyre & Clark, 2013). The idea of what constitutes Australianness, then, is seen to have morphed over time from 1788 through to the present. Beginning as the embodiment of ‘hell on earth’ for convicts, to becoming the land of the ‘fair go’, ‘mateship’ and the ‘lucky country’, Australia bases its imagined identity on the mythic male archetypes of Ned Kelly, the larrikin and the Australian and New Zealand

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Army Corps (Elder, 2007; Fredericks, 2013).1 The construction of monuments, buildings and other sites of commemoration therefore become tangible remnants of these narratives. As with other expressions of public history, these sites are mediated by “ideological and political discourses that authorise their creation, or which create the right ideological and political conditions for their conception and eventual inception” (Crownshaw, 2014, p. 220). They become material representations through which Australian national history is mobilised, and the structures become mechanisms for the nation state to dictate how its history is represented publicly. This is not a situation unique to Australia— the post-1989 widespread removal of memorials in post-Soviet states after 1989 (Buckley-Zisten & Schäfer, 2014; Demetrious & Wingo, 2018), reconceptualising of Ottoman monuments as Republican national monuments in Turkey in the 1950s (Aykaç, 2020) and the various debates around publicly maintained monuments in the United States (Britt et  al., 2020; Forest & Johnston, 2019; O’Connell, 2020) and South Africa (Fubah, 2018; Ndletyana & Webb, 2017) are recent international examples. As such, while monuments and memorials are long-standing and tangible features of public space and place, they can never be politically neutral sites (Sumartojo, 2015), and this constructed heritage comes to occupy a political role in the reinforcement of nation-building and national identities. In looking at nation-building efforts in Australia, tertiary education institutions provide an interesting complex of negotiations. In the twenty-first century, they reside in commemorative and heritage spaces, whereas in the twentieth century, they represented the birth of the new Australian nation and its potential. As in Europe, tangible remnants of the past such as the University of Sydney, Macquarie University and James Cook University attained significance as icons of Australia—the former for its age and founding, and the latter two for the names attached to the institutions. However, this chapter will question the kind of heritage—and therefore the kind of Australia—that is commemorated in the specific use of these sites. As with almost all tertiary institutions in Australia, the University of Sydney was established with the aim of making tertiary education more accessible, in the spirit of “openness and equality” (North, 2014, p.  88; see also: Selleck, 2003, p. 9). When the University of Sydney opened in 1850, New South Wales still had largely a convict or former convict-based population. The university did not allow the admittance of women, and a large percentage of the male population could not read or write (North, 2014). In the early nineteenth century, education in the Australian colonies was not systematic, and in New 1  Ned Kelly is a famous Australian bush ranger who developed folk hero status in Australia. He divides public opinion, with many seeing him as a ‘Robin Hood’ figure, while others characterising him as a murderer and outlaw. The ‘larrikin’ identity represents an ideal of Australian culture where fundamentally ‘good’ individuals push the boundaries of unjust rules. The Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) came to reside in Australian identity following the failed military campaign at Gallipoli. Their actions came to be heralded as exemplars of ‘mateship’, ‘courage’ and ‘humour’, which the broader Australian public aims to replicate.

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South Wales in particular, control over education was marked by a battle between the Church of England, and the various other Catholic and Christian denominations from Ireland and Scotland. To assuage controversy over the establishment of university institutions, the governing body of New South Wales in the 1840s thought it prudent for the institution to be secular (North, 2014). William Charles Wentworth, a radical turned conservative landowner, particularly pushed for the University of Sydney to be a secular body. Wentworth hoped that the university would “be the foundation of knowledge at whose spring all might drink, be they Christian, Mahomedan, Jew, or Heathen” (‘Council Paper,’ 1849, p. 2). He posited London University as a model, which was established antithetically from Oxford and Cambridge, which maintained a model of education based on ecclesiastical teachings primarily for the aristocratic class. Those who attended ‘Oxbridge’ did so not because they required an education for possible careers but purely because they could. By comparison, Wentworth’s vision for the University of Sydney was as an institution accessible to all those who passed matriculation requirements, regardless of class or background. However, as North (2014) contends, the attendance within the University of Sydney reveals that the class divide still existed in this space, with the instituted elite committed to maintaining the status quo. Those individuals with access to the prerequisite knowledge were those belonging to the already educated classes, leaving the ideal of university openness as just that—an ideal. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples were not part of discussions regarding the construction of the University of Sydney. Education in the settler state of Australia has always been the responsibility of the states—and later, territories—as was the relegation and control of Indigenous populations. From the early 1800s, the colony of New South Wales implemented a series of policies designed to “teach and civilise” (Burridge & Chodkiewicz, 2012, p. 12) Indigenous peoples that simultaneously led to the systematic exclusion, segregation, separation and forcible removal of Indigenous children (Brook & Kohen, 1991; Burridge & Chodkiewicz, 2012). As such, while successive governors in the first half of the nineteenth century enacted policies designed to educate the settler community, so too did successive polices aim to civilise Indigenous peoples through education practices without going so far as to include them in the mainstream education practices. As in primary and secondary education, such segregated approaches to tertiary education persisted until the middle of the twentieth century, when Malera Budjalung and Gumbaynggirr woman Margaret Williams-Weir enrolled at the University of Queensland in 1957 (‘Aboriginal Girl Matriculates,’ 1957, p. 2). She later transferred to the University of Melbourne, graduating in 1959 with a Diploma of Physical Education (Henningham, 2014). She was followed by Charles Perkins, a Kalkadoon man who completed a Bachelor of Arts at the University of Sydney in 1966 (Perkins, 1975).

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While radical ideals may have been a founding principle of the University of Sydney, the curriculum taught a moral education. Governor Bourke, one of the first New South Wales governors to propose educational policies for the colony, stated in 1833 that “in no part of the world is the general education of the People a more sacred and necessary duty of the Government than in New South Wales” (Bourke, 1923, p. 232). In her discussion about the foundations of the universities of Sydney and Melbourne, North (2014) writes that Bourke’s belief in education stemmed from the difficulties that come with governing an uneducated population, rather than education for the benefit of the population. Indeed, much of the education offered to convict populations was designed around social control—it is easier to control a population with at least a rudimentary schooling (Campbell & Proctor, 2014, p. 23). From this understanding, it is evident that the role the University of Sydney played in this period of colonial history was not one of radical openness but rather as a tangible space in which colonial governments could reinforce a national identity that fit within the settler colonial ideology. Altogether, the foundation and operation of tertiary education institutions in Australia can be seen as colonial imaginings. That is, they constructed perceptions of Australia that manifest in the colonised operation of the education and heritage systems and highlight the settler privilege operating in the Australian context. This chapter opened with the placing of the University of Sydney on the State Heritage Register of New South Wales, and Heritage Minister Gabriel Upton’s acknowledgement of Gadigal connection to Country (NSW Department of Planning, Industry and Environment, 2018). The heritage listing itself, however, is a celebration of “how early Sydney aspired to shape its own society, polity, and ideals”, with the University being “a tangible representation of the early development of NSW and the development of the state and nation” (NSW State Heritage Inventory, 2021). The listing emphasises the built heritage—the ‘picturesque’ campus and Gothic and Tudor Revival architecture—while ignoring any heritage assessment for Gadigal peoples on whose land the university is built. While the listing acknowledged Charles Perkins as a point of historical association, it is clear that the primary points of significance, and the values outlined to be preserved and protected, are deeply colonial. The NSW State Heritage List was created to protect places and objects that are of significance to the entirety of New South Wales (Heritage NSW, 2021), an objective maintained by most other Australian state and territory heritage lists. In most cases, Indigenous heritage is collated outside of or separate to these lists, and in the case of the Queensland Heritage Register, being managed and protected separately (Queensland Government, 2021). While using a separate criterion to assess Indigenous heritage may have the benefit of involving a wider or different range of considerations, it also suggests that Indigenous heritage, people, places and knowledges have had no impact on the evolution and development of ‘the entire’ community of various states and territories. Indigenous heritage is the only cultural grouping to be distinguished by these

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lists; places belonging to other cultures can be found on the respective State Heritage Registers. Ultimately, this holds Indigenous heritage to exist separate from broader Australian heritage. The University of Sydney remains, to this day, one of the most exclusive and expensive Australian universities to attend. Its inclusion in the State Heritage List without recognition of Gadigal cultural heritage is an example of how colonial policies intentionally exclude, remove and sever Indigenous peoples’ connection with Country. Indeed, Wolfe’s ‘logic of elimination’ contends that the built heritage of the University of Sydney exists only because Gadigal presence has been eliminated (Wolfe, 2006). In celebrating the built colonial heritage, this elimination is consolidated. In acknowledging Gadigal Country, the Heritage Minister is masking the fact that it is only by virtue of the dispossession of Country that the university stands. While the University of Sydney may invoke colonial ideals through its physical existence, other institutions invoke— and celebrate—colonial ideals through more intangible means.

Commemorative Names This section explores the processes and implications of naming and commemoration after significant figures. Further, the interaction between the universities and the acquired legacies of the commemorated person is explored in relation to Macquarie University on Darug Country in Sydney, and James Cook University, which was previously the University College of Townsville and now operates across three main campuses in Far North Queensland. While most of the ‘new’ Australian universities—established from the 1960s onwards—were named for key historic figures, only Macquarie University (est. 1964) and James Cook University (est. 1970) invoke the colonial landscape so explicitly due to the specific legacies left by their namesakes—Governor Lachlan Macquarie and Captain James Cook, respectively. There is an inherent power in the act of naming. Naming involves some form of administrative or possessive claim over the place or space being named. In Australia, the European names chosen to identify public spaces act as a form of commemoration of the colonising group. They depict Australia’s colonial past, and signpost “who really made the nation” (Fredericks, 2013, p. 9) and who holds the power and possession. The building and naming of public monuments, buildings, streets and other places is, and always has been, a reassertion of the dominant political and cultural power (D’Ascenzo, 2016). Tretter (2011) writes that toponyms—place names—are a defining feature of the cultural landscape. By bestowing a name on any public place, the governing power imbues the space with meaning, ideals and values associated with the chosen name that helps people to orient themselves in a particular location and identify surroundings (Tretter, 2011). In this way, the power of naming is also a political one, particularly when the name chosen is taken from a person or event that the dominant society wishes to commemorate. To name a public monument, building, street or other place

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serves to make us aware of something from the past that people have valued or continue to value (Tretter, 2011). Public institutions and monuments are relatively permanent structures within a cultural landscape. As such, when a place or space is named after a person, the assumption is that the person whose name is being used is worthy of being valued and commemorated in the long term. This does not, however, mean that the interpretation or remembrance of the commemorated person remains stagnant. While there may be an official version of events associated with the naming of the place, alternative versions and interpretations may also arise in the present that contest, question or refute the official version. When such a situation arises, it usually centres around truth-­ telling and contesting the commemoration or memorialisation of a racialised colonial history (Fredericks & Bradfield, 2021; Ireland, 2018; Mencevska, 2020). The question: ‘What’s in a name?’ has never been more pertinent than in cases such as these. With this knowledge at hand, institutions need to justify how they want to be identified moving forward. Australia’s Most Radical University Macquarie University, the third university established in Sydney, was founded in 1964 by the New South Wales government to deal with an emergency in university enrolments in New South Wales during the 1960s (Forsyth, 2014; Mansfield & Hutchinson, 1992; Moodie, 2020). The intention was to establish a third university to relieve the rising number of enrolments at the University of Sydney due to the post-war baby boom, as well as a mounting dissatisfaction with the way teaching was conducted at the older, sandstone institutions. Macquarie University was quickly followed by Flinders University (1966) in Adelaide, La Trobe University (1967) in Melbourne, Griffith University (1971) in Brisbane and Murdoch University (1973) in Perth. These institutions are informally known as the ‘gumtree’ universities due to their location on the urban fringes of the major cities, usually among native vegetation or parkland (de la Fuente & Murphy, 2015). The term ‘gumtree’ is also occasionally used in reference to the University of Newcastle (1965), James Cook University (1970), the University of Wollongong (1975) and Deakin University (1976), which are sometimes considered either ‘regional’ or ‘new generation’ universities depending on the criteria applied (Moodie, 2020). Gumtree universities in Australia were meant to be different to the established sandstone institutions—architecturally and academically. At the time of its establishment, Macquarie University was seen as “Australia’s most radical and unconventional university” (Mansfield & Hutchinson, 1992, p. 30). The foundational ideology of the university was one of universality, with scholars working at the borders of disciplines rather than in narrow specialisations (Mansfield & Hutchinson, 1992). Similarly, emphasis was placed on teaching, and specifically teaching conducted within the context of “active and current research” (Mansfield & Hutchinson, 1992, p. 19). It is this philosophy that influenced the selection of the university motto “and gladly teche”, a quote

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from the general prologue of Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, a collection of 24 stories written by Chaucer between 1387 and 1400. The full line reads, “And gladly wolde he lerne, and gladly teche” (Chaucer, 2007, l. 310), and the phrase, while being a positive though idealised image of the teacher, suggests that any good teacher is continually both learning as well as teaching. This suggestion makes the phrase a fitting motto for a university that aimed to emphasise an engaged teaching philosophy with its students. The naming process of Macquarie University was not as straightforward. Within the Interim Council, there was strong preference towards naming this new and innovative institution ‘University of Northern Sydney’. The New South Wales State Cabinet preferred the idea of naming the new university after a prominent figure, particularly if they had contributed to education in Australia (Mansfield & Hutchinson, 1992). Previous suggestions included W.C.  Wentworth and Sir Henry Parkes, though ultimately, and against the Interim Committee’s explicit request, the decision was made to commemorate Lachlan Macquarie, the 5th Governor of New South Wales because of “his achievements as a builder, his humanitarianism, and his interest in education” (Mansfield & Hutchinson, 1992, p. 30). Appointed Governor of New South Wales on the 8 May 1809, in the wake of the Rum Rebellion that ousted Governor Bligh (Lazarev, 2018), Lachlan Macquarie arrived at Sydney Cove on December 28 that same year (Bashir, 2010). His term officially beginning on 1 January 1810 and would continue for another 12 years. Referred to at different points as a “benevolent despot” (MacIntyre, 2009, p. 47), the “Father of Australia” (Lazarev, 2018, p. 89), and “the founder of modern Australia” (Bashir, 2010, p.  3), Lachlan Macquarie’s term as Governor of New South Wales is characterised by many historians as one of enlightenment and innovation (Lazarev, 2018). However, like many of the colonisers who arrived on the continent, Lachlan Macquarie saw and treated Darug people and their D’harawal, Gundangarra and Darkinjung neighbours as primitive and in need of civilising. It is partially within this context that Macquarie’s reputation as a humanitarian is discussed. When Macquarie took charge of New South Wales in 1810, the colony was “chaotic, divided, [and] demoralised” following the coup d’etat that had deposed Governor Bligh (Bashir, 2010, p. 6). Macquarie sought to bring together the various facets of society that were in conflict, prompting many cultural and civil amenities, including the first courthouses and magistrates, an independent newspaper, roads and a system of public and private education (Bashir, 2010; Ellis, 1973). In his desire to protect the welfare of his charges, he made little distinction between convicts and free settlers (Ritchie, 1986), instead focussing on the elimination of factions for the purpose of social progress. Bashir (2010) describes this as the beginning of the Australian tradition of the ‘fair go’, drawing on Lachlan Macquarie’s belief that everyone deserved a second chance regardless of their past deeds. In many ways, Lachlan Macquarie’s reputation as a ‘civiliser’ is, perhaps, directed more towards his efforts to civilise colonial society. His term as governor lay the foundations for

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the white settler society, including the first celebration of ‘Australia’ day, which he titled Anniversary Day, in 1818, decreeing the date a public holiday for government workers (‘Sydney,’ 1818). To an extent, this egalitarian belief extended to the Aboriginal people of New South Wales. Macquarie’s commitment to elevating the masses to higher purpose played out in his approach to Aboriginal peoples, but only to the extent that they conformed with his assumptions about them. Macquarie, like many of his predecessors, believed that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples were “scarcely emerged from the remotest State of Rude and Uncivilized Nature” (Lazarev, 2018, p. 101). Any attempt to civilise them, in European terms, therefore necessitated the removal of Aboriginal children for the purpose of education in European ways of living (Brook & Kohen, 1991). These ideas culminated in the establishment of the Native Institution at Parramatta and the eponymous ‘Blacks Town’, delivering a curriculum designed to assimilate Aboriginal children into European ways of life, while Lachlan Macquarie was simultaneously offering small ‘land grants’ to those deemed suitable for the scheme (Ritchie, 1986; Roberts, 2020). Growing tension between Lachlan Macquarie and the Darug people and their neighbours, and an increased number of military clashes between colonial forces and Aboriginal groups, ultimately culminated in Lachlan Macquarie issuing orders to track down, capture or kill all Aboriginal people regardless of them being ‘friendly’ or ‘hostile’, and the bodies of those killed were to be hung from trees as a warning to other Aboriginal peoples (Gapps, 2018; Wallis, 1816). These orders were eventually carried out under the command of Captain James Wallis on 17 April 1816, in what is now known as the Appin massacre (Daley, 2018). At least 14 Dharawal men, women and children were killed when soldiers forced a group of Dharawal people over the gorge of the Cataract River, though it is likely that many more also died (Turbet, 2011). The Appin massacre was an early form of the tactic of ‘terror’ against Aboriginal people, who were seen as the enemy of Macquarie’s expanding civilisation (Daley, 2018). In an age when the superiority of European values was taken as fact, it was perhaps inevitable that tension would break out between Lachlan Macquarie and the Indigenous groups against whom he enacted these civilising policies. In many ways, a profound ontological gulf separated the Darug peoples and their neighbours from the colonial society governed by Lachlan Macquarie. Macquarie did not understand the cultures and customs of Aboriginal people in New South Wales, though it is unlikely he wanted to understand them. From his colonial white, European perspective, this was simply the next stage in the ‘progress’ of civilisation. Indigenous customs, as they existed before European colonisation, were dying, and to maintain their survival, the Aboriginal people needed to be assimilated into the more enlightened European culture. He did not recognise the paternalistic or barbaric nature of his actions, nor did he ever show remorse for them (Roberts, 2020). Indeed, both Lachlan Macquarie’s approach and his misunderstanding of Aboriginal peoples and

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cultures set a pattern that became the foundation for the white settler society that endured long after his term as governor came to an end. The decision to name Macquarie University after Lachlan Macquarie was made, unsurprisingly, without consultation with the local Darug peoples. No consideration was given to the contentious relationship and history that existed—and indeed, continues to exist—between Lachlan Macquarie and the broader Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander population (Roberts, 2020). The implications of utilising Lachlan Macquarie’s name also appear not to have been considered or realised, especially the new institution’s representation that it values or upholds Lachlan Macquarie’s colonial legacy. In carrying the name Macquarie, by commemorating the name in such a public way, Macquarie University inherits the burden of the colonial history created by Macquarie the man; both the perceived ‘goodness’ of his legacy and the darker aspects that often go unwritten, unrecognised or sugarcoated by those who write or speak about him. A University in the North Commemoration problems are not unique to Macquarie University. James Cook University was established by legislation that went before the Queensland Legislative Assembly in 1969. At the time, the legislation was called the University of North Queensland Bill; however, while the Bill was before the Queensland Parliament, the University of Queensland Senate intervened (Bell, 2010). The name of the new university had been given little thought in the period leading up to the Bill’s introduction to parliament. The body that would become James Cook University in 1970 had previously operated as the University College of Townsville under the provisions of the University of Queensland Act. When the decision was made to establish a second university in the state of Queensland, rather than a university college, there was need for new legislation.2 To some, the progression from ‘The University College of Townsville’ to ‘The University of Townsville’ seemed logical; however, the Master Plan of the new institution instead called the new university ‘The University of North Queensland’, drawing from the already-established University of Queensland in Brisbane (Bell, 2010). When the new legislation was before the Queensland Parliament, a suggestion was made to name the university ‘James Cook University of North Queensland’ to commemorate the forthcoming bicentenary of Cook’s visit to the continent (Bell, 2010). While the name was considered too long (Bell, 2010), it was retained until 1998, when it was shortened to the current name, James Cook University.

2  Tertiary education in Australia went through a series of reforms following the 1988 Dawkins White Paper, commissioned under the Hawke government. Institutions to this point included universities, Colleges of Advanced Education (CAE) and Technical and Further Education institutes (TAFE) (Forsyth, 2014).

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It is perhaps fitting that a university named in commemoration of one of Australia’s greatest colonisers was opened, in person, by the colonial Head of State, on the 200th anniversary of the day James Cook’s expedition sighted the coast of the Australian continent. Queen Elizabeth II visited Townsville on the Royal Yacht Britannia on Monday 20 April 1970 to give Royal Assent to the James Cook University of North Queensland Act. As Bell (2010) notes, this was an exceptionally rare occurrence, the only time it has happened in Australia, and “a reminder that the Queen is not a symbol or figurehead, but the real Head of State not only of the Commonwealth, but of all the Australian states” (p.  36). This sentiment was echoed in the words of Prime Minister Tony Abbott when he addressed Prince Harry at Kirribilli House in 2013 by stating, “You grace us as your family has graced our nation from its beginning … you are here as the Crown is a symbol of stability, continuity, decency, in our public life” (Abbott, 2013, para. 4). The British Royal Family, and the broader and enduring ideal of the British monarchy, are often framed by the Australian government as necessary for the stability of democracy within the Australian settler state. The enduring and divine symbol of the royal family, and all the pomp, ceremony and tradition that it involves, also embodies specifically Anglo-British cultural values that are comparable to the colonial principles of Crown law used to legitimise James Cook’s observation that sovereign Aboriginal lands were instead terra nullius (Randell-Moon, 2015). The terminology used by both Abbott (2013) and Bell (2010), as well as the ideology that undergirds that terminology, are used to legitimise the imperial and racial origins of the British monarchy and the colonial foundations of the Australian settler state, and instead celebrate the enduring settler-colonial structures. James Cook’s claim of the Australian continent in the name of King George III of England is a version of history taught to most Australian children at one point or another. From the dominant, Anglo-settler perspective, James Cook is the celebrated ‘discoverer’ of the east coast of the continent and, in many ways, is considered a ‘Founding Father’ despite only having been here once (Ireland, 2018). The mythologising of James Cook adds legitimacy to the ongoing colonial project, and his space in the colonial imagination occurs as a result of a particular type of colonial historicising. As Smith (1992) writes, Cook possessed all the qualities of the perfect and enlightened Australian hero archetype: rising from humble origins, a man of science, motivated by a quest for knowledge. Cook was also not associated with the transportation of convicts, unlike Arthur Phillip and other members of the First Fleet, an important distinction because convictism was seen as a stain on the national character until the early twentieth century (Healy, 1997). In a 2003 report regarding the exhibitions and programs of the National Museum of Australia, a review board remarked, “If modern Australia has a foundation myth, it surely involves somewhere at its heart the figure of Captain James Cook” (National Museum of Australia, 2003, p. 23). Monuments to Cook began being erected in Australia in the 1860s—the statue in Hyde Park, Sydney was dedicated in 1879, and the site of Cook’s

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landing at Kurnell was declared a public reserve in 1899 (Healy, 1997). The rise of historical archaeology as a discipline in the 1960s and 1970s led to a holy grail quest to find ‘Cook artefacts’ (Ireland, 2018), while at the same time Aboriginal Land Rights movements began gaining momentum. As a result, archaeology in Australia during this period sought to provide evidence for a legitimising narrative of colonial occupation, while simultaneously seeking out evidence of the antiquity of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. Such commemoration, however, is not confined to the past. In 2018, then-prime minister Malcolm Turnbull announced a $50 million redevelopment of Botany Bay, including a $3 million ‘aquatic monument’ of James Cook, to celebrate “a momentous occasion in our history” (Sas, 2018, para. 4). A year later, in 2019, then prime minister Scott Morrison announced that $6.7 million dollars were allocated for a replica of the Endeavor to circumnavigate the continent in commemoration of the 250th anniversary of Cook’s first voyage to Australia (Latimore, 2019). While the project was later cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic (Armbruster, 2020), it is evident the desire to place James Cook at the forefront of national narratives remains consistent and apparent. It is this legacy that was celebrated in the naming of James Cook University. However, James Cook’s claim of the continent was conducted as an act of white, colonial possession (Moreton-Robinson, 2015), and paved the way for the settler-colonial occupation of Australia in 1788. It is unsurprising, then, that James Cook stands also as a symbol of the ongoing dispossession of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. Cook’s actions in 1770 were an explicit act of colonial authority, actively denying Indigenous sovereignty, and even working against the two sets of instructions he received from the Royal Society and the Admiralty (Cook, 1893; Hawke et al., 1768). These instructions forbade Cook from conquering the land, as any attempt to do so would be unlawful, and “No European nation has the right to occupy any part of their country, or settle among them, without their voluntary consent” (Morton, 1768, para 5). The choice to disregard these instructions was done with the assumption that the Indigenous peoples he had encountered proved little threat to European people and culture, underscored by ideologies of race and racialisation (Banner, 2005; Reynolds, 2005). Indeed, Cook had already categorised the Indigenous people he had encountered on a scale of their skin colour, from dark copper to wood soot (Cook, 1893; see also: Moreton-­ Robinson, 2015). In the same way Macquarie University inherits the legacy of Lachlan Macquarie’s colonial record, so too does James Cook University inherit the legacy of James Cook. Recent scholarship has forged space for reconsidering the ambiguities and challenges of the colonial heritage of tertiary institutions (Bodkin-Andrews & Carlson, 2016; Locke, 2018; Roberts, 2020). Leading academics are publicly calling for institutions to engage in truth-telling regarding the colonial legacies of those being commemorated (Kelly, 2017) and the role Indigenous people play and have played in the broader direction of these spaces (Fredericks et al., 2019). There is a widespread need to address the fundamental issues faced with

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commemorating colonial figures in such a way, and how their legacies echo in present times. In 2020, as part of its 50-year celebrations, James Cook University worked with local community groups to select Indigenous language names for each of its northern-Australia campuses, with Vice Chancellor Professor Sandra Harding commenting that the naming ceremonies “acknowledge and celebrate JCU’s campuses, reflecting the shared sense of connection to place” (James Cook University, 2020, para. 3). The implications of adding an Indigenous campus name, which follows the coloniser’s name, needs to be interrogated. Silencing the colonial name will not reinstate Indigenous sovereignty over the land upon which the institutions are built. Nor will it nullify or compensate for the enduring harm of commemorating such figures in the present (Birch, 1992; Gentry, 2015). There is an inherent responsibility that sits with the leaders and communities of institutions that commemorate colonial leaders, including addressing the burden of legacy and colonialism. Such a legacy must be addressed in enduring, truthful and meaningful ways.

Commemorations as Colonial Imaginings The role tertiary institutions play in the process of nation building is one that upholds the colonial imagining of Australia’s past. While tertiary institutions as material entities were not a specific part of Australia’s History Wars, they remain part of the cultural and ideological war due to their enduring presence on the Australian colonial landscape. As Aboriginal writer and activist Tony Birch (2008) contends, the History Wars responded to the ideological ‘panic’ amongst people in Australia who preferred Indigenous populations to remain characterised by the rhetorics of reliance and welfare dependency. As a result, Indigenous peoples were included in historical narratives through objectification rather than any meaningful and truthful examination of the past. Utilising the past to produce anti-Indigenous revisionism works not only to devalue Indigenous life but perpetuates denial of colonial violence, both past and present, in very real attempts to dispossess Indigenous peoples, lands, identities, cultures, histories, memories and experiences. This denial produces the narratives of white nostalgia that are clearly evident in the ways tertiary institutions represent themselves. The case of the University of Sydney’s addition to the State Heritage Register exemplifies our argument. The denial of Gadigal connection to Country and preference for colonial-built heritage clearly articulates the white epistemology for the way Sydney “aspired to shape its own society, polity, and ideals” (NSW State Heritage Inventory, 2021). By disengaging and subjugating Indigenous presence, and therefore denying the less idealised histories of dispossession, this calls into question the very notions of fairness, equality and openness espoused in the foundations of the institution. Other tertiary institutions achieve similar results through different means. Macquarie University and James Cook University explicitly invoke the colonial landscape through the specific legacies of their namesakes. Both Lachlan Macquarie and James Cook embody a colonial past remembered in one way by

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Indigenous peoples and another, more nostalgic manner by non-Indigenous peoples. The embeddedness of this practice tends to conceal, naturalise or marginalise continuing colonising practices. When commemorated in this way, tertiary education institutions therefore become monuments of colonisation. Considering their perceived role to reverse the processes of colonisation through education (Rose, 1996), the terrible irony of this situation only exacerbates its ongoing harm and is highly problematic. While all the universities mentioned above possess reconciliation action plans, their self-representation speaks to colonial imaginings. The lack of recognition of Indigenous heritage in their respective locations not only sidelines Indigenous people and heritage but forefronts and privileges settler ontology and epistemology regarding the nature of heritage itself. In a discussion paper for the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS), non-Indigenous researchers working in the Indigenous Culture and Heritage Team at AITASIS Dr. Tran Tran and lawyer Clare Barcham (2018) highlight how the arbitrary categories imposed by Australian heritage legislation do not accurately reflect Aboriginal heritage. They argue that Indigenous knowledges are better understood as existing on a continuum that maintains multiple aspects of physical and intangible significance. Perhaps most significantly for the subject at hand is their conclusion that Heritage as a concept “has been traditionally defined based on physical place and relics without a substantial definition for intangible elements of heritage and the interlinkages between physical places of significance and knowledge generation and protection” (Tran & Barcham, 2018, p. 4). This is evident in the State Heritage Registers, which are overwhelmingly focused on built heritage. Little intangible heritage is protected, and if a landscape is protected, it is because of a colonial-era facades or some other human-made intervention. While built heritage remains a focal point, it is notable that the intangible values of settler education systems are also upheld in these commemorations. The anniversaries of first graduates are celebrated, as are course outcomes that prepare students for a white society. Indeed, universities are celebrated for their rankings marked against other global institutions within a neoliberal, capitalist, Eurocentric framework. Awards are presented to staff according to Western education protocol. All of this commemoration is based on a privileged, settler perspective of education. In celebrating the learning and achievements on their campuses, the tertiary institutions should—but do not always—acknowledge the learning that has been taking place on Country for generations. Education has been happening in Australia, very successfully, for tens of thousands of years (Rigney, 2015). As Gamilaroi academic Michelle Bishop (2020, 2021) writes, knowledge has been exchanged on this continent for thousands of generations. These exchanges uphold traditions of learning and knowing embedded in the landscape, and a connection to our Old People and Country. What role, then, do these institutions and the knowledges produced within them play in the continued commemoration of Australia’s cultural heritage?

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Tran and Barcham suggest that “the most effective way to protect cultural heritage and knowledge is to practice it” (2018, p. 4). As such, to acknowledge and celebrate the rich histories of education that these institutions rest upon, commemorations should involve Indigenous learning and perspectives as much as those promulgated by the built institutions. Continued colonialism enables the same historic authority to define Indigenous reality through a system that continues to benefit the dominant, colonising group. In the case of tertiary education institutions, this creates a pervasive view of education that defines Indigenous education in a dichotomy to settler forms; built, structured, and objective in comparison to grounded, relational and entangled. Therefore, these sites of tertiary education become ones of colonial violence where war is waged against Indigenous epistemologies and ontologies on a land that has been knowledgeable and learning for eons.

Conclusion In this chapter, we unravelled some of the processes and challenges of cultural heritage in relation to tertiary institutions in Australia. As material representations on the Australian landscape, tertiary institutions occupy a space and place within national memory and identity. By invoking a sense of nostalgia based on colonial ideals, tertiary institutions also act as powerful agents of erasure and forgetting. When one version of history is prioritised over another, and Indigenous heritage, memory and knowledge are sidelined in favour of settler ideals, tertiary institutions themselves become sites of colonial commemoration and colonial violence. We have examined three institutions: the University of Sydney, Macquarie University and James Cook University. While these three institutions stand as examples, the complex of negotiations explored in this chapter can be applied to other institutions across the continent, and indeed around the world. What is clear, then, is the widespread need for institutions to engage in truth-telling regarding the colonial legacies of these institutions, questioning of what exactly is being commemorated, and the roles and connections of Indigenous peoples in these places.

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CHAPTER 5

Toppling the Racist Anglo-Saxon Politics of Cecil Rhodes Mandisi Majavu

Introduction In April 2015, the statue of Cecil Rhodes was removed from its pedestal at the University of Cape Town (UCT) as a result of a Rhodes Must Fall (RMF) student movement campaign, which involved student demonstrations and extensive media coverage of the demonstrations in South Africa and abroad (Knudsen & Andersen, 2019). The RMF student movement demanded the statue be removed because, firstly, it represented a gross distortion of history, and secondly, it embodied an open celebration of the racist Anglo-Saxon politics of Cecil Rhodes. By interrogating the memorialised legacy of Cecil Rhodes, this chapter aims to contribute to the political discourse that spurred the RMF movement. According to van der Wal (2018, p. 130), Rhodes’ memorialised legacy revolves around the portrayal of Rhodes as a “saviour and leader” of the British Empire. Within an African context, the word ‘empire’ refers to a system of white supremacy, the enslavement of Black people and cycles of colonial violence— essentially a source of chaos, impoverishment, exploitation, dispossession and widespread and unabated misery for Black people (Drayton, 2019). It is a system that produced both the coloniser and the colonised through the repetitive operations of white power and violence (Drayton, 2019). This chapter argues that the memorialised legacy of Rhodes is a discursive emblem of that white

M. Majavu (*) Rhodes University, Grahamstown, South Africa e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 B. Carlson, T. Farrelly (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook on Rethinking Colonial Commemorations, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-28609-4_5

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supremacy and the exploitation and dispossession of Black people (Drayton, 2019). Rhodes was, after all, a white imperialist; an Anglo-Saxon social Darwinist with a ‘callous disregard for’ African people and their cultures and societies (Rotberg, 1988, p. 551). Rhodes championed Anglo-Saxon supremacy. As far as he was concerned, “the Anglo-Saxon race” was the only race that was suitable to manage world affairs (Scholz & Hornbeck, 1907, p. 3). According to W. T. Stead (1902, p. 63), Cecil Rhodes’ friend and editor of the Review of Reviews, Rhodes believed that the most evolved human race was the Anglo-­ Saxon and thus “the greatest instrument yet evolved for the progress and elevation of humankind.” It was on this basis that Rhodes advocated for Anglo-Saxons to “exercise a civilising influence to bring other races to a higher level” (Mensing, 1986, p.  104). To that end, Rhodes wrote a will in which he directed that: all his estates and effects of every kind should be administered to promote British rule; to perfect a system of emigration from the United Kingdom to the Colonies; to further the consolidation of the British Empire; to assist towards the restoration of Anglo-Saxon unity; towards securing the representation of the colonies in parliament, and the foundation of a power so great as to render wars impossible and to promote the best interests of humanity. (Scholz & Hornbeck, 1907, p. 4)

Until the end of the eighteenth century, the myth of the Anglo-Saxons centred around political institutions that were supposedly deserving of modern emulation because they were held up as free and democratic (Horsman, 1981). In England, the Anglo-Saxon myth was employed to defend absolute monarchy, while in America it was deployed to justify a revolution against the English monarchy (Horsman, 1981). By the early nineteenth century, the Anglo-Saxon myth was increasingly racialised. Both the English and the Americans concluded that the Anglo-Saxon people were successful in the world due to innate racial qualities (Horsman, 1981). It was then declared that the Anglo-Saxon hegemony in world affairs was inevitable “because nature herself had decreed it” (Horsman, 1981, p. 63). By the end of the nineteenth century, the Anglo-­ Saxon myth had become a fully fledged racial framework. When Rhodes advocated for Anglo-Saxon unity, he had in mind a racial narrative of the ‘English race’ that consisted of the most evolved of all whites. As far as Rhodes was concerned, the superiority of the Anglo-Saxon people over other races, including other whites like the French and the Germans, was indisputable, and hence, the colonisation of the world by Anglo-Saxons was beneficial to the human race (Stead, 1902). It is against this discursive backdrop that Rhodes considered it his moral duty and responsibility to bring about the “restoration of Anglo-Saxon unity” (Scholz & Hornbeck, 1907, p. 4). Rhodes was highly energised by the idea of incorporating the United States into the British Empire, an idea which he viewed as an important step to bringing the Anglo-­ Saxon race under “one Empire” (cited in Stead, 1902, p. 59). He wrote, “what

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a dream! But yet it is probable. It is possible” (cited in Stead, 1902, p. 59). Rhodes regarded the Rhodes Scholarship (described in further detail below) as part of the larger effort to restore the unity of the Anglo-Saxon race which as far as he was concerned was shattered by the American Revolution which led to the declaration of American independence in late eighteenth century (Stead, 1902).

The Cultural Production of the Anglo-Saxon Race through the Rhodes Scholarship The Rhodes Scholarship was a defining feature of Rhodes’ will, conceptualised as some kind of philanthropic Social Darwinism tool designed to help induct colonial whites into the “Anglo-Saxon race” (Schaeper & Schaeper, 2010). Among other things, Rhodes intended for the scholarship to help the Anglo-­ Saxon race triumph over other whites like the French, the Belgians, and the Germans in the racial struggle for evolutionary survival (Ramirez, 2016). Rhodes certainly did not intend for his scholarship to be used to support Africans to resist white racism and the colonial project (Ramirez, 2016). W. T. Stead (1902, p. 52) accurately described Cecil Rhodes as a “distinguished British statesman” who was committed to the imperialism of race. The historical record shows that Cecil Rhodes was highly energised by the project of white racism. Rhodes apologists like to point out that, in his will, Rhodes stated that “no student shall be qualified or disqualified for election to a Scholarship on account of his race or religious opinions” (Stead, 1902, p.  39). In his authoritative biography of Cecil Rhodes, titled The founder: Cecil Rhodes and the pursuit of power, Robert Rotberg illustrates that when Rhodes wrote that clause, he “was thinking of the English-Dutch division” in South Africa which had led to the Anglo-Boer war (1988, p. 668). Rhodes had no moral objection to white racism; after all, white racism made Rhodes wealthy at a young age. In Rhodes’ vision of the British Empire, Black people did not feature, except as manual labourers and servants of white people. Thus, Rhodes never expected that Black people would apply for the scholarship, much less be awarded it (Schaeper & Schaeper, 2010). For Rhodes, the scholarship was exclusively a white man’s opportunity. Despite this, there were some successful Black recipients. The first Black Rhodes Scholar was Alain LeRoy Locke, an African American, who was accepted in 1907 (Slater, 1993; von Tunzelmann, 2021). Several others accepted from other nations followed, such as Norman Manley in 1914 who went on to be the first premier of Jamaica (von Tunzelmann, 2021). However, the Black people of the continent in which Rhodes made his wealth, which facilitated the establishment of the Rhodes Scholarship, did not get awarded the scholarship until the 1960s and 1970s (Schaeper & Schaeper, 2010). According to Anthony Kirk-Greene (1993), a British historian, the first Black

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people to be awarded Rhodes Scholarships from Southern Africa were O. Ncube from Zambia in 1972 and Stanlake Samkange from Zimbabwe in 1982. The Rhodes Trust website (n.d.) lists Loyiso Nongxa as the first Black South African to receive the Rhodes Scholarship award in 1978. The Rhodes Scholarship was set up to recruit young white men from Anglo-­ Saxon countries to be educated at Oxford University, who would after graduation go out into the modern world to manage the colonial project for the British empire (Symonds, 1991). Although Rhodes considered Cambridge University, he was of the view that Cambridge’s focus on mathematics and science “limited one’s outlook, whereas Oxford with its more philosophical training tended to broaden one’s vision of the world” (Symonds, 1991, p. 163). Hence, in his will, Rhodes specifically directed his trustees to establish a university scholarship for male students that would enable them to study at the University of Oxford (Stead, 1902). Rhodes chose Oxford University because he wanted to make Oxford University the “educational centre” of the Anglo-­ Saxon race (cited in Stead, 1902, p. 52). For centuries, Oxford University was synonymous with the British Empire—“the training school of the English gentleman” (Scholz & Hornbeck, 1907, p. 61). The English elite sent their sons to Oxford or to Cambridge for university studies (Scholz & Hornbeck, 1907). Historically, the elite Oxbridge undergraduate has consistently been represented as the embodiment “of the self-assured British man” prepared to take on his role as a leader in the modern world (Deslandes, 1995, p. 7). Historically, the British Empire recruited colonial administrators from Oxford and Cambridge (Symonds, 1991). At the peak of the British Empire between 1880 and 1914, the prime minister and foreign secretary were typically Oxford men (Symonds, 1991). For instance, 15 of the governors general or viceroys who represented the authority of the British empire in India graduated from Oxford, compared to 5 from Cambridge (Symonds, 1991). It was for this reason that Rhodes used to reflect that wherever one went in the colonial world, they would “find an Oxford man on top” (Symonds, 1991, p. 163). Cecil Rhodes was well aware that Oxford University produced graduates who took upon themselves the task of running the British Empire—the university’s ideological connection to the British Empire “is as old as the Empire” itself (Symonds, 1991, p. 4): It was always regarded as the duty of the University and the Colleges, as expressed in their official prayers, to breed up men for service in Church and State, and before the Reformation it was common for Oxford graduates to serve both. (Symonds, 1991, p. 4)

Rhodes was well aware of this history, and he was eager to use his wealth to finance this tradition in order to keep it alive. Perhaps at this point it is worth noting that the wealth that was used to establish the Rhodes Scholarship was generated from the diamond and gold mines of South Africa. Rhodes founded the De Beers commercial mining company which, for much of the twentieth

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century, handled the world’s production and distribution of diamonds (Thompson, 1983). According to the Antwerp World Diamond Centre’s report (2011, p. 7), “by the time Rhodes died, in 1902, De Beers accounted for 90 percent of the world’s rough diamond production and distribution.” To achieve this output, Rhodes relied on African labour working around the clock in his mines under the most exploitative and miserable of working conditions. For instance, Rotberg (1988) reported that the mines operated on three eight-hour shifts. At the time there were 2600 African employees who endured eight long hours underground before being confined to the compound for the other sixteen hours (Rotberg, 1988). These compounds were prisonlike hostels constructed in 1885 to supposedly discourage African people from stealing and smuggling diamonds, but in reality, were designed to control, discipline and dehumanise African labour (Lelyveld, 1981; Rotberg, 1988). African workers were confined in these dehumanising compounds for the length of their contracts, which were up to three months long. They did so without the freedom to explore their surroundings or to walk around town freely (Rotberg, 1988). African people made Rhodes the wealth that enabled him to fund the university education of white Europeans from the West and to support Western institutions. The people who are morally deserving of the wealth that made the creation of the Rhodes Scholarship possible are Black South African students. In a world where justice is a master value, this claim would not be controversial—in such a world, this claim would be a moral truism. But, clearly we do not live in such a world. We live in a Eurocentric world in which the scholarship that carries Rhodes’ name functions as a philanthropic tool to sanitise the history of the gross exploitation of African people. We exist in a white discourse where the Rhodes Scholarship functions like a propaganda tool to “perpetuate the romantic and heroic side” of Rhodes (Rotberg, 1988, p. 11). This is the Rhodes that was commemorated with a bronze statue with pride of place at the University of Cape Town from 1934 to 2015.

The Unbearable Whiteness of Cecil Rhodes In this chapter, I use the concept of whiteness to refer to the worldview that undergirds the global political and socio-economic system that privileges whites and the West over the Black and Brown peoples of the world (Mills, 1997; Ramirez-Johnson & Schrest, 2018). Cecil Rhodes embodied the narrative of colonial whiteness that African people in South Africa have resisted since white Europeans arrived to build a white settlement in the Cape in 1652. African people, that is, different Khoisan groups, challenged and resisted the white racism of European settlers throughout the late seventeenth century to the eighteenth century. In their effort to resist white racism, African people fought nine Frontier wars with the English throughout the nineteenth century (Arndt, 2010; Bundy, 2004). African people have historically struggled and worked against the racist legacy of whiteness. Based on this history, it is not

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anachronistic to conclude that Cecil Rhodes lived a reprehensible and morally repugnant life that is not worth celebrating or commemorating. Democratic societies in the twenty-first century ought to work against the racist legacies of white men like Cecil Rhodes. An honest and complete historical description of Cecil Rhodes would place him within the long tradition of plunder and ruthless exploitation of Black people, and whiteness that characterised the history of colonialism in South Africa. There was nothing particularly unique about Rhodes’ exploitative behaviour in South Africa, because after all, from the seventeenth century to the twentieth century, white Europeans who came to South Africa were “adventurers”; finding “either fame or disgrace, unheard-of riches or the most abject poverty, power or humiliation” (Radziwill, 1918, p. 1). Robert Percival, a nineteenth-century English writer and traveller, described the original white settlers of South Africa as having been: for the most part composed of low and profligate wretches, chiefly kidnapped from the sea-port towns and country in their vicinity, and unhappy emigrants from the different German states, who fled from poverty and the despotism of their princes. (Percival, 1804, p. 242)

Harriet Ward (1851, p. 24), another British writer who lived in South Africa in the early nineteenth century, described these original white settlers as “persons of abandoned character”. Ever since white settlers first arrived in South Africa in the seventeenth century, the country has, by and large, appealed to the kind of white settlers who were drawn to the country because they viewed it as offering a unique opportunity for whites to accumulate wealth at the expense of African people. White settlers have historically regarded African people as mere labour tools; “savages” who were “to spend their lives in manual labour” for the financial benefit of whites (Rotberg, 1988, p. 471). From the seventeenth-century Dutch settlers through to the nineteenth-century British settlers, and then on to the twentieth-century white immigrants who came to settle in Apartheid South Africa, white Europeans who came to settle in South Africa largely had no qualms with this repugnant moral calculus. Rhodes certainly did not object to this colonial enterprise; in fact, Rhodes knew how to play this colonial game even better than most white settlers in South Africa at the time. For instance, Robert Rotberg (1988, p. 685) attributed Rhodes’ success to “Rhodes’ lack of shame and guilt was intrinsic to his success”. A lack of shame and guilt is a description generally used to talk about sociopaths. Rhodes fused a lack of shame and guilt with white racism to make himself wealthy at a young age. When Rhodes first arrived in South Africa in the 1870s, he expressed happiness in finally owning land and livestock, and commented on all the other benefits available to him: “shooting when you like and a lot of black niggers to do what you like with, apart from the fact of making money” (cited in Rotberg, 1988, p. 44). Rhodes wrote to his mother stating that he was in charge of a farm and had many Black people under his white

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authority (Rotberg, 1988). He later used the compound system in his diamond mines to perfect the management of African labour. He defended the draconian restrictions on the autonomy and the movement of mine workers as being necessary to prevent the theft of diamonds (Rotberg, 1988). Politically, Rhodes was opposed to the idea of extending the right to vote to Africans. He rhetorically asked—is it right that “men in a state of pure barbarism should have the franchise and vote?” (cited in Rotberg, 1988, p. 225). He further advocated for the Pass Laws to restrict the movement of African people within white South Africa. Pass Laws regulated African labour in white spaces by laying down racist conditions under which African labourers could move (Savage, 1986). For instance, Pass Laws required African people travelling in white spaces to carry identity cards that were approved by white authorities. By the twentieth century, African people without a pass could not be employed by whites, and white employers were “required to demand the pass and retain it in his possession until the end of the period of service, when it would be returned with the date of discharge” (Chanock, 2004, p. 346). As far as Rhodes was concerned, South Africa was a ‘White man’s country’. And for Rhodes that meant that white men in South Africa were racially entitled to preside over a racist society designed to benefit whites only. Thus, Rhodes advocated for racial segregation and opposed education and training for Black South Africans because he claimed that there was no place for educated Blacks in a white society (Mensing, 1986). Rhodes’ political objective was to subjugate the Black people of Southern Africa, and he achieved that political goal with confidence and support of white settlers (Ramirez, 2016). While a member of Cape parliament and as prime minister, Rhodes worked tirelessly to erode whatever minimum political rights Blacks still had in the late nineteenth-century Cape Colony (Schaeper & Schaeper, 2010). Some of the racist laws that Rhodes advocated for included the Franchise and Ballot Act of 1892, which sought to limit the African franchise, and the Strop Bill proposed in 1890 advocated for white employers to flog their Black labourers if they were deemed to have been disobedient (Rotberg, 1988; Schaeper & Schaeper, 2010). Although Rhodes, as the prime minister of the Cape, advocated for the Strop Bill, it did not become law. The Glen Grey Act of 1894, however, did become law. The Act was “Cecil Rhodes’ pet project”, and it sought to police the lives of Africans as well as to coerce Blacks to labour for Whites (Denis, 2015, p. 291; Thompson & Nicholls, 1993). The main thrust of the Glen Grey Act was the racist desire to forcefully convert Africans from being land owners and farmers into another tool in the labour tool kit of exploitative whites like Rhodes (Thompson & Nicholls, 1993). The racist idea that presents Black people as a workhorse for whites is a recurring motif throughout the history of whiteness in South Africa. The policies that Rhodes introduced as the prime minister of the Cape Colony foreshadowed white supremacist policies that were later introduced in the twentieth-century South Africa, including apartheid (Mensing, 1986; Schaeper & Schaeper, 2010).

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Memorialising Rhodes Rhodes wrote, “I find I am human and should like to be living after my death” (cited in Stead, 1902, p. 68). Thus, after his death, Rhodes donated his wealth with “the express desire that he be remembered for 4,000 years” (Younge, 2021, para. 22). White Europeans who have benefitted from Rhodes’ imperial and colonial adventures have been celebrating Rhodes ever since his death. As part of the efforts to memorialise Rhodes, the Rhodes Trust created the Rhodes Scholarship. In 1908, white South Africans in Cape Town erected a Rhodes statue in the Company’s Garden. In 1911, the Rhodes building at Oxford was completed, and in 1912, the Rhodes Memorial Monument was installed in Cape Town (von Tunzelmann, 2021). In 1934, the University of Cape Town unveiled the Rhodes statue (von Tunzelmann, 2021). The existence of Rhodes University in South Africa was made possible by the financial support of the Rhodes Trust (Currey, 1970). In 2003, Nelson Mandela partnered with the Rhodes Trust to establish the Mandela Rhodes Foundation. Nelson Mandela was the first democratically elected president of South Africa in 1994, after having spent 27 years in prison for fighting against white racism and apartheid. According to the Mandela Rhodes Foundation website, “forming the partnership was a considered act of reconciliation and, specifically, reparation: a way to return some of Cecil John Rhodes’s wealth to its origins in Africa” (Mandela Rhodes Foundation, 2022, para. 3). I argue that in reality, this move was about rehabilitating the name of Cecil John Rhodes. The fact of the matter is that Rhodes’ wealth will never change his role in history as a chaos character—a colonial monarch who along with his legions waged a successful war in 1893 against the Ndebele (Rotberg, 1988). Ultimately, I argue in this chapter that Cecil Rhodes ought to be remembered as a megalomaniac and sociopath who used his white privilege to dispossess and exploit Black South African people, subjecting them to racist laws while amassing wealth for himself, other white settlers and global white institutions. White apologists of Rhodes like to justify his colonial adventures by asserting that Rhodes was a ‘man of his time’. As historian Alex von Tunzelmann (2021) demonstrates, this is a dishonest argument because it suggests that it is only the morality of modern times that finds such honoured historical figures unacceptable, despite the fact that the deeds of many were contentious even in their own day. Apart from the fact that, at his peak, Rhodes had white liberal critics who objected to his greed and violent adventures, “it must not be forgotten that the first opponents of Cecil Rhodes were black men” (Radziwill, 1918). It was Black people who fought wars against Rhodes in 1893. It was Black people that Rhodes violently crushed in 1896 to overcome “a determined and prolonged violent resistance by the Ndebele and the majority of Shona” (Rotberg, 1988, p. 10). By and large, Black people found Rhodes morally repugnant back then, and as a historical figure, many Black people find Rhodes a moral monstrosity today.

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Conclusion There is growing global discontent with commemorations to people like Rhodes. Across the world, there are demands for these statues to be torn down, defaced or removed. For instance, the RMF student movement in South Africa inspired students at the University of Oxford to establish an RMF United Kingdom chapter. Although the RMF Oxford chapter was not successful in having the statue of Rhodes removed, the movement succeeded in unsettling the white discourse around Rhodes (Knudsen & Andersen, 2019). Students challenged the white discourse around Rhodes by pointing out that colonial statues are “sites of memory”, which symbolically announce whites’ sympathies and attitudes towards the colonial past and colonial legacy (Aldrich, 2005, p. viii). Globally, the RMF has also been aligned ideologically with Black Lives Matter (Knudsen & Andersen, 2019). The ideas of RMF functioned as an ideological background in 2020 when Black Lives Matter protests defaced and demanded that statues of slaveholders and confederates be pulled down (von Tunzelmann, 2021). The RMF politics have inspired movements from the United States and UK to New Zealand and Australia (von Tunzelmann, 2021). In short, the RMF inspired a global movement that raised serious questions about colonial heritage in the postcolonial world, and most importantly, it sparked a global movement that mobilised to have ‘emblems of historic despotism’ destroyed (Drayton, 2019, p. 655). The RMF contribution to the ongoing critical interrogation of colonialism is huge. It rendered visible the homage that whites pay to historical figures who embodied the colonial narrative, and that is, white racism, slavery, colonial violence and the impoverishment of Africans (Aldrich, 2005). In the final analysis, the RMF not only forced a postcolonial country like South Africa to exorcise its colonial ghosts, but it reminded the world that if statues are constructed to communicate something about remembering, “they also imply something about forgetting, as difficult or painful episodes are glossed over, denied or simply ignored” (Aldrich, 2005, p. 7).

References Aldrich, R. (2005). Vestiges of the colonial empire in France: Monuments, museums, and colonial memories. Palgrave Macmillan. Antwerp World Diamond Centre private foundation (AWDC). (2011). The global diamond industry: Lifting the veil of mystery. Bain & Company, Inc. and Antwerp World Diamond Centre private foundation (AWDC). http://www.bain.com/Images/ PR_BAIN_REPORT_The_global_diamond_industry.pdf Arndt, J.  S. (2010). Treacherous savages and merciless barbarians: knowledge, discourse and violence during the Cape Frontier Wars, 1834–1853. Journal of Military History, 74(3), 709–735. Bundy, C. (2004). Lessons on the frontier: Aspects of eastern cape history (p. 30). Kronos.

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Chanock, M. (2004). South Africa, 1841—1924: Race, contract, and coercion. In D.  Hay & P.  Craven (Eds.), Masters, servants, and magistrates in Britain and the empire, 1562–1955 (pp. 338–364). The University of North Carolina Press. Currey, R. F. (1970). Rhodes University: 1904–1970, a chronicle. The Rustica Press. Denis, P. (2015). Abbot Pfanner, the Glen Grey act and the native question. South African Historical Journal, 67(3), 271–292. Deslandes, P. R. (1995). Oxbridge men: British masculinity and the undergraduate experience, 1850–1920. Indiana University Press. Drayton, R. (2019). Rhodes Must Not Fall? Third Text, 33(4–5), 651–666. Horsman, R. (1981). Race and manifest destiny:The origins of American racial Anglo-­ Saxonism. Harvard University Press. Kirk-Greene, A. (1993). Doubly elite: African Rhodes scholars, 1960–90. Immigrants & Minorities, 12(3), 220–235. Knudsen, B. T., & Andersen, C. (2019). Affective politics and colonial heritage, Rhodes must fall at UCT and Oxford. International Journal of Heritage Studies, 25(3), 239–258. Lelyveld, J. (1981, June 9). At South Africa’s mines, race barriers are rigid. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/1981/06/09/world/at-­south-­africa-­s-­mines-­ race-­barriers-­are-­rigid.html Mandela Rhodes Foundation. (2022). About Us. Mandela Rhodes Foundation. https://www.mandelarhodes.org/about/story/ Mensing, R. C. (1986). Cecil Rhodes’s ideas of race and empire. International Social Science Review, 61(3), 99–106. Mills, C. W. (1997). The racial contract. Cornell University Press. Percival, R. (1804). An account of the Cape of Good Hope; containing an historical view of its original settlement by the Dutch, its capture by the British in 1795, and the different policy pursued there by the Dutch and British governments. Printed for C. and R. Baldwin, 1804. The Making of the Modern World. Radziwill, C. (1918). Cecil Rhodes: Man and empire-maker. Cassell & Company, LTD. Ramirez, N.F. (2016). Masculine celebrity: Hero worship and myth creation in the modern British Empire. MA Thesis, University of Colorado. Ramirez-Johnson, J., & Schrest, L. L. (2018). Introduction: Race and missiology in global perspective. In L.  L. Schrest, J.  Ramirez-Johnson, & A.  Yong (Eds.), Can ‘white’ people be saved? Triangulating race, theology, and mission. InterVarsity Press. Rhodes Trust. (n.d.). Rhodes scholar database. Rhodes Trust website. https://www. rhodeshouse.ox.ac.uk/scholars-­volunteers/rhodes-­scholar-­database/ Rotberg, R.  I. (1988). The founder: Cecil Rhodes and the pursuit of power. Oxford University Press. Savage, M. (1986). The imposition of pass Laws on the African population in South Africa 1916–1984. African Affairs, 85(339), 181–205. Schaeper, T. J., & Schaeper, K. (2010). Rhodes scholars, Oxford, and the creation of an American elite. Berghahn Books. Scholz, R. F., & Hornbeck, S. K. (1907). Oxford and the Rhodes scholarships. H. Frowde. Slater, R. B. (1993). Black Rhodes scholars in academia. The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, 2, 102–107. Stead, W. T. (1902). The last will and testament of Cecil John Rhodes with elucidatory notes to which are added some chapters describing the political and religious ideas of the testator Cecil Rhodes 1853–1902. “Review of Reviews” Office. Symonds, R. (1991). Oxford and empire the last lost cause? Clarendon.

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Thompson, H.  M. (1983). Argyle, De beers and the international diamond market. Minerals & energy. Raw materials report, 2(3), 24–39. Thompson, R. J., & Nicholls, B. M. (1993). The Glen Grey act : Forgotten dimensions in an old theme. South African Journal of Economic History, 8(2), 58–70. Van der Wal, E. (2018). Killing Rhodes: Decolonization and memorial practices in post-apartheid South Africa. Folk Life: Journal of Ethnological Studies, 56(2), 130–146. Von Tunzelmann, A. (2021). Fallen idols: Twelve statues that made history. Headline Publishing Group. Ward, H. (1851). The cape and the kaffirs: A diary of a five years’ residence in Kaffirland. Henry G. Bohn, York Street, Covent Garden. Nineteenth Century Collections Online. Younge, G. (2021, June 2). Why every single statue should come down. The Guardian.

CHAPTER 6

The Dark Side of Canadian History: A Two-­Eyed Seeing Approach John Terry Ward

A Global Reckoning As a Métis from the Algonquin territory of Kitchi-Sibi, I am pursuing a PhD in education, specialising in Indigenous holistic knowledge ethics, and disabilities, which also involves uncovering past injustices that impact Indigenous people in Canada. Over these past two years, I have witnessed a global reckoning: a growing global movement re-examining past injustices and rewriting them to tell the true story (Henderson & Wakeham, 2009). The aim, as I understand it, is to attempt to assuage the need for some historical figures to be held accountable for past deeds by those who have been negatively impacted. There are so many sides to a history that many argue can’t be ‘re-written’ because one can never truly cover all the sides. By allowing the Indigenous side of a particular history to be heard could add more and more authentic information to the historical account. There will always be arguments about what the ‘truth’ is about a particular time in history; however, ‘re-writing’ it is ultimately never going to be achieved and will change nothing on an

Trigger warning: This chapter discusses the Canadian Residential Schools. This may cause distress for some readers—support is available from the Canadian Residential School Crisis Line at 1-866-925-4419.

J. T. Ward (*) University of Ottawa, Ottawa, ON, Canada e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 B. Carlson, T. Farrelly (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook on Rethinking Colonial Commemorations, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-28609-4_6

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emotional-psychological level, whereas adding more and more real perspectives to that history can enable a more ‘accurate’ recording of events. This attempt to redefine those who have been honoured as heroes in their adopted country must and should be examined in order to qualify for any such change. The history of mankind is rich as it provides us with ancient renowned figures, monuments to them and accounts of their great deeds, but are all these examples the legacy of righteous people or of historical inaccuracies? Who is to be the judge and how can the past be examined? For both Canadian settlers and Indigenous (First Nations, Inuit and Métis) peoples, for much of our past the true knowledge has disappeared, so that only fragments remain that have transpired into speculation, half-truths and even theories of what may or may not have occurred. However, new discoveries are taking place that are making us re-evaluate how we as humans see the world we live in and where we come from. This means we can re-evaluate events that are present and fresh in the minds and memories of victims, which can give two sides to a story, which may be both correct and wrong. What then are the motives for providing an age-old theory or for supporting what a community, society or family members have so steadfastly voiced and believed? The choice of either ‘is it right or wrong?’ must be made by those who seek out all avenues of knowledge until they determine the beginning or the origin of what is being questioned. How we choose which path to follow is ultimately up to each individual. If a process of truth-telling and better-informing history is to occur, then investigations must ensue first, in order to better understand and determine whether the actions of a person or people in question were honourable/truthful, or misguided/wrongful. Thus, in this chapter, I will pursue that inquiry within the Canadian context.

Understanding a Two-Eyed Seeing Approach I have chosen to utilise the two-eyed seeing approach to facilitate a dualistic perspective, which means “to see from one eye with the strengths of Indigenous ways of knowing, and from the other eye, see with the strengths of Western ways of knowing, and use both of these eyes together” (Mashford-Pringle & Stewart, 2019, p. 68). This approach is not just a methodology but a way of living, viewing and understanding a topic, which was explained by Elder Albert Marshall of the Mi’kmaq Nation. His two-eyed seeing approach brought together Indigenous knowledge and colonial information in a dialogue. He utilised two-eyed seeing when he wanted to analyse healthcare from the two perspectives (Bartlett et al., 2012). Galway et al. (2022) also provide insight into their approach of utilising two-eyed seeing when working with Fort William First Nation, an Anishinaabe community located on the shores of Lake Superior (Kitchigami) in Northern Ontario, together with settler-colonial researchers, in weaving both knowledge systems. They explain that this approach of weaving knowledge “fostered respectful relationships, and created a safe space for learning and working together” (p. 9). I have found that this

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dualistic approach provides a unique way of looking at a single issue, especially, a contentious one. It is worth noting, as well, that this perspective of a global reckoning must be taken in small steps and must provide a steadfast stance because not all peoples in Canada are aware of what ‘a reckoning’ is as it relates to past historical figures. There are those who would tend to ignore these past injustices as merely something that occurred long ago, so have no bearing on the current landscape. For them to choose this stance ideally means they can just get on with their lives.

The Relevance of Canadian Colonial Commemorations in the Twenty-First Century This topic regarding a global reckoning, which is disrupting colonial commemorations, is one that is particularly ripe in Canada today. Along with many other countries, Canada has had its share of colonialism and past injustices done towards Indigenous peoples, which for some are all but forgotten. For this reason, and in retaliation, there has been an upsurge in the removal and replacement of statues or landmarks that commemorate figures because of the person’s past wrongs. Thus, landmarks such as street names that commemorate historical figures have been changed. My contribution here reflects the Canadian Indigenous perspective, so I have chosen the two-eyed seeing approach to examine both sides of the actions of Canada’s first prime minister. This approach is always how one should scrutinise all things so as not to be too hasty to judge without merit. Such famous figures as our first prime minister, John A.  MacDonald among others, are among those in jeopardy. MacDonald advocated for and secured the collective welfare of all British subjects in the land to unify it and advance it toward becoming a self-sustaining dominion called Canada within the British Empire. This enabled Britain in 1867 to relinquish territorial control, except for its foreign representation, over the newly formed Dominion of Canada. This new country, though, only consisted of present-day Ontario, Québec, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. MacDonald wanted to connect it all from coast to coast with British Colombia, so he set out to build a cross-Canada railway, which resulted in the displacement of many Indigenous people. The method of clearing the land for railway construction was conducted by the forcible relocation and the systemic starvation of innumerable Indigenous peoples, which resulted in the physical harm and deaths of many Indigenous people, as well as many Chinese Canadians, who were used as cheap labour to build the railway. At that time, most of the country was inhabited by Indigenous peoples from various Nations and different linguistical backgrounds. In order to ‘civilize them’ and make them into ‘productive British subjects’, MacDonald created Canada’s residential school system, which he copied from the American model. Referred to as Indian Residential Schools (IRS), the teachers began to ‘civilize’

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the ‘savages’ through forced educational programs within day and boarding schools. These schools are now remembered for child abuse, murder, torture and medical experiments (Deska-Gauthier et al., 2021), as well as some children being adopted by families as far away as New Zealand. Some were made wards of the state, even being sold to American farmers as cheap labour. Being wards of the state meant these children had no rights. Non-Indigenous Canadians are only starting now to recognise what the IRS was, the impact they had and the legacy they have left behind. In particular, they are beginning to awaken to the overall negative culture of the school that the Indigenous students had to live in daily and were “kept in a condition of tutelage and treated as wards or children of the State” (Department of the Interior, 1876, p. xiv). This government re-education initiative was specifically designed to isolate Indigenous children from their families, culture, environment and religion in order to assimilate them into the new white-Canadian culture, thereby erasing their ‘Indian identity’. There were many unforgivable acts of terror that Indigenous children witnessed and faced at these residential schools. One, in particular, stand outs: how children were used as research subjects in creating the ‘Canada Food Guide’. Ian Mosby, a historian on food, Indigenous health and the politics of settler colonialism, has researched how nutritional experiments were conducted at residential schools to assess children’s daily food intakes. Malnutrition and starvation were the results of techniques utilised in conjunction with expired surplus World War II food rations to see how the human body survives. These human food experiments, which determined just what and how much food children needed to live, led to the Canadian Food Guide (Mosby, 2013). Aside from the absence of compassion and ethics, what was unknown and therefore not utilised, was that the majority of Indigenous children were not accustomed to Canadian food such as oatmeal, milk, sugar, bread and other sorts of dietary items. This contributed to diabetes, obesity and death due to food allergies and infections. These IRS children were also purposely infected with such things as ear infections to test different antibiotics as well as various other types of unethical and horrendous medical treatments (Bombay et al., 2014; Kaspar, 2014; Mosby, 2013). Those who were used as test subjects at the IRS were recently hesitant of being tested for COVID-19 because of a history of governmental policy that used the word ‘testing’ as a method for unethical research (Mosby & Swidrovich, 2021). Miriam Shuchman took an in-depth look into this dark side of Canadian (white) history in her 2014 publication, ‘Meet Ian Mosby, The Man Who Exposed Canada’s Experiments on Aboriginals’. She relayed that Elders had testified to her that “they felt like they were being used as guinea pigs, that there were experiments” (p. 4). This testimony was originally published in the Two Row Times, a Haudenosaunee peoples’ newspaper located on their traditional territory (Ohswekn) of the Six Nations of the Grand River in Southern Ontario. Acts such as testing medications and forcible re-education had a historical similarity to what prisoners of concentration camps suffered in Nazi Germany.

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The way the Canadian government implemented and sustained its success at assimilating the Indians was such a creative “method that Adolf Hitler used it as the model for his own concentration camps in Nazi Germany” (Deschauer & Deschauer, 2017). This comparison only came to the attention of the Canadian public within the last 25 years (Macdonald et al., 2014). This action has stained Canada’s previously clean and welcoming reputation. MacDonald has been praised as the founding father of modern-day Canada, yet his legacy of systematic discrimination and cultural genocide that greatly affected Indigenous peoples has also lived on. The aftermath of his infamous legacy has resulted in ongoing intergenerational trauma, evident today in our Indigenous communities, as well as in the segregation of Chinese Canadians. They illustrate and give evidence of Canada’s dark history, and many argue it hinders any Indigenous effort towards a path of reconciliation. In a public speech in 2009, the then Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper stated “Canada has no history of colonialism” (Christodoulou, 2021, p. 255). As an Elder once told me upon reflecting on this statement, “That’s a load of Moose shit” (personal communication, 2016). Later, the government changed its position to reflect that colonialism indeed had been present within Canada. This ability to change a statement because of political pressure led to intensive debates about Canada and its having been founded as a British colony. This acceptance of Canada’s past colonial history drew attention to a landscape ripe with racism that had the potential to expose the darker side of Canadian history and cause Canada to have a black eye on the international stage. The acknowledgement by both Indigenous and non-Indigenous Canadian politicians that racism did and still does exist has the potential to force another acknowledgement—that it has had long-term effects. Accepting these past wrongs would be seen as a conciliation effort, which could help usher Canada into a long overdue healing process. With this global reckoning, Canada may well see the sins of the past dug up just like the unmarked residential school graves of Indigenous children. Yet, in doing so, it could also allow all of its citizens to participate in overall healing, education and understanding. Other historical figures and events that established Canada must also be held accountable for those who have been negatively impacted physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually by the onslaught of past trauma and abuse. Far too often, history has been written by the victors, but the global reckoning is enabling the past to be revisited, analysed and debated, not by the elite of society but by those who have been affected by the results. Any steps towards reconciliation will need to be more than words and political appeasement; rather, action and atonement for the acts of the past regarding such places as the Indian Residential Schools that MacDonald created, regardless of his intent.

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How Cultural Genocide Unfolded in Canada Genocide has been deemed a topic of a sensitive nature by those in authority in Canada, who do not wish to dig up history and want past events that are often argued about to remain exactly that—in the past. However, those people who have been affected by the consequences of these events, such as the Indigenous peoples, see an unearthing of the past as a way of bringing to light the bad, ugly and often disturbing parts of history. It is not only to relive them but to acknowledge them for what they were—wrongdoings—so that those past actions can be understood, in order that no future events similar to them could occur again. As the famous historical expression states: those who do not know history are doomed to repeat it. Many of these past atrocities have been forgotten or deliberately downplayed by history books. Until these atrocities are explored, there cannot be any justice for those who still struggle with the infamous outcomes such as territorial disputes or neglected treaty obligations. There needs to be accountability for how colonialism forever changed the landscape of Indigenous peoples in what is known today as Canada. Mackenzie Doiron was a settler who was doing a Master’s in psychology in Ottawa, Ontario. She studied ‘The Perceptions of Indigenous Peoples in Canada: Modern Racism, Benefit Finding, and Moral Obligations For Descendants of Residential School Survivors’. She worked alongside her settler supervisor, Kim Matheson, who has worked among First Nations organisations in Northern Ontario and her settler advisor, Nyla Branscombe from the University of Kansas. Their article (2021) reflects that the majority of non-­ Indigenous Canadians and even Americans do not know what transpired for Indigenous peoples during their time at residential boarding schools. The question remains, though, how could a country for more than 100 years have a policy of forcible relocation and educating of Indigenous children with little to no accountability? There were, of course, a few of these schools that were built as early as the 1830s, before MacDonald’s time. However, the countrywide initiative to legalise this action took place at MacDonald’s instigation. The fact that going to these schools was enforced by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) and Indian agents, and that they thrived uncontested for so long, is truly disturbing. Even more disturbing is that this dark side of Canadian history has never been taught to non-Indigenous people and seems to be missing from history textbooks and school curriculum (MacDonald, 2019). This omission of information, especially, regarding how many children died and were buried in unmarked graves is genocide. This has been embodied by presenting children’s footwear at reconciliation events, as seen in Image 6.1. The scene in this photo really affected me—all the children’s clothing brought so much sadness, misery and distress—families not knowing what happened to their youth. For this topic, I have applied Elder Albert Marshall’s approach of ‘two-eyed seeing’, which was brought to my attention by Elder Annie Smith St-Georges from Kitigan Zibi. As an Elder, she looks at topics of interest, studies them,

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Image 6.1  Parliament Hill, Ottawa, Ontario—Footwear, clothing, and personal items placed in memory of the children who never returned home from the Indian Residential Schools, November 19, 2021. (Photograph by John Terry Ward)

then shares her knowledge about the issues with two-eyed seeing. Elder Annie, along with her husband, who is Métis, scrutinises the issue, then over a cup of coffee, says that ‘before we judge, we must understand both sides of any story’. Their advice led me to pursue this two-eyed seeing approach, and so I examined both sides of Canada’s first prime minister: as the visionary country builder and unifying national leader, yet also as the instigator of cultural genocide and thus a contributor to the current situation of Canadian Indigenous peoples. This two-eyed seeing approach helps understand how the global reckoning is viewed and interpreted, with its focus on the condemnation of commemorating certain historical figures and the removal or even renaming of monuments and places that commemorate those figures, who have more recently been portrayed in a negative light by the media. As with any topic, we must thus look at both sides before passing judgement. We must carefully review all from both the settler and the Indigenous perspectives as each one could lead to a path of violence that would create a clash between the sides. The onslaught of anger and distrust that would ensue would cloud over or dismiss the good deeds that were done. Image 6.2 depicts a statue of Canada’s first prime minister John A. MacDonald. Once I had taken the photo, I deliberately shaded one side of the statue in red to help me envisage a two-eyed seeing approach. The two different shades of the statue signify the two opposing sides of MacDonald’s story,

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Image 6.2  Statue of John A. MacDonald, Parliament Hill, Ottawa. Sculptor: Louis-­ Philippe Hébert. (Photograph by John Terry Ward)

which will be explained. Each person, as part of their lived experience, must analyse it for themselves from a two-eyed seeing approach to gain a greater unique insight. What is not commonly known about this statue of Sir John A. MacDonald is that it faces west to British Colombia, from where he promised to build a railway connecting the newly formed country that would be later known as Canada, with the west. This would include uprooting Indigenous people and establishing Indian residential schools across Canada for the sake of building this railroad. So, MacDonald’s dream of connecting British subjects (Canadians) was the prelude to these schools as a way of civilising all subjects under the crown.

John A. MacDonald from a Two-Eyed Seeing Approach This section will look at this two-eyed seeing approach which, from a western perspective, could be understood as dualistic methodology. A two-eyed seeing approach can be useful in a multitude of areas, topics and training scenarios that would benefit from a duality lens, especially for character leadership. This facilitates an ability to identify any mistakes that occurred so that those in leadership positions do not repeat the same errors. That is the way to move forward in leadership: by reviewing and understanding both sides of a conflict or situation that requires delicate analysis. The two-eyed seeing approach is thus ideal

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for discovering the two sides of John A. MacDonald and the varied outcomes, as listed in Image 6.3. The left side represents a non-Indigenous lens, whereas the right side is the perspective from an Indigenous lens: There can be countless ways of looking at and arguing for either side, both are right and wrong. However, any evaluation must first analyse how life was at the time when John A. MacDonald, his officials and the IRS teachers made the decisions they did. This is like trying to fit into the shoes of a person that you have only seen a partial side of. Only by acknowledging how they really acted— by weighing both sides of their actions and by building a thorough understanding of them—can one achieve the strong ability to reflect and then take a realistic decision on how to judge them. Therefore, prior to judging, we can only review both sides of what we know and carefully analyse the facts. One expression says, ‘one can only know someone if we have walked a mile in their shoes’. Then, just as another famous colonial saying goes, ‘The devil is in the details’. This is why we must be able to look from a two-eyed seeing approach.

Image 6.3  John A. MacDonald from a two-eyed seeing approach

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It can be argued that the actions of MacDonald are really not surprising given the period we are focusing on. Countries were being conquered and colonised, resulting in oppressed territories and subjugated people (world expansion and founding countries engendered the divide of Africa, the Middle East, India and Pakistan and the Americans into North and South). Just about everywhere had a dominating authoritarian presence that affected both the Indigenous culture and language, not to mention people’s very lives. Those who were not white in skin colour or did not follow the same religion were discriminated against and forcibly assimilated into the dominating authority. However, we have to remind ourselves that these marauders were only carrying out the commands of a monarchy far away overseas, who often never visited ‘the new land’ so had little notion of the reality of what was happening in these fledgling countries. Therefore, one could argue that, in what became known as Canada, such actions as MacDonald’s were merely what was already happening throughout the world, along with known or unknown murder, mass killings bordering on genocide, starvation and subjugation of the weakest to gain wealth through cheap labour. The fact of the matter was that MacDonald’s actions were justified at the time, as were many other things that today would be considered as racist, inappropriate, unethical and even illegal. One could also argue that if MacDonald had not been born then, perhaps, Canada would have been part of the United States or would be made up of small independent countries. It could have even been worse. Therefore, regardless of how MacDonald’s actions were viewed then, and are viewed now, the fact remains that his actions have impacted thousands of families and continue to do so today. Now, after more than 150 years, his legacy and name could be in jeopardy as the global reckoning wants to see such historical figures held accountable for their actions. Yes, MacDonald did so much for what is now known as Canada by opening up the territory to settlers and immigrants alike, but he also forcibly removed and even starved First Nations peoples so they would accept being relocated. Non-Indigenous people (white in skin colour), on the other hand, were welcomed and even given free land. From a two-eyed seeing comparison, one sees on one hand, the forcible relocation from territorial lands as opposed to giving free land to white Europeans on the other. Macdonald established an Aryan Canada by controlling immigration and Indian Affairs. His white supremacist belief in Canada would bring about a new country built on the back and graves of Indigenous, Chinese and even Irish people (Stanley, 2014). This is what Canada’s origins trace back to. There were many people mistreated in Canada at that time, but those who would forever be changed would be the original peoples, for their society, people, language, customs, knowledge systems, and, ultimately, their next generation would be drastically altered by the actions of that one man. If the people of a country, including those who govern it, are unable to reconcile past actions, it would make it nearly impossible to move forward. Atoning for the actions of the past is at the heart of understanding who we are

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as a country and as a people, for we all have our own unique cultural heritage and backgrounds that must live on. I believe we must all blend together and not try to erase those who came before us but build on their shoulders. We, as Canadians, must all be accountable for our actions both present and past. How can we move forward as a people, as a nation, and as a voice for those dead and gone, who would have possibly been found guilty the same way we would have been judged ourselves, if we had walked in their shoes (Christian, 2011)? Understanding our faults is the only way to truly engage in reconciliation.

Conclusion: The Legacy of Sir John A MacDonald and the Indian Residential Schools MacDonald’s infamous legacy has resulted in the disfigurement and removal of some of his statues throughout Canada. In fact, this reckoning has even resulted in the removal of the name Adolphus Egerton Ryerson or ‘Ryerson’ from the university in Toronto that once bore his name. It was temporarily referred to as ‘X’ University (CBC News, 2021) and is now Toronto Metropolitan University. Ryerson was targeted because he was the architect of the Indian Residential Schools and, therefore, was a key player in this system of education, along with MacDonald. Their legacy has led both Indigenous and, most recently, non-Indigenous people to question how these figures ought to be judged and if their actions reflect a new perspective on Canadian history. This legacy has engendered the current situation faced by many Indigenous peoples not just in Canada but throughout the world, where colonialism was the purpose for eradicating Indigenous people. I believe Canada’s scrutinisation in this global reckoning will only grow and intensify to shed a different light on those who were once praised for their greatness and well doing, but who are now being recognised for their role in what is now acknowledged to be a dark time in history. This time of global reckoning may also be remembered as a dark time in history for our country, as it may turn even darker from now as more atrocities are uncovered, more statues pulled down and names changed, as some settler Canadians react to such change with hatred. However, hate engenders hate, not reconciliation. I believe we each have to weigh-in concerning how and why people did what they did back then, believing that it was the right way to go and then we must consider how we act today: is it any better? Therefore, we must each start to look from a two-eyed seeing approach and make our own judgments based on the merits we see. This is why Canada Day,1 July, is not embraced and celebrated equally across Canada by all who reside there. However, it is true to say that without MacDonald, there would be no Canada. The way to respect both sides, Indigenous and settler Canadian, would be to acknowledge MacDonald rather than to celebrate him and his actions. Thus, amid this movement to try to right the wrongs, the question is, what will be the extent of reclaiming these past injustices? Who will be targeted next,

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and for what? And how far will this type of accusation and redemption go? Only time will tell, but we must move forward as a country by acknowledging this dark side of Canadian history as we advance on the path of reconciliation. Those seeking out knowledge of the past must decide which path to follow and weigh the merits and consequences of those actions, taken at the time with what has since transpired. This is no easy task. There is no right or wrong answer. Only by looking at these situations from a two-eyed seeing approach will the understanding and realities of the two sides come together. Then, they can be judged by those who are willing and able to see both sides or at least try. The question to be asked, though, is, “Does participating in the removal of a statue, commemoration plaque, the renaming of a street or a building have any effect on current teachings, and will it be reflected in the educational thinking or curriculum at hand?” Also, will this action change people’s hearts so there are better relations with colonial authorities and Indigenous peoples? Can privileged white people voice their arguments and frustration as allies? And what will the long-term effect be? Image 6.4 shows personal items placed around the Centennial Flame monument, representing the victims of the Indian Residential Schools. These will not go silent into the night nor be forgotten. Many non-Indigenous Canadians and immigrants were unaware of the negative events that occurred, which have been hidden until recently. This display at the Centennial Flame monument is

Image 6.4  Centennial Flame, Parliament Hill, Ottawa—personal items placed in memory of the victims of the Indian Residential Schools. (Photograph taken by John Terry Ward.

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striking: it is the first thing one sees when entering the grounds of Parliament Hill. Many tourisits that arrive here are shocked to realise that Canada is not as amazing, beautiful or pure as they were told. This surreal image exemplifies this notorious moment in Canada’s Indigenous attempt to approach a reconciliation effort, which is why such an image must be on display to the general public. It is also a long overdue present-day reckoning. No one is a saint. We are all human and as humans we make mistakes, but it is the mistakes that we admit to that help us look together to a brighter future. Condemning the past will not change it or make what happened any easier. There is a need for accountability by understanding that past events, even though they were believed to be just, were in fact unjust. Only by addressing these concerns will the act of conciliation become the first steps towards reconciliation. Also, learning from past deeds ensures that those who suffered, die, and became the forgotten, nameless and voiceless can be heard and remembered. Then and only then can reconciliation be possible and the ability will arise to move forward, knowing that these stories will be told not only to Indigenous children but to all children in schools and classrooms; by reflecting with a new reverence on the fact that Canadian history is not as glorious and pristine as what has been written and taught, but in fact has a hidden dark and sinister side—it was an unjust society. This acknowledgement will help Indigenous people in their process of healing and moving forward. We are all in the process of moving forward; reconciliation affects everyone.

References Bartlett, C., Marshall, M., & Marshall, A. (2012). Two-eyed seeing and other lessons learned within a co-learning journey of bringing together Indigenous and mainstream knowledges and ways of knowing. Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences, 2(4), 331–340. Bombay, A., Matheson, K., & Anisman, H. (2014). The intergenerational effects of Indian residential schools: Implications for the concept of historical trauma. Transcultural Psychiatry, 51(3), 320–338. CBC News. (2021). Ryerson University to change its name amid reckoning with history of residential schools. Retrieved September 21, 2021, from https://www.cbc. ca/news/canada/toronto/ryerson-­university-­name-­change-­1.6154716 Christian, D. (2011). Reconciling with the people and the land? In A. Mathur, J. Dewar, & M. DeGagné (Eds.), Cultivating Canada: Reconciliation through the lens of culture diversity. Ottawa, ON. Christodoulou, E. (2021). Textbook revisions as educational atonement? Possibilities and challenges of history education as a means to historical justice. In M.  Keyes, H. Asrirn Eknersio, & D. Lindmark (Eds.), Historical justice and history education. Palgrave Macmillan. Department of the Interior. (1876). Annual Report for the year ended 30th June 1876 (Parliament, Sessional Papers, No. 11). Deschauer, B. A., & Deschauer, L. (2017). Concentration camps of Canada: Based on a true story. Independently Published.

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Deska-Gauthier, S., Levac, L., & Hanson, C. (2021). Undermining justice: The political framing of actors in the independent assessment process. Journal of Canadian Studies, e20200051. Doiron, M. J., Branscombe, N., & Matheson, K. (2021). Non-Indigenous Canadians’ and Americans’ moral expectations of Indigenous peoples in light of the negative impacts of the Indian residential schools. PLOS ONE, 16(5), e0252038. Galway, L. P., Esquega, E., & Jones-Casey, K. (2022). ‘Land is everything, land is us’: Exploring the connections between climate change, land, and health in Fort William First Nation. Social Science & Medicine, 294, 1–11. Henderson, J., & Wakeham, P. (2009). Colonial reckoning, national reconciliation?: Aboriginal peoples and the culture of redress in Canada. English Studies in Canada, 35(1), 1–26. Kaspar, V. (2014). The lifetime effect of residential school attendance on Indigenous health status. American Journal of Public Health, 104(11), 2184–2190. MacDonald, D.  B. (2019). The sleeping giant awakens: Genocide, Indian residential schools, and the challenge of conciliation. University of Toronto Press. Macdonald, N.  E., Stanwick, R., & Lynk, A. (2014). Canada’s shameful history of nutrition research on residential school children: The need for strong medical ethics in Aboriginal health research. Paediatrics & Child Health, 19(2), 64. Mashford-Pringle, A., & Stewart, S. L. (2019). Akiikaa (it is the land): Exploring landbased experiences with university students in Ontario. Global Health Promotion, 26(3), 64–72. Mosby, I. (2013). Administering colonial science: Nutrition research and human biomedical experimentation in Aboriginal communities and residential schools, 1942–1952. Social History, 46(91), 145–172. Mosby, I., & Swidrovich, J. (2021). Medical experimentation and the roots of COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy among Indigenous Peoples in Canada. Canadian Medical Association Journal, 193(11), E381–E383. Shuchman, M. (2014). Meet Ian Mosby, the man who exposed Canada’s experiments on Aboriginals. Two Row Times. Stanley, T.  J. (2014). John A.  Macdonald and the invention of White supremacy in Canada. In Canadian issues thèmes Canadiens: (Re) making confederation: (Re) Imagining Canada (pp. 29–32).

CHAPTER 7

“This Is Not a Day for You”: Indigenous Australians and the ‘Disruption’ of Anzac Day Rachel Caines

Introduction The visible presence of Australia’s First Peoples in official Anzac Day commemorations has often been portrayed by the mainstream media and key governmental and institutional figures as ‘disruptive’. This chapter argues that these narratives of disruption serve to continually restrict the ways in which Indigenous Australian and Māori veterans and their communities are permitted to participate and interact with narratives of war commemoration in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand on the national stage. These restrictions in turn reflect the continued framing of Anzac Day as an inherently colonial commemoration—one that prioritises a narrative of both war service and nation built on ideas of white-settler superiority, imperial dynamics and early twentieth-­ century ideas of warfare and nationhood. Using the concepts of ‘service’ and ‘warfare’ as a structural framework, this chapter analyses the ways in which Indigenous participation in Anzac Day has been gatekept by white governmental and cultural institutions, and how this, in turn, reflects wider tensions and debates in Australia around the recognition, rights and respect afforded to First Peoples in the country. Throughout, this chapter uses the phrase ‘official’ to refer to narratives, events or rituals that have been institutionally legitimated and endorsed by the

R. Caines (*) Australian War Memorial, Canberra, ACT, Australia Australian Catholic University, Melbourne, VIC, Australia e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 B. Carlson, T. Farrelly (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook on Rethinking Colonial Commemorations, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-28609-4_7

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Australian War Memorial (AWM), the Returned and Services League (RSL), the Department of Veterans’ Affairs (DVA), and state and federal governments. These three institutions (in various iterations) have controlled and shaped the dominant narratives of Australia’s war service and war commemoration since the end of the First World War and remain the central bodies for the organisation and dissemination of Anzac Day commemorations (Mayes, 2009). While First Nations communities have always commemorated Indigenous war service—in both overseas conflicts and the Australian Frontier Wars—this chapter examines the ways in which the attempts of Indigenous people to cross into ‘official’ commemorations have been challenged, monitored and regulated by an increasingly small but vocal minority within  the  official commemorative institutions throughout the history of Anzac Day. To do so, this chapter first situates Anzac Day within its historical and contemporary context, mapping the ways in which it remains an inherently colonial commemoration in its values and outlooks. It then explores three case studies, each approaching the question of First Nations’ inclusion in official commemorations from a different angle: ‘bodies’ and the debates over whether Indigenous veterans should be allowed to march as a cohesive group; ‘cultures’ and questions over the inclusion of First Peoples’ languages and cultural rituals in official Anzac Day services; and ‘warfare’ and the attempts to recognise the Frontier Wars as part of Anzac Day. Through these examples, this chapter demonstrates the ways Indigenous inclusion in Anzac Day has been—and continues to be—heavily controlled by official institutions, and how narratives of ‘disruption’ are often weaponised against unwanted attempts to deviate from approved Anzac Day structures.

Situating Anzac Day as a Colonial Commemoration The Anzac legend has helped us to define who we are as Australians. —John Howard (2005, in The Sydney Morning Herald, 2005, para. 5)

Anzac Day was adopted as an official commemorative day and national holiday in 1921, following five years of “widespread, but largely unofficial remembrance events” across Australia (Henry, 2006, p.  5). In comparison to Remembrance Day (11 November), which promoted a more universal and sombre form of commemoration, Anzac Day was from the outset closely linked to Australian and Aotearoa New Zealand national identities and myth-making (Powell, 2004). During the First World War, the Gallipoli campaign—and in particular, the landings on 25 April—was portrayed by wartime reporters as a defining moment in the history of Australia. The reports of Australian war correspondent Charles Bean and English war correspondent Ellis Ashmead-­ Bartlett highlighted the military prowess and bravery of Australian soldiers, who had previously been characterised as undisciplined and unreliable (Seal, 2004). As sociologists Jed Donoghue and Bruce Tranter (2015, p. 450) argue, “war correspondents and official historians transformed these ill-disciplined

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‘bushmen’ into pioneer-soldiers, loyal to the empire and the state”. The Gallipoli campaign was increasingly portrayed by the media and politicians as a ‘baptism of fire’ for the young Dominion, the result of which was “the achievement of elevated national status” (Sheftall, 2009, p. 182). Granting Anzac Day official status as both a commemorative day and a public holiday in 1921 reinforced these narratives and situated Anzac Day from the 1920s as Australia’s preeminent national day (Macdonald, 2015). As Anzac Day remained relevant during the interwar period and following the Second World War, it also absorbed the commemoration of post-First World War conflicts—creating an amalgamation of a commemorative identity that could be mobilised as needed. Although interest in the day declined in the 1960s and 1970s as a result of the Vietnam War and public disillusionment with the RSL, the commemoration experienced a ‘resurgence’ in the 1980s and 1990s (Clark, 2017; Holbrook, 2018; Macleod, 2002). By 2014, with the beginning of the First World War centenary commemorations, the role of Anzac in Australia’s official national consciousness had been firmly re-established. The Anzac narrative provided a cohesive and widely applicable official national narrative at a time when Australia “still had not established a universally accepted story that united the recently federated nation” (Midford, 2011, p. 63). There was no great Australian narrative by 1914, with each state still emphasising ‘colonial’ (that is, of the colony) identities. The narrative and image of the revered Australian digger “provided cohesion and confidence to a fledging nation in the first half of the twentieth century” (Donoghue & Tranter, 2015, p. 450)—emphasising not only a shared identity within Australia but one that could be compared to more established nation states (McQuilton, 2004). This shared narrative highlighted Australian exceptionalism, focusing on the triumphs and potentials of white, male Australians for nation-building and nation-shaping. The centrality of the Anzac legend to Australian identity remains relevant in the twenty-first century due to the controlled evolution of the narrative within Australia’s official sociopolitical context and history of overseas military engagement. Importantly, although some attempts have been made to diversify the official narrative (by including women’s experiences, for instance), the primary image conjured on Anzac Day is still that of the white male Australian soldier. Situating the Anzac legend as the foundational myth for Australia also created an official (white) national story that was palatable, triumphant and positive. As Australian war historian Martin Crotty (2009, p.  109) explains, situating the Anzac legend as Australia’s foundational myth “offered a foundation story more digestible than the shameful arrival of a convict fleet and the devastation of indigenous populations, or the dullness of a constitutional arrangement forged by politicians in 1901”. The Anzac legend drew upon pre-­ established features of colonial identity—particularly ‘mateship’, egalitarianism and anti-authoritarianism—but transformed them into a narrative that could be shared with pride on the world stage.

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This reasoning also facilitated the revival of Anzac Day and the Anzac legend in the 1980s and 1990s, at a time when attendance at Remembrance Day services was continuing to decline. Prime ministers Bob Hawke (Labor Party), Paul Keating (Labor Party) and John Howard (Liberal Party) oversaw a revitalisation of Anzac Day, spearheaded by the  1990 75th anniversary of the Gallipoli landings and the 1995 ‘Australia Remembers’ commemorations to mark the end of the Second World War. This “extravaganza came hard on the heels of a difficult bicentenary of the arrival of the First Fleet”, which had included widespread protests against official commemorations (Macleod, 2015, p. 12). The Anzac legend provided a less controversial focal point for Australian national narratives, while Anzac Day provided a day free from protest or the darker overtones of colonisation to commemorate and celebrate “who we are as Australians” (Sydney Morning Herald, 2005, para. 5). Although the initial revitalisation of Anzac Day occurred under Keating, its reaffirmed place at the heart of Australia’s official historical narrative was shaped by Howard. This is, in large part, due to Howard’s search for a positive national history for Australia in the wake of contention over the place of Indigenous histories in the national narrative. As historian Jenny Macleod (2015, p. 12) reflects, “the prime minister keenest on promoting Anzac was also the most vehement in rejecting what he termed the black armband view of history that attempted to grapple with Australia’s history of dispossession”. The deliberate linking of Anzac Day with a ‘positive’ view of Australian history—in opposition to histories of dispossession, genocide and invasion—reinforced the day’s historical associations with Anglo-Australian identity and its colonial beginnings by asserting a boundary between ‘Indigenous’ histories and the official ‘Australian’ history. It is this boundary—reinforced by Howard but established far earlier in Australia’s past—that has enabled members of official institutions  and the mainstream media to label Indigenous attempts at inclusion and recognition as ‘disruptions’, whether they are seeking recognition of overseas war service, cultures and languages, or the foundational conflicts Australians seem determined to forget.

‘The Rules Are the Rules’: Bla(c)k Bodies as ‘Disruptive’ To see our contribution acknowledged is one of the proudest moments of my life. —David Williams (2007, in Bibby, 2007b, para. 12)

In 1985, Indigenous Australian veterans in Melbourne clashed with the Victorian RSL over their desire to march as a cohesive group in the Melbourne Anzac Day parade. The group sought to march under the banner of the newly formed National Aboriginals’ and Islanders’ Ex-Servicemen’s Association— presenting a cohesive and visible group of First Peoples’ veterans, rather than as a collection of dispersed individuals marching within their original units, as was tradition. The evolution of the dispute between the veterans and the Victorian RSL, its aftermath and its legacies demonstrates the ways in which

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the presence of bla(c)k bodies in official Anzac Day events has been regulated by organising institutions, and how the idea of ‘disruption’ has been weaponised in attempts to retain the status quo at such events. Anzac Day parades or marches are central to the commemorative landscape of the day across Australia, particularly in capital cities and major regional hubs. Originally used to encourage recruitment during the First World War, the marches of veterans and current servicepeople remained as a key ritual in interwar services (Phillips & Inglis, 1991). This is likely related to the importance of ‘volunteerism’ in the Australian Imperial Force (AIF), with the failures of two conscription referenda, meaning that the forces in the First World War were comprised entirely of volunteers (Scates & Wheatley, 2014; Winter, 1995). Although veterans’ marches similarly occurred in Aotearoa New Zealand on Anzac Day, they typically did not adopt the celebratory, ‘parade’ atmosphere of Australian marches (Phillips & Inglis, 1991). While Anzac Day services forefront commemoration of the dead, the parade prioritises the acknowledgement and celebration of the living—those who served and returned home, and those who have committed to serving but have not yet left. Anzac Day marches provide attendees with a visible, tangible example of war service; individuals in uniform or wearing badges and decorations give faces to the otherwise anonymous image of the Australian digger. Given its centrality to the commemorative rituals of Anzac Day, it is unsurprising that Indigenous veterans have sought throughout history to be involved, acknowledged and identified in these marches. There is no historical record that suggests that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander veterans were officially barred from marching in national and state Anzac Day parades. Many did from as early as the end of the First World War, though some were “relegated to the back” of the marches due to their Indigeneity (Riseman, 2017a, p.  81). Following the Second World War, in particular, some high-profile veterans even led local marches. Ray Raiwala, a Miltjingi man who served as part of the Special Reconnaissance Unit in the Second World War, was invited to march in Adelaide’s 1949 Anzac Day parade, a plan ‘sympathetically consider[ed]’ by the federal government (News, 1949, p. 1; The Herald, 1949, p. 3). Gunditjmara veteran Reg Saunders led Anzac Day marches in regional New South Wales throughout the 1950s, honoured as a guest speaker at the Wagga Wagga Anzac Day ceremony and luncheon in 1952 (Daily Advertiser, 1952, p. 1) and the Newport Anzac Day Service in 1953 (Williamstown Chronicle, 1953, p. 6). Stephen Dodd, a Korean War veteran, led the Adelaide Anzac Day March in 1953 (News, 1953, p. 3). While many of these examples were drawn from smaller, regional parades, the widespread reporting of such instances suggests that the presence of Indigenous soldiers in Anzac Day parades was not particularly controversial, nor was it unusual. In almost all cases, Indigenous veterans were required by the RSL to march as part of their service units, particularly at larger state and national parades (Riseman, 2017a).  This reflected the norms of the parades, where service

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people marched with their units rather than with other groups. The National Aboriginals’ and Islanders’ Ex-Servicemen’s Association (NAIESA) sought to change that. Formed  in Victoria in 1985 as a precursor to the modern Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Veterans and Services Association (ATSIVSA), NAIESA sought to increase public and official recognition of the twentieth-century war service of First Nations Australians. For NAIESA, marching as a cohesive group was an important element in having the war service of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people recognised. Quoted in the Canberra Times’s coverage of the dispute (1985, p. 3), Vietnam veteran and NAIESA convenor Daryl Wallace argued: One black fellow in amongst a big heap of people doesn’t stick out much. It is very important that people, instead of being brainwashed by Bruce Ruxton, see that black fellows had the courage and the guts to lay down their lives for this country. If they don’t see black fellows marching as a group, they’ll never know that.

In the eyes of Wallace and the 100 other Indigenous members of the association, it was not enough for Indigenous veterans to merely march; in order to change the narratives that excluded Indigenous Australians from the Anzac legend, there needed to be a visible, collective presence of Indigenous veterans—united under a joint banner. In asking permission to march as a cohesive group, the association was “attempting to affirm their identities as both Aboriginal and Australian” (Riseman, 2017a, p. 86), while also drawing attention to the diverse reality of Australia’s wartime service and experiences. The Victorian RSL, led by Bruce Ruxton, was not sympathetic to the group’s request. As Riseman (2017a) explains, Ruxton embodied cultural studies scholar Fiona Nicoll’s concept of the “conservative digger-national” ideology (Nicoll, 2001, p. 100). Ruxton had previously prevented members of the Gay Ex-Servicemen’s Association from laying a wreath at the Shrine of Remembrance on Anzac Day in 1982. In justifying his decision, he vocally argued: “we didn’t want them to lay a wreath because we didn’t want them … they are just another start to the denigration of Anzac Day” (cited in Riseman, 2017b, p. 41). In Ruxton’s view, there was a single ‘digger’ (soldier) identity compatible with Anzac Day and its associated commemorations, an identity that did not allow for the explicit recognition of ‘hyphen’ or co-existing identities (Winter, 2006, p.  36). Responding to questions over whether NAIESA would be given permission to march as a unified group, Ruxton asserted, “They cannot march alone. This is the same whether they’re black or white or brindle. The rules are the rules” (Ruxton, Canberra Times, 1985, p.  3). In reasserting the ‘rules’ of Anzac Day—rules both created and reinforced by the RSL—Ruxton situated NAESA as disruptive protestors, whose request—if granted—would fundamentally alter (for the worse) the nature of Anzac Day. Ruxton led a vote of the Anzac Day Memorial Council on 18 March 1985, which voted nine to four against allowing Indigenous Australians to march as

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a separate group during the established Anzac Day parade (The Canberra Times, 1985). In response, NAIESA applied for permission to hold their own march through the suburbs of Melbourne—a move Ruxton condemned as evidence the group were “trying to make the gap wider and wider between black and white” (The Canberra Times, 1985, p.  9). Conversely, the acting-­ chairman of NAIESA, Stewart Murray, welcomed all people to the march, stating, “all people are welcome—we won’t discriminate” (The Canberra Times, 1985, p. 9). The marches went ahead in the Melbourne suburb of Northcote between 1985 and 1989, with Wallace recalling that about 30 marchers attended—half of them Koories, the other half non-Indigenous allies (Wallace, in Bostock, 1991). The decision to march separately, and against the RSL’s wishes, reinforced Ruxton’s impressions of NAIESA’s request as disruptive. Although the group repeatedly asserted they were not intended to discriminate or divide, within official narratives NAIESA’s actions were used as evidence for the ways in which Indigenous veterans were seeking to disrupt Anzac Day and challenge traditional rituals and narratives. A similar march has been held in the Sydney suburb of Redfern since 2007, though under less combative circumstances. Pastor Ray Minniecon and Chris Carbon organised the first Coloured Diggers ceremony and march in response to the need to recognise the service and struggles of Indigenous servicepeople (Riches, 2016). Initially, the march was criticised by the NSW and national RSL, though not to the same level as Ruxton’s 1985 derision. RSL national president Bill Crews reflected that: They [Indigenous Australian veterans] appear to be conducting an alternative march, which is unfortunate … They could be part of any of the services and marches being conducted around NSW and do not need to conduct any service of their own. It’s unfortunate they don’t feel they will get the attention they need at those services. (cited in Bibby, 2007a, paras. 13–14)

Although the RSL later revised their position to support the Coloured Diggers march, their initial concern once again positioned the leaders of the march as disruptive. The desire of involved Indigenous Australian veterans to march separately, and together, was portrayed as ‘unfortunate’—an act deliberately distancing Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander veterans from the supposedly ‘inclusive’ services and marches being conducted by the RSL across the state. Minniecon’s response reaffirmed the feelings of need for the separate march, not as a ‘snub’ against the RSL but as a project of inclusion and recognition: “a lot of our people don’t march on Anzac Day and we’re simply trying to give them the opportunity to be recognised and acknowledged in the same way that anyone who served… should be recognised” (Bibby, 2007a, para. 18). David Williams, the president of the NSW Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Veterans Association, reflected after the march that “to walk down those streets of Redfern and to be at the head of a parade and for people to say thank you to me and my colleagues from the past, present, and beyond is

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unbelievable … to see our contribution acknowledged is one of the proudest moments of my life” (cited in Bibby, 2007b, para. 10–12). Like the Northcote marches of the 1980s, the Coloured Diggers marches provided (and continue to provide) an avenue for explicit recognition of Indigenous Australian war service, one dictated by Indigenous peoples themselves. However, the withdrawal of City of Sydney funding from the march (and the lack of funding from the RSL or DVA) reflects the continuing tension between the Coloured Diggers marches and the officially sanctioned Anzac Day events (Riches, 2016). Although nominally accepted and endorsed by Anzac institutions, at its heart it remains portrayed as a disruption, a distraction and a diversion from the ‘real’ Anzac Day events. The reluctance to allow Indigenous servicepeople and veterans to march as a cohesive and visible group in official Anzac Day events reflects in many ways how the commemorations are still inherently influenced and shaped by colonial values and ideas of warfare, society and belonging. The preferred way for Indigenous veterans to march—in the eyes of RSL representatives and other official institutions—simultaneously serves to isolate them and their experiences. The predominant view of Anzac Day, and by extension of Australian military service, created by the parades is one of white male soldiers—particularly in the case of historical wars and conflicts. A large group of Indigenous veterans marching together—rather than dispersed throughout their units— would challenge this assumption, sending a clear message that not only has the Australian military always been diverse, but also that Indigenous war service is worthy of explicit recognition and acknowledgement at the official level. Since 2000, specific instances of progress in relation to the validation of a collective Indigenous Australian experience and history of war service have occurred within the state-authorised commemorative events. In 2000, members of the ATSIVSA asked permission from the Perth RSL to march as a group in the 2001 Anzac Day march. Unlike in 1985, the RSL granted permission for the group to march together and invited them to lead the parade (Dortch & Lam, 2001, p.  5; Riseman, 2017a). Echoing Wallace’s sentiments from 15 years earlier, Aboriginal man and event organiser Phil Prosser reflected, “It is quite important for the indigenous people of Australia to be able to go public and show that we did actually represent our people and the whole of Australia” (cited in Dortch & Lam, 2001, p. 5). One hundred and one years after the first Anzac Day commemorations, on 25 April 2017, Indigenous Australian servicepeople and veterans led the national Anzac Day march in Canberra. The event marked the first time Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander veterans had led the parade, an “overdue acknowledgement” of the thousands of Indigenous veterans who were ignored, excluded or mistreated upon their return from war service (Brennan, 2017, para. 1). Garth O’Connell, the secretary of ATSIVSA, noted that the march was “a very special and poignant moment” for the families of now-deceased Indigenous veterans, as well as the communities of those still living or in active service (Brennan, 2017). Both the 2000 and 2017 marches enabled Indigenous veterans to be explicitly recognised and

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commemorated within official commemorative rituals, drawing attention to Indigenous war service within these highly regulated spaces. Although significant instances of recognition and inclusion on the part of official institutions, both the 2001 Perth march and the 2017 national parade were only possible because ‘permission’ was expressly given by the RSL. These events were overwhelmingly portrayed in the media and by the facilitating institutions as positive events, evidence of the inclusive nature of Anzac Day and the triumph of the ‘colour-blind’ narrative built up around Indigenous war service. This, in itself, is problematic and indicative of the colonial nature of the Anzac narrative. Although Indigenous service was recognised in both events, the sacrifices, hardships and discrimination experienced by the majority of Indigenous veterans was effectively erased. Had these groups attempted to draw explicit attention to the realities of Indigenous war service, or had permission not been sought by ATSIVSA in both instances, the narrative would likely have been significantly more combative. The debates around when and how to allow Indigenous veterans to march as a group, rather than scattered within their individual units, demonstrate the ways in which the presence of bla(c)k bodies have been mobilised as ‘disruptive’ to the official narratives of Anzac Day. This is despite the fact that in each of the cases discussed, the groups’ only aims were to facilitate greater representation of Indigenous war service and shared experience, not to question or significantly alter the commemorative rituals of Anzac Day. As the later case studies will demonstrate, tensions—particularly in recent years—have escalated not only over the presence of Indigenous peoples within Anzac Day services but also over whether or not Indigenous languages, cultures and traditional forms of commemoration are welcome at these events.

‘Irrespective of Race, Culture or Religion’: Indigenous Cultures as ‘Disruption’ For those who want to portray the Welcome to Country as some racist thing that only includes Aboriginal people, I’m sorry you’re completely misinformed. —Prof. Len Collard (2020)

From 1919 until his death in 1954, Ngarrindjeri serviceman Gordon Rigney travelled from Point McLeay to Adelaide each year to lay a handmade wreath at Adelaide’s official Anzac Day services (The Daily News, 1945, p. 6; News, 1950, p. 9). The wreaths, made from pelican and swan feathers with the help of other members of his community, were laid by Rigney “in memory of [A]boriginal soldiers killed in the two World Wars” (The News, 1950, p. 9). By laying a wreath, Rigney was also participating in a key commemorative ritual of Anzac Day, one observed by both official delegates and institutional representatives and the broader public (Inglis, 2008). His participation was widely reported on in newspapers following the Second World War (as was the unusual

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nature of his wreath) and seems to have been an accepted and expected part of the ritual of wreath-laying at the state commemorative service. Anzac Day—particularly the commemorative services—is an inherently performative site of memory, mourning and commemoration (Winter, 1995). Official Anzac Day events have been ‘assembled’ over time, formed into commemorative services that are ritualised, narrativised and ordered (Henry, 2006, p.  8). The ritualised pattern of commemorative services—the welcome, the prayers and speeches, the Ode and silence, the wreath-laying—simultaneously guide attendees through the ‘appropriate’ steps of public commemoration and promote official narratives of war service, sacrifice and remembrance. These rituals reinforce a prescribed Anglo-Christian format for commemorative services and create a sense of tradition and rigidity surrounding Anzac Day (Henry, 2006, p. 8). The rigidity of these rituals and patterns makes them particularly susceptible to ‘disruption’—at least in the eyes of organising institutions. This is particularly the case where additional rituals or commemorative expressions are introduced—such as Indigenous commemorative dances, Indigenous language usage, or Welcome to Country performances. Although there has, in recent years, been a growing adoption of Indigenous cultural elements as part of official and public events, questions over the inclusion of such elements into the official rituals of major Anzac Day services remain contested. Most evident of the tensions over the ways Indigenous cultural expressions are ‘admitted’ into official Anzac Day ceremonies—and most recent—were the actions of the Western Australian branch of the RSL in early 2020. On 20 February 2020, the  Returned and Services League of Western Australia (herein RSLWA) announced that it had decided to ban ‘Welcome to Country’ ceremonies, the flying of the Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander flag and the use of Indigenous Australian languages from its Anzac Day services. The policy, developed by the RSLWA board, in particular, outlined the following key points: “all content, bar the New Zealand national anthem, is to be presented or sung in English; only the Australian, New Zealand and WA flags may be flown; no Welcome to Country and/or Acknowledgement of Country ceremonies … at the dawn service or services at recognised war memorials” (Turner et al., 2020, para. 7). The ban was prompted by the Fremantle 2019 Anzac Day Dawn Service, at which Whadjuk Nyungar Aboriginal elder and University of Western Australian Professor Len Collard recited the Ode of Remembrance in the local Nyungar language (Collard, 2020). Some members of the RSL allegedly found the reading of the Ode in a language other than English ‘inappropriate’, arguing that the new policy would instead “promote inclusivity of all cultures at commemorative ceremonies” (Duncan, 2020, para. 5). Reflecting on the proposed ban, RSLWA chief executive John McCourt stated that “all the RSL is asking for is two days” (Turner et al., 2020, para. 10). Noting the rise in ‘cultural elements’ in commemoration ceremonies in recent years, the RSLWA policy argued:

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While it is important to recognise cultural and ethnic contributions to the defence of Australia, it is also important to maintain Anzac Day and Remembrance Day as occasions to express unity, a time when all Australians—irrespective of race, culture or religion—come together to remember and reflect. (Turner et  al., 2020, para. 13)

Clarifying their position, the RSLWA specified that “RSLWA supports the rights of all Government and community entities flying the Indigenous flag and making a Welcome to Country dedication at official ceremonies. What RSL is not supportive of is the use of Welcome to Country as part of the actual service itself” (RSLWA, 2020a, para. 4). Although the ban was not strictly enforceable, Mr. McCourt also noted that the board had the authority to withdraw support for ceremonies that did not comply with the new RSLWA policies. The RSLWA’s approach demonstrated the continued ways Indigenous contributions to Anzac Day are positioned by conservative representatives within institutional authorities as ‘disruptive’ or unwelcome. The policy served to codify the exclusion of Indigenous cultures and languages, as well as the recognition of Indigenous cultural sovereignty, from the official protocols and accepted activities of Anzac Day commemorations. Justifying the policy, the RSLWA positioned their approach “to the form and conduct of commemoration” as facilitating “commemoration in a way that respects all who served, and still serve, no matter their background” (RSLWA, 2020a, para. 13). This approach further discursively positioned First Nations cultures as ‘exclusive’ and disrespectful, and by extension inherently incompatible with the ‘spirit’ and purpose of Anzac Day. Inclusion, recognition and respect—according to the RSLWA—were best achieved through the reinforcement of the dominant cultural forms of the Anzac tradition—through the English language, the Australian and Aotearoa New Zealand flags, and the absence of explicitly Indigenous cultural rituals. The RSLWA (2020a, para. 11) continued to ‘welcome’ ‘popular cultural dances in traditional dress’ after the Dawn Service, but remained adamant that cultural expressions or dedications should have no part of the ‘official’ Anzac Day commemorative services. The ‘popular cultural dances in traditional dress’ referenced by the RSLWA are the combined haka and corrobboree performed at the close of the Anzac Day dawn service in King’s Park, Perth, since 2018. The performance, which brings together Indigenous Australian, Māori and Pasifika performers, is intended as an act of commemoration of Australian and Aotearoa New Zealand cooperation during the war, as well as “to raise awareness and recognition for our people on a cultural platform” (Hirini, 2019, para. 6). The performance was subject to controversy in both 2018 and 2019, with the dances criticised as being ‘insulting’ to veterans. McCourt, for example, reflected that “Anzac Day is about all of us not just some of us, and I think they [veterans] get rightly upset when someone takes advantage of that” (McCourt, cited in Collard, 2018, para. 17).

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The RSLWA’s proposed ban received significant and immediate backlash from Indigenous and non-Indigenous groups and politicians. President of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Veterans and Services Association of Australia, Gary Oakley, described the policy as a “slap in the face” to Indigenous Australians, particularly considering “we’ve been protecting country for 60,000-plus years and we fought in two world wars as non-citizens” (cited in Turner et al., 2020, para. 23). Bart Pilgrim, a Yawuru man and tourism operator who performed as part of Broome’s 2019 RSL Anzac ceremony, argued that “it [the ban] is something I think our kids shouldn’t be seeing and shouldn’t be part of, because we’re moving towards an inclusive and embracing society more and more, and then we have this sort of setback” (cited in Turner et al., 2020, para. 30). Collard was particularly critical of the decision, characterising the policy as reminiscent of a ‘highly divisive’ and outdated era: “I think there’s people out there living in the past, and pursuing past glory, you know the White Australia policy, and other silly ideas but we’re long past that” (cited in SBS, 2020, para. 13). In referencing Australia’s recent historical past, as well as explicitly raising the issue of the White Australia policy, Collard drew attention to the conservative ideas still held by many RSLWA executives, and the ways these ideas were tied to broader Anzac Day commemorations and values. Collard highlighted the long history of Indigenous war service in Australia, both pre- and post-­ federation, arguing that central “to those men and women’s contributions to the war, was freedom of speech and to have diversity of values in our society” (cited in SBS, 2020, para. 19). This argument, implying the RSLWA was acting against the ideals and purposes of the Anzacs, shifted the discourse away from Indigenous languages and cultures as ‘disruptive’, characterising them instead as an inherent element of Anzac values. Collard also expressed his hope that the attention around the ban would “create another spike in language speaking around the nation”, calling on First Peoples across Australia to “go and write the ode in your language and recite it on your country” (cited in SBS, 2020, para. 23). Several Western Australian politicians also called on the RSLWA to reconsider their decision. Greens senator Rachel Siewart, for example, asserted, “Many First Nations people have served this country in the armed services and this move by the RSL is deeply offensive to their memories and not in the Anzac spirit” (cited in Turner et al., 2020, para. 41). By referencing the ‘Anzac spirit’—the intangible and often undefinable set of values most closely associated with Anzac—Siewart, like Collard, repositioned the RSLWA’s discursive argument, placing them, not Indigenous language and culture, as incompatible with the Anzac legend and the values of Anzac Day. This discursive tension between Siewart and the RSLWA over the place of First Peoples’ cultures and languages in Anzac Day is reflective of broader political debates over the place that should be afforded to these cultures in the wider Australian landscape. Veterans’ affairs minister Peter Tinsley picked up on these debates in his criticism of the RWLA, in which he labelled the

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proposed move the “wrong decision” (cited in Turner et al., 2020, para. 34). Tinsley argued that the assumption of the RSLWA that First Peoples and their cultures were “somehow just part of the multicultural excerpt of this country” was inherently misguided. Instead, he asserted, “I think as First Nation Australians, they deserve the respect and a special place in the commemoration. They are a very special connection for all of us to have to our land, to our culture, to our heritage” (cited in Turner et al., 2020, para. 36–37). Through Welcome to Country, the use of Indigenous languages and the presence of Indigenous cultural and political symbols (including the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander flags), not only could Anzac Day services be inclusive of Indigenous veterans and servicepeople, but they also gained a deeper significance and connection to Australian history—both settler-colonial and ancient. Pointing out the layers of significance to the inclusion of First Peoples’ cultures in Anzac Day therefore also explicitly highlighted the ways the conservative position of the RSLW served to reinforce a view of commemoration that prioritised an inherently colonial view of not only the day but of Australia—white, English-speaking and unified under an Australian flag with continued ties to Britain. Critics of the RSLWA’s ban frequently drew parallels between Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand, criticising Australia’s ‘backwards’ policies in comparison to Aotearoa New Zealand’s apparently progressive and inclusive approaches. In particular, these criticisms focused on the widely accepted use of te reo Māori throughout Aotearoa New Zealand’s official Anzac Day services, not only during the national anthem (in which the first verse is sung exclusively in te reo Māori  before being sung in English) but also as part of the opening pōwhiri and as part of the reading of the Ode of Remembrance. Elements of a traditional pōwhiri (Māori welcoming ceremony) and readings of the Ode in both te reo Māori and English were introduced into mainstream commemorations throughout the mid-2000s and were firmly established at a national level by 2009 (Auckland City Council and the Returned Services Association, 2009). The inclusion of the Ode in te reo Māori has since become an uncontested element of Anzac Day services, both in Aotearoa New Zealand and overseas as part of the service held at Anzac Cove in Turkey. The adoption of a bilingual Ode of Remembrance reflects both Aotearoa New Zealand’s official policy of biculturalism and the subsequent greater incorporation of Māori rituals and culture into national events. Yamatji man and WA treasurer Ben Wyatt (2020) expressed his disappointment with the RSLWA by comparing the ban to Aotearoa New Zealand’s approaches to Anzac Day on Twitter: “It is worth noting that our New Zealand partners embrace the language of their Indigenous peoples at Anzac Day ceremonies. We should do the same”. By drawing on the example set by Aotearoa New Zealand, critics of the RSLWA’s proposal were able to highlight the feasibility and ease of incorporating Indigenous languages into official Anzac ceremonies and point to the way such inclusion promotes cultural inclusion and engagement with Anzac Day rather than disrupts it.

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Ultimately, the RSLWA’s ban was short-lived, with the organisation withdrawing the policy on 23 February, only three days after it was officially announced. In a statement delivered by McCourt, the RSLWA explained that “given the level of community reaction to RSLWA’s advisory policy on cultural matters relating to commemoration, this policy has now been withdrawn” (cited in Shepherd, 2020, para. 6). Commenting on the public and political backlash to the ban, RSLWA president Peter Aspinal apologised for any “misunderstanding” of the organisation’s intentions, asserting that the policy “certainly had nothing to do with—in any shape or form—attempting to be disrespectful to our Indigenous brethren and in the veteran community—our Indigenous veterans” (cited in Shepherd, 2020, para. 18). The rapid withdrawal of the policy demonstrated the vulnerability of institutions such as the RSL to popular opinion and political controversy. Despite their authority within the commemorative space, RSL branches, as registered charities, are reliant on both government and (to a significantly lesser extent) public financial support to operate. The gross income for the RSLWA in 2020 (January–December 2020) was $8.794 million, with 69.83 percent coming from government grants (RSLWA, 2020b). This reliance on government funding means that RSL branches cannot consistently act against government interest, nor can they explicitly act against overt popular opinion. Often, particularly historically, conservative decisions and policies from RSL branches have either aligned with majority government opinion, or not provoked opposition from both acting politicians and members of the public and the defence forces. In the case of the ban on Indigenous languages, flags and Welcome to Country ceremonies from Anzac Day services, however, the RSLWA was quickly forced to backtrack and concede to public opinion to avoid further controversy and the potential loss of governmental or public support. Responding to the RSLWA’s decision to overturn the ban, Collard reflected on the damage done to the relationship between the organisation, ex-­ servicemen and active Indigenous RSL members, who were left “bewildered” by the decision that was “out of step with” both national guidelines and community sentiment (cited in Marsters, 2020, para. 9). Collard also addressed any perceived notions of his Nyungar Ode or the Welcome to Country ceremony as being exclusionary or directed only at First Peoples: For those who want to portray the Welcome to Country as some racist thing that only include Aboriginal people, I’m sorry you’re completely misinformed. I don’t stand up in front of a crowd and say this is only for Aboriginal people … it was never intended to be like that and never will be. (cited in Marsters, 2020, para. 15–17)

Although Collard expressed his intention to deliver the Ode in Nyungar again at the 2020 Anzac Day service in Fremantle, both that service and the 2021 service were cancelled due to the global COVID-19 pandemic. However,

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he was able to deliver the Ode in Nyungar at the 2023 Fremantle dawn service (City of Fremantle, 2023, para. 55:35–56:04). RSLWA’s attempt to categorise the presence of Indigenous languages and cultural practices in Anzac Day services as disruptive was ultimately unsuccessful. However, the attempt alone demonstrates the ways institutions such as the RSL continue to attempt to dictate when and how Indigenous languages and cultures are able to be included in official Anzac Day commemorations, and the ways Indigenous attempts to operate outside these boundaries are categorised as ‘disruptive’. That such boundaries are asserted in the first place demonstrates the continuing colonial nature of Anzac Day. Portraying Indigenous Australian languages, cultures and rituals as antithetical to the purpose of official commemorative events reinforces underlying assumptions in the Anzac narrative of the Australian military (and by extension Australia) as a white Anglo-Christian society. Multiculturalism is only allowed inasmuch as it contributes to this narrative, rather than detracts or challenges it. In particular, the implications of the Welcome to Country ritual and contestations over land ‘ownership’ and belonging begin to challenge the heart of the Anzac narrative—that it represents the birth of the Australian nation. These tensions come apart further when the question moves beyond the representation of Indigenous servicepeople from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, and into broader questions around what wars should be included in Anzac Day.

‘A Misuse of Anzac Day’: Indigenous Warfare as Disruption The ‘disruptions’ to Anzac Day labelled the most egregious by critics are typically those that seek to recognise the combat, suffering and sacrifice of First Peoples during the prolonged Frontier Wars across the continent, and the continuing ramification of these conflicts in the present day. Attempts to include or acknowledge Frontier Warfare as part of official Anzac Day commemorations are often portrayed as disrespectful, unnecessary, inappropriately political, deliberately obtuse and disruptive. This, in turn, polices not only how and when Indigenous war service can be commemorated as part of Anzac Day but also serves to delineate what constitutes warfare—both in the context of Anzac Day and in the broader context of the history of Australia. The history of the memorialisation of the Frontier Wars is long and contentious. As British studies scholar Matthew Graves and memory studies researcher Elizabeth Rechniewski (2017) highlight, there are few monuments commemorating the violent conflict between First Peoples and settlers, and none at a national or state level (though a memorial to the Black War in lutruwita (Tasmania) is currently planned for Hobart). Those that do exist often identify settler-civilians alone, either as ‘heroes’ or ‘sacrifices’ in the advance of civilisation across the Australian continent (Graves & Rechniewski, 2017). Although memorials to Black victims of the Frontier Wars began to emerge in the 1980s

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on a noticeable scale, these were still widely contested and predominately regional, with the exception of the Aboriginal Memorial at the National Gallery in Canberra. In response to calls for the Frontier Wars to be acknowledged at the AWM, then prime minister John Howard asserted in 1998, “if you want to be legalistic about it, the state of war didn’t exist. Now, I think the Australian War Memorial is to honour Aboriginal Australians and other Australians who died defending Australia” (cited in Peacock, 2009, para. 16). Howard’s rejection of Inglis’s proposal was heavily influenced by his own position in Australia’s history wars and demonstrated his continued denial of the reality of the frontier wars as warfare. As Nicoll (2013, p. 273) explains, “Howard’s response both expressed and performatively reinforced a clear boundary between armed conflicts of Indigenous and British forces during the process of colonisation … and the military service of Indigenous people after the formation of the Australian nation”. Although the AWM has since committed to depicting the Frontier Wars in its renovated pre-1914 galleries (Knaus, 2022), this boundary continues to influence the narrative and nature of Anzac Day—it is demarcated as a day to commemorate the service of Australians ‘in defence of their country’, but only in overseas conflicts, not on Australian soil. Attempts to challenge this boundary have been met with fierce criticism and resistance, not only from politicians and the RSL but also from popular media and members of the public. On Anzac Day 2015 in Canberra, what had for the past four years been a peaceful shadow to the official Anzac Day march became a site of dispute as Australian Federal Police prevented marchers commemorating the ‘undeclared Frontier Wars’ from following the official procession or laying a wreath at the AWM. The first Australian Frontier Wars March was held on Anzac Day 2011, organised by Sovereign Union and led by Eualyhi Nation head Ghillar Michael Anderson—the last surviving founder of the Aboriginal Embassy in Canberra. Not permitted to be part of the official Anzac Day march, each year a small group of people shadow the procession, carrying flags and signs commemorating “those Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who gave their lives defending their homelands from the incursions of British and other colonists from 1788” (Morrison, 2021, para. 2). As the march gained greater attention, Anderson reflected “this is not a protest, this is just being totally respectful of the fact that our people have got a message to relay and Australia cannot keep hiding it” (Gilbert, 2017, pp.  08:35–08:47). Despite this, the group still attracted controversy from the outset, both from members of the public and from officials and politicians. This controversy erupted in 2015, when over 50 people attempted to march behind the official procession. Australian Federal Police barred the group from marching, including Murrawarri man Fred Hooper, who served as a submariner in the Royal Australian Navy and had traditionally marched alongside his non-Indigenous colleagues in official marches (New Matilda, 2015). Hooper was warned by police to remove his Murrawarri nation flag and threatened with arrest when he attempted to join to march with his submariner battalion

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(Gilbert, 2015). In response to Hooper’s explanation that “I’m going to march with my mates. I served with my mates and I’m going to march”, an AFP officer responded: “You take another step and you’ll be arrested … you have to maintain a distance from them until they move on. This is not a day for you” (cited Gilbert, 2015, para. 01:34–02:31). Officers then escorted Hooper back to the Submarine Association. The group were also barred from laying a wreath at the war memorial and were not permitted to have someone from the memorial do so on their behalf. The actions of the AFP and the RSL in 2015 were vocally condemned by both Hooper and Anderson in the immediate aftermath of the confrontation. Reflecting on the morning’s events, Anderson questioned “What was different this time? Why did the AFP turn this normally peaceful event into an ugly confrontational incident? It was impossible but to conclude that our commemoration group was subject to overt racism” (cited in New Matilda, 2015, para. 28). Hooper was similarly bewildered and upset, particularly given the fact the ‘hype’ around commemorating Indigenous veterans and recognising First Peoples in the constitution. In particular, Hooper criticised what he viewed as the ‘segregation’ of the marchers from the rest of the official Anzac Day proceedings: We were segregated away from participating in ceremonies to honour the dead, and honour the people who served this country … We are segregated on Anzac Day. I think Anzac Day is the last bastion of the white Australia policy … It shows we are separate from the rest of the country when it comes to honour our people … These are not protests. It’s about wanting a place in the celebration of Anzac to commemoration all the people who fought in wars since 1788. (cited in New Matilda, 2015, para. 31–39)

The responses of both Anderson and Hooper to the confrontation reflect a similar frustration with the ways the Australian Federal Police and the RSL had sought to control the ways in which Indigenous war service was reflected in the official Anzac Day commemorations—both in relation to twentieth-century conflicts and the broader understanding of what constituted ‘war service’. By preventing the marchers from trailing the official parade or laying a wreath, the AFP and RSL were able to reinforce a narrative of Australian war service that explicitly excluded the Frontier Wars. This decision was particularly significant as 2015 marked the centenary commemoration of the ANZAC landing at Anzac Cove—the moment that created the Anzac legend. With the Sovereign Union’s march barred from occurring, the official Anzac Day parade was able to reinforce a narrative of Australian war service (and by extension, Australian nationhood) that began with the landings at Anzac Cove. To draw attention to the Frontier Wars—even in an unofficial capacity—as part of the proceedings would inherently challenge this narrative. Although the Sovereign Union sought (and continues to seek) to expand the Anzac narrative rather than undermine or destroy it, their actions were nonetheless cast by the

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organisers of the official proceedings as disruptive—a protest requiring police intervention rather than a peaceful contribution to the wider commemorative march. Similar controversy erupted following the 2017 Anzac Day Dawn Service in Adelaide. At the opening of the memorial service at the National War Memorial, Kaurna elder Katrina Ngaitlyala Power presented a Welcome to Country address. During the address, Power referenced the “invasion” of Australia, the “slavery” of Indigenous Australians, and the “stolen land” of her ancestors and her community (Cook, 2017a, para. 2–3). Power discussed the discrimination faced by Indigenous veterans returning from service in the First World War— “returning from Gallipoli to slavery and rations”—as well as changing the words of the 23rd Psalm to include the phrase “walk through the valley of invasion” and referencing that the crowd were standing on “stolen Kaurna land” (Cook, 2017a, para. 4). The Welcome to Country address was delivered to a crowd of approximately 5000 people at the start of the dawn service, before the remaining official proceedings were carried out. Although supported by the head of the South Australian RSL—who stated “the things she’s talking about are factual things and we need them on the record so we can move forward together” (Smith, quoted in Cook, 2017a, para. 14; Smith 2017), Power was immediately criticised by attendees of the service and major news outlets. Conservative newspaper The Australian ran articles entitled “Dawn Service Politicised by Activist” and “Activist tweaks psalms during Anzac Day dawn service”, while the Herald Sun ran a blog entitled “Disrespecting Anzac Day becoming a national sport” (Panahi, 2017). The articles positioned the Dawn Service has having been “hijacked by an Aboriginal activist”, and made heavy reference to criticism from both the public and politicians (Owen, 2017a, para. 1). The speech was categorised by attendees as “an insult” to the Anzac spirit, “a political statement”, a “misuse” of the service for “political messaging” and “particularly aggressive”, with one attendee arguing that the historical facts raised by Power were “at best, matters of contested politico-historical interpretation … [and] certainly not universally accepted Australian history” (Cook, 2017a, para. 21–22). Then federal Education Minister Simon Birmingham released a statement arguing that “Everyone honoured with a public role to play on Anzac Day should be mindful that it’s a day to unite Australians and recognise those who’ve served our nation, not a change to prosecute other agendas” (cited in Cook, 2017a, para. 30). The South Australian opposition leader Steven Marshall reinforced that “this important day should not be hijacked for political purposes”, categorising Power’s comments as “unnecessary and inappropriate” (cited in Owens, 2017a, para. 19–20). Similarly, Minister for Veterans’ Affairs Martin Hamilton-Smith stated: “It is important we all remember the true purpose of Anzac Day. It is always best if other political issues are left for another time” (cited in Cook, 2017a, para. 31). Power ultimately apologised for upsetting attendees and the broader public, though she maintained her earlier assertions that she was “giving a voice to all

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the Aboriginal people that have fought in the war [sic]” (cited in Owen, 2017b, para. 6). In her original statement to The Australian, Power argued that: I am not interested in whether what I say is universally accepted. Being born Aboriginal is political in this country. I am interested in truth-telling. I am interested in celebrating and remembering all of Australia’s history, not shining a spotlight on just one part of it. Why should I apologise? (cited in Owen, 2017b, para. 7)

Speaking to The Advertiser, Power noted that “it wasn’t my intention to upset anyone and I apologise if I did”, emphasising that she “see[s] Anzac as a time to recognise our true shared history where black and white fought side-­ by-­side. I want us to move forward together in reconciliation but you can only do that with truth telling” (cited in Cook, 2017b, para. 5–7). As with the controversy and confrontation surrounding the Australian Frontier Wars March, the backlash against Power demonstrated the ways in which the mainstream Anzac narrative is framed in such a way that it is resistant to efforts to acknowledge the Frontier Wars as warfare, and the struggles of Indigenous Australians as worthy of recognising. Although Power did not directly discuss the Frontier Wars, her references to invasion, stolen land and slavery all served as reminders of a period of Australian history that remains contentious and largely absent from the national narrative—a period still predominately excluded from mainstream Anzac Day commemorations. The exception to this exclusion came in 2019  in Hobart, where the Australian Frontier Wars were acknowledged for the first time in the city’s official Anzac Day parade (Kinniburgh, 2019). Reflecting on their inclusion, elder Aunty Wendal Pitchford thanked the community for their support, stating that “Anzac Day is enabling us to represent our people who passed away in the Frontier Wars here in Tasmania” (cited in Reynolds, 2021, para. 3). Within 24 hours, however, a spokesman for the Hobart RSL asserted that Anzac Day was “to remember those who had served in Australia’s armed forces and paid the ultimate price with their lives. It was not to remember the conflicts of white settlement” (cited in Reynolds, 2021, para. 3). The inclusion of marchers commemorating the Frontier Wars remains controversial in Hobart, as it does throughout Australia. But the initial inclusion marks what historian Henry Reynolds (2021, para. 6) has characterised as “an important milestone in the slow evolution of Australian historical consciousness”—one that may continue to evolve as the twenty-first century progresses. Efforts to exclude the Frontier Wars from official Anzac Day commemorations reflect the ways the definitions of warfare have been altered over time to suit the dominant white Australian narrative. Although widely recognised and referred to as ‘warfare’ throughout the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, by the late nineteenth-century language the discourse had shifted in favour of a narrative that portrayed white Australians as pioneers and bushmen who had tamed a wild and unsettled land for their own (Broome, 2020; Griffiths,

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1994; Foster et al., 2001). As Griffiths argues, the protracted, covert and localised Frontier Wars did not give settlers a ‘suitable’ narrative of colonial warfare: “a proper war would have dignified their violence, brought it out in the open and allowed them the romance of heroes and campaigns” (1994, p.  11). Instead, frontier violence was “clothed in euphemisms” and surrounded by “a culture of secrecy”, and readily usurped as Australia’s foundational conflict by the Gallipoli campaign in the First World War (Foster et al., 2001, p. 8). Despite efforts from historians, First Peoples’ communities and public supporters, the Frontier Wars still remain cloaked in ‘a culture of secrecy’. Just as it was at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, this culture of secrecy is ardently maintained by key social and political institutions and elements of the mainstream media. By excluding the Frontier Wars from official Anzac Day commemorations, these institutions not only retain control of the definitions surrounding military service and sacrifice but also facilitate the continued denial of the Frontier Wars as a genuine conflict deserving of recognition. To do so, at least in the eyes of these institutions, would be the ultimate disruption to Anzac Day.

Towards a Conclusion According to historian Ann Curthoys’ (2000, p. 32) analysis of Australian race relations, Australia can be conceptualised ‘as both a colonial and post-colonial society or, more accurately, a society which is colonising and decolonising at the same time’. On the one hand, Australia celebrates its status as a truly multicultural nation, with a history of diverse migration underlaid by ancient Indigenous cultures and societies. On the other, official narratives and daily interactions belie an undercurrent of racism and prejudice that “suppresses recognition that Australia is in many ways a colonial society still” (Curthoys, 2000, p. 32). The tensions around Indigenous Australian inclusion and recognition in Anzac Day reveal the ways in which colonial values and expectations of Australian war service, commemorative rituals and society still hold sway, particularly amongst some representatives of in our nation’s official commemorative institutions. Some elements of Indigenous Australian overseas war service have been acknowledged in the official Anzac legend and by its controlling institutions. The 2017 Anzac Day march in Canberra highlighted a recognition from the RSL of the place of First Nations soldiers in Australia’s history of overseas conflict, and the beginnings of a path towards official recognition. The march coincided with the AWM exhibition ‘For Country, For Nation’, which toured Australia from 2018 to early 2021. The exhibition honoured the military service of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people from invasion to present-­ day peacekeeping operations and identified the discrimination and disrespect many Indigenous servicepeople endured. Other cultural institutions, including the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne, have held similar exhibitions, and sought to include Indigenous voices in their permanent exhibits. As previously

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mentioned, in 2022 the AWM committed to a “broader and deeper” inclusion of the Frontier Wars in its redeveloped galleries achieved through consultation with Indigenous communities (Knaus, 2022). While an important step towards official recognition of Indigenous military service, these examples of inclusion remain tightly controlled by the governing institutions. They largely convey narratives of First Nations’ military involvement that highlight mateship and equality, underplaying experiences of racism and discrimination—particularly from within the Australian defence forces. This ‘colour-blind AIF’ narrative remains the primary way Indigenous experiences of war are incorporated into the fringes of the official Anzac legend (Riseman, 2017a). In all cases, access to and inclusion in official spaces— whether they be museums or Anzac Day events—is controlled by white official institutions, often with a vested interest in maintaining the existing narratives around Australian war service. When attempts at inclusion do not meet the (often changing) requirements of these institutions, they are labelled as ‘disruptive’—a catch-all term for any unwanted attempts to bring new stories to the fore. From its earliest iterations during the First World War, Anzac Day was imbued with colonial values, ideals and aims. It originally commemorated the contribution of Australia as a member of the British Empire to an imperial conflict and celebrated the ‘foundation of nationhood’ through participation alongside European combatants. Even as the focus of Anzac Day broadened to include later overseas conflicts, its underlying narrative continued to prioritise settler narratives of nation and warfare. Further, Anzac Day’s association with white ‘settler’ narratives of Australian history was reinforced in the late 1990s and early 2000s through its ardent adoption by John Howard in the face of criticism from historians and activists over his denial of the Frontier Wars and their place in Australian history. This narrative of national ‘birth’ minimised Indigenous suffering and experiences, while highlighting the heroism and prowess of white Australians. The primary soldier still presented in the Anzac legend is a white Anglo-Australian male; the primary mode of warfare organised overseas military engagement. Although elements of the Anzac narrative have been diversified—such as the incorporation of female experiences of warfare and the inclusion of a tightly regulated narrative of Turkish participation in the Gallipoli campaign—the dominance of Anglo-Christian language, rituals and experiences ensures Anzac Day retains its colonial underpinnings. On a day where veterans are recognised and applauded, many Indigenous veterans are still required to march away from the official parades if they want to march side by side with fellow First Nations servicepeople. On a day for ‘all Australians, irrespective of race, culture, or religion’, the use of Indigenous languages is still portrayed as controversial, offensive or exclusionary by some media and overseeing institutions. On our nation’s primary day for commemorating the service and sacrifice of those who have died serving their country, mentions of the Frontier Wars or the continued suffering and mistreatment of Indigenous Australians are decried as inappropriate, unnecessary or untrue. If

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an Indigenous veteran can still be told by police that ‘this is not a day for you’ (New Matilda, 2015), the colonial nature of Anzac Day commemorations is not contentious—it is readily apparent, explicitly protected and perhaps deserving of ‘disruption’.

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SBS. (2020, February 21). Indigenous elder ‘gobsmacked’ by RSLWA decision to discourage Aboriginal flag and languages and major services. Special Broadcasting Service. https://www.sbs.com.au/news/indigenous-­elder-­gobsmacked-­by-­rslwa-­ decision-­t o-­d iscourage-­a boriginal-­f lag-­a nd-­l anguages-­a t-­m ajor-­s er vices/ be0581e2-­5ea1-­4298-­94a4-­e24b251b7481 Inglis, K. (2008). Sacred places: War memorials in the Australian landscape (Revised ed.). Melbourne University Press. Invitation to Raiwala. (1949, March 4). The Herald (Melbourne), p. 3. https://trove. nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/247720036 Kinniburgh, C. (2019, April 26). Hobart Anzac Day parade a first for our Frontier Wars. The Mercury. https://www.themercury.com.au/news/tasmania/hobart-­a nzac-­d ay-­p arade-­a -­f irst-­f or-­o ur-­f rontier-­w ars/news-­s tor y/ a89eee77d33796844d749ba41f950c3f Knaus, C. (2022, September 29). Australian War Memorial promises ‘much broader, deeper’ depiction of frontier wars. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/ australianews/2022/sep/29/australian-war-memorial-promises-much-broaderdeeper-depiction-of-frontier-wars Macdonald, C. (2015). The first world war and the making of colonial memory. Journal of New Zealand Literature, 33(2), 15–37. Macleod, J. (2002). The fall and rise of Anzac Day: 1965 and 1990 compared. War and Society, 20(1), 149–168. https://doi.org/10.1179/072924702791201935 Macleod, J. (2015). Remembering Gallipoli in New Zealand and beyond. NZUK Link Foundation Annual Lecture. https://www.researchgate.net/ publication/308597025_Remembering_the_Gallipoli_campaign_Turkish_official_ military_historiography_war_memorials_and_contested_ground Marsters, A. (2020, February 24). ‘They were out of step’: Indigenous elder welcomes RSLWA’s decision to overturn controversial ban. Special Broadcasting Service (SBS). https://www.sbs.com.au/news/they-­were-­out-­of-­step-­indigenous-­elder-­ welcomes-­rslwa-­s-­decision-­to-­overturn-­controversial-­ban/51a3468f-­87d7-­4a7d-­ a1df-­7ec8c8d66563 Mayes, R. (2009). Origins of the Anzac Dawn ceremony: Spontaneity and nationhood. Journal of Australian Studies, 33(1), 51–65. https://doi.org/10.1080/ 14443050802672536 McQuilton, J. (2004). Gallipoli as contested commemorative space. In J.  Macleod (Ed.), Gallipoli: Making history (pp. 150–158). Routledge. Midford, S. (2011). Constructing the ‘Australian Iliad’: Ancient heroes and Anzac diggers in the Dardanelles. Melbourne Historical Journal, 2, 59–79. https://www. researchgate.net/profile/Sarah-­Midford/publication/274713441_Constructing_ the_Australian_Iliad_Ancient_Heroes_and_Anzac_Diggers_in_the_Dardanelles/ links/552769f30cf2520617a7102d/Constructing-­the-­Australian-­Iliad-­Ancient-­ Heroes-­and-­Anzac-­Diggers-­in-­the-­Dardanelles.pdf Morrison, J. (2021). Australian frontier wars marches and exhibitions. Australian Frontier Conflicts 1788–1940. https://australianfrontierconflicts.com.au/resources/ australian-­frontier-­wars-­march/ New Matilda. (2015, April 27). ‘This day is not for you’: Police stop black digger from marching for frontier wars. New Matilda. https://newmatilda.com/2015/04/27/ day-­not-­you-­police-­stop-­black-­digger-­marching-­frontier-­wars/ Nicoll, F. (2001). From diggers to drag queens: configurations of Australian national identity. Pluto Press and King Street Press.

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Nicoll, F. (2013). War by other means: The Australian War Memorial and the Aboriginal Tent Embassy in national space and time. In G.  Foley, A.  Schaap, & E.  Howell (Eds.), The Aboriginal tent embassy: Sovereignty, black power, land rights, and the state (pp. 267–283). Routledge. Owen, M. (2017a, April 25). Anzac Day 2017: Dawn service politicised by activist. The Australian. https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/nation/anzac-­day-­2017-­ dawn-­service-­politicised-­by-­activist/news-­story/287f564552a07c65d6e60e5673 cc50ed Owen, M. (2017b, April 26). Anzac Day: Aboriginal activist tweaks 23rd Psalm to ‘shadow of invasion’. The Australian. https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/ nation/anzac-­day-­aboriginal-­activist-­tweaks-­23rd-­psalm-­to-­shadow-­of-­invasion/ news-­story/1a43670e62574801d5b1d703d76b4514 Panahi, R. (2017, April 25). Disrespecting Anzac Day becoming a national sport. The Herald Sun. https://www.heraldsun.com.au/blogs/rita-­panahi/disrespecting-­ anzac-­day-­becoming-­a-­national-­sport/news-­story/7c0aa6dabfc1b0825748c47b0 ad7f381 Passing By by Mr Pim. (1950, April 24). News. p. 5. https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/130337733 Peacock, M. (2009, February 26). War memorial battle over frontier conflict recognition. Australian Broadcasting Corporation 7.30 Report. https://www.abc.net. au/7.30/war-­memorial-­battle-­over-­frontier-­conflict/2675486 Phillips, J., & Inglis, K. (1991). War memorials in Australia and New Zealand: A comparative survey. Australian Historical Studies, 24(96), 179–191. https://doi. org/10.1080/10314619108595879 Powell, D. (2004). Remembrance day: Memories and values in Australia since 1918. Victorian Historical Journal, 75(2), 165–188. https://search.informit.org/doi/ pdf/10.3316/ielapa.200410992?download=true Raiwala Invited to March Here. (1949, March 4). News (Adelaide), p. 1. https://trove. nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/130251154 Returned and Services League of Western Australia. (2020a, February 21). We are not banning the first nations flag. Media Release. https://www.rslwa.org.au/news-­ events/latest-­news/media-­releases/132-­rslwa-­media-­release-­we-­are-­not-­banning-­ the-­first-­nations-­flag Returned and Services League of Western Australia. (2020b). Annual information statement. Australian Charities and Not-for-Profits Commission. https://www.acnc.gov. au/charity/132fcc089d583f7ad1639e5bec7052bd#ais-­54801930b82d957793 3334a1d3841b5a Reynolds, H. (2021, April 25). Anzac Day and the frontier wars. Pearls and Irritations: John Menadue’s Public Policy Journal. https://johnmenadue.com/anzac-­day-­and-­ the-­frontier-­wars/. Riches, T. (2016, April 25). Hiding the truth: Honouring the coloured diggers— A conversation with Ray Minniecon. Australian Broadcasting Corporation Religion & Ethics. https://www.abc.net.au/religion/hiding-­the-­truth-­honouring-­the-­ coloured-­diggers%2D%2D-­a-­conversation/10097060 Riseman, N. (2017a). Evolving Commemorations of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Military Service. Wcazo Sa Review, 32(1), 80–101. https://doi. org/10.5749/wicazosareview.32.1.0080

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Riseman, N. (2017b). ‘Just another start to the denigration of Anzac Day’: Evolving commemorations of Australian LGBTI military service. Australian Historical Studies, 48(1), 35–51. https://doi.org/10.1080/1031461X.2016.1251476 Ruxton plans to stop Aboriginal group March. (1985, March 4). The Canberra Times, p. 3. https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/122501054 Scates, B., & Wheatley, R. (2014). War memorials. In J. Winter (Ed.), The Cambridge history of the first world war (pp. 526–556). Cambridge University Press. Seal, G. (2004). Inventing Anzac: The digger and national mythology. University of Queensland Press. Sheftall, M. (2009). Altered memories of the great war: Divergent narratives of Britain, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada. I.B. Tauris. Shepherd, B. (2020, February 23). WA RSL backs down over ban on Aboriginal flag after public backlash. Australian Broadcasting Corporation. https:// www.abc.net.au/news/2020-­0 2-­2 3/wa-­r sl-­b acks-­d own-­o n-­a boriginal-­ flag-­welcome-­to-­country-­ban/11992416 Smith, I. (2017, April 27). Ian Smith: Anzac Day is time we should speak up. The Advertiser (Adelaide). www.adelaidenow.com.au%2Fnews%2Fopinion%2Fian-smith-­ anzac-day-is-time-we-should-speak-up%2Fnews-story%2Ff21c2231d2721df349f57 6bc1af33d77 The Odd Spot. (1953, April 11). News (Adelaide), p.  3. https://trove.nla.gov.au/ newspaper/article/134282945/11114840 The Sydney Morning Herald. (2005, April 25). Howard says Anzac legend defines nation. The Sydney Morning Herald. www.smh.com.au%2Fnational%2Fhoward-says-­ anzac-legend-defines-nation-20050425-gdl6v1.html Turner, R., Kaur, H., Carmody, J., & Parke, E. (2020, February 21). RSL bans welcome to country, aboriginal flag at Anzac Day, remembrance day ceremonies in WA. Australian Broadcasting Corporation. https://www.abc. net.au/news/2020-­0 2-­2 1/rslwa-­b ans-­w elcome-­t o-­c ountr y-­a boriginal-­f lag-­ anzac-­remembrance/11986324 Winter, J. (1995). Sites of memory, sites of mourning. Cambridge University Press. Winter, J. (2006). Remembering war: The great war between history and memory in the twentieth century. Yale University Press. Wyatt, B. [@benwyatt] (2020, February 21). It is worth noting that our New Zealand partners embrace the language of their Indigenous peoples at Anzac Day ceremonies [Tweet]. Twitter. https://twitter.com/benwyatt/ status/1230651550499917825?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweete mbed%7Ctwterm%5E1230651550499917825%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_ &ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.rnz.co.nz%2Fnews%2Fworld%2F410105%2F old-­school-­thinking-­plan-­to-­ditch-­aboriginal-­language-­flag-­for-­anzac-­day

CHAPTER 8

Reflections on Representation, Remembrance and the Memorial Brook Garru Andrew, Marcia Langton , and Jessica Neath

Introduction Representation, Remembrance and the Memorial (RRM) (2016–2019) was an Indigenous-led international comparative research project centring on the memorialisation of the Australian Frontier Wars and the possibility of representing the magnitude of Indigenous loss and survival in a national memorial or memorials.1 The Frontier Wars in Australia occurred from British invasion in 1788 up to and including the last documented massacre of Aboriginal people in 1928 in Coniston, Northern Australia.2 However, the violence continued The authors wish to acknowledge the Boon Wurrung and Wurrundjeri peoples of the Kulin Nations as the Traditional Owners of the land and waters on which we work and live. We pay our respect to elders past and present.  The RRM project was funded by the Australian Research Council Indigenous Discovery program and hosted at Monash University’s Faculty of Art, Design and Architecture. For more information, visit www.rr.memorial. 2  For an account of the Frontier Wars, see Henry Reynolds’ Forgotten War (2013, NewSouth Publishing). For recent mapping of massacre sites during the Frontier Wars, see the University of Newcastle Colonial Frontier Massacres, Australia (Date Range 1780 to 1930) webpage—https:// c21ch.newcastle.edu.au/colonialmassacres/map.php. 1

B. G. Andrew • M. Langton University of Melbourne, Melbourne, VIC, Australia J. Neath (*) Monash University, Melbourne, VIC, Australia e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 B. Carlson, T. Farrelly (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook on Rethinking Colonial Commemorations, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-28609-4_8

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into the twentieth century with the government control of Aboriginal movement in the reserve system, suppression of culture including languages, and forced labour. Many argue that it endures now with Aboriginal deaths in custody, forced family separation, and limitations on self-determining futures (Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, 2020, p.  1; Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, 1997). Led by the Wiradjuri/Celtic artist, curator and researcher Brook Garru Andrew, with mentoring from Professor Marcia Langton, a descendant of the Yiman people, and research assistance by Dr Jessica Neath, the project did not seek to provide this memorialisation or represent the violence of colonialism. Rather, it asked questions and raised visibility through an international comparative approach that was based on case studies and conversations with a range of people invested in memorial projects across the world. The project investigated international examples of monuments to genocide such as the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in Berlin (designed by Peter Eisenman) and community approaches to remembering frontier violence such as the annual ceremony at the Myall Creek Memorial, which commemorates the 1838 massacre in New South Wales. The intention behind the comparative research was to raise the urgency in talking about sites and histories in Australia implicated in the Frontier Wars, to hold a research space for different viewpoints about memorialisation, and to consider future possibilities for memorialising that are not bound by narrowly defined Western conventions. There is still important research to be done in documenting and historicising what has been achieved to date in Australia in terms of memory work, but this was beyond the scope of the project. Nor could the project be an extensive overview of all that has happened internationally in addressing traumatic histories, particularly the international impact of the Holocaust and the ongoing genocide in other societies and continents, such as the contested lands of West Papua. While the project grew from visual arts research, it was not circumscribed by an investigation of public art. Instead, it took a broad view of art and creativity informed by Indigenous methodologies which do not silo creative practice into discrete categories, and where relationships and processes can be more important than tangible outcomes (Lillie et  al., 2020; Bunn-Marcuse & Jonaitis, 2020; Martin, 2017). Memorials can be embedded through cultural practices such as smoking ceremonies, looking after ‘Country’, or healing walks. They can also be presented in the form of major urban developments. A memorial is never one thing. Even in the traditional Western form of an obelisk or monumental statue, the choice of location, the activities that happen there, the relationships that deepen, and the words used on plaques make for complexes that permeate personal, cultural and civic lives. The process of creating these places of memory is important, and our project was particularly inspired by the years of memory work in establishing the Sand Creek Massacre National Historic

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Site in the United States, the 1938 National Day of Mourning in Australia, and the Document Center of Cambodia. One of the main activities of the project was a forum and exhibition in Melbourne, Australia, in June 2018. The project gathered people from across the globe who are directly involved in this memorial work for a week of sharing stories and processes of memorialisation, and culturally embedded knowledge systems. Many people and institutions supported this forum, including Monash University, the University of Melbourne, RMIT, the National Gallery of Victoria, and the Koorie Heritage Trust. Importantly, senior Boonwurrung Elder N’Arweet Professor  Carolyn Briggs AM  was involved in planning the forum and was there to welcome delegates from across the globe to Melbourne, the Aboriginal lands of the Wurrundjeri, and Boonwurrung peoples of the Kulin Nation. The forum realised the comparative methodology of the project connecting local and international perspectives as a strategy to propel the discussion around memorialisation into new territory and expand beyond local and national debates. It provided a space for exploring new ways to work, share, and learn through solidarity. Memorialisation is different for and in different cultures, and the focus of remembering may not be for a particular event or loss but rather to create a space for shared memory, to reconnect with culture, and to forge new relationships. In this chapter, the researchers reflect on the findings of the RRM project and forum, focusing on the kinds of methodologies needed in these spaces of trauma, the importance of grassroots voices, and land as a living entity that can drive memorial processes. Through the RRM forum, they created a space for different viewpoints of what memorialisation can be, with inspiring examples of how grassroots voices and local methodologies have succeeded in creating nationally and internationally recognised memorials. The following is an edited transcript of a conversation between the authors that took place in August 2021.

Conversation Jessica: Thinking back to the beginnings of the RRM project in 2014, what was always so central was the international comparative approach, and the whole project was structured around this. Brook, when you were designing the project and what you wanted to do, what was your rationale for this approach? Brook: For me, the Australian Research Council (ARC) grant was an opportunity to go deeper with my concern around international comparisons, to really increase understanding of our past internationally, but also to have this dual and mutual support. It was about going deeper into some of my interests and concerns that had been driving my visual art practice for a number of years. I had been researching archives and cultural materials in museums and libraries to uncover hidden histories and to increase awareness of the First Peoples of Australia. Our ancestors experienced the direct violence of the Frontier Wars, and also the violence of misrepresentation under the ruse of primitivism. I wanted to make people aware of what had happened to Indigenous peoples in

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Australia, the complexity of our cultures and knowledge, and highlight connections between histories of genocide and colonialism internationally. Marcia: The question, “How should we memorialise the dead?” is key to the RRM project and how we can learn from artists, from memorial projects in Australia and internationally. Brook, this had been something you have been considering for some time. I remember your photographic series Gun Metal Grey (2007). I wrote an essay called “Ethical Portraits and Ghost-scapes” for the National Gallery of Victoria, which acquired this work and reflected on your approach to working with the thousands of ethnographic photographs of Aboriginal people, long deceased, which you had found in a number of library and museum collections including the Royal Anthropological Institute in London, and the Mitchell Library in Sydney. In making this work you were thinking about the metaphysical problem of our relationship with the dead in the image, and making connections with memorial cultures outside Australia, thinking about other populations who were ‘disappeared’ such as during the military regimes in Argentina and Chile in the 1970s and 1980s. Your research included interviewing Rosa, vice-­ president of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo (Mothers of the Disappeared), a women’s human rights movement that started in Buenos Aires in April 1977, when four mothers demonstrated to draw attention to the plight of their children under the military dictatorship of the time. They continued for three decades to campaign for those who were taken from them. In my essay, I argued that it: is difficult for Australians to consider the fate of thousands of Aboriginal people as akin to that of the Disappeared. The reduction of Aboriginal history to caricatures and slogans that stand in for partial and reductionist understandings of the experience of the stolen generations, for instance, leaves most of us with few tools for the cosmopolitan comparisons that Andrew makes. (Langton, 2014, p. 59)

I argued that you are giving dignity to the unnamed dead who are laboriously documented by these anthropologists, but they have no names. There’s no mention of their pain, there’s no mention of the historical circumstances in which they were taking these photographs. It was all just physical anthropology studies and yet, here we are with thousands of photographs of Aboriginal people who are now dead, but they don’t have names. What the anthropologists did was strip them of their human dignity, but you gave them back their dignity in the way that you treated them in your artworks. Memorialisation is about this act of remembering the dead, but more than that, giving them dignity, don’t you think? Brook: Yes, these questions about memorialising the dead were there in the Gun Metal Grey exhibition. I also made the artwork, Jumping Castle War Memorial for the Sydney Biennale in 2010. I had been thinking about the lack of memorials and spaces in Australia to remember the events of the Frontier Wars to reflect on not only the Australian experience but to connect our

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histories to those internationally who are also still fighting for visibility in a colonial-dominated public space. I was supported at Monash University to design a project around these concerns. Jessica: I came on board as a research assistant in the grant writing phase in 2014. At the time I was doing my PhD in Art History at Monash University looking at the work of Ricky Maynard, the Tasmanian Aboriginal photographer; the memorialisation of war and representation of traumatic histories were some of the topics of my PhD research (Neath, 2019). Ricky Maynard made a photograph of the war memorial on Cape Barren Island for his series Portrait of a Distant Land (2005–2008). It is one of those small community-built memorials, a simple obelisk form made out of stone and concrete that was unveiled in 1937 (see Image 8.1). There are hundreds of these in townships across Australia that began appearing after World War I, commemorating the service of men and women in wars fought overseas (see Inglis & Brazier, 2008). Yet, this example was built by the Aboriginal community on Cape Barren Island, off the northeast coast of Tasmania. A former Aboriginal Reserve, the population on the island were subject to various government acts under assimilation policies of the twentieth century. A number of men from this community served in World War I even though government regulation at the time did not officially allow service by Aboriginal people (Maynard, 2017). Ricky’s text that goes alongside the image of the memorial asking why these men served when they had no right to vote and for a nation that stole their land in the Frontier Wars. For me, this work really brought attention to the lack of memorialisation around the Frontier Wars in Australia when compared to the dominant culture of war remembrance. I was brought up in this white culture of commemorating white service in wars fought overseas, the Anzac legend, which under Prime Minister John Howard (1996–2007) became a dominant national story (Lake et al., 2010). Yet, since at least 1979, there has been a public debate with many calling for the Australian War Memorial, the most grand memorial in Australia’s capital of Canberra, to represent and commemorate the Frontier Wars.3 When I started to work with Brook on the ARC application, he brought that lens of international practice, looking at Holocaust memorialisation for instance, and the work of artists such as Christian Boltanski and Jenny Holzer. 3  Geoffrey Blainey in 1979, quoted in Michael McKernan’s Here Is Their Spirit: A History of the Australian War Memorial, 1917–1990 (1991, University of Queensland Press, p.  293). Henry Reynolds makes this argument in his works The Other Side of the Frontier (1982, Penguin), Fate of a Free People (2005, Penguin) and Forgotten War (2013, NewSouth Publishing). Other examples are John Pilger’s suggestion in his documentary film The Secret Country (1985), Richard Frankland’s open letter to the Prime Minister John Howard and the Australian War Memorial in 2005 (Age Editorial, 20 June 2005) and the remarks by the Governor General William Deane at the launch of Ken Inglis’s book Sacred Places: War Memorials in the Australian Landscape in 1998. Such a display is also recommended in Ian D. Clark and Henry Reynolds’ report Sharing History: A Sense for All Australians of a Shared Ownership of Their History (1994, Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation, Australian Government Public Service).

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Many of our men went off to fight in both world wars, I have often wondered why. These men were Indigenous to this land. They were not recognized as citizens of Australia. Had no right to vote, yet served and died for a nation, one that had been stolen from them. Those who did return, returned to a world of degradation. Lest We Forget. Cape Barren Island War Memorial opened in 1937

Image 8.1  Ricky Maynard, A Free Country from the series Portrait of a Distant Land, 2005. Silver gelatin print, 43.0  ×  41.7  cm image; 60.7  ×  50.5  cm sheet. (© Ricky Maynard. Image courtesy of the artist)

Importantly, he was proposing a different methodology that is driven by a diversity of Indigenous perspectives and lived experiences—voices that were mostly absent from published literature. The RRM project brought together different ways of thinking about and of approaching memorialisation. The methods and methodology really challenged my training as an art historian. Brook: In Australia, there is mostly silence around the histories and memories of the Frontier Wars in the public sphere. Many Indigenous artists have

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reckoned with this denialism (see below). Yet, the fantasy of untouched shorelines and of peaceful settlement still circulates today, and there is inadequate consideration for the intergenerational trauma that continues to affect Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. There is not enough consideration of what the history of frontier violence means for the nation, for everyone, not just recognition of Aboriginal people and land but also the traumas we have inherited and the way this violence shaped the emergence of the modern Australian nation. There are no memorials that compare to Berlin’s Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe for example, or the Killing Fields in Cambodia, both of which are readily visited by Australian tourists. I was driven by these questions and problems: Would a national memorial of this kind of prominence inspire mainstream Australia to accept this true history? Would a statement of acknowledgement and recognition at the Australian War Memorial help, as many people argue? Or perhaps truth-telling is something that needs to be driven by local communities; significant community-led memorialisation is happening in Australia with Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples coming together to remember. When should, or how should, the grassroots join with the national agenda? Is a national memorial even possible, given that the Australian continent is actually made up of hundreds of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander nations? The diversity of Indigenous peoples brings a myriad of cultural practices relating to remembrance and mourning, as well as different experiences spanning a one-hundred plus year history of the frontier, it would be difficult to create one thing. I wanted to consider the lack of memorialisation of violence against Indigenous peoples and the ignorance of this history in the dominant cultures. I was also really fascinated with the Holocaust and the way in which Jewish cultures had successfully built museums or politically and socially agitated for visibility around the world. For our communities here in Australia we haven’t had access to that fiscal support, to the political and social agitation on that scale, it was about how do we draw attention to it. I was also reflecting on the global art world and its reception of this violence. Often, within the art world, you have people like Jenny Holzer, who are not Indigenous, or people of colour, but they get a lot of visibility. I think she does really great work, the same with Rachel Whiteread, who made the Nameless Library, the Holocaust memorial in Vienna which opened in 2000. Another example is the work Lustmord (1994) by Jenny Holzer, which uses bones and text to represent the massacres and rapes during the conflict in ex-­ Yugoslavia. However, I was asking myself, why are these artists, like Christian Boltanski, so incredibly famous within the Western art world and other Indigenous artists or from the diaspora are not? Jessica: There have been a number of important artworks made by First Nations artists that acknowledge these histories in Australia. The landmark work of course being The Aboriginal Memorial (1988)—completed for the

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bicentennial year and originally made for the Sydney Biennale.4 Curated by Djon Mundine and made by the Ramingining artists of Central Arnhem Land, it is now permanently housed in the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra. The 200 traditional hollow log coffins, each represent a year of European settlement and the First Peoples who died defending their land. It really challenged the narrative around the bicentenary as a celebration of the so-called discovery of Australia. Marcia: Also, in 1988, there was a massive demonstration in Sydney against the official bicentenary celebrations with more than 40,000 people protesting for Aboriginal land rights, marching from Redfern to Hyde Park. At the time, it was the largest march ever held in Sydney. After the march, everybody went to La Perouse for an all-night festival. By 1992, this celebration had been formalised into the Survival Day concert, known as Yabun, which continues today (see Image 8.2). La Perouse has a significant history of Indigenous resistance being the one place in Sydney with an unbroken connection of Aboriginal occupation for thousands of years. It has long been a place of protest and of remembering the Old People. From the shores of La Perouse, Aboriginal people witnessed the

Image 8.2  Uncle Max Eulo begins the day with a smoking ceremony in front of artist Brook Andrew’s Travelling Colony caravan, Yabun, Victoria Park, Sydney, Thursday, 26 January 2012. (© Photograph by Jamie James. State Library of New South Wales) 4  In 1988, Australia celebrated the Bicentennary to mark 200 years since the First Fleet of British convict ships landed in Sydney to establish a British colony.

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landing of Lieutenant Cook in 1770, and these stories are still handed down today as oral histories. In 1970, when white Australia was celebrating the 200th anniversary of Cook’s landing at Kurnell with a grand dramatic re-enactment, including a speech by Queen Elizabeth who was in attendance, there was a silent march from Hyde Park to La Perouse. There the group lay wreathes into the bay during the re-enactment bringing visible attention to their protest. Jessica: I remember the 1988 bicentenary and becoming aware of another story through a similar action. I was a child at the time and with my family joined thousands of others on the harbour in Hobart, Tasmania, to welcome the two hundred Tall Ships, the Bicentennial Fleet that was recreating the journey made from England to Australia in the late eighteenth century. However, there was also a protest boat carrying the Aboriginal flag and members from the Tasmanian Aboriginal community who were reminding us all of the history of violence and racism behind the celebration. I had similar moments of learning some of the true histories of Australian frontier violence, of massacres, of nuclear testing at Maralinga and other trauma through artworks, not through curriculum at school. I remember seeing the work by Badtjala artist Fiona Foley Lie of the Land (1997) installed outside the Melbourne Town Hall that really questioned the legality of land ownership: how did the land around Melbourne—which I now know is Kulin land— became the property of the Crown, or made available for so-called settlement? I remember a series of sandstone pillars that towered over the footpath, each with a word inscribed on it like ‘blankets’, ‘flour’ or ‘beads’—these were the items listed in John Batman’s controversial treaty of 1835 when he attempted to secure over 60,000 acres of Kulin land, an unofficial and unequal trade that far from accounted for the wealth of this land. Brook: Yes, First Nations artists have really driven this truth-telling. Artists have been working with these themes for some time. The hard work done by the artists of the Boomalli Aboriginal Artists Cooperative founded in 1987 in Redfern (Sydney), the curator Hetti Perkins, and established artists including Tracey Moffat, Judy Watson, and Richard Bell have all been very vibrant in this area. Younger artists today like Tony Albert and Yhonnie Scarce are continuing this truth-telling. Yhonnie has made work about the massacre at Elliston in 1849, also known as the Waterloo Bay massacre. I first saw it exhibited in Melbourne NOW at the National Gallery of Victoria and more recently when we visited the Australian Centre of Contemporary Art (ACCA) for her survey show in 2021. The work Blood on the Wattle (Elliston 1949) (2013) remembers the victims of this horrible massacre with hand-blown glass vessels which she calls yams—also remembering the traditional food source (see Browning, 2014). Yhonnie has also made a lot of work reflecting on the history and fallout of the nuclear testing in Woomera, South Australia, where she was born, including the large-scale commission Missile Park first exhibited in this survey show at ACCA. In my role on the curatorial team for the group exhibition Yoyi! Care, Repair, Heal at the Gropius Bau, Berlin, I have invited Yhonnie to exhibit Missile Park. This show is opening in September 2022. It is so important for

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these stories to be told; for the story tellers to travel overseas and connect with other international Indigenous artists. This is something to be proud of, and it has also been an agenda in theatre and dance for some time with productions by Bangarra Dance Theatre and Ibijerri Theatre Company, as well as in film and literature. Marcia: The title of Yhonnie Scarce’s work Blood on the Wattle references the landmark book of the same name by Bruce Elder published in 1988, the Bicentennial year, which documented the massacres of Aboriginal peoples across Australia (Elder, 1988). When I first started at the University of Melbourne 21 years ago, I had been working with Kimberley artists from when I lived up north, with the Jirrawun Arts Cooperative from the East Kimberley (now known as Warmun Art Centre); Paddy Bedford, Peggy Patrick, Rusty Peters, that mob and their art advisor Tony Oliver. They created all this art about the massacres in the East Kimberley. There was an exhibition of this work in 2002 at the Ian Potter Museum of Art at the University of Melbourne called Blood on the Spinifex—also in reference to Elder’s book—though using spinifex to reflect on their Country as Wattle, the Golden Wattle is from southeastern Australia. I wrote an essay for the catalogue titled ‘Hungry Ghosts’, reflecting on how these artists were using visual and performative languages that referenced ancient religious and cultural principles but which also revealed dangerous facts about recent history and their determination to remember the dead (Langton, 2002). There are eleven massacres remembered in the Gija area including at Bedford Downs, Mistake Creek (see Image 8.3), and White Rock (Daiwul Gidja Culture Group, 1999, p. 65). The artists had been making these massacre paintings for a number of years but were motivated to create this exhibition after a visit by Governor General Sir William Deane to the area in 2001. Deane had visited Mistake Creek and apologised to Gija elders about this massacre event in a special episode of the 7:30 report on ABC television. Of course, this exhibition and media coverage caught the wrath of the self-described revisionist historian Keith Windschuttle. In a piece for the Australian Financial Review, he denied these massacre events. The prime minister of the time, John Howard, along with Keith Windschuttle and his followers at Quadrant, denied the massacres and opposed an apology for this history. Yet, there had been something like 28 massacres in the East Kimberley and many of these paintings were about actual events in living memory. As the curator Tony Oliver shared with me, Mistake Creek by Timmy Timms was one of his first paintings on canvas (Image 8.3), painted at the Charles Darwin University under the auspices of Timmy’s art collective, Jirrawun Arts. He painted them alongside his brother-in-law Paddy Bedford who at the time made two paintings about the Bedford Downs massacre. The artists actually created a ceremony about one of the massacres and it became a performance with the paintings which they brought down here to Melbourne called Fire Fire Burning Bright. It was also a performance at the Perth Festival. So it was quite an extensive program with a wide-ranging impact.

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Image 8.3  Timmy Timms, Mistake Creek Massacre, 2000. Natural pigments on linen canvas. 150 × 180 cm. (Art Gallery of New South Wales. © Timmy Timms/Copyright Agency 2022)

Brook: This was around the same time that the National Museum of Australia tried to have an exhibition about the frontier massacres. The museum re-opened in 2001 under the leadership of Dawn Casey and included the exhibition Contested Frontiers in the Gallery of First Australians. I remember visiting the curators when they were setting it up and there was a real sense of momentum behind it. I was so excited. The exhibition grappled with this history, in particular the Bells Falls Gorge massacre on Wiradjuri Country, and included Indigenous oral histories as sources of evidence. Again, Windschuttle and others criticised the historical account discrediting Indigenous memories. Howard was so appalled he ordered a review of the National Museum which ended in replacing Dawn Casey as director. Marcia: Yes, this was height of the History Wars, where there was this absolute denial that there were massacres (Macintyre & Clark, 2003). This denialism by many historians and politicians, particularly Keith Windschuttle and John Howard, initiated research that led to some understanding that what happened in Australia was genocide, or several genocides. Some historians, notably Colin Tatz, Tony Barta, Dirk Moses, Robert Manne, Lyndall Ryan,

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and Henry Reynolds, researched from the records and found the documentary evidence of widespread ‘extermination’ of Aboriginal people and other attempts to destroy Aboriginal life and culture. Lyndall Ryan has since led a research project at the Centre for 21st Century Humanities at the University of Newcastle to compile the records of these events and create a map of frontier massacres. The project now lists over 400 massacre events across Australia with documented evidence and a very rigorous methodology (Ryan et  al., 2017–2022). Brook: We found that for many of the artists and communities who have been affected by frontier violence and the massacres in Australia that we spoke to for the RRM project, this culture of denial exacerbates the intergenerational trauma that many continue to experience. Worimi artist and curator Genevieve Grieves called it the “Violence of Denial” in a collaborative exhibition for Artshouse, North Melbourne in 2017 (see also Greives, 2018). We also found this internationally: when communities, artists, and organisations are memorialising genocide, they often have to contend with the politics of dominant narratives. Meeting with Youk Chaang and Savina Sirik from the Document Center in Cambodia really highlighted this for me. They have worked tirelessly to recognise the violence that is not given visibility in the national stories that focus around tourist sites, including the S21 Prison and the Killing Fields at Cheong Ek (DeFalco & Sirik, 2021). This is an ongoing issue for many fighting for that violence to be recognised and acknowledged. Marcia: It never ends, and genocides never cease. This is all about how the conquerors write the histories, isn’t it? And therefore, they don’t want us having a say. This is why we keep demanding truth-telling. The Uluru Statement demanded it in 2017 and now the Yoorrook Justice Commission in Victoria (established 2021) will be the first truth-telling body in Australia.5 This is a landmark action, following in the steps of the Royal Commission into Deaths in Custody (1987–1991) and the Report of the National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from Their Families (1997). The Uluru Statement, which is yet to be enacted, calls for a First Nations Voice to Parliament and a Makarrata Commission to supervise a national process of agreement-making and truth-telling.6 Brook: One of the driving questions of the RRM was asking what are the blind spots that prevent the recognition of the Aboriginal death and suffering as genocide or as a national history that needs to be memorialised. There have long been demands for the Australian War Memorial to acknowledge these histories. It is heartening to see new commissions like the artwork by Daniel Boyd on the grounds of the Australian War Memorial. Jessica: Yes, it is interesting how this shift is occurring at the Australian War Memorial. The national institution is starting to recognise the Frontier Wars through their art collection with acquisition of some of those paintings from 5 6

 For more information, visit https://yoorrookjusticecommission.org.au.  For more information, visit https://ulurustatement.org/.

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the Kimberley about the Killing Times. The War Memorial has acquired some of the earliest paintings from this region made about massacres: Queenie McKenzie’s work Horso Creek Killing (1996) and Rover Thomas’s Ruby Plains Massacre (1985) in time to present alongside their exhibition For Country: For Nation, which opened at the end of 2016. This exhibition was a long time coming and the first to deeply consider the service by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in wars fought overseas. Though the Australian War Memorial has thus far refused an official and permanent representation of the Frontier Wars in its displays, claiming it is the mandate of the National Museum, there are a number of items that speak to this history in its collection. One item, that Michael Bell, a Ngunnawal and Gomeroi man and the Indigenous Liaison Officer at the Memorial, shared with me, is a photograph of William Punch.7 The photograph is one of those thousands of studio portraits made of men before they went off to war in their military uniform. William Punch was an Aboriginal man, most likely from the Wiradjuri nation. He lost his family when he was a baby in a massacre event carried out by white settlers in the late nineteenth century and was adopted and raised by a white family in Goulburn, New South Wales. In 1915 he enlisted to serve in the World War I as a young man and paid the ultimate sacrifice; he was buried with full military honours in Bournemouth East Cemetery, England. There are a few more objects in the War Memorial’s collection that speak to the Frontier Wars. The scholar Professor Greg Lehman, a descendant of the Trawulwuy people of northeast Tasmania, explained to me, the connections and entanglements of these war histories need better understanding and acknowledgement. It is an entanglement that the Waanyi artist Judy Watson has considered in her painting Pale Slaughter 2015 (Image 8.4). The work lists the weapons imported into Australia and used in frontier violence throughout the nineteenth century and into the twentieth. Listing both “Gallipoli” and “Coniston” in this painting, Judy reflects on how massacre events continued after World War I, with perpetrators including returned servicemen. Brook: The RRM project for me was about how to connect in a grassroots way around these issues of visibility and memorialisation—and less targeted at researching the big institutions like the Australian War Memorial, which really represent the dominant narratives of the nation. When we visited places, like the Sandcreek Massacre National Historic Site in the United States, or organisations in Cambodia including the Document Center of Cambodia and the Bophana Center, or when I was invited in my art practice to curate the first artist camp at the site of the former Blacktown Native Institution in 2013, what has been most important to me is the connections I have made with communities that are doing really meaningful things and making change. For the RRM project in 2018, we created a forum in Melbourne that brought together 7  Jessica Neath was the Spiros Zournazis Memorial Fellow at the Australian War Memorial in 2017.

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Image 8.4  Judy Watson, pale slaughter, 2015. Pigment, paint, pastel, watercolour pencil on canvas, 179  h  ×  96  w  cm. (National Gallery of Australia. © Judy Watson. Image courtesy of the artist)

some of these individuals and communities—to create a space for these kinds of connections to prosper, bringing together people who are working tirelessly to memorialise the disappeared, to bring visibility to genocide, and to honour their ancestors. We devised the forum with a small working group including N’Arweet Carolyn Briggs, senior Boon Wurrung elder and Traditional Owner of Melbourne; James Oliver, an academic in creative practice and a Hebridean Gàidheal from the Isle of Skye (Scotland); Indigenous heritage expert Dr

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Ormond-Parker; Professor Greg Lehman, a descendant of the Trawulwuy people of North East Tasmania; and from RMIT University, architects Jock Gilbert and Christine Phillips. Jessica: The RRM forum was not an academic conference where literature, artworks, public art or monuments are surveyed and analysed, or where new research findings are presented. Rather, it was designed to generate new methodologies for memorialisation, to strengthen a network of people and communities with group discussions, creative workshops, an exhibition, as well as individual presentations and some public events including a day-long program of talks at the National Gallery of Victoria. Brook specifically sought out delegates who had the cultural authority to speak about particular traumas. It was important to platform Indigenous voices and those with intimate connections to these histories. For example, Aunty Sue Blacklock, Elder of the Nucoorilma people from Tingha, part of the Gamilaraay nation in northwest New South Wales, came down to talk about the Myall Creek Massacre Memorial. This is a national heritage-listed site near Bingara, New South Wales, where hundreds gather each year to remember and acknowledge the unprovoked massacre of 28 unarmed Aboriginal people by white stockmen on Myall Creek Station in 1838. As a descendant of one of the survivors of the Myall Creek Massacre, Aunty Sue initiated the Myall Creek Memorial in the late 1990s and continues to guide the work of the Friends of Myall Creek.8 We were also joined by Judy Watson, who (as mentioned above) has made incredible work about massacres in Australia, including recently for the 2018 exhibition Beyond Myall Creek at the New England Regional Art Museum, which commemorated the 180th anniversary of the massacre. Brook: At the forum, we had some difficult conversations about how to share these stories in public spaces. Telling these histories, stories, and memories of massacre and genocide in Australia requires care and sensitivity. Many of these experiences are still incredibly raw for survivors and descendants of survivors. Like other artists and communities around the world we are asking, how do we deal with these things that we carry in our bodies through intergenerational trauma? We want recognition and we want to be healed. We want other people to take some responsibility. Bringing some of these artists, community leaders, and projects together from around the world was so important in creating a sense of solidarity. We were joined by Nelson Abidi, a curator at the Ugandan National Museum who is involved in post-conflict community reconciliation activities in northern Uganda, focusing on displacement, post-trauma, and healing within communities through memorials; the British art historian Annie Coombes, who has written about memorialising Apartheid in South Africa; and Shiraz Bayjoo, an artist from Mauritius who seeks to represent the complex histories of colonialism and slavery of this island state. Mauritius is interesting because it was actually uninhabited until the seventeenth century

8

 For more information, visit the Friends of Myall Creek website—https://myallcreek.org/.

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when it became a strategic port caught up in the slave trade and other colonial exploits. Jessica: We were able to share Shiraz’s work in an exhibition we held alongside the forum in the MADA Gallery at Monash University. It also included artworks by Judy Watson, Julie Gough and Roberta Rich, Eisenmann’s architectural plans for the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, and plans for a Keeping Place alongside the Myall Creek Memorial in New South Wales. Through this exhibition we could present this international comparison through a creative dialogue between artworks.9 We included Shiraz’s film Ile de France (2015), which offers an immersive experience with footage highlighting objects, environments, and architecture that reveal encounters between Mauritius today and its colonial past. The film takes us on our journey through rugged coastlines, rainforests, the ruins of the first Dutch settlement, and other landscapes but always coming back to the ocean, as a force shaping this island and its history and pointing to a much longer history beyond colonialism (Image 8.5). Brook: It was important in the forum not just to focus on art making and we held a series of focused conversations with invited delegates where we talked about different ways of memorialising and of healing. Otto Braided Hair, the Northern Cheyenne representative from the Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site near Colorado in the United States, talked about the healing run that takes place each year to remember the massacre of 1864 (see Kelman, 2013 for a detailed account). The run from Sand Creek to Denver

Image 8.5  Shiraz Bayjoo, film still from Ile de France, 2015. HD Film. (© Shiraz Bayjoo. Image courtesy of the artist) 9

 For more information, visit http://www.rr.memorial/exhibition.

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commemorates those who were killed in the massacre. It was initiated in 1999 by Lee Lone Bear, a Northern Cheyenne descendant of massacre survivors. Initially the event was only for descendants of survivors, Cheyenne and Arapaho runners. Otto spoke about the process of forgiveness, when other people including descendants of the perpetrators wanted to join the annual event. He had a hard time accepting that, but his Elders said to him, “You have to forgive these people”. That process was really important, and Aunty Sue talked also spoke about it as a kind of healing. Jessica: Yes. Both Otto Braided Hair and Aunty Sue Blacklock are involved with memorials that have an annual gathering each year, including descendants of survivors and of perpetrators coming together. At Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site, they have an annual healing run in November that re-­ enacts part of the journey the perpetrators made after the massacre when they rode triumphant from the massacre site back into Denver displaying the body parts of victims. At Myall Creek, each June hundreds of people gather at the hall down the road from the memorial site. Together they walk up the road for about a kilometre to the memorial site where they are greeted by healing smoke. Following the memorial pathway, there are a series of plaques that describe the events leading to the massacre. At each plaque, local school students read out these stories before gathering at the main rock (Image 8.6). There’s definitely an

Image 8.6  Annual memorial walk at the Myall Creek Memorial, New South Wales, June 2017. (Photo: Jessica Neath)

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aspect of re-enactment or reliving the history. It’s an embodied experience, this memorial. Brook: Yes, smoking ceremonies are always an embodied experience. It is especially practiced in southeast Australia and reminds us of the special relationship to the land. One use is to cleanse the body and spirit before entering a sacred place or take part in ceremonial business. Jessica: Yes, and performing cultural practices in contemporary ways is a priority for the community around the Myall Creek Memorial. The committee has been raising funds for a permanent cultural and education center near the site. Since our forum, the first phase has been completed comprising an outdoor performance space with amphitheatre. What was most important to the community was creating a space for ceremony and for the performance of contemporary cultural practices including song and dance. This is a way of reclaiming a place of genocide. Brook: At the forum we spoke in depth about creating these cultural spaces, and at several moments throughout the week-long forum we had moments of song which were incredibly moving. Singers included Jessie Lloyd, the creator of the Mission Songs Project, and also our delegates Otto Braided Hair and Corina Marino. Following a couple of days of focused delegate conversations, we opened the forum up to a day-long session we called the Design Charettes, which was facilitated by the Indigenous architect Carroll Go-Sam who is a descendant of Dyirbal Bama peoples of gumbilbara Country, north Queensland. It was hosted by the RMIT School of Architecture and Urban Design who provided several work and presentation spaces and invited a group of 45 architects, landscape architects, and other creative practitioners to work alongside our forum delegates. We focused on three really significant sites that are propositions for development in Australia: the National Resting Place proposed for Canberra by the federal government’s Advisory Committee for Indigenous Repatriation; the Truth and Reconciliation Art Park proposed for Hobart as part of the Macquarie Point Development; and the Blacktown Native Institution project in Western Sydney. Addressing significant aspects of Australian history—the continual mishandling of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander human remains, frontier violence, and the removal of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families—there is scope for each to become internationally renowned sites similar to Berlin’s Memorial to the Murdered Jew of Europe. We had community representatives from all three sites to lead each workshop group, following closely the principles of the Australian Indigenous Design Charter.10 Carroll introduced the day with moving words sharing her own family oral history of massacre violence in Queensland. Stories which are as recent as the 10  For a copy of the charters developed by Brian Martin, Jefa Greenaway, Russell Kennedy and Meghan Kelly, visit the Australian Indigenous Design Charter website—https://indigenousdesigncharter.com.au/australian-indigenous-design-charter/.

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1940s in living memory. In the workshops, she asked the group to consider the power of these memories and how they can be conveyed in a spatial manifestation, or through a connection with audiences. Across the course of the day, there were a lot of different stories shared, and this felt really important to bring them together. We weren’t trying to fix the world, but we wanted there to be authentic and solid representation there from different places. There was some sensitivities and complexities shared at the forum around these three significant sites. Jessica: Yes, there was some deep conversation about community ownership of the proposed sites, and the need for Indigenous-led processes. How to realise these ambitions when governments or large corporations also have a vested interest? For example, there were different viewpoints on the proposed Truth and Reconciliation Art Park in Hobart with representatives from Aboriginal communities in Tasmania, the Macquarie Point Development Corporation, and the Museum of Old and New Art (MONA) who are all involved in this proposed development. Many questions were raised in the forum, including who’s this reconciliation place for? Is it going to bring any benefit to us? Who has the cultural authority to lead this process or speak this story of genocide? Who owns that land? Brook: These questions are important. They really unearth or expose the trauma that is colonialism, that is in our societies and our communities at the moment. The violence colonialism has created for our communities includes dispossession from Country and from cultural practices and language. Under the reserve system speaking one’s Aboriginal language was banned and our cultural heritage was removed for museum collections overseas. Colonialism has created division and lateral violence, questioning who is and who isn’t a Traditional Owner, who can mourn and cannot not, who can access particular cultural materials, especially in urban areas where there has been so much displacement and dispossession. This pain and this mess are often revealed in these spaces we create of unpacking histories and imagining new futures. Marcia: I’m listening carefully to what you’re saying, Brook, and thinking, ‘We can’t ignore the trauma that all of this creates’. When we come together to talk about these things, having deep conversations about these memorial processes can be challenging and bring up unresolved histories and pain—especially when we are the victims of this history. The pain often leads to fights and arguments over the detritus that colonialism leaves. Brook: I absolutely agree with you, Marcia. It is about healing, which is an ongoing process. It’s about how do we live with it. If we’re talking about having difficult conversations, what was so important at this forum was having the delegates from Australia and internationally and bringing their expertise. These are people who work very deeply with communities, with diverse social and cultural practices and across different kinds of sites and projects. They are able to cut through all of that and provide a pathway that transcends these horrible trauma politics and the ineptitude of governments and corporations.

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We had Savina Sirik there who has worked for the Document Center of Cambodia and in preparing communities and individuals for the Khmer Rouge Tribunal. She has been very active in memorialisation and genocide education post-genocide Cambodia, which have emerged as significant aspects of seeking justice and healing (DeFalco & Sirik, 2021). Similar to Otto Braided Hair and the development of the Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site in the United States, they have both worked with different levels of governments, international organisations, and also local communities. There are lots of different stakeholders in these sites and projects. I think it takes a particular kind of person to be able to engage in these spaces and hold these difficult conversations without perpetuating trauma. It is about having a deep understanding of the importance of care and awareness of your responsibilities. What I call yindyamarra, which is a Wiradjuri word for ongoing respect and to go slowly. Sharing these methodologies at the forum was a way to bring a different perspective and support to projects at Indigenous sites in Australia. To ask questions: How are people doing this internationally? How are people doing this locally? How can we learn from each other and provide support? We can’t control the government, we can’t control other things, but we can control the way we work together and how we make decisions together to make these things visible. Jessica: The National Resting Place is an idea that has been around for some time in Australia, at least since the 1990s. It is an idea that has circulated in various levels of governments and through cultural institutions, and the museums which currently house thousands of ancestral remains of First Peoples. I don’t need to explain this to you both, but I did not know until recently that, for example, the National Museum of Australia holds over 700 unprovenanced remains in a storage unit on the outskirts of Canberra. Not to mention the thousands of ancestral remains in overseas collections. This is a colonial legacy that remains deeply troubling—this Western culture of collecting bodies and other cultures if fueled by ideologies of race and white supremacy. I know, Brook, that you have encountered ancestral remains in your research and creative practice in museum collections in the United Kingdom and Europe, and how traumatic this has been. The workshop around the proposition of a National Resting Place was quite productive at the Design Charettes because it had that National Report as a guide. This report by the Advisory Committee for Indigenous Repatriation was released in 2014 and it really articulates the diverse viewpoints on what this resting place should be.11 Marcia: Yes, this question of what to do with these ancestral remains cannot be answered by the institutions or by governments. It needs to be an Indigenous-led discussion and development. There has been a long campaign in Australia since at least the 1970s to repatriate ancestral remains, which were collected in their thousands for so-called scientific examination, but often as 11  The report can be accessed here www.arts.gov.au/what-we-do/cultural-heritage/indigenousrepatriation/national-resting-place.

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trophies of Western conquest. In Australia, the repatriation of ancestral remains with provenance involves commemorative gatherings and the designation of memorial sites. When we know where these remains are from, when they can be provenanced, they need to be returned to Country, to their place of origin. But the thousands of unprovenanced remains sitting in museum boxes also need to be treated with dignity—these are our Old People. So the national working group for the Advisory Committee for Indigenous Repatriation consulted across Australia and there was consensus to create a national building for these remains. The 2014 report proposes a resting place to care for the remains of Indigenous ancestors who are unable to be returned to their communities of origin. The findings from these consultations gave clear direction for the complex, and the Australian Institute for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS) is currently developing the Ngurra Cultural Precinct which will include the National Resting Place. This will stand on Country that is home to the Ngunnawal and Ngambri people, and also located in Commonwealth Place in the National Triangle, close to the centre of government and alongside other principal Australian cultural institutions including the Australian War Memorial. In creating a National Resting Place, there is an opportunity to re-think how we take care of these Old People, and how these remains and associated documents can be used to educate the public about this history and its ongoing effects. It will be a multifunctional place that can house these remains with ceremony. Jessica: Yes, in our RRM research we spoke with Neil Carter (Gooniyandi and Kidji), Cultural Heritage Repatriation Officer for the Kimberley Aboriginal Law and Cultural Centre, and one of the authors of the 2014 report who has been working with communities in the Kimberley to repatriate remains for over 20 years (Ormond-Parker et al., 2020). He said he wanted it to be a learning space, but also a meeting place, ‘a living, pulsating place’. Neil also spoke of being out on Country, of visiting special water holes, out in the desert for ceremony, and likened these waterholes to a monument (see  Neath & Andrew, 2018). Brook: We also found this thinking in the conversation at the Design Charettes around the Blacktown Native Institution, the importance of the living presence of the land itself (see Andrew & Hibberd, 2022). This is acknowledged in Aotearoa/New Zealand where the Whanganui River on the North Island has been granted the legal rights of a person by the New Zealand government. This river is hugely significant to iwi (Māori people) and continuing cultural practices. In 2017, after the longest-running legal case in New Zealand’s history, the river was granted legal personhood by an act of the New Zealand parliament, which recognises the river as an indivisible and living being called Te Awa Tupua. Corina Marino, a descendant of the Darug or Dharug people of Western Sydney, and one of the community leaders driving the Blacktown Native

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Image 8.7  Corina Marino addressing the working group for the Blacktown Native Institute, RR.Memorial Forum, Thursday 28 June, RMIT Design Hub. (Photo: Brook Andrew)

Institution project led the workshop about this site at the Design Charettes (Image 8.7). She spoke about this site in similar terms, of wanting to heal the site, to heal Country, as a way of moving forward. This outcome is a very different memorialisation to a building. It’s about returning the site to its original landscape, and this was an idea explored in the Design Charettes. Jessica: Otto Braided Hair also talked about the massacre site at Sand Creek in similar terms. In managing the site, they haven’t proposed a large monument but are working with the land to rehabilitate it and are pleased to find the animals are returning. Marcia: Yes. There are other outcomes for memorialisation beyond a monumental building or structure. For example, the proposition for the National Resting Place to include a research space where latest developments in science and technology will be used to identify ancestral remains, if possible, if there is evidence or documentation. There is an objective of ultimately returning ancestral remains to communities of origin. Therefore, the National Resting Place is not necessarily the end point for these remains, they could be returned to Country. Part of healing from the trauma is to lay people to rest, to ensure they are returned to Country.

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Brook: Yes, in the workshop for the National Resting Place, the architects articulated this movement in a series of arrows, a visual mapping that is beyond a static building. The forum revealed that there are different kinds of memorialisation to the narrowly defined Western conventions. The success of the forum was providing a platform for these different viewpoints and ideas. Often there are these stereotypes of what a memorial or monument should be, including the idea of the anti-monument which could be used to describe what’s happening at Blacktown Native Institution, for example. For me, making these definitions is not so important. The RRM project sought to make visible grassroots views on what and how these places could be activated or memorialised or owned, the futures they can have. I believe this is most important.

References Andrew, B., & Hibberd, L. (2022). The Blacktown Native Institution as a living, embodied being: Decolonizing Australian First Nations Zones of trauma through creativity. Space and Culture, 25(2), 168–183. https://doi.org/10.1177/ 12063312211073048 Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW). (2020). Indigenous life expectancy and deaths. https://www.aihw.gov.au/reports/australias-­health/indigenous-­life-­ expectancy-­and-­deaths/ Browning, D. (2014). A lens and a mirror. Artlink, 34(2), 44–47. Bunn-Marcuse, K., & Jonaitis, A. (Eds.). (2020). Unsettling native art histories on the Northwest Coast. University of Washington Press. Daiwul Gidja Culture Group. (1999). Cross cultural awareness program course notes. DeFalco, R.  C., & Sirik, S. (2021). The fluctuating visibility of everyday violence in Khmer Rouge Era Cambodia. Southern California Interdisciplinary Law Journal, 31. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3898763 Elder, B. (1988). Blood on the wattle: Massacres and maltreatment of Australian Aborigines since 1788. Child & Associates. Greives, G. 2018. Connecting with wounded spaces. UnMagazine 12.1. https:// unprojects.org.au/article/connecting-­with-­wounded-­spaces/ Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (HREOC). (1997). Bringing them home: Report of the national inquiry into the separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families. Australian Human Rights Commission. https://www.humanrights.gov.au/our-­work/bringing-­them-­home-­report-­1997/ Inglis, K. S., & Brazier, J. (2008). Sacred places: War memorials in the Australian landscape. Melbourne University Publishing. Kelman, A. (2013). A misplaced massacre. Harvard University Press. Lake, M., Reynolds, H., McKenna, M., & Damousi, J. (2010). What’s wrong with Anzac: The militarisation of Australian history. NewSouth Publishing. Langton, M. (2002). Hungry ghosts: Landscape and memory. In B. Starr (Ed.), Blood on the Spinifex (pp. 6–11). Ian Potter Museum of Art, University of Melbourne. Langton, M. (2014). Brook Andrew: Ethical portraits and ghost-scapes. Art Bulletin of Victoria, 48, 47–62.

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Lillie, J., Brown, J. J., Larsen, K., & Kirkwood, C. (2020). The relationship is the project: Working with communities. Brow Books. Macintyre, S., & Clark, A. (2003). The history wars. Melbourne University Press. Martin, B. (2017). Methodology is content: Indigenous approaches to research and knowledge. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 49(14), 1392–1400. Maynard, J. (2017). Missing voices: Aboriginal experiences in the Great War. History Australia, 14(2), 237–249. Neath, J., & Andrew, B. (2018). Walking on bones. In L. Ryan & J. Lydon (Eds.), Remembering the Myall Creek massacre (pp. 130–160). NewSouth Publishing. Neath, J.  C. (2019). The photography of empty lands: Tasmanian history in the art of Ricky Maynard and Anne Ferran. PhD Thesis, Monash University. Ormond-Parker, L., Carter, N., Fforde, C., Knapman, G., & Morris, W. (2020). Repatriation in the Kimberley. In The Routledge companion to indigenous repatriation (1st ed., pp. 165–187). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203730966-10 Ryan, L., Debenham, J., Pascoe, B., Smith, R., Owen, C., Richards, J., Gilbert, S., Anders, R. J., Usher, K., Price, D., Newley, J., Brown, M., Le, L. H., & Fairbairn, H. (2017–2022). Colonial frontier massacres in Australia 1788–1930. University of Newcastle. https://c21ch.newcastle.edu.au/colonialmassacres/

CHAPTER 9

Lest We Forget: The Tunnerminnerwait and Maulboyheenner Saga A Template for How to Build Public Monuments to the Frontier Wars Joseph Toscano

Introduction When I was a young boy, over six decades ago, I was intrigued by the monuments you could see in every city, suburb, town and hamlet around Australia. I was fascinated by the inscriptions on the monuments that told the story about Australian men and women who had made the ultimate sacrifice fighting other people’s wars overseas to protect their country, their families and their way of life. As I grew older and met various Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in high school and university, it slowly dawned on me that the land I walked on was covered with the blood of tens of thousands of men, women and children who had, since Indigenous Australians made first contact with Europeans in the late sixteenth century, made the ultimate sacrifice protecting their country, their families and their way of life on their lands—not somebody else’s country overseas. I soon realised, apart from the descendants of this country’s First Nations people, very few people in Australia were willing to acknowledge the brutality of the colonisation process, let alone having any interest in building public monuments to acknowledge the Frontier Wars

J. Toscano (*) Tunnerminnerwait and Maulboyheenner Commemoration Committee, Melbourne, VIC, Australia © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 B. Carlson, T. Farrelly (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook on Rethinking Colonial Commemorations, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-28609-4_9

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whose legacy continues to have a profound impact on both Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians today. Although I was born in Brisbane, Queensland, in 1951, I have lived in Melbourne since late 1976. I graduated from the University of Queensland in 1975 with a Bachelor of Medicine and a Bachelor of Surgery and did my internship at the Royal Brisbane Hospital in 1976. I’ve been an activist since 1968 and was involved in many radical struggles during the six years I studied at the University of Queensland. In late 1976, I was told by Queensland Health not to bother applying for any public hospital positions with Queensland Health as I had been blacklisted by the Bjelke-Petersen government for my involvement with the Self-Management Group, a Libertarian Socialist/ Anarchist Alliance in Brisbane. I was able to secure a medical appointment in the Victorian public health system and moved to Melbourne in late 1976. I continued to be involved in radical struggles, joined the Community Radio Federation—3CR in Melbourne, where I continue to broadcast three radio programmes: Anarchist World This Week, Talkback with Attitude and Radical Australia. I pride myself on my knowledge about radical struggles, having been involved in many campaigns and written numerous articles about Australian radical history. In 2002, while rummaging through a second-hand bookshop in Hampton, Melbourne, trying to find a book to review for the Anarchist Age Weekly Review, I came across what looked like an interesting book: Jack of Cape Grim by Jan Roberts (1986). When I opened the book, I was dumbstruck by my lack of knowledge about what is, in my opinion, one of the most pivotal moments in the history of the Frontier Wars in this country. The story of Tunnerminnerwait, Maulboyheenner, Truganini, Pyterruner and Planobeena is something that all Australians should be familiar with. It is a love story, a story of survival against all the odds, a story of armed resistance, rebellion, compassion, brutality and, most importantly of all, hope. In addition to Jan Roberts’ (1986) work, the history of the palawa group has also been researched by Ian MacFarlane (1984), Clare Land (2014) and myself (Toscano, 2008). The overview presented here has been drawn from these respective analyses of historical accounts.

What’s in a Name? Tunnerminnerwait, the son of Keeghernewboyheenner, was born on Robbins Island in lutruwita1 (Tasmania) in 1812. He was also known as ‘Peevay’, ‘Napoleon’, ‘Jack of Cape Grim’ and ‘Tunninerpareway’. When he was born, European sealers had been hunting elephant seals and kangaroos on Robbins 1  Please note that use of Aboriginal terms from lutruwita (Tasmania), such as names for places and peoples, come from the Aboriginal language known as palawa kani, which does not use capital letters in the same way as English. For example, ‘palawa’ is a collective term referring to the Aboriginal people of lutruwita.

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Island in northwest lutruwita for the previous eight years. By the time he had turned 13, nearly all the elephant seals and kangaroos on the island had been wiped out. One year later, the Tasmanian Land Company moved onto the North West tribe’s land, establishing sheep stations at Circular Head and Cape Grim. On 27 November 1827, a northwest palawa Aboriginal group came across sheep and several shepherds at Cape Grim. The meeting ended in disaster for the northwest tribes when one palawa man was shot dead and one shepherd was wounded in the scuffle that developed when the shepherds attempted to entice the palawa women into their huts. A few days later, the group drove a mob of sheep to their deaths over the cliffs at Victory Hill in revenge for the palawa man’s death. Six weeks later, the shepherds ambushed a group of palawa who were mutton birding, killing 30 men, women and children. They threw their bodies over the same cliffs, giving Cape Grim its European name. The northwest tribes continued to suffer at the hands of the sealers and shepherds; palawa men were shot on sight, women were kidnapped and taken to the sealers’ camps on karta (Kangaroo Island) and Southern Victoria, where they were forced into sexual servitude. Within thirty years of colonisation, only 60 of the 500 members of the northwest tribe had survived the onslaught. In June 1830, George Augustus Robinson, the chief protector of Aborigines in Tasmania, reached northwest lutruwita. He was attempting to round up the remnants of the free tribes of lutruwita and resettle them on an island off the north coast to prevent them from being ‘exterminated’. The only palawa in the northwest he came into contact with were six abducted women and one abducted man, an 18-year-old who had been named ‘Jack of Cape Grim’. He forced the sealers to give up the northwest palawa by threatening to prosecute them for shooting the palawa women’s husbands. Robinson persuaded the palawa to come with him, promising they would be able to return to their tribal lands. Tunnerminnerwait escaped from Robinson a few months after his initial capture because he realised that Robinson had no intention of returning him to Robbins Island. He was recaptured by Robinson soon after and became part of a group that accompanied Robinson in the search for the Big River people between October 1830 to January 1831. Tunnerminnerwait developed a long and complex relationship with Robinson and in October 1835, he accompanied him to wybalenna (Flinders Island). Robinson held Tunnerminnerwait in high regard and spoke of him as being agreeable and hard-working. Maulboyheenner was also known as ‘Robert Smallboy’, ‘Jemmy’, ‘Timmy’, ‘Tinney Jimmy’, ‘Robert of Ben Lomond’ and ‘Bob’. He came from one of the inland tribes that had lived on the turapina (Ben Lomond) highlands. Maulboyheenner came into contact with Robinson as a relatively young man and, in early 1830, accompanied him, his party of white assistants and the five survivors of the lunawanna-allonah (Bruny Island) people (Woureddy, his two sons Peter and Davy Bruny, and two young girls Dray and Pagerly) on the

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difficult journey along the west coast to help persuade the west coast guerrilla bands to lay down their arms and move to wybalenna. Maulboyheenner was also part of Governor Arthur’s infamous ‘Black Line’ campaign that was conducted later that year to drive palawa peoples away from the ‘settled’ areas. Maulboyheenner joined the dynamic leader of the Stoney Creek tribe, Kannerherlargenner (Eumarrah), and Tunnerminnerwait in October 1831 to find the Big River tribe and force them to join Robinson’s group. In 1832, Maulboyheenner accompanied Robinson on his second foray down the west coast. In 1835, Robinson boasted that the entire palawa population had been removed to wybalenna. He received a reward of 1000 pounds for his services to the government. The 33-year war between European colonisers and the ‘Tasmanian Aborigines’ was finally over. Over 10,000 palawa had lived in lutruwita when Europeans first colonised the island in 1803. By 1835, less than 350 had survived. Three-quarters of those who were transferred to wybalenna died by 1837. Only 89 palawa transferred to wybalenna were still alive when Robinson decided to offer his ‘services’ to the New South Wales (NSW) government. The Tasmania government, keen to see the back of the last of the palawa, offered to bankroll Robinson’s ‘generous’ offer as long as he was allowed to take all those that had survived the European holocaust to the mainland.

Move ’em Out! George Augustus Robinson had big plans for himself and ‘his Aborigines’. He never had any intention of returning the survivors of the 33-year holocaust back to their tribal lands. Robinson wanted to use his ‘domesticated Aborigines’ to ‘civilise’ the ‘mainland Blacks’. Even before John Batman set up his illegal settlement at Port Phillip Bay, the Governor of Van Diemen’s Land, Sir George Arthur, wrote on 27 September 1835 to the Colonial office in England informing them that George Robinson was willing to take ‘his Aborigines’ from wybalenna to the newly established settlement at Portland Bay on the Australian mainland, as they could aid in communicating and conciliating with the natives there. The Tasmanian authorities, keen to deport the last of the palawa, even offered to pay for their maintenance on the mainland. The NSW authorities, however, strongly opposed their deportation to the mainland although the British Colonial office was in favour of the move. Governor Arthur highlighted that the deportation of the last surviving palawa to wybalenna had greatly increased the value of Crown land in lutruwita, and he believed Robinson, using the same tactics he used on the island, could do the same for the value of Crown land on the mainland. On 12 December 1838, Robinson was appointed chief protector of Aborigines at Port Phillip. Sir George Gipps, the governor of NSW, made it clear to the Colonial Office in England that he did not support Robinson’s plan to bring the palawa across

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to Port Phillip. He only allowed Robinson to bring ‘one family’ with him to act as his personal attendants. Robinson, full of his own self-importance, brought 16 of the surviving 89 palawa from wybalenna with him to Port Phillip. Governor Gipps informed Robinson that the NSW government would only provide rations for a family of four. Robinson and the 16 palawa arrived at Port Phillip in January 1839. He intended to use the palawa as mediators and educators. Even a man as hardened as Robinson was shocked by the terrible living conditions the Aboriginal people who were living on the outskirts of Melbourne were subjected to. Robinson wanted the Aboriginal people of Victoria to be able to continue to live on government-owned remnants of land in the districts they had traditionally lived in. The chief protector introduced the palawa group to the Yarra tribes almost as soon as he arrived, but noted their reception was anything but friendly. Governor Gipps, concerned about the cost involved, complained to the Colonial Office. He severely limited the rations that could be given to Aboriginal peoples after October 1839. George Augustus Robinson had four assistant protectors to help him try to address the impact that colonisation was having on the local Aboriginal tribes, particularly introduced disease, alcohol, massacres and poisonings. The chief protector of Aborigines was expected to do his job despite overt hostility from white settlers and the press, and very little financial support from the Sydney Treasury. When Robinson arrived with 16 palawa from wybalenna, no government supplies were allocated for the palawa. Some months after their arrival, Superintendent La Trobe provided rations for four of them. The palawa were expected to look after themselves. Robinson’s four assistants had been appointed by the British Colonial Office; none had been to Australia before. Charles Dredge, Edward Parker and William Thomas were Methodist school teachers. The fourth assistant, Charles Sievwright, was a former military officer who had been forced to sell his military office to pay off his gambling debts. On 26 March 1839, after the new assistant protectors had familiarised themselves with their positions, they were allocated areas of responsibility by Robinson. Dredge was sent to northeast Victoria, Parker to northwest Victoria, Sievwright to the western districts and Thomas was responsible for Melbourne and Westernport. Sievwright was shocked to find that on his first journey to the Western Districts, two stations he visited had Aboriginal skulls placed over the doors as a warning to any Aboriginal people coming to the station. Robinson was more interested in creating an empire for himself than in the plight of the Aborigines he was employed to protect. Faced with hundreds of Aborigines camped around Melbourne, many of them dying from typhus fever, dysentery, syphilis, pneumonia, the cold and famine, Robinson lost interest in the plight of the 16 palawa he brought across with him from wybalenna. Some were loaned out to work for Robinson’s sons; others were expected to look after themselves. On 2 October 1840, the New South governor released Robinson from any responsibility for the palawa he had brought to Port Phillip.

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The Myall Creek Massacre In June 1838 at Myall Creek, north of Sydney, 28 Wirrayaraay people—mainly women and children—were tied up and hacked to pieces with swords. Their dismembered bodies were partially burnt. Seven assigned convicts were brought to trial for the massacre. They were acquitted by a jury after 15 minutes discussion. The Anti-Slavery Society in England and the Aborigines’ Protection Society in London were disgusted by the massacre, the trial and the comments made by the jurors involved in the trial, such as reported in The Australian, 18 December 1838: “I look on the blacks as a set of monkeys, and the earlier they are exterminated from the face of the earth, the better… I would never see a white man hanged for killing a black” (cited in Korff, 2020, para. 24), An active Aborigines Protection Society in London and a sympathetic colonial administration in England forced NSW Governor Gipps to hold a retrial. After the second trial, the assigned convicts working as shepherds were found guilty. They were hung soon after the second trial, on 18 December 1838. Interestingly, their masters—the squatters who ordered the massacre—were never questioned, charged or brought to trial. The seven assigned convicts were executed to keep the colonial office off the NSW government’s back. In May 1839, Gipps, who was also responsible for the newly established Port Phillip settlement, declared in the Government Gazette in 1839 that he wanted to bring the settlers and the Aborigines ‘to equal and indiscriminate justice’. The hanging of the seven assigned convicts in Sydney in late 1838 and Governor Gipps’ announcement five months later caused consternation among the Port Phillip settlers. The open warfare that had been occurring between Aboriginal people and squatters in the Port Phillip region and the rest of Victoria became a secret covert war of destruction almost overnight. Nobody talked about what was happening; bodies of Aborigines with gunshot wounds were dismembered and burnt. Robinson’s assistant protectors were shunned. William Thomas, the assistant protector for the Melbourne region, reported that the squatters and their shepherds were incensed about the Sydney hangings. Thomas reported that poisoning had become the favourite weapon of the coloniser and the Blacks stopped accepting flour, milk and bread from the squatters because of the fear of poisoning. The local Aboriginal people now found themselves in an impossible situation, driven from their lands at the point of a gun, concerned about the very real possibility that the provisions that were being offered to them by squatters and assistant protectors alike could be poisoned, and unable to hunt and gather food on their traditional lands. Many died of starvation. Those like Tullamarine and Jin Jin, who stole potatoes grown in South Yarra or killed sheep to survive, were treated as criminals. The lucky ones like Tullamarine and Jin Jin were arrested; the unlucky ones were legally hunted down and slaughtered. The palawa of lutruwita were of little use to the Chief Protector Robinson. Maulboyheenner and Walter Arthur were sent to assist white ‘explorers’

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trekking to South Australia. Woureddy and a few of the older men were sent to work on Robinson’s sons’ properties. Robinson reportedly found the women hard to handle. They absconded on a number of occasions and had to be recaptured. In August 1840, Superintendent La Trobe, concerned about Robinson’s capacity to deal with the ‘local Aborigines’, asked the NSW governor to relieve Robinson of responsibility for the palawa group. He was officially relieved of any responsibility for their care on 2 October 1840. Left to their own devices, the palawa group tended to gravitate to the Westernport region where Thomas, the Assistant Protector for the Melbourne region, had been sent to set up a ‘Blacks camp’ to distribute rations to encourage the hundreds of Aboriginal people who were camped round the settlement in Melbourne to move away. It is known that Isaac, one of the 16 palawa, was in early 1841 going around the Westernport region telling the settlers to arm themselves as five ‘Black fellows’ were coming down to cause mischief. On the pretence that they were going to join Thomas’ camp—Tunnerminnerwait, Maulboyheenner, Pyterruner, Truganini and Planobeena—5 of the original party of 16 vanished into the Westernport bush by August 1841. Planobeena was Tunnerminnerwait’s wife; Maulboyheenner was involved in a relationship with Truganini. This little band of two men and three women were familiar with the white man’s ways. They knew how to use firearms; they knew how to survive in the bush. It was six years since the settlement of ‘Melbourne’ (on Naarm) was formed and over 8000 whites lived in the new town. The local Aboriginal people had to a large degree been subdued and posed little threat to the settlers. In October 1841, fear and trepidation swept through the town as the exploits of the palawa became known. Many of the settlers had come to Naarm from lutruwita, and they were aghast their old foes—the palawa who were only defeated after a 33-year brutal and bitter struggle whereby palawa were legally shot on sight—were mounting a determined resistance to white settlement on the outskirts of Naarm in Dandenong and the Westernport region.

All Out Warfare In 1840, the Dandenong Ranges and the Westernport region were dense bush. The stations set up by the squatters were established in clearings they had hacked from the scrub. The palawa began their campaign in the Dandenong region. They robbed Mr. Horsefal, a squatter living in the Dandenongs, of his fowling piece. Walking up to 30 miles a day to evade capture, they robbed a number of other stations. They mainly stole firearms, sugar, flour and tea. The firearms they collected were much more than they could use themselves. Considering they were trying to move quickly through the bush to evade capture, it is highly likely they were collecting firearms to distribute to the local Aboriginal peoples. It is recorded their first strike against squatters was conducted with the help of local Aboriginal peoples.

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The palawa raided the hut of Mr. Watson, the overseer of a small open-cut cliff-face mine at Cape Patterson that had been established to provide coal for Naarm. Following their normal practice, they spared the women in the hut, ordering them into the bush, stole guns and ammunition and then set fire to the hut, ensuring that it couldn’t be used by the settlers in the future. On one of the few occasions when they didn’t get away without exchanging shots, the hut’s overseer and his son-in-law, Walter Inman, began shooting at the party; the palawa fired back wounding Walter in the leg. Walter Inman and Mr. Watson made their way to a squatter’s station for assistance. A party of seven whalers, who were walking along the beach from their camp at Lady’s Bay, came across the deserted mining settlement, soon after shots were exchanged. Seeing some people a few hundred metres away in the bush, who they thought were the miners, two of the whalers—William Cook and Yankee— went into the bush to investigate. Within five minutes of them leaving, two shots rang out. The palawa set up an ambush for Mr. Watson and his son-in-law William Inman. The two whalers William Cook and Yankee stumbled into the ambush prepared for Watson and Inman. Cook dropped dead as a result of a gunshot through the ear. Yankee, shot in the side, was killed by a number of blows to the head. Samuel Evans, one of the whalers who was concerned about the missing men, organised the rest of the party to look for them. They walked into the path of Watson and Inman, who, concerned about the approaching men, shot over their heads. One of the whalers, who continued the search for the men, stumbled across their bodies on the beach. The whalers and miners saw the party of palawa who killed the whalers on a nearby hill. They chased them but soon lost sight of them. They returned, burying the bodies near the mouth of the Powlett River. Superintendent La Trobe had been notified two days earlier, on 4 October 1841, that a party of Aboriginal people had robbed Mossies station at Westernport. La Trobe decided that same night to send troops to deal with the situation. Mr. Powlett, the commissioner of Crown Lands (who came to Westernport to sell off Aboriginal land to the squatters) and two police joined Lieutenant Samuel Rawson of the 28th Regiment who had been sent to Westernport in early October to protect the squatters from Aboriginal attack. On 10 October, four days after the killing of Yankee and Cook, Rawson and Powlett were notified about their deaths. They left in an open rowboat, hoping to quickly find the palawa. By this time, 14 armed men were involved in the hunt for their capture. After a fruitless day of searching, they decided to return to Naarm to find Aboriginal trackers to help them in their hunt. On their way back, they called in to see Mr. Westaway and his labourers, who told them they had been shot at during the night. The palawa freedom fighters had stolen guns and ammunition and 22 pounds in banknotes. Tunnerminnerwait, hoping to drive Westaway’s workers from Westernport, burnt the notes realising the timber cutters would leave their employer if he could not pay them. It took Rawson and Powlett five days by boat to get back to Naarm. They called in at all the squatter camps they came across, raising the alarm.

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On 29 October 1841, almost a month after the first raids had started, the Port Phillip Herald carried the first report about the raids across Dandenong and Westernport that were being conducted by the heavily armed palawa. Rawson and Powlett arrived in Dandenong on 29 October to meet up with a party of six policemen, six Black trackers, Mr. Thomas (the Aboriginal Protector for the Naarm area), and a few squatters. The palawa had travelled from Cape Patterson back to Dandenong on the same day the search party arrived to steal more guns, ammunition and supplies from the squatters. On 30 October, the palawa threw down the gauntlet to the pursuing party, leaving messages at a station that they would not be taken alive and would fight to the last man and woman. By now, the police party had swelled to 18 men on horseback and six on foot.

End Game The palawa freedom fighters arrived at Anderson’s station on 17 November. They waited until the men had left and then entered the house. Finding two women and a child in the house, Tunnerminnerwait led them out and stood guard over them while Maulboyheenner ransacked the house. The palawa took all the weapons they could find and all the supplies they needed. In all the raids they carried out, they never harmed any women or children. The men who were shot in the raids were usually shot in the heat of battle. They burned down the houses they raided to drive the squatters back to Naarm. Although they hoped the local Aboriginal people would be inspired by their example, not one joined their little group. If it wasn’t for the assistance of the Aboriginal trackers who became involved in the chase because they were promised they would receive guns and provisions for their help, it is highly unlikely the palawa—survivors of a bitter and brutal 33-year war against the British in lutruwita—would ever have been captured. Ironically, the Aboriginal trackers received a few trinkets and blankets for their troubles although they had been allowed to carry guns during the chase. The following day the pursuit party, which had now grown to 29 men on horseback, arrived at Anderson’s station. They were confident that with the help of the Aboriginal trackers, they would soon overtake the two men and three women travelling on foot who had caused consternation and panic among the squatters in the Dandenongs, Westernport and the Mornington Peninsula. The following day, they were camped less than a mile from where the palawa had set up their camp. That evening, William Thomas the assistant protector, volunteered to negotiate with the palawa. The rest of the party, believing the end of the chase was near, refused Thomas permission to negotiate. Soldiers, police, squatters and Black trackers woke up about 4am on Saturday 20 November. They moved out in single file, armed to the teeth, hoping to end the palawa freedom fighters’ rebellion by daybreak. They walked about a mile through a lagoon and across sand hills until the Aboriginal trackers pointed

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out the smoke coming from the palawa’s fire that was less than 30 metres away. The party was standing on top of a sand hill that overlooked the camp that had been set up in the gully below them. They formed a semi-circle with the men less than two metres away from each other and had advanced to within two metres of the camp fire, when all hell broke loose. The palawa’s dogs rushed at the posse; the palawa tried to slip into the scrub amid a hail of bullets. Samuel Rawson, believing all the palawa were dead, entered the camp. He found two of the women hiding under blankets. After putting handcuffs on them, he put a gun to their heads and forced them to call out to those in the scrub to surrender. A woman emerged from the scrub covered in blood. She had sustained a superficial wound to her head, the only casualty from the 30 to 40 shots that were fired at the heads of the sleeping group. One of the men who tried to escape from the scrub was captured, while the other, who had made his escape, decided to return when the women, who had guns trained at their heads, pleaded for him to return. The five palawa freedom fighters were handcuffed and had chains put on their legs. While they quietly awaited their fate, the ravenous soldiers, Aboriginal trackers, police and squatters made cakes from the 60 pounds of flour and sugar the palawa had with them. The prisoners were marched through the bush and arrived in Naarm six days later. They were taken before the Police Magistrate Major St John who took evidence from 12 witnesses. He committed Tunnerminnerwait and Maulboyheenner for the murder of William Cook and Yankee, and the three women Pyterruner, Truganini and Planobeena as accessories before and after the fact.

Judge Willis The five palawa freedom fighters were put on trial for the murders of the whalers on 20 December 1841, before Judge John Walpole Willis. In 1841, five years after the establishment of Naarm, the first Supreme Court was housed in a temporary structure at the corner of King and Bourke Streets. Judge Willis arrived at Port Phillip on 9 March 1841. Before Willis’ arrival, serious offenders who were committed for trial had to be sent with military and police escorts back to Warrane (Sydney) for trial. The expense involved in this undertaking gave Governor Sir George Gipps the excuse he needed to send Judge Willis— the most quarrelsome and difficult member of the NSW Supreme Court—to preside over the newly established Supreme Court at Port Phillip. To say Willis had a colourful past is an understatement. In 1840, the squatters who had established the settlement at Port Phillip were concerned about the large number of Aboriginal people who were camping on the Yarra banks. They had come to the settlement to receive the rations they had been promised. In October 1840, in a show of force, 200 Aboriginal people were arrested after a dispute in the camp led to the death of one of their group. By the time one of them, Bonjon, appeared before Judge Willis, the other 199 had ‘escaped’.

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Bonjon’s Defence Counsel made the point that the absence of a treaty with the Aboriginal peoples meant that Aboriginal people were therefore not subjects of the British Crown. Judge Willis agreed with the Defence Counsel, citing examples in Aotearoa New Zealand, Ireland and the East Indies, making the point that Aboriginal people cannot be considered foreigners in their own lands. He ruled that Aboriginal law had legal force in matters concerning the relationship between Aboriginal peoples. Judge Willis ruled that he therefore did not have the authority to try Bonjon for a crime he had committed against another Aboriginal person and set him free. In May 1842, the colonial government in London stepped in, and Judge Willis’ decision was overruled by the NSW Supreme Court. The law that Judge Willis administered in Port Phillip was based largely on the laws of England. His interpretation of those laws in the Bonjon case was overturned because his decision called into doubt the legality of the British colonisation of Australia.

Legal Manoeuvrings Judge Willis’ magnanimity towards Aboriginal peoples did not extend to conflicts between the ‘whites’ and ‘Blacks’. George Bolden squatted an area near the Hopkins River in the Western District. When an Aboriginal man, a woman and a child attempted to cross ‘his’ property to reach a camp set up by Aboriginal Protector for the Western District Charles Sievwright, he attacked them on horseback with whips. Tatkier, the Aboriginal man acting in self-­ defence, tried to pull Bolden off his horse. Bolden shot him in the stomach and beat the Aboriginal woman to death. The child escaped to Sievwright’s Aboriginal camp. Charles Sievwright, sickened by what had happened, reported the matter to Superintendent La Trobe. Bolden was put on trial but was acquitted on the direction of Judge Willis. La Trobe was concerned that Willis’ judgement meant that the squatters would recommence massacring the Aboriginal population. Willis clearly stated that, unlike the Bonjon case, the court had jurisdiction in matters of aggression between Blacks and whites. On 20 December 1841, the five palawa appeared before Judge Willis. If the defendants were unable to understand English or had been ignorant of Christian values, there is a slight possibility they would have been spared prosecution. Unfortunately, Robinson’s ‘civilising’ influence and his adamant assertions they had knowledge about the principles of religion and knew right from wrong, sealed their fate. In 1841, Aboriginal people were not equal in the eyes of the law. They could not testify or lay charges in the courts. The only way they could achieve even a modicum of justice was for a white witness to testify on their behalf. Considering the crimes against humanity that were being perpetrated against Aboriginal people were conducted in an undeclared frontier war, where those squatters doing the killing were the only white witnesses, the ruling against Aboriginal evidence ensured that crimes committed against Aboriginal peoples never made it to the colonial courts.

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Five Aboriginal people were executed in Naarm for crimes against whites between 1842 and 1848. Only one white man was convicted in court for killing Aborigines during this period and he only received two months incarceration for his crime. Considering the legal gun was loaded against the palawa defendants because they couldn’t call Aboriginal witnesses to speak in their own defence or were even allowed to tender an alibi, Redmond Barry, the Defence Counsel for Aboriginals for the Port Phillip region, mounted a spirited defence on their behalf. Just in case the name Redmond Barry seems familiar, the young Irish Aboriginal Defence Counsel is the same Redmond Barry who, as a judge, presided over the trials of a number of the Eureka miners charged with High Treason in 1855 and sentenced Ned Kelly to hang almost 40 years later in 1880, but those are other stories. As a public defender, Redmond Barry canvassed a number of interesting arguments in Judge Willis’ court, even arguing against the legal validity of the court proceedings. Barry began by arguing the defendants were not naturalised subjects of the Queen and therefore half of the jury should be composed of people who were also not subjects of the Queen. Judge Willis scoffed at this novel idea and refused to grant Barry’s request. One of the Crown Prosecutor’s main witnesses Samuel Evans, one of the whalers who ‘witnessed’ the whalers murders, had not turned up to the trial. Therefore, the Crown Prosecutor wanted to drop the charges of murder against the defendants as the only evidence the prosecution had was the defendants’ own confessions. Judge Willis, in no mood to accept this argument, ruled the murder charge would stand because he accepted Truganini’s pre-trial confession that Tunnerminnerwait and Maulboyheenner were responsible for the murders of the whalers. As the trial progressed, Barry highlighted the evidence was largely circumstantial and the confessions should not be accepted because they were given under duress. He attempted to win the jury’s sympathy by highlighting what every settler in the colony knew but refused to acknowledge—the terrible impact of colonisation on Aboriginal peoples. Barry asked the jury how a people treated in this manner could be asked to simply accept and forget what had happened to them, and be expected not to exact revenge for their dispossession and misery. He was encouraging the jury to put themselves in the place of the defendants, hoping the very people who had been responsible for their dispossession and murder would be able to identify and sympathise with the palawa. As there were no white witnesses to the murder, the prosecution’s case swung on the confessions of Maulboyheenner and Truganini. Tunnerminnerwait and Pyterruner and Planobeena made no confessions when captured nor while they were held in custody. Evidence that directly implicated Truganini in the murder of the whalers was ignored by the court. The defendants’ inability to give evidence or be cross examined meant that the evidence given by Powlett, Watson and Robert Robins (one of the whaling parties) about Tunnerminnerwait’s and Maulboyheenner’s admissions reportedly given when they were captured had a greater influence on the jury than it should have.

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George Robinson was called on to give character references for the defendants who he had known for 13 years. He praised Tunnerminnerwait, and told the jury that Maulboyheenner, as Langhorne’s and Bacchus’ servant, had accompanied them on an overland journey from Naarm to Tarntanya (Adelaide) and back, and had saved Langhorne’s life when they were attacked by Aboriginal people along the Murray. Robinson told the jury that Truganini had saved his life in lutruwita. Robinson praised their humanity, but sealed their fate when he told the court the accused understood the principles of religion and knew right from wrong. In his closing address, Barry highlighted the circumstantial nature of the evidence and the inappropriate manner by which the confessions had been obtained. He pointed out that not one witness could identify any of the accused. Barry urged the jury to acquit the defendants of the crimes they were charged with. Late Monday night on 20 December 1841, the jury came to their decision in just 30 minutes. They found Tunnerminnerwait and Maulboyheenner guilty of murder and acquitted Truganini, Pyterruner and Planobeena of all charges. The jury, moved by Barry’s arguments, recommended mercy for the men. Despite this plea for clemency, the following morning, Willis discharged the three women into Robinson’s care and sentenced Tunnerminnerwait and Maulboyheenner to death by hanging.

Carnival Time On the eve of the execution, Maulboyheenner refused his supper. Tunnerminnerwait, on the other hand, reportedly ate well and smoked a pipe, appearing unperturbed. The following morning, Tuesday 20 January 1842, spectators began arriving at the gallows trying to find the best spot to view the hangings. At 8am, the prisoners emerged from the Eastern watch house dressed entirely in white, including white calico caps. They were herded into a cart that had cloth stretched around it to give the condemned men some privacy. Mounted and border police led the cart through the city to ‘gallows hill’. A quarter of Victoria’s white population—some 5000 people— had come to see the hanging. The detachment of infantry, which paraded in their Sunday best, tried to keep some order in the crowd. Aboriginal people had climbed into the surrounding trees to witness the executions. The cart eventually drew up at the gallows, and the mood was akin to that of a carnival. The report in the Australasian Chronicle on Tuesday 15 February 1842 (courtesy of the National Library of Australia, cited in To Melbourne, 2021, para 9) noted “the most disgusting spirit” among the spectators, “scrambling for places; several even jumped upon the coffins, which stood at the foot of the gibbet, in their eagerness to watch”. The report also noted that while Tunnerminnerwait remained calm to the very end, Maulboyheenner was extremely distressed, his “feelings broke out in the most the most heartrending groans; the terrified and piteous looks he threw around him, pressing against everyone that spoke to

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him as if to catch some chance of salvation, were terrible to witness; he trembled violently” (para. 11). The executioner tied both the men’s hands behind their backs, which made it nearly impossible for them to climb the scaffold ladder, having to use their knees and chins and be dragged and pushed up to the platform. The crowd, seeing Maulboyheenner shaking violently on the scaffold, went quiet. The executioner fixed the nooses, pulled down their night caps over their heads and hurried down the ladder. At the signal, the executioner and his assistant pulled the rope. However, due to an obstruction, the platform only dropped a couple of feet and a terrible scene followed. The two men reacted to the shock with terror, convulsing and struggling. The executioner and his assistant did not seem to know what to do. A bystander rushed forward and knocked away the obstruction. Tunnerminnerwait died instantly, however, the botched manner in which the platform dropped meant that Maulboyheenner’s fall was broken. His noose had also become displaced, and he hung, writhing and struggling for a number of minutes before he was finally dead. The bodies were left on the scaffold for the regulation hour. They were cut down from their nooses, placed in coffins and taken to be buried in unconsecrated ground adjunct the Melbourne Cemetery, now Queen Victoria Market. On the way to the cemetery, their clothes were removed from the bodies (an executioner’s perk). Chief Aboriginal Protector Robinson was waiting for their coffins at the cemetery beside their open graves.

The Campaign We are all products of our upbringing, experiences, the circumstances we find ourselves in, the people around us and the political, social and cultural milieu we are part of. I was moved by the story of these five people. In an era when most Australians know more about Geronimo and Sitting Bull than Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander freedom fighters, I believed incorporating their story into the fabric of conversation of non-Indigenous Australians would be a good way to highlight the unfinished business that exists between Australia’s First Nations people and the rest of Australian society. Thinking about doing something is one thing, actually putting flesh on the bones of an idea is a different matter. The re-election of the Howard Coalition government (1996 to 2007) was a dark period in Australian history as far as reconciliation was concerned. Forces within Australian society, concerned about the ramifications of the High Court’s 1992 Mabo decision, had been mobilising both popular and political opinion by supporting commentators who openly denied the horrors of the colonisation process in Australia. In 2003, my late wife Ellen José, a renowned Torres Strait Islander visual artist who was a pioneer of the urban Indigenous art movement, mounted an exhibition at The William Mora Gallery, Melbourne, titled A Fact Is a Fact Is a Fact Is a Fact—Up Yours Windschuttle to publicly challenge the campaign

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that had been launched to deny the horrors of the past. This exhibition acted as a catalyst to put flesh on the bones of a campaign that would eventually lead to the creation of a public monument in a major capital city that would honour those First Nations people who died in the Frontier Wars. During the next three years, discussion about the best way to carry out such a campaign was a regular feature of discussions within the Anarchist Media Institute and the Wednesday Action Group, two radical groups based in Naarm we were foundation members of. In 2006 and 2007, the Anarchist Media Institute held public ceremonies at the corner of Franklin and Bowen streets in Melbourne, near the site the executions took place on 20 January 1842, to mark the 164th and 165th anniversaries of the execution of Tunnerminnerwait and Maulboyheenner. Despite an intensive campaign, interest among Indigenous and radical circles was minimal with fewer than 20 people attending the ceremonies during those years. The 2007 commemorations were followed by a discussion that led to the formation of the Tunnerminnerwait and Maulboyheenner Commemoration Committee (TMCC) whose task was to organise future commemorations. Seven of the participants present that day—Ellen José, Joy French, William French, Doug Chessman, John O’Brien, Rick Simpson and myself, Joseph Toscano—became the foundation members of the Tunnerminnerwait and Maulboyheenner Commemoration Committee. I was appointed Convenor. Following a series of discussions by the foundation members, radical activists who had over 200 years of experience of activism between them, it was decided to: . Appoint an Indigenous patron 1 2. Make overtures to radical elements of the Indigenous community in Victoria who we had worked with on a number of projects in the past 3. Define our aims 4. Publish the material we had collected 5. Set up a website 6. Launch a political campaign attempting to garner support from interested parties My late wife Ellen José and I had had a long relationship with Dr. Carolyn Briggs AM, a Boon Wurrung elder, and her husband, knowing them both for over 25 years. We asked Carolyn to become the Patron of the Committee as she had ancestral links with both palawa people in lutruwita and the Boon Wurrung in Victoria. Tunnerminnerwait, Maulboyheenner, Truganini, Pyterruner and Planobeena came from various parts of lutruwita and fought their struggle on Boon Wurrung land. The aims of the Tunnerminnerwait and Maulboyheenner Commemoration Committee were set down as:

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• To hold a yearly commemoration on 20 January at the site the executions took place (corner Franklin and Bowen St, Naarm (Melbourne)) • To acknowledge the injustice of what happened in January 1842 • To highlight the unfinished business that exists between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians • To work towards the establishment of a significant monument to publicly acknowledge what happened on that fateful day Once the aims were formalised, the TMCC made a number of important decisions before we launched the 2008 commemoration. The committee decided: . To only use the Indigenous names of those involved 1 2. To describe them as freedom fighters 3. To create a banner to launch the 2008 commemoration with the words ‘Lest We Forget’ on it, knowing full well it would create a public debate about the use of those words 4. To use the term ‘Lest We Forget’ on our publicity material 5. To begin a dialogue with the Melbourne City Council, the authority that would ultimately be responsible for financing and maintaining the monument 6. To form an association with radical Aboriginal activists like Robbie Thorpe, who we knew through our involvement with 3CR the Community Radio Federation 7. To never ask permission from the police or private security to hold the commemoration; we had already had confrontations with Victoria Police and private security when we held our commemorations in 2006 and 2007 The commemoration on 20 January 2008 was addressed by our patron Dr. Carolyn Briggs and a number of other radical speakers. No elected officials bothered to attend, let alone respond to our requests to attend and address the commemoration. As a direct result of the absolute refusal of any elected representatives to take up the TMCC invitation to speak, it was decided I stand as a Lord Mayoral candidate in the Melbourne City Council elections in 2008 to highlight our campaign and form the political alliances required to push our agenda to build a Frontier Wars monument. Armed with the ‘Lest We Forget’ booklet, I launched myself in the campaign to become Lord Mayor, despite knowing I had a snowflake’s chance in hell of being elected. Melbourne City Council elections are held by postal ballot, which means you are able to get your message across to the electors through the material you’ve written that the Australian Electoral Commission distributes to electors. As a candidate, you are invited to address public meetings around the city. My participation in the Lord Mayoral race on behalf of the TMCC gave us a legitimacy we would have not been able to obtain through

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solely using direct action. It allowed me to make preference deals with candidates who had a chance of being elected as councillors or Lord Mayor. This campaign well and truly put our aims in the political and public domain. Fortunately, our preference deal with the Greens paid dividends and Cathy Oke, a great supporter of our campaign, was elected as a Melbourne City Councillor. This gave us the foot in the door we so badly needed. During 2009, 2010 and 2011, we were able to pile political pressure on the Melbourne City Council. Despite a relatively solid campaign by the conservative legacy media to derail our attempts, we were able to gain momentum for the construction of a monument despite resistance from the Lord Mayor Robert Doyle and influential sections of the Melbourne City Council bureaucracy. In 2011, the TMCC had expanded the nature of the commemorations on 20 January by initiating a silent walk through Naarm to the site in the Queen Victoria Market complex where the six people publicly executed in 1842 were buried. • Tunnerminnerwait and Maulboyheenner: 20 January 1842 • Bushrangers: Charles Ellis (from England), Daniel Jepps (from USA) and Martin Fogarty (from Ireland) who were publicly executed on 28 June 1842 • Figara Alkepurata: an Aboriginal man from the Port Fairy region who was publicly executed on 5 September 1842 for the murder of Patrick Codd (a squatter who had a history of murdering Aboriginal people) despite the fact that he was over 100 miles from the murder scene I stood as a Lord Mayoral candidate in 2012 to continue to promote the Tunnerminnerwait and Maulboyheenner struggle as well as a number of other radical agendas. The political influence we were able to exercise in the Melbourne City Council grew as a number of the newly elected councillors came on board. The TMCC believe we have pinpointed the unconsecrated ground in the Queen Victoria Market where these six men are buried. Countless tales of the sound of Aboriginal clapsticks and Irish jigs were recounted by people who passed by the unconsecrated burial site late at night. We requested that ground-penetrating radar be used by the Melbourne City Council, which runs the Queen Victoria Market, to ascertain if our suspicions were correct. To date, although the site we have pinpointed has become a Queen Victoria Market information centre instead of a market stall, we have had no success in getting the Melbourne City Council to examine the area with ground-penetrating radar. If ground-penetrating radar confirmed our suspicions, the bodies of the Aboriginal men buried could be returned to their ancestral homelands. The bodies of the three bushrangers could also be reburied according to the wishes of any surviving relatives.

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In 2015, after lobbying by a number of Melbourne City Councillors, including Cr Cathy Oke, Cr Jackie Watts and Cr Rohan Leppert, the Melbourne City Council unanimously agreed to fund a significant public monument to honour Tunnerminnerwait and Maulboyheenner’s struggle. The TMCC had always requested that a public competition be conducted to select the monument design. Three Indigenous groups were shortlisted by a Melbourne City Council committee. These artists were sent to lutruwita by the Melbourne City Council to meet local Indigenous people who were familiar with the story of Tunnerminnerwait and Maulboyheenner. The Melbourne City Council chose the artists Brook Andrew and Trent Walter, who designed the installation that now stands at what was most likely the execution site. Even during the construction phase of the monument, it became apparent that attempts were being made to water down the radical nature of the installation. Eventually, a compromise position was reached regarding the wording on the monument and the construction phase went ahead. In 2016, the Tunnerminnerwait and Maulboyheenner monument at the corner of Victoria and Franklin Streets, Melbourne, was officially opened. The Tunnerminnerwait and Maulboyheenner Commemoration Committee continues to hold yearly commemorations at midday on 20 January to mark the anniversary of Tunnerminnerwait and Maulboyheenner’s executions. The commemoration is followed by a silent walk through the streets of Melbourne to what we believe to be their final resting place.

Conclusion This country has thousands of stories of resistance to the colonisation process. Every inch of soil is soaked in the blood of the original inhabitants. Most have never been acknowledged, let alone named. They were involved, and their descendants continue to be involved, in the struggle against the colonisation process. It’s important you learn about the history of where you live. Make contact with Indigenous organisations and individuals who are the custodians of that historical record. Form bonds to establish monuments to the Frontier Wars. Since 2020, the TMCC has radically shifted its focus. We hope to generate interest in a campaign to mark 20 January as National Indigenous Freedom Fighters Day. If it’s good enough that we have a day to mark the sacrifices of

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Australians who have died in wars mostly fought overseas, then it’s time those First Nations people who died defending their country, their way of life and their families be remembered. Finally, I’d like to pay my respects to all those people, both Indigenous and non-Indigenous, who made the Tunnerminnerwait and Maulboyheenner monument—possibly the first significant monument to the Frontier Wars in a major capital city in this country—a reality. I would especially like to pay my respects to four foundation members of the Tunnerminnerwait and Maulboyheenner Commemoration Committee who have since died: Ellen José, Joy French, William French and Rick Simpson (Images 9.1, 9.2, 9.3, 9.4, and 9.5).

Image 9.1  Dr. Carolyn Briggs AM—Boon Wurrung Elder, Chairperson and Founder of the Boon Wurrung Foundation and Patron of the Tunnerminnerwait and Maulboyheenner Commemoration Committee, 2018. (Photograph: Charandev Singh)

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Image 9.2  Dr. Joseph Toscano—Convenor Tunnerminnerwait and Maulboyheenner Commemoration Committee, 2019. (Photograph: Brendan Bonsack)

Image 9.3  Piece of art from Ellen José’s 2003 exhibition titled ‘A Fact Is a Fact Is a Fact Is a Fact—Up Yours Windschuttle’ that launched the campaign, photographed at the Standing by Tunnerminnerwait and Maulboyheenner Memorial, Melbourne, 2016. (Photograph: Joseph Toscano)

Image 9.4  Standing By Tunnerminnerwait and Maulboyheenner, memorial created by Brook Andrew and Trent Walter, 2016. Public art commissioned for City of Melbourne. (Photograph: Joseph Toscano)

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Image 9.5  The ‘newspaper stands’ section of the Standing By Tunnerminnerwait and Maulboyheenner memorial created by Brook Andrew and Trent Walter, 2016. Public art commissioned for City of Melbourne. (Photograph: Joseph Toscano)

References Korff, J. (2020, August 12). Myall Creek massacre. Creative Spirits. https://www.creativespirits.info/aboriginalculture/history/myall-­creek-­massacre-­1838 Land, C. (2014). Tunnerminnerwait and Maulboyheenner: The involvement of Aboriginal people from Tasmania in key events of early Melbourne. City of Melbourne. www.melbourne.vic.gov.au/SiteCollectionDocuments/tunnerminnerwait-­and-­ maulboyheenner.pdf MacFarlane, I. (1984). 1842 the public executions at Melbourne. Victorian Government Printing Office. Roberts, J. (1986). Jack of Cape Grim: A Victorian adventure. Greenhouse. To Melbourne. (2021). The story of Tunnerminnerwait and Maulboyheenneer and Melbourne’s first public executions. To Melbourne. https://tomelbourne.com.au/ story-­tunnerminnerwait-­maulboyheenneer-­melbournes-­fist-­public-­executions/ Toscano, J. (2008). Lest we forget: The Tunnerminnerwait and Maulboyheenner Saga. Anarchist Media Institute. www.anarchistmedia.net/pdf/Tunner-­Maul-­Booklet.pdf

CHAPTER 10

Unwanted Endeavours and the Reconstruction of Cook’s World Innez Haua

So, while honouring Captain Cook, the Commission has created a little world intended to be pleasing to those who will call it ‘home’. Matavai and Turanga—Introduction. [The Endeavour Housing Project, Waterloo] (The Housing Commission of NSW, 1976, p. 1)

Introduction It has been over 250 years since the Goorawal and Gweagal peoples of what is today known as Australia first encountered Lieutenant James Cook, his crew and their sailing ship the Endeavour. For centuries after, Cook and his bark the Endeavour have been idolised and immortalised amassing tributes and commemorations, constructions and reconstructions that have forged 250 years of Australian place and identity in their name. This chapter draws from my master’s research of a six-building Sydney housing estate with construction completed in 1976, which was named the ‘The Endeavour Project’. The design and erection of this estate, which includes two iconic inner-city structures, locally coined the ‘Twin Towers’, offer glimpses into the 1970s psyche of Sydney’s social imagination and construction of itself but, in particular, of Indigenous peoples and places. The Twin Towers—‘Matavai’ and ‘Turanga’—are the focus of this chapter, and by tracing their design and construction, they illuminate

I. Haua (*) Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW, Australia e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 B. Carlson, T. Farrelly (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook on Rethinking Colonial Commemorations, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-28609-4_10

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how Cook and the Endeavour narratives not only erase and re-write Indigenous Australian identity, place and history but also reconstruct Indigenous identity, place and humanity from all around the globe. A leisurely five- to ten-minute walk from Redfern station (just two train stops from Sydney Town Hall) looking south down George Street where Redfern meets Waterloo, the Twin Towers Matavai and Turanga command most of the view and skyline. The parklands surrounding the Twin Towers are made up of clean green lines and manicured common grass. With the largest neighbouring buildings reaching a maximum of four storeys in height, the already imposing 30-storey towers are made even more impressive in stature and concreteness. They look like two gargantuan cement exclamation marks, stark against the history and culture of Waterloo and Redfern, and impressive as the massive housing structures they are. When built in 1976, the NSW Housing Commission named one of the housing towers ‘Turanga’ which, in a promotional booklet produced by that organisation, is described as “the Māori word for ‘landing place’ [and it also] commemorates where … [Captain Cook’s] ship first anchored in New Zealand”1 (Housing Commission of NSW (HCNSW), 1976, p. 1). Turanga has a twin, an identical sibling approximately 100 metres adjacent to it: another 30-storey cement block of units named ‘Matavai’. This name derives from one of Cook’s favoured destinations, a “beautiful harbour in Tahiti, where he first anchored HMS Endeavour and a place where he would return to many times” (HCNSW, 1976, p. 1). Matavai and Turanga were the pride of a NSW Housing Commission scheme to house elderly residents in the city. The controversial construction was called the ‘Endeavour Project’ in tribute to the man, Captain James Cook, and his voyaging adventures in the vessel Endeavour, that brought him to this place. The Twin Towers are iconic in Waterloo and Redfern, and indeed, inner South Sydney. They are an established feature of the landscape and the history of these suburbs. These architecturally ‘Brutalist’2 structures of modernity were touted to represent all that was progressive and nation-building in the 1970s drive to a future urban Sydney. These enormous tributes to Cook and his inanimate vessel reflect the enormity of the idol status that are afforded to these two historical figures. The vast size of these monuments also reflects the effort that went into designing and delivering this particular homage, for Turanga and Matavai do not just perform the ‘standard’ acts of violence against Aboriginal peoples and land through colonial commemoration and monumentalisation. That ‘standard’ typically erases and replaces Aboriginal presence with aspirations of the Empire and Cook, reinforces terra nullius, and sets a permanent, constant reminder of the injustice and oppression that was, and is, inflicted on Aboriginal land and loved ones. This homage not only erases and  Captain Cook first landed in Tūranga-nui-a-Kiwa, now known as Gisborne, New Zealand.  ‘Brutalist Architecture’ or ‘New Brutalism’ is an architectural style that emerged in Europe around the 1950s and in Australia around the 1960s. See Ghand and North (2019). 1 2

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replaces Aboriginal identity and history, it also extends and compounds this to recreate, rewrite and re-invent other Indigenous peoples, places, identities and history, from all around the globe, in its place. I unreservedly situate myself as a settler in Australia, writing from a settler perspective with settler re-collection(s) of Gadigal land. This chapter, this particular ‘historical narrative of place’ in Waterloo, is a one-off polaroid snapshot, that I, the photographer and the visitor, am furiously shaking for that instant, blurry, out-of-frame image. I am manuhiri, a visitor, I am wahine Māori, a woman Indigenous to Aotearoa (New Zealand). I am a scholar of Indigenous Studies based in Australia and one of four migrant generations to reside here in Australia. In my desire to learn about the Māori presence in this space, particularly these towers, I have become painfully aware of both the blatant and insidious ways that Aboriginal people and connection to country have been erased from this place. This space and place is not my story, this place is Gadigal land. This place, and therefore its stories, belongs to the Gadigal peoples and all the other Indigenous peoples whose lineages have been born, nourished and farewelled from here. I am describing to you just a moment of what my out-of-­ focus polaroid photograph has recorded. I am a settler on the stolen lands and identities of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island peoples. I, and the three other generations of my family, have been, and continue to be, beneficiary of the theft of life, children, culture and lands of Australia’s First Peoples. In this chapter, I describe the colonial rewriting, reconstructing and the replacing of Gadigal country and identity on which the Twin Towers, Matavai and Turanga, are situated. I argue that the Endeavour Project inscribes this place and Country with a colonial narrative of discovery and hope, fuelled by colonial discourse, while working to erase Aboriginal history, ongoing presence and rightful sovereignty. This erasure is then simultaneously replaced with colonial mythologies of other colonised places, peoples and cultures around the globe. I begin by discussing the Indigenous peoples of what we now know as Waterloo, patterns of Indigenous migration into and out of the region since invasion, and their ongoing connections to this space. I then discuss events, social attitudes and planning leading up to the erection of the Twin Towers, including the decorating concepts designed to herald, acclaim and proclaim the prowess of Cook and his ‘discoveries’ through the appropriation and piracy of these colonised Indigenous places and peoples. Finally, I close with the ‘Waterloo Project’, the new housing scheme set to replace the Endeavour Project and the Matavai and Turanga Towers, which illuminates contradictions in what social acceptance of monument removal entails.

Always Was, Always Will Be, Aboriginal Land The Indigenous peoples (or the traditional owners) of Gadi land, or what is now known as Redfern and Waterloo and surrounding areas (inner Sydney city and south Sydney), are the Gadigal people (also spelled as Kadigal or Cadigal). Material excavated in the 1960s date the Gadigal people’s occupation of the

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South Sydney area to some 40,000  years before British invasion (Heiss and Gibson, 2013). The Gadigal people were coastal dwellers who had thrived on the seafood sources of Port Jackson and lived peacefully with their environment and neighbouring clans. For at least 400 centuries, the Gadigal people existed this way, until their way of life and their population were all but destroyed in a matter of a few years, come the arrival of British settlers in 1788. In his 2017 historical account of the Aboriginal people of coastal Sydney, Paul Irish endorses Arthur Phillip’s estimation of the Aboriginal population in this region when Phillip arrived with the First Fleet. Irish (2017, p. 19) states that “there may have been as many as fifteen hundred Aboriginal people living in coastal Sydney in January 1788 when the ships of the First Fleet disgorged a similar number of Europeans onto the shores of Warrane”, which eventually became known as it’s colonial name Sydney Cove. The devastation of Aboriginal people, families and culture by Europeans through various violent interactions but mainly with the spread of smallpox was immense. Smallpox reduced “coastal Sydney to ground zero—hundreds and hundreds of Aboriginal people perished in months” and for the next 100 years, or “throughout the 19th century [-] we can speak of just dozens of Aboriginal people in coastal Sydney” (Irish, 2017, p. 20). In spite of the death, loss, grief and social collapse of Gadigal peoples—and demonstrating the persistent and remarkable resilience of Aboriginal people— Gadigal peoples and cultures continue to survive. Following British invasion, Redfern and its surrounds became an area of congregation and relocation for Aboriginal peoples forced from their homes and natural areas of residence in and around Warrane. In what is a recurring display of survivability, tenacity, strength and adaptability, Gadigal peoples (in addition to peoples from other Aboriginal and Torres Strait nations) became ‘urban’ very quickly. Generational ties and “post-invasion history and experience [with an] additional layer of memory and significance” (Behrendt, 2005, p. 2) were (and are) rooted in the urban Sydney suburbs of Redfern and Waterloo. According to Redfern Oral History,3 in the early part of the nineteenth century, Redfern was an Aboriginal place of camping, meeting and social activities. By 1890, the NSW Department of Railways employed the largest numbers of Aboriginal people primarily at the Eveleigh Railway Workshops (areas in Waterloo and what is also now known as Redfern train station and Australian Technology Park). By the 1920s, following the end of the First World War, and in parallel with the urbanisation of other settler antipodean nations, Aboriginal people migrated from rural areas seeking employment in the city. In Sydney, there were three main areas of Aboriginal settlement: Salt Pan Creek in Peakhurst, La Perouse, and the urban centre of Redfern (Irish, 2017). During the 1930s (in the eye of the Great Depression), the 1940s and the outbreak of the Second World War, the 3  Redfern Oral History is a website established and maintained by Redfern Residents for Reconciliation. The website is funded by the Australian Council for the Arts to encourage reconciliation with an Aboriginal voice. www.redfernoralhistory.org/

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migration of Aboriginal peoples to South Sydney increased with rural economic refugees again seeking ‘big smoke’ respite and prospects (Hoff, 2010). Due to the railways’ requirement of local labour, the Waterloo area and surrounding suburbs became not only Aboriginal neighbourhoods, but home to the Anglo-­Australian and migrant working class, and, when work was not available, the unemployed and poor. With limited employment opportunity for Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal alike—often poverty stricken—Waterloo and Redfern became a government-categorised slum that the same NSW government would spend decades trying to hide or eliminate.

Redfern and Waterloo: The Bla(c)k Heart of Sydney Urbanisation, kinship and extended family ties contributed to the Waterloo and Redfern areas becoming a hub of diverse Aboriginal peoples and culture. According to Irish (2017, p. 139), by about 1939, “the number of Aboriginal people living in coastal Sydney was again comparable to that before European arrival”. These estimations counted not only Gadigal people but also other Aboriginal peoples, as the area became home for many other Aboriginal diasporas from differing nations who would host further kin and family in their resettlement process. It is important to note that during these migratory movements Aboriginal people throughout Australia remained subject to white racist policy and social perceptions and forces that sought to directly eliminate their existence. Absorption, assimilation, the forcible removal of children and relocation to reserves are a few examples of how this objective was to be achieved. Consequently, the resettlement of Aboriginal people in cities did not follow the official assimilation script and it created another dilemma for white sensibilities, imaginations and policy makers (Anderson, 2000). The established white Australian xenophobic imagination of ‘the Aborigine’ relegated these so-called lazy, dependent, uncivilised savages to the deserts of the outback. Policies forced Aboriginal communities in towns and smaller cities to reserves and the fringes of these places, seeking to maintain the ideology and image of a modern, progressive society. The marginalisation of ‘Fringe Dwellers’ and the subjugation of Aboriginal people on the reserves also contributed to driving numbers to major cities (Anderson, 2000). From the 1930s, this disruption to assimilation goals, and the social and official view of urban Sydney, provided ample opportunity for xenophobic rhetoric to thrive. Ideas that the Fringe Dwellers were a ‘dying remnant’ of Australian society and the promotion of popular fears of the “emergence of black ghettos akin to Harlem, New York, posed a dark and immediate presence within” (Morgan, 2006, p.  45). This meant “that Indigenous city dwellers were doubly marginalised: both on their race and because they were associated with the ‘underserving poor’ of these areas” (Morgan, 2006, pp. 44–46). Racist rhetoric soon evolved to the near ‘moral panic’ generated from the discourse surrounding these two unpalatable representations. Morgan (2006, p.  48) writes that “Aboriginal people who

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lived in inner-city housing were seen by the guardians of respectability as threatening, miscegenation and moral degeneration”. Resistance to the subjugation of Australia’s Indigenous peoples, lands and culture had been expressed by Aboriginal peoples in many ways since Cook arrived in 1770. It was, however, not until the 1920s that Aboriginal political activism gained greater public visibility, in particular through the Australian Aboriginal Progressive Association (AAPA) which was formed in 1924. While the AAPA was first established outside of NSW, connections and support from centres of Aboriginal urban settlement such as Redfern were strong and necessary. The AAPA sought to improve the material conditions of Aboriginal peoples and end political oppression and, by 1925, it was operating out of Sydney (Maynard, 1997). Maynard (1997, p. 2) maintains that the AAPA marks the “awakening of Aboriginal political consciousness”. The movement set a precedent of political activism, from its establishment to the campaigning and the visible protest of the Day of Mourning and Protest on Wednesday 26 January 1938. In response to Australia’s sesquicentenary celebrations, the AAPA organised an assembly of Aboriginal people in Sydney, protesting against 150 years of “white men’s seizure of our country” and the subsequent oppression and “callous treatment’ of Aboriginal peoples” (Dodson, 2000, p. 8). The protests called for government policy that would enable “equality and recognition — the right to be Aboriginal people along with the right to enjoy the equality, responsibility, and quality of being an Australian citizen” (Dodson, 2000, p. 8). From the 1940s, more civil and equal rights movements began to emerge as the Redfern and Waterloo area became a much larger hub for the Indigenous community, and their struggle in a society of inequity and discrimination became a much more visible violation of human rights. A steady stream of Aboriginal people relocated to Sydney over the next few decades. Anderson (2000, p. 136) states that “by 1971 there were between four and nine thousand Aboriginals living in inner-Sydney”. When the 1967 Referendum (which recognised Aboriginal people in the Australian census and allowed Commonwealth law proposals for Aboriginal people) allowed less constricted movement of Indigenous peoples in Australia, Redfern again became a destination of urban hope (Hoff, 2010). From the mid-1960s and especially throughout the 1970s, Redfern had firmly established itself as a civil rights and Black Power centre (Parbury, 2006, Foley, 2021). As Foley (2021, p.  2) explains in his essay ‘White Police and Black Power’, the emergence of a collective of Indigenous activists in Redfern around the late 1960s (emulating its American counterpart) was “essentially about the necessity for Black people to define the world in their own terms, and [to] seek self-determination and independence on their own terms, without white interference”. By the early 1970s, with then Prime Minister Gough Whitlam’s approach to and support of Aboriginal equality and relations and conversations and promises regarding land rights, a new sense of justice and urgency permeated the Indigenous community. Redfern during the 1960s and especially the 1970s saw the establishment of Aboriginal advocacy, government

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and health services. During this time, many Aboriginal services in NSW were headquartered in Redfern (Parbury, 2006). Elevated by a succession of Indigenous achievements in education and sports, new leaders and sporting heroes, and a revival of dance troupes and Indigenous expression, a renewed sense of self-determination and community pride rooted itself in the south Sydney suburbs (Parbury, 2006). From more than 400 centuries of tranquil Gadigal lands and people, to the refuge of forced Aboriginal migration and the destination of freedom-seeking Indigenous peoples, to the cultivation of Aboriginal rights and Black Power movements and their ongoing achievements, and to the sheer numbers of its Aboriginal residents and generations with connections to many Aboriginal communities in Australia, Redfern and Waterloo established itself as the Indigenous Bla(c)k heart of Australia.

Unwanted Endeavours The unwanted arrival of the Endeavour in 1770 began two centuries of endeavours to eradicate the unsightly and unpalatable ‘unwanteds’ of the invader’s imagined and progressive British-cloned society. Legislation and policy regarding immigration and Aboriginality throughout Australian history affirmed this attitude and its ensuing actions. Hence, in the 1960s and 1970s, Redfern and Waterloo screamed its unwantedness by way of its appearance and its militant, radical, Black, and impoverished residents. Some 20-plus years of prior government planning had Waterloo scheduled for sanitisation and slum clearance in the late 1960s and early 1970s, with a focus on removing over-crowded, unsightly terrace houses along with their residents. New suburbs and satellite cities were planned and engineered, and the NSW Housing Commission was set up in 1941 (Housing Act, 1941) to plan for the “anticipated population increase with an aim to supply affordable housing for low income earners” (Morgan, 2006, p. 70). However, slums such as Waterloo (and adjacent inner-city suburbs such as Redfern, The Rocks, Woolloomooloo, Surry Hills, Chippendale and Glebe) did not fit this progressive modernist mould. So, in 1972, “with no prior consultation or warning, the NSW Housing Commission sent Waterloo residents a ‘proclamation’ stating that their homes had been gazetted for resumption and acquisition” (Zubrycki, 1981). The proclamation created a widespread sense of insecurity and fear throughout Waterloo, in what was agreed by its own residents as a working-class and struggling suburb, but also a space brimming with community and civic unity and pride. Some residents sold their homes quickly, while many others stayed and become part of large movement of resident action against the NSW government (Zubrycki, 1981). Tom Zubrycki filmed a documentary titled Waterloo which was completed in 1981.4 Filming began during the mid-1970s and traced the journey of  AFI, ADG, and Stanley Hawes Award winner Tom Zubrycki is one of Australia’s most celebrated documentary filmmakers who for the last 30 years has mapped Australia’s changing social and political landscape. Tom is also a past lecturer and tutor at both UTS and Australian Film Television Radio and School. http://www.aftrs.edu.au 4

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Waterloo’s residents from 1972  in their protest and resistance of the NSW Housing Commissions plans to modernise and sanitise Waterloo of its terraced homes and the people in them. What is glaringly missing from this documentary, however, is the presence of Aboriginal people. There are no references to the large Aboriginal population in the area with an obvious failure to capture the Aboriginal culture that we know was thriving in this suburb during this time. The film, in its efforts to document social and community ‘opposition’ to government housing and social planning, emphasises the ubiquitous xenophobic attitude and social imagination of a white deserving ‘community’ by erasing (unwanted) Aboriginal presence in its ‘supposedly socially aware’ depiction of Waterloo (Zubrycki, 1981). The documentary does, however, produce a useful account of chronological events in terms of resistance, planning and construction of the estate. The film describes the rise of (white) people power when the working class of Waterloo combined forces with residents from other classed slums (such as The Rocks and Woolloomooloo) and the emerging powers of the building trade unions. However: by 1970 the Housing Commission owned virtually half the housing in Waterloo having demolished 549 houses and thirty shops and offices to erect 1293 dwellings in blocks. In 1971, the Housing Commission began 1041 new high rise units including 460 units for elderly people. (Duncan, 1995, p. 7)

This development was named the ‘Endeavour Project’ and was the initial stage of a much larger development proposed for a much larger area of Waterloo. Unwanted by the residents of the suburb and adjacent Redfern, the Endeavour estate consisted of six buildings in total, including the ‘crowning glory’ of the Twin Towers of Matavai and Turanga, and four low-level apartment blocks. Each block was named for Captain James Cook or the Endeavour and its voyage, including ‘Banks’, after Endeavour’s botanist Joseph Banks, ‘Solander’, after Banks’ assistant Daniel Solander, ‘Marton’, after Cook’s birthplace, and of course ‘Cook’ (HCNSW, 1976). The erection of this estate spurred the joined forces of the owner/occupants action groups of Waterloo, Woolloomooloo, The Rocks and the Builders Labourers’ Federation to facilitate a ‘Black Ban’ on further building. This unprecedented and revolutionary action (in Australia and internationally) by the builders’ trade unions halted and dissolved the redevelopment of many of Sydney’s historic areas, including The Rocks, Centennial Park and Moore Park. The ‘Black Ban’ was eventually coined as the ‘Green Ban’ by union leader Jack Mundey in February 1973. Australian builders, in a show of social responsibility and in support of public resistance to proposals of profit-seeking development on either heritage, environmental or occupied areas, refused to work (Burgmann and Burgmann, 2011). Unfortunately for Waterloo, the extended Housing Commission project went ahead, and “The only gains for the action groups was increased

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consultation of the NSW Housing Commission with local people, and modified height of subsequent building” (Duncan, Waterloo and the Sisters of Mercy, 1995, p. 8). Further low-level high-density apartment blocks were built around the Endeavour estate. As unwanted as the Endeavour development was, according to the government body appointed to implement the utopian social housing—the NSW Housing Commission—the developments were a solution to what they portrayed as a desperate need for particular neglected peoples and their housing needs. Incorporating contemporary government ideologies, the future for Sydney city housing looked like ‘towers of concrete and steel [the] symbols of modernisation’ (Zubrycki, 1981). Through short, propaganda-like television movies during the 1950s, the NSW government drummed up contempt for slums and encouraged a new Australian desire for suburban life complete with happy children and housewives (Zubrycki, 1981). As a result, apart from the resistance of resident action groups, the new and improved modernised version of inner-city living was a relatively easy pill for Sydney society to swallow. As a result, the Twin Towers Matavai and Turanga were received optimistically by most Sydneysiders, and enthusiastically by the elderly residents for whom they were designed and constructed. According to the 1977 Housing Commission annual report, a “Green Ban applied to the development was lifted by what could be termed as a pensioner’s revolt” (HCNSW, 1977, p. 2). The initial 1971 plans for the Twin Towers were two high-rise apartment buildings of ‘30 storeys catering for 464 units’ designed to house aged pensioners, to be named ‘Sirius and Endeavour’ (HCNSW, 1975, p. 2). There was very little change in what was eventually erected in 1976. Constructed using the Brutalist design, and for reasons unclear, they were renamed “Matavai and Turanga, both 30 storeys high. Each high-rise contained 29 residential floors and in 1976 the towers could house a capacity of 522 elderly people” (HCNSW, 1976, p. 1). The buildings were progressively occupied by their elderly residents from August 1976 onwards (HCNSW, 1977, p. 8). This area of Gadi land, home of the Gadigal people and once a meeting point for Aboriginal mob to camp and socialise, now housed hundreds of pensioners, with the nerve centre of Aboriginal civil right movements and activism, just around the corner.

Constructing a ‘Pleasing’ Home in Captain Cook’s World In 1976, prior to the opening of the towers, the NSW Housing Commission published a promotional information booklet titled Matavai and Turanga, describing the Twin Towers. The first few sentences of the introduction read: [Matavai and Turanga] represent the best and most modern thinking about the way elderly people should be housed to give them the most pleasure and enjoyment as well as safety and comfort in their surroundings.

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The two buildings also stand as enduring, life enhancing monuments to the great navigator and mariner, Captain James Cook. They demonstrate the human concern the Commission brings to its housing tasks. (HCNSW, 1976, p. 1)

As part of this tribute, Māori kaiwhakairo (carvers) were commissioned to create Māori and Pacific carvings to feature in the grounds of each tower5 to acknowledge Cooks ‘presence’ in the Pacific. Each floor of the 29-storeys of both towers included a communal lounge room, and each of these 58 communal rooms was designed and decorated to represent a theme relevant to a particular time and place in Cook’s life (HCNSW, 1976, p.  1). Of these 58 particular times and places, 39 were on, at, or with lands and places inhabited by indigenous peoples and cultures. A combined voluntary effort from many employees of the NSW Housing Commission decorated each of these rooms, and according to the booklet it took three years for these volunteers to complete their work (with many using their personal holiday leave to contribute to the decorating). As shown in Table 10.1, the naming of the communal rooms reflects key sites in Cooks travels: Each common room was decorated by the employees of the NSW Housing Commission using furnishings including murals, screens, landscaping and a number of varied artefacts donated by various governments as focal points. The Table 10.1  The Communal Rooms of the Turanga and Matavai Buildings in the Endeavour Project Turanga

Turanga

Matavai

Matavai

1. Cooks Cabin 2. Cape Everarda 3. Botany Baya 4. Barrier Reefa 5. Cooktowna 6. Cape Yorka 7. Papuaa 8.  Savua 9. Bataviaa 10. Cape Towna 11. HMS Resolution 12. Porto Grandea 13. Antarctica 14. Dusky Sounda 15. Vaitepihaa

16. Tongaa 17. Wellingtona 18. Easter Islanda 19. Vaitahua 20. Tannaa 21. Jamestowna 22. Ascensiona 23. Santa Mariaa 24. Kauaia 25. Vancouvera 26. Alaskaa 27. Chukchia 28. Mauia 29. Hawaiia

1. Marton 2. Great Ayton 3. Staithes 4. Whitby 5. The Freelove 6. Newcastle 7. London 8. The Three Brothers 9. Ireland 10. Norwaya 11. Friendship 12. Portsmouth 13. HMS Eagle 14. HMS Pembroke 15. Atlantica

16. Newfoundlanda 17. St Lawrencea 18. Quebeca 19. HMS Northumberland 20. Endeavour 21. Plymouth 22. Seaman’s Inn 23. Madeira 24. Rio de Janeiroa 25. Tierra del Fuegoa 26. Pacifica 27. Matavaia 28. Mooreaa 29. Raiteaa [sic]

NSW Housing Commission, Turanga and Matavai. Pages 5–20 feature a title and description of all of the floors in the Twin Towers, including the design concepts for their decoration Indicates Indigenous lands and peoples

a

5  The Māori components of these decorative pieces in the Endeavour Project were the focus of my Masters thesis. Haua, 2016.

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murals in each room were artistic interpretations of each site and employees created and constructed most of the artefacts to encourage an ambience from that time and place (HCNSW, 1976, p. 21–22). Floor after floor featured the focused manifestation of colonised, supremacist views that falsified, trivialised, fetishized, mocked and commodified imagined Indigenous peoples, places and cultures from around the globe. For example, the description for the Raitea (sic) room (Floor 29 of Matavai) reads: This community room has no screen but is treated as a whole to give the impression of the interior of a native hut. Cane poles are carried down both side walls and bamboo paper is left with ragged edges, to increase the South Seas feeling. The carpet is Sand Yellow, and the curtains are Lisbon Green. Cane furniture by a Sydney maker, strikes an island note. (HCNSW, 1976, p. 12)

The Vancouver room: The totem pole which marks the entrance to this community room is one of the most decorative of all the items made by volunteers from the Housing Commission staff in their off-duty hours. It follows the authentic shapes of the totems for the Indian tribes living in the Vancouver River region with whom Cook’s ship traded. (HCNSW, 1976, p. 19)

And Alaska: The mural here is an Alaskan scene with distant mountains and bright mauve Arctic flowers. The screen uses six vertical blades of timber, each one foot wide, out of which circles are cut and turned at an angle of ninety degrees. Also used are the primitive forms of Eskimo art in bears, seals, faces, snails, with cloud, water and a bay. (HCNSW, 1976, p. 19)

Both towers feature three community rooms on the ground floor that are named after specific Pacific Indigenous peoples and places: “Matavai evokes thoughts of Tahiti and Turanga has constant reminders of the Māori people and their culture” (HCNSW, 1976, p. 23). The booklet states that the ground floor rooms in Matavai include the main common room, which is called the ‘Tupia’ (sic) Room, who is “named after a Tahitian chieftain”’ (HCNSW, 1976, p. 23). Tupaia, who they are referring to, was a high priest from Ra’iātea, an island in a region which is now known by its colonial name French Polynesia. Tupaia was renowned throughout this region for his courage and formidable intellect, and his ritual and navigational knowledge. Tupaia joined Cook on the Endeavour, sharing his traditional knowledge and navigating the party through the islands of the Pacific, contributing as a pilot and translator. Tupaia was also on board the Endeavour when it arrived in both New Zealand and Australia (Salmond, 1997).

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The second room is called the ‘Tiata’ [sic] room and the booklet states it is named after Tupia’s [sic] boy servant (HCNSW, 1976). Taiata is often referred to as Tupaia’s servant (Salmond, 1997); both he and Tupaia boarded the Endeavour together in Ra’iātea. However, in other accounts of this history, Taiata is also referred to as Tupaia’s apprentice (Meredith and Tait, 2019). The booklet also explains that “both died from fever caught in Batavia, and Tiata was buried there” (HCNSW, 1976, p. 23). The third ground-floor community room in Matavai is named the ‘Purea’ room. According to Salmond, Purea was a “high-born woman [of Teva], with the most majestic bearing” and the crew of the Endeavour called her the Queen of Tahiti. Tupaia was Purea’s lover, and the two had established a friendship with Cook (Salmond, 1997, p.  47). The entire description in the Housing Commission’s booklet of Purea and the Purea room of Matavai reads: When the English ship “Dolphin” visited Tahiti in 1767 they believed Purea, who had made them most welcome, to be the Queen of Tahiti. In 1769 Cook had to wait over 2 weeks before Purea made her appearance accompanied by Tupia (sic), her favourite. In the two year interval there had been a civil war in which Purea had lost much of her land and power. Whilst still treated with respect she certainly had no royal authority. One of the Endeavour artists, Parkinson, described Purea as “a fat, bouncing, good looking dame.” Cook described her as “like most of the other women, very masculine.” (HCNSW, 1976, p. 23)

The Housing Commission’s description of Purea (apart from the obvious colonial lens) portrays her in an unbecoming light. She kept Cook waiting, she lost her land and power, with no royal authority and she was ‘fat’, ‘bouncing’ and ‘masculine’. With this understanding and such a contemptuous description and introduction of the Maohi (Indigenous Tahitian) noble Purea, I am left wondering why the designers of Matavai would consider her and construct a community room named after her. Finally, in Turanga, the main community room is called ‘Moana’, which according to the Housing Commission booklet “comes from one of the Māori names of New Zealand … Tiritiri O Te Moana, meaning gift of the sea” (HCNSW, 1976, p.  24). In Te Reo Māori (Aotearoa Māori language), the general understanding of this phrase refers to the Southern Alps of New Zealand’s South Island.6 If it is a Māori name for New Zealand, it is very seldom used (if at all) and it does not translate to ‘gift of the sea’. The ‘Tolaga’ room is the second space of ‘office-cum-lounge’ and this name “comes from the Māori word for a bay where Captain Cook found safe anchorage, food and water in October, 1769” (HCNSW, 1976, p. 24). Tolaga is not a Māori word, 6  See: Tiritiri o te moana (2003), Te Aka: Māori Dictionary Online. As Te Reo is expressed distinctly in different regions of Aotearoa, this could be a specific reference apart from the general understanding, however, it is not a term commonly used.

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but it is the name given by Cook to the district Ū awa (of the East Coast of the North Island of New Zealand). It is largely accepted that Cook “misinterpreted the word ‘te raki’ which refers to a north wind blowing into the bay” (Soutar, 2011, para. 2). The final room of the ground floor section is the ‘Arawa’ (surprisingly spelt correctly, Te Arawa is indeed a waka that migrated across the Pacific). According to the Housing Commission, it is “the name taken from one of the seven canoes which brought the Māori to New Zealand in the Great Fleet”. Colonial history tells of a ‘great fleet’ of seven canoes which brought Māori to Aotearoa from Hawaiki. An incorrect narrative and discourse, there were actually tens of waka that travelled to Aotearoa from Hawaiki. There were also Māori tı ̄puna that did not migrate from Hawaiki— Māori who were born in the lands of Aotearoa. I believe it is the booklet’s final words for these community rooms, however, that succinctly encompass the attitude towards Māori and Māori culture and indeed the other Indigenous people and culture appropriated on this estate: “Throughout the three rooms the carved Māori panels are a distinctive element—probably never to be equalled in modern Australia, or in New Zealand today” (HCNSW, 1976, p. 24). The opinion that the whakairo or carvings and the art featured throughout an Australian housing commission estate would not be rivalled in the Indigenous lands from where these Indigenous carvings originate is truly audacious. Oh, the caucasity! The colonial stamp throughout this project is loud, proud and clear. However, in what seems to be an incredible happenstance and perhaps to ensure the integrity of this tribute to the colonisation of these far flung, exotic global places and peoples couldn’t be amplified any further, the Commission invited Dr. Margaret Mead, who was heralded by the Housing Commission (HCNSW, 1976, p. 1) as “the world-renowned anthropologist and sociologist who herself is a grandmother in her seventies” to visit the towers. According to the booklet, Mead “professed herself ‘delighted’ with all she saw and pointed out the advantages this type of building offered [for the elderly]” (HCNSW, 1976, p. 1). The archives I have researched have been ambiguous about Mead’s involvement in the construction and design of the towers and mention only her visit to the towers and other NSW Housing Commission projects in Sydney (Nicklin, 1973). The lack of reference to Mead’s purpose in the projects would suggest that the Commission sought her visibility and approval of the towers simply to promote the Commission’s housing schemes. Later, in her silver jubilee official visit to Australia, (indubitably), HRH Queen Elizabeth and Prince Phillip officially opened the Matavai and Turanga towers on 14 March 1977, a full eight months after the actual residential occupation of the buildings (HCNSW, 1977). According to the annual report from the commission, it “was a great day for Waterloo” (HCNSW, 1977, p.  19) when the Queen unveiled a commemorative plaque on the grounds of Matavai and Turanga. That these two colonial history makers, Queen Elizabeth and Margaret Mead, were pivotal in the affirmation of these buildings—these

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‘homes’ that are labelled and masked as other people and places—makes the whole project appear even more outrageous when we consider the history of the land and the people. The Twin Towers, with their reconstructed, appropriated homes of renamed and reclaimed Indigenous places sit within the grounds of a project dedicated to the man who marks the beginning of the campaign to destroy these very things. They also reside upon the very land that belongs not only to the Gadigal people but also to the heart of the Aboriginal civil rights and Black activist movements. The Twin Towers are not just an intersection of these histories but a marker of the visible and insidious ways that colonial forces have persisted in eliminating Aboriginal histories and identities, and simultaneously re-written other Indigenous identities through the representations of Cook’s travels of ‘discovery’.

Tūranganui-a-Kiwa: The Long-Standing Place of Liwa in Waterloo on Gadigal Country Across Te Tai o Rehua, or what we now know as the Tasman sea, in 1769, nearly a year before the Goorawal and Gweagal people watched Cook anchor in their waters, Cook ‘landed’ in a place called Tūranganui-a-Kiwa. This place is now known by its colonial name of Poverty Bay, or specifically, Gisborne. The building Turanga, in its homage to Cook (according to the promotional booklet), was bestowed the Māori word for landing place. Generally speaking, the word for harbour or landing place in Te Reo Māori (the Māori language), is not turanga, but actually tauranga or ūanga.7 Tūranganui-a-Kiwa is commonly translated as the ‘great (or long) standing place of Kiwa’. Kiwa was a paramount chief and tohunga (high priest and expert navigator) who centuries ago navigated the waka (sea vessel/canoe) Tākitimu across the vast Pacific Ocean. This waka carried my ancestors from our spiritual homeland of Hawaiki, to the place he named after his long wait for following waka. I am a descendent of Kiwa, he is my tipuna (ancestor), and centuries later when Cook and the Endeavour crew first made contact with Māori, they shot and killed my tı ̄puna, including chiefs of my peoples in Tūranganui-a-Kiwa. It was my whenua (country, land) that he first invaded and my iwi (kinship/ Nation) who fought him first. I was born in Tūranganui-a-Kiwa, also known as Poverty Bay (the city of Gisborne), in a hospital named—of course—Cook Hospital. It was renamed Gisborne Hospital in 1985 (NZHosp, 1985). Today, Poverty Bay also goes by its original name Tūranganui-a-Kiwa. Over 250 years after Cook first stepped foot on this Māori land, we can now reclaim its original, rightful name, (well, at least, its official ‘dual’ name) (Dewes, 2019). And, as the naming of places of colonial invasions go, and certainly monuments, Tūranganui-a-Kiwa /Gisborne is not just renowned for its association with 7  ‘Te Aka: Māori Dictionary Online translates ‘Tauranga or ūanga’ (2003) as anchorage, place to land, mooring, place of arrival, act of becoming firm.

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Cook and ‘firsts’ but also for the constant vandalism of Cook monuments in the city (Cooke, 2016). In their inscribing and appropriating of Indigenous names, places and peoples, I wonder what the designers and proclaimers of the Endeavour Estate in Waterloo would change if they had understood that many of the exotic names and places praising Cook and his boat were actually mistaken and incorrect. Or, that the residential tower they were championing was bestowed the name for a voyaging Māori chief (and not a British one). That, when you look at history from another (silenced) perspective, or overlook the other polaroid shots of past moments, or erase millennia of Aboriginal and Indigenous identity and history, Aboriginal and Indigenous stories and histories have a way of making their way home. Or that Indigenous connections can be made around the world in spite of a colonial construction. The Twin Towers are an incredible account of Cook’s central involvement within the global project of colonisation and the forced entanglement of the places the colonial project continues to imagine and colonise. The buildings themselves can be perceived as museums or databases of Cook’s travels, encounters and colonising. They are massive, 58-storeyed material records of imagined colonial history. Yet, these gigantic monuments of colonial records are also current homes to many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people (also Māori and Pasifika peoples), families and generations. These homes, built on the NSW Housing Commissions promises of ‘pleasure and enjoyment as well as safety and comfort’ (HCNSW, 1976, p. 1), contradict the violent history of the building of Australia, specifically years of construction and reconstruction of homes, on this site. For the many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples who come home to sleep, laugh, sorrow, eat and live in these monuments, their home is a constant, roaring, unwavering reminder of Cook and all he represents. A constant acknowledgement of the beginning of violence and oppression, the marker of the erasure of themselves, those that came before them and those who will come after. In stark contrast to the foundations of pleasure, enjoyment, safety and comfort promised, for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples living in these homes is itself constantly living in and with violence. An unrelenting violence that is not only justified but glorified and acclaimed.

Replacing Cook’s World In a turn of remarkable irony (or perhaps, it is the usual colonial narrative of this place), the original ‘unwanted Endeavour project’ is now again officially ‘unwanted’ by the current NSW government. At the time of writing this account, the Endeavour Estate is in the master planning and consultation stages of redevelopment (Cole, 2020). The situation is uncannily being played out nearly identically to the events in Waterloo of the 1970s residents’ movements, albeit a resistance to the redevelopment of the very estate they protested originally. Accordingly, the NSW government, or the NSW Land and Housing Corporation (LAHC as it is now known), is promoting the ‘renewal’ (which

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consists of the demolition of the existing estate and the re/construction of both private and state housing) of what is now known as the ‘Waterloo Estate’ (Cole, 2020). Proposals for the new estate include 3000 new properties, of which 30 per cent will be social housing. Through media statements, the LAHC is again promoting a resuscitation of lifestyle, but this way of living is urban and chic with a pinch of obligatory social responsibility (Cole, 2020). The LAHC proposes to transform the Waterloo Estate into a world-class precinct, […] by deconcentrating disadvantage, we can breathe new life into local economies to reenergise social housing to create vibrant communities, not just buildings—this is emblematic of the way we are now delivering social housing. (Cole, 2020, para. 3)

The existing 4500 residents of the Endeavour estate—many of whom have lived here for generations and many who are Indigenous Australian—can, just like the previous Waterloo residents those decades ago, look forward to relocation to areas on the fringes of Sydney and beyond. There has been some protest about the redevelopment of this site and most of this resistance is generated from current residents, naturally fearful and frustrated with no indication of where, when, or how they will be relocated. But as smaller monuments have raised louder protest with the threat of vandalism or removal, the silence with regard to protesting the demolishment and redevelopment of this massive tribute to Cook and the Endeavour has been largely silent. Arguably one of the largest tributes or monuments of Cook and Endeavour in the nation, an iconic landmark that was opened by the Queen herself, which has stood nearly 50 years, one wonders why there has been very little noise from colonial history loyalists, white supremacists, conservative blokes and their mates. That the estate and its design and construction history are largely unknown (including all of the tributes housed within the Twin Towers) is certainly one possible reason. One very likely reason is that the site itself proves to be a place of concern for ‘the guardians of respectability’, a repeat of what Morgan (2006, p. 48) expresses regarding the first government redevelopment of the site, threatening social sensibilities with moral degeneration. The estate, originally built for the elderly, was always Housing Commission property and the blocks eventually became homes for the disadvantaged and marginalised of all ages. For over two decades, the estate was overrun with poverty-related crime, including the constant presence of drugs and their human casualties and deaths. The estate and the area housed a large tight-knit Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander population who were, as usual, subjected to the oppressive systemic racism that is always targeted at impoverished and Indigenous communities. In response to (and the manifestation of) all the violence both present and past, the estate, including the Twin Towers, were known as the suicide towers by residents in the area (Carswell, 2015). Following a ‘clean up’ campaign by Housing NSW in 2015, the estate and its surrounds

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have vastly reduced the crime rate, and the violence and the reputation that came with it. But, as the estate finally becomes a pleasant place to live, in another decade or so, the estate will be demolished (again) leaving thousands of people, families, to be relocated to other places. The complications of indigeneity, poverty and reputation of the area, I suspect, play a major role in the lack of interest demonstrated from Cook loyalists and the like. Māori Academic Susan Mlcek explores similar situations to the Endeavour estate and the ‘social engineering’ of Indigenous communities in the NSW housing estates of the Gordon Estate in Dubbo, the south-west Sydney suburbs of Claymore and Minto and Mlcek’s home community of Matapihi in Aotearoa (2016). Mlcek explores the concept of community, and “the typical whiteness worldview” (p. 304), which defines communities in settler colonised lands. From the original dispossession of Indigenous peoples from their lands, today Indigenous communities, whether urban, rural or remote, are still ‘othered’ and in the cases of Waterloo, Dubbo, Claymore, Minto and Matapihi, this translates to the disabling or the dismantlement of urban Indigenous individuals and communities (2016), masked as redevelopment and renewal. In a recent article, the editors of this collection, Bronwyn Carlson and Terri Farrelly (2022) discuss the fates of Cook monuments in Australia (and elsewhere) and investigate the emotionality that is often demonstrated around commemoration removal. They observe that “whether removal is acceptable [certainly] depends on who does the removing and for what purpose. Business motivations will likely prove more compelling than ethical arguments” (Carlson & Farrelly, 2022, p. 7). This certainly seems to be the case for this enormous Cook monument. Even with the human element (and thousands at that) bound within this commemoration, the commercial reward far outweighs the ethical and moral consequences of its demolition. But, as we know that is not a new story in this place. It is the same story with the same actors and the same intent, and it starts with an introduction that sounds a lot like “a little world intended to be pleasing to those who will call it ‘home’” (HCNSW, 1976, p. 1), repeating all the while in this space, on this land—the original unceded home of the Gadigal people.

Glossary of Māori Words and Terms Aotearoa Iwi Kiwa manuhiri Māori Moana Tākitimu te raki Te Reo Māori Tauranga

New Zealand. Lit: the Land of the Long White Cloud. Nation, Kinship group, tribal group Name of Ancestor, Paramount Chief Visitor; guest People Indigenous to Aotearoa (New Zealand); natural Ocean The name of the waka that came to Aotearoa from Hawaiki The north wind blowing into the bay Aotearoa Māori language Harbour; Coastal city of the Bay of Plenty, Aotearoa (continued)

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(continued) Te Arawa Te Tai o Rēhua Tiritiri o te Moana tipuna/tupuna Tohunga Tohunga whakairo Tūranga Tūranganui-a-­ Kiwa Tauranga, ūanga Wahine Waka kaiwhakairo whānau

The name of the waka that came to Aotearoa from Hawaiki; iwi; Nation The Tasman Sea Southern Alps of New Zealand’s South Island; Gift of the Sea Ancestor/s (tribal variance in dialect) High priest, Expert, Chief, Leader Master Carver Stand, position, site, foundation, stance. A harbour on the East Coast of the North Island of Aotearoa. Now known as Poverty Bay. Lit: the long-standing place of Kiwa Harbour Woman Canoe, sea vessel Carver Family. Kinship

References Anderson, K. (2000). Savagery and urbanity: Struggles over aboriginal housing Redfern, 1970–73. In Settlement: A history of Australian indigenous housing (pp. 130–143). Aboriginal Studies Press. Behrendt, L. (2005, November 22–23). The urban aboriginal landscape. Post-suburban Sydney. The City in Transformation Conference. University of Western Sydney. Burgmann, M., & Burgmann, V. (2011). Green Bans movement. Dictionary of Sydney. http://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/green_bans_movement Carlson, B, & Farrelly, T. (2022). Monumental upheavals: Unsettle fates of the Captain Cook statue and other colonial monuments in Australia. In Thesis Eleven https:// doi.org/10.1177/07255136211069416. Carswell, A. (2015). The dark past of Waterloos Housing commission blocks. The Daily Telegraph. https://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/nsw/suicide-­towers-­the-­ dark-­past-­of-­waterloos-­housing-­commission-­blocks/news-­story/74f20d4878f0c20 b4afbc3674fcca74b Cole, J. (2020, May 31). Waterloo redevelopment moves forward. NSW Land and Housing Corporation (LAHC), Media Release. https://www.communitiesplus. com.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0010/781273/Media-­R elease-­Waterloo-­3 1-­ May-­2020.pdf Cooke, H. (2016). Captain Cook statue in Gisborne repeatedly defaced. Stuff. https:// www.stuf f.co.nz/national/82669990/captain-­c ook-­s tatue-­i n-­g isbornerepeatedly-­defaced Dewes, T. (2019). Dual name for Tūranganui-a-Kiwa / Poverty Bay approved. Te Ao Maori News Online. https://www.teaomaori.news/dual-­name-­turanganui-­kiwa-­ poverty-­bay-­a pproved#:~:text=Dual%20name%20for%20T%C5%ABranganui-­a -­ Kiwa%20%2F%20Poverty%20Bay%20approved,Minister%20for%20Land%20 Information%20Eugenie%20Sage%20announced%20today Dodson, P. (2000). Beyond the mourning gate: Dealing with unfinished business. Canberra.

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Duncan, C. (1995). Waterloo and the sisters of mercy. A century of change. Redfern & Waterloo. Foley, G. (2021). White police and black power. Aboriginal Legal Service (NSW/ACT) Limited. https://www.alsnswact.org.au/white_police_black_power_1 Haua, I. (2016). The Little Whare in Waterloo: Thinking about Māori in Australia. Masters. Macquarie University. Heiss, A, & Gibson, M. (2013). Aboriginal people and place. Barani Sydney’s Aboriginal History. http://www.sydneybarani.com.au/sites/aboriginal-­people-­ and-­place/ Ghand V., & North, ML. (2019). Sirius: Retrofitting Brutalism in Sydney,  IOP Conference Series. Earth and Environmental Science, vol. 290, no. 1, p.  12153–, https://doi.org/10.1088/1755-1315/290/1/012153. Hoff, J. (2010). Timeline. Redfern Oral History. A.C.T. Aboriginal Studies Press. www. redfernoralhistory.org/ Housing Act 1941 (Cth) Act No. 65.(Austl.). (1941). www.legislation.nsw.gov.au Housing Commission of New South Wales. (1975). ID410596 Sirius and Endeavour— Twin towers. Document. Housing Commission of New South Wales. (1976). Matavai and Turanga. Housing Commission. Housing Commission of New South Wales HNCNSW. (1977). Annual Report 1977. Housing Commission of NSW. Irish, P. (2017). Hidden in plain view: The aboriginal people of coastal. University of NSW Press Ltd.. Maynard, J. (1997). Fred Maynard and the Australian aboriginal progressive association (AAPA): One god, one aim, one destiny. Aboriginal History, 21, 1–13. Meredith, C., & Tait, M. (2019). The adventures of Tupaia. Allen & Unwin. Mlcek, S. (2016). Land dialogues: Interdisciplinary research in dialogue with land. Communities as ‘other’: Social engineering indigenous communities—Lessons from the past to inform community sustainability. Fusion Journal, 10, 296–318. Morgan, G. (2006). Unsettled places: Aboriginal people and urbanisation in New South Wales. Wakefield Press. Nicklin, L. (1973). Insights on old—And Dr Mead. The Sydney Morning Herald. NZ Hosp. (1985). Official opening of new Gisborne Hospital. NZ Hosp, 37(6), 19–21. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10289657/. Parbury, N. (2006). Survival: A history of aboriginal life in New South Wales. Surry Hills. Salmond, A. (1997). Between worlds: Early exchanges between Maori and Europeans 1173–1815 (1st ed.). Auckland. Soutar, M. (2011). East coast places—Tolaga bay. Te Ara—the Encyclopedia of New Zealand. http://www.TeAra.govt.nz/en/east-­coast-­places/page-­4 Te Tiritiri-o-te-moana. (2003). Te Aka: The Māori dictionary https://maoridictionary. co.nz/sear.ch?idiom=&phrase=proverb=&loan=&histLoanWords=&keywords=te+t iritiri Tūranga. (2003). Te Aka: The Maō ri dictionary. https://maoridictionary.co.nz/search ?idiom=&phrase=&proverb=&loan=&histLoanWords=&keywords=turanga Zubrycki, T. (1981). Waterloo [Video]. Australia. https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=ItMM4PivSI8

CHAPTER 11

How Churches Are Framed and Presented in the Contemporary Sámi Homeland of Finland to Maintain Colonial Discourses Inker-Anni Sara

Introduction This chapter examines how churches are presented and framed on the websites of the parishes in the Sámi homeland of Finland, focusing on one question: how do the introductory texts of the churches1 frame and thus maintain colonial discourses in today’s Sámi homeland of Finland? The cases of the study are two churches located in the Sámi homeland of Finland: Ohcejohka/Utsjoki2 church in the municipality of Ohcejohka and Bielbajávri/Pielpajärvi3 Wilderness Church in the municipality of Anár/Inari.4 The Sámi are an Indigenous people who live in the northern regions of present-day Finland, Norway, Sweden, and Russia. The Sámi homeland of Finland covers the four northernmost 1  The introductory texts of churches are compiled by parishes of Evangelic Lutheran Churches of Finland and are placed on the parishes webpages. 2  The Sámi name of the municipality is Ohcejohka and the Finnish name is Utsjoki. From now on the Sámi name is used in the chapter. 3  The Sámi name of the place is Bielbajávri and the Finnish name is Pielpajärvi. The Sámi name is used in the chapter. 4  The Sámi name of the municipality is Anár and the Finnish name is Inari. The Sámi name is used in this chapter from now on. The same applies to all place names in this chapter.

I.-A. Sara (*) Sámi University of Applied Sciences, Guovdageaidnu, Norway e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 B. Carlson, T. Farrelly (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook on Rethinking Colonial Commemorations, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-28609-4_11

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municipalities of Finland, Anár/Inari, Eanodat/Enontekiö, Ohcejohka/ ̵ Utsjoki, and the northernmost area of the Soadegilli/Sodankylä municipality. The Constitution of Finland and its section 17(3) provide: “The Sámi as an Indigenous people as well as Roma and other groups, have the right to maintain and develop their own language and culture”. Historically, before colonization, the Indigenous Sámi society was based on the very old Sámi Siida system. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the Siida system began to change due to the influence of states and resettlement. However, until the eighteenth century, the surrounding nation states recognized the borders of Siidas and their right to self-determination. At that time, the traditional Sámi Siida system and the Nordic administrative system coexisted (Aikio, 1992). The construction of churches is related to the era of colonialism in the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries, when the nation states of Sweden, Denmark-­ Norway,5 and Russia competed for the conquest of the Sámi region by the means of church missionary work and resettlement (Lehtola, 1997). Nowadays, churches are buildings in the Sámi homeland of Finland, which were constructed when the surrounding states tightened their control over the then Sámi society. Globally, before the arrival of the colonizers, Indigenous communities were dominated by their own traditional cultures, languages, governing structures, epistemologies, and religions. Often the conquerors replaced the Indigenous governing systems with their own and labelled the Indigenous societal systems as inappropriate (Chilisa, 2019). The Christian church was one of the institutions that strongly assimilated the Sámi people to the conquering states, for example, through baptism and marriage. The church as an institution was powerful because it had judicial power, it functioned as an education institution, and it had the right to collect taxes (Aikio, 1992, p. 151). This is how the conversion work of the church was used to support the goals of colonialism. The aim of this chapter is therefore to better understand the role of the Christian church as a promoter of colonialism. Still, many Sámi are religious, and Christianity plays an important role in their lives. However, power exercised by the church as a colonial institution and the unbalanced power relations between the church and the Sámi people should therefore not be left unexamined. Hence, the goal of this chapter is to examine the discourses and frames produced by the church that maintain and reproduce representations of colonialism even today. This chapter builds on both Indigenous and mainstream approaches by combining Indigenous methodologies and framing theory. Framing helps to understand which frames, whose frames and what kind of frames dominate the discussion, as well as what frames and whose frames are absent from the debate (Sara, 2018). When the goal of framing is to “set the 5

 From 1814 Norway was part of Sweden.

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agenda for the target audiences of a discourse” (Bardhan, 2013, pp. 395–396), the significance of methodology lies in its ability to “frame the questions being answered” (Smith, 2004, p. 75). Thus, this study draws on both Western and Indigenous epistemologies (Fortier, 2017, p. 21) and bridges between mainstream and Indigenous approaches to the benefit of both (Datta, 2018, p. 3). Ulnicane (2021, p. 63) argues that framing analysis may open the possibility of comprehending and resolving disputes since it “includes revealing silences and kinds of politics are hidden in the framing”. The findings of this study show that the frames based on western epistemology produced by the church promoted the power politics of colonialism and gradually displaced the Sámi people’s own philosophy, culture, and societal system.

The Indigenous Sámi People in Contemporary Finland Today, the Sámi people in Finland make up a third of the entire population of the Sámi homeland of Finland. Before the Second World War, half of the population of the region were Sámi. The total number of Sámi in Finland is around 10,000 people, of which 1000 are Nuortalačcǎ t/Skolt Sámi and 900 are Anár/ Inari Sámi. The rest are North Sámi. In other words, there are three Sámi language groups in Finland, the North Sámi majority, the Anár Sámi minority, and the Skolt Sámi minority. They are all endangered languages, but Skolt Sámi and Anár Sámi with 300–400 speakers are in danger of disappearing. There are around 2000 North Sámi speakers in Finland. The number of Anár Sámi speakers has increased considerably due to language revitalization measures such as language nets.6

Framing A frame is the core of the matter, which helps to understand (Gamson & Modigliani, 1989, p.  3) “how situations, attributes, choices, actions, issues, and responsibility should be posed to achieve favourable objectives” (Kiuosis et al., 2006, p. 270). In other words, “framing is a way of selecting, organizing, interpreting, and making sense of a complex reality to provide guideposts for knowing, analysing, persuading, and acting” (Ulnicane et al., 2021, p. 163). Framing is related to power in such a way that those in power can decide which issues are framed as true and which issues, such as Indigenous issues, are framed as less significant or false (Smith, 2013, p. 227). Hence, Smith (2004, p. 83) argues that the issues of Indigenous peoples, should be backgrounded and placed in their historical context. Perhaps the most famous and the most quoted is Entman’s definition of framing: “To frame is to select some aspects of a perceived reality and make them more salient in a communicating text in such a way to promote a 6  https://www.oktavuohta.com/historia-artikkeli; https://fi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saamelaiset; https://www.samediggi.fi/saamelaiset-info/.

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particular problem definition, causal interpretation, moral evaluation and/or treatment recommendation for the item described” (Entman, 1993, p.  52; Entman, 2007, p. 164). Osaka et al. (2021) build on Entman’s definition and list the main points to consider: “how problems are defined; what options are chosen; what criteria are selected; whose perspectives are included; how ambiguities and uncertainties are conveyed; and what methods are used”. The frame concept aims to understand “the structuring power of context” in interplay between individuals. Because the background has an impact on how people see certain social topics, events, and issues (D’Angelo & Shaw, 2018, p. 207). Moreover, frames are expected to influence peoples’ thinking and how they perceive the problem at hand (Druckman, 2001, pp. 227–228). However, people do not necessarily accept all potential frames (Hallahan, 2011, p. 179) and different actors may not only be recipients of frames, but they proactively seek to reframe public issues in a way that benefits them (Miller & Riechert, 2001, p. 112). Different types of frames exist, all of which aim to ensure public support. Collective action frames, for instance, produce social reality to bring about social change (Benford & Snow, 2000, p.  614). Value frames, on the other hand, focus on the values of socially significant public issues to guarantee support (Shah et  al., 2001, p.  228). Issue framing and policy framing, in turn, emphasize certain aspects of an issue to influence the opinion of the general public (Nelson, 2004, p. 352). Consequently, the framing of public issues can affect the outcome of political process (Stokes & Warshaw, 2017). When it comes to mass media, many social actors, political and economic, seek to influence the news content with their frames (Von Zabern & Tulloch, 2020, p. 26). Although media frames are the most popular subjects of framing research (Dearing & Rogers, 1992, pp.  2, 4), frames do not only appear in news. Instead, frames can be found in all kinds of texts and communications, the goal of which is to influence people’s thinking (Murphree et al., 2009, pp. 275–276). Such as the introductory text of churches that are the research data of this study. They are assumed to contain colonial frames that have influenced and still influence people’s thinking in the Sámi area of Finland.

Indigenous Methodologies Indigenous methodologies were determined for the first time by Māori scholar Linda Tuhiwai Smith (1999) in her landmark book Decolonizing Methodologies. It is designed as a foundation for Indigenous “research process and practices” based on the Kaupapa Maori Indigenous philosophy. “An Indigenous methodology, therefore, is a methodology where the approach to, and undertaking of, research process and practices take Indigenous worldviews, perspectives, values and lived experience as their central axis” (Walter & Suina, 2019, p.  233). Porsanger (2004, p.  107), in turn, defines Indigenous methodologies as “a body of indigenous and theoretical approaches and methods, rules and postulates employed by indigenous research in the study of indigenous peoples”.

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Furthermore, research methodologies do not develop in a vacuum, but certain historical, political, and cultural backgrounds shape their worldviews (Gerlach, 2018, pp. 1–2). The historical framework of Indigenous methodologies is twofold. On the one hand, they are shaped by the identities of Indigenous peoples, and, on the other hand, are defined by the history of colonialism and the ongoing relationship with the conquering nation-states (Walter & Suina, 2019, p.  233; Porsanger, 2004). Thus, Indigenous methodologies aim to justify Indigenous values and traditional knowledge as the basis of research, revive broken identities, and engage indigenous communities as equal research partners. The history of colonialism has shown that even in the field of research, unbalanced power relations can arise, where the more powerful party can frame and present its less powerful research object in the way they desire (Chilisa, 2019). As in Canada, academia has only recently replaced colonial policies by incorporating Indigenous traditional knowledge and recruiting Indigenous academics and students (Louie et al., 2017, p. 16). Indigenous methodologies, which have a solid foundation in the traditional knowledge of Indigenous peoples, not only build new academic knowledge but also serve as tools in resisting colonialism (Evans et al., 2014, p. 177). The development of Indigenous methodologies is a continuation of the 1970s struggle for the preservation of Indigenous societies and cultures, the right to land and water, and the right to self-determination based on “Indigenous nations, tribes and family histories” (Smith, 2004, pp. 75–76). Emphasizing the aspects of Indigenous peoples means decolonizing methodologies and developing them in such a way that creating a meaningful understanding of Indigenous peoples and their world views becomes possible (Porsanger, 2004, p.  107). Thus, Indigenous methodologies that build on “the our story, our story and our truth” strive to achieve social change through prevailing discourses (Smith, 2015, p. 206) in both research and policy that often replicate colonial practices (Jolivétte, 2015, p. 5). Reframing discourses can destabilize the status quo as people can find new ways of acting to change the current situation (Smith, 2013, p. 227).

The Ohcejohka/Utsjoki Church Ohcejohka’s oldest Church, St. Ulrika’s Church, also called St. Ulrika’s Chapel, was built on the traditional Sámi marketplace near the shore of the lake Máttájávri/Mantojärvi in the years 1700–1703. The church and the parish at the time were named St. Ulrika’s church and parish after Queen Ulrika Eleonora of Sweden (1718–1720). At the time, Finland was under Swedish rule. In the vicinity of St. Ulrika’s Church, there were a cemetery and church houses, where the Sámi people of the area stayed overnight when visiting the marketplace. During the market, Sámi children attended a temporary school run by the church. The Sámi also paid taxes to the crown during the market. The old church located almost 6 kilometres south of the current Ohcejohka village centre. Almost a century and a half later, the new church of Ohcejohka, still located in the same place today, was completed in

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1853. The old wooden church of St. Ulrika was badly dilapidated and in danger of collapsing. When the new church was built in Ohcejohka in 1853, Finland was part of the Russian Empire. In 1828, the then Tsar of Russia Nicholas I gave the order to build a new church in Ohcejohka. However, the Lapland church fund was unreserved, and the construction of the church was postponed. Originally, a round stone church imitating the Pantheon temple of Ancient Greece was planned for Ohcejohka. In the end, a new stone church was built on the rock top of the lake Máttájávri. The granite for the church was extracted from the same rock wall and the clay was fetched from the Deatnu/Tenojoki river valley.7 Ohcejohka church is the northernmost church in Finland and the European Union.8 The church and its surroundings are described on the webpage of Ohcejohka parish as follows: The Ohcejohka church, vicarage, old sacristy, and church houses form the nationally valuable landscape area of the Ohcejohka river valley, classified as a national landscape (of Finland) on the shore of lake Máttajávri. The Ohcejohka church and vicarage with its courtyard represent the northernmost part of the state construction method in Lapland,9 Finland. Renovated church houses of different ages make the area a unique historical church milieu in Finland. It is a protected site of the Finnish Museum Agency.10

The Bielbajávri/Pielpajärvi Wilderness Church The first church in Anár/Inari was planned to be built in the village centre of Anár. The church was finally built in the old winter village of Bielbajávri/ Pielpajärvi, where the Sámi people of the Siida had gathered in winter for centuries. There were winter villages in Siidas, where the Sámi people of a certain Siida had gathered in winter for centuries (Aikio, 1992). It was also a time of persecutions and Russian persecutors roamed around the Sámi region, burning down villages. Therefore, churches were not built-in village centres at that time. The first church built in Bielbajávri was named after Queen Christina (1632–1654) of Sweden. The construction of the church was completed in 1646–1648. When Christina’s Church fell into disrepair, a much larger cross-­ shaped church was built in Bielbajávri in 1760. The new Bielbajávri Church was named after King Adolf Fredrik (1751–1771) of Sweden.11 Before the arrival of the colonizers, the Sámi society was organized administratively, politically, and economically according to the traditional Indigenous

 https://www.utsjoenseurakunta.fi/kirkot-ja-tilat/utsjoen-kirkko/kirkon-historia.  https://fi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utsjoen_kirkko. 9  Lapland is Finland’s northernmost county, in the northernmost part of which is the Sámi homeland of Finland. 10  https://www.utsjoenseurakunta.fi/kirkot-ja-tilat/utsjoen-kirkko. 11  https://www.inarinseurakunta.fi/kirkot-ja-tilat/pielpajarven-eramaakirkko. 7 8

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Sámi Siida system as mentioned earlier. The historical Sámi region, Sápmi,12 stretched from Central Norway and Central Sweden to the shore of the Arctic Ocean and covered the present-day Finnish Lapland, in the south as far as Kuusamo region in Finland and the Kola peninsula in Russia, was formed by the Siidas. Siida was a local unit of the Siida system. It was the political, economic, and administrative unit of the Sámi society at that time, which controlled and distributed the lands and waters of a certain Siida for the use of all Siida families. The names of the current municipalities of Ohcejohka and Anár are centuries old, because Ohcejohka and Anár were the names of the then Sámi Siidas (Aikio, 1992). That is why the colonizers also started to establish churches, temporary schools, and market-time courts in the winter villages of Siidas, as the example of Bielbajávri shows.

Analysis In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the surrounding states competed for the control of the Sámi area. As the examples of the Ohcejohka ja Bielbajávri churches in this study show, in the colonial period, the churches in the Sámi region were named after Swedish kings and queens when Finland was under Swedish rule. In this way, Sweden showed other surrounding states and the Sámi population of the area, who ruled the region. Thus, with the support of the church, Sweden strengthened its grip on the region and its population, the Sámi. By emphasizing the Swedish ruler as the ruler of the region, the existence of the Sámi’s own historical governance system and leaders were erased. According to the research data, the Russian Tsar at the time ordered the new church to be built in Ohcejohka in 1853, but the church was not named after the tsar. However, it is worth noting that demonstrating control over the most distant regions of the empire by building churches was significant. The design of the new church (1853) in Ohcejohka also shows that the goal of the colonial era has been to supplant traditional Sámi philosophy and replace it with the philosophical tradition of ancient Greece. Interestingly, even though Finland was part of Russian, the trends in philosophy refer to Ancient Greece. The plan to build a round church in Ohcejohka, which imitated an ancient Greek temple, is as an example of this. It reveals attempts to assimilate Indigenous Sámi communities to the traditions of western philosophy. For its part, it contributed to the destruction of the Indigenous Sámi philosophy and shamanistic religion. In addition, material objects of the ancient Sámi religion, such as drums, were stolen, burned, and transported to the cities of the surrounding states (Lehtola, 1997). Both examples also demonstrate that the church’s conversion work made use of the existing structures and established customs of the Sámi society. In both cases, the churches were built on the marketplaces of traditional Sámi winter villages, where the Sámi of a certain Siida had gathered for centuries. In this way, the conqueror’s school system, taxation  The name of the Sámi region in the Sámi language.

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system, and judicial institution were gradually integrated into the structures of the Sámi society, the Siida system. In addition, due to the pressure caused by the population from elsewhere and their livelihoods, the historical Sámi Siida system had come to an end by the end of the eighteenth century (Aikio, 1992). Moreover, the current name of the Bielbajávri church, Bielbajávri Wilderness Church, refers to the colonial discourse. For the Sámi, the lands of Siida have never been wilderness, but land and water where they have fished, grazed reindeer, and utilized other renewable resources, such as berries, in a sustainable way. In colonial cultures, the wilderness is understood as an area that can be conquered and its non-renewable natural resources can be exploited without limits. Contemporary descriptions of Ohcejohka’s church also explain that Ohcejohka and its church are included in the Finland’s national building tradition and the Finnish national ethos.

Conclusions The goal of this chapter is to better understand the role of the church in the colonization of the Sámi society in Finland. This was made by analysing the introductory texts of two churches of Ohcejohka and Anár in the Sámi homeland of Finland, which can be found on the websites of the Ohcejohka and Anár parishes. In order to understand how colonialism has affected the thinking of Indigenous peoples, it is necessary to better understand how colonialism has taken place and what methods it has used. In particular, this study focused on the role of the church in the implementation of colonialism. The study borrows from Indigenous methodologies and agrees with Walter and Suina (2019) and Porsanger (2004) that the societies of Indigenous peoples have been shaped by the histories, languages, religions, and worldviews of the Indigenous peoples, but at the same time colonialism has greatly influenced their development. Indigenous methodologies help to understand how the missionary work of the church supported the power of the rulers of the nation states, displaced Sámi philosophy and worldviews, and utilized the existing structures of Sámi society in colonial policy, for example, by establishing temporary schools and courts. This chapter used framing theory to analyse the discourses produced by the church. It examined how, if in any way, the introductory texts of two churches in the Sámi homeland of Finland highlighted colonial discourses and frames. In Entman’s words (1993, p.  52) these introductory texts of churches utilized framing “to select some aspects of a perceived reality and make them more salient in a communicating text in such a way to promote a particular problem definition, causal interpretation, moral evaluation and/or treatment recommendation for the item described”. Based on the analysis, it can be stated that the churches were named after the rulers of the conquering state. The established practices of Sámi society were used in the selection of church sites. In addition, the goal of the activity was to replace the philosophy of the Indigenous Sámi people with the philosophy of the conqueror. In addition, the Ohcejohka

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church and its surroundings have been included as part of the Finnish national architectural tradition. Based on the analysis, the following four frames have been identified from the churches’ introductory texts: (1) ruler frame, (2) conquest frame, (3) displacement frame, and (4) nationalism frame. Noteworthy, the research data of this study is quite small, and the preliminary frames identified based on the analysis of the research data should be applied to a larger research material to obtain more comprehensive research findings.

References Aikio, S. (1992). Olbmot ovdal min. Sámiid historjá 1700-logu rádjái. Girjegiisá OY. Bardhan, N. (2013). Constructing the meaning of globalization: A framing analysis of the PR strategist. Journal of Public Relations Research, 25, 391–410. Benford, R. D., & Snow, D. A. (2000). Framing processes and social movements: An overview and assessment. Annual Review of Sociology, 26, 611–639. Chilisa, B. (2019). Indigenous research methodologies. SAGE Publications. D’Angelo, P., & Shaw, D. (2018). Journalism as framing. In T. P. Vos (Ed.), Handbooks of communication science: Journalism (pp. 205–234). De Gruyter Mouton. Datta, R. (2018). Decolonizing both researcher and research and its effectiveness in Indigenous research. Research Ethics, 14(2), 1–24. Dearing, J.  W., & Rogers, E.  M. (1992). Communication concepts 6: Agenda-­ setting. Sage. Druckman, J. N. (2001). The implications of framing effects for citizen competence. Political Behavior, 23(3), 225–256. Entman, R. M. (1993). Framing: Towards clarification of a fractured paradigm. Journal of Communication, 43(4), 51–58. Entman, R. M. (2007). Framing bias: Media in the distribution of power. Journal of Communication, 57, 163–173. Evans, M., Miller, A., Hutchinson, P., & Dingwall, C. (2014). Decolonizing research practices: Indigenous methodologies, aboriginal methods and knowledge/knowing. In P. Leavy (Ed.), The Oxford handbook of qualitative research (pp. 178–191). Oxford University Press. Fortier, C. (2017). Unsettling methodologies/decolonizing movements. Journal of Indigenous Social Development, 6(1), 20–36. Gamson, W.  A., & Modigliani, A. (1989). Media discourse and public opinion on nuclear power: A constructionist approach. American Journal of Sociology, 95(1), 1–37. Gerlach, A. (2018). Thinking and researching relationally: Enacting decolonizing methodologies with an Indigenous early childhood program in Canada. International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 17, 1–8. https://doi. org/10.1177/1609406918776075 Hallahan, K. (2011). Political public relations and strategic framing. In J. Strömbäck & S. Kiousis (Eds.), Political public relations: Principles and applications (pp. 177–213). Routledge. Jolivétte, A. J. (2015). Research justice: Radical love as a strategy for social transformation. In A. Jolivétte (Ed.), Research justice: Methodologies for social change (pp. 5–12). Policy Press. Kiuosis, S., Mitrook, M., Wu, X., & Seltzer, T. (2006). First- and second-level agenda-­ building and agenda-setting effects: Exploring the linkages among candidate news

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releases, media coverage and public opinion during the 2002 Florida gubernatorial election. Journal of Public Relations Research, 18, 265–285. Lehtola, V.-P. (1997). Saamelaiset – Historia, Yhteiskunta, Taide. Kustannus Puntsi. Louie, D., Poitras-Pratt, Y., Hanson, A., & Ottmann, J. (2017). Applying indigenizing principles of decolonizing methodologies in university classrooms. Canadian Journal of Higher Education / Revue Canadienne d’enseignement supérieur, 47(3), 16–33. https://doi.org/10.7202/1043236ar Miller, M. M., & Riechert, P. B. (2001). The spiral of opportunity and frame resonance: Mapping the issue cycle in news and public discourse. In S. D. Reese, O. H. Gandy Jr., & A. E. Grant (Eds.), Framing public life: Perspectives on media and our understanding of the social world (pp. 107–121). Erlbaum. Murphree, V., Reber, B.  H., & Blevens, F. (2009). Superhero, instructor, optimist: FEMA and the frames of disaster in Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Journal of Public Relations Research, 21(3), 273–294. Nelson, T. E. (2004). Policy goals, public rhetoric, and political attitudes. The Journal of Politics, 66(2), 581–605. Osaka, S., Bellamy, R., & Castree, N. (2021). Framing “nature-based” solutions to climate change. WIREs Climate Change. https://doi.org/10.1002/wcc.729 Porsanger, J. (2004). An essay about Indigenous methodology. Nordlit, 15, 105–120. https://doi.org/10.7557/13.1910 Sara, I.-A. (2018). Whose voice? Understanding stakeholder involvement in law-drafting affecting Sami reindeer herding. JUY Dissertations, 44, Jyväskylän Yliopisto (University of Jyvaskyla), Jyväskylä, Finland. Shah, D. V., Domke, D., & Wackman, D. B. (2001). The effects of value-framing on political judgement and reasoning. In S. D. Reese, O. H. Gandy Jr., & A. E. Grant (Eds.), Framing public life: Perspectives on media and our understanding of the social world (pp. 227–244). Erlbaum. Smith, L. T. (1999). Decolonizing methodologies: Research and Indigenous peoples. Zed Books Ltd. Smith, L. T. (2004). Twenty-five Indigenous projects. In W. K. Carroll (Ed.), Critical strategies for social sciences (pp. 75–100). Canadian Scholars’ Press. Smith, L. T. (2013). The future is now. In M. Rashbrooke (Ed.), Inequality: A New Zealand crisis (pp. 227–234). Bridget Williams Books. Smith, L. T. (2015). Decolonizing knowledge: Toward a critical Indigenous research justice praxis. In A. J. Jolivétte (Ed.), Research justice: Methodologies for social change (pp. 205–210). Policy Press. Stokes, L.  C., & Warshaw, C. (2017). Renewable energy policy design and framing influence public support in the United States. Nature Energy, 2(8). https://doi. org/10.1038/nenergy.2017.107 Ulnicane, I., Knight, W., Leach, T., Carsten Stahl, B., & Wanjiku, W.-G. (2021). Framing governance for a contested emerging technology: Insights from AI policy. Policy and Society, 40(2), 158–177. https://doi.org/10.1080/1449403 5.2020.1855800 Von Zabern, L., & Tulloch, C. D. (2020). Rebel with a cause: The framing of climate change and intergenerational justice in the German press treatment of the Fridays for Future protests. Media, Culture and Society, 43(1), 23–47. Walter, M., & Suina, M. (2019). Indigenous data, Indigenous methodologies, and Indigenous data sovereignty. International Journal of Social Research Methodology, 22(3), 233–243. https://doi.org/10.1080/13645579.2018.1531228

CHAPTER 12

Colonial Histories and Artefacts: Which Way Gender? Sandy O’Sullivan and Madi Day

Introduction Relationality is complex and often interpreted by outsiders in the context of a settler-colonial approach to relationships and kin (Tallbear & Willey, 2019). As Indigenous people it informs our connection to each other, our capacity to interpret and be accountable for claims on the present and our communal understanding of the past. O’Sullivan and Day are Aboriginal scholars. Day is a Murri, born and raised on Dharug Country; O’Sullivan is Wiradjuri. These Indigenous countries are located within the island-continent colonially framed as ‘Australia’. The authors are decades apart in age and have complex and storied experiences; both are transgender, non binary, both work across the intersection of gender, sexuality and Indigeneity in the field of material culture and identity/ies. The title of this chapter uses the phrase ‘which way gender’ deploying Aboriginal English to ask a fundamental question of how and why curators make determinations of gender across deep time. Our starting point is to question how curatorial interpreters can know the gender(s) of a made figure, or of a body eased from their grave. We ponder the implications of erasing a complexity beyond gender binaries in a body or figure-informed story translated from deep time. That these stories or the artefacts that inspire them are frequently reduced and made simple is of great concern, as doing can add to an

S. O’Sullivan (*) • M. Day Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW, Australia e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 B. Carlson, T. Farrelly (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook on Rethinking Colonial Commemorations, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-28609-4_12

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erasure of the complexity of the past. Curatorial interpretation directly informs contemporary visitors in the museum space and does so with a level of authority (Macdonald, 2020; Macdonald, 2012; Roberts 2004). It is not our assertion that gendered determinations, where no available evidence is provided, is done out of malice, but rather because of consistent museum practices that draw stories of the past to the present, combined with the curator’s own capacity to comprehend gender separate to sex, and the complexity therein. In the context of European history, the definitions of an unknowable deep time or ancient culture are often framed as a broken or unreliable history (Schultz, 2018; Swinney, 2012). While many Indigenous peoples have had layered forms of record-keeping, including orality, these have been challenged as less reliable in the Western archive than the archaeological or post-invasion colonial record (Russell, 2005; Schultz, 2018), with an assumed blank slate that ends—in the Australian continent, for example—a mere 250  years ago. When extended to colonised Indigenous people, the interpretation of how people lived pre-invasion is often recast in the same way as the deep time era of the coloniser, resulting in a far shorter history that reflects the time lapse since invasion. For the coloniser it may be thousands of years, for Indigenous people a few hundred. Indigenous figures from the more recent past are often made anonymous in curatorial practice (Lonetree, 2012; Schultz, 2019) with this anonymity placing them into a further shared space with European collections from a far earlier period. Using this reductive approach, modern interpretation has the remit of, ironically, extrapolating and making sense of the past based on the limits of these artefacts and remnant information. Alternatively, in spite of the claim of absence in pre-invasion Indigenous historical records or claims of an absence of reliable records across deep time in the West that contribute to that unreliability, there are many hidden histories within the recent and well-­ documented Western monolith. These include claims or counterclaims around gender in its many forms (Schultz, 2018; Thorne et al., 2019). It is our assertion that, regardless of the capacity to accurately interpret gender, and with remnant materials requiring heavy interpretation when considering deep time, the gender binary and other socio-cultural factors are still frequently upheld by museum curators (O’Sullivan, 2021a; Schultz, 2018). We do not contest that this is done out of malice or as a specific measure of making past figures less complex. Gender, however, being a social construct that is layered and contextual (Thorne et al., 2019), is instead often conflated with reductive binary reportings of sex. These rely on the curator or interpreter’s own ideas of both gender and sex and their comfort with conflations (Haas et al., 2020; O’Sullivan, 2021a). It is these interpretive decisions that are questioned here, and by extension it calls into question many other decisions concerning the lives of peoples of the past. People with genders outside of the man/woman binary have been a part of the available written and oral record for thousands of years (Matsuno & Budge, 2017, p. 117). As a starting point for this work, the central assumption is that gender and sex, while independent, are often interpreted by colonial systems as

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interchangeable terms with immutable positions (O’Sullivan, 2021a). Any conflation of sex with gender is challenged here, as it is across anti-colonial writings on gender complexity (Driskill, 2011; Kraeher, 2016; Pyle, 2018) and across other contemporary discussions of non-binary and binary transness. Similarly, any idea that sex determines a binary or immutable experience is refuted (Thorne et al., 2019). While the idea of genders outside of the binary are not actively repudiated in museum interpretations of the past, the insistence on gendering figures when genders cannot possibly be known does the work of forcing them into the interpreter’s own imagined idea of how gender works and is understood by a museum visitor. This also speaks to a fundamental pressure found in interpreting the past that audiences frequently see curatorial decisions as authoritative (Macdonald, 2012).

Museums and Gendering The museums’ role as public-facing interpretive sites for the ancient past and deep time requires some assumptions to be made about ancestral ways of life and perspectives that provide analysis and a conduit from the past to the present. It is assumed that this has a level of accuracy that separates it from the private collection with the modern museum using this benchmark as a point of differentiation from collections that are not similarly ordered (Smith, 1989, pp.  6–7). It is the thesis of this chapter that interpretive decisions made in museums holding deep time collections often deliver an intentionally reductive story when relying on the body, solely, as an indicator for describing gender (O’Sullivan, 2021a), which could extend to other factors. It is also proposed that understanding the relationship between gender and sex relies on knowledge of the conventions of that deep time, for which no record can exist to aid interpretation. Decisions around gender, when made by curators and others charged with building provenance, reduce the knowing so that binary gender stories are presented when no, or little, evidence to authorise that assumption can be found. From the gendering of the ancient representative European Ice Age figurines of ‘Lion Man’ and ‘Venus of Willendorf’ to the ways in which gender roles are assumed when connected to the physical bodies of ancestors, the possibility of telling a definitive or accurate story of gender is challenged along with the actual depiction and age of the artefact (Clifford & Bahn, 2021). It is not our assertion that museum interpretation of humans from the past is entirely arbitrary, wrong or that decisions are made by all actors in the museums field, rather than where missteps occur, the remedies are relatively straightforward and may open up possibilities to explore the broader imperative to make complex our contemporary stories of the past (Hooper-Greenhill, 1999). For the purpose of this chapter, we propose a model that both makes gender less present in the telling, and mutable in the interpretation. Fundamentally, we propose that those charged with telling stories of past cultures examine remnants of that culture both through the lens of the inaccuracies enacted on other cultures by the current system and with a consideration that these cultures are

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complex and storied in ways that are as yet unknown. Where multiple stories of the past are provided in the interpretation and curation of artefacts and deep histories, it has extended the conversation and engaged the museum visitor (Vo, 2020).

The Gendered Stories we Tell Many doing the work of the colonial project continue to assert gender containers on the bodies of Indigenous peoples—with our histories made reductive through the burden of proof falling to Indigenous people. That burden of proof often lies with communities who are required to assert their complex histories, and in lieu of that, decisions are made based on the act of interpretation that delivers a more reductive understanding (O’Sullivan, 2016; Russell, 2005; Sleeper-Smith, 2009). For those tasked with interpreting ancient collections, the role is frequently to draw a connection between the past and the present. There is a substantial museum rhetoric that proposes that interpretation of deep history objects is required to be made meaningful for visitors (Ambrose & Paine, 2006, p. 78). This frequently results in gendering, conflating the sex characteristics of bodies with gender and making determinations about those bodies based on a reductive knowledge of past lives (Adair & Levin, 2020). In the acclaimed exhibition and accompanying book, Ice Age Art: The Arrival of the Modern Mind, curated and written by Jill Cook for the British Museum, ideas are explored that make a direct connection between the ancient and modern sensibilities. In connecting iterations of ice age art to our present, the work ponders the intentions and motivations of people who lived tens of thousands of years ago (Cook, 2013, p.  108; O’Sullivan, 2021a). Others have similarly resolved gender of the past into a dyad when no clear available information to the contrary is provided. Some figures have been particularly associated within the idea and ideal of gender. Venus of Willendorf is one such example, with a frequent contemplation of the figure as maternal, therefore female, therefore womanly (Karayanni, 2009, p. 449; Kuiper, 2016; Tripp & Schmidt, 2013, p.  56). The Venus figure is described by Cook in these ways, reflecting as with many substantial reviews, current interpretive thought on gender, sex and maternal status of these deep time objects (Cook, 2013, p. 226; Dommasnes, 2020; Karayanni, 2009). While there is a frustration at the lack of detail on how these decisions are arrived at, insistent conflation of maternal, feminine or masculine figures with women and men is only ever challenged when objects are perhaps sexed variously in terms of genitalia (Vo, 2020). Interpretation and curatorial storytelling require a level of art and choice, and it is understood that this moves beyond a sense of deeply knowing the everyday experiences of the past (Hooper-Greenhill, 1999; Macdonald, 2012). Cook’s text gathers thought and interpretation of remnant ice age art figures and shapes stories that both interrogate their historical meaning and provide a pathway for understanding by a contemporary visitor and reader. While

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complex and storied in other ways, Cook specifically genders figures reductively and in ways that reflect other curators of the ancient past. Cook is singled out here because the interpretation of this work is used extensively to make the connection between the ancient and the contemporary mind, and the notion of seeing ourselves in these figures from 40,000 years ago. In Cook’s writing, figures associated with pregnancy, however, contested these ideas may be, are automatically female or woman or womanly and these terms are used interchangeably. Figures that represent warriorship with harder, flatter torsos without curves are coded masculine or male or men, as with Lion Man (Cook, 2013, pp. 224–241). This, as with other writing on Cook’s work, is less criticism of their otherwise complex retelling, but instead a commentary on how frequently exhibitions that draw the past into the present through correlation, also gender and sex each object or remnant as though it also tells us of that specific past. What would it mean to present these items with either multiple complexities or without these arbitrary decisions? The headline of a Daily Correspondent for the Smithsonian Magazine reads: ‘This Prehistoric Peruvian Woman Was a Big-Game Hunter’ (Gershon, 2020). In relating the story of the discovery of skeletal remains of a 17–19-year-old from 7000 BCE, the analysis by Livia Gershon does two things to remind the reader of the importance of this revelation. Firstly, it reports a complex find from an archaeological team as a reductive gender absolute. It then reports that because of the sheer numbers of those with a similar body found, this individual cannot be, as Gershon frames it, ‘a unique gender non-conforming individual’ (2020). They may not be unique, due to numbers, but what evidence do they have that all or any of the individual are not non-conforming, or transgender?  Given that gender is a socio-cultural category, how could they tell this was a woman from skeletal and dental analysis? How do they arrive at the idea of ‘gender non-conforming’ or demarcate between this and someone who is transgender; terms that are distinct for a contemporary audience? Gershon provides a public recounting of the archaeological team’s research findings, explaining that the team initially assumed, from items found alongside the body, that the person was a man, later correcting their find to ‘female’. In both this summary and in the original report, the team lays claim to a debunking of the myth that only men were the hunters of big game during this era and in this location. In both reports, men, women, male and female are used interchangeably, and gender and sex are unproblematically connected. Based on their own reporting, the team did not analyse on the basis of their gender, they analysed on the basis of ‘sexing’, further remarking that this was why they were surprised when they performed analysis on the bones that the figure was, according to them, female-bodied (Haas et al., 2020). Rather than a semantical argument, the idea that gender and sex can be easily traded has implications. The idea that transgender people could not exist in numbers, and that ‘gender non-conforming’ can be determined some 9000 years into the future, is a contemporary interpretation laden with value-­ judgements. It is a decision rather than a fact. More crucially the reporting of

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this finding through public dissemination is telling. This process of interpretation of archaeological finds is often taken on by museums—as it is here—and can provide embellishment, and as we see here can contain the conclusions of those interpreting for a broader audience. Gershon’s use of the term ‘gender non-conforming’ is not found in the original article written by the team conducting the research and led by archaeologist Randy Haas. Even though the original article conflates terms around gender and sex, they are clear in describing the sexing of individual bodies, and they mark these as both precise and imprecise (Haas et al., 2020). Instead, their conclusions are clearly that differently bodied individuals were engaged in big game hunting, a focus of their study. This is not reported by Gershon. By focusing on a headline that creates a false equivalency, it makes contemporary a finding, while also ordering it into their own construction of gender. Sexing, while also problematic in the framing by Haas’ team, is different. Crucially, Gershon’s article cites the work of an archaeological team that has made fewer claims than the article itself purports. While they do use the terms ‘woman’ and ‘man’ interchangeably with ‘male’ and ‘female’, they do not make claims against the body on the basis of gender with evidence that only shows sex. In this retelling, the story of surprise is centred. The punchline is that while it was thought they were male, they are female. The act of revelation in interpretation is an important hook for engaging a museum visitor, alongside ideas that museum visitors require a punchline to remain connected (Macdonald, 2012). In particular with deep time depictions, the function, as with Cook’s work, is to draw a connected line between the past and the present (Adair & Levin, 2020). Where is a complexity of gender in the present worlds of these curators and their public? Where does this challenge or assist in the lives of museum visitors? An essential question around how these genders are arrived at is found in the sexing. Using this framing, if someone has a penis and testicles, they are a man, if someone has the capacity to carry a child, they are a woman. Beyond the reductivity of both sexing and gendering that this presents, where sex and gender are seen as an unproblematic dyadic representative, it also leads those deciding the past to make assumptions about gender roles. In this framing, what is a man or a woman if not a reproductive actor? What role can they play in a society if not to reproduce? In this way these figures from the past are automatically more reductive than the present, even though a curator from the present, who would have access to understanding the temporal, social and cultural production of gender and gender roles, tells both stories. There exists a more complex rendering of this story, found in Wei-Haas’ National Geographic article on the find. In a similarly populist journal, the writer is able to summarise and make complex the role of gender and sex of the discovered bodies by not only explaining to the reader that gender is not sex, but in also problematising a dyadic approach by suggesting multiple ways that discovering what has been framed as ‘female-bodied individuals’ may have a more complex relationship than as counter to male bodied individuals (Wei-­ Haas, 2020).

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Kinships: The Burden of Proof and the Colonial Project of Gender The colonial project of gender has been a site of control and restriction enacted on Indigenous peoples through direct and ongoing acts of oppression. It has been projected onto Indigenous bodies, reduced to reproductive containers mapping their primary responsibility to lineage and direct descent. The fundamental difficulty with this is a past, present and future cultural complexity imagined only through the externally imposed constructions of a binary reproductive gender. In arguing diversity of gender in Indigenous communities, this chapter draws on the work of Gomeroi scholar, Alison Whittaker, who argues that queer Indigenous bodies that deviate from the expected colonial project can trace a long history because our existence now evidences conditions of possibility that have always existed (Whittaker, 2015). They invoke ideas reminiscent of Anishinaabe theorist Gerald Vizenor’s theorising of Indigenous Survivance— if we exist now, we have always existed, and we will always exist (Vizenor, 1999). Whittaker (2015) further proposes that the absence of evidence is frequently used against colonised queer peoples by the very systems which stand as evidence of erasure and failure to understand their existence in the first place. These assumptions around gender and sex have been challenged through history, are challenged by many communities in the contemporary era and this challenge is supported through both the historical archive. Essential to the colonial project is the idea of reduction and management of the Indigenous body. Assumptions and closing off the interpretation of the past to a museum visitor creates a false sense of the ancient world. It proposes a less complex existence, based on our own conservative views of knowing, without recognising that the archaeological record is bound in the moment of discovery. But it has another, possibly inadvertent effect: it tells museum visitors about Indigenous and ancient cultures thus explaining who we are, and who we are not. In 2021, Sqilx scholar Percy Lezard led a 2-Spirit/Two-Spirit, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, questioning, intersex, asexual plus (2SLGBTQQIA+) team of community researchers in Canada to put together a National Action Plan in response to murdered and missing people from that community (Lezard et  al., 2021). The original focus of inquiry was on Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women and Girls; the extension of the plan to include 2SLGBTQQIA and a plus (+) to ‘denote the diversity of remaining identities not covered in the acronym’ has resulted in the scope of concern extending to MMIWG and 2SLGBTQQIA+ people, whom, they contend, are affected disproportionately. The impact of inclusion is immediate in this case. It reminds the communities and the broader population that trans and gender diverse Indigenous people exist and that the impact of colonial actions affects them as well.

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Sexing and gendering remains a persistent marker in the management of colonial bodies across the colonised world, leading to persistent erasures (Day, 2020; O’Sullivan, 2021a; Whittaker, 2015). Along with other enforced containers that comply with colonial impositions, it flags that until colonial entities write about or tell the story of colonised people, markers like gender cannot be truly known, with other diversities and kinships erased (Meiu, 2015; Sullivan, 2020). The colonial ideal of each binary gendered Indigenous subject becomes reduced to their procreative and assumed roles, with the colonial actor tasked to erase any marker that does not comply with the sensibility of the colonial mind (Sullivan, 2020). Thus conflating sex and gender for Indigenous peoples, and using male/female to draw attention to bodies and specifically, genitalia constructs Indigenous existence as bodily rather than a complex social and cultural experience of personhood. It is a denial of full humanity (Day, 2021). Indigenous peoples in this way are reduced to the status of animals with pedigrees, requiring the management of the coloniser (Moreton-Robinson, 2015). Simultaneously, imposing colonial gender binaries and roles as though they are relevant despite culture, time and place both universalises and naturalises coloniser  presence (Day, 2021). These actions deny the unique complexity of Indigenous family life and the complexity of gender across Indigenous history, while providing no evidence to support such a denial (Meiu, 2015). To persist in applying these colonial rules to museum interpretation tells a contemporary visitor that gender complexity outside of the colonial binary is new, and it does so with no proof.

Returning our Bodies; Listening While depictions of the natural world are often subject to biological determinism, when cultures are sufficiently othered through colonisation, their agency to challenge this is made more difficult. Challenging practices, for instance, and treating bodies of Indigenous people as objects is a part of this. This is demonstrated in the ways in which Indigenous bodies have been gathered and displayed in museum spaces, and even in the contestation across shameful returns (Sleeper-Smith, 2009). Museum interpretation has moved beyond an approach where the ancient past represents humans as animals, devoid of socio-­ cultural experiences, and yet we continue to work to request the return of bodies of our ancestors removed from their graves and relocated to foreign lands (Norman & Payne, 2022). The willingness for a reckoning formed through Indigenous-led protocols such as the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) (Trope & Echo-Hawk, 1992) provides not just a measure of return and material compensation to communities; it also questions the practices and protocols of collections (Sleeper-Smith, 2009). But the attention here is less on collections and more on the ways these are interpretated to a contemporary visitor. When it is no longer either possible, under jurisdictional legislations such as NAGPRA, and where there is a public questioning of displaying bodies from the recent past, there is a need to tell stories. If these stories then become

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gendered as a means of connecting past to the present, there must be an understanding of the complexity of these genders for Indigenous peoples. There has been much written about both historical acceptance (Driskill, 2011) and repudiation (Chisholm, 2018) of Indigenous people’s experience and treatment outside of the gender binary within their own communities. Many Indigenous cultures report multiple genders, and the complex relationality amongst those who inhabit these genders with roles as caregivers and family members moving in and out of reproductive relationships (O’Sullivan, 2021a) are not good, bad or indifferent, they just are. Across many cultures, and indeed in museums, there have always been exceptions in binary gendered representation, figures that respond to, but are not related to, the body are sometimes exempted. With mythical characters where there is ‘ambiguous’ genitalia (Vo, 2020), there has been licence to explore gender outside of the binary even if this is marker of diverse sex characteristics more so than gender. The mystical aspect of non-binary genders may be challenged, but they have also been used as protective layers by some communities to ensure that colonisation does not erase and work against these groups and their need to survive (Driskill, 2011). From 2010 to 2017, a study was undertaken by one of the authors, O’Sullivan, of 470 museums. The study examined the ways that major national museum spaces in the continents framed as the United States and Australia engaged and represented  Indigenous peoples (O’Sullivan, 2021b). This was extended to include the way museums in the United Kingdom were representing their own ancient past, as a method of exploring how colonial sites engage and represent. In this research curators were asked to describe ‘what works’ in the representation and engagement of Indigenous peoples in their museum (O’Sullivan, 2016). Respondents were asked to describe how they knew these ‘worked’. Consistent responses suggested that the further away in time that an artefact had to a living culture, the greater the need to draw a contemporary relationship to the lives of those connected to the object. In particular, they articulated an explicit relationality, where members of that shared culture took charge of some of the interpretation. This included a major finding, supported by other research, that suggests that Indigenous curatorship best facilitates this connection (O’Sullivan, 2016; Sleeper-Smith, 2009). When asked about the gendering of objects—not the main focus of the study—one curator spoke about the need to humanise, expressing a concern that using terms like ‘they’ and failing to gender in the binary would make people from history less human for their visitors. This idea is both widespread yet challenged robustly by gender scholars, who argue that misgendering into the binary does the same harm by imposing ideology (Nicholas, 2019) or in the case of this authoritative voice, foreclosing on possibilities. This approach also fails to account for further information that may become available to describe artefacts or representation, as we see with the ongoing debate around the gender, timeframe and even the animal being represented in the Lion Man figure (Clifford & Bahn, 2021).

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Who Curates? We began this chapter by discussing relationality and by acknowledging that in the museum space, stories of the past can only be told in the present, or across the many presents in which visitors are engaged. Who tells the story, and how they value other voices is at the heart of how we arrive at more complex potentialities. Where evidence does not exist for gender, making one up is more than unhelpful it rejects the very idea of complexity. In any act of interpretation there are multiple considerations, but the two immutable ones are the interpreter and the interpreted. Historian Susan Sleeper-Smith, in the book Contesting Knowledge approaches an interesting problem in the interpretation of contemporary Indigenous people and the reproduction of tropes of identity. Sleeper-Smith refers to the risks found even in an exhibition made by Indigenous curators and that celebrates Indigenous people. In discussing one exhibition, Sleeper-Smith argues that symbols associated with a community are highly gendered towards masculinities and in this way do not represent the complexity of who the people are, so using these symbols in an exhibition creates stereotypes that are both unhelpful and propose the community be read as masculine (Sleeper-Smith, 2009, pp.  180–181). These challenges to understandings of culture, even in the absence of Two-Spirit People or gender diversity, suggest that gender when used as a tool of understanding, without being fully unpacked, could be open to misinterpretation by the visitor. Sleeper-Smith argues that stereotypes are more likely when Indigenous people are not present, resulting in a culture solely associated with images of masculinity that misses the complexity of others (Sleeper-Smith, 2009).

Which Way Gender? There is substantial scholarship on the countenance of decolonising the body and mind (Bodkin-Andrews & Carlson, 2016; Carlson et al., 2021; Moreton-­ Robinson, 2015; O’Sullivan, 2022). Central to this is the premise that Indigenous peoples do anti-colonial work to free us from the dictates drawn onto our body through the violent act of colonisation. This is made difficult by the continued presence of colonial structures and a less-informed settler community for whom these lands were seized. With this in mind, many curators have explored the need for a more complex rendering of the past, and there is often a desire in visitors to read a more storied version of their own ancient cultures as well as an understanding for settlers in invaded lands, of the histories of Indigenous peoples. But for Indigenous peoples this has continued to be a challenge that is taken on mostly by museums that have substantial Indigenous leadership. When Bunjilaka at Melbourne Museum formed a new curatorial approach to centre local Indigenous stories that described deep time to the current era and in the local context, the approach was informed by the extensive work of a group of Indigenous Elders with knowledge and experiences of place and culture

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(Witcomb, 2014). Their discussion of the past was informed by the present, and this specific connection between deep time and the contemporary era meant that there was a range of genders, sexualities and, more broadly, experiences reflected across the telling of the project, and the communities represented. Facilitated by Woromi curator, Genevieve Grieves and supported by, then director and Boonwurrung and Wemba Wemba woman, Caroline Martin, the process created opportunities for multiple voices, by giving literal voice to contemporary Indigenous people. Bunjilaka’s approach recasts the experience of contemporary Aboriginal people as a direct connection to their ancestors showing a complex body and mind assumed across the ancient past. While there are items that are tens of thousands of years old found in the exhibition, it is the linking back to the contemporary world and experiences of Aboriginal peoples from the area, in video story form, who present a complexity of genders and sexualities (Witcomb, 2014). With Adair and Levin’s Museums, Sexuality, and Gender Activism (2020), we see challenges to practices in the colonial museums that contain, exclude and decide genders with no evidence. Throughout this chapter we have posited that there could be a framework that provides a more complex understanding of gender for the benefit of curators and those charged with interpreting our ancient pasts for museum visitors. That framework is simple: which way gender? The burden of proof remaining with those interpreting, and the evidence or lack of it, being presented. Learning from the processes within Indigenous-led museums, like Bunjilaka, will see a connection that travels between the past and present. It will embolden both Indigenous peoples as we tell our past, and for colonisers as they consider the complex lives of their own ancestors. Fundamentally museums must decide if they want to reproduce colonial erasure and impose reductive stories of gender, or whether they are prepared to engage in complex work that opens rather than closes possibilities of the past. It also must be asked that if telling the story of the past in museums has an effect, ultimately what effect does it have on trans and gender diverse people in the present when decisions are made to erase them from our shared histories?

Conclusions Positionality and relationship to content challenges the colonial framing of scholarship as distanced, objective and devoid of perspective. Curatorship, too, has framed itself as objective and distanced (Smith, 1989). It is our assertion that who the curator is, affects the act of interpretation and meaning, and that this act is often so aligned with the colonial project and system that it can do further harm to contemporary Indigenous people. To perform anti-colonial work, no matter the background of the curator, will allow a more fulsome telling, and to do this will be to tell more than one story, to provide alternative readings and interpretations. To do so will also allow coloniser countries the gift of possibility and a rediscovery of their own complex past.

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References Adair, J. G., & Levin, A. K. (Eds.). (2020). Museums, sexuality, and gender activism. Routledge. Ambrose, T., & Paine, C. (2006). Museum basics: The international handbook. Routledge. Bodkin-Andrews, G., & Carlson, B. (2016). The legacy of racism and indigenous Australian identity within education. Race Ethnicity and Education, 19, 784–807. Carlson, B., Kennedy, T., & Farrell, A. (2021). Indigenous gender intersubjectivities: Political bodies. Chisholm, J. (2018). Muxe, two-spirits, and the myth of indigenous transgender acceptance. International Journal of Critical Indigenous Studies, 1, 21–35. Clifford, E., & Bahn, P. (2021). The Bear Necessities. World Archaeology. 100. https:// www.world-­archaeology.com/features/the-­bear-­necessities/ Cook, J. (2013). Ice age art: The arrival of the modern mind. British Museum Press. Day, M. (2020). Indigenist origins: Institutionalizing indigenous queer and trans studies in Australia. Trans Studies Quarterly, 7(3), 367–373. Day, M. (2021). Remembering Lugones: the critical potential of heterosexualism for studies of so-called Australia. Genealogy, 5(3), 71. Dommasnes, L. H. (2020). Gender, feminist, and queer archaeologies: European perspective. Encyclopedia of global archaeology, 1, 4486–4498. Driskill, Q.-L. (Ed.). (2011). Queer indigenous studies: Critical interventions in theory, politics, and literature. University of Arizona Press. Gershon, L. (2020, November 5). This prehistoric Peruvian woman was a big-game hunter. Smithsonian.com. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-­news/9000-­ year-­old-­big-­game-­hunter-­peru-­prompts-­questions-­about-­hunter-­gatherer-­gender-­ roles-­180976218/. Haas, R., Watson, J., Buonasera, T., Southon, J., Chen, J. C., Noe, S., et al. (2020). Female hunters of the early Americas. Science Advances, 6(45). Hooper-Greenhill, E. (1999). Learning in art museums: Strategies of interpretation. The educational role of the museum, 2, 44–52. Karayanni, S. S. (2009). Sacred embodiment: Fertility ritual, mother goddess, and cultures of belly dance. Religion and the Arts, 13, 448–463. Kraeher, R. (2016). Two-Spirit acts: Queer indigenous performances ed. by Jean O’Hara. Diálogo, 19(1), 235–236. Kuiper, K. (2016). Venus of Willendorf. Encyclopædia Britannica Inc, 16. https:// www.britannica.com/topic/Venus-­of-­Willendorf Lezard, P., Prefontaine, N., Cederwall, D. M., Sparrow, C., Maracle, S., Beck, A., & McCleod, A. (2021). 2SLGBTQQIA+ Sub-Working Group MMIWG2SLGBTQQIA+ National Action Plan Final report. https://mmiwg2splus-­nationalactionplan.ca/ wp-­content/uploads/2021/06/2SLGBTQQIA-­Report-­Final.pdf. Lonetree, A. (2012). Decolonizing museums: Representing native America in national and tribal museums. Univ of North Carolina Press. Macdonald, S. J. (2012). Museums, national, postnational and transcultural identities (pp. 273–286). An anthology of contexts. Macdonald, S. (2020). Behind the scenes at the science museum. Routledge. Matsuno, E., & Budge, S.  L. (2017). Non-binary/genderqueer identities: A critical review of the literature. Current Sexual Health Reports, 9(3), 116–120.

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Meiu, G.  P. (2015). Colonialism and sexuality. The International Encyclopedia of Human Sexuality, 1, 197–290. Moreton-Robinson, A. (2015). Nullifying native title: A possessive Investment in Whiteness. In The white possessive: Property, power, and indigenous sovereignty (pp. 65–78). University of Minnesota Press. Nicholas, L. (2019). Queer ethics and fostering positive mindsets toward non-binary gender, genderqueer, and gender ambiguity. International Journal of Transgenderism, 20(2–3), 169–180. Norman, H., & Payne, A. M. (2022). Nowhere Else but home: A National Resting Place for indigenous Australian ancestral remains. The Museum Journal. O’Sullivan, S. (2016). Recasting identities: Intercultural understandings of first peoples in the national museum space. In P. Burnard, E. Mackinlay, & K. Powell (Eds.), The Routledge international handbook of intercultural arts research. Routledge. O’Sullivan, S. (2021a). The colonial project of gender (and everything else). Genealogy, 5(3), 67. O’Sullivan, S. (2021b). Saving lives: Mapping the power of LGBTIQ+ first nations creative artists. Social Inclusion, 9(2), 61–64. Pyle, K. (2018). Naming and claiming: Recovering Ojibwe and plains Cree two-spirit language. Transgender Studies Quarterly, 5(4), 574–588. Russell, L. (2005). Indigenous knowledge and archives: Accessing hidden history and understandings. Australian academic & research libraries, 36(2), 161–171. Schultz, L. (2018). Object-based learning, or learning from objects in the anthropology museum. Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies, 40(4), 282–304. Sleeper-Smith, S. (Ed.). (2009). Contesting knowledge: Museums and indigenous perspectives. U of Nebraska Press. Smith, C.  S. (1989). Museums, artefacts, and meanings. In P.  Vergo (Ed.), The new museology. essay, Reaktion Books. Sullivan, C. T. (2020). Who holds the key? Negotiating gatekeepers, community politics, and the “right” to research in indigenous spaces. Geographical Research, 58, 344–354. Swinney, G.  N. (2012). What Do We Know about What We Know?: The Museum ‘Register’ as Museum Object. The thing about museums: Objects and experience, representation and contestation, 31–46. Tallbear, K., & Willey, A. (2019). Critical relationality: Queer, indigenous, and multispecies belonging beyond settler sex & nature. Imaginations: Journal of Cross-­ Cultural Image Studies, 10(1), 5–15. Thorne, N., Yip, A. K., Bouman, W. P., Marshall, E., & Arcelus, J. (2019). The terminology of identities between, outside and beyond the gender binary—A systematic review. The international journal of transgenderism, 20(2–3), 138–154. https://doi. org/10.1080/15532739.2019.1640654 Tripp, A. J., & Schmidt, N. E. (2013). Analyzing fertility and attraction in the paleolithic: The venus figurines. Archaeology, Ethnology and Anthropology of Eurasia, 41, 54–60. Trope, J. F., & Echo-Hawk, W. R. (1992). Native American graves protection and repatriation act: Background and legislative history. The. Ariz. St. LJ, 24, 35. Vizenor, G. R. (1999). Manifest manners: Narratives on postindian survivance. U of Nebraska Press.

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Vo, D. (2020). The compassionate way: Towards trans and non-binary inclusive narratives in museums: Towards trans and non-binary inclusive narratives in museums. SQS–Suomen Queer-tutkimuksen Seuran lehti, 14(1–2), 95–101. Wei-Haas, M. (2020). Prehistoric female hunter discovery upends gender role assumptions. National Geographic, 4. Whittaker, A. (2015). The border made of mirrors. In D. Hodge (Ed.), Colouring the rainbow: Blak queer and trans perspectives, life stories and essays by first nations people of Australia (pp. 223–237). Wakefield Press. Witcomb, A. (2014). “Look, listen and feel”: The first peoples exhibition at the Bunjilaka gallery, Melbourne museum. Thema La revue des Musées de la civilistion, 1, 49–62.

CHAPTER 13

Monumental Copper and Coal: The Case for Including Extractivism in the Rethinking of Colonial Commemorations Nikolas Orr

and Nancy Cushing

Introduction The recent wave of iconoclasm has drawn attention not only to the subjects of statues and other memorials but also to their form and fabric. Protestors had to calculate how much force is required to pull a bronze statue from its plinth or to remove the head from a marble figure. They have chosen paints that will adhere to polished surfaces in order to convey their message to observers. Opponents of Confederate statues discovered that, when pulling over the cheap mass-produced bronze variety, they doubled at the shins where the metal is thinnest, while those responsible for the drowning of Edward Colston’s figure in Bristol expressed awe at the noises it produced as they dragged it to the harbour.1 Joining in via social media, scholars of art crime and heritage 1  NBC4 Columbus. (2017). Protestors topple Confederate statue in Durham, North Carolina. https://youtu.be/H-uAZa4H1vk; Alasdair Doggart interviewed in Movements at Manchester. (2021). Not set in stone: Remembering empire and contesting statues. University of Manchester. https://youtu.be/YtzKWHazTiA.

N. Orr • N. Cushing (*) University of Newcastle, Newcastle, NSW, Australia e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 B. Carlson, T. Farrelly (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook on Rethinking Colonial Commemorations, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-28609-4_13

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conservation praised the mechanical advantages of chains over rope for statue toppling and the utility of household cleaning chemicals for causing bronze disease.2 This heightened attention to the material properties of monuments prompts an expansion of their critique beyond the now familiar focus on the political, military and economic leaders they typically portray. The dull thud of granite on grass or the din of hammer-struck bronze evokes both their raw materials and the chain of industries required to convert minerals into commemorative objects. Here, we draw attention to the colonial practice which made these materials available to be sculpted: extractivist mining. To begin, we focus on the mining of copper, a major component of bronze statues. We then move to monuments intended to celebrate or commemorate extractive industries, where our attention is directed to coal. These two substances, one a metal and the other a sedimentary rock, have a long-shared history (see, e.g., Golding & Golding, 2017). Most relevant here, coal fuelled the refining and smelting processes that ultimately produced bronze for statues. We use copper and coal to expand discussions on decolonising the commemorative landscape to argue that ethical appraisal of monuments might consider, first, the substances from which they are made and, second, a broader range of commemorative subjects. In semiotic terms, these two theoretical moves explore the two aspects of signs, both the signifier and the signified. Copper will be examined as a signifier in bronze statues, asking to what degree their fabric communicates colonialist histories and values, independently of the form in which the metal was cast. Although the material elements of monuments are manifold, we have isolated copper because of its role as the prime component of bronze statues. A fuller semiotic analysis would, of course, require study of all the elements that operate to give a monument its meaning: its material but also its formal composition, iconography and the broader spatial and urbanistic setting, not to mention the overarching discursive field in which meaning is made, shared and remade (Savage, 2011; Clay, 2007). Even a single raw material, nevertheless, has far-reaching implications, imbuing the object it forms with the histories of all those who contributed to its production. A decolonising critique of bronze statues cannot be considered comprehensive without attention to the copper within them. The second move returns to more familiar ground, applying the well-­ established model of contesting monuments based on the individual, group or event they represent. That is, the external signified or referent that the sign evokes forms the focus of scrutiny. This approach is in keeping with ‘embodied’ theories of the power of images, which affirm that people respond to 2  Thompson, E. L. [@artcrimeprof]. (2020, 11 June). Use chain instead of rope and it’ll go faster. Retrieved 5 July 2021 from https://twitter.com/artcrimeprof/status/127086900174543257 8?s=20; Odent, M. [@oldenoughtosay]. (2020, 10 June). It’s honestly fine to throw paint on memorials of genocidal racists! Retrieved 5 July 2021 from https://twitter.com/oldenoughtosay/statu s/1270376631274790915?s=20.

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figurative representations as if they were the real thing and not an artistic reproduction of a prototype (Freedberg, 1989). This accounts for the veneration and loathing that religious and political icons have long elicited, which is well documented in the literature on iconoclasm (see, e.g., Gamboni, 1997, Freedberg, 2021). Here we will show that monuments to coal mining possess a power of their own. Through the subjects they portray and the words with which they are inscribed, these images celebrate the establishment and growth of an extractive industry, as well as marking lives directly lost in pursuit of coal. Such images are intended to be celebratory, commemorative and nostalgic, presenting the industry in a positive light which excludes its environmental cost. By broadening the focus from individual agents of violent or discriminatory actions to whole industries implicated in racial and environmental exploitation, new categories of monuments can be drawn into the wider decolonial debate. Expanding the critique of statues to encompass extractivism is of particular relevance as the world responds to the challenges of the Anthropocene, or perhaps more appropriately the Capitalocene (Moore, 2017). As many have pointed out, Indigenous peoples have experienced this sort of cataclysmic disruption before (Davis & Todd, 2017). Colonisers invaded armed with an economic model premised on extracting wealth in whatever form would be profitable to them, with little regard for impacts on people, other living things or the land itself. Based on the term extractivismo used in Latin America, these practices have been referred to as “extractivism”, defined as “a complex ensemble of self-reinforcing practices, mentalities, and power differentials underwriting and rationalizing socio-ecologically destructive modes of organizing life through subjugation, violence, depletion, and non-reciprocity” (Chagnon et al., 2022, p. 760). The concept of extractivism has been applied to many areas of economic activity, including intensive forestry and agriculture, but our focus on mining reflects the original use of the term. While the effects of extractive mining varied, overall it was deeply disruptive for colonised peoples, causing cultural, spiritual and economic harm. The search for mineral deposits hastened the advance of colonisers into territory away from their ports of entry, extending the challenge to Indigenous sovereignty into remote areas. When coveted minerals were found, extractivists saw them as unutilised resources requiring only the application of human ingenuity to be transformed into a profitable commodity (Isenberg, 2017). The nature of mining meant that not only was the Earth’s surface occupied, disrupting existing economies and spiritual beliefs, but the land was opened and excavated, bringing forth what should have remained hidden and distributing physical materials charged with meaning to distant locations. In some instances, colonised peoples were forced to provide labour for the mines through enslavement or enforced dependency; in others, they were excluded from this new economy and made to share their land with workforces composed of settler-­ colonists and unfree workers. Pre-existing relationships with land were

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disrupted, ecosystems distorted and pollutants released into the soils, atmosphere and waterways, making their way into human and non-human bodies. Extraction is not conducted on a sustainable basis but is premised on depletion. When mineral deposits were reduced to the point that mining was no longer profitable, operations ceased and enterprises moved on to fresh fields, generally with minimal remediation. This cycle of local displacement, disruption, abandonment and, in some cases, reactivation was repeated around the world, and as is increasingly apparent, has had global implications. As Sakshi wrote, “It is intrinsic to the operation of extractive capitalism to colonise land and disregard the plurality and diversity of the lives and knowledge forms of its local inhabitants” (2021, p.  70). Just as colonisation and extractivism have been mutually supporting practices so the critique of monuments can be usefully extended to those which are composed of and those which commemorate the products of mining. There is a large body of literature on decolonising the commemorative landscape. Since Ruth B. Phillips “dis-membered” Canadian art history by pitting settler monuments against Indigenous memory (2003), the field has grown enormously. In the past seven years, journals have produced a number of special issues from urbanist, art historical and historical perspectives, to name a few, including City (2020), Sculpture Journal (2022), October (2018), de arte (2018), Public Art Dialogue (2016) and the Journal of Genocide Research (2022). Articles have covered a range of strategies from removal, anti-­ monuments and counter-memorialisation through varying types and degrees of iconoclasm (Carlson & Farrelly, 2022; Marcos, 2022; Scates & Yu, 2022; Goddeeris, 2022; Fields, 2022; Garsha, 2019; Orr, 2021). Authors of recent monographs on the iconoclasm of statues have also dedicated considerable room to specifically colonial monuments and their contestation. Noteworthy is Erin Thompson’s account (2022) of the toppling of a Columbus statue in Minnesota led by American Indian Movement chairman Mike Forcia. Monuments to agents of Spanish colonialism across the Americas received ample coverage in Peio Riaño’s Decapitados (2021). Mining monuments have largely escaped scholarly attention. There is, of course, overlap as in the work of Alex von Tunzelmann (2021) who documents the vicissitudes of statues of Leopold II, Cecil Rhodes and Edward Colston, all of whom invested heavily in the extraction of wealth from colonised bodies and lands. But few studies have situated mining tributes within the broader colonial memorialscape. One exception is Tom Perreault who examined monuments to mining in Bolivia as assertions of the centrality of Indigenous miners in the national identity and history of this país minero (“mining country”) (2018, p. 230). Turning to our focus, critical studies of coal and decarbonisation generally do not extend to monuments (Goodman et al., 2020). Rebecca R. Scott’s study (2010) of coal mining and regional identity in Appalachia analysed coalmining heritage sites and museums as memorials while Andrew C.  Isenberg (2017) showed how sites of nostalgia reinforce romantic conceptions of mining, yet neither consider discrete monuments. The sole monument referred to

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in Scott’s book is dedicated to the damaged environment rather than the mining which caused the harm. The materials from which monuments are made have not attracted strong interest in the field of iconoclasm but have been well considered by art historians. The racial connotations of white materials, such as plaster and marble, and dark ones including bronze and jasperware in the long nineteenth century are especially well documented (Savage, 1997; Nelson, 2000; Breitweiser, 2015; Beach, 2022). Unlike some late nineteenth-century audiences, who were still “unaccustomed to see English faces represented in [the] mulatto-like hue [of bronze]”,3 later publics learned to “expunge the signs of blackness” from the materials they beheld (Savage, 1997, p. 186). Classicists have also produced important insights into the hierarchy of value ascribed to marble and bronze in antiquity, the former generally reserved for Greek deities while the latter was used for honorific purposes (Højte, 2005, p. 45). Bronze forms the focus of Simon Baker’s surrealist-inspired invitation (2007) to think of statues, first and foremost, as material. Yet the mineral origins of the materials used in fabricating statuary have not been the object of significant investigation from the vantage point of sculptural meaning-making. Kathryn Yusoff’s concept of “White Geology” (2018), however, might usefully be applied to the art object. Yusoff describes a transfer of meaning and value between geological matter and human subjects, a single system in which black and brown bodies and earth are amalgamated. Enslaved bodies, conceivably, inhabit the bronze monuments we worship. The close ties of bronze with the mining and metallurgical industries, and the foundation of these in the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries, imbue statues with histories of enslavement. The rethinking of colonial commemorations has to this point been focused on statues of men who are emblematic of imperial ventures. We argue that applying a materialist approach can open up a wider critique of monuments by paying attention both to the substances from which they are formed and the extractivist processes which made stone and metal available for commemorative purposes. Attention to these aspects of monuments is of particular significance as the global repercussions of mining are being unequally experienced across the Global North and South. We now turn to a discussion of the mining, refining and use of copper within the Spanish and British Empires.

Copper in the Colonial Archive Copper and its alloys have been used for millennia in a wide range of cultures. Of note, however, is that the two most prolific periods of statue production in western history were part of imperial projects: the Roman and British empires. Occurring at the turn of the first and twentieth centuries, both booms were sustained by enormous increases in copper production (Hong et  al., 1996). 3  A comment from 1887 on the unveiling of a bronze figure of Queen Victoria for Winchester Castle, reproduced in the Hampshire Observer, 18 May 1912, as cited in Powell, 2011, p. 285.

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Both were made possible by imperial expansion, the first in the Mediterranean region and the second on a global scale. From the sixteenth century on, Europe’s access to copper came to depend more and more on the resources made accessible through Spanish and Portuguese exploration. Although the quantities of copper spent on statues is relatively small, the argument that follows centres on the origins of the copper ore, its uses, and the Spanish and British colonial contexts in which the global copper industry was born. Copper’s relevance is predicated, therefore, not on its weight in statuary, but on the symbolic meaning inscribed in it. Copper, arguably more than any other metal, helped shape the global economy and establish the hierarchy of modern-­ day geopolitics along racial lines. In tracing the colonial origins of the modern copper industry, we now focus on Latin America and its place in Spanish and British imperialism. Precious metals appear throughout the Spanish colonial archive as one of the economic drivers (and facilitators) of expansion in the New World. Throughout the various phases of colonisation, and particularly during the sixteenth century, the Spanish state offered fiscal incentives to stimulate exploration and exploitation of mineral deposits across the Americas and, later, the Philippines. Gold and silver have undoubtedly earned the scholarly attention directed towards them; they exerted an undeniable hold over Columbus, the conquistadors and the Spanish crown (Bebbington & Bury, 2013). In comparison, copper’s role in Spanish conquest has, at times, been given short shrift by scholars. In recognising gold and silver exploration as a key procedure in conquest, ethnohistorian Matthew Restall concludes that “Spaniards had no interest at all in [copper] per se” but valued it solely as a monetary medium (2003, pp. 22–23). However, Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella of Castile understood well the desirability of copper, providing the resources and legislative support required to locate copper deposits and establish mines. As early as 1505, Fray Nicolás de Ovando, governor general of the Indias, and King Ferdinand corresponded over the matter (Ferdinand II, 1505a, 1505b). Queen Isabella was overjoyed in 1532 at the discovery of a rich deposit of copper in Santiago del Prado in Cuba (Isabella I, 1532). A further reason copper was ever-present through Spanish conquest is a purely geological one: the paragenetic sequence of mineral formation meant that, wherever colonisers found gold and silver, they were likely to find copper as well. In fact, copper is to be found all through colonial records. Communications between Spanish officials often belied an impatience to locate copper deposits and extract the maximum advantage from them. Given Spain’s inexperience in copper production at the time, expertise from the copper fields of Northern and Central Europe was called upon. In 1544, El Cobre (‘The Copper’) in Santiago del Prado, Cuba, became the first New World mine established by Spanish colonial interests. Owned and managed by German patrician and mining expert Johann Tetzel, it represented the early phase of foreign investment and the incursion of the global economy into the Americas (Roth, 2017).

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This copper mining was premised upon the exploitation of the labour of Indigenous people and enslaved Africans. Records of requests for Indigenous forced labour appear in 1562, issuing from mine owners in San Martín and Zacatecas, in present-day Mexico (Gómez de Contreras et  al., 1563). The reducción, or forced displacement and concentration, of Indigenous populations served a dual purpose of clearing territory of its inhabitants and supplying labour to an industry burgeoning under the urgent military and economic priorities of the Spanish Empire. These local workers were supplemented with enslaved African peoples forcibly displaced to the Americas. In a particularly cruel logic, they produced the copper for bracelets, or manillas, that Portuguese and other traders exchanged in West Africa for more human captives and gold (Golding & Golding, 2017). An order for 100 African men with no criminal records to be taken to Cuba for work in copper mines was issued in 1578 (Philip II, 1579). Even by contemporary standards, Cuba was a brutal destination, the harsh conditions reflected in greater trafficking of Africans into Cuba than to the North American colonies (Rodrigo y Alharilla, 2021). Underlying the urgency to find and exploit minerals was a push for territorial and economic growth and the defence of the resources already held by the empire. Copper’s military uses therefore attracted special interest in the sixteenth century, over and above that elicited by its myriad industrial and domestic applications (Barros Arana, 2000/1885). Demands for copper at the time also issued from industrial, domestic and ecclesiastical quarters, including those situated in colonies. Sugar production in the Caribbean depended on copper for the various pots, vats and pans used in the boiling and crystallisation of the juice pressed from sugarcane (Roth, 2017). All manner of tools and kitchen utensils were fashioned in copper and alloys. The clergy, too, were desirous of copper for their church bells and ritual trappings (Herrmann, 1894). The early colonial copper industry was, nevertheless, oriented towards military demands. The Spanish Empire’s territorial and economic growth was achieved and maintained through force. Copper’s utility in manufacturing weapons proved critical. Small arms, such as crossbow bolt tips made of Mexican copper, played a part in Hernán Cortés’ siege of Tenochtitlán and the later northward expansion of New Spain (Díaz del Castillo, 1796; Worth, 2017). Artillery for Spanish boats and coastal defence placed even greater demand on copper supplies. Any copper ore discoveries were promptly assessed for their suitability for casting cannon (Casa de la Contratación de Sevilla, 1573; Márques de Andrade, n.d.; Real Cédula, 1586). Towards the end of the sixteenth century, the empire had produced enough bronze cannon to prevail in its arms race with English and Dutch opponents. Ultimately, however, Spain could not keep up. By the seventeenth century, the advantages that Cuban copper conferred on Spain were shrinking alongside its opponents’ growing ability to forge larger and cheaper weapons in both bronze and iron (González Enciso, 2017; see also Alcalá-Zamora y Queipo de Llano, 1971). In the passage from Spanish ascendancy to British world domination, Latin American copper again played a role. After a period of decline in global copper

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consumption, a series of booms took place in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, in large part resourced by Chilean mines of colonial origin. The British navy drew heavily on Andean reserves between the 1780s and 1830s, sheathing the hulls of its wooden ships in a bid to protect them from rot and reduce drag. By the 1840s, raw Cuban and Chilean copper was being channelled to smelters in South Wales, supplying a combined 85 per cent of the ore processed in Britain, which produced at the time up to 80 per cent of the world’s refined copper (Golding & Golding, 2017, pp. 87, 110). Thus, Latin America helped feed the copper-hungry enterprise of rail construction in North America in the 1840s, where it accelerated First People’s relocation and dispossession. The expansion of railways in Britain, the electrical and telecommunications revolution of the 1880s, and the arrival of trams in European cities at the close of the century were all fed from Chilean mines. At its height in the 1870s, Chilean bullion represented the bulk of the copper registered on the London commodities market (Herrmann, 1894; Welter, 2006). Chile’s mines came to supply half of the world’s copper and sated nineteenth-century imperialist and capitalists’ hunger for speed and reach in transport and telecommunications.

A Material Critique of Bronze Statuary Chile’s copper boom served to expand the British Empire’s influence not only through railways and submarine telegraph cables but also through statues of its rulers and administrators. The long pause in statue making after the Roman period had started to come to an end when Renaissance scholars and collectors of antiquity again drew attention to the practice. Artistic demand for bronze grew slowly, returning to (and exceeding) ancient Roman levels with the statue boom of the nineteenth century. This fit well with declining demand for copper for military purposes. By 1830, the Spanish inspector of the Ministerio de Haciendia de Indias was seeking new markets, recognising in England’s burgeoning sculpture industry a new consumer of colonial copper ore (Intendente de Hacienda, 1830).4 The boom in bronze statuary in the late nineteenth century resulted from a conjunction of a nationalistic urge for patriotic celebration in forms that imitated the classical origins claimed for western civilisation and the technological and economic means to cast those feelings in bronze. Monumental statues had become increasingly economical to produce; knowledge of mineral deposits had swelled, and production reached unprecedented levels of efficiency, while boundary-crossing multinational workforces and foreign capital traded in the expertise and equipment of industrial metallurgy, which had been a tightly held secret throughout the early modern period. Faster, more secure trade routes multiplied and, with them, the artisanal guilds required to cast complex,

4  The tax inspector wrote to the director of mining of ‘la importancia de facilitar … en aquel pais … [el] mineral de cobre en disposicion de ser aplicado á las artes’.

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hollow forms. The presence of statues in public spaces was extended across the globe. The conjunction of these three elements—Latin American copper, British imperialism and monumental sculpture—in the nineteenth century is what established bronze statuary as a colonialist cultural form. Britain was the leader in this wave of statue building. Over the course of the century, British foreign and cultural policy cemented monumental sculpture as a tool of modern empire-building, making use of access to colonial minerals (see especially Coutu, 2006) and enslaved labour. By the 1830s, British-owned mines operating in Cuba and Brazil had become the largest enterprises worked by enslaved peoples in the western hemisphere (Evans, 2013). Latin America presented a hideaway for unscrupulous industrialists seeking to escape British slavery abolition laws passed in 1833. Far from being a safe haven though, Cuba was in the throes of rebellion, plantation workers having revolted across the island in 1825, sparking replica uprisings over the next two decades (Barcia, 2012). Faced with diminishing returns and a climate of hostility, British capital was in retreat by the 1860s. Opposition to slavery reached its height in Cuba in 1868 with the call for independence and freeing of plantation workers by the sugar mill owner-turned-independence leader Carlos Manuel de Céspedes y Castillo. Copper miners soon joined the sugar workers’ revolution. Nevertheless, from 1870 to 1901, Britain erected in its colonies 75 statues of Queen Victoria alone. Inaugurated at a rate of two per year, in just three decades, the colonial effort almost equalled the number of statues the domestic campaign had spawned in twice that time (Powell, 2011, pp.  284, 286). Reflecting on British India, the Duke of Windsor wrote in 1951 of how statues and other “elaborate display[s] and pageantry” were effective in “impressing the Oriental mind” (qtd. in von Tunzelmann, 2021, p. 72). This statue craze outlasted the nineteenth century and the crest of Chilean supply, relying after that on the US, which became the prime producer of copper (Welter, 2006). Centred on the state of Michigan from the mid-century and then Montana, these operations employed free labour while displacing First Nations Peoples and damaging their traditional lands. Today, after decades of US hegemony, copper mining is centred once again on Latin America and its profits continue to go overwhelmingly to foreign multinationals. Of the ten largest copper mines in operation, six are in Chile, and the other four in Peru and Mexico. In 2009, Latin America accounted for 47 per cent of world copper production; today Chile alone provides around a third (Bebbington & Bury, 2013, p. 54; Golding & Golding, 2017, p. 38). The country’s reserves are dominated by Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton, Britishand Australian-based companies respectively (Bebbington & Bury, 2013  p. 59). The present-day copper economy is thus a visible legacy of pre-modern geographies. It follows that a good portion of the copper in circulation today is a product of colonialism. How appropriate, then, that in 2019 Chileans’ struggle for a new constitution took a bronze statue—of independence hero and nationalist figure Manuel Baquedano—as its symbolic target.

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These histories signal the likelihood that a great many British colonial statues—and indeed any statuary produced since the nineteenth century—contain copper extracted in conditions that harmed First Peoples on the American continent. Not only was copper extracted from stolen lands, but mining in Spanish colonies depended on enslaved labour, a situation that lasted well beyond abolition, owing to illegal human trafficking and legal loopholes. Recent research estimates that around five million Indigenous people were enslaved in the Americas between 1500 and 1900 (Reséndez, 2016, p. 324). Bronze monuments, therefore, may be interpreted as products and symbols of colonialism not because of the historical subjects they represent but because of the presence of copper in their makeup. The idea that a monument might be contested because of the very material from which it is made—or, more precisely, the origins of and conditions in which that material was produced—raises methodological considerations about how one can ascertain such information beyond what might be inferred from general knowledge. We have argued that copper sourced from Indigenous lands from the early modern period onwards is tainted by colonial extractivist practice; however, the origins of copper used in any given statue are complex and very likely multiple. The many phases that copper undergoes in its passage from subterranean resource to public statue stand in the way of any easy adjudication of provenance. First mined, the ore is crushed and smelted to produce a relatively pure element, which may then be cast, rolled or extruded, ready for applications including its admixture with zinc and tin to form bronze. Each phase can take place at a different site, often separated by thousands of kilometres and passing through the hands of any number of agents: labourers, technicians, merchants and artisans. ‘Single-origin’ copper, if such a product existed, would be rare indeed. Instead, copper is typically made from the ore of multiple extraction sites and is combined with scrap coppers from any number of sources, some of which might have been in circulation for centuries. Indeed, it is estimated that around 80 per cent of all copper ever produced is still in circulation, passing from one form to another according to changing priorities (Helmenstine, 2021). The difficulty of identifying the origin of copper was demonstrated in research conducted on Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi’s “Statue of Liberty” (1875–76) in New York in 2009. A multidisciplinary approach was taken, combining scientific and archival methods (Young et al., 2009). Using a technique known as optical spectroscopy, researchers analysed samples of the statue’s copper sheeting to determine its chemical composition. Similar techniques have enabled chemists to trace the production sites of bronze sculptures lacking foundry marks or for which documentary evidence is scarce. The presence of impurities such as arsenic, selenium and tellurium in Bartholdi’s monument provided important clues; their varying quantities indicated that the copper in the sheeting used on the statue’s upper part and skirts came from different extraction sites. The findings were, nonetheless, inconclusive. The tellurium-­ rich lower half may have originated in the Andes but could equally have come from the Rocky Mountains in the US.

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These approaches suggest that chemical composition may help to understand a statue’s ethical fingerprint up to a point. But the inter-racial power relations between those responsible for the extraction and refinement of the copper requires further research into the relevant mines and smelting plants, the terms under which the lands were acquired from First Nations, the demography of their labour force and the conditions to which workers were subjected. An interim approach, which has been pursued here, is to treat copper as an inherently fraught artistic medium due to environmental degradation caused by its extraction and refinement, and colonial-period copper as doubly fraught because of the racial injustices perpetrated in its production. Indeed, despite the evidence for any given statue being partial, the macro-level economic and social processes in which copper production is entangled are still cause for reflection. In the case discussed here, copper extraction was one of the drivers of Spanish colonialism in the early modern period. Its ever-increasing utility ensured that imperial interests in colonial copper continued right up to the independence of the main supply nations. The entry of Northern European capital and expertise under Spanish colonialisation set the stage for the global domination of the mining industry by foreign multinationals. Neo-extractivist practices continue in the post-colonial era, suggesting that conditions often change little after national governments are established. While some mining sites and periods are undoubtedly more vexed than others, as a symbolic medium in the service of bronze, copper has a distinctively pro-colonial lustre. Modern bronze statues are not merely representations of colonial power but its material manifestation.

Monuments to Coal and Coal Mining The second nexus between decolonising statues and extractivism to be explored in this chapter shifts to the more familiar engagement with iconography. Here we examine monuments dedicated to extractivist mining, specifically the mining of coal. With coal combustion as the single largest contributor to rising global temperatures (Goodman et al., 2020), further heightened by the release of methane during and after active mining (United States Environmental Protection Agency, 2022), coal is now widely regarded as a highly problematic fuel source. The coal industry faces pressure from government regulation, uncertain markets and disinvestment, just as formerly colonised nations seek reparations for the loss and damage they are suffering because of carbon dioxide emitted by coal-burning nations made wealthy through imperialism (World Economic Forum, 2022). Coal-mining monuments have become a natural target for decolonising critiques. We have chosen to focus on coal mining in three of the world’s top seven producers and leading five exporters of coal: South Africa, the US and Australia. In each of these countries, coal was used in limited ways by the original inhabitants, but placed on an extractivist footing in the nineteenth century as the global appetite for coal expanded (Smil, 2017; Barak, 2020). In South Africa,

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coal mining was stepped up from the 1860s to meet the demand for power for the lucrative mining of diamonds and gold (van der Merwe, 2006). The principal coal-mining districts lie in the northeast of the country, including KwaZulu-Natal and Limpopo provinces. Coal mining was racialised from the time of its establishment, with local people making up the majority of the workforce, some Indian workers and small numbers of settler colonists in management roles (Alexander, 2008). Across the Atlantic in the US, coal mining began in the east, with anthracite or hard coal mines in the north and a line of bituminous coal running north-south through Appalachia. Mines were opened in the west from the 1870s increasing output from just over eight million tons (7.26  million tonnes) in 1850 to 270  million tons (245  million tonnes) in 1900, then one-third of global production (Isenberg, 2017). In Australia, extractive coal mining began in the early 1800s, scarcely a decade after the original invasion of the continent but remained on a small scale until the midnineteenth century when, as in South Africa, it received a boost in demand from a series of goldrushes. Commercially exploitable coal was discovered around the continent with the eastern states of New South Wales and Queensland proving to be the most productive and now fuelling industrial expansion in China, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan. Across these three countries, monuments to coal mining exist in small but significant numbers. In the US, the National Monument Audit undertaken by Monument Lab (which does not claim to be comprehensive) identified 120 monuments related to coal, most of them clustered in the older coal-mining regions of Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Illinois (2021a). The Monument Australia database includes 255 references to coal, predominantly in the original coal-mining state, New South Wales, followed by Queensland and Victoria. South Africa appears not to have a similar database to provide comparative figures but specific examples are available from a range of sources. There are a variety of types of coal-related monuments. Here we consider three: those celebrating the mineral itself, those marking discovery and exploitation of coal reserves and those memorialising coal miners.5 The first category are memorials to coal, in some cases with the doubled characteristic of being made from coal and therefore echoing the issues raised in the foregoing discussion of copper. These could be said to have developed from a more transitory celebratory form, the coal arch. Constructed to mark ceremonial occasions, coal arches were formed from blocks of coal supported by a wooden or metal frame. One was constructed in Sydney in 1901 from 135 tons of coal donated by mining companies as part of the celebrations of the inauguration of the Commonwealth of Australia (Freestone & Veale, 2004). Like other triumphal arches of the period made of timber, wool, wheat and even butter, coal arches served as “actor[s] in the formation of settler colonial 5  Another significant category are monuments to past mining technologies, often created from large scale equipment. Benyon notes that in Wales, “artefacts of the mines” are a predominant form of memorial, with a smaller number of figurative sculptures (2021, 256).

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narratives” (Power & Norrie, 2017, p.  92), representing the economic and social progress those societies associated with extraction. More permanent monuments made of coal tend to take a simple form, being large pieces of coal to which interpretive plaques are affixed. One example is the 6.8-tonne block of anthracite set up in the tourist district of Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania, in 1976 (Historical Marker Database, 2022). An unusually elaborate instance is the Coal Monument at Baxter, Kentucky, built by the local Kiwanis Club in 1934 to guide visitor to the nearby mining centre of Harlan. It consists of large blocks of coal said to have been donated by the 50 mining companies operating in the county when it was built (Crafty Crow Show, 2021). Monuments made from coal required the active participation of the commodity’s producers to provide the raw material, in the belief that their generosity would be rewarded with ongoing support for their operations. Other monuments to coal are made of alternative substances. Those designing the 1909 Jubilee or Coal Monument in Newcastle, Australia, chose to include a large composite block of black marble to represent coal, realising that it would have greater longevity than the local bituminous coal (Cushing, 2021). A 1938 plaque on a stone in Rock Springs, Wyoming, draws attention to coal with the inscription: “beneath this monument, coal was first mined in this district” in 1868.6 Memorials to coal, most placed in prominent positions where they are visible to outside observers, follow the pattern noted by Gibbs (2021) in Scotland where community-focused memorials tend to commemorate specific events, while those intended to have commercial benefits offer more generic tributes to the coal-mining industry. A second category of coal monuments follows conventional memorial practices in portraying specific individuals who initiated or advanced the industry. A 1923 obelisk at Vereeniging in the Gauteng province of South Africa that commemorates George William Stow, who identified commercially viable coalfields in the Vaal River district in the 1870s, is part of this genre (George William Stow Memorial, n.d.). In 1970, the town of Seatonville in Illinois memorialised two Seaton Brothers for sinking the first coal mine on the site in 1879 with a plaque (Historical Marker Database, 2022). In Newcastle, Australia, an 1897 marble statue of James Fletcher paid for by public donations attests to his work as a coal miners’ union leader, newspaper proprietor and politician, applying the sobriquet he was awarded during his lifetime: The Miners’ Advocate (Gollan, 1972). Across the continent at Collie, Western Australia, a memorial in the form of a cairn overlooks the site where, in 1883, shepherd George Marsh accidentally set alight black rocks he had gathered from a riverbed, proving the presence of coal (Coal Memorial Site, 2022; 6  Rock Springs also celebrates coal with an illuminated arch emblazoned with the words “Home of Rock Springs Coal, Welcome” installed over the Lincoln Highway in 1929 by the Wyoming Coal Operators and now relocated to the downtown (Luke Anderson (2017) “Rock Springs Coal Sign”, Alliance of Historic Wyoming, https://www.historicwyoming.org/profiles/ rockspringscoal).

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Collie Coal Discoverer, 1909). Erected by one service club (Apex) and restored by another (Rotary), there is a clear intention on the part of these middle-class community-building associations to elicit pride in a key local industry by telling its origin story. Although a small category, these memorials sit within the wider genre of statues of “great men” translated into bronze or stone for actions and achievements that drew admiration in their own times or through posthumous elevation. The most numerous and widespread coal-mining monuments are those that place coal miners at their centre. While they have a celebratory element, they have an important memorial role as well. Conducted on the extractivist model, underground coal mining has placed miners at high risk of injury and death from collapses, exposure to noxious gases, fires and explosions. Coal-mining deaths peaked in the US at 3242 in 1937 but remained above 1000 a year until the 1970s (United States Department of Labor, 2022). In South Africa in the early 1990s, the fatal accident rate was still high at 1.57 per thousand annually, although it has since fallen (van der Merwe, 2006). Australian fatality rates have been low by international standards but marred by major events with more than ten fatalities prior to the shift to open-cut mining in the late twentieth century. Between 1991 and 2010, eighty-five mineworkers were killed (Harris et al., 2014). Memorials for miners killed in their workplaces began to appear from the late nineteenth century and took many forms: obelisks, ceremonial gates, fountains, stained-glass windows and even a swimming pool (Coal Memorial Site, 2022). The impetus and the funding for such memorials often came from the miners and their families, through ad hoc committees or trade unions. They commonly include a figure of a miner, portraying the dignity of labour in their proud bearing, robust physiques and the inclusion of mining equipment. This is the case for the 1988 At the Coalface memorial in Blackwater, Queensland in Australia, which marks the role of the coal industry in the development of the region and the lives lost to the mine (“At the Coalface” Memorial, 2022). Paid for by the Blackwater Mine Workers Memorial Trust, it features two miners, one seated and another holding aloft a mining lamp. The 2001 Tribute to Anthracite Coal Miners memorial in Scranton, Pennsylvania, was funded by the son of a miner and portrays a single miner striding confidently to his work atop a black cube-shaped plinth. It is at once celebratory of the role of coal in making the US “the most powerful nation on earth” and solemn, drawing attention to the human cost. Its plaque records that 50,000 coal miners had been killed in US mines and hundreds of thousands more left with chronic health problems (Historical Marker Database, 2022). Memorials to mining disasters erected by mining companies and governments often appear long after a lethal event occurred. The deaths of 437 mineworkers trapped by a roof collapse in 1960 at the Coalbrook mine in the Orange Free State, remembered as South Africa’s largest coal-mining disaster, was first marked in 1996 with a memorial stone and a coal-cutting machine; and more recently, by the local and national governments, with an

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amphitheatre inside which is a circle of stones engraved with the names of the lost miners (Müller, 2018). New owners of a mine at Appin outside Sydney replaced a modest existing memorial to 14 miners killed by a coal-dust explosion there in 1979. The artists’ brief for a design competition made clear that the intention of the company in funding the memorial was to draw out positives from the tragedy, suggesting a focus on mateship, improvements in safety since the event and the future of mining (Appin Mine Memorial, 2019). Memorialisation of this type is undertaken as part of “soft counter-insurgency” campaigns to create images of extractive enterprises as working for the good of the community, opening the way for the acceptance of ongoing mining (Dunlap, 2020).

Towards a Critique of Extractivist Monuments Monuments to coal mining warrant critique as much as those to other aspects of the colonial project. Though less direct than interpersonal violence or genocidal practices, resource extraction has also had a damaging impact on people and environments. Like other colonial monuments, those designed to celebrate the substance being mined, the inauguration of mining and the miners are intended to shape public understandings of extraction as natural, necessary and positive. As the Etcetera Collective noted “culture and arts are viewed as a fundamental part in the productive chain of [the extractivist] model” (The Future of Memory, The Neo Extractivism Museum, 2022). In response, they developed a Neo Extractivism Museum designed to be temporarily housed on mine-affected sites as well as in museums or art spaces. In the Museum, they counter the narratives embedded in corporate visitor centres and museums with works and installations showing the effects of extractivism on territory, and the agents who backed or resisted it. More broadly, through reinterpretation, and monuments celebrating mining can be made acknowledge past harms and warn against their continuation under neo-extractivism. One caveat is the case of the memorials to lives lost in mining. When formulating a critical response to these memorials, it is important to consider the emotional charge they continue to carry. Coal-mining communities are not the principal beneficiaries of the profits generated from their labour. Their monuments often stand beside bypassed roads and in otherwise barren parks. As described by Scott, the US Appalachia has been “a national sacrifice zone” left degraded by corporations catering to the “national appetite for energy” (2010, p. 168). Many residents of these zones are fearful of a future without coal and protective of historical coal-based identities. As Ewan Gibbs (2021) explored with regard to the Auchengeich Mining Disaster Memorial in Scotland, their memorials are often not neglected and forgotten like many statues but kept vital through annual ceremonies which reanimate collective memories of tragic events in new generations and new arrivals. Whether mining has ceased or continues, memorials provide a physical anchor for a community identity in which pride is often associated with a sense of victimisation, heroic actions and

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sacrifice. Coal monuments are their war memorials, standing in for the graves of miners whose bodies could not be retrieved. They acknowledge sudden deaths which occurred without the usual processes of leave taking or more familiar processes of grieving (King, 1998, p. 172). The nature of the deaths being honoured means that words or actions taken against these memorials are understood as a form of sacrilege—a suggestion that miners’ lives were wasted and their efforts misdirected. What is needed is an iconoclastic strategy that continues to honour miners while also recognising the toll taken by mining and fostering repair and healing (Monument Lab, 2021b, p. 22). One solution is to apply a decolonising and environmental lens in a way that does not take away from but adds to the solemn roles of these memorials. Without belittling the tragedy of sudden explosions or collapses, revisiting memorials can be done in a way that frames these events not as discrete disasters but moments of concentrated violence which punctuate a slowly unfolding disaster on a larger scale: alienation of people from place, the poisoning of soil, air and water, the weakening of living human and more-than-human bodies and the contribution to the inexorable rise of global temperature. Using the dialogic approach, in which words, images or elements are added to existing monuments (Stevens et al., 2018; Hadley et al., 2022; Scates, 2021), coal-mining memorials could be reframed to tell new stories in which the dramatic moments of disaster—the gas explosion, the roof collapse—are used to draw attention to the “longue durée socioenvironmental interactions” of which they form a part (Williamson & Courtney, 2018, p. 7). This would position them amongst the growing number of Anthropocene memorials that mark events, such as the death of the last known individual in a species (Jorgensen, 2018), as part of the slow disasters set in motion by colonialism. As in the Neo Extractivism Museum, the involvement of those with lived experience of mining and its consequences is essential to such reimaginings of memorials, as is the concept of critical nostalgia. That is, allowing for mining’s people to express a sense of loss while at the same time recognising the negatives which flowed from mining (Gibbs, 2021, pp. 100–104).

Conclusion Monuments are important as scaffolds for the “collective cognitive frameworks that serve to filter, shape and give meaning to personal memories” (Perreault, 2018, p.  231). Recent critiques of them have focused almost exclusively on how monuments continue silently to endorse racial hierarchies and direct colonial violence against Indigenous and other racialised peoples. We have argued that the basis of iconoclasm could be extended to recognise the wider impacts of colonisation, in particular the environmental degradation associated with extractivist mining. Our case studies of copper as a constituent of bronze statues and monuments to coal mining draw attention to the multiple ways in which monuments are entangled with colonialism. In doing so, we suggest that

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the rethinking of colonial commemorations should include the colonial violence inflicted on the more-than-human world, with its particular effects on Indigenous peoples.

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PART II

Resistance and Reimagining

CHAPTER 14

Holding Dissonance, While Disrupting Narratives Amy Young, Ana Borges Jelinic, Elena Marchetti , and Patrick O’Leary

Introduction The Uluru Statement of the Heart and accompanying referendum has prompted reflection and dialogue on Australian settler colonial history, and its continuing legacy in Australian society (Uluru Statement of the Heart, 2022). The commencement of the Treaty process in Queensland and the development of the process in Victoria provide an opportunity for truth-telling about the past, and a reckoning with social narratives from settler colonial times that continue to impact Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. This chapter emerged from a symposium held in June 2022, titled ‘Reason and Reckoning’ which focused on, and re-examined, the continuing legacy of Sir Samuel Walker Griffith, the former premier and Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Queensland and inaugural chief justice of the High Court of Australia, and a key figure in developing the Commonwealth Constitution. Griffith’s name has been adopted by Griffith University (2022), whose official website indicates the current reckoning of the University with his legacy, stating: Indeed, the breadth of his education and legal prowess make his apparent complicity in extrajudicial killings across the state almost impossible to understand alongside many of his other professional accomplishments. His extensive

A. Young (*) • A. B. Jelinic • E. Marchetti • P. O’Leary Disrupting Violence Beacon, Griffith University, Brisbane, QLD, Australia e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 B. Carlson, T. Farrelly (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook on Rethinking Colonial Commemorations, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-28609-4_14

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involvement in co-drafting the Australian Constitution makes him a pivotal figure of Federation, yet while this achievement is widely lauded, it carries with it the inescapable weight of Indigenous exclusion and dehumanisation which contributed to a legacy still being reckoned with today.

Foley and colleagues, in this volume, unpack Griffith’s legacy in relation to his complicity in extrajudicial killings, especially in regard to First Nations peoples, and the impact this legacy has for the University. As members of the University with a commitment to promoting social justice and access to justice through addressing contemporary violence and its intersections with social vulnerabilities, the authors aim to understand the legacy of Samuel Griffith, with particular focus on the beliefs prevailing in colonial Queensland at the time. These beliefs were codified by Griffith into legal documents and conventions which continue to impact the lives of groups who face disadvantage. In doing so, this chapter aims to demonstrate the continuity of beliefs from Griffith’s time in colonial Queensland, to the current period, and the violence and disadvantage these continue to drive in contemporary Australia, demonstrating the pervasiveness of colonisation. Through understanding the drivers of violence, greater insight can be gained into how structures created in Australian colonial history continue to interact and reinforce structural disadvantage and discrimination. Griffith’s biographer, Joyce (1984b), argues that understanding Griffith allows for a deeper appreciation of Queensland society and Australian law, and asserts that Queensland society presently cannot be fully apprehended without acquiring the requisite knowledge of its past. This chapter ends with a short discussion on how these narratives can be disrupted.

Background A short overview of Griffith’s professional biography will assist in contextualising key aspects of his career that have a continuing impact on contemporary society. Griffith was born in Wales in 1845 and migrated to Australia at age eight (Kelly, 2019). Following his time at university, he was admitted by the Supreme Court of Queensland as a barrister in 1876 (Joyce, 1983; Kelly, 2019). By 1893, he had appeared in 280 recorded cases throughout Queensland, including regional courts in Rockhampton and Maryborough (Joyce, 1983). Griffith’s career included 10 years as chief justice of Queensland, and 21 years as a member of Queensland Parliament, including as premier (Macrossan, 1998). In 1872, he entered the Queensland Legislative Assembly becoming premier in 1883 serving in the role until 1888 (Kelly, 2019). Griffith’s second period as premier occurred between 1890 and 1893, in alliance with McIlwraith (Kelly, 2019). From 1893 to 1903, Griffith served as chief justice of Queensland’s Supreme Court (Kelly, 2019). During this period, he also undertook the task of codifying Queensland’s criminal laws, which he completed in 1899 (Joyce, 1983). In Queensland politics Griffith worked to have the evidence of Aboriginal witnesses admissible in legal proceedings (Joyce, 1983). He championed free,

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compulsory and secular education, introducing the Education Act of 1875 (Qld), which made free primary education compulsory between the ages of six and twelve (Forward, 1964, p. 10). However, the compulsory component was not operationalised until 1900, given its difficulty to enforce. Griffith was also a trustee of both Brisbane Grammar schools and was active in the movement to establish a university in Queensland (Joyce, 1983). Griffith encouraged European migration into the colony, and attempted to restrict Chinese immigration, introducing Bills to this effect in 1884 and 1886 (Forward, 1964; Joyce, 1983). Griffith further ended a scheme allowing workers from India to be introduced into Queensland (Joyce, 1983). The promotion of European immigration was supported by the electorate at the time as illustrated by the following letters addressed to Griffith during his time in parliament. We believe that this district as you pass through it will show forth what results can be obtained through thrift and industry of an intelligent European population, as compared with the worst feature of capital cheap, that is to say coloured capital, which will only benefit individuals to the hurt of the community at large. (From Electors of Rosewood, 1882, located in State Library of Queensland)

Similar letters were sent from the Gold Miners of Ravenswood and the Townsville Anti-Coolie league in 1882. Griffith was invested in prohibiting the use of Pacific Island indebted labour, attempting to introduce legislation to this effect to end indebted labour by 1890 (Forward, 1964). Griffith was also involved in introducing a trade union system into the colony (Forward, 1964); however, his role in this space is contested, given his subsequent role in sending armed militia to break up industrial disputes (Bolton, 1991). During this period, Griffith was accused of patronage, with this charge supported by the findings of a Royal Commission into the Civil Service (Joyce, 1983). He showed a continued interest in legal reform, demonstrated by his introduction of a probation scheme for first time offenders in 1886 (Joyce, 1983). Griffith was heavily involved in discussions of federation, taking a pivotal role in the 1891 Sydney convention, and in the 1897–1898 convention to draft a constitution (Joyce, 1983). In 1903, the Judiciary Act (Cth), drafted by Griffith, was passed, inaugurating the High Court of Australia, with Griffith becoming its first Chief Justice (Joyce, 1983). Griffith sat on the bench for 16 years and was involved in 950 reported cases (Joyce, 1983). This short background provides context for the more in-depth discussions of Griffith’s legal legacy throughout this chapter, especially in relation to First Nations, Chinese and Pacific Island populations.

Personal Beliefs Examining the narratives that influenced Griffith’s decisions are inhibited by a lack of information about his personal beliefs. For example, Joyce (1984b) laments that the influence that religion played in Griffith’s decision making cannot be determined with the sources available. Though Griffith’s father was

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a strict congregationalist, the importance Griffith himself placed on religion is unknown, with correspondence indicating he held doubts about his faith, being referred to as a ‘cynical misanthropical doubter’ (Joyce, 1984b). Griffith joined the Freemasons when commencing his legal and political career, and was a member for 47 years, demonstrating his commitment to the hierarchical and secretive organisation (Joyce, 1984b). Tentative links between his Freemasonry and his interpretation of the law can be drawn, including Griffith lamenting any degeneracy of principles judged by Griffith to be important, to mere observance or ceremony (Joyce, 1984b). Joyce (1984b) argues that links can be drawn between Freemasonry and Griffith’s approach to the great strikes of 1891, with masonry not drawing distinctions between employers and workers. Griffith argued that masonry was comparable with trade unionism, which he legalised within Queensland (Joyce, 1984b). The rights of workers are an example of Griffith’s pragmatic decisions which allowed him to maintain political power. Griffith championed the rights of workers, and praised the labour movement (Bolton, 1991). His position on workers’ rights were supported by community members as can be seen in a letter written in December 1882 housed in the State Library of Queensland’s collection and signed from the ‘inhabitants of Glemorgan Vale’: Although personally unknown by the majority of us, the noble stand which you have taken on all questions affecting the interests of the working man as against the schemes of the capitalists, and the dogged persistent manner in which you stuck to your post in spite of the scorn continually heaped upon you by your opponents have … our greatest admiration.

Griffith in the 1880s displayed sympathy with the emerging labour movement, illustrated by his 1888 election statement that “the great problem of this age is not how to accumulate wealth but how to secure its more equitable distribution” (Kelly, 2019, p. 100). However, this sat in contrast to his actions during the shearer’s strikes of 1891, where he sent military troops to end the industrial action (Kelly, 2019). Griffith justified this apparent contradiction by declaring he no longer had sympathy with ‘men who endeavour to bring about reforms…by crime and violence’ (Joyce, 1983). Similarly, Griffith planned to stop the trafficking of Pacific Island indebted labourers, until economic circumstances shifted (Bolton, 1991). His commitment from the mid-1880s to end Pacific Island indebted labour by December 1980 was trumped in 1892, when the use of this labour was prolonged for another decade (Joyce, 1983). Arguing that this was a temporary solution given the worsening economic crisis, Griffith promised ‘constant watchfulness’ against abuses (Joyce, 1983). Griffith’s pragmatism was evident during his time at school in Maitland, where he was referred to as ‘Oily Sam’ as he could argue on any side of a question (Forward, 1964; Joyce, 1983). Another aspect of Griffith’s beliefs on which there is little commentary is his attitude towards women. Women played a role in Griffith’s personal life. In his

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younger years he is noted as flirting with married women and simultaneously falling in love with three of his cousins (Joyce, 1984b). He married Julia Thomson at the age of 25, and they had six children, with the marriage being described as a “close union” (Joyce, 1984b, p. 178). Forward (1964) describes Griffith as a good husband and father to his six children, including four daughters, noting his diaries took a devoted interest to documenting his children’s lives. However, given Griffith is reported to have worked 80 hours a week during his time in Queensland Parliament, it is difficult to see when he could have devoted time to fathering (Joyce, 1983). Little is recorded about Griffith’s beliefs or actions in relation to women’s rights and political participation.

Silence and Pragmatism: Women’s Suffrage and Rights Griffith’s silence on women’s rights is conspicuous given the rise of the suffragette movement in Queensland from 1888 (Jordan, 2004). Jordan (2004) suggests that feminist issues at the time were subsumed by masculine political priorities in Queensland, including the ongoing Frontier Wars against First Nations peoples, and the use of Pacific Island indebted labourers, being the second issue prominent in Griffith’s recorded thoughts. Further, federation discussions positioning women as ‘mothers’ of a new nation, suppressed feminist debates (Jordan, 2004). Griffith’s comments while chief justice of Queensland in an address on 11 June 1896 gives insight into his views on women’s voting rights: It is especially important to bear in mind this division of subjects when considering the Constitution of the Federal Legislature. It is no part of my duty to offer any opinion as to the superiority of one franchise over another; but I may observe that the functions to be performed by the elected appear to me to be very relevant to the question of who the electors shall be. Take as an instance the latest regard to the franchise. No one, I suppose, objects to a woman voting at an election of a hospital board or a committee of a school of arts. Nor in Queensland, at any rate, has anyone objected to a female ratepayer voting at municipal elections. It does not seem to me to follow that at an election, say, of a captain of volunteers women should be entitled to vote. And there is, I think, no finality in any scheme of franchise. The tendency of late years certainly has been to continually enlarge the franchise, and naturally so, because of the narrow and, as we think, absurd limits within which it was at first confined. It is still, so far as I know, capable of enlargement in every country which has a definite franchise, for no nation has thought fit to admit indiscriminately any person without regard to age or nationality, or to allow the privilege to criminals or lunatics in confinement. (Griffith cited in White & Rahemtula, 2002, p. 363)

Griffith continued, stating that he could conceive of a time when all men and women over the age of 21 would be able to vote in Australia, demonstrating his openness to the possibility, if women were included in the franchise or considered part of the community (White & Rahemtula, 2002). Griffith’s

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argument, made throughout the speech, was that voting rights are dependent on who is considered part of the community, and thus should differ from country to country. His arguments are not framed around an idea of the rights of women. Despite a lack of commentary on women or the women’s movement, Griffith still had an impact on contemporary women’s lives. For example, despite extensive discussion from Griffith on the Commonwealth Constitution, he devotes little time to discussing marriage and divorce articles present within the Constitution, which over time has disproportionately impacted on the rights of women, particularly in relation to parental rights and responsibilities and property rights. Despite his lack of commentary, Griffith’s career as a High Court justice saw him adjudicate ‘domestic’ cases (Joyce, 198ba). In his final domestic case, the High Court overturned a decision made by the Victorian Supreme Court, where a couple married because the man believed the child being carried by his partner was his. The husband had no home for his wife to live in, so she continued living with her family of origin (Joyce, 1984b). The wife later disclosed that the father of her child was another man, not the man she had married (Joyce, 1984b). As a result, the husband declared that he was willing to have his wife live with him, but not the child, and that he was not willing to pay maintenance for the child, which influenced the wife’s decision to reside with her family. In determining who had deserted whom, Griffith commented that the husband had not deserted his wife and did not have a duty to have the child into his home, stating: The wife’s refusal to go to his home…in the first instance an absolute refusal, unless he complied with the condition that the child should live with her. He replied that he could not comply with that condition. Her refusal then stood as an absolute refusal, and…desertion commenced at the date of the refusal. (Griffith cited in Joyce, 1984a, p. 341)

This ruling gives some insight into Griffith’s understanding at the time of women and children, given the lack of recognition of the need for the child to be protected by living with their mother. The story gives insight as to how women and children were seen as men’s property, through marriage and his procreation. This may have influenced the mother’s coerced choice to refuse the offer to live with her husband without her child in the first instance. Parallels can be drawn with Australia’s contemporary family law and child protection systems, which disproportionately place a burden on mothers to protect and care for children. Griffith’s ruling was congruent with understandings of women’s and children’s rights of the time; however, the lack of accompanying commentary makes it difficult to assess his conceptualisations of women’s rights and the responsibilities of a husband or father. During his time in Queensland politics, Griffith passed legislation that directly influenced the lives of women, without a consistent framework regarding women’s suffrage. For example, Griffith’s government passed the Married

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Women’s Property Act of 1890, which allowed women in Queensland to own property, ensuring women gained a greater economic security (McCulloch, 2004). However, there is no commentary available on Griffith’s motivation or ideology driving the decision to pass the legislation. At the time Griffith entered politics in Queensland, women were actively discriminated against by laws including a lack of property and voting rights, exclusion from higher education, and not being paid an equal wage for equal work (Jordan, 2004). Griffith appointed women commissioners to sit on the Queensland Royal Commission into the Conditions of Labour in Shops, Factories and Workshops, making it the first time women had been appointed in such a role (Jordan, 2004). However, the women commissions were restricted to investigating women’s employment (Jordan, 2004). The report to come from the Royal Commission highlighted the child labour used, unpaid overtime and apprentice pay rates that were one third less for women than men (Jordan, 2004). Viewing Griffith’s appointment of women to the Royal Commission in light of his views on voting rights, suggests the appointments, while progressive for the time, were in relation to a space where he saw it as appropriate for women to be included, segregating women to speaking only on certain topics and in certain arenas. Griffith’s dismissal and indeed, disregard of women’s views and voices is further exemplified by his involvement on the Board of Trustees of Brisbane Grammar School when the Board sacked the headmistress, Eliza Fewings, and teacher Miss Sellers, for their outspoken views on women’s education (Jordan, 2004; Joyce, 1984a). The Women’s Suffrage League was formed in Brisbane in 1889, campaigning to amend two laws that were particularly harmful for women and girls, the Contagious Diseases Act 1868, which prescribe the compulsory medical examination of women, and laws related to the age of consent, which at the time was set at 10 to 12 depending on the circumstances (Jordan, 2004). Griffith’s Queensland Criminal Code Act (hereinafter referred to as the Criminal Code) of 1899 did raise the age of consent to 14, but not as high as 16 like Victoria and South Australia (Boxall et al., 2014). Leontine Cooper writing in support of the women’s movement in Queensland in the late 1800s stated that laws of the time failed to protect women, with violence against women widespread in the region (Jordan, 2004). Reviewing a snapshot of Griffith’s cases when he was chief justice of Queensland gives insight into the levels of violence against women during this period. Griffith kept a record of his tours of regional Queensland courts including in criminal cases, which described the circumstances of violence against women and girls. These cases included the prosecution of a man for unlawfully knowing a girl under 12 years of age, in Rockhampton in 1897 and 1899 (Joyce, 1984a). A further Rockhampton case included an Aboriginal man who was convicted of manslaughter for the murder of an Aboriginal woman, with Griffith’s notes on the case indicating that the man had used a tomahawk to hit her in the head, after she had tried to run away from a possible abduction by a third party (Joyce, 1984a). Another case in 1899, also involved two Aboriginal men fighting over an Aboriginal woman

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and ended in one man murdering the other (Joyce, 1984a). Griffith’s cases in Maryborough in 1902 included a murder charge against an Aboriginal man for killing a woman. Griffith’s notes included the following words from the accused: I no kill her. I hit her three fellow time along nulla nulla and make 3 fellow mark along a head belonga her. She live to follow day—then she die. I plenty cross alonga her. I get some fellow drink she go donga one fellow black boy one fellow half caste plenty fellow white man. That’s why I been beating her. (Joyce, 1984a, p. 243)

Joyce (1984a) argues that this case would have reinforced to Griffith the challenges of living in a “mixed society” (p. 243). However, it also highlights gendered attitudes used to justify violence against women. As did a case in Imbil where a man was acquitted of rape after he claimed that the women had agreed to have sex with him, with other evidence presented that the victim was married, had previously brought charges against another man, and was a “casual prostitute” and “half-witted” (Joyce, 1984a p. 243). Previous sexual history, sex work and intellectual disability are still narratives used to challenge the claims of sexual assault victim-survivors in contemporary court settings. Finally, Griffith’s cases in Roma in 1898 included a murder charge of an Aboriginal man who had killed a girl aged 8, in which the accused was sentenced to death and a charge of indecent assault of a girl under 12, which resulted in a sentence of 10 years in jail (Joyce, 1984a). These cases illustrate the depth of violence perpetrated against women during the late 1800s in Queensland, and the ties between misogyny and racism evident at the time.1 The parallels between the cases Griffith presided over and contemporary cases in Queensland highlight the continuation of gendered narratives in society that continue to place women’s safety at risk, especially in relation to sexual and intimate partner violence (Women’s Safety and Justice Taskforce, 2021). Griffith’s actions towards women throughout his time in government seem to weave an inconsistent narrative, which seems to be pragmatically driven rather than through a consistent commitment to improving the lives of women in Australia. There appears a reluctance to advocate on the rights of women and where there was apparent progress it was still qualified on the basis of male superiority rather than any sense of equity. In a similar way Griffith placed European people as superior and rightful custodians of both land and other peoples labour, and thus underpinned the oppression and suffrage of Indigenous people. Cases on violence against women explored above also highlight the overrepresentation of First Nations peoples in justice systems, which continues in 1  While campaigning for women to support each other, no matter class or creed, prominent white suffragettes of the time were silent on the lack of rights for First Nations, South Sea Islander and Chinese women in Queensland (Jordan, 2004).

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all jurisdictions across Australia (Hage, 2018). Robust critiques of Griffith’s legacy and inaction in relation to First Nations peoples can be seen in the following chapter by Foley and colleagues, and in Henry Reynolds’ (2021) extensive work. Reynolds (2021, p. 919) argues that Griffith is an enabler of the massacres that occurred during the Frontier Wars in Queensland’s colonisation: At no stage did he contemplate the implications of maintaining the Native Mounted Police as state-operated death squads. This total disregard for the core principles of natural justice will forever blight his reputation as a politician.

Reynolds (2021) argues that the widespread violence that occurred during Griffith’s political career in Queensland would have been considered immoral by today’s standard, but also illegal under the law of the day which offered legal rights to all British subjects, therefore including Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. Griffith’s inaction in terms of enforcing legal responses allowed for the killing and dislocation of First Nations peoples in Queensland. While Reynolds (2021) and Foley et al. (2023) have comprehensively covered the topic, this chapter will briefly examine the attitudes towards Aboriginal2 peoples held by Griffith that impacted his actions and inactions towards them.

Violence: Colonial Dispossession and Racism Griffith was positioned as a ‘black sympathiser’ by his political opponents at the time (Sheehan, 1998). Griffith increased Aboriginal evidence rights and passed the Native Labourers Protection Act of 1884 which afforded protection to workers in specific industries, including the Pearl Industry (Sheehan, 1998). While Griffith advocated for Aboriginal people to be allowed to give evidence in trials, his notes also reflected his racist attitudes: It is however to be borne in mind that many persons familiar with the character of the Aboriginal population assert that no safeguard can be devised to secure their speaking the truth, and that a skilful questioner can always elicit from them such an answer as the witness thinks is desired. (Griffith in Joyce, 1984a, p. 53)

Queensland during Griffith’s time in politics was under close observation from humanitarian groups because of its negative reputation in dealing with Aboriginal and Pacific Islander peoples (Joyce, 1984a). The Aboriginal Protection Society complained to the colonial office in 1875 about the murder conviction of an Aboriginal man, Keelah, on the grounds that he did not understand the proceedings of the trial (Joyce, 1984a). Attorney-General Griffith defended the Queensland justice system stating that he as prosecutor 2  The text refers to Aboriginal people only because Griffith made no mention of Torres Strait Islander people in his notes, so it is difficult to ascertain whether they were included in his deliberations.

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had taken the greatest possible precautions of including two interpreters so the accused could understand the evidence (Joyce, 1984a). Griffith subscribed to the commonly held view of the time that the Aboriginal population would die out (Joyce, 1983): At no time was Aboriginal policy at the forefront of Griffith’s programmes. He drafted and successfully introduced, a bill making it illegal to sell opium to Aboriginals, and he investigated complaints, but he regarded their condition as being less important than the economic problems of white settlers, and less significant than the treatment of Pacific Islanders. Griffith shared the prevailing view that the Aboriginals were a dying race. The Queensland Aboriginals were being exterminated, but Griffith’s liberal conscience was not unduly worried so long as this process was slowed down, and legally supervised rather than being hastened by uncontrolled violence. (Joyce, 1984a, p. 176)

Reynolds (2021) would likely argue that the violence perpetrated during Griffith’s time in politics was uncontrolled. Joyce (1984a) describes Griffith’s attitude towards Aboriginal people, who were “not central to his administration”, as a humanitarian one, tempered by legalism (p. 115). Griffith’s inaction in relation to the protection of Aboriginal people extended to healthcare. For example, a doctor from Ravenswood requested that Griffith allow admission of Aboriginal people into the hospital, following a series of accidents in the region victimising Aboriginal people that died because they were refused treatment or access to the building (Joyce, 1984a). Joyce (1984a) reports that Griffith wrote “no action” beside the request and did not make contact to further investigate the allegations of improper care (Joyce, 1984a, p. 113). Further, while Griffith labelled a request by Normanton Hospital in 1885 to introduce a rule excluding Aboriginal and “other coloured persons” as inpatients as “objectionable”, he responded that it would be better to include the request as a bylaw or to act on it without formalising the procedure, thereby allowing such actions in ways that were less detectable (Joyce, 1984a, p. 113). Clearly Griffith did not view himself as failing in the protection of Aboriginal people when, in his second term as Premier, he responded angrily to criticism by Presbyterian advocates of the ways in which Aboriginal people were treated by police and medical staff (Joyce, 1984a). First Nations peoples and women were undoubtedly not at the forefront of Griffith’s political agenda and received little of his attention. He showed little understanding of their circumstances, specific needs and vulnerabilities which could have shaped the way he drafted certain pieces of legislation, including the Criminal Code. This was also seen in Griffith’s approach to immigration, particularly his legislative actions against Chinese and Pacific Islander workers. These occurrences are discussed later in the chapter, in the context of federalism.

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The Legacy of Queensland-Based Legislation Griffith’s contribution to criminal justice legislation in Queensland includes the Criminal Code adopted in 1901, the Justices Act of 1886 and the Offenders Probation Act of 1886 (Mackenzie, 2002). The Criminal Code extended the Offenders Probation Act of 1886, which was one of the first statutory probation schemes worldwide, and the first in Australia (Mackenzie, 2002; O’Regan, 1991). The Offenders Probation Act, indeed, became the model for all Australian colonies (O’Regan, 1991). The Act provided for a sentence to be suspended if an offender complied with the condition of their release (Mackenzie, 2002). If convicted of a “minor offence” (as defined in the Act) the court could elect to pass sentence, which would be suspended if the offender demonstrated good behaviour for the duration of the order (Mackenzie, 2002). Offenders were required to present to police every three months and could be ordered to pay compensation if the offence was related to property (Mackenzie, 2002). If offenders did not comply with the conditions, they had to complete their sentence in prison, therefore the Act was an amalgamation of contemporary probation orders and suspended imprisonment (Mackenzie, 2002). A year after Griffith introduced the scheme, 85 prisoners had been put on probation, with complaints that there were not enough police officers to monitor the offenders, a criticism which is commonly made in contemporary Queensland. Mackenzie (2002) compares Griffith’s scheme with current probation/suspended sentence orders, stating that suspended sentences attract criticism because they do not promote rehabilitation or deterrence. The Act introduced by Griffith attached conditions to the order of suspension; however, it did not have the supervisory arrangements that are currently in place for those on probation (Mackenzie, 2002). Subsequently, the Offenders Probation Act was amended so that only first-time offenders were eligible for probation (O’Regan, 1991). Wells (1994) describes the Criminal Code, also referred to as the Griffith Code, as Griffith’s most enduring legacy. Griffith commenced work on the Criminal Code in 1893, when criminal law in Queensland were described as complex and inaccessible (O’Regan, 1991). When Griffith commenced the task of codification, criminal law in the majority of jurisdictions throughout the British Empire had not been codified (O’Regan, 1991). To guide the development of the Code, Griffith relied on three sources—the English Draft Bill of 1880, the Penal Code of the State of New York of 1881 and the Italian Penal Code of 1888 (O’Regan, 1991). Griffith also heavily drew upon English statute law and common law, which his Code was to replace (O’Regan, 1991). Griffith aimed to set out all possible defences for criminal charges, an aspect that gave him great satisfaction, but also anxiety (O’Regan, 1991). To do this, he drew heavily on the Italian Penal Code (O’Regan, 1991). There is no evidence that Griffith consulted with local legal organisations or legal professionals who may have held disparate views on criminal responsibility (Wells, 1994). There were also critics who called for laypeople to give feedback on the Code

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(Wells, 1994). When introduced into parliament, there were long and divisive discussions on punishment for offences including floggings and solitary confinement (Wells, 1994). Whipping remained part of Queensland’s criminal justice system until the 1980s (Wells, 1994), with solitary confinement continuing to be used, even if not under this name. A Royal Commission was held in 1899, which although supportive of Griffith’s draft Code, recommended several alterations (Wells, 1994). For example, the Royal Commission recommended that the punishment for rape should no longer be a capital offence, a point with which Griffith did not agree (Wells, 1994). Griffith’s definition of rape had longevity, with little change made to rape laws in Queensland until the 1990s and early 2000s (Crowe, 2011). Crowe (2011) argues that the maintenance of Griffith’s definition of rape for close to a century, with only minor alterations, demonstrates Griffith’s skill as a jurist and the slow pace at which rape law has developed. The authors argue that it demonstrated a continuation of gendered attitudes and tropes from Victorian times that went unchallenged. Griffith’s definition of rape included sexual intercourse which was non-consensual or induced by force, threats, intimidation or specific types of misleading conduct (Crowe, 2011). However, the definition did not include a person married to the accused, with Queensland the last state to criminalise marital rape in 1989. Crowe (2011) argues that Queensland courts up until 2000 did not tend to distinguish between the two limbs of the definition, primarily focusing on consent. Further, Crowe (2011) asserts that the amendments made in 2000 in Queensland did not affect any real change in the definition of consent. A notable change from Griffith’s version of the Criminal Code in 2000 related to the type of sexual contact capable of constituting rape (Crowe, 2011). Prior to 2000, sexual acts not involving the penetration of the anus or vagina were not covered in the Criminal Code (Crowe, 2011). Significant revisions to the Criminal Code in 1997 and 2000 highlight shortcomings of the original legislation with provisions changed and/or included relating to carnal knowledge, female genital mutilation, sexual assault and kidnapping (Mackenzie, 2002). The Criminal Code criminalised the provision of and assistance in and undergoing of an abortion (Kerr, 2014), with abortion only decriminalised in Queensland in 2018. Griffith’s legacy in terms of criminalising abortion saw women and girls in Queensland experience a lack of autonomy, self-determination and right to bodily integrity, as well as experiencing direct impact on to their safety (Kerr, 2014). The Criminal Code contained four sections (sections 208–211) relating to male-to-male sexual activity (Moore & Jamison, 2007). Sections 208 and 209 related to the criminalisation of anal intercourse, with section 208 criminalising sodomy and carrying a prison sentence of up to 14 years with hard labour, an offence and sentence retained in Queensland until 1990 (Moore & Jamison, 2007). Section 209 related to attempted anal intercourse with a punishment of up to seven years with hard labour (Moore & Jamison, 2007). Section 210 related to the “indecent” treatment of boys under fourteen, specifying a prison

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term of seven years with hard labour, while section 211 covered “indecent practices between males” including “gross indecency” in public and private spaces (Moore & Jamison, 2007). Section 211 covered acts such as oral sex and masturbation and was deemed a misdemeanour with a possible jail sentence of three years with hard labour (Moore & Jamison, 2007). All four sections remained part of the Queensland Criminal Code until 1990 (Moore & Jamison, 2007). Moore and Jamison (2007) undertook an analysis of historic cases where men were charged under sections 208–211 of the Criminal Code. This analysis uncovered evidence that police issued charges to frighten and intimidate men involved in homosexual activity, even when there was a low chance of conviction (Moore & Jamison, 2007). Police often engaged in perjury to secure a conviction with courts accepting their evidence above that of the defence to prove that anal penetration had occurred (Moore & Jamison, 2007). Moore and Jamison (2007) assert that the police in the early 1900s chose to target certain groups, to constrain homosexuality as a growing subculture, however, their analysis found no indication that the laws were used more severely against racial minorities. Prior to the enactment of the Criminal Code in the late nineteenth century, there are indications that anti-sodomy laws were used to progress local agendas against Asian and Melanesian minorities (Moore & Jamison, 2007). Only two cases referred to Aboriginal people, with neither described as the accused (Moore & Jamison, 2007). While the Criminal Code has been amended and homosexual conduct is no longer criminalised in Queensland, the social legacy of delegitimising LGBTIQ+ relationships, continues to this day in Australia (Moore & Jamison, 2007). Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) responses are influenced by heterosexual norms, which impacts the availability and appropriateness of service responses for LGBTIQ+ community members (Campo & Tayton, 2015), despite the prevalence of IPV within the LGBTIQ+ community. Estimations of prevalence included in Campo and Tayton’s (2015) practice paper suggest that 28% of male identifying respondents, and 41% of female-identifying respondents reported being in a relationship with a partner who was abusive. The shame and lack of acceptance and understanding of LGBTIQ+ relationships, a continuing legacy of criminalising homosexual offences, inhibits help seeking. The Queensland Criminal Code and its criminalization of homosexual conduct was exported through the British Empire, and has elements still used in Africa and the Pacific today. Griffith’s Code was the first criminal code to be enacted in Australia, and thus was used as a template for other jurisdictions nationally and internationally (O’Regan, 1991). Western Australia, Tasmania and later the Northern Territory all adopted Criminal Codes influenced by Griffith’s model (O’Regan, 1991). In 1889 following its annexation, British New Guinea adopted numerous Queensland statutes, including the Criminal Code in 1903. With some modifications, the Criminal Code has been maintained in Papua New Guinea post-independence in 1975, and it became the basis of criminal law in much of British colonised Africa (O’Regan, 1991).

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While there have been modifications post-independence, the legacy of Griffith’s Code can still be seen in countries including Gambia, Kenya and Uganda (O’Regan, 1991). The Queensland Criminal Code was also the basis of the Fijian Penal Code adopted in 1945, and the Penal Code of the British Solomon Islands Protectorate in 1963 (O’Regan, 1991). In Fiji, however, the law was adjusted to the social context (Han & O’Mahoney, 2018).3 Griffith’s Code was also imported into Cyprus in 1928, and later Palestine (O’Regan, 1991). Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands and Fiji have kept Griffith’s Code in original or adapted form, as has the Seychelles where it was first introduced in 1955 (O’Regan, 1991). Botswana has also continued to follow a legal system derived from the Queensland Criminal Code following its independence from Britain in 1966 (Han & O’Mahoney, 2018). Botswana maintained provisions relating to the criminalisation of “unnatural offences” adapting them in 1998 to include sexual acts between women (Han & O’Mahoney, 2018), and only decriminalising homosexuality in 2019 (BBC, 2019). Homosexuality remains punishable by death in Northern Nigeria (BBC, 2019), which also has a legal system informed by Griffith’s Code (Han & O’Mahoney, 2018). Nigeria has a complex history of legal codification and chose the Queensland Criminal Code over the local African Gold Coast Code (which delineates between consensual and non-consensual ‘unnatural carnal knowledge’) or Sudan penal code, which does not criminalise consensual homosexual acts (Han & O’Mahoney, 2018). Griffith’s Code was not the first legal code to criminalise homosexual acts, with legal statutes from the time of Henry the VIII (1534) enforcing the death penalty for ‘buggery’. However, the Criminal Code did legitimise the criminalisation of homosexual acts, and had widespread and lasting consequences for members of LGBTIQ+ communities both in many former British colonies. Clearly, the Criminal code made a sizable contribution to British colonisation and its lasting impacts, with many nations having to reckon with Griffith’s legacy beyond Australia.

The Legacy of Federal Legislation Griffith’s legacy in the federal sphere is tied to his political and legal legacy in Queensland. Griffith was an active participant in discussion relating to federation in Australia for over a decade. An area of the Australian Constitution which had ongoing impacts on First Nations Australians and asylum seekers was section 51, referred to as the racial power, which Griffith was integral in constructing. The 1901 Constitution provided for the discrimination of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people on the grounds of their race, permitting special legislation to be enacted (Duncanson, 2003). Section 51 of the Constitution 3  For example, an offender charged with “committing gross indecency with other male persons” had a sentence reduced because the offender apologised to the boy’s parents and made Fijian peace by presenting a whale’s tooth (Han & O’Mahoney, 2018).

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gives Parliament power to make laws for the peace, order and good government of the Commonwealth “with respect to… the people of any race for whom it is necessary to make special laws” (Sadler, 1985, p. 591). Griffith suggested this provision and argued that the Commonwealth should have exclusive powers as “the introduction of an alien race in considerable numbers into any part of the Commonwealth is a danger to the whole of the Commonwealth” (Sadler, 1985, p. 592). Power became concurrent with the states, rather than exclusive to the Commonwealth, however the sentiment of the Act remained the same (Sadler, 1985). Griffith emphasised the need for special treatment, observing the need for labour protections for Polynesian indebted workers in Queensland (Sadler, 1985). This power allowed specific groups of people to be restricted within defined areas, confined to certain occupations and/or returned to their country of origin (Sadler, 1985). Taylor (2018) argues that the provision, rewritten in 1967, did not initially aim to exclude Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people on the basis of racial exceptionalism, because they were already present in Australia. Griffith’s actions while in Queensland Parliament gave insight into his views on immigration. While treasurer, Griffith had shown interest in replacing Chinese and Pacific Island agricultural labour, with labourers from Europe (Sheehan, 1998). While in government, Griffith was described as maintaining restrictive policies on Chinese people, drawing an academic distinction between those of Chinese descent living in Queensland, and Chinese civilisation (Sheehan, 1998). The Chinese people were a group Griffith consistently discriminated against during his time in politics. This aligned with his beliefs regarding the need for a homogenous society, where racial groups such as those of Chinese descent were seen as incompatible with a ‘White Australian’ way of life (Joyce, 1983). In an 1888 report, Griffith opposed Chinese immigration partly on economic grounds: “owing to their habits of life, the cost of subsistence is to them very much less than to Europeans living in accordance with European habits” (Joyce, 1984a, p. 143). Examples of his political acts towards the Chinese population in Queensland include restricting their immigration through policies and taxes (Joyce, 1984a). In his time drafting the Constitution, Griffith proposed immigration power intended to limit ‘undesirable immigration’. Federation gave Australia an opportunity to make its own decisions about who was to be included and excluded from the colony, instead of having to follow any implicit directions from the British Empire, including subjects of the Chinese Emperor (Duncanson, 2003). Duncanson (2003) illustrates Griffith’s legacy in relation to Australia’s contemporary immigration policies by focusing on issues such as the ‘Tampa Crisis’, which occurred in August 2001 and signalled the beginning of the ‘Pacific Solution’ where asylum seekers requesting protection in Australia came to be detained in Pacific Island nations. Duncanson (2003) argues that Australia’s immigration policy follows a narrative characterised by the dichotomy of insiders and outsiders. These dichotomies are present in federation discussions, including in the language used by Griffith (Duncanson,

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2003). For example, Duncanson (2003) describes Griffith as mixing xenophobia and idealism in his narrative around immigration, reflected in his assumption as the first federal Chief Justice that resident Chinese people could not be citizens (Joyce, 1983). This assumption may have been fed by fear of a loss of whiteness, and particularly white manhood, that were present in the colony (Duncanson, 2003). Narratives of fear are also present in the idea that the colonies ‘did not have enough space’ and that if immigration was not restricted white men would be overrun by ‘swarms’ of others. This rhetoric has continued in Australian politics, as demonstrated by Pauline Hanson’s electoral win in 1996 on a platform espousing the need to restrict Asian immigration (Saunders & McConnel, 2000). These ideas were further legitimised by John Howard during his term as Australian prime minister. Hage (2014, p.  234) describes Howard’s rule as the “process of relaxing, routinising, and normalising the violence of Hansonism.” The parallels between the language used by Hanson and Howard, and Griffith himself are illustrated in a speech delivered in 1891. Speaking at the Anniversary Address to the Royal Geographical Society of Australasia, held in Brisbane on the 6th of July 1891, Griffith demonstrated his fears relating to immigration and its possible impact of an “Australian culture” in the following statement: The European races are swarming rapidly. Many of the grounds to which they used to find their way to make homes are closed, or there is very little room left there for more. Even the United States of America are beginning to think of restricting immigration; and the temptations to emigration to that country are not so great as they were. And while the population of Europe is by no means decreasing but increasing to a large extent, the new swarms which will be thrown out from that great human hive, will have to find a place somewhere. For my own part, I do not think that we have any room in Australia that we can afford to give to any race other than our own. At any rate, it is worth trying the experiment whether we cannot keep it for ourselves and preserve a homogenous race within the limits of the Australian shores. I know that this is a matter upon which great difference of opinion exists, I know also, that we cannot fight against nature. That is impossible. If nature says there shall be divisions of race in a country, it is utterly useless for us to say there shall not be, and it is equally useless for us to fix artificial divisions between a homogenous people. (Griffith cited in White & Rahemtula, 2002, p. 355)

Taylor (2018) argues that there is “no doubt Griffith … could be charged with attitudes that would not be acceptable today” (p. 242); however, Griffith also recognised the “common humanity” of groups like the Pacific Islanders. Taylor (2018) states that this is not unexpected given the influence of social and racial Darwinism at the time. These narratives have continued in Australian society, especially in Hansonist rhetoric, and are particularly visible in media report and political responses to asylum seekers and migrants, as legitimised under Howard’s prime ministership.

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In their Griffith Review essay, Prince and Lester (2022) outline how Griffith’s legacy in relation to immigration is continuing to shape Australia’s responses to asylum seekers, and their indefinite detention, highlighted by the detention of tennis player Novak Djokovic in January 2022, when media coverage of the specificities of refugee treatment and migration law became prominent (Refugee Council of Australia, 2022). Griffith occupied the role of the inaugural chief justice of the High Court of Australia, leading him to play a role in both the construction and application of the Constitution, especially in respect to non-citizens or “aliens” (Prince & Lester, 2022). Prince and Lester (2022, p. 172) argue that it was Griffith’s application of the “God Powers”, which were a foundational aspect of the White Australia policy that have allowed arbitrary decisions to be made in immigration cases by federal ministers. The 1906 High Court decision Robtelms v. Brenan (1906) 4 CLR 395, authorised the mass deportation of the Australian South Sea Islander community, a subset of the Pacific Island indebted labourers brought to Australia, due to Griffith’s assertion that they were “aliens” (Prince & Lester, 2022). Griffith’s assertion was based on what Prince and Lester (2022, p. 174) term a “myth-­ conception” that an absolute sovereign right to expel, as well as exclude, “aliens” was a principle of international and common law. Prince and Lester (2022) argue that this decision was “one of the most damaging decisions in our legal history” (p. 174) as Griffith used race, rather than law, to define “aliens” and thus wrongly expelled the Islander community from Australia. This decision has had an ongoing legacy for asylum seekers who face human rights violations while arbitrarily kept in detention (Barnes, 2022). It also has had an ongoing impact on the South Sea Islander community in Australia, who face ongoing challenges and marginalisation, impacting their wellbeing (Prince, 2018). South Sea Islanders in Australia have experienced a lack of government services in relation to appropriate education, with their wrongful labelling as aliens in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries a major contributing factor to their cultural dislocation (Prince, 2018). Understanding Griffith’s legacy requires the holding of dissonance and contradictions. One case where this is evident is in relation to the rights and protections of Pacific Islander indebted labourers. While Griffith played a large role in their mass deportation from Australia, he also used his role in Queensland politics earlier in his career to advocate for their protection. Griffith himself recognised the different positions he held concerning the topic: “in 1868 it was necessary to pass an Act to protect Polynesians from ourselves; now we have to legislate to protect ourselves from them” (Forward, 1964, p. 13). The use of indebted labour in Queensland throughout the 1800s constituted slavery without the label (Taylor, 2018). Griffith opposed the use of indebted labour on plantations even when it was politically unpopular, passing the Pacific Island Labourers Act of 1880 (Taylor, 2018). However, in 1892, Griffith reversed his decision to end the use of indebted labour, which he attributed to ongoing economic depression despite the fact that he was still committed to regulating abuses in the industry (Taylor, 2018). As discussed previously, after indebted

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labour ceased in Queensland, Griffith contributed to the further dislocation of the community through mass deportation.

Reckoning with Legacy and Disrupting Social Narratives The authors of this chapter are all members of Griffith University’s Disrupting Violence Beacon, a strategic initiative by the university which aims to undertake innovative and multidisciplinary research on violence, including improving access to justice and redress. It recognises that violence most often has a historical legacy that is intertwined with structural disadvantage and discrimination. Given the named connection to Griffith, it is also incumbent on the Beacon to investigate his legacy in law, policy and culture. These legacies have contemporary relevance and power connected to how discrimination and structural violence continues to occur in Australia and beyond. Reasoning and reckoning with Griffith’s legacy and stature disrupts the status quo of how institutions construct and transform their histories. It provides a basis for retelling history through locating experience away from the colonisers towards the colonised. This provides an opportunity to disrupt Griffith’s ongoing impact on Australian society. Taylor (2018) argues that it is impossible to examine Griffith’s views without ‘presentism’, which means judging Griffith using contemporary values, rather than the prevailing values of the day, as otherwise it would limit the extent Griffith could be held accountable. Personal accountability has been a core tenant of addressing the use of violence by individuals and offering redress to survivors and as demonstrated in this paper Griffith was not only a ‘man of his time’, but someone that systematically placed pragmatism ahead of principles resulting on him being responsible for acts that could be considered immoral or criminal even at his time. This perspective, however, narrows our understanding of the wrongs perpetrated by him and does little to advance the work of reckoning with his legacy today. For the needs of twenty-­ first century Australia, what may be more applicable is community accountability. Community accountability encourages societies to challenge collective ideas that drive violence, such as gender norms, and to shoulder the responsibility of creating new and more just social relationships (Rojas et al., 2012). In this case, this would encourage recognition of the links between violence and trauma experienced by First Nations Australians, and settler colonial legacies that drive ongoing discrimination and a lack of access to justice. It would allow communities to come together to unpick the narratives that drive violence, and to understand how these narratives are continually given meaning, legitimised through their historic value (such as the use of phrases like founding fathers), and how they exist in micro-aggressions, for instance in assumptions about Aboriginal peoples being in a room to contribute with cultural artefacts but not intellectually (see, Fredericks & Bargallie, 2020). The term ‘microaggression’ refers to subtle and hidden injustices that reinforce social exclusions and cause harm to minority groups in society (Baran & Jana, 2020). Inclusion of those who experience ongoing discrimination from these social narratives,

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including First Nations Australians, Chinese Australians and Australian South Sea Islanders, is crucial. The monument that bears his name, Griffith University, has a role in redress, and a role in addressing ongoing violence, discrimination and dislocation. It aims to bring solutions to these complex global and local problems to create a sustainable and inclusive future for everyone. Through encouraging truth-­ telling and bearing witness, the institution can challenge dominant narratives about Griffith, and harmful social narratives rooted in racism and misogyny. A holistic approach should be adopted, ensuring that the conversation does not occur in isolation, but is embedded in university curricula and in research endeavours, including Indigenising research methods. Given Griffith’s role in restricting the rights of immigrants, which extended to controlling their movements within Australia, the University should advocate strongly for the rights of international students, a group which face racism, discrimination and violations of their rights, all of which intensified during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Conclusion In challenging the unstinting veneration of Griffith—a man lauded as statesman, founding father and judicial giant by many—we can draw an analogy with another sporting giant: Lance Armstrong. This reminds us, should it be necessary, that relying too heavily on reputation can blind us to realities hidden in plain sight … like Armstrong, Griffith’s stellar reputation appears to have made him and his legacy ‘untouchable’, creating a bling sport resistant to more nuanced scrutiny of his record. (Prince & Lester, 2022, p. 174)

The legacy of Sir Samuel Griffith is an ongoing conversation for Griffith University, and its diverse student body and academic workforce. How does the University hold the dissonance of Griffith’s legacy? Griffith has contributed to the development of the political and legal culture within Australia and internationally. However, these developments are entwined with colonial legacies, and racist and misogynistic ideologies that continue to impact vulnerable groups in Australia. To disrupt ongoing rights violations for women, First Nations people, migrants and asylum seekers, Chinese and South Pacific Islander Australians, the narratives that underpinned Griffith’s reasoning, and that continue to drive disadvantage and injustice, need to be exposed and challenged. As Denborough (2022, p. 109) reminds readers, while colonial settler narratives continue, so does First Nations resistance: Over time, I have realised that there is no sense in moral superiority towards my ancestry because colonial violence in this country has not ended. There’s no place for hopelessness because First Nations resistance has never wavered. And there’s no time for paralysing shame because invitations to form partnerships are still being offered—if only we are open to them—and there is so much to be done.

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Partnerships might better expose arguments that deny First Nations sovereignty by restoring Indigenous people in Australia as custodians in the Constitution, democracy, law, and ways of life actively recognising the original nations formed long before invasion, colonisation and the British empire. As leaders and members of the Disrupting Violence Beacon we must stand with this resistance in encouraging and supporting more just outcomes. Acknowledgements  The authors would like to acknowledge the leadership of Fiona Foley and colleagues in reckoning with the legacy of Sir Samuel Griffith, and the continued dialogue this has created for Griffith University. The authors would also like to acknowledge the expertise and assistance of the librarians from Griffith University and the State Library of Queensland for their guidance in writing this chapter.

References Baran, T., & Jana, M. (2020). Subtle Acts of Exclusion: How to understand, identify and stop microaggressions; How to identify and stop microaggressions. Berrett- Koehler. Barnes, J. (2022). 3 types of denial that allow Australians to feel OK about how we treat refugees. The Conversation, July 21. https://theconversation. com/3-­t ypes-­o f-­d enial-­t hat-­a llow-­a ustralians-­t o-­f eel-­o k-­a bout-­h ow-­w e-­t reat-­ refugees-­186294 Bolton, G. (1991). Samuel Griffith: The great provincial. Presented at the Clem Lack Memorial Oration, 21 March. Boxall, H., Tomison, A., & Hulme, S. (2014). Historical review of sexual offence and child sexual abuse legislation in Australia: 1788–2013. Australian Institute of Criminology. British Broadcasting Corporation [BBC]. (2019). Botswana decriminalises homosexuality in landmark ruling. British Broadcasting Corporation. https://www.bbc.com/ news/world-­africa-­48594162 Campo, M., & Tayton, S. (2015). Intimate partner violence in lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, intersex and queer communities. Australian Institute of Family Studies. Crowe, J. (2011). Consent, power and mistake of fact in Queensland Rape Law. Bond Law Review, 23(1)., [i]–40. Denborough, D. (2022). Writing back: A letter to Samuel Griffith from his great-great-­ grandson. Griffith Review, 76, 105–114. Duncanson, I. (2003). Telling the refugee story: The ‘Ordinary Australian’, the state of Australia. Law and Critique, 14(1), 29–44. Foley, F. (2023). Reason and reckoning: Provocations and conversations about reimagining Samuel Griffith’s University. Forward, R. (1964). Great Australians: Samuel Griffith. Oxford University Press. Fredericks, B., & Bargallie, D. (2020). Situating race in cultural competency training: A site of self-revelation. M/C Journal, 23(4). https://doi.org/10.5204/mcj.1660 Griffith University. (2022). Sir Samuel Walker Griffith. https://griffitharchive.griffith. edu.au/items/sir-­samuel-­walker-­griffith/ Hage, G. (2014). Continuity and change in Australian racism. Journal of Intercultural Studies, 35(3), 232–237.

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Hage, T. (2018). Combatting over-representation of Indigenous youth in the Queensland criminal justice system through ‘justice reinvestment’. James Cook University Law Review, 24, 147–168. Han, E., & O’Mahoney, J. (2018). British colonialism and the criminalization of homosexuality: Queens, crime and empire. Routledge. Jordan, D. (2004). ‘There is no question more perplexing at the present time and more frequently discussed than women’s place in society’: Léontine Cooper and the Queensland Suffrage Movement, 1888–1903. Hecate, 30(2), 81–102. Joyce, R. (1983). Griffith, Sir Samuel Walker (1845–1920). Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography. Australian National University. https:// adb.anu.edu.au/biography/griffith-­sir-­samuel-­walker-­445/text11119 Joyce, R. (1984a). Samuel Walker Griffith. University of Queensland Press. Joyce, R. (1984b). Samuel Walker Griffith: A Biographer and his problems. Presented at the meeting of the Royal Historical Society of Queensland, 25 October. Kelly, D. (2019). Political troglodytes and economic lunatics: The hard right in Australia. La Trobe University Press. Kerr, K. (2014). Queensland Abortion Laws: Criminalising one in three women. QUT Law Review, 14(2), 15–35. Mackenzie, G. (2002). An enduring influence: Sir Samuel Griffith and his contribution to criminal justice in Queensland. Queensland University of Technology Law and Justice Journal, 2(1), 53–63. Macrossan, J. (1998). Griffith and the constitution’s 100th Birthday. In J. Kerr (Ed.), Griffith, the law, and the Australian constitution (pp. 9–20). Royal Historical Society of Queensland. McCulloch, J. (2004). The struggle for women’s suffrage in Queensland. Hectate, 30(2), 11. Moore, C., & Jamison, B. (2007). Queensland’s criminal justice system and homosexuality, 1860–1954. Queensland Review, 14(2), 3–12. O’Regan, R. (1991). Sir Samuel Griffith’s criminal code. Royal Historical Society of Queensland Journal, 14(8), 305–317. Prince, P. (2018). Australia’s most inhumane mass deportation abuse: Robtelmes v Brenan and expulsion of the Alien Islanders. Law & History, 5(1), 117–145. Prince, P., & Lester, E. (2022). The God of the ‘God Powers’: The gaps between history and law. Griffith Review, 76, 172–185. Refugee Council of Australia. (2022). Djokovic case exposes unfair treatment of refugees in Australia. https://www.refugeecouncil.org.au/djokovic-­case-­exposes-­ unfair-­treatment-­of-­refugees-­in-­australia/ Reynolds, H. (2021). Truth-telling: History, sovereignty and the Uluru statement. Sydney: NewSouth Publishing. Rojas, C., Bierria, A., & Kim, M. (2012). Community accountability: Emerging movements to transform violence. Social Justice, 37(4), 1–11. Sadler, R. (1985). The Federal Parliament’s power to make laws with respect to people of any race. Sydney Law Review, 10(3), 591–613. Saunders, K., & McConnel, K. (2000). The question of the day: The maintenance of racial rhetoric in Queensland, Australia: William Lane and Pauline Hanson as racial ideologues. Immigrants & Minorities, 19(3), 45–66. Sheehan, C. (1998). ‘Man is by Nature a Political Animal’: Sir Samuel Griffith as seen by Queensland Figaro. In J.  Kerr (Ed.), Griffith, the law, and the Australian Constitution (pp. 51–68). Royal Historical Society of Queensland.

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Taylor, G. (2018). Why were Aborigines originally excluded from the races power? University of Queensland Law Journal, 37(2), 237–259. Uluru Statement of the Heart. (2022). Home is calling. https://ulurustatement.org/ Wells, D. (1994). The Griffith code—Then and now. Griffith Law Review, 3(2), 205–223. White, M., & Rahemtula, A. (2002). Sir Samuel Griffith: The law and constitution. Thomson Lawbook Co. Women’s Safety and Justice Taskforce. (2021). Hear her voice volume 1: Addressing coercive control and domestic and family violence in Queensland. Queensland: Women’s Safety and Justice Taskforce.

CHAPTER 15

Reason and Reckoning: Provocations and Conversations About Re-imagining Samuel Griffith’s University Fiona Foley , Debbie Bargallie , Bronwyn Carlson , and Fiona Nicoll

Introduction There is a growing movement across the globe regarding the names of universities who are more often than not named in commemoration of colonial figures with problematic legacies. This chapter emerged from the 2022 symposium ‘Reason and Reckoning: Provocations and Conversations1’ held at Griffith University and orchestrated by Fiona Foley as a response to Henry Reynolds 2021 publication Truth-­Telling: 1

 See, https://app.secure.griffith.edu.au/events/event/70702.

F. Foley University of Queensland, Brisbane, QLD, Australia D. Bargallie Griffith University, Brisbane, QLD, Australia B. Carlson (*) Department of Indigenous Studies, Macquarie University, Macquarie Park, NSW, Australia e-mail: [email protected] F. Nicoll University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 B. Carlson, T. Farrelly (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook on Rethinking Colonial Commemorations, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-28609-4_15

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History, Sovereignty, and the Uluru Statement. Various speakers from different disciplines each engaged with the problematic public figure of Sir Samuel Griffith and the naming of universities commemorating colonial figures in general. Speakers included historians Henry Reynolds and Jonathan Richards; Griffith University scholars; artist Fiona Foley; critical race scholar Debbie Bargallie; social work scholar Patrick O’Leary; Law Professor Elena Marchetti and Professor of journalism Susan Forde; architect Kevin O’Brien, Senior Counsel Tony McAvoy; Sociologist and Professor of Indigenous Studies Bronwyn Carlson, Macquarie University; and international critical race Scholar Fiona Nicoll from the University of Alberta. The chapter largely focusses on Sir Samuel Griffith, the namesake of Griffith University, and comprises contributions from several of the presentations delivered at the symposium: Aboriginal scholars Foley, Bargallie and Carlson and settler scholar Fiona Nicoll. There is much to engage with in terms of Queensland’s race politics historically and its legacy left for us today. As Reynolds rightly points out, “the violence of the frontier has flooded back into the national story” (2021, p. 199). When the ‘Founding Fathers’, including Sir Samuel Griffith, drafted the Australian Constitution, they made no mention of Indigenous sovereign nations across this continent. As part of the Australian Government’s (elected in May 2022) commitment to implement the Uluru Statement from the Heart (see Davis & Williams, 2021), a referendum will be held in this term of Parliament to enshrine an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice in the Australian Constitution (McKay, 2017). Prime Minister Anthony Albanese announced on 30 July 2022 draft words for a constitutional amendment and a draft referendum question: “Do you support an alteration to the Constitution that establishes an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice?”.2 A lingering settler fear steeped in our history permeates the conversations and a lack of action by various institutions in the present to account for their past treatment the original peoples of Australia. The gathering of these four narratives presents a detailed overview of the symposium.

Narrative #1: Dr Fiona Foley, Recasting Colonial Legacies Back in 2002, I attended an auction with a plan to purchase a property. Mixed with nervousness and a hint of excitement I bought an apartment running parallel to the mighty Brisbane River in Griffith Street, New Farm an inner Brisbane suburb. A location that was also a short walk to the manicured rose gardens of Merthyr Park and the Powerhouse. For twelve years I resided at this address. It was also the same suburb where Sir Samuel Griffith built his beloved Merthyr House (1878–1880) including opulent ballroom where he lived with his wife Lady Julia Griffith. My life would criss-cross with the name Griffith and the man it heralded from on many more occasions over the coming decades. Between 2003 and 2

 See, https://www.pm.gov.au/media/address-garma-festival.

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2009, I took up an appointment for six years as adjunct professor at Griffith University (Queensland College of Art). Followed much later in 2018, I began my academic employment at the same institution. During those years, I didn’t pay much attention to where the name Griffith came from. Griffith Street and Griffith University are indeed named after the same man who originated from Wales as a child with his family in 1842.3 There is a recurrent aspect within Australian society that likes to bestow the names of past prominent colonial figures by valorising through naming. Griffith also has an electorate in the Australian House of Representatives named after him, a suburb in Canberra, the publication Griffith Review4 and a lecture. Oftentimes, these same colonial figures impacted upon the lives of Indigenous people with their decisions shrouded in ambiguities of truth and myth making. Citing from the Queensland Figaro newspaper, The Hon Catherine Holmes AC states in her 2020 address that “Griffith was referred to as ‘oily Sam’, apparently because of this ease in changing positions”.5 At the other end of the spectrum, this continent continues to paper over or hide from its citizens past historical deeds. In particular, the Queensland government carried out active violence through occupational land grabs by parliamentary sanctioned warfare against Aboriginal people, including children. The role that Sir Samuel Griffith as Queensland Premier (between 1883–1888 and again 1890–1893) played against this backdrop in not protecting the states Indigenes, designated as British subjects at this time, is bereft of any real analysis. Fragmented across the Queensland landscape are the slayed bodies of Indigenous people as each district was opened up. Shadowing the brutality of Australia’s frontier wars is the perpetual silence as the traditional names of those lives lost are no longer remembered, spoken or written about in stark contrast to Sir Samuel Griffith. Large swaths of information are therefore unknown to the Australian population or understood today. Why did an attorney general, chief justice of the High Court and knowledgeable drafter of the Australian Constitution such as Sir Samuel Griffith allow the colonists and the Queensland Native Police Force to continue to massacre across the state under his two terms as premier? These were some of the questions raised at the symposium titled ‘Reason and Reckoning: Conversations and Provocations’ that I organised at Griffith University in June 2022.6 In conjunction with thirteen invited speakers nationally and internationally from various disciplines, we spent the day discussing the nuanced public life of Sir Samuel Griffith. The symposium ran in tandem with 3  Raymond Evans, Griffith’s Welsh odyssey: Mining new perspectives, Griffith Review 76: Acts of Reckoning, 2022. 4  Griffith Review is published four times a year by Griffith University. 5  The Hon Catherine Holmes AC, Chief Justice, Webinar to mark the 100th Anniversary of Sir Samuel Griffith’s passing, 11 August 2020. https://legalheritage.sclqld.org.au/2020-celebratingsamuel-griffith. 6  See, https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/jun/05/enabler-of-massacres-thepush-to-reexamine-the-legacy-of-founding-father-samuel-griffith.

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a special issue of Griffith Review 76: Acts of Reckoning.7 The following is a version of the speech I gave at the symposium. My life’s work has been influenced by a handful of historians. In 1984, I read The Destruction of Aboriginal Society by C.D. Rowley and the following year—1985—I read The Other Side of the Frontier by Henry Reynolds. In 2021, I read Henry Reynolds’ recent publication Truth Telling: History, Sovereignty and the Uluru Statement, where he writes, “for many years the truth was either deftly avoided or consciously suppressed. Aboriginal families kept alive their own memories of those terrible times” (2021, p. 194). Whilst I was an art student at Sydney College of the Arts in the sculpture department in 1986, I created an artwork entitled, ‘Annihilation of the Blacks’. In the same year, it was exhibited as a free-standing sculpture and bought for the National Museum of Australia when the Museum at that point in time did not physically exist. I make the claim that this sculpture is the first memorial created by an Aboriginal artist to honour a massacre across this continent. An event in the districts, regarding the Badtjala people, was told to me by my late mother, Shirley Foley. Our family, the Wondunna Clan, has a proud history of speaking truth to power and publishing books since 1964. This piece of oral history formed the basis for the sculpture, ‘Annihilation of the Blacks’. It was a way to honour the people killed on the Susan River, Maryborough, Queensland, long before the national lexicon of Truth Telling came into fashion. Indeed, I’ve paid a high price for truth telling across this continent through using public art as my platform in works such as ‘Witnessing to Silence’ 2004 and the exhibition ‘Red Ochre Me’ held at Griffith University in 2003. All of this is now documented in my 2020 publication, ‘Biting the Clouds8’. I write, “I learned many lessons about Queensland and its representatives that year. I learned how a society can shun you through absolute silence. I learned about institutional shunning. I had overstepped some invisible mark” (2020, p. 114). Ever the outcast this has not deterred me in bringing people together to discuss important challenges which this colonially established country needs to answer. Reason and Reckoning unpacked Professor Reynolds’ provocations and a series of questions contained within chapters 11 through to 13 of Truth Telling: History, Sovereignty and the Uluru Statement. In chapter 11—Remembering the Dead—Reynolds asks, “Were the pioneer settlers murderers? Were they heroic pathfinders or criminals”, and more to the point “How can two such disparate narratives be sliced together?” (2021, p. 195). The next breakthrough work of national significance came in 1988, conceptualised by Bundjalung curator and artist Djon Mundine for the installation of 200 hollow log coffins titled, The Aboriginal Memorial. Created by 43 artists 7  See, https://www.griffithreview.com/the-launch-of-griffith-review-76-acts-of-reckoningonline-and-in-person-event/. 8  Biting the Clouds: A Badtjala perspective on the Aboriginals Protection and Restriction of the Sale of Opium Act, 1897, UQP, 2020.

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from Ramingining, Arnhem Land. This memorial is acknowledged in Reynolds publication with the point being made that—Mundine’s central challenge about the absence of memorials for the frontier wars is as relevant today as it was in 1988. Silence Is Complicity I had the opportunity to interview historian Raymond Evans for my film, A Quintessential Act. He stated that the frontier wars caused a decline in the Queensland Aboriginal population of 95 per cent. There is no going back from that figure. Sometimes, I reflect on the fact that you are seeing the descendants of the surviving 5 per cent of Queensland’s Aboriginal populations. How did we get to that point in our shared history and why is it shrouded in silence? In relation to Sir Samuel Griffith, Henry Reynolds makes the point that “colonial politicians… were enablers” (2021, p.  220) and that Sir Samuel Griffith “actively condoned widespread defiance of the law” (2021, p.  223) because he did not protect Aboriginal people under the law as British subjects or afford them the right to remain on their traditional lands. During his time, Griffith would have been aware of methods, such as “dispersal”, a well-known euphemism for killing, through the state apparatus of the Native Police Force. How could Griffith not see Aboriginal people as human beings and make laws to stop the indiscriminate killing in Queensland under his leadership? After all murder is murder no matter how you view it. The central question asked of us is, should Griffith University change its name in light of the role Sir Samuel Griffith played as premier (twice), attorney general, drafter of the Australian Constitution, chief justice of the Supreme Court of Queensland and chief justice of the High Court of Australia? What’s in a name like Griffith University? I suspect most who attend undergraduate or higher degree research courses at Griffith University are unaware the university is named after Sir Samuel Griffith. If we decided to change the name Griffith University, the next question would most likely be what would we replace it with. Like the name change that took place only a block away from Queensland College of Art—from the previous Lady Cilento Children’s Hospital to the Queensland Children’s Hospital under the current state Labor Government9— this is doable if there is a will to make change and be brave. I would propose we change the name from Griffith University to Dundalli University. Dundalli lived between 1820 and 1855. He traversed between the Blackall Ranges, Bribie Island and Brisbane. He is considered to be a resistance fighter by Aboriginal people historically and today. He was the last man to be publicly hung in Queensland. Dundalli University has a nice ring about it. In Griffith Review 76, there is an essay by Aboriginal lawyer Merinda Dutton, she writes, “Truth does not inherently lead to justice. … There is ample room for 9  See, https://www.childrens.health.qld.gov.au/latest-news-minister-announces-hospital-namechange/.

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settlers to contemplate the spaces they occupy and to enact the abdication of their power” (2022, p. 322). I hope there is no abdication of power at Griffith University and that powerful professors among the executive listen and meet the challenges voiced. In closing, Reynolds gives us the most precious gift to consider—a seismic cultural shift—that Queensland could embark on a well-funded museum to tell the story of the frontier wars. Due to the wealth gained by the state from Aboriginal territories and the exploitation of our natural resources, it would shift the terrain of “decolonising our education” to build a future where two disparate narratives are brought together. Aboriginal sovereign nations have a right to remember what took place in this state. The proposition of a (physical) frontier war museum is something this institution could initiate through dialogue with the current state government and their Tracks to Treaty, Statement of Commitment. I will finish with this quote from Henry Reynolds (2021, p. 234), “It is a project that Griffith University is ideally placed to promote, develop and partly fund. After all, it is an inescapable responsibility that comes with the name”.

Narrative #2: Debbie Bargallie, Breaking the Racial Contract: Facing Uncomfortable Truths I enter this conversation on Samuel Griffith through an invitation to speak at the Reasoning and Reckoning Symposium at Griffith University by my colleague Fiona Foley. As you would have just read, she engaged with the provocation that Henry Reynolds lays down in his recent book Truth-Telling: that is, should Griffith University change its name considering Samuel Griffith’s explicit role in the killings of Aboriginal peoples or what today is known to be crimes against humanity? At Griffith University, it took an Aboriginal woman to respond to Reynold’s call by pulling together a symposium to initiate critical conversations on the topic. We do this work however knowing only too well that there is often backlash for those employees, particularly Indigenous employees, who attempt to disrupt the colonial narratives that sustain white supremacy in our predominantly patriarchal white institutions—the very institutions that continue to subjugate Indigenous employees—particularly non-­ compliant Aboriginal women. I also acknowledge that the contribution of the Griffith Review 76—Acts of Reckoning made an important contribution to this discussion. In the week leading up to the symposium, I was further encouraged at reading in a Guardian article by Joe Hinchliffe titled: ‘Enabler’ of massacres: the push to re-examine the legacy of founding father Samuel Griffith that “the university welcomes a robust exchange of views on his time in government and have been encouraging this to occur” (Hinchliffe, 2022, para 34). I was aware of the hesitancy of academics to speak on this topic that places the gaze on the very institution they work at which was evidenced by the number of academics

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that were invited to speak who responded to the invitation to speak as either being unavailable, declined or withdrew. On ABC’s Late-Night Live radio programme in August 2020, host Phillip Adams held a discussion with two guests on the life and legacy of the twice Queensland Premier, Judge, and scholar Samuel Griffith who drafted the Australian Constitution and many of the laws that still govern us. The program was titled ‘Samuel Griffith: Australia’s forgotten founding father’.10 I was perplexed by the title knowing that Samuel Griffith is commemorated with the naming of Griffith University, a quarterly publication titled Griffith Review, the suburb of Griffith in Canberra, a street in New Farm and a Drive on Mt Coot-­ tha in Brisbane, a federal electorate in inner-city Brisbane, and buildings across several institutions. And let’s not forget the prestigious Samuel Griffith Society, founded in 1992 to undertake and support research into our constitutional arrangements, to encourage and promote widespread debate about the benefits of federalism, and to defend the great virtues of the present Australian Constitution. It doesn’t seem to me that he will be forgotten any time soon— and should he be? The panel were enthralled with Samuel Griffith. Adams suggested that Griffith should be reincarnated. One guest suggested that if Australia had a Mt Rushmore that you would have to think that Griffith’s bust would be carved into the side of the mountain. He found it utterly remarkable that there is no statue of Griffith that is forever preserved in bronze or carved in stone like some other worthy citizens. So, what are we missing here? Why are we singling out Samuel Griffith? I am a Kamilaroi and Wonnarua Indigenous Australian woman and critical race scholar. My primary research is the theorising of race and racism with a focus on the experiences of Indigenous peoples and work. I examine the ways historical laws, legislations, policies, and practices continue to influence and impact the contemporary experiences of Indigenous Australian peoples. In terms of entering the conversation and provocations in this chapter, I titled my section: Breaking the Racial Contract: Facing uncomfortable truths. I engage the recently passed eminent philosopher of race Charles W. Mills’ racial contract theory to place race and racism centre stage to identify the structural privilege that advantages non-Indigenous peoples over Indigenous peoples and to draw your attention to the way settler colonialism establishes a particular kind of racial state in Australia. As a ‘Founding Father’, Samuel Griffith, of course, was a key architect of the racial state of Australia both in terms of the politics and the legal foundations. Racial contract theory attempts to “redirect your vision, to make you see what… has been there all along” (Mills, 1997, p. 2). Charles Mills (1997) views the world that we live in as one of persistent white supremacism where the political, moral, and epistemological structure of contemporary society is determined by what he calls the racial contract. Mills argues that the racial contract “establishes a racial polity, a racial state, and racial 10  See, https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/latenightlive/the-life-and-times-ofsamuel-griffith/12589996.

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juridical system, where the status of whites and non-whites is clearly demarcated, whether by law or custom”; the main purpose of this state is to “maintain and reproduce racial order, securing the privileges and advantages of the full white citizens, and maintaining the subordination of non-whites” (1997, pp. 13–14). Mills (1997, p.  1) states that “White supremacy is the unnamed political system that has made the modern world what it is today”. White supremacy infers “the existence of a system that not only privileges whites but is run by whites for white benefit” (Mills, 2004, p. 31). The notion of the racial contract is a conceptual and abstract way of exploring white racial privilege and black racial disadvantage. The terms of this contract may not be visible, but its impacts are clear to those who experience it. Racial contract theory challenges the dominant social contract theory, which has classically been presented as the basis for the development of the modern nation-state. Social contract theory is the view that there is an agreement of moral and/or political obligations between people that shapes the way society is structured and the way the government functions and relies on popular consent of all individuals taken as equals. Mills argues, however, that the social contract is racialised and therefore is underpinned by the racial contract. The racial contract explains “how society was created or crucially transformed, how the individuals in that society were reconstituted, how the state was established, and how a particular moral code and a certain moral psychology were brought into existence” (Mills, 1997, p.10). Australia is a racial state as internationally renowned Indigenous Australian race scholar Aileen Moreton-Robinson (2015) clearly demonstrates in her theoretically rich analysis of white possession in her book The White Possessive. Since colonisation, race has been integral to the development of the nation-­ state through the power to exclude and include in racially ordered terms. The contemporary experiences of Indigenous peoples are not isolated from the colonial project that is ongoing. Moreton-Robinson argues that the nation is socially and culturally constructed as a white possession. Tellingly, the first substantive acts passed by the newly formed Commonwealth related to racial exclusion: the Pacific Island Labourers Act 1901 (Cth) and the Immigration Restriction Act 1901 (Cth), which together gave legal foundation to the White Australia policy. The White Australia policy was a doctrine of purity by the racial state to ensure the racial character of the new nation remained ‘snow white’; as James Black Ronald, one of the first parliamentarians, pleaded, “Let us keep before us the noble idea of a white Australia—snow-­ white Australia if you will. Let it be pure and spotless” (Ronald, 1901, p. 4666). Leading up to Federation, the desire for racial purity was already evident in the constitutional debates, during which, in 1898, Edmund Barton, Australia’s first prime minister and a founding justice of the High Court of Australia, commented that the race power was necessary: He stated, “the moment the Commonwealth obtains any legislative power at all it should have the power to regulate the affairs of the people of coloured or inferior races who are in the

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Commonwealth” (Barton cited in Expert Panel on Constitutional Recognition of Indigenous Australians 2012, p. 15). As Moreton-Robinson (2015) argues, the possessive logics of the ‘Founding Fathers’ were embedded in these laws used to keep out non-white populations. She further asserts: “They were concerned with white racial usurpation and dispossession and took action to ensure that Australia would be a nation controlled by and for whites” (2015, p. xii). Constitutional lawyer and academic Gregory Craven has done extensive research on the ‘Founding Founders’. He states: “In terms of intellect, it would not be unfair to say that the quality of the Founders was such as to be potentially embarrassing to modern-day Australians” (1993, para. 22). Craven informs us that Samuel Griffith was a brilliant lawyer; a brilliant legislator, which is not the same thing; a brilliant judge, which is a third and different thing; and finally, a brilliant administrator. In fact, Griffith had been described as a child prodigy, a brilliant student and academic and as having a conscious sense of his own superiority. As Henry Reynolds (2021) makes clear in his chapter titled ‘Inescapable iconoclasm’, Samuel Griffith—as Premier of the newly formed Queensland colony, and as a senior legal mind—must have known what was going on about the killings. He chose to do nothing about it—he must be deemed complicit—these colonial leaders were all complicit in one way or another. This was the racial contract in action. They were all complicit in upholding the racial contract before and after federation of Australia on 1 January 1901 when six British colonies—Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia, Western Australia, and Tasmania—united to form the Commonwealth of Australia. In terms of the Constitution, Craven (1993, para. 42) argues that these men were not ‘imperial terrorists’ brandishing guns demanding permission to write a constitution—their Constitution was put to a referendum on two separate occasions and passed with massive majorities. As Mill argues, from the beginning, race was never an ‘afterthought’ or a ‘deviation’; rather, it was a central shaping principal of “raceless Western ideals” (Mills, 1997, p. 14). In Australia, the racial contract began with invasion and colonisation of Aboriginal lands from the late 1700s when the British colonies were established each with their own parliaments but with the British Parliament still holding the law-making power; indeed, it may be thought of as a racial-colonial contract. Within the earlier iterations of the racial contract, Indigenous Australian peoples were treated as sub-persons and explicitly excluded from equal status. In the current racial contract, ‘it is now pretended’ that Indigenous peoples are equal to non-Indigenous people. The exclusion of Indigenous peoples may today be more latent, making it difficult to identify and name—even to the person experiencing it. Insofar as racial subordination is the product of the racial contract in Australia, there is a paper trail of evidence. I will now turn to show how the current racial contract works to subjugate Indigenous peoples in everyday institutional life such as in the university—an icon of meritocracy. To put Griffith’s ‘legacy’ into a modern context, I’ve

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chosen to look at the way that structures—established by Griffith, and his peers—privilege non-Indigenous workers. Key to this privilege is the idea of merit—so I’ll look briefly at the myth of merit or the idea of the best person for job. Critical race scholar Richard Delgado (1996, p. 85) argues that “unless constantly revised, modernized, and renegotiated, merit causes complacency and meritlessness… [t]he more absorbed in ‘merit’ a system becomes, the worse it will fare in world competition”. Sociologist and proponent of contemporary critical race theory Eduardo Bonilla-Silva (2010, p.32) reminds us that “the most qualified…[is] a meritocratic way of defending white privilege” in that it makes race invisible. In an article titled ‘Choosing the “Best” Candidate: Our Struggle with Merit’, Eggins (2010) argues that what really happens in merit-­ based recruitment selection processes is “the personal fit principle”, where selection panels look at how a person will fit within the organisation (2010, pp. 24–25). In an address to the Merit Seminar of the Public Service and Merit Protection Commission in 1996, Peter Shergold, a former public service commissioner and now chancellor of Western Sydney University, stated, “Too often commitment to merit is seen by selection panels as a clarion call to reproduce their own talents. It is as if merit is to be transmitted by the process of cloning” (Shergold, 1996, cited in Bargallie, 2020, pp. 67–70). Philomena Essed and David Theo Goldberg (2002, p.  1067) argue that cloning is a troubling notion, which they view as the “systemic reproduction of sameness [and a…] phenomenon deeply engrained in the organisation”. Essed (2002) uses the concept of ‘cultural cloning’ to problematise the cloning of preferred types, mostly white and male—but not always, to fit into segregated spaces as everyday practice. Ideas of merit and notions of cultural superiority have been consistent elements of colonisation. Merit and cultural cloning go hand in hand. Mentoring and leadership programmes can also often be a form of cultural cloning. By focusing on replicating the actions of mostly non-­ Indigenous mentors or leaders, Indigenous employees are merely trained how to navigate a system that favours non-Indigenous people. Mentoring practices can conceal power relations and their effects. That’s because they teach Indigenous peoples how to work within, rather than change, a system biased against us. They are systems that try to mould us through the systematic reproduction of sameness. We do see token positions created for Indigenous peoples—mostly at lower levels so that things don’t appear too inequitable. We also see a newer trend across institutions with the creation of senior positions for Indigenous peoples who are deemed to be the ‘miraculous’ the ‘impressive’ or the ‘articulate’ albeit mostly in roles to manage Indigenous concerns. These senior appointments in the university are usually considered to be the ‘right type’ of Indigenous peoples. Most often, Indigenous peoples are not deemed suitable or the right fit for the senior mainstream roles. Tokenism is a superficial gesture that lacks substance, and is demeaning, demoralizing, and debilitating’, yet it continues to be the experience of

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Indigenous employees and persists in various forms. This was born out by the evidence I gathered from over eight years of doctoral and postdoctoral study which included a study of Indigenous employees in the Australian Public Service and postdoctoral studies on the experiences of Indigenous peoples in workplaces more broadly. There are occasions in institutions however where opportunities are made available for ‘selected’ Indigenous peoples, but only if it benefits non-­ Indigenous peoples to do so; this is what critical race theorists call ‘interest convergence’. Charles Tilly (1998, p.  81) identifies this phenomenon as ‘opportunity hoarding’—a mechanism through which groups use bounded networks to monopolize access to valuable resources and opportunities. In all this, we must be cognisant of the colonial tool of divide and conquer, the reason it is so popular is because it works! As Moreton-Robinson (2015, p. xiii) states, “race matters in the lives of all peoples; for some people it confers unearned privileges, and for others it is the mark of inferiority”. Indigenous employees have paid and continue to pay a high price for racism in workplaces. Indigenous employees’ experiences of racism in workplaces do not emerge out of isolation but reflect hierarchical power relations that can be traced back to colonisation. Historically, legislations, policies, administrative practices, and individuals have worked together to perpetuate entrenched systems of racism in institutions that shape our contemporary experiences. Managerial failure to act on racism makes them complicit in perpetuating white supremacy. When I speak about white, I am not speaking about white people per se. I am speaking about whiteness as a system of power—a white ignorance that is structural and wilful. It is what allows the racial contract to persist. To bring it back to the core of our discussion today, it’s a system that enabled Samuel Griffith to be complacent and complicit and not held accountable for the mass killings of Queensland Aboriginal peoples. The racial contract prescribes inverted ways of knowing, or epistemologies of ignorance, where white people to quote Mills “live in an invented delusional world, a racial fantasyland”, disregarding racialised structures of inequality that in turn perpetuate systems of white supremacy (Mills, 1997, p.  18). Mills (1997, p. 19) explains: One could say then, as a general rule, that white misunderstanding, misrepresentation, evasion, and self-deception on matters related to race are among the most pervasive mental phenomena of the past few hundred years, a cognitive and moral economy psychically required for conquest, colonization, and enslavement. And these phenomena are in no way accidental, but prescribed by the terms of the Racial Contract, which requires a certain set of structured blindness and opacities in order to establish and maintain the white polity.

Henry Reynolds (2021, p.  213) reminds us that truth-telling has consequences. He asks, “what responsibility rests on the shoulders of those who inherit a troubled legacy?” Reynolds has called on Griffith University to

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act—“to treat the matter with appropriate seriousness” (p.  231). Griffith University notes its name was a result of an Act of Parliament and any decision to change it would have to come from the government. The University leaders are responsible for moving this conversation forward. In the interim—the University can take responsibility to change the narrative and tell the full story of Samuel Griffith. Henry Reynolds (2021, p.  231) provided Griffith University with some promising recommendations. He raises the possibilities of funding a research agenda to further examine the work of Samuel Griffith or for a well-funded museum to tell the stories of the Frontier Wars (p.  234). In terms of what would Griffith University change their name to, I will leave that up to discussions to be had with the traditional Aboriginal owners of the sites where the Griffith campuses are situated. To change the name of Griffith University could be considered be a powerful and important symbolic gesture to the Aboriginal peoples of Queensland. No doubt it would attract applause. But what will this name change achieve beyond symbolism—it must have more substance than mere symbolism. Or to use Moreton-Robinson’s words: “how would this clapping change the racialized power relations in which we are enmeshed?” (Moreton-Robinson, 2011, p. 419). In Decolonizing Methodologies, Māori scholar Linda Tuhiwai Smith (1999) warns us that history is mostly about power. That it is the story about the powerful and how they became powerful, and then how they use their power to keep them in positions in which they can continue to dominate others. Smith makes clear that we are wrong to think that when the truth comes out things will be right. She states that a thousand accounts of the truth will not alter the fact that Indigenous peoples are still marginal and do not possess the power to transform history into justice. We have unfinished business—we are still being colonised. Indigenous people do not have the power alone to transform history into justice or break the racial contract. For Indigenous peoples, whether we opt to stay in the institutions we work or opt to leave, we are still here and we continue to tell our stories and write our interpretations of history. This is a powerful form of Indigenous resistance. That the theory of the racial contract separates “whiteness as phenotype/ racial classification from Whiteness as a politicoeconomic system committed to white supremacy, opens up a theoretical space for white repudiation of the Contract” (Mills, 1997, p. 106). Non-Indigenous peoples have a real choice, albeit a difficult one, to opt out of the contract, a choice that requires them to cease “unquestioningly going along with things, by accepting all the privileges of whiteness with concomitant complicity in the system of white supremacy” (Mills, 1997, p. 107). In opting out, however, under the terms of the racial contract, Mills states that they will be marked as “white renegades and race traitors” (Mills, 1997, p. 127). Stanley Cohen reminds us in his book, States of Denial, that not only are societies collectively geared towards neglecting the crimes of the past, but we

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are wilfully in denial of what goes on around us: “Whole societies are based on forms of cruelty, discrimination, repression or exclusion which are ‘known’ about but never openly acknowledged” (Cohen, 2001, p. 11). It’s time for us all to choose which side of history we want to be on. We all must question how complicit we are in upholding white supremacist colonial institutions. For non-Indigenous peoples, it is time to relinquish the automatic right to power, privilege and dominance afforded to them as ‘beneficiaries’ of the racial contract (Bargallie, 2020, p. 273; Mills, 1997, p. 11). This vision is possible, but it requires will, and authentic solidarity with Indigenous Australian peoples. As Reynolds (2021, p. 234) makes clear: “it is our inescapable responsibility” to act. With Constitutional reform on the agenda there is an opportunity to act—to challenge racism and colonialism and for the country to tell the truth of the nation. As Charles W. Mills would say “we…know where the bodies are buried” (1997, p. 132), and, as we take on Henry Reynolds work, so did Samuel Griffith.

Narrative # 3: Bronwyn Carlson, ‘You Can’t Handle the Truth’: Settler Refusal to Engage with Facts I am always interested in why settlers are hell bent on refusing to engage in any truth-telling that involves the founding of this nation and their ancestors participation in the dispossession of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. From what I see in the public domain, news media and media commentators is that it is considered very ‘unAustralian’ to even contemplate critiquing colonial figures (Carlson & Farrelly, 2023a, p. 17). Whenever the topic of colonial commemorations is raised, the same old arguments ensue and include, ‘you can’t change history’ or ‘you can’t judge them on today’s standards’ and specifically targeted at Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, ‘get over it’, ‘it happened hundreds of years ago’. I have to wonder whether it is because to face the truth of the brutality and violence of colonialism is so overwhelming or is it a wilful position based on a deep-seated hatred for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples? When thinking about this presentation, I was reminded of a scene from the 1992 film A Few Good Men where Colonel Nathan R. Jessup played by actor Jack Nicholson who while testifying in court gets very defensive and yells “you can’t handle the truth!”. The scene has made its way into popular culture and is often spouted when someone doesn’t want to face the truth of a situation. The scene as discussed by Hirschfield (2011, p. 9) reminds viewers that “the truth must always come out” and that the inability to face the truth “ultimately weakens and even destroys” society. The refusal to contemplate or even empathise with what some of these colonial commemorations mean to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people can only mean that settlers see us as:

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• undeserving—less than human and what has happened is justified on that premise. Evidence of this is all around us, • there is a fear we will do to them what they have done to us—there is no evidence of that, and/or • that compensation is required—something they have always resisted. Commemorations are reminders to the public about the values and attitudes of a society. They are literally a display of what a particular society deems significant and memorable. Commemorations also legitimise a particular version of history. They enforce what is to be remembered and what those who have the power wish forgotten. On this continent, to erect statues and monuments to ‘discovery’ and ‘exploration’ is a way to legitimise white settler history and eradicate Aboriginal history and presence (Healy, 1997). They gaslight the public—they tell a story of peaceful settlement of an empty land—a narrative settlers are keen to enforce. But the truth of the violent actions and orders are well published and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are forced to live with their presence knowing they were the instigators of our grief and loss. Back in 2014 the then Prime Minister Tony Abbott declared this continent as terra nullius stating that “back in 1788 it was nothing but bush” (cited in Henderson, 2014, para. 1). This statement from our highest office asserts the empty land narrative. In 2019, the then Prime Minister Scott Morrison stated that he would dedicate millions of dollars of taxpayers’ money to ‘rediscover Cook’. This was to celebrate the 250th anniversary of his unlawful claiming of the east coast of this continent. Morrison claimed, “I mean it was a long time ago, 250 years ago, and those people who want to judge people for what they did 250 years ago, I think that’s a bit harsh…You need to try and look at him in the context of his time” (cited in McCulloch, 2019, para. 11). Commemorations fortify colonial ideologies and bolster the assertion of white occupation and permanence and the logic of Aboriginal elimination (Wolfe, 2006, p. 388). This agenda, as argued by Aboriginal scholar Tony Birch, is not marking history, but rather promoting an ideology (Birch, 2020). Colonisation is a structure and not an event (Wolfe, 2006) and as such continues and manifests through the violence Indigenous peoples endure daily. Settler scholar Patrick Wolfe (2006, p. 388) argues this includes: Miscegenation, the breaking down of native title into alienable individual freeholds, native citizenship, child abduction, religious conversion, resocialization in total institutions such as missions or boarding schools, and a whole range of cognate biocultural assimilation. All these strategies, including frontier homicide, are characteristics of settler colonialism.

On this continent we experience child removals in contemporary times that exceed the colonial policy era of Assimilation (Silva & Collard, 2021). As a population of 3% Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people comprise over 37% of the recorded deaths in custody. Indigenous people are ten times more

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likely to be killed in custody than the general population (Sydney Morning Herald, 2022, para. 5; Carlson, 2021). In the recent ‘Closing the Gap’ report, it was revealed that systemic failure continues with suicide rates for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples increasing and the numbers of Indigenous children being taken into care and rates of deaths in custody are mounting (Collard, 2022, para. 9). High levels of racism are a daily reality for Indigenous peoples (Bargallie, 2020) both offline and online (Carlson & Day, 2021, 2022; Day & Carlson, 2022). Over many years, and particularly recently, debate has raged around the world about the meaning of many commemorations, notably monuments, and what should be done about them (see, Carlson & Farrelly, 2023a, 2023b). Across Turtle Island (North America), the debate has centred around commemorations of Confederate Civil War figures. Such monuments are about commemorating a history where white supremacy ruled and brought much violence to the lives of African American peoples. Those who seek to protect such statues are clearly in favour of who and what they represent. Some people have called for such commemorations to remain as they have the potential to promote truth-telling however, it makes you wonder why the truth of those being commemorated wasn’t big on the agenda before they were bestowed with such an honour. As such, many city councils have opted instead to tear them down. In 2015, New Orleans began the process by removing four Confederate monuments. Other cities soon followed. This action incited significant protest from neo-Nazi, neo-Confederate, neo-fascist, and white nationalist groups (Carlson & Farrelly, 2022b). In August 2017, hundreds from such groups collaborated to ‘Unite the Right’ in Charlottesville, Virginia, to protest against the city’s attempt to remove a monument to Confederate General Robert E. Lee, claiming it was a direct attack on their cultural identity and an effort to rewrite history (Carlson & Farrelly, 2022b). The rally soon became violent and as a result one person was killed and 30 injured when a white supremacist rammed a group of anti-fascist counter-protestors (Blout & Burkart, 2020). The then President Donald Trump responded suggesting that it was not a case of white supremacy but rather Americans were just trying to protect and preserve American history (Merica, 2017). In 2020, Aboriginal rights groups and supporters took to the streets to protest against the high rates of Aboriginal deaths in custody and incarceration rates and police brutality. Colonial commemorations and statues became the topic of heated debate and a number of monuments were ‘vandalised’ (Carlson & Farrelly, 2022a). Statues of Captain James Cook in Naarm (Melbourne) and Warrane (Sydney) were coated in pink paint with the words ‘no pride’ painted beneath its feet, and the other spray-painted with ‘no pride in genocide’ and ‘change the date’ (in reference to the commemorations publicly endorsed on January 26th, known as ‘Australia Day’). Monuments to former colonial governor, Lachlan Macquarie and Queen Victoria were also targeted with similar messages. Busts of former prime ministers, Tony Abbott and John Howard in Ballarat, were vandalised and sprayed with red paint (Attwooll, 2021).

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Howard’s bust was spray-painted with the word ‘homophobe’ while Abbott’s was covered with words including ‘fascist’ and ‘pig’. A Perth statue of Captain James Stirling had its neck and hands painted red, and an Aboriginal flag painted over the inscription on the base (Kagi & Carmody, 2020, para. 2). In 2020, following the publicization of statue-toppling across the globe the government and authorities were concerned for statues of Cook. It was during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic and the public were panicked by news media reporting that any protests risked spreading COVID-19 (Mason, 2020; Davey, 2020). Regardless, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and allies took to the streets protesting the ongoing violence of colonialism and including deaths in custody. The protests were global following the Black Lives Matter movement against racism, police brutality and killings. There was a real fear that colonial commemorations would be targeted as they were in the US, England and many other places across the world. This led to the deployment of dozens of police to guard the Cook statue in Hyde Park (Baj, 2020). Police including mounted police surrounded the statue. They were joined by a number of members of the public who were also keen to protect the statue. All settler men without masks, locked arms in an act of solidarity and defiance and held a sign that stated ‘Stand up for Australia’. So, while Black Lives Matter protesters were presented as a threat to the public due to the COVID-19 pandemic and faced arrests and fines, the settlers were able to stand alongside police, unmasked without fear of penalty. While colonial monuments attract police protection the deaths of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people receive little media attention (see, Carlson, 2021) and our commemorations are provided with minimal protection by the law and are constantly destroyed with no consequences (Carlson & Frazer, 2021, p. 166). Also, in 2020 and during Reconciliation week no less, reports were published detailing the destruction of a significant Aboriginal rock shelter in the Pilbara region in Western Australia by mining giant Rio Tinto (Hopkins & Kemp, 2020). The site has been cared for continuously for over 46,000 years by Puutu Kunti Kurramam and Pinkura peoples (Carlson & Frazer, 2021, p.  166). The Australian satirical news website Betoota Advocate, responded with a story entitled ‘Police urged to treat Indigenous people in custody as carefully as they treat the statues’ which they posted on their Instagram page (@betootaadvocate 15th June 2020). Daring to engage in any conversation that is focused on what should be done with colonial commemorations other than honouring them results in media and public backlash. Accusations of being ‘unAustralian’ are common (Carlson & Farrelly, 2023a, p. 17) as are threats to personal safety and derogatory comments about your intellect and your appearance. For Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples responses can become violent quickly and include directives to leave the country or to even die. Our keynote at this symposium, Henry Reynolds, is well-versed with such responses and has been accused of being a “shit stirring academic and a troublemaker” (Carlson & Farrelly, 2023a, pp. 8–9).

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Wiradjuri journalist Stan Grant was the recipient of the wrath of the public daring to highlight the offensiveness of the Cook statue, with its inscription ‘Discovered This Territory 1770’. Again, those in the highest office also weighed in. The then Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull was enraged and stated that the ‘editing’ of statues and inscriptions was an attempt to deny, rewrite and even obliterate history, likening such moves to Stalinism (McKenna, 2018). Grant was even nicknamed ‘Taliban Stan’ in the media (Carlson & Farrelly, 2023a, p.  10). Scott Morrison, who was the Treasurer at the time, commented that Australians “don’t get to choose when or how our story starts…or rewrite what has happened since” (McKenna, 2018, p. 46). Grant latter published that after commenting on the statue, he was designated “public enemy number one” and conceded that “Those who hole the pen of Australian history refused to give up, they had written the final chapter and shut the book” (Grant, 2019, p. 144). I have had my own experience of speaking out about colonial monuments which is recorded in the book, Monumental Disruptions: Aboriginal people and Colonial Commemorations in So-Called Australia that is published by Aboriginal Studies Press. Back in 2017, I was interviewed on ABC Radio by Fran Kelly. In the interview, I highlighted that Governor Lachlan Macquarie, honoured and commemorated as the ‘father of Australia’, had in fact ordered the brutal mass murder of Aboriginal people. Given I work at Macquarie University which is built on the lands of the people he ordered the deaths of, I went on to state that I imagined arriving at work to Pemulwuy University. I suggested the Australian public consider two things: what it means to see figures such as Cook and Macquarie immortalised as heroic founding fathers, and what might be the possibilities for a cultural transformation that might review some of these icons and consider removing them or even replacing them with Aboriginal heroes or activists for example. I highlighted the hypocrisy of commemorations to murderers and I stated that it just seems a little odd in a country that claims to be quite progressive and claims to consider reconciliation with Indigenous people something that’s on the agenda, to have statues that continue to represent those people who are part of genocide in this country (Carlson cited in Kelly, 2017). I also pointed out the lack of concern regarding damage to Aboriginal sites of significance, stating “Australia has no problem tearing down and destroying sites significant to Indigenous peoples that are much older than colonial monuments” (Carlson cited in Kelly, 2017). As expected, my comments were met with abusive vitriol communicated via social media, as well as phone calls and emails, some of which even included threats of violence to my personal safety. The messages attacked my intelligence, accused me of lying and deliberately trying to incite trouble, and rolled out the usual trope about Aboriginal people being ‘backward’ and ‘ungrateful’ for being ‘saved’ by the British: There was a call for a Fact Check to legitimise my comments about Macquarie, which confirmed my claims—Lachlan Macquarie did indeed order the killings of Aboriginal people in an incident which has long been described as the Appin Massacre, among many other examples (RMIT Fact Check, 2017).

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My comments about the problematic nature of colonial commemorations drew the attention of right-wing media commentator Andrew Bolt, who had previously publicly accused me of being an ‘enemy of free speech’ (Bolt, 2016). Bolt’s attack on me and other Aboriginal people in response to my comments to the media about statues of Cook and Macquarie was so inflammatory it caused 25 Curtin University academics to sign a letter of protest to The West Australian for publishing the piece (Barry, 2017). The aggressive attacks in response to my criticism of Macquarie indicate that any critique of Macquarie carries with it a critique of the Australian ethos of a ‘fair go’ for which he became renowned. However, it is not simply my critique of commemorations to the likes of Cook and Macquarie that stimulated the violent responses to my suggestions for change. It is the fact that these commemorations, and others like them, carry with them the core of the nation’s ideology—they represent the values inscribed in egalitarianism, mateship, Christianity, patriarchy and in contemporary neoliberalism itself and is why our prime ministers are so swift to respond. My critique positioned me as a detractor, ‘unAustralian’, therefore ‘other’ to the nation, outside of its limits of tolerance and democracy. I am an outsider and if I cannot be contained, I must be disciplined and re-taught the ‘facts’ by those who are properly inculcated with them. My transgression is public, and therefore requires public admonishment. My so-called anger defies the spectrum of Aboriginal stereotype; after all, Aboriginal peoples are meant to be ‘passive’ and settlement peaceful. When asked to comment on the character of ‘explorers’ by people desperate to uphold these men as heroes, Aboriginal people are frequently attacked as being ‘unAustralian’—however, for many of us, this is not an insult at all. We note the unlawful claiming of this continent and the colonial renaming of Country. As such ‘Australia’ as it is now colonially referred encompasses a violent history of dispossession. So many settlers who defend colonial commemorations have little understanding of who they are defending and protecting but I would argue that doesn’t matter to them—it is not the point. Colonial monuments are for us, for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and other Indigenous people globally—their purpose is to remind us of that fear or as Lachlan Macquarie ordered—“the bodies of those that resist should be hung from the trees so as to strike terror into the hearts of those surviving natives” (RMIT Fact Check, 2017). Colonial commemorations are the bodies in the trees. It is not that settlers can’t handle the truth, rather, they don’t want to. I will finish with the words of Mykaela Saunders (2022) who argues that truth telling is one of the most powerful things we can do: It might not be easy, but the greatest act of reckoning we have to do is to know ourselves in the fullness of time, to know that the past lives all around us and inside us and the future lives around and inside us too. This is not always ­comforting if we face the truth of it—but it is arguably the most powerful thinking we can do.

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Narrative #4: Fiona Nicoll, The Art of Reckoning: Re-imagining Samuel Griffith’s University How can artists participate in movements for political change? What is the role of art in reimagining public spaces and institutions that define and reproduce them? These questions frame the following reflections on the symposium centred on the memorialization of Samuel Griffith organized. For nearly three decades, Foley’s art has catalysed some of the most important conversations in Australian political and cultural life, including genocidal frontier wars (Dispersed, 2008, Witnessing to Silence, 2004), the history of slavery in Queensland (Sugar Cubes, 2009), the use of Opioid policies to establish a system of reserves and missions to contain Aboriginal resistance (Bliss, 2008), the failure of colonial authorities to negotiate just treaties with sovereign Indigenous nations (Lie of the Land, 1997), as well as the role of race and whiteness in constructing a sense of citizenship and belonging in Australia (HHH, 2004 and Nulla 4 Eva, 2009). ‘Reasoning and Reckoning’ was another timely provocation (see Martin-­ Chew, 2019) by Foley to highlight the role of universities, museums and public art projects in the creation and contestation of national political memory. It successfully reoriented a debate raging since the concept of ‘black armband’ history erupted on the Australian political landscape in the 1980s. Devised as a way to justify former Prime Minister John Howard’s refusal to apologise to the Stolen Generations of Aboriginal children, in the course of this debate, the value of reconciliation, already an amorphous (and arguably disingenuous) term to refer to unresolved questions of sovereignty and land rights in Australia, became bifurcated into ‘symbolic’ and ‘practical’ versions. For over two decades, politicians, academics and journalists opposed to Indigenous rights condemned any efforts to improve the situation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples that were not limited to ‘closing gaps’ in education, health and employment as ‘mere symbolism’ (Nicoll, 2012). Within political discourses of ‘practical reconciliation’, artists, activists and academics working to create necessary and overdue shifts within the domain of representation were accused of various cultural errors and misdemeanours, from being naïve and irrelevant to being dangerous, subversive of national unity and reversely racist. The Uluru Statement from the Heart (2017) decisively refused the false dichotomy between practical and symbolic reconciliation pedalled by opponents of ‘black armband’ history, to restore a central place for the truth in ongoing political negotiations between Indigenous and non-Indigenous citizens. It is timely, then, to consider the creative processes by which symbols used to communicate the ‘lie of the land’ over generations have been developed, circulated and challenged. Drawing on presentations from the symposium and Courting Blakness, a related project curated by Fiona Foley at the University of Queensland in 2014, I will explore how artists and academics can work together to elicit curiosity among all citizens about new ways of being and understanding ourselves and one another. I hope to show that this is an

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important and overlooked element of national and state processes of modern treaty making, constitutional recognition and truth-telling that are currently underway in Australia. Signposting or the Matter of Symbolism I am descended from five generations of settler-colonizing peoples in Australia: Early ancestors in the South Eastern colony named after Queen Victoria included whalers, miners, butchers, seamstresses, bullockies and ministers of religion. I remember my first encounter with the early colonial history of Melbourne, my city of birth. Around the age of seven, I asked my mother why a local park was named after Batman, my favourite television superhero. My mother informed me that John Batman was one of the people who ‘discovered Melbourne’. The next time I thought about Batman was decades later; I was walking past the Melbourne Town Hall in Swanston St and almost stumbled over the Sandstone pillars of Fiona Foley’s 1997 installation, Lie of the Land, on each of which was inscribed the items exchanged in a failed treaty that Batman negotiated with First Nations, including Blankets, Flour, Knives, Beads, Scissors and Tomahawks. In addition to the monumental scale and repetition of the names of these objects, the works’ title has continued to provoke my awareness of Indigenous sovereignties in productively unsettling ways. After the ‘Reason and Reckoning’ symposium, I visited relatives in Shepparton, where weeks earlier, a concert celebrating the launch of a Treaty in Victoria had taken place. On a walk around the town, I encountered a new housing development with a road named ‘Settler’s Drive’. This signpost seemed to perfectly encapsulate the problem that the Reason and Reckoning symposium addressed (Image 15.1). What does this everyday act of naming space tell us about ‘the lie of the land’ which national and state processes of treaty relations are finally beginning to acknowledge? Considered as a metonym for colonial ways of being, “settlers’ drive” recalls what Aileen Moreton-Robinson describes as the ‘white possessive’, a state in which “the logics of white possession and the disavowal of Indigenous sovereignty are discursively and materially linked” (2015, p. xiii). I hope that the following invited reflections on the symposium incites the curiosity of readers about ways of governing and law making that interrupt the settler’s drive embodied by the legacies of Samuel Griffith. Re-evaluating Griffith’s Legacies Foley opened the symposium with a photograph of her first sculpture titled ‘Annihilation of the Blacks’ (1986). This powerful work is based on her family’s oral history of frontier violence; she discussed how these histories, together

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Image 15.1  Settlers’ Drive. Shepparton. (Photograph by Fiona Nicoll)

with academic historical studies, forged her artistic career of truth telling through visual arts. She then framed the project of re-imagining Griffith University by suggesting it be renamed after Dundalli, the Aboriginal resistance leader and warrior publicly executed in Brisbane in 1855 (Latimore, 2019). Henry Reynolds’ keynote address explained why the culpability of Samuel Griffith, specifically, must be reckoned with at state, territory and national levels of memory where he is currently celebrated. Queensland was responsible for the colonization of the North through the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and the work of Griffith as a politician (holding roles of attorney-­ general and premier) and drafter of a national constitution enabled this to be achieved. Reynold’s point was not just that Griffith was extremely influential on the conduct of politics of his era; he also played an enormous role in shaping the theory and the practice of law in what was to become the Commonwealth of Australia. Reynold’s (2021) latest book, Truth-Telling, provides evidence that, between 1874 and 1893, when Griffith exercised power, First Nations were thrust aside and hundreds if not thousands [were] killed. There were hundreds of monthly patrols by the native police, a heavily armed force whose official instructions were … to disperse any large gatherings of Aboriginal people and to respond to complaints from settlers with punitive violence. (Reynolds, 2021, p. 227)

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It is against the backdrop of this history that Reynolds proposes Griffith University as an ideal location for an Indigenous war memorial. He advocates: A well-funded museum that will tell the story of the frontier wars. It is the least that might be expected from a state whose wealth has been largely due to the exploitation of the territories of the First Nations. It is a project that Griffith University is ideally placed to promote, develop and partly fund. After all, it is an inescapable responsibility that comes with the name. (Reynolds, 2021, p. 234)

Participants in the symposium returned to discuss this proposal for a Frontier War Museum throughout the day. Making Ambiguous Law Reynold’s address to the symposium pointed to Samuel Griffith’s culpability in fostering ambiguity about the rights, value and—ultimately—the humanity of First Nations who pre-possessed countries in this continent. This ambiguity was revisited in a presentation by historian Jonathan Richards. He related his search for archival documents about former native police who supplied firearms to Indigenous resistance fighters on the Frontier. This traffic in firearms was a serious concern for colonial authorities and attempts were made to confiscate weapons by lethal force. While Griffith was clear that he did not support lethal force to remove firearms, he was equally clear in his support a law to disarm Aboriginal people. His government’s response to this call was to increase the number of native police. Richards’ historical case studies consistently reveal how skilled Griffith was at empowering inaction against white murders of Aboriginal and South Sea Islander peoples. This is not a case of judging white ancestors through the lens of the present; Griffith was publicly accused, during his time, of using law to prevent action against perpetrators of atrocities. Richards pithily concluded his presentation by suggesting that one of Griffith’s greatest accomplishments was to make the Frontier wars somebody else’s problem. Patrick O’Leary and Professor Elena Marchetti appraised Griffith’s considerable historical legacies through the lens of law and criminology and who have contributed a chapter in this volume. Their presentation posed a series of questions: • How do justice institutions in domestic and international contexts address race, gender, conflict and human security? • How do narratives constructed by Griffith’s legacy persist and how can they be disrupted? • How do we stop separating the names of legal leaders from the political realities they create and in which they intervene?

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To answer these questions, their presentation explored the dissonance between social goods and harms that grappling with Griffith’s legacy requires here and now. They noted his role in asserting the sovereign right of the Commonwealth to exclude those deemed aliens and that this assertion continues to empower the mandatory and indefinite detention of asylum seekers. They demonstrated how this right to exclude was exploited in 2022 federal election campaign advertisements by parties that promised to be ‘tough on immigration’. A related point, they noted, is the persistence of the concept of ‘race’ in defining who an alien is and is not. The mythical image of Griffith as an impartial arbiter of law and order is unsettled by his discriminatory framing of Chinese settlers, British-Indians and South Sea Islanders as aliens. They revealed the law-making of Griffith to be nothing if not inconsistent. For example, his opposition to the conditions of slavery that characterised Melanesian labour recruitment, known as ‘Black-birding’ led to a Royal Commission. However, this was at odds with his beliefs and actions related to Aboriginal people, where inequity in labour conditions flourished. O’Leary and Marchetti noted legacies of inequity continue to distinguish Pacific and Indigenous workers from other Australians. Workers from Melanesia are paid less than Australian counterparts for agricultural labour and subject to punitive fines for consumption of alcohol and the conduct of sexual relations when they are on work sites. Griffith’s legacy is also implicated in rights of gendered, sexual and youthful citizens. They noted his silence on suffragette claims and criminalization of abortion (only decriminalized in QLD in 2018), his exclusion of the crime of rape from marriage relationships, his authorisation of corporal punishment of children and criminalization of homosexual conduct. Making Racial Law Debbie Bargallie’s presentation addressed Griffith’s role in embedding racism across Australia’s legal and political institutions. She began with critical reflections on a glowing celebration of Griffith’ contribution to the nation’s formation by public intellectual and broadcaster, Phillip Adams (ABC, 2020). The remainder of her talk demolished this apotheosis in a careful demonstration of how Griffith’s role in creating a ‘racial state’ shapes the experience of Indigenous people today (Goldberg, 2008). Drawing on the work of Charles Mills (1997), Bargallie analysed Griffith’s legacy through the lens of a ‘racial contract’ that reproduces white privilege and black disadvantage (Bargallie, 2020). In this context, Griffith appears less as a figure worthy of universal respect than as a man whose intelligence was consistently turned towards the institutionalization of white racial power. A case study of the university reveals how the racial contract continues to perpetuate myths of merit, shaping preconceptions about who is recognized as the ‘most qualified’ and the best ‘personal fit’ for employment opportunities. Social processes of cloning ensure that whiteness persists as a bonding force within and between institutions which employ Indigenous people. However,

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the need for Indigenous ‘representation’ produces a bifurcation, with some people recruited to work within existing systems at lower levels while others are appointed to senior positions and used for the management of ‘Indigenous concerns’. Strategies of ‘interest convergence’ are used to divide and conquer Indigenous employees as they navigate racism in different levels of the workplace. This is how the racial contract masks the investments of a white polity served by the labour of Indigenous professionals. However, the work of Bargallie and other critical Indigenous theorists (see also Moreton-Robinson, 2015; Larkin, 2020) demonstrates the failure of colonial strategies to control the ends to which Indigenous subjects turn their institutional knowledge. Can We Handle the Truth? Public processes for revealing truth have been central to movements for justice and political change, including the South African and Canadian Truth and Reconciliation’ Commissions, respectively marking the end of the racist Apartheid and Indian Residential School systems. Australia notably opted for a process of national reconciliation in the 1990s without a mechanism for truth telling or a representative voice to parliament. There was significant discussion throughout the symposium about what happens after truth-telling? Public truth telling is a complicated matter, with the current convergence of broadcast media monopolies and social media echo chambers. A notable example is Grace Tame’s tenure as Australian of the year in 2021. Retelling her story of traumatic sexual abuse by a teacher was not only retraumatising. It triggered an avalanche of correspondence by women who had similar experiences of abuse, which Tame was both unqualified and unsupported to address. Her experience raised questions pertinent to the space opening up for telling truths about Indigenous experiences—both historical and current—of the trauma that is settler-colonial occupation: What do listeners owe those who share truths about being harmed? Is talking worse than nothing if talking won’t change anything? It is in the context of these questions that Bronwyn Carlson built on her expertise on Indigenous online communities and identities (Carlson, 2020; Carlson et  al., 2017) to deliver a powerful intervention. Her co-authored book, Monumental Disruptions: Aboriginal People and Colonial Commemorations in So-Called Australia, has launched an important challenge, which she encapsulated in a line memorably delivered by actor Jack Nicholson, and which has subsequently become a popular meme: “You can’t handle the truth”. Carlson pointed to the many benefits conferred by the persistence of inequality between Indigenous and non-Indigenous citizens. These are evidenced in ongoing white supremacist investments in property and resource ownership, Indigenous incarceration, and deliberate campaigns of historical disinformation. An example she pointed to is the double standards applied to the policing of Indigenous and white activism related to monuments. While non-violent protests against statues of James Cook (among other key figures in

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colonial history) by Black Lives Matter protesters elicited obscene and violent threats, white people ‘defending’ their heroes in the name of ‘Stand[ing] up for Australia’ were protected by police. Violent reactions to acts designed to provoke questions about myths of peaceful white settlement are not limited to statues and other public monuments. Carlson noted how accusations of ‘shit stirring’ invariably follow acts of truth-telling by public intellectuals, including Henry Reynolds and Stan Grant. Such accusations remind us of the white supremacist violence lurking under the veneer of everyday political debates in Australia. She related examples of threats against her own personal safety and streaming assaults of racist stereotypes sent through in social media platforms. These attacks are inextricable from the algorithms that bring profits for social media platforms. As Carlson noted, manufacturing culture wars through policing the boundaries of Australian-ness has become a popular online activity and this interaction generates advertising revenue. Notwithstanding violent resistance against projects of political transformation and justice both on and offline, Carlson argued that the project of white Empire in Australia needs to and will fall. And this requires new ways of conceptualizing what Australia is, who it belongs to and who belongs to it. How can we imagine forms of co-existence beyond the limits of a colonial imagination of time? Carlson offered the concept of ‘everywhen’ elaborated by Mykaela Saunders to explore how the past and the future live in all of us. Criticising the retreat to ‘now’ that permeates New Age discourses of personal empowerment, Saunders calls for a collective reckoning to reconfigure the sense of time on which white settlers’ drive depends. As she writes: We need to think… like futurists …if we want to bequeath a living planet to our descendants. We also need to be historians because every single problem we face today has its roots in the past. We must support leaders and activists who are past and future thinkers too and starve the now-mongers of attention and power. (2021, p. 124)

One of the ways that lies empower and perpetuate genocidal relationships is by killing curiosity about new and creative ways of living together as political subjects. How can art help us to envisage layered truths that form the ‘everywhen’ in this country of Indigenous countries? The Role of the Arts in the Space and Time of Truth Telling The capacity of art to enact political and social transformations can be overstated.11 Containment within institutions that sustain and reproduce white settlers’ 11  For example, as politicians worked to extinguish and contain the potential for Indigenous empowerment after the High Court’s recognition of native title in the Mabo decision, the late Papunya artist, Michael Nelson Tjakamarra, threatened to remove his mosaic in the forecourt of the (then) new Federal Parliament House (Nicoll, 1993).

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drive can significantly limit its revolutionary potential. In spite of this, the symposium offered new insights about the conditions under which art, architecture and theatre might enact political and social transformation. Modern Treaty processes underway in several parts of Australia provide a unique opportunity to renegotiate political relationships. This is in contrast to many historical Treaties negotiated in New Zealand and North America where the consent of landowners was gained through duplicity (for example through two versions of the Waitangi Treaty) or under conditions of extreme desperation, including starvation and brutal violence. However, even if with adequate resourcing and a genuinely representative Indigenous voice to Federal Parliament embedded in the constitution, the challenge remains of how to bring non-Indigenous Australians, including the descendants of those involved in frontier conflicts into the process. The capacity of art to enact political and social transformations can be overstated.12 Containment within institutions that sustain and reproduce white settlers’ drive can significantly limit its revolutionary potential. In spite of this, the symposium offered new insights about the conditions under which art, architecture and design might enact political and social transformation. An adequate commemoration of the genocidal conflicts from which the nation was born cannot simply apply the template of the Australian War Memorial and its global outposts (Nicoll, 2001). Consider, for example, the erection of a new war memorial in France for 100 million dollars.13 This project exemplifies settlers’ drive to contain the definition of war and its crimes to international ‘theatres of war’, notwithstanding the genocidal conflicts that established the nation’s ‘home front’. Treaties, in contrast, explains Native Title lawyer and Treaty Commissioner Tony McAvoy, offer a way for the beneficiaries of settler-colonial violence to reckon with our portion of the burden of history. McAvoy began his presentation to the symposium with a theatrical introduction, interpolating the audience as jury members tasked with helping him to bring justice in the war crimes trial of Samuel Griffith. After noting that the current scope of war crimes in Australia is limited to the period of 1939–1945, he asked us to imagine the date of Griffith’s trial as occurring in 1845. This would not only make the trial consistent with international law on war crimes. Intervening within the theatres of war and law that sustain existing political and legal institutions would expose the nation as a series of accumulated performances by white actors over decades and centuries. In the course of his legal work, McAvoy collected evidence in historical archives of how land was cleared in order to be packaged as land grants during 12  For example, as politicians worked to extinguish and contain the potential for Indigenous empowerment after the High Court’s recognition of native title in the Mabo decision, the late Papunya artist, Michael Tjakamarra, threatened to remove his mosaic in the forecourt of the (then) new Federal Parliament House (Nicoll, 1993). 13  https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/postcolonial-blog/2018/apr/09/a-500mexpansion-of-the-war-memorial-is-a-reckless-waste-of-money.

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Griffith’s political tenure. These revealed a clear connection between the wealth accumulated by white landowners and the intergenerational trauma, death and poverty inflicted on Indigenous nations who previously enjoyed the land. This truth was also refracted in oral histories he encountered in different parts of Australia, often featuring the appearance of a devilish dog with red eyes which immediately preceded the arrival of colonial force. A mock trial would encourage regional truth telling in places where people have lived and died over many generations since settlers’ drive began to shape this continent as a white racial state. For there was not one war against Indigenous sovereign nations but many wars. Beyond Queensland and the figure of Samuel Griffith, McAvoy suggested that a mock trial kit could be created by Indigenous playwrights for customisation by First Nations and audiences all over the continent. With reference to oral and archival historical materials about colonial administrators in their own areas, each performance would help residents to answer these questions: what are you going to do when the truth comes to you and how are you going to be part of creating history? While McAvoy presented a new way of understanding and inhabiting histories through theatrical performance, a talk by architect and Professor, Kevin O’Brien addressed the reinvention of spaces to reveal truths that Samuel Griffith was unwilling to acknowledge (and perhaps incapable of understanding). These truths emerge from Indigenous country itself and O’Brien has dedicated his career to incorporating them within architecture and design projects that shape our everyday lives. O’Brien is well-placed to lead the design of a Frontier War Museum along the lines suggested by Henry Reynolds. He is experienced in dealing with the challenges of bringing culture into the multi-­ million-­dollar projects that architects create and with addressing the fears this can provoke. His built environments are designed to highlight and generate curiosity about cultural and political distinctions between owning and belonging within the layers of influence that shape old and new spaces. A member of the Blak Hand Collective (ABC, 2022) of Aboriginal architects, O’Brien is acutely aware of the collaborative work involved in realizing this vision. A Frontier War Memorial would need to work through the role of community and agency for developers as well as the role of Aboriginal land councils. Government sponsors would also need to understand the difference between relational and contractual ways of working. Rather than putting Indigenous architects in the service of existing visions of state and national identities, sponsors would need to facilitate their creative and transformative agency in re-imagining country. This would enable work of the calibre produced by leading, visionary, chief architects internationally. He concluded with striking images of David Adjaye’s building of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture (2016) and Douglas Cardinal’s National Museum of the American Indian (2004). The final part of this chapter discusses a precedent for re-imagining Griffith University in the Courting Blakness project in the Great Court at the University of Queensland.

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Turning off Settlers’ Drive: After Griffith’s University Sometimes a project is so dissonant and visionary that its significance is only recognized much later (Foley et al., 2015; Fredericks, 2020; Emmett, 2022). Courting Blakness was a temporary art installation in the University of Queensland’s Great Court curated by Fiona Foley in 2014. Constructed between two world wars in the twentieth century, the Great Court deployed art and architecture to materialise an ideology of race that not only linked whiteness to the value of civilization but to knowledge itself. With the partial exception of some work by the second sculptor Rhyl Hinwood, Aboriginal people are relegated to prehistoric footnotes carved upon UQ’s walls. For three weeks in 2014, the white racial story narrated by the Great Court’s architecture and carvings was disrupted by sculptural, photographic and multimedia artworks by Megan Cope, Ryan Presley, Karla Dickens, Christian Thompson, Archie Moore, Michael Cook, Natalie Harkin and rea. These artists reimagined the university by offering diverse, humorous and politically challenging perspectives about identity and belonging to students, staff, and visitors. Over two years of planning and development secured significant collaboration in the project between artists and academics from psychology, anthropology, history, law and political science. A collection of essays on the project was published by the University of Queensland Press in 2015, and there is a digital archive in the AUSLIT database held at University of Queensland.14 One artwork in this installation in particular reverberates with recalibration of Australian law and politics called for in the Uluru Statement from the Heart and elaborated in the symposium. 14 Nations extended an existing body of Archie Moore’s art exploring the cultural politics of Aboriginal identity explored through the material and symbolic object of the flag (Moore, 2015, pp. 119–121). Moore’s hand-stitched flags took inspiration from a map by RH Matthews, the first anthropologist to use the term ‘nations’ to describe fourteen Indigenous territories in Queensland in a map he created in 1900, on the eve of Federation (Babidge, 2015). 14 Nations was also the most controversial work in the exhibition and important parts of it were not permitted by the university to be exhibited (See Foley & Martin-Chew, 2015, pp.  14–21) (Image 15.2). Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander flags adorn most government buildings in Australia today. Moore’s work provokes reflection on how these official flags, like the ubiquitous acknowledgements of country preceding formal presentations, have become part of business-as-usual. He explains that his Courting Blakness flags question and address the existing ways in which we consume flags, through the creation of signs that encompass inauthenticity. They examine the way that I (and  https://www.austlit.edu.au/austlit/page/10043258.

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Image 15.2  Archie Moore, 14 Nations, 2014. (Photograph by Fiona Nicoll) Indigenous people) fit or don’t fit within dominant narratives. As such, they invite a different sense of Indigenous participation into the University of Queensland [Great Court] and speak to previous artwork I have made about flags and the issues they raise. [They] Do not require the status of the Australian National Flag nor are they required to follow existing protocols. They are false flags and, as such, do not hide their dualities. They are ambiguous and ­contradictory, raise questions of authenticity, and evoke my own fragmented personal identity. The current Aboriginal Flag is a pan-Aboriginal flag. Aboriginal people may not feel represented by this flag—given that it is a united Aboriginal nations flag. (Moore, 2015, p. 122)

The beautiful mimicry of official flags in Fourteen Nations invites us to reimagine how else it is possible to be a nation, a university and an individual citizen in Queensland and Australia. By bringing a white historical artefact (in this

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Image 15.3  Archie Moore, United Neytions, 2018. Sydney International Airport. (Photograph by Fiona Nicoll)

case a historical anthropological map) to bear on the complexity of Indigenous identities and the politics of sovereignty, Moore stimulated the imagination of academic researchers, students and fellow artists at the University of Queensland and beyond. His flags became maps of actual and imaginary territories that can only be accessed and shared by turning off settlers’ drive (Image 15.3). The artist subsequently adapted this body of work for another public art commission titled United Neytions (2018); the flags now hang from the enormous ceiling of the International terminal at Sydney airport. On a recent visit to the terminal to view the adapted works in situ, I wondered how other travellers encounter the complexities of Indigenous and white claims to nationhood in these flags at the moment of their departure or return to places outside of Australia? An art installation inspired by Courting Blakness and the new ideas presented at symposium promises to illuminate Samuel Griffith’s historical role as a part of a racial contract that enabled without explicitly condoning genocidal violence. A Frontier War Museum could explore how Griffith embodied and pre-figured a nation with a disturbing lack of curiosity about the Indigenous laws that humanized the continent for tens of thousands of years prior to his arrival. Like the Courting Blakness project, this art installation and museum could be a whole-of-university project. This would engage researchers across

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academic disciplines and involve students in assignments to stimulate a deep curiosity about what it means to be living where and when it is always was and always will be Aboriginal land.

References ABC. (2020, August 24). Samuel Griffith: Australia’s founding father? https://www. abc.net.au/radionational/programs/latenightlive/the-­life-­and-­times-­of-­samuel-­ griffith/12589996 ABC. (2022, July 8). Blak Hand Collective. https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/ programs/blueprintforliving/blak-­hand-­collective/13960188 Attwooll, J. (2021, April 15). “Moronic”: Artist behind vandalised prime minister sculptures in Ballarat botanical gardens speaks out. The Courier. https://www.thecourier.com.au/story/6791827/moronic-­and-­sad-­artists-­behind-­vandalised-­prime-­ minister-­sculptures-­speak-­out/ Babidge, S. (2015). Who belongs in the nation? In Courting Blakness (pp. 118–123). UQP. Baj, L. (2020). Police depend Captain Cook statue during Sydney’s protest against Black deaths in custody. Pedestrian. https://www.pedestrian.tv/news/ captain-­cook-­statue/ Bargallie, D. (2020). Unmasking the racial contract: Indigenous voices on racism in the Australian public service. Aboriginal Studies Press. Barry, H. (2017, September 13). Perth academics lash The West Australian for publishing ‘attacks’ on Aboriginal people. WA Today. https://www.watoday.com.au/ national/western-­a ustralia/perth-­a cademics-­l ash-­t he-­w est-­a ustralian-­f or-­ publishing-­attack-­on-­aboriginal-­people-­20170912-­gyfsbr.html Birch, T. (2020, October 20). Who needs monuments? Memorials and colonial violence in Victoria: Black Fire III. [Webinar] Melbourne School of Discontent: The Black Fire Lectures. https://gooriweb.org/msd/msd_index.html Blout, E., & Burkart, P. (2020). White supremacist terrorism in Charlottesville: Reconstructing ‘Unite the Right’. Studies in Conflict Terrorism, 1–22. Bolt, A. (2016, November 6). A list of the media’s enemies of free speech. Herald Sun. https://www.heraldsun.com.au/blogs/andrew-­bolt/a-­list-­of-­the-­medias-­enemies-­ of-­free-­speech/news-­story/169ccf41ede378d1e9bb661919d4e60e Bonilla-Silva, E. (2010). Racism without racists: Color-blind racism and the persistence of racial in the United States (3rd ed.). Rowman & Littlefield. Carlson, B. (2020). Love and hate at the cultural interface: Indigenous Australians and dating apps. Journal of Sociology, 56(2), 133–150. https://doi.org/10.1177/ 1440783319833181 Carlson, B. (2021). Data silence in the settler archive: Indigenous femicide, deathscapes and social media. In S.  Perera & J.  Pugleise (Eds.), Mapping deathscapes: Digital geographies of racial and border violence (pp. 84–105). Routledge. Carlson, B., & Day, M. (2021). Technology facilitated abuse: The need for Indigenous led research and response. In B. Harris & D. Woodlock (Eds.), The Routledge handbook on technology and domestic violence: Victimisation, perpetration and responses. Routledge. Carlson, B., & Day, M. (2022). Colonial violence on dating apps. In H.  Arden, A. Briers, & N. Carah (Eds.), Conflict in my Outlook. University of Queensland Press.

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Carlson, B., & Farrelly, T. (2022a, February 8). Monumental upheavals: Unsettled fates of the Captain Cook statue and other colonial monuments in Australia. Thesis Eleven, 1–20. https://doi.org/10.1177/07255136211069416 Carlson, B., & Farrelly, T. (2022b). Monumental changes: History isn’t always written by the victors. Special Issue, Aftermaths. Vulnerable times, vanishing places, toxic erasures edited by Parlati, M. & Pugliese, J. European South. Carlson, B., & Farrelly, T. (2023a). Monumental disruptions: Aboriginal people and colonial commemorations in so-called Australia. Aboriginal Studies Press. Carlson, B., & Farrelly, T. (Eds.). (2023b). The Palgrave handbook of rethinking colonial commemorations. Palgrave Macmillan. Carlson, B., & Frazer, R. (2021). Indigenous digital life: The practice and politics of being Indigenous on social media. Palgrave Macmillan. Carlson, B. L., Jones, L. V., Harris, M., Quezada, N., & Frazer, R. (2017). Trauma, shared recognition and Indigenous resistance on social media. Australasian Journal of Information Systems, 21. https://doi.org/10.3127/ajis.v21i0.1570 Cohen, S. (2001). States of denial: Knowing about atrocities and suffering. Polity Press. Collard, S. (2022). Australia still failing to hit more than two-thirds of Closing the Gap targets, new data shows. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/australia-­ news/2022/jul/28/australia-­s till-­f ailing-­t o-­h it-­m ore-­t han-­t wo-­t hirds-­o f-­ closing-­the-­gap-­targets-­new-­data-­shows Craven, G. (1993). The Founding Fathers: Constitutional kings or colonial knaves? Papers in Parliament No. 21, Parliamentary Library, Parliament of Australia. https:// www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Senate/Powers_practice_n_procedures/ pops/pop21/c06 Davey, M. (2020). Black Lives Matter: Health experts assess the risk of Covid-19 transmission at Australian protests. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/ australia-­n ews/2020/jun/12/black-­l ives-­m atter-­a ustralia-­p rotest-­w ill-­ blm-­protests-­spark-­second-­covid-­19-­coronavirus-­wave-­health-­experts Davis, M., & Williams, G. (2021). Everything you need to know about the Uluru Statement from the Heart. UNSW Press/NewSouth Publishing. Day, M., & Carlson, B. (2022). Predators & perpetrators: White settler violence online. In D. Callander, P. Farvid, A. Baradaran, & T. Vance (Eds.), (Un)desiring whiteness: (Un)doing sexual racism. Oxford University Press. Delgado, R. (1996). The coming race war: And other apocalyptic tales of America after affirmative action and welfare. New York University Press. Dutton, M. (2022). Disrupting the colonial narrative: Reading, reckoning and reimagining. In A.  Hay & T.  Reid (Eds.), Griffith Review 76: Acts of Reckoning (pp. 312–323). The Griffith Review. Eggins, S. (2010, October). Choosing the “best” candidate: Our struggle with merit. Public Sector Informant. Emmett, H. (2022). Teaching transnational Morrison: Curation and comparative American studies. Comparative American Studies An International Journal, 19, 1–16. Essed, P. (2002). Cloning cultural homogeneity while talking diversity: Old wine in new bottles in Dutch work organisations? Transforming Anthropology, 11(1), 2–12. Essed, P., & Goldberg, D. T. (2002). Cloning cultures: The social injustices of sameness. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 25(6), 1066–1082. Foley, F., & Martin-Chew, L. (2015). The politics of art and place. In F. Foley, L. Martin-Chew, & F. Nicoll (Eds.), Courting Blakness: Recalibrating Knowledge in the Sandstone University (pp.  14–21). St Lucia, QLD, Australia: University of Queensland Press.

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Foley, F., Martin-Chew, L., & Nicoll, F. (Eds.). (2015). Courting blakness: recalibrating knowledge in the sandstone university. St. Lucia, QLD, Australia: University of Queensland Press. Fredericks, B. (2020). Collaborative creative processes that challenge us as “anomaly”, and affirm our Indigeneity and enact our sovereignty. M/C Journal, 23(5). https:// journal.media-culture.org.au/index.php/mcjournal/article/view/1674 Goldberg, D.  T. (2008). Racial states. In A companion to racial and ethnic studies (pp. 233–258). Wiley. Grant, S. (2019). Australia Day. Harper Collins Publisher. Healy, C. (1997). From the ruins of colonialism: History as social memory. Cambridge University Press. Henderson, A. (2014). Prime Minister Tony Abbott describes Sydney as ‘nothing but bush’ before the First Fleet arrived in 1788. ABC News. https://www.abc.net.au/ news/2014-­11-­14/abbot-­describes-­1778-­australia-­as-­nothing-­but-­bush/5892608 Hinchliffe, J. (2022, June 4). ‘Enabler’ of massacres: The push to reexamine the legacy of founding father Samuel Griffith. The Guardian. Hirschfield, R. B. (2011). You can’t handle the truth… or maybe you can. In Muslims and Jews in America (pp. 9–19). Palgrave Macmillan. Hopkins, A., & Kemp, D. (2020). Juukan Gorge: How could they have not known? (and how can we be sure they will in future?). The Conversation. https://theconversation.com/juukan-­g orge-­h ow-­c ould-­t hey-­n ot-­h ave-­k nown-­a nd-­h ow-­ can-­we-­be-­sure-­they-­will-­in-­future-­151580 Kagi, J., & Carmody, J. (2020, June 20). Captain James Sterling statue vandalised in Perth on eve of Black Lives Matter rally. ABC News. https://www.abc.net.au/ news/2020-­0 6-­1 2/captain-­j ames-­s tirling-­s tatue-­v andalised-­b efore-­b lm-­ rally/12348328 Kelly, F. (2017, August 29). Most Indigenous people will call for statues to be removed. ABC RN Breakfast. https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/breakfast/ most-­indigenous-­people-­will-­call-­for-­statues-­to-­be-­removed/8851536 Larkin, S. (2020). Locating Indigenous sovereignty: Race and research in Indigenous health policy-making. In Sovereign subjects (pp. 168–178). Routledge. Latimore, J. (2019, March 4). There are few memorials to Australia’s bloody history but that’s changing. Guardian. Martin-Chew, K. L. (2019). Fiona Foley provocateur: An art life. QUT Art Museum. Mason, R. (2020). Black Lives Matter protests risk spreading Covid-19, says Hancock. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/07/black-­lives­matter-­protests-­risk-­spreading-­covid19-­says-­matt-­hancock McCulloch, D. (2019). Prime Minister Scott Morrison wants Aussie’s to ‘rediscover’ Captain James Cook with $12m project. The Western Australian. https://www. perthnow.com.au/politics/federal-­politics/prime-­minister-­scott-­morrison-­wants-­ aussies-­to-­rediscover-­captain-­james-­cook-­with-­12m-­project-­ng-­b881081256z McKay, D. (2017). Uluru Statement: A quick guide. Law and Bills Digest Section, Parliament of Australia, Canberra, Australia. McKenna, M. (2018). Moment of truth: History and Australia’s future. Quarterly Essay, 69(1), 86. Merica, D. (2017, August 16). Trump says both sides to blame amid Charlotte backlash. CNN. https://edition.cnn.com/2017/08/15/politics/trump-­charlottesville-­ delay/index.html Mills, C. W. (1997). The racial contract. Cornell University Press.

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Mills, C. W. (2004). Racial exploitation and the wages of whiteness. In What white looks like (pp. 41–70). Routledge. Moore, A. (2015). 14 Nations, Courting Blakness – Recalibrating Knowledge in the Sandstone University (pp. 118–123). The University of Queensland. Moreton-Robinson, A. (2011). The White Man’s burden. Australian Feminist Studies, 26(70), 413–431. Moreton-Robinson, A. (2015). The White possessive: Property, power and Indigenous sovereignty. University of Minnesota Press. Nicoll, F. (1993). The art of reconciliation: Art, Aboriginality and the state. Meanjin, 52(4), 705–718. Nicoll, F. (2001). From diggers to drag queens: Configurations of Australian identity. Pluto Press. Nicoll, F. (2012). Bad habits: Discourses of addiction and the racial politics of intervention. Griffith Law Review, 21(1), 164–189. Reynolds, H. (2021). Truth-Telling: History, sovereignty and the Uluru Statement. New South Publishing. RMIT ABC Fact Check. (2017, November 10). Fact Check: Was Lachlan Macquarie a mass murderer who ordered genocide of Indigenous people? ABC News. https:// www.abc.net.au/news/2017-­09-­27/fact-­check-­did-­lachlan-­macquarie-­commit-­ mass-­murder-­and-­genocide/8981092 Ronald, J. B. (1901, September 12). ‘Immigration restriction bill’, house of representative debates. Debates. http://historichansard.net/hofreps/1901/19010912_ REPS_1_4_c1/ Saunders, M. (2022). Everywhen: Against ‘the power of now’. Griffith Review, (76), 115–125. Shergold, P. (1996, May 30). PSMPC merit seminar. Address to Public service and merit protection commission merit seminar. Canberra: Commonwealth of Australia. Silva, N., & Collard, S. (2021). ‘They’re unacceptable’: Rates of removal of Indigenous children increasing. SBS News. https://www.sbs.com.au/nitv/article/theyre-­ unacceptable-­rates-­of-­removal-­of-­indigenous-­children-­increasing/mu9e7jutk Smith, L.  T. (1999). Decolonizing methodologies: Research and Indigenous peoples. Zed Books. The Sydney Morning Herald. (2022). A Grim milestone for Indigenous deaths in custody. https://www.smh.com.au/politics/nsw/a-­grim-­milestone-­for-­indigenous-­ deaths-­in-­custody-­in-­nsw-­20220929-­p5bm34.html Tilly, C. (1998). Durable inequality. University of California Press. Wolfe, P. (2006). Settler colonialism and the elimination of the native. Journal of Genocide Research, 8(4), 387–409.

CHAPTER 16

Comedic Interventions: Toppling Monuments and Dismantling Myths in Rutherford Falls Jeff Berglund

Natives are astutely aware that there’s been “fake news” since 1492. (Oscar Hokeah @OscarHokeah, author of Calling for a Blanket Dance, Twitter, May 16, 2022) That statue is who I am, and if they can just pick up an object and move it, and if they do that to the statue, then literally who am I? (Nathan Rutherford, episode 1, Rutherford Falls) Nathan, in case you haven’t noticed, this isn’t a great time for people who love statues. (Mayor Deirdre Chisenhall, episode 1, Rutherford Falls) Why is your history more important than mine? (Reagan Wells, episode 7, Rutherford Falls) Our market research shows that the average American’s understanding of history can be boiled down to seven concepts: George Washington, the flag, Independence Day, Independence Day (the movie), MLK, Forrest Gump, & butter churns. (Terry Thomas, episode 9, Rutherford Falls) Nathan is a mirror to a settler America, and Canada, that we are very familiar with… (Michael Greyeyes (who plays Terry Thomas), episode 4 of Terry Talks)

J. Berglund (*) Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, AZ, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 B. Carlson, T. Farrelly (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook on Rethinking Colonial Commemorations, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-28609-4_16

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Rutherford Falls, a U.S.-produced sitcom which premiered in April 2021 on NBC’s Peacock streaming platform, with a second season set to premier in June 2022, features a large cast of Native characters actually played by brilliant Native actors. It also boasts the largest staff of Native/Indigenous writers in Hollywood: the showrunner, Sierra Teller Ornelas, (Diné), Bobby Wilson (Sisseton-Wahpeton Dakota); Tai Leclaire (Kanien’kehá:ka/Mi’kmaq); Tazbah Chavez, (Nüümü/Diné/San Carlos Apache); and Jana Schmieding (Cheyenne River Lakota Sioux). The team encouraged actors, writers, and directors to bring in their influences and enlisted Native fashion designers, musicians, and beadworkers (Teller Orenelas, 2021). Teller Orenelas shares, “We hired Native people specifically from different regions of the country. Each nation has its own religion, its own government, its own sovereignty. So [the room rule was], if it made all five of us laugh or if it was a conversation all five of us wanted to have, then it went into the show” (Miller, 2021). Nearly half of the 10-­episode first season was directed by Diné director Sydney Freeland. This breakthrough sitcom has literally dismantled age-old refusals of the commercial entertainment industry in the United States to tell contemporary stories that feature realistic Indigenous Peoples engaged in efforts to maintain sovereignty, self-governance, autonomy, and possession over their culture and histories, all in context of a situation comedy, where humour operates as an Indigenous tool to reveal truths and expose lies. Central to the plotline of the series is an effort to remove ‘Big Larry’, a commemorative statue of the town’s colonial-era founder and namesake, Lawrence Rutherford. Rutherford Falls, a fictional small town in New York state, is next to a fictional Indigenous community, the Minishonka Nation. Big Larry stands in the middle of a traffic circle and is literally a hazard to the health of community members, as many automobile accidents occur at this site. Metaphorically, the history this monument represents continues to perpetuate injurious narratives about the founding of the township and, by extension, the U.S. nation as a whole. Big Larry’s supposed descendent, Nathan Rutherford (played by Ed Helms), tries hard to maintain his family’s centring mythology and presence, also heavily represented in the Rutherford Falls Heritage Museum he runs. Reagan Wells (played by series writer Schmieding) is a Minishonka tribal member and friend of Nathan. Reagan has returned home after her graduate studies and is working to launch a Minishonka Cultural Center in a small space in the tribal nation’s Running Thunder Casino run by Terry Thomas (played by Michael Greyeyes, who is Muskeg Lake Cree). Reagan’s relationship with others in the community still bears the impact of her previous decision to head to graduate school at Northwestern University instead of marrying her then-­ fiancé, son of the tribal leader. This series premiered against the backdrop of real-world efforts to remove colonial monuments of imaginary and/or symbolic import to ‘American’ settler mythologies, including Juan de Oñate, Junipero Serra, Kit Carson, Hannah Dusten, Soldier’s Monument, an obelisk in Santa Fe, New Mexico, other ‘pioneer’ memorials, and, especially, Christopher Columbus (not to mention

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adjacent movements to remove Confederate U.S. Civil War-era monuments). While it seems imminent that Big Larry will ‘fall’ or be moved (the title has double meanings, after all), the show meditates on the complicated and vexed nature of commemorating historical truths and the lies that must be dismantled or come into the open as the members of the town engage in the process of truth-telling. This Indigenous-centred sitcom is simultaneously pushing against a range of mythologies and distortions about Indigenous Peoples. This chapter analyses how Rutherford Falls provokes viewers to think about the values and interests that guide history- and myth-making and implicitly and explicitly offers meta-commentary on the ways that the televisual medium can be used to dismantle monolithic settler paradigms to reveal complex and varied realities.1 It asks viewers how, in intercultural spaces, do we engage and understand the past where in the present we share common space and are likely destined to navigate a life and future together? Two particular tools are employed by the creative team of Rutherford Falls to reconsider the past and readjust understandings in the present and future. First,  humour and comedy, in this context, must be understood as a tactic used to critique, move people, and alter attitudes in the service of change. Humour is “the best and sharpest weapon we’ve always had against the ravages of conquest and assimilation”, notes Laguna Pueblo writer and theorist, Paula Gunn Allen (as cited in Lincoln, 1993, p. 7). In ‘Indian Humor,’ the well-known essay from Custer Died for Your Sins (1969), Vine Deloria, Jr. (Hunkpapa Lakota) (1969, p. 147) writes: “The more desperate the problem, the more humour is directed to describe it. Satirical remarks often circumscribe problems so that possible solutions are drawn from the circumstances that would not make sense if presented in other than a humourous form”. In In the Belly of a Laughing God (2011), writer Jennifer Andrews (2011, p. 1) suggests irony itself, in opening up double- or multiple-readings simultaneously, “often temper[s] the playful elements of humour by reminding readers of the legacy of oppression that has shaped the lives of Native North Americans for centuries; it also creates a space for other perspectives and voices, offering a venue for alternative articulations of selfhood and community”.2 Second, the creative team of Rutherford Falls fosters  what Seneca scholar Michelle Raheja has described as “visual sovereignty”:

1  Not long after Rutherford Falls premiered in April 2021, Reservation Dogs premiered globally in August 2021. This television program, produced by Taika Waititi and Sterlin Harjo, without a doubt, is also responsible for shifting the terrain of United States-originated television programming about Indigenous Peoples. A review such as the following notes this breakthrough moment in US television programming: Boutsalis (2021). 2  I have written elsewhere about the use of humour and comedy as activism and tactic to shift thinking, particularly regarding the work of the comedy troupe, The 1491s. See, for example, Berglund (2021), Berglund (2017), and Berglund (2016). Interestingly, many members of this group are now writers, actors, producers, and directors on both Rutherford Falls and Reservation Dogs.

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[T]he concept of visual sovereignty [is] whereby Indigenous filmmakers take a holistic approach to the process of creating moving images. Visual sovereignty simultaneously addresses the settler population by creating self-representations that interact with older stereotypes but also, more importantly, connects film production to larger aesthetic practices that work toward strengthening treaty claims and more traditional (although by no means static) modes of cultural understanding. (Raheja, 2010, p. 19)

Rutherford Falls most definitely engages with older stereotypes, often implicitly, in its wholesale inversion of deficit models and rejection of trauma narratives. Writer and lead actor on the show, Jana Schmieding, notes: It’s not that we are ‘allowed’ to tell our stories or that we have been ‘granted the space.’ The messaging has always been that the impact of the show relies on the Native writers to be the cultural critics and comedians that we are. We are tasked with bringing our full, joyful Indigenous selves to this story about a Native woman and her white best friend. And although I get asked this in every other press interview—no, none of the writers struggled to avoid stereotyping ourselves. It was hard work but shameless, unadulterated Native Joy every day. (Schmieding, 2021)

Showrunner, Teller Ornelas, also speaks to the ease with which the writing staff had in avoiding stereotypes, especially the too-common ‘over-corrections’: The “course corrections” to old stereotypes have often become such a positive stereotype of Natives that they don’t seem human. If you don’t have just one person to bear the brunt of representation, you can have complex, layered people. I wanted to tell a story where you could have three Native people having a regular conversation, maybe talking about movies. That’s what’s revolutionary, is us just getting to be funny and smart and interesting. Those are the Native people I know. But we’re not perfect. (Miller, 2021)

As Michael Greyeyes, who plays Terry Thomas, CEO of Running Thunder Casino, commented in episode 2 of his video series, Terry Talks: “The Thomas family is a radical provocation of Indigenous empowerment and wholeness in a climate that loves our brokenness.” In a conversation with his onscreen wife, Renee Thomas, played by Kimberly Guerrero (Colville), he notes how the show is breaking new ground in its construction of Native wholeness. Greyeyes continues: “Native people have money, they live in nice houses, there is nothing weird about that, we don’t live in poverty, we’re not resilient, we’re making it, we’re the Jeffersons!” Guerrero concurs: “I can’t remember seeing as a whole healthy happy Native family you know and it’s just that just the joy …

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we are that kind of family do we get to be fully human and fully present and flawed and wonderful and unapologetically you know, here now, and awesome” (Greyeyes, 2022a). (See Tribal Television for a comprehensive analysis of the presentation of Indigenous-originated stories and roles on television (Tahmahkera, 2014)). In so many ways, Rutherford Falls is a full-on rejection of what Canadian First Nations playwright, Kim Senklip Harvey (Syilx & Tsilhqot’in), outlined in a November 2021 Twitter post that went viral, striking a nerve: “By making pain the dramatic action we do a few things: 1. We normalize pain as something to be consumed by whiteness. 2. We sensationalize and operationalize our pain as entertainment. 3. We submit to the state that our pain is a qualification for being treated respectfully”. Harvey contends that Indigenous creatives need to resist this trauma and pain imperative and the attendant premise that Indigenous sovereignty and recognition is merely an outgrowth of pain. Rutherford Falls does precisely that. Schmieding acknowledges that the series has reverberated positively among Indigenous viewers: I’m completely tickled every time an Indigenous woman tweets, ‘Holy shit. I am Reagan.’ Native Joy is trending and the culture is ready to gobble it up. Our joy is as vast and sacred as the land we’ve inhabited for thousands of years. Despite the many attempts over the course of history to stifle our optimism, we remain flexible and buoyant, eyes turned toward the future and ready to step into our fullness. (Schmieding, 2021)

Indeed, this sounds like an echo of Raheja’s characterisation of acts of “visual sovereignty”, where “new media technologies frame more imaginative renderings of Native American intellectual and cultural paradigms” (2010, p. 200). It also echoes how Raheja describes the impact of digital, ‘virtual reservations’ wherein they display: Indigenous knowledges and practices in sharp relief against competing colonial discourses. By doing so, it opens up multiple narratives for dialogue within and outside the community on a site that is less invested in ideas of “authenticity” and fixed definitions of indigeneity imposed by outsiders. Indigenous people recuperate, regenerate, and begin to heal on the virtual reservation. (Raheja, 2010, p. 149)

Schmieding offers further insights into the continuities and confluences of age-old, long-running Indigenous practices and the artistic choices made by the Rutherford Falls production team. In episode 4 of Terry Talks, Schmieding explains that the Indigenous creatives on the show are doing what Indigenous Peoples have always done: Native People have been sitting on outside of mainstream culture for a long time, but we have been raised by our parents and grandparents to know the history, to challenge the common narrative, to challenge the white narrative and it’s been part of our crucial life’s work. We have it within us the ability to critique culture and mainstream white culture and whiteness. We’re good at it, we’ve been doing

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it since we were children. We are good at exposing the farce that is white superiority. As comedy writers and performers: this is our time to shine. Pull out your white people jokes because here we are! (Greyeyes, 2022b)

Here, Schmieding makes a clear sovereign claim to tell culturally relevant stories and to engage in critique of myths perpetuated by mainstream culture, all using culturally originated approaches, including the use of humour. The first episode opens with a close-up on the male face of a statue at dawn. The camera quickly pans out, showing an idyllic small-town-USA city centre. The wide shot reveals an iconic ‘Pilgrim’ settler, familiar to viewers as a stock figure in American founding myths. Then, before that diorama of colonial history has time to ‘stick’, or to settle, a red mini-cooper races towards the statue and crashes into it. The scene cuts to a wrecker picking up the smashed vehicle and the stressed-out driver explaining to the sheriff, “I’m not from here. I was just driving—hey, why is there a frickin’ statue in the middle of the street?” The sheriff replies, “It’s just always been there”. The driver retorts, “Well, it’s dumb!”, and the sheriff concurs, “Yep” (Schur et al., 2021). The inane opening dialogue of Rutherford Falls, uttered by minor characters never seen again, one an outsider to the community, and one connected to the legal enforcement system (and juridical infrastructure connected to adjudication of Constitutional matters and governance), metonymically establishes the statue as a debate about habit, about tradition, and even about the process of history-making. The outright absurdity of the statue’s placement in the middle of a road that doesn’t have a proper traffic circle with median eventually draws attention to the extreme lengths one representative of the founding family will go to in order to preserve the family’s mythology and his sense of their role within the past, the present, and the future. The very next scene shift, in fact, establishes this connection, as Nathan Rutherford proudly narrates: “Brave settlers landed in a new world … [and] befriended Native Americans, all in the service of founding this very town in which you’re standing right now” (Schur et  al., 2021). As he guides the school group through the family-home-based museum, dramatically breathing life into this distant history, he attempts to interpellate them into the rituals of mythmaking: “Lawrence Rutherford gazed upon the majestic valley and thus declared, ‘This is where we belong’” (Schur et  al., 2021). The camera pans to an elaborate diorama, historical artefacts, and other memorializations of the Rutherfords. He tells the group about a deal that Lawrence and his group brokered with the Minishonka. According to his account, the terms of the treaty required the honoring of the exact location where this deal was made with the erection of a statue of Lawrence Rutherford. Nathan’s exposition rebuts the interloper’s claim after her accident, “That’s stupid”, and provides insights about why “it’s always just been there”. At this point, Nathan has no knowledge of the recent accident. It is the viewers who are left to make these associations. A student, identifiably Native and wearing a ‘Land Back’ T-shirt, asks Nathan, “Did they make a statue of any Minishonka?” The T-shirt slogan—part of a powerful activist movement in the United States

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likely not featured in any or many sitcoms—and the question both draw attention to the lopsided reality of narratives about the past and the selective privileging and memorialization of some stories and individuals. Unnerved, Nathan tactically evades the issue: “That’s a great question. Bronze was very expensive and they only had money for one. If you’re interested in Minishonka history, I recommend you visit the Minishonka Cultural Center run by my good friend Reagan Wells” (Schur et al., 2021). This is a ridiculously unfounded and false answer based in ‘fake news’/false facts and suggests that a Native culture and history is presented elsewhere. His invocation of ‘my good friend’ is also a tactic of performative sincerity and reliability. A quick scene shift occurs while Nathan’s voiceover introduces Reagan. Their friendship, we learn later, is a sincere one built over decades. Viewers see Reagan standing behind an empty glass display case in a mainly empty glass-­ walled cubicle-style store front in the Minishonka Running Thunder Casino, practising a speech for the grand-opening: “The story of Indigenous People is the greatest story never told. This is why I’m proud to be the director of the Cultural Center, a place where our people will not be overlooked” (Schur et al., 2021). Frustrated with her awkward delivery, Reagan follows up with “Winner, winner, Cultural Center”, which sounds like the throw-away cliché, ‘Winner, winner, chicken dinner’. Just then, a patron of the Casino wanders in to buy a souvenir for his wife, likely a common occurrence. A frustrated Reagan replies: “This is the Cultural Center, not the gift shop, totally different” (Schur et al., 2021). The glass cases and the glass walls likely resemble those in the gift shop, and its positioning adjacent to the slot machines creates an appropriate association between Native culture and commodity. It highlights that circulating in U.S. society—and elsewhere—are items that can be bought and sold and collected as a souvenir of an exotic or mythologized culture. The mayor of Rutherford Falls, Deirdre Chisenhall (played by Dana Hall), proposes to move Big Larry, as this was the fifth person, since she has been mayor, to have collided with it in their car. Nathan confronts her in the mayor’s office: “The Town charter is very clear. You have to commemorate the exact spot where the town was founded. That’s history, Deirdre. You can’t change history. Unless you got a time machine.” When Deirdre objects that this is also a “public safety issue”, Nathan replies, “But it is also an historical preservation issue”. Chisenhall, who is African American, says: “Nathan, in case you haven’t noticed, this isn’t a great time for people who love statues”. But Nathan persists, claiming that Lawrence Rutherford “brought people together, he was a uniter” (Schur et  al., 2021). When Nathan claims “The Minishonka helped build the statue, it’s as much their history as ours”, the mayor gives him an incredulous look  and states that the decision is in her hands as the town’s leader. Deirdre acknowledges that as the “town mascot” Nathan will likely be a “pain in the ass”, but he has “no real power here” (Schur et al., 2021). When Nathan consults his brother, hoping for some documents that might be used in the fight against Deirdre, his brother agrees that  Big Larry should be moved, and comments, “Staying in that town has given you tunnel vision …

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Leave those stones alone”. Still later, when he’s not listening carefully to Reagan who is concerned about not having support  for the Minishonka Cultural Center, Nathan obsessively turns back to the subject of Deirdre’s plans: “How do they not realize the Rutherford family is meaningful? I’m the one telling the whole story… I’m going to fight for my family’s legacy”. He also speaks with townspeople, trying to raise awareness, but townspeople plug into other conservative political rhetoric, rather than the focused cause; for example, ‘Psycho Debbie’ from a group of bikers yells, “Let’s take our country back!” (Schur et al., 2021). When Nathan shares this with Reagan, she asks, “Take it back from whom?” While she  is initially supportive of Nathan as a friend, Reagan offers, “I think you should move the statue… It’s your history. Your history is fine. There are hundreds of objects [gesturing to the contents of the museum] honoring your family” (Schur et al., 2021). Nathan digs in about Big Larry and stakes his monumental claim: “That statue is who I am, and if they can just pick up an object and move it, and if they do that to the statue, then literally who am I?” Reagan responds, “What you’re describing is literally my entire life. It’s something I have to deal with every day” (Schur et al., 2021). Reagan proposes a solution that Nathan seems to consider: making a ‘noble gesture’ for the town by moving the statue to a museum and installing a flat medallion in its place in the street, something he can magnanimously detail during his Founder’s Day speech. However, during this speech, rather than having support, other townspeople start suggesting alternatives to Big Larry. Nathan is upset that his intent is misconstrued and that no one values his sense of the Rutherford’s centrality in the town’s mythos, and retorts: “You don’t get it. You’re just ungrateful boobs” (Schur et al., 2021). The camera rotates around him, documenting the emotional chaos he is feeling, and his ballistic, angry tirade is filmed by those in the crowd. Their videos go viral through social media. The first episode closes with a few brief touchstones on the videos’ impact. It reaches Terry, the Casino CEO, who sees an opportunity to launch ‘Operation Lightning’, his seemingly undefined plan to ‘level-up’ which later takes on a new shape when different conditions emerge. It reaches the Rutherford Corporation, a powerful conglomerate connected symbolically to the family. And it catches the attention of an NPR reporter, Josh (played by Dustin Milligan), who sees a story that will resonate for all Americans. In episode 2, Terry approaches Nathan and surprisingly tells him that Big Larry “should stay right where he is”. Reagan worries that Terry is taking advantage of her friend, who is now running headlong towards an effort to reconnect with his history professor, Tobias Kaufman, who has spent his career researching the Rutherfords and has been supposedly attempting to publish The Rutherfords: How America’s Founding Family Found the Strength to Found the Country. Reagan knows the professor is an alcoholic with a dubious reputation, but Nathan and his high-school-aged assistant, Bobby Yang (played by actor Jessie Leigh), ply him with alcohol, amping up his enthusiasm for the cause. Kaufman asserts that moving Big Larry is “historical erasure” (Schur

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et al., 2021). He enlists Nathan in an interview for his podcast, ‘The Salon: A Bacchanal of Ideas’, which will likely engender more collateral damage for his cause and his family’s reputation. This is borne out when Professor Kaufman notes, “Isn’t it fair to say that your family introduced whiteness to the region?” Nathan is quite uncomfortable with this comment and qualifies that his family pride is not “anything race-related”, which leads Kaufman to declare, “I’m proud of that white baby” (Schur et al., 2021). The unedited interview will air as-is, Nathan learns. In normal circumstances, this podcast would engender minimal interest; however, the social media virality of Nathan’s other foibles accelerate this latest flashpoint. Nathan has done anything but “keep a lid on it”, as instructed by the public relations head at the Rutherford Corporation (who then is seen in the episode’s final shot uttering, “white baby”). Although Nathan feels deeply misunderstood, this plot-point explore the race-based biases that inform claims of authority concerning historiography and how white supremacy is imbricated in many global and U.S.-based efforts to fight against the dismantling of colonial monuments. While this scenario unfolds, Reagan confronts the challenges of finding community buy-in for the Minishonka Cultural Center. Terry reminds Reagan  how the current tribal chairwoman, Rayanne (played by Geraldine Keams (Diné)), still holds a grudge against her for leaving Rayanne’s son, Ray, “at the altar”. Terry explains that Reagan’s success in establishing the Center is limited because ‘we hold a grudge’. Reagan replies “So now I’m as bad as Columbus?” Terry nods, stating “Crime divided by time”. He encourages her, saying, “you need to confront your past so you can move on … No more hiding” (Schur et al., 2021). At first, Rayanne wonders why Terry has shown up to their meeting with Reagan, but we later learn it’s a strategic move to bring the tribal leader into his own plan, and that Terry’s a “shark” just as Reagan suspected. Rayanne actually does hold a grudge and blames Reagan for her own son’s eventual marriage to a white woman. With Rayanne on board, convinced of the value of pursuing the plan, the episode closes with Terry launching ‘Operation Lightning’, saying, “Draw up your papers. We’re going to sue Nathan Rutherford”. While viewers don’t exactly know where Reagan stands at this point, she confesses to swiping a Minishonka pot from the Rutherford Museum, “repatriating it”. And when she acknowledges this to Terry, saying, “I stole it”, Terry replies, “Chomp, chomp”, aligning her ‘shark-like’ character with his own (Schur et al., 2021). Episodes 3 and 4 continue to build the story arc and thematic emphasis on how positionality and access to power, connected to particular representations of the past and their ramifications for the present, continue to guide how people understand history. Episode 3 opens with the NPR reporter Josh pitching his story idea: What is the story of America? Is it a chronicle of innovation and achievement? Or of oppression and greed? Is it about freedom or power? Who gets to write his-

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tory? And once written, can it be changed?… This is a story about stories. About who we are and how we got here. It’s about a town, but it’s also about everything… Something is happening in that town and it feels like a…feels like a powder keg. (Schur et al., 2021)

One of Josh’s unenthused and distracted  millennial colleagues—most are glued to their phones and social media—initially responds, “This isn’t a confederate statute, at most it’s a traffic problem”. He chooses to ignore them. Josh’s tag phrase “powder keg”, of course, perfectly sums up the impact that this increased attention will have in the life of Nathan Rutherford—a story lead that’s returned to in the final episode of the season (more on this later). When Josh arrives in Rutherford Falls, he begins a romantic relationship with Reagan, whose own position helps him further contextualize and understand the contested narrative he’s hoping for. Josh’s interest in telling the full story shows potential for threatening the bonds of Reagan and Nathan’s friendship, and it also provides Reagan with an outside ally to embolden her efforts to amplify the Minishonka story through the Cultural Center and her inevitable and deepening partnership with Terry, the Casino, and Operation Lightning. Episode 4 opens and flashes back to 1981 to tell the ‘origin story’ of Terry and the lesson he learns that comes from the power of the dollar. On multiple levels, this episode meditates on the tensions that exist between capitalism and tradition and the ways that economic success within the capitalist economy of the United States affords greater power and privilege, and perhaps even the opportunity to control the narrative. It is in this episode that we learn more about Terry’s family, and the balancing act of remaining committed to his people and the twin aim of being successful. He prods his daughter Maya (played by Kiawntiio (Mohawk)) to sell her beading, and in the end she agrees to sell some. In an impassioned speech to Josh, who is schooled on tribal sovereignty and corrected on simplistic assumptions about Indigenous Peoples and economic empowerment, Terry explains that he is engaged in righting the wrongs committed in the past, in reasserting control when resources of all kinds were stripped from Native Peoples: I did learn about power…as a child. If we want to maintain our culture … that takes power. The Casino is a means to an end…That’s what we do, we do whatever we have to … I won’t rest until my nation gets every single thing that was taken from them! (Schur et al., 2021).

The episode wraps after Nathan unsuccessfully tries to resolve his personal lawsuit brought against him by Terry as part of Operation Lightning, by absurdly and literally delivering on the terms of the original unfulfilled treaty without allowance for inflation and the generous interpretation of valued goods (he provides snack popcorn and other trivial items that match the original terms). This motivates Terry to add Rutherford, Inc., to their lawsuit. In

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the final scene of the episode, as Terry is shopping for beads for his daughter, the tribal leader and store owner compliments him on raising her well. At the counter, about to complete the purchase, Terry pauses on a CD featuring his youthful rage-filled band, Rage Fuel Black Chrysanthemum. Asked if he wants to buy it, he signals to the audience that he’s firm in his current path when he replies, “No. I have everything I need” (Schur et al., 2021). These two episodes foreground the economic underpinnings of power, of transformations and political challenges that are driven by money, as well as the power of developing receptive audiences for nuanced and complex stories that reveal truths glossed over by homogenizing mythologies and master narratives. The emphasis on social media’s role in amplifying attention to outmoded ideologically biased narratives further signals the roles that handheld and social media technologies have in overturning and threatening mainstream media conglomerates’ stranglehold on the news, and narrativization of our pasts and presents, even more specifically. Episode 5 re-centres viewers’ focus on how individuals are interpellated into the project of historiography. A high school ‘History Fair’ satirizes the effort of history-making as a popularity contest with questions about positionality, originality, and the most seamless and cliché-ridden effort emerging victorious. It also casts Reagan, Nathan, and an ambitionless lawyer, Frank (played by Bill Glass) as judges. Nathan is dressed as Lawrence Rutherford which Reagan describes as “a little cry-for-helpy” (Schur et al., 2021). The Fair is opened by Mayor Chisenhall, and then a land acknowledgement is offered by Terry in which he speaks Mohawk (presumably to avoid the creation of a meaningless Minishonka language) with phrases punctuated in English with references to genocide, unemployment, and the mayor’s name. This framing of the History Fair lays out the competitive nature of history-making, and of the competing political, tribal, economic, and personal interests that undergird it. Indeed, we later learn that the bristly relationship between Terry and Deirdre is rooted in an unrelated family saga involving Terry’s Airbnb rental, nothing truly significant. The three judges determine that another student’s project should be the winner since it best manages the complexities of history, including Indigenous perspectives. When Reagan learns that its creator, Spencer, is white and not Indigenous, she is conflicted and wonders about his motivation. When she confirms he’s an ally, she characterizes him as a Mark Ruffalo and says that in being convinced of his good motives, she’s “been Ruffaloed”3 (Schur et al., 2021). Nathan is not so convinced as Spencer has endorsed the need to dismantle Big Larry and critiques the Rutherford family’s stranglehold on the past. In fact, Nathan says to Spencer, “You aren’t well-educated, and that’s all of our faults”. This, along with a reveal by Nathan’s young assistant Bobby that Spencer is documented as donning Blackface, leads to Bobby  himself being 3  Mark Ruffalo was an active supporter of the Dakota Access Pipelines and became, alongside Shailene Woodley, another prominent U.S. white celebrity who publicly supported Indigenous causes. Within popular social media discourse, for several years, he was elevated, in celebrity terms, to quasi-sainthood. To be “Ruffalo-ed” would mean to be convinced of the merit of a cause / project by a charming, good-looking, Indigenous-positive white man.

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named winner of the History Fair. While it is a cliché-ridden, extended, empty-­ platitude of a project, it is the least problematic according to the judges; accepting his award, he says, “This is like The Greenbook winning an Oscar!” (Schur et al., 2021).4 Set against Nathan’s self-interests and Professor Kaufman’s racism and addiction, the project of history-making is presented as rife with biases. In episode 6, in fact, Nathan is further entrenched in demanding that Big Larry remain in place. He proposes building a road under the statue—akin to re-­ engineering realities to conform to myths. Much of this episode focuses on Reagan’s efforts to build a deeply meaningful collection for the Cultural Center. Her tribal nemeses, Wayne and Sally, ‘slackadaisical’ Casino workers (played by Bobby Wilson, a writer on the show, and Julia Jones) drag and critique her after she asks them, “Seriously, what are you two doing for our people?” They do issue  a call through Facebook for donations to the Cultural Center (Schur et al., 2021). Initially, this too presents a challenge to Reagan as she is inundated with seemingly meaningless items, like a blender for example, which we later learn was used for smoothies during the #NODAPL5 movement at Standing Rock. It is Josh who helps Reagan frame ‘the story’ of these seemingly mundane items and their value and possibilities within the context of a museum that hopes to re-present what is important to contemporary Minishonka people. In episode 7, Reagan continues to pursue the complementary effort of repatriating other historical items of cultural value and meaning to the Minishonka. Not surprisingly, this leads to a stand-off once again with Nathan, since she discovers that Nathan’s great aunt Joan is hoarding in her garage a “treasure trove of Minishonka goods”. While she acquiesces momentarily, in episode 8, she returns to this subject. When Reagan first tells Nathan, he says, “Your people are trying to steal my home!” and then he characterizes her work with the Casino as “being a total Uncle Tom” (Schur et al., 2021). Patiently, Reagan responds: Reagan: Your life sucks right now for perhaps the first time ever. I’m asking you to press pause and help me for like the first time ever. Nathan: I wouldn’t get in the way of something you really want, except I can’t give those items back to Terry. I’m hurting right now. Why can’t you see that? 4  Greenbook, an Oscar winner in 2019, had many things going against it, including indecency allegations against its director Peter Farrelley, and was the least racially progressive film of that year in the final contenders’ list, including Spike Lee’s The Black Klansman and Ryan Coogler’s The Black Panther. It also centered the plot on a white character against the backdrop of Black segregation in the 1960s U.S. South and was considered an inferior film, generally, among the full list of finalists. 5  The Dakota Access Pipeline protests in South Dakota, United States, in opposition to the construction of a 1127 mile oil pipeline by Energy Partners Dakota on sovereign Indigenous lands and northcentral United States. Water Protectors began their grassroots efforts in 2016 to protect the land and waterways essential to all peoples. The hashtag #NODAPL galvanized international attention and expanded the movement.

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Reagan: I’m hurting right now. Why can’t you see that? Why is your history more important than mine? (Schur et al., 2021)

Episode 7 concludes with the Buffy Sainte-Marie (Cree) song, ‘My Own Way’, from the album Power in the Blood (2015), with Reagan confirming with Terry that she’ll work for the casino and his plan as long as she receives a budget to make the Center work for the Minishonka people. The scene cuts to Mayor Chisenhall calling Nathan, saying she’s hatched a plan, as ‘My Own Way’ grows louder and closes out through the credits. Chisenhall has found a way for her and Nathan to partner to combat the proposal that Terry has now brokered with Rutherford, Inc., detailed earlier in the episode. Nathan is forced to renounce any connection to the company, since, after all, his affiliation is honorary at best. This paves the way for Terry and the Minishonka tribe to powerfully negotiate a settlement that involves a monetary payout and the relinquishment of original tribal lands on which parts of the city and Nathan’s home-based museum stand on. Terry’s initiative follows through literally and figuratively on the ‘Land Back’ claim gestured to in episode 1 and picks up on the meaningless efforts of Nathan to offer snack popcorn and other meagre goods in fulfilment of treaty rights. While Nathan initially was concerned about the removal of a statue, he’s now facing for the first time in his life, a removal and displacement of another sort. Ironically, but accurately, the corporation is happy to relinquish ownership of the land to settle the Minishonka lawsuit because they  have determined the land is ‘unfrackable’, thus there are no exploitable resources and economically damaging consequences of continuing bad press. During this episode, a further insult to Nathan occurs when Terry brings in Professor Kaufman who has sold all copies of his revised and retitled book to the Minishonka Nation. Kaufman’s misguided historiography has been taken out of circulation. While this represents an intervention in the proliferation of yet another settler-oriented history, it draws attention to the ways that power dynamics (be they economic or cultural capital) influence the way history is understood. Indeed, a sidebar here is that Indigenous historians have been and are working tirelessly to turn back the tides of such colonialist histories. In the U.S. context, the work of scholars like Jennifer Nez Denetdale (Diné), Ned Blackhawk (Western Shoshone), and Waziyatawin (Dakota) represented in Susan Miller’s (Seminole) Native Historians Write Back: Decolonizing American Indian History (2011) offer clear evidence of the vibrant scholarly and intellectual projects underway. (See also stand-alone books by these historians: Denetdale (2007), Blackhawk (2009), Wilson & Taylor (2005)). In a precursor to Native Historians Write Back, Miller notes that the interests of Indigenous historians are inextricable from the health and well-being of tribal nations and that such efforts empower and guide Indigenous Peoples to positive futures (Miller, 2009, p 41).

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In episode 8, Deirdre and Nathan partner publicly in a coordinated but ultimately unsuccessful effort to combat Terry ‘Operation Lightning’ project. At a public hearing, Nathan states: I know this is an awkward time for statues, but when the statue commemorates the great deeds of our ancestors mustn’t we preserve that as guidance and inspiration for our future? And so Big Larry stands shoulders back, heart full, proclaiming ‘Yes, yes, I am in the way.’ And he should stay in the way now and forever! (Schur et al., 2021)

Others there gloss over his philosophizing focusing primarily on the statue as a public safety hazard. Later, Deirdre and Nathan also sleep together and thus become literal and figurative bedfellows. This plotline emphasizes for viewers how public governance infrastructures face inertia in paradigm shifts, particularly when there are mutually beneficial reasons not to change. During this time, there is even a ‘false flag’ effort coordinated by Nathan and Bobby to damage Big Larry. Big Larry is covered in red paint and the words “History is Dumb. Take it Down” (Schur, et al., 2021).  Though this slogan is hackneyed and glosses over the complexities of colonial and genocidal legacies, the actual defacement resembled symbolically resonant protests seen throughout the world in recent years, whether it’s Junipero Serra in California, Egerton Ryerson in Canada, Christopher Columbus throughout the Americas, or James Cook in Australia. This ‘false flag’ effort was in response to Nathan’s desire to “keep up the victim narrative”, a distortion typically at play in threatened white males who perceive that rights and entitlement are understood only in the economy of victimhood. Deirdre only finds out once that misdeed is done but is quick to capitalize on the vandalism as a means to galvanize support. While Nathan participates in its clean-up, he discovers an etching of a phrase that includes ‘Mal-Mer’, which he connects to a Minishonka story featuring a monstrous character who can only satisfy his hunger by eating the excrement of children. Nathan goes to Rayanne, the Minishonka elder and tribal leader, with his questions, and she generously and boldly confronts him with the truth of Mal-Mer, coming from Mal-Merde who for the Minishonkas is: Bad shit. The first part is in our language. The second part is bad shit. ‘Don’t trust Mal Merde’ became ‘Mal-Mer’—a monster that came from over the ocean and made a home in the woodlands of the Minishonka. Wore a white mask and pretended to be our friend. (Schur et al., 2021)

Nathan, more clueless than the viewers, says with relief, “So this is just local folklore?” Rayanne continues, “Yes, this monster had an insatiable appetite for one thing: the poop of children.” When Nathan inquires about the phrase’s connection to the statue, Rayanne replies: I hate to tell you, Nathan, but the legend of Mal Mer is actually about Lawrence Rutherford. I’m serious. Lawrence Senior was a real bastard to our people, but

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pardon my French, he may not have eaten poop, but he was a real shithead (Schur et al., 2021).

Nathan questions the accuracy of her knowledge of Minishonka language and is slapped by Rayanne for being so out-of-line and inappropriate. In episodes 8 through 9, we learn that Terry, as the Casino, in partnership with the Minishonka nation will build an elaborate theme-park-style town to control and capitalize on touristic interest, putting the nation’s narrative front and centre, flattening and homogenizing settler histories, a perfect example of ‘turnabout is fair-play’. Their inspiration comes after Reagan, now associate director of the Casino, attends a tribal Casino conference with Terry and she learns about the many ways that other tribal nations are leveraging misconceptions about Indigenous Peoples to their own lucrative ends. Reagan is disturbed and wants nothing to do with the space-age neon-rimmed virtual reality propositions and says these ideas are “super tropey and stereotypical and sets us all back by like, a hundred years, right” (Schur et al., 2021). Later, Reagan tries to boost Terry’s mood when he seems despondent about not having a project to harness new trends: You’re looking very end of the trail-y. Are you going to be a baby and cry or you going to suck it up and be the badass everyone knows. Skokden Thomas. Stoodis Thomas. How do we stoodis? I don’t know, but this is not leveling up. This is Native minstrel show. We can do better. Terry, you hate it when white people portray us like this. And now we have a little bit of power and we’re going to do it to ourselves? (Schur et al., 2021)

Terry looks up, as if he has found a way forward, and the scene shifts to Terry introducing Reagan who surveys their vision for a revamped commercial centre: Rutherford Falls is a town defined by its history and that history can benefit us all. We present to you Ye Olde Rutherford Village, a cutting-edge retail tourism community. The entire town center will be transformed into 17th Century Rutherford Falls with period costumes and shops just like colonial Williamsburg. Terry chose to use the system and the odds that have tilted in his favor through his legal negotiations (the return of tribal homelands). Revamping the town will create hundreds of new jobs as will the new and improved Running Lightning Casino and Resort. Our future is our past. (Schur et al., 2021)

Terry attempts to satisfy Deirdre by saying the town will remain the same size and the changed name will only apply to the tribally owned shopping complex. Deirdre considers, “My constituents might like lots of new jobs and money!” Nathan is unconvinced by Reagan’s effort to get him to see this as vital ‘rebranding’. Terry rejoinders, “We’re trying to make Disneyworld, and Nathan, we want you to be our Mickey Mouse. And as long as you work with us, you can remain in your house and run your museum.” Nathan is outraged: “So, you’re going to take my land but allow me to stay on it on your terms?”

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Reinforcing the ironic underpinnings of so much of U.S. policy derived from treaties, Terry replies, “Think of it as a fair and honest deal” (Schur et al., 2021). Nathan rejects the deal, and episode 9 follows the ensuing efforts of Terry and Reagan to launch their plans. The episode flashes back to 2008 when Reagan made the hard choice to forego her wedding plans to marry Rayanne’s son in order to pursue graduate school at Northwestern University. It is in this context that viewers are asked to understand the sacrifices Reagan makes in the effort to forge her own path. Later, he and Josh (brought along for his ‘disarming’ good looks), empowered with a $20,000 fund, approach Nathan’s great aunt Joan to purchase her Minishonka collection. In a humourous intertextual reference, Joan stirs a silver spoon in her teacup in a manner reminiscent of the Missy Armitage in Jordan Peele’s Get Out (which sends the lead, Chris, who is African American, to the ‘Sunken Place’). Like the Armitages and their ilk, the scenario involving Aunt Joan is thematically focused on white misappropriation, abuse, and control of non-white Others. Reagan, though, makes the ethical and emotional appeal for the artefacts’ return so the Minishonka people can provide them appropriate care and love. When neither that or her initial monetary offer fails to move Aunt Joan, Reagan succeeds in closing the deal after she leverages the threat of an investigation supported by the Native American Graves Protection and Appropriation Act. Other parts of episode 9 feature Nathan’s reckoning with the forward momentum of plans that will affect him even if he’s not involved. He doesn’t want to be Terry’s Mickey Mouse but he’s convinced by Reagan that he should have a say in this. When Nathan tells Terry that he’s in, Terry gives him a costume—highly inaccurate, Nathan claims, a “hodgepodge of colonial fashion”. Terry ignores the concern and explains, “We’re capturing the spirit of the era to give the people what they want”, and brings the costumed Nathan a butter churn: “Our market research shows that the average American’s understanding of history can be boiled down to seven concepts: George Washington, the flag, Independence Day, Independence Day (the movie), MLK, Forrest Gump, & butter churns” (Schur et al., 2021). After showing Nathan plans for a combo ice cream creamery and a history museum, Nathan characteristically exclaims, “This version of my family is bullshit”. Terry replies, “Respectfully, every version of your family is bullshit. At least this version is profitable”. Nathan’s house of cards comes tumbling down later in the episode when Josh confirms something he and Reagan discovered in a family letter in Joan’s collection of heirlooms: that Nathan’s father was not a Rutherford, and therefore he is not technically a Rutherford. His earlier pronouncement about the removal of the statue—“who even am I?”—becomes eerily literal and relevant. Reagan makes the difficult choice to end her relationship with Josh as his journalistic pursuit of the complete story has hurt her good friend. Although it will be difficult, she knows she must inform Nathan about the story going public. Before she does, he remarks, “Who are you anymore? First, you go work for Terry, my nemesis. And then you go steal stuff from my family”. She qualifies that it wasn’t stealing and that nothing belonged to Joan. When she breaks the hard truth to him, Nathan responds, “I’m so sick of everyone claiming to know more about my

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family than I do. You don’t know anything about my heritage, about me. So please, just go”. Nathan is unhinged, and he calls Bobby, with whom he has already had a falling out, and tells him that he is closing the museum forever: “Sorry I wasted your time for a dumb museum for a dumb family who is dumb. I really am sorry. You really are an awesome person” (Schur et al., 2021). The episode closes with Nathan trying to drag down Big Larry himself with his car, but he only succeeds in pulling off the car’s bumper. Jesse Ed Davis’s (Kiowa, Comanche, Seminole, Creek) ‘Washita Love Child’ plays over this scene and into the credits. The love child, Nathan, unmoored and drifting, is about to set out on a journey to find his true self, and perhaps reckon with the truth of history. After this eventful penultimate episode, the first season closes out with episode 10 that alternates between 1) Nathan heading West to escape Rutherford Falls, the mess he has left behind, and his misguided effort to corroborate if he really has Rutherford heritage; and 2) Reagan also reeling from the end of two relationships and the whiplash of working within the Casino structure itself, finding herself at a crossroad where tribal members are criticizing her for her efforts and not allowing her to move beyond her own past. Reagan learns that she is that proverbial crab in a bucket. She is called on to address this crisis and lack of faith in her to put an end to the bad publicity that has threatened to derail the Casino’s expansion project. An anti-Reagan Facebook Page has emerged with over 2000 followers. In an online broadcast, Reagan confronts her haters and asks why everyone is ready to tear everyone down and subject one another to judgements and cultural litmus tests. In essence, she asks why the Minishonka are surveilling and limiting one another’s freedom—it is almost as if the colonizers’ work is done and the Minishonka have been left to perpetually dispossess one another. Reagan emerges successful enough to satisfy Terry, and they hope that they have turned the corner. Nathan’s efforts are less successful, and he fails to even meet even one relative with the knowledge and wherewithal to tell him what he needs to know. On his return trip, stopping at an Italian restaurant named for his biological father’s family, he attempts an eating-challenge to forge some sort of illusory affiliation with the family. But he projectile vomits, offering viewers one last look at his continuing failure to find a way through to his truth. In the wake of these disappointments, it looks as if Nathan has reached a new understanding and embraced the truth that the monument he has built to a mythic past must come down. He calls Reagan from the road, acknowledging his insights: “I need to tell you… I don’t get it. Any of it. I thought I got it for so long… And you tried to help me, and I see that now, and I’m really so sorry, Reagan”. She responds thoughtfully and appreciatively, “But, Nathan, this world is too big and messy and complicated for us to think that we could ever divide people into one group that’s enlightened and another that’s stupid … and you have a family and a good friend” (Schur et al., 2021). Nathan continues driving after the call, takes a deep breath, and the soundtrack swells towards closing credits, featuring Kurt Vile’s ‘Pretty Pimpin”

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which includes the thematically resonant refrain, “I woke up this morning/ Didn’t recognize the man in the mirror”. As the credits begin to roll, radio static screeches and a new channel broadcast comes in clearly. Viewers hear Josh’s voice, echoing the pitch he made in episode 3: What is the story of America? And who gets to write history, and once written why do we cling to it at our own peril? These were the questions I carried with me as I stepped off that train in Rutherford Falls. Over the next seven episodes, we’ll explore how one small town and a nearby Native American reservation experienced a reckoning 500 hundred years in the making as members of the Minishonka struggle to sustain success, a hapless rube representing a once revered Mayflower family fails to prevent his own demise. Welcome to an American Powder Keg: the story of Nathan Rutherford. (Schur et al., 2021)

The credits end, and we return to a flummoxed Nathan, unhinged again, yelling out, “Oh shit!” The producers’ and writers’ decisions in constructing Nathan and Reagan as central characters within the plot in this first season of Rutherford Falls create a scenario where both potential oppositional poles of cultural connection to this origin story and its contemporary resonances will be tested and tried. This creative decision conveys that intercultural relationships are part of our present and future which is itself a basic interruption of familiar televisual accounts of Native Peoples. It also brings out into the open some significant differences between the subject positions of these two  good friends—something which Reagan has likely recognized and felt, but something that Nathan has never been forced to reckon with. These insights are in stark contrast to their earlier conversation in episode 1 about how similar they are, that they each ‘get it’ (which  is code for a ‘wokeness’ and intelligence and creativity, something which they recognize in each other and that they see in others such as Missy Elliot, Taika [Waititi], and ‘the Dollies’, Dolly Parton and the Dalai Lama) (Schur et al., 2021). Whether or not either, but especially Nathan, really ‘gets it’ is under sharp analysis. Indeed, core to the original germ of his character and eventually the inflection it took with regard to the monumentalizing of family and national histories was rooted in the idea of the ‘backfire effect’. Producers Ed Helms and Michael Schur, Teller Ornelas relays, were interested in this: weird hiccup in human psychology where if you are given information that goes against a core belief of yours, even if it’s irrefutable, people will mostly not accept it—they will actually double down on their previous belief. It’s why we have anti-­ vaxxers, why people can’t let go of certain politicians. (Miller, 2021)

The true monument at the centre is not ‘Big Larry’, but that monument which Nathan Rutherford has erected in his own imagination and his own personal archive. The close friendship of Reagan and Nathan allows for there to be probing evaluation of the backfire effect. As viewers discover, the process of reckoning with historical truths and their contemporary ramifications, while

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a collaborative one, challenges, threatens, complexifies, and, if all works out, deepens relationships. Schmieding in her conversation on episode 4 of Terry Talks, offers this insight about the nature of her character’s friendship with Ed Helm’s character Nathan: “[We’re complicating the narrative] by saying these are our friends and loved ones that are still misguided and this is how we walk through the world. We have to navigate these spaces carefully lest we lose the people we love and have built relationships with” (Greyeyes, 2022b). This is the complicated and nuanced story that has never been explored on television, and while the comic elements may exaggerate and make the situation outsized at times, it’s this emphasis on complexity that sustains and intensifies the narrative drive of the series. Teller Ornelas sums it up in this way: Holding two things in your hands at the same time and embracing this messiness…It made for better storytelling, and it makes for better history…I think the reconciling is…I think people will do anything to avoid discomfort. They’ll do anything, and that means erasing entire cultures of people, that means erasing entire narratives. The more we can actually dive in on that stuff, it being centralized with these two friends, their friendship is stronger the more open…the more real they are with each other. I think the stronger those bonds. And the more we all pretend everything’s okay, the less strength there is in that friendship. (Cole, 2021)

Chinese American novelist, Maxine Hong Kingston, reflecting on her own family’s history and her creative exploration of it in several books including Woman Warrior and China Men, acknowledges that a basic human frustration involves not being able to change the past. While this is true on the most basic level, she offers this important interventionist strategy: “We can change the past by figuring out the meanings, new meanings, of events that took place…So I want to do some of those events and say these are the new meanings…in that sense I want to rewrite for these new meanings” (Infobase, 1990). The possibility of time travel—in order to alter the past—may not exist, as Nathan opines in episode 1. But powerful art and shows like Rutherford Falls do exist. So, while the past doesn’t change, its reframed interpretation impacts the present and future differently, thus refusing the forward momentum of the misdeeds of the past. Rutherford Falls is doing precisely this, through its characters and plotlines, asking viewers to reconsider the past and bring new meanings to it by rejecting and critiquing settler-focused stories that have become defining, limiting, and damaging. Showrunner Teller Ornelas sums this process up: There’s a secondary thing happening, I think, for a lot of people…‘well, that wasn’t me. I didn’t do that, whatever that thing is. I didn’t oppress Native people. I wasn’t President Andrew Jackson. I wasn’t Thomas Jefferson. I didn’t own slaves.’ And it’s like, ‘Yeah, well, that doesn’t matter, man. You’re part of the country…You still got to grapple and understand and work through and try to improve…Don’t you want to be better now? Don’t you want to get better? Don’t you want to move your C+ to an A-? You can’t do that if you ignore all the stuff you got wrong. (Cole, 2021)

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References Andrews, J. (2011). In the belly of a laughing god: Humour and irony in native women’s poetry. University of Toronto Press. Berglund, J. (2016). ‘I’m just as Indian standing before you with no feathers popping out of my head’: Critiquing indigenous performativity in the YouTube performances of the 1491s. ALTERNative, 12(5), 541–557. Berglund, J. (2017). Go cry over someone Else’s Tragedy’: The YouTube activism of the 1491s. Australasian Journal of Information Systems, 21, 1–13. Berglund, J. (2021). ‘We’re alive and thriving … we’re modern, we’re human, we’re here!’: The 1491s’ social media activism. In B.  Carlson & J.  Berglund (Eds.), Indigenous peoples rise up: The global ascendancy of social media activism (pp. 218–234). Blackhawk, N. (2009). Violence over the land: Indians and empires in the early American west. Harvard University Press. Boutsalis, K. (2021, August 9). This is what we should have had all along. The New York Times, https://www.nytimes.com Cole, G. (Host). (2021, May 21). Episode 51: Sierra Teller Ornelas and Mike Schur, Rutherford Falls [Audio podcast episode]. In On writing: A publication of the writers’ guild of America, east. https://onwriting.libsyn.com/ episode-­51-­sierra-­teller-­ornelas-­and-­mike-­schur-­rutherford-­falls Deloria, Jr., V. (1969). Indian Humor. In Custer died for your sins: An Indian manifesto. Macmillan Press. Denetdale, J. N. (2007). Reclaiming Diné history: The legacies of Navajo chief Manuelito and Juanita. University of Arizona Press. Greyeyes, M. (2022a, February 21). Terry talks with Michael Greyeyes, ep. 2, N8v families vs. the tropes of disempowerment [Video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/ Mi8zTy1AT7U Greyeyes, M. (2022b, March 8). Terry talks with Michael Greyeyes, ep. 4, Joy [Video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/CTVXbW_fyH0 Harvey, S.H. [@KimSenklip]. (2021, November 29). By making the pain dramatic, we do a few things: 1. We normalize pain as something to be consumed by [Tweet]. Twitter. Hokeah, O. [@OscarHokeah]. (2022, May 16). Natives are astutely aware that there’s been “fake news” since 1492 [Tweet]. Twitter https://twitter.com/OscarHokeah/ status/1526190479624257536 Infobase. (1990). The stories of Maxine Hong Kingston. Films for the Humanities & Sciences. Lincoln, K. (1993). Ind’n humor: Bicultural plans in native America. Oxford University Press. Miller, S. (2021, April 21). Sierra Teller Ornelas on the roots of ‘Rutherford Falls’. The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com Miller, S. A. (2009). Native historians write back: The indigenous paradigm in American Indian historiography. Wicazo Sa Review, 24(1), 25–45. Miller, S. A., & Riding In J. (2011). Native historians write back decolonizing American Indian history. Texas Tech University Press. Raheja, M. H. (2010). Reservation reelism: Redfacing, visual sovereignty, and representations of native Americans in film. University of Nebraska Press. Schmieding, J. (2021, June 21). Jana Schmieding on the Native joy of Rutherford Falls. Vanity Fair. http://www.vanityfair.com

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Schur, T., Helms, E., & Teller Ornelas, S. (Executive Producers). (2021). Rutherford falls [TV series]. NBC Peacock. Tahmahkera, D. (2014). Tribal television: Viewing native people in sitcoms. Univ. of North Carolina Press. Teller Orenelas, S. (2021, November 16). Rutherford Falls showrunner Sierra Teller Ornelas on bringing Native artistry to television. Variety. http://www.variety.com Wilson, A. C., & Taylor, E. (2005). Remember this!: Dakota decolonization and the Eli Taylor narratives. U of Nebraska Press.

CHAPTER 17

Confederates and Colonial Commemoration in the United States: Collective Memory and Counter-histories Ricardo Guthrie

Introduction At first glance, Confederate monuments might easily be dismissed as racial memorialisations that are designed to reinscribe white supremacy and the ‘Lost Cause’ mythology (Blight, 2001) to justify Jim Crow’s segregation of African American peoples. Such a narrow interpretation supports simplistic racial binaries between ‘Black’ and ‘White’ Americas—while obscuring more complex relationships that enshrine colonial conquest of Indigenous nations who ruled homelands for millennia prior to ‘La Conquista’ of Columbus and his followers (Nothaft, 2017). In the wake of Cristobal Colón’s (Columbus) landing in Hispañola in 1492, and his role in subjugating, exterminating and enslaving Indigenous as well as African-descendant peoples, narratives of colonialism and colonisation of America’s mind, body and soul were developed to justify genocide and enslavement. Most observers recognise the myth of ‘Southern Redemption’ (that a noble white race will rise again to take control of American society) is founded on the bitter assumption that ‘the South’ lost the Civil War—the bloodiest conflict ever fought by Americans, up until the Afghanistan engagement of 2001–2021, but this ensures a failure to comprehend how such monuments also justify racial colonialism (Blight, 2001; Hunt, 2021). The

R. Guthrie (*) Fisk University, Nashville, TN, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 B. Carlson, T. Farrelly (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook on Rethinking Colonial Commemorations, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-28609-4_17

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racial-colonial conceit, masquerading as historical truth, obscures the dilemma of Native peoples who joined the Confederacy to seek freedom from conquering ‘Founding Fathers’ who had stolen tribal lands throughout the nineteenth century. It also obliterates the shared histories of African-descendant peoples who lost not only their homelands in Africa, but their very identification with Indigeneity, and the impossibility of finding home on stolen landscapes. The monuments and memorialisation motifs entrap Black and Indigenous peoples between two realities that deny us freedom, justice or equality under American legal and social frameworks. The 2015–2021 success of ‘Confederate Monuments Must Fall’—like 2015’s ‘Rhodes Must Fall’ movement against South African mining magnate and arch imperialist Cecil Rhodes whose statuary incited mass protests in Cape Town—provides new analytical and pragmatic frames for asserting freedom from colonial imaginations and contesting the hegemony of white-dominant, racially stratified society. In the aftermath of America’s largest social movement for racial justice in recent memory—and with a renewed backlash against ascendant moments of racial unity and solidarity to transform the past, to re-investigate hateful memories and to embrace both symbolic and substantive changes—we can better assess the utility and impact of a racial-colonial analysis. Black, Indigenous and other communities led social movements that created counter-narratives and new rationale for demolishing racist monuments, for erasing hateful sports mascots and for transforming collective memories of struggle in the current age, but they also did something more: they demonstrated the possibility of re-imagining futures in which monuments could be replaced by new memorials and cultural productions to set the stage for justice, equity and liberation from trauma of the past. Such ‘rememories’ (summoning echoes from the past—no matter how painful they may be) bolster our collective will to combat extreme social, cultural and political retrenchment (Crenshaw, 1988). Racist monuments and colonial memorials in concrete and abstracted form exist to wipe out Black and Indigenous presence, but also to salve wounds of defeated white colonialists—and to suture faulty commitments to the racial nation itself. The wilful forgetting of racial violence and colonialist trauma of the past lessens our collective energies to reckon with generational trauma and address cruel rememories of the past. As Morrison (2019) noted, most Americans of all backgrounds practice ignorance of the nation’s past because it is full of blood, death, racial and sexual depravity, and despair. But forgetting our painful pasts creates a fertile landscape for re-inventions of racial hegemony that enliven Southern redemption myths and confuse those seeking reconciliation, rather than racial justice and reparations for Black and Indigenous peoples. Following Morrison’s apt prescriptions for healing, bringing down monuments help re-center national trauma and resurrect racial landscapes that at once reconcile missing Black, Indigenous and multicultural heritages (Morrison, 2020). It is a painful process, but one which is increasingly necessary because ‘Lost Cause’ myths (Faust, 2009) as well as deeply injurious ‘American’

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conqueror mythologies still hold power as pathologies from the past. They provide a kind of ‘welcome mat’ for racial and colonial oppression—rationale for anti-democratic leaders who leverage white domination as the ‘true’ American spirit that needs no reconciliation or reckoning for wrongdoing. The racial and sexual tragedies that we want to forget leave too much room for effective false narratives by colonisers and conquerors whose fake histories crowd out possible redemption and make racial justice impossible. But that’s not all: These monuments and memorials to the Lost Cause incite both racist and mistaken patriotic paradigms that emulate and elongate racial regimes that seemingly resist anti-racist, anti-colonial logics. In essence, they stem from the same illogical premise: that colonisation by white conquerors was good for both African and Native Indigenous peoples, who must now fight over reclaiming land that remains fully colonised and unredeemable to either group. This chapter assesses the meaning and significance of racial and sexual disruption of ‘rememoried’ trauma that makes room for Confederate and colonial memorialisations, and how ‘Confederate Monuments Must Fall,’ the ‘Movement for Black Lives’ and other protest movements serve as painful, essential bridges to the past that can promote healing, racial reckoning and reconciliation of Black and Indigenous futures. It is for us, and ‘by us,’ but all of us are invited to recognise our own roles in re-imagining nation, race, space and place on sacred grounds. In the next section, I outline what’s at stake and provide theoretical and methodological frameworks for re-imagining monuments and memorialisations using a racial-colonialist analysis. We might assess what work can be done in the midst of continued retrenchment. The analytical framework is not predictive but can perhaps invite new thinkers and doers to help re-imagine the work ahead of us.

Theoretical and Methodological Concerns Black feminist critics have labored to puncture the geo-mythology of the Americas, the pervasive, transcontinental view of place that separates Black and Indigenous peoples from the land as well as from national histories of soil and sea. … Narratives of the land feature heroic, masculinized, racialized white figures who tame or claim it much as they would a woman. There is no room for blackness or redness in these stories, nor for women, nor for preexisting rights or continuing attachments claimed by marginalized peoples. … People of color are written out of national landscapes. (Miles, 2019, p. 65)

Although observers of the anti-colonial monuments movement primarily focus on correcting historical reckonings, history is not the only (or even the main) location for addressing the trauma, injuries and fatal couplings of memorialising racial-colonial regimes that are still dominant and in effect. In fact, resurrecting counter-histories and seeking correctives in some ways

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substantiate social-cultural inadequacies that reduce collective empowerment against the dominant society. The covering conceit (Robinson, 2007) empowers racist mythologies and replacement ideologies that can render progressive change impossible. The imagination for summoning new ways of ‘rememorising’ requires a different theoretical and methodological praxis that can emerge through questioning both histories and memories of the past. There are several historical and memorial case studies available, but I want to focus attention on not just reciting the history, placement and enduring resistance to removing Confederate monuments. I also want to examine the significance of the racial-colonising nation that makes successful redemption difficult to sustain past the lifetime of successive social movements. I cite possible conflicted victories that emerge out of these seemingly obvious, specific examples (such as the 2017 removal of Confederate monuments in New Orleans, Louisiana; the removal of the Robert E. Lee statue in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2020; and the successful removal and banishment of the South Carolina flag from the state capitol). But I also want to explain how these possible victories mask hidden transcripts, privilege and power that remain untouched as we revel in symbolic turns that are clearly ‘wins’ within a larger war. Indeed, larger questions and targets have emerged: why not bring down statues and monuments to ‘Founding Fathers’ who presided over ‘slavocratic’ delusions of a flawed republic? Why not question the patriotic premise (Coates, 2017) that a ‘more perfect [re]union’ can be built, revised or reinvented? Is symbolic forgetting an ‘American’ trait that proves the lie: ‘we are exceptional, so we require exceptional attention to our great experiment that eludes successful repair’? We can pull down monuments and prohibit language that is hurtful, racist and trauma producing, but we allow power, privilege and disenfranchisement to prevail because reckoning with generational trauma within our multiracial, semi-sovereign, racial-fascist republic is too hard to contemplate, and too damaging to raise up as a unifying truth. Most people don’t want to ‘rememory’ enslavement, colonisation, conquest, sexual predation or worse. Most seek catharsis as a palliative, rather than reliving or reinscribing oppressions that unearth the causes for conflict and present them for redress, reparation and possible resolution (Boal, 2019). Thus, the ritual cleansing and prayerful requests for honouring sacred grounds devoid of Confederate monuments can provide glimpses of reconciliation, but this is only a beginning, not an end in itself. Such ritualistic redemptions may have within them their own demise and destruction—because they incite political backlash by an entrenched, powerful elite. Therefore, I want to indicate how symbolic and figurative victories may be indicative of the future. For example, in addition to the removal of key Confederate monuments and memorials to racist leaders, there are several symbolic accomplishments that punctuate our seeming victories:

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1. Successful retirement of racist mascots by the National Football League and Major League Baseball. 2. Broader calls for removing names of former Confederates and slave-owners from military camps, public education buildings and private colleges. 3. Renaming streets, thoroughfares, mountains and replacement statues after civil rights leaders and Indigenous peoples. Few of these accomplishments were possible before the avalanche of 2015 to 2020 protests and the call for renewed commitment to racial justice, the end to state-sanctioned violence and a recommitment of government funding for diversity, equity and inclusion projects, social service expansion and renewed attempts at abolition democracy (Du Bois, 1998/1935). A pause is necessary, however, because the 6 January 2021 storming of the Capitol Building in Washington, DC, demonstrates renewed retrenchment against democratic aspects of American society and has seemingly galvanised a radical right-wing minority to attack voting rights, to ban critical analyses in schools and in public settings and to embrace continued allegiance to political leaders fearful of being “out-niggered” by white supremacists running for office (Coates, 2017, p. 61). It is, in a word, an extended period of retrenchment against social progress going back two generations (Crenshaw, 1988). The removal of Confederate monuments, then, is a victory we can count, but it also may mask structural barriers to redemption and corrective reckonings with race and colonialism as well. As Crenshaw notes, the repackaging of racial hegemony under seeming reforms is a key feature of the exceptional story that Americans like to tell about our conflicted multicultural society. Unfortunately, remapping social reforms under the dominant liberal ideology tends towards continued exclusion of subdominant groups—Blacks in particular (Crenshaw, 1988, p. 1386). This chapter, I hope, may suggest methods and theoretical framings that can be used to move us to solidarity and collaboration, as well as embracing the rememory of trauma and pain and developing redemptive collectivities that challenge the racial-colonial state. We can forgive and reconcile with racist wrongdoers, but rememory—as Morrison writes—means we can never forget (Morrison, 1987). We must create new texts that write us back into the story as shapers of destiny, and members of a new body politic centred around those whose memories have been ignored or rewritten as part of a racial script they had no hand in shaping: It was in Beloved that all of these matters coalesced for me in new and major ways. History versus memory, and memory versus memorylessness. Rememory as in recollecting and remembering as in reassembling the members of the body, the family, the population of the past. And it was the struggle, the pitched battle between remembering and forgetting, that became the device of the narrative.

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The effort to both remember and not know became the structure of the text. (Morrison, 2019, para. 5)

Rememory, unlike resurrecting history or devising collective counter-­ histories to challenge dominant narratives, creates avenues of imagination that have no easy resolution. It is a form of witnessing and provoking continual remembrances of transgressions that exist in the past and present. How, then, do we account for removal and replacement of counterfeit histories embodied in colonial/confederate monuments?

I. The Architecture of Monuments, Memorialisation and Forgetting How Does the Architecture of Monuments and the Story of Memorialisation Colonise Landscapes of Memory (Authentic or ‘the Real’)? In each section I ask a specific set of questions that can be used to assess case studies of removing colonial and Confederate monuments and replacing them with new memorials that resurrect rememory of the past found within the racial landscape. This segment focuses on landscapes of memory. As noted previously, the modern nation-state produces memorialisations and monuments which provide rationale for historicising its necessary creation (Guthrie, 2017). Statues and monuments are needed, but they typically resist full articulation and clarity of meaning. They are semiotically ‘open’ to reinterpretation of negative and positive aspects of American history—but changing the racial landscape and promising possibilities of change by rememorying the past is a difficult, complex process. Thus, museums, monuments, stories as well as statues are erected by the racial state to justify its own existence and persistence: The museum exists to enshrine a revisionist history, a post-colonial present, and a righteous commitment to undoing the wrongs of the past. But it also exists to help [racial states] embrace an unembraceable present, in which … Blacks suffer under police and governmental terrorism, corruption, … displacement and evictions, political instability, and the erasure of [Black] and Indigenous rights—all under [liberal] leadership [regimes]…. One can see how the curative narrative can be utilized to stabilize racial regimes, or to encourage healing among individuals, but also can understand how such efforts fall short of eliminating the social, political and economic foundations for continued racial oppression. (Guthrie, 2017, unpublished)

Even the most progressive, democratically inspired nation requires memorials to the past so that current citizens will not forget how or why the nation-­ state exists. A multiracial society like South Africa, for example, must resurrect

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memories of the long-term struggles against apartheid and racial exclusion in order to maintain loyalty and garner support through difficult political periods and to overcome economic, social and cultural divisions that are remnants of the previous regime. Oppressive rulers and symbols of apartheid must be removed or replaced in order for South Africa to begin healing (Masondo, 2015). For how long, however, can such a state continue to call upon the oppressive past to justify commemorations of a glorious victory over racism? Given the ever-present obstacles to racial and social equity in a new South Africa, for example, the past inequities seem to pale in comparison. Some would say the replacement monuments must be built for as long as it takes for new generations to emerge who no longer have memories, hurts and traumas from the cruel apartheid regime. Here, then, is the contradiction: if there were no generational trauma present, the nation-state would still resurrect that trauma as part of its national historiography. The pathology of trauma, violence and genocide—committed against Indigenous African peoples who were colonised by the Dutch, British and Boer-Afrikaner settlers—most certainly exists, but should it be consigned to the past? ‘Rememorying’ the cruel, violent depredations committed against Indigenous African peoples in Southern Africa is a method for suturing the past and the present over and over again for political gain, for social-economic cohesion and for rationalising the continued sacrifices and/or demands of ascendant political regimes who endeavour to unite a nation that struggles across cultural, linguistic, racial and other barriers. The contradiction of a new South Africa that can emerge out of the apartheid regime requires a new logic of multiracial confederation that can be created and recreated repeatedly—as each successive generation must be reminded of the past, provided means for overcoming the trauma and continued injuries that are carried forward and then allowed time for healing while demanding additional sacrifices to bolster the current ruling regime’s policies. The monument and the museum provide ample room for doing this work, but they also reinscribe landscapes of suffering and sacrifice that suggest ‘we feel bad about what was done to us in the past, so that we can better appreciate the suffering we may yet endure today’—as society seeks an antidote to past transgressions and political failings suffered even in the present. As Boal (2019), Robinson (2007), Crenshaw (1988), Hartman (1997) and others have stated, the covering conceit of racial hegemony does not allow for much beyond catharsis, because status quo order often depends on stabilising a coherent history of progress over trauma and pain—ignoring current pathologies by safely putting them in the past. The haunting of the previous racial regime and heralding the bloody sacrifices of noble heroes and ‘sheroes’ create room for such reckonings, but even within a progressive state monuments and memorials hold space for enduring iterations of how/why the nation sees itself. In the US, then, it is a problematic space in which racial and colonial transgressions continue to haunt collective memories and block rememories that ‘what was done in the past may yet

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endure.’ The hurtful present crowds out successful reckoning of enslavement and colonisation. This, then, is the conundrum presented within the space of statues, monuments and memorialisations of those seeking reconciliation rather than an honest reckoning of the past and the future. Americans practise wilful forgetting that forever traumatises Black and Indigenous peoples and allows ‘Lost Cause’ mythologies to prevail (Blight, 2001).

II. Social and Political Narratives of Erasure Which Social or Political Narratives Depend Upon Erasure of Individual Counter-narratives That Might Better Describe Colonialism and Racial Regimes? The history breaks the myth. And so the history is ignored, and fictions are weaved into our art and politics that dress villainy in martyrdom and transform banditry into chivalry, and so strong are these fictions that their emblem, the stars and bars, darkens front porches and state capitol buildings across the land to this day. (Coates, 2017, p. 64)

One of the foundations of political narratives within a modern nation-state committed to multiracial democracy is that individual and collective stories be encouraged and allowed to flourish, so that racial domination by majority rule will not stamp out “emergent, alternative” or “oppositional” voices (Williams, 1980, p.  40). In the debates over Confederate monuments, there were moments in which the dominant narrative—that Confederate statuary represents legitimate historical or heritage considerations of Southern combatants and therefore should not be toppled or removed—was effectively overturned by subordinate voices in solidarity with allies who questioned the power of the racial nation to suppress, arrest and exterminate Black lives. This was not a quest to resurrect redemptive history, but to replace historical myths with painful reckonings based on finding truth and bearing witness to that effort as redemptive for all. Society as a whole seemed willing to question the power of the state to police and exert violent suppression resulting in Black deaths—extending the notion of violence to structural operations of public health, housing, jobs, incarceration, food production and bodily control over Black futures. These ascendant social concerns joined together to challenge romantic seditious narratives of the Union and the Confederacy and in how we conceived of the liberal nation-state. Under alternative and oppositional narratives, then, both genocidal colonisation and violent terrorism of slavery and its aftermath could be identified and targeted for removal—not just rewriting history to replace myth, but to show the nation’s history as hurtful. Indeed, the significance of monuments and memorials to white chivalry and racial unity quickly moved to eliminating flags, questioning the morals of founding fathers, eliminating subsidies for state-sanctioned violence and upending symbolic reckonings of the

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liberal state itself. These developments created a powerful moment that went beyond separate movements against settler-colonialism and enslavement, and instead offered new dialects of reckoning and redemption that challenged status quo conceptions of Blackness and Indigeneity—together (Lethabo King, 2019, p. 21).

III. Trauma vs. Catharsis What Is the Purpose of Enshrining Continual Trauma, Seeking Catharsis or Attempting to Re-direct Historical Memorialising? For me, the American flag is no better [than the Confederate flag]. Actually, it’s far worse. It reminds me of what we Black folk have survived and witnessed at the hands of white folk hiding behind the American flag for centuries. (Laymon, 2020, p. 22)

The social movements to uphold Black lives—like the movements to upend white settler colonialism—correctly focus on naming violent trauma from the past that continues to plague subordinate peoples in the present. These movements invoke a grammar of suffering (Hartman, 1997) that is a reminder to folks that the violence and pain are real, and that they result in excess deaths— or, state-sanctioned violence, really, that is routinely ignored until someone pulls out a cell phone and captures truly reprehensible suffering and death for all to see. When George Floyd’s death video surfaced, many Blacks refused to watch the nine minutes-long lynching—because, after all: had not we seen it before? What additional proof was needed that the racial state (not just occupying police) existed to control Black women’s bodies, Black men’s lives, Black trans- and queer+ futures and so on in painful ways? And yet, we watched and consumed a palpable suffering because that helped create shared catharsis and a sense of relief that, perhaps, allies and accomplices would join us on the margins for turning a ‘moment into a movement.’ Were we not fulfilled, however, when the movement changed ‘Say Her Name’ into ‘Say Their Names’? When Breonna was ignored while Ahmaud and George were uplifted? When pop culture painted ‘Black Lives Matter’ slogans on basketball courts, major thoroughfares and on tee-shirts? When everyone ‘took a knee’ and vindicated scorned football player Colin Kaepernick for protesting the ‘Star Spangled Banner’ (acknowledging that Francis Scott Key wrote the lyrics to valorise the oppression of Black slaves and indentured whites)? When even the Dixie Chicks dropped ‘Dixie’ from their band name because ‘Black Lives Matter’ and paying tongue-in-cheek homage to the South’s quaint nickname did not square with their commitment to racial justice? These cathartic moments were genuinely felt and revered by beloved communities who pledged to stop the suffering, but they could not erase generational trauma because the structural impediments to freedom, justice and

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equality (or diversity, equity and inclusion in today’s lingo) yet remain—revivified as emergent and oppositional voices are co-opted into residual calls for ‘a more perfect union.’ A ‘more perfect oxymoron’ could not have been imagined—the union of conquest and genocide has already perfected obliteration of Black rights and Indigenous sovereignty. The moment of unification—when the public cries for racial reconciliation—lends itself to aspirational hopes for equality between races and between representatives of different political strata. Allowing for monuments to conquering heroes (both Confederate and Union together) ensures painful collusions between past and present. It is not catharsis that Black and Indigenous peoples seek—there is only the pitched battle between remembering and forgetting, between history and memory. In the midst of that pitched battle, Confederate monuments—as well as the nation’s star-spangled banner, and the stars and bars—incite patriotic reconciliation that sacrifices Black and Indigenous peoples every day. Removing statuary is a start—but a release from the past is all but impossible so long as rememory is replaced by cathartic release. The signs come down, the names change, but the pathologies remain—replicated in song and daily rituals that are hard to avoid, as when attending a sports event and the crowd sings a national anthem whose third stanza romanticises the continued subjugation of servants and slaves—written during a war to combat Indigenous nations and steal their lands: No refuge could save the hireling and slave From the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave… (Francis Scott Key, 1814, ‘The Star Spangled Banner,’ Third Stanza.)

IV. Counter-narratives and Collective Stories How Can Counter-narratives Reconstruct Collective Stories That Enable New Social Engagements Through Monuments, Artefacts and Oral Histories? Can We Externalise Memory to ‘Prompt the Body’ to Remember in Ways That Are More Productive? To be rendered Black and fungible under conquest is to be rendered porous, undulating, fluttering, sensuous, and in a space and state at-the-edge and outside of normative configurations of sex, gender, sexuality, space and time to stabilize and fix the human category. Black fungibility is an expression of the gratuitous violence of conquest and slavery whose repertoire has no limits or bounds. It operates both materially on the body and produces Blackness (as idea and symbol) as a discursive space of open possibility. (Lethabo King, 2019, p. 23)

Developing conquering narratives that inhabit discourses of humans vs. non-humans allowed for heroic monuments to patriotic (white) leaders as well as those Confederates who sought redemption some forty years after Civil War’s end. Each monument, North and South, reflected a similar

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‘conquistador humanism’ (Lethabo King, 2019) that was dependent on lesser beings—black, brown, red and yellow. Counter-narratives, stories, songs and recollections, however, could possibly replace conqueror mythologies with their opposite: words, songs, literature, to imagine possible escape from oppressor/oppressed binaries. The ‘Blues Epistemology’ (Woods, 1998), for example, connects people and the land through shared pain and experiences that are not easily heard by the dominant society because their collective scream, wail, murmur and embrace threaten the dominant quest for ‘order.’ Each statue, monument or memorialisation (both North and South) constructs a conceit of racial domination, gender inequality and genocide that can be pulled down but must be replaced by new monuments and artefacts—if such a language can be resurrected, recognised or embraced: The blues [epistemology] is a knowledge system indigenous to the United States that is expressed through an ever-expanding variety of cultural, economic, political, and social traditions. Embedded within the blues tradition are highly developed and institutionalized forms of philosophy, political economy, social theory and practice, and geographic knowledge that are dedicated to the realization of global justice. (Woods, 2007, p. 49)

According to Woods, place-based knowledge practices are all around us— within the landscape and the geography of home, and within the lived expressions of resistant ‘blues people’ who saw the coming of Union soldiers as an opportunity to re-exert themselves, find families and to ‘free the lan’. These resistant narratives find resonance among struggles for Indigenous sovereignty subjugated by the US, and in racial justice and reparations movements for African Americans—periodically erased by both liberal and conservative regimes. This, then, is the nexus between overcoming colonial reification and Union-Confederate myths masquerading behind patriotism and ‘more-­perfect-­ union’ posturing. These are both covering conceits for white domination and supremacy into the current age, but the narratives that arise out of local knowledge continue to exist and persist regardless of which racial regime is in effect: Neither liberal nor conservative institutions of power hold control over Black and Indigenous knowledge practices that govern subordinate peoples’ lives— they see the lies for what they are, and they hold continued significance for resolution and possible resistance through protests and social movements—but also through recapturing the language necessary for reparation.

V. From Catharsis to Critical Debate How Are Monuments or Memorials, in General, Dedicated More to Nostalgia and Catharsis than to Critical Debate? How does a community heal itself from the ravages of the past? … What qualifies something as sacred? …. Debates on how the past is understood and what the future might bring have bearing on genetic research, reclama-

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tion of mining sites, reparations for broken treaties, and reconciliation between descendants of murderers and their victims. (La Duke, 2005, p. 11)

Monuments, statues and memorials seem to thrive on nostalgia, while creating a mythology of authenticity and a quest for ‘the truth.’ But artefacts dedicated to provoking dialogue (and perhaps something beyond catharsis and release) do have the potential to evoke critical engagement, if not debate. The difficult interactions between Black and Indigenous peoples (the conflict between Black Cherokees and Indigenous Confederates, for example—or between ‘Buffalo Soldiers’ and Apache warriors during the Indian Wars throughout the nineteenth century) demonstrate how conflicted histories and counter-memories cannot be claimed by one conquering class over another (Guthrie, 2016). The racial state has colonised desires and dislocated and displaced homelands and heritages across four continents and throughout oceans and seas. The counter-stories, tributes and monuments must begin to reflect these incomplete stories—not in a nostalgic way, but in a generative, productive dialogue that calls on each to present memories and pitched battles that externalise history in more productive ways. To shed the racial-colonising nation will not be so easy as pulling down a statue, or by merely replacing it with another. But there are victories all around us. In the next section, we identify a few case studies in which a racial-colonial analysis can be utilised to assess strategies for uniting Indigenous and Black struggles against colonialism and white supremacy. ‘If war among Whites brought peace and liberty to Blacks,’ Frederick Douglass had asked…, ‘what will peace among Whites bring?’ (Grandin, 2019, p. 140) William Faulkner said once that history is not ‘was,’ it’s ‘is.’ The Civil War is still going on. It’s still to be fought. And, regrettably, it can still be lost. (Fields, 2021, para. 21)

Commemorative Moments and Case Studies Examining case studies for removing Confederate/colonial monuments can help address the foregoing questions. There is no dearth of historical examples in recent times, but I will mention the following: 1. The removal of statues and monuments in New Orleans, Louisiana, after the 2015 murders by Dylann Roof of Black churchgoers in Charleston, South Carolina. 2. The removal of the Robert E. Lee statue in Charlottesville, VA, after the 2017 ‘Unite the Right’ rally of white nationalists resulted in the death of

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a counter protester and a national outcry over President Donald Trump’s comment that there were ‘good people on both sides’ of the protests. 3. The removal of the South Carolina state flag in 2015—as an example of how banners and flags carry as much weight as statuary, monuments and memorialisations in national memories. 4. A fourth ‘moment’ might involve the 2020–2021 removal of racist sport mascots and the resurrection of former football quarterback Colin Kaepernick as a civil rights leader—after he had been effectively banished from the NFL for taking a knee during the playing of the ‘Star Spangled Banner’ before football games. 5. And a fifth ‘moment’ would be the series of replacement/renaming efforts that rightfully identify Indigenous and Black presence in the racial landscape that may yet inspire resilience and redemptive healing while we strive to manage traumatic pasts (Mitchell, 2022).  Because there were hundreds of monuments that were challenged over the period after 2015 (Southern Poverty Law Center, 2016), numerous examples could be cited for further investigation, but I will focus on one in New Orleans, as it seems to reflect most elements of analysis that can be useful to understanding what’s at stake.

Bringing Down Confederate Statues in New Orleans In 2016, the Southern Poverty Law Center published the first Whose Heritage? Report identifying 1,747 Confederate symbols and monuments across the United States. 125 of them are in Alabama. (Moriba, 2021) Over 300 monuments to the Confederacy stand in America, mostly in the South, especially in Alabama, Georgia, North and South Carolina and Tennessee, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, a civil rights group…. Many Confederate monuments were erected well after the war. (Reid, 2021, paras. 11–12) Amid nationwide protests against racism following the murder of George Floyd, a Black man, by a white police officer in Minnesota in May 2020, the movement to take down Confederate symbols accelerated in 2020, over 160 Confederate monuments were taken down, compared to 58 between 2015 and 2019… (Reid, May 27, 2021, para. 24)

The call to remove Confederate monuments began much earlier than 2015 (paralleling the ‘Rhodes Must Fall’ campaigns in South Africa), but the momentum accelerated after the global outrage over the murder of George Floyd—gaining traction for both symbolic and substantive changes in public acceptance of the badges and incidents of slavery and its afterlife. This is how cultural and historical trends emerge over time. The immediate causal actions for removing monuments over the years were not achieved by protests of civil rights and abolition activists, nor by legal actions by advocates for racial justice, nor by reasoned debates presented by scholars and filmmakers, but by deaths,

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mass shootings and public outrage against perceived racial intolerance. In the modern era, consonant with the impact of the election of Senator Barack Obama to the presidency in 2008 and 2012, public sentiment increasingly reflected the fact that condoning racial violence was not acceptable—even as sporadic racial terrorism continued against Black people. Even though racial terrorism persisted throughout the last 100 years, open displays of symbols of hate were generally abhorred, as public outrage was reported in the US and global media. Still, over 300 Confederate monuments remain in place. A significant movement to eradicate symbols in the South after the 2015 shootings of Black churchgoers in Charleston, South Carolina, by the Charlottesville, Virginia, ‘Unite the Right’ rally in which one counter-protester was killed by a Klan/Nazi supporter in 2017, and after the Minnesota Police murder of Floyd in 2020 is still evolving. Even now, public sentiment favours finding a middle ground: removal of monuments to museums or cemeteries, rather than outright eradication. Elected officials have generally agreed with protesters that the statues must go. For example, Mayor of New Orleans Mitch Landrieu inveighed against four monuments in his city and fought for more than 500 days (from 2015 to 2017) before the statues were finally removed. The vociferous public debate was well-documented, but Landrieu stood his ground—out of respect for African Americans who constituted the majority of the city, and who had personally presented grievances to him: Why are there no slave ship monuments, no prominent markers on public land to remember the lynchings or the slave blocks; nothing to remember this long chapter of our lives; the pain, the sacrifice, the shame… all of it happening on the soil of New Orleans. So for those self-appointed defenders of history and the monuments, they are eerily silent on what amounts to this historical malfeasance, a lie by omission. There is a difference between remembrance of history and reverence of it. (Mayor Mitch Landrieu, cited in New York Times, 2017)

Landrieu recited New Orleans history based on interactions between Native Americans, Spanish and French empires, Haitians, Free People of Color, Germans, Italians, Cubans and many more who helped build the city. He called it “a city of many nations” but also one which enshrined ‘Separate but Equal’ in the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson court case, and one which allowed four Confederate monuments to stand for decades during the twentieth century. If it were not for jazz musician Wynton Marsalis speaking out, Mayor Landrieu (cited in New York Times, 2017) would have missed his chance to rectify an historical insult to all these “many nations”: The historic record is clear, the Robert E.  Lee, Jefferson Davis, and PGT Beauregard statues were not erected just to honor these men, but as part of the movement which became known as The Cult of the Lost Cause. This ‘cult’ had one goal—through monuments and other means—to rewrite history to hide the truth, which is that the Confederacy was on the wrong side of humanity…. It is evident that these men did not fight for the United States of America, they fought against it.

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And yet, the battle to remove the monuments took several months, despite the growing momentum across the nation to rectify history and memorialisation of the nation’s commitment to racial justice. This key example—in a city where African Americans held a majority—is emblematic of the difficult challenges to racial hegemony by a white minority. The New Orleans example fits the analytical frameworks cited earlier: 1. The ‘racial architecture’ of the statues created an unreal landscape of counterfeit history that entrapped residents and limited their imagination of counter memorials to a rich, diverse nation. (Landrieu states he never noticed the discrepancy before Marsalis asked him to imagine how little Black children might feel about the raised pedestal and exalted figure of Robert E. Lee welcoming visitors to New Orleans—how an out of place and discrepant message was normalised through the city’s landscape.) 2. The political narrative of the Lost Cause helped erase counter-narratives of slave ships, survivors, resilient Indigenous nations and active resistance to Southern oppression, segregation and discrimination that would have allowed New Orleans to acknowledge legacies of enslavement and emancipation of Blacks at the same time. Ultimately, ‘Lost Cause’ redeemers lost the battle to retain their champions of sedition, and no amount of terrorism could dissuade the Mayor from effectively acting on behalf of the Black majority. 3. Enshrining continual trauma rather than resurrecting memorials to freedom, justice and equality. As Landrieu asked: “Where are the monuments to slave descendants and Indigenous rebels who helped liberate the city?” In Mobile, Alabama, residents worked to uncover a sunken slave ship—the Clotilda—and to build monuments to the founders of ‘Africatown,’ while other museums were opened to document the victims of lynchings throughout the nation. 4. Reconstructing a collective narrative that could be verified through new monuments, artefacts and oral histories. Many activist groups emerged during the 500-day-journey towards removal of the Confederate statues, and they now seek replacement monuments. 5. Externalising memory that ‘prompts the body’ to remember and to generate critical debate. This was the most powerful outcome of the movement to bring down the monuments, as a vigorous, critical debate resulted in success, whereas other Southern municipalities became mired in political division and procedural stalemates, state laws restricting removal of statues and threats of violence to those tasked with the job of moving the monuments.

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Other cities looked to these developments as inspiration for establishing replacement monuments and memorialisations of other heroic figures: • In Florida, the city of Gainesville removed a statue of a Confederate soldier in 2017 that had been donated by the United Daughters of the Confederacy in 1904. It will be replaced by a ‘Sankofa’ statue memorialising an African American studies professor who had uncovered racial atrocities in the county. Sankofa is depicted as a bird moving forward while looking backward—remembering one’s past while making better decisions for the future. • In Montgomery, Alabama, Jefferson Davis Avenue was renamed Fred D Gray Avenue, after the prominent civil rights attorney who defended Rosa Parks during the bus boycott of 1955–56. • And the Pentagon will rename nine military bases—removing and replacing 1100 names of Confederate and Ku Klux Klan leaders at other installations—with names of Black men and women who served in the US military (Hennigan, 2022). None of these changes affect the governance of power or repair the colonising and genocidal damage done to Blacks and Indigenous peoples, but they represent symbolic memorialisations that allow us to consider the role that monuments can play in resurrecting new stories that do not rely upon redeeming an unseemly, racist past. We understand that these military bases named KKK leaders, secessionists and white terrorists as a reflection of powerful racial regimes—both liberal and conservative—that depended on Southern politicians throughout the period from the 1877 Compromise (when Democrats agreed to install a Republican president if he removed the occupying Union army from the South and agreed to end ‘Reconstruction’ protections for Black and Unionist officials) to the current age. After the Compromise of 1877, racial terror against Blacks and their allies began in earnest, reaching a peak in 1898 when Black elected officials, business people and residents were hunted down and killed in Wilmington, NC, by ‘red shirt’ white supremacists (Neuman, 2021). It was the largest city in the state, and the ‘coup d’état’ removed Blacks from office, destroyed the city’s Black newspaper and left upwards of 250 people killed—many bodies were never recovered. By the end of 1898, two years after the Supreme Court approved the egregious Plessy decision mandating legal segregation, the nation had united behind wars of empire throughout the Pacific—acquiring Hawai’i, Guam, the Philippines and taking control of Puerto Rico and much of the Caribbean. The self-evident control of white domination over people of colour extended beyond Jim Crow America, to island nations and Indigenous peoples who became colonial subjects under the same banner that inscribed racial terrorism against African Americans throughout the twentieth century. In many battlefields across the Pacific and in Southeast Asia, Confederate battle flags unfurled

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alongside the US flag—exemplifying how both banners represented white domination and control: Southern working-class soldiers, white and black, served in US wars in disproportionate numbers, so these escalating fights over symbols of southern racist identity effectively marked the end of the pact of 1898. That pact … brought about national reconciliation between North and South…. The War of 1898 and the serial wars that followed allowed southerners to reclaim admission into the nation without having to renounce their white supremacy. (Grandin, 2019, p. 209)

Conclusion Although it can be said that the connection between colonisation and genocide of Indigenous Americans and the enslavement and racial terrorism against African Americans is more apparent now than ever before, the evidence was available in constitutional, legal, political and popular culture events from long ago. For instance, when Native Hawai’ians petitioned US President Grover Cleveland in the 1890s to protest the forced annexation of their island nation, he agreed with them, which only angered white landholders bent on forcing out the monarchy of Hawai’i’s Queen Lili (held under house arrest for over eight months, while whites developed a scheme to steal the entire chain of islands). Such was their commitment to white supremacy and flouting the sovereign rule of law, that they copied whole sections of the Mississippi state constitution which disenfranchised Black Americans at the onset of ‘Jim Crow.’ White missionary descendant and US Congressman Lorrin Thurston, the corporate puppet Governor Sanford Dole, and their followers crafted a new constitution that disenfranchised Hawai’ians of Asian descent, banned those who could not “speak, read or write the English language,” then moved insidiously to adopt Mississippi laws to wipe out the remaining Native Hawai’ian vote against annexation and to “beef up the puny white minority”: [The white minority] suggests … track[ing] down a copy of the new Mississippi state constitution, because this post-Reconstruction Jim Crow masterpiece had figured out innovative ways to deny [B]lacks the right to vote that the Dole government could apply to native Hawaiians. Thurston believe[d] they could go further, refining Mississippi’s requirement that a voter should understand the constitution with a Hawaiian update in which ‘the voter be able to write correctly from dictation any portion of the constitution.’ (Vowell, 2011, p. 212)

The familiar pattern of oppressing and exploiting African descendant peoples was used as a template for oppressing others over and over again throughout American history—reaching a ‘Nadir’ in the wake of the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson Supreme Court decision upholding legal segregation and discrimination, and the 1898 racial reconciliation between white Northerners and Southern redeemers, along with the culmination of US-Spanish wars of

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imperialism that captured island territories for the US, as well as setting the stage for grabbing Hawai’i and portions of Cuba. The nexus between colonialism, enslavement, genocide and the evolution of the racial state was complete by century’s turn—extending beyond the savage inequities of the 1787 US Constitution and continued restrictions of citizenship to non-white Americans. The fate and fortunes of Black and Indigenous peoples were inextricably bound together and found physical form in the hundreds of Confederate monuments which were erected in the early decades of the twentieth century, finding a revival during the 1950s launch of the ‘civil rights’ struggle that resurrected legal challenges to racist wrongs committed on behalf of ‘states’ rights’ and federal complicity in racial terrorism and white supremacy. The symbols and substance of Confederate monuments, battle flags—like the American flag itself—represented twin aspects of historical amnesia and willful exploitation of manifest destiny and white domination to further the ends of racial colonialism throughout the modern era. It is, in a word, why Toni Morrison (2019) claimed that ‘rememory’ of the painful aspects of what was done in the past should not be consigned to ‘history’ but instead be re-­ membered again and again whenever we seek to understand the possible futures that can overcome centuries of trauma.

References Blight, D. (2001). Race and reunion: The Civil War in American history. Harvard University Press. Boal, A. (2019). Theatre of the oppressed (4th ed.). Pluto Press. https://www.perlego. com/book/921534/theatre-­of-­the-­oppressed-­pdf Coates, T. (2017). We were eight years in power: An American tragedy. One World. Crenshaw, K. (1988). Race, reform, and retrenchment: Transformation and legitimation in antidiscrimination law. Harvard Law Review, 101(7), 1331–1387. Du Bois, W.  E. B. (1998/1935). Black reconstruction in America, 1860–1880. The Free Press. Faust, D.  G. (2009). This republic of suffering: Death and the American Civil War. Vintage. Fields, B. (2021, January 21). Ken Burns says US has 3 viruses. NPR Interview Transcript. https://www.npr.org/transcripts/958189841#:~:text=BARBARA%20 FIELDS%3A%20William%20Faulkner%20said,it%20can%20still%20be%20lost Grandin, G. (2019). The end of the myth. Holt and Co. Guthrie, R. (2016, December). Embodying an imagined other through rebellion, resistance and joy: Mardi Gras Indians and Black indigeneity. ALTERNative, 12(5), 558–573. Guthrie, R. (2017). Memory and the anti-apartheid struggle. Unpublished manuscript. Hartman, S. V. (1997). Scenes of subjection: Terror, slavery, and self-making in nineteenth-­ century America. Oxford University Press.

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Hennigan, W. J. (2022, May 24). At last, The U.S. military won’t have bases named after Confederates. Time Magazine. https://time.com/6180832/ military-­bases-­remove-­confederate-­names-­history/ Hunt, C. J. (2021). The Neutral Ground. POV/ITVS films. La Duke, W. (2005). Recovering the sacred. South End Press. Laymon, K. (2020). How to kill yourself and others in America. Scribner. Lethabo King, T. (2019). The Black Shoals. Duke University Press. Masondo, S. (2015, March 2). Rhodes: As divisive in death as in life. News24. https:// www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/Cecil-­John-­Rhodes-­As-­divisive-­in-­death­as-­in-­life-­20150322 Miles, T. (2019). Structures of stone and rings of light. In D. Carrasco & S. Paulsell (Eds.), Goodness and the literary imagination: Harvard Divinity School’s 95th Ingersoll Lecture. University of Virginia Press. Mitchell, E. (2022, October 6). Pentagon chief gives go ahead to change military bases named after Confederate generals. The Hill. https://thehill.com/policy/ defense/3677228-­p entagon-­c hief-­g ives-­g o-­a head-­t o-­c hange-­m ilitary-­b ases-­ named-­after-­confederate-­generals/ Moriba, G. (2021). Monumental problems I: Sounds like hate. Southern Poverty Law Center. https://soundslikehate.org/season-­two/monumental-­problems/transcript/monumental-­problems-­i/ Morrison, T. (1987). Beloved. Alfred A. Knopf. Morrison, T. (2019, August 8). ‘I wanted to carve out a world both culture specific and race-free’: An essay by Toni Morrison. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian. com/books/2019/aug/08/toni-­morrison-­rememory-­essay. Morrison, T. (2020). Mouth full of blood: Essays, speeches, meditations by Toni Morrison. Random House. Neuman, S. (2021, November 10). A North Carolina city begins to reckon with the massacre in its white supremacist past. National Public Radio/NPR. https://www. npr.org/2021/11/10/1053562371/1898-­wilmington-­coup-­massacre New York Times. (2017, May 23). Mitch Landrieu’s speech on the removal of Confederate monuments in New Orleans. New York Times. https://www.nytimes. com/2017/05/23/opinion/mitch-­landrieus-­speech-­transcript.html?mtrref=undef ined&assetType=opinion Nothaft, M. (2017, January 24). Is Arizona home to the longest continuously inhabited settlement in North America? Arizona Republic. https://www.azcentral.com/ story/news/local/arizona-­c ontributor/2017/01/24/arizona-­h ome-­l ongest­continuously-­inhabited-­settlement-­north-­america/96967640/ Reid, T. (2021, May 27). Death threats and the KKK: Inside a Black Alabaman’s fight to remove a Confederate statue. Reuters. https://www.reuters.com/world/us/ death-­t hr eats-­k kk-­i nside-­b lack-­a labamans-­f ight-­r emove-­c onfederate-­ statue-­2021-­05-­27/ Robinson, C. J. (2007). Forgeries of memory and meaning: Blacks and the regimes of race in American theater and film before World War II. University of North Carolina Press. Southern Poverty Law Center. (2016, April 21). Whose Heritage? Public symbols of the Confederacy. Southern Poverty Law Center. https://www.splcenter. org/20160421/whose-­heritage-­public-­symbols-­confederacy

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Vowell, S. (2011). Unfamiliar fishes. Riverhead Books. Williams, R. (1980). Base and superstructure in marxist cultural theory. In Problems in materialism and culture. Verso Books. Woods, C. (1998). Development arrested: The blues and plantation power in the Mississippi Delta. Verso Books. Woods, C. (2007). Sitting on top of the world. In K. McKittrick & C. Woods (Eds.), Black geographies and the politics of place. South End Press.

CHAPTER 18

The Art of Daniel Boyd: Decolonising Banks and Cook, Challenging Colonial Commemoration Prudence Gibson

Introduction Australia has a complex history of colonial collecting of flora, fauna, objects of ethnographic interest and human remains. Many precious local objects were purloined from the 1780s onwards, and mostly without permission. At the same time, art was being created by white settlers to celebrate the very people who encouraged and/or enacted the filching of culture and nature. These are sensitive cultural issues that are often distressing to discuss, let alone redress. However, art has the capacity to mediate difficult issues—from climate change to colonial violence to the cosmos—by presenting information in a way that is easier to understand and digest, and that lingers longer. Artist Daniel Boyd is a Kudjala, Ghungalu, Wangerriburra, Wakka Wakka, Gubbi Gubbi, Kuku Yalanji, Yuggera and Bundajalong man, with ni-Vanuatu heritage. He is a key figure in Australian art and has been represented by a major solo exhibition at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, from

Warning: Readers of this article are warned that it may contain terms and descriptions that may be culturally sensitive for First Nations people.

P. Gibson (*) University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW, Australia e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 B. Carlson, T. Farrelly (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook on Rethinking Colonial Commemorations, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-28609-4_18

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June 2022 to January 2023. His work decolonises and demystifies Australian colonial praxes. By telling the truth about blackbirding and forced slave labour, the truth about stealing First Nations knowledge and the truth about racist and violent practices of appropriation and abuse of First Nations people, the artworks become political, but they also engage audiences through their aesthetic. What sets Boyd apart as a major force is that, despite the hurt and even despair of violence towards First Nations people in Australia, Boyd’s large output of paintings, prints and videos manages to evoke an atmosphere of honesty and of hope. Before this chapter attempts an art analysis of some key Daniel Boyd paintings which redress the false white histories, it is significant to connect with the ongoing context for this work. While many First Nations people were being massacred during colonial times—unfortunately there are too many examples to list here—and exploited and forced into slave labour (Christopher, 2021), the practice of stealing cultural knowledge was extensively being undertaken both in Australia and across the Pacific. This was not just objects of knowledge but the legacy of knowledge. For example, First Nations people were used as guides to find remote and multiple plant species for colonial botanists. These botanists did not acknowledge the First Nations information, nor fully understand the significance of the knowledge being generously shared with them (Clarke, 2008, pp. 14–21). Material culture such as weapons and cultural objects were some of the objects taken, that in some ways are easier to see and chart than intellectual knowledge. Cultural and utility objects were considered oddities by Europeans, symbols of ‘otherness’ or ‘savagery’ that needed to be scientifically scrutinised and presented to European society as curiosities. There was also a clear commemoration of white settler arrival and these collecting practices via the paintings created at the time and subsequently. An example is Benjamin West’s 1773 portrait of Joseph Banks, surrounded by his collected objects, which will be discussed shortly. Not only were curious objects collected, but the process and procedures and stories of that collecting were revered and admired as a nationalistic and imperial practice. Collectors such as botanist Joseph Banks (1743–1820) were applauded and lauded back in England; their careers were forged on these stolen objects. And it is these parallel trajectories of collecting and honouring collecting that infuse much of Boyd’s artistic oeuvre. To first develop the context of colonial collecting more fully, there are ongoing colonial collections around the world, and also in Australia, where human artefacts and even remains are still held. There are over 10,000 First Nations human remains in Australian museums and an inestimable figure in international museums (Browning, 2022). This month, the Smithsonian will give back human remains to Narungga and Kaurna nations (ABC News, 2022). Artist Daniel Boyd has first-hand experience of these issues. He spent time in 2011 at the Natural History Museum in London, where he was appointed artist in residence (Parker Philip & Vink, 2022, p. 18). Boyd says of his residency:

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Because of the Natural History Museum’s association with empire, and given the opportunity, I felt like it was my duty to be able to share what legacies were still intact and being perpetuated in the institution and through the museum context. This idea of repatriation and restitution, and the kind of dehumanizing practices of the museums were a result of The Enlightenment. I use The Enlightenment to make sense of the museum, because I was a young artist in the museum, and all these things were being thrown at me. I was given access to these things that are quite traumatic. I understood the opportunity to be able to share how the museum was relating to the collection or how they understood their relationship to the collection. I was working inside of this huge bureaucratic institution as a place of knowledge and keeping knowledge and assessing the relationship to the world. (D. Boyd, personal communication, July 3, 2022)

The Stealing of Cultural Artefacts and Knowledge The residency was inspiration for Boyd’s painting, which was a self-portrait, as Pemulwuy represented as a head floating in a jar of formaldehyde. Pemulwuy (1750–1802) was a Bidjigal man living round Kamay. He was a famous warrior known for resisting the aggressions of colonial settlers. When he was shot, his head was cut off and sent to Joseph Banks. Boyd explains: The museum comes with all these biases. The opportunity of the residency, well, I kind of felt like it hadn’t happened before. It was a chance for me to share the current situation about the museum and how they were dealing with the collection. I think we have to not forget about [human remains being exhibited in the past]. I think we have to make present those things that are difficult to contend with. If we forget about that part of our history, or these associations, then you’re bound to make those same mistakes. (D.  Boyd, personal communication, July 3, 2022)

The two curators of Boyd’s 2022 Art Gallery of NSW exhibition, Erin Vink and Isobel Parker Philip, evidence the disturbing story of Banks receiving Pemulwuy’s head by citing two articles which attest to the return of remains. First, there was the return of Tasmania’s Truganini after her remains had been taken away for 130 years (The Age, 2002). In the catalogue, they also reference the much-commemorated Joseph Banks who wrote a letter to Governor King on 8 April 1803 to say that he had received a skull—possibly Pemulwuy’s—and had forwarded it on to the Hunterian Museum at the Royal College of Surgeons in London. Presumably, this meant it would be used for possible dissection, analysis and testing. Many such skulls and human remains were later ‘lost’ (Parker Philip & Vink, 2022, p. 230). In July 2022, I visited the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford, United Kingdom, and noticed that even as recently as this, there were cabinets displaying First Nations guliwil sticks with notes on them written by settler collectors stating things like ‘collected by Lady Tylor 1917…used for sympathetic magic…Wotjobaluk tribe’. It is hard to comprehend what Lady Tylor intended

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to convey by her term sympathetic magic, but it suggests the fetishised ‘other’ or her perception that the objects belonged to natives undertaking irreligious practices. The term on the guliwil stick also suggests cultural secrets outside her own heteronormative, androcentric, Eurocentric knowledge, which presumably made them eccentric and curious to her. The Pitt Rivers Museum has recently removed shrunken heads from its public display, admitting the exhibition of these heads hold racist connotations. Pitt River Museum explains the inclusion of the heads in the collection is due to ‘problematic past research practices’. Another colonial collection reference that attests to the context Boyd is working within is the story of Amelie Dietrich. Amelie Dietrich (1821–1891) was a German fauna and flora collector who was commissioned in 1863 by the wealthy shipping merchant, Johann Cesar VI Godeffroy, to voyage from Hamburg to Australia to collect specimens for the newly established Museum Godeffroy. She spent nine years in Australia. In October 1866, a catalogue entitled ‘Plants of New Holland collected by Mrs. Amalie Dietrich at the Brisbane river, Col., Queensland by order of Mr Joh. Ces. Godeffroy & Son in Hamburg’ was issued (Dietrich, 1866). It contained a list of almost 350 plant species available for purchase in sets. Amalie also collected ethnological specimens such as canoes, clubs and spears, and collected 266 species of birds. Amalie Dietrich would have faced harsh conditions and perhaps some xenophobia and misogyny as a female European collector, travelling alone during the late colonial period. She was able to constantly ship back her collections to Hamburg for the Godeffroy Museum. Originating mostly from remote regional Queensland, her collections were and still are widely respected and had an enormous impact on zoological and botanical knowledge for many decades to come. However, her work is an example of how Australian science and culture was pilfered, in the name of European dominion and German expansionism, and lost from Australian shores. Among her collected items that she sent back to Germany, there were eight skeletons including skulls. It is not known exactly how she sourced these First Nations skeletons, but it is presumed they were either stolen from burial sites or people were murdered. The collection was later moved to the National Museum of Hamburg, the ethno-collection was moved to Leipzig and the plants moved to the Hamburg Herbarium. During the Second World War, the collections were moved again and only rediscovered in the 1980s (H. McPherson, personal communication, 5 April, 2019). Finally, there are First Nations boomerangs on display at Pitt Rivers Museum, UK. There are multitudes of these kinds of weapons and tools in the collection because, apparently, taking one was not enough to quench the colonial collecting desire. These objects of curiosity are presented as primitive objects of fetish, among thousands of others. For those of us who see these kinds of cultural collecting—theft in the name of the British Empire—yet are without authority or capacity to redress the history of colonial pillage, there is a residual feeling of powerlessness. However, spending time with the work of artist Daniel Boyd

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is a salve because it critiques Australia’s history of British self-congratulation, of commonwealth commemoration and its colonial yearning to celebrate the activities of white settlers. Boyd’s work also manages to critique histories of collecting and commemorating, with both political power and with aesthetic capacity.

Sir No Beard Joseph Banks was implicated in colonial collecting praxes. One of Boyd’s most compelling works is Sir No Beard (2007), which is based on Benjamin West’s 1773 portrait of Joseph Banks. In West’s painting, Banks holds a Tahitian leader’s headdress (Parker Philip & Vink, 2022, p. 24), and Maori weaponry stands to his right. In West’s version, Banks is presented as a young and handsome gentleman who clearly travels and collects objects of curious interest. Implicit is that these objects were being brought back to ‘civilisation’ to bolster the strength and imperial power of Britain. This was a period of energetic European exploration, colonisation and as historian, theorist and artist Jill Casid coins it, ‘Sowing Empire’, because there was a concomitant interest in plants and their economic value and First Nations people and their knowledge of medicinal cures and other culturally significant information (Casid, 2005; Schiebinger, 2017). Exploitation of lands and peoples is well documented by scholars, such as the work of Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate anthropologist Kim TallBear (TallBear, 2011). Ethnoscience and anthropology scholar Philip Clarke (2008) has noted that First Nations guides, in fact, led Australian colonial botanists to the remote places where they could find myriad plant specimens that they would otherwise have been blind to. However, art has the ability to push forward the horror and emotion of the cultural thievery and the attempted Indigenous erasures. In Sir No Beard, Daniel Boyd interprets West’s portrait of the much-revered Joseph Banks and lays bare the colonial violence associated with Banks, the revered botanist. This painting bears a likeness to West’s 1773 version, except that Boyd’s Banks wears an eye patch, pirate-like, and at his feet is a glass jar with Boyd’s severed head floating in formaldehyde. The red velvet curtain remains pulled to one side, and the distant landscape of trees and cloudy sky refer to the eighteenth-century habits of portrait painting. These painting tropes are retained by Boyd in his version, but they don’t work in terms of the conventionality of a picturesque scene. Instead, in their new context, they serve as a way to ‘pull back the curtain’ and to expose the true horror of this colonial period. Boyd states: It wasn’t hard to see that Banks was in the background, pulling the strings and was in fact more powerful than Cook. Cook is a symbol of an idea exploration and I wanted to connect with these legacies, these moments that are quite dark and disturbing, and to share those practices with the general public. Because they’re not a part of the [accepted] story, and they need to be. Because we can’t

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continue going on with this lie. It’s unhealthy not to acknowledge the injustices of the past, to be able to move forward together. I just wanted to show people how these systems, these imperial systems, how they permeate culture and being in a way that Cook doesn’t. The museums, the representation of people, and the human species is in the context of science, it’s affected us far more than Cook could ever have done. (D. Boyd, personal communication, July 3, 2022)

Banks is still a highly commemorated individual in Australian and British history. Even in the Lincoln Cathedral in Middle England, I noted on a visit that there is a new commemoration of Banks, created in 2021, which applauds his wonderful work collecting plants and generating knowledge in botany. It can be a surprise for Australian visitors to witness these ongoing commemorations, knowing the violence and thievery that were the price to pay. There have been some decolonising processes in the museum sector in Australia. For instance, the Eucalyptusdom exhibition at Sydney’s Powerhouse (Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences) in 2022 presented new Indigenous artworks, installed alongside original wood, porcelain, letters, prints, wood oils and information about the extraction industry around the Eucalyptus trees, all from the Powerhouse collection. There will be an ongoing exhibition podcast to reiterate the connection between the two forms of display, as a means of decolonising the museum objects and framing their beauty within the truth of First Nations experiences (see Powerhouse Museum, 2022). These curatorial processes are seemingly not being borne out in the United Kingdom in 2022. There is, as evidenced, ongoing commemoration of Banks’ botanical work, being hailed as a hero of imperial scientific inquiry, applauded for his voyages to far-flung First Nations lands, not to mention that he took over 30,000 species from around the world back to Kew Gardens for their new botanical collection. Daniel Boyd’s critical eye and his truth-telling would no doubt come as a shock to the city of Lincoln locals or to the visitors of the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford, UK. Colonial critique has arguably not travelled back to the empire, despite promises by such institutions as Kew Gardens, which recently published a Decolonising Manifesto (Parveen, 2021) which promised to attend to access, diversity and decolonial procedures in the botanical institution. To extend the context of colonial celebration of white heroes, one of the most interesting plants in Australia, a plant that is the signature of the endangered Eastern Suburbs Banksia Scrub ecology, is the Banksia serrata tree. There is important Indigenous work being undertaken by the Indigigrow Nursery in La Perouse to restore and conserve this important bush ecology. I mention it here because the Banksia is named after and continues to commemorate Joseph Banks. The commemorative naming of a tree that is important to Indigenous people mirrors other settler colonies around the world where similar attempts at Indigenous erasures and eliminations have taken place. There are not just Indigenous absences from stories and archives, but elimination via land

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redistribution, pollution, renaming and even termination (loss of previous treaty rights) by settler colonists, which has had lasting impacts not only socially but also environmentally (Bacon, 2018, p. 63). As Māori scholar Linda Tuhiwai Smith states, ‘Renaming the land was probably as powerful ideologically as changing the land’ (Bacon, 2018, p. 64). Renaming carries political and social weight; then, including First Nations names in Western botanical classification may be a complex but necessary process. Looking again at Banksia serrata as an example, and approaching an examination of Australian colonial past, it must be time to reassess the power that names have to inform our relationships with plants, the land, each other and the impacts of colonial mastery. This requires careful and respectful consideration of First Nations knowledge. It is therefore interesting to see how artist Daniel Boyd often titles his paintings with unexplained acronyms, such as the title, Untitled (T14) 2015, of a painting that recreated a photograph of artefacts in an auction catalogue that author Robert Louis Stevenson collected while living and writing in Samoa. This seems to be Boyd’s way of disrupting the power of Western naming and also re-presenting Stevenson as less of a beloved literary idol, and more as one of many colonial Westerners who collected ‘native curiosities’. The Western scientific name Banksia serrata acknowledges Joseph Banks in the genus name. This has never been renamed or redressed. In the 240 odd years since it was first given a colonial scientific binomial name (genus and species), it has accumulated several English common names: old man banksia, saw-tooth banksia, honeysuckle, red honeysuckle and saw banksia. The Atlas of Living Australia website records only one Indigenous name for this plant: wiriyagan, a name from the Cadigal people of the Sydney region of New South Wales (Atlas of Living Australia, 2022). On Fraser Island, locals refer to the Banksia as wallum (a Gabi Gabi or Murri word). Given that the natural distribution of Banksia serrata covers much of the eastern seaboard of Australia passing through the countries and languages of many Australian First Nations peoples, it is likely that there are many more names for the Banksia that reflect subtleties in culture, season and situation. Banksia serrata is one of the four Banksia species collected by Joseph Banks (1743–1820) and Daniel Solander (1733–1782) from Kamay (Botany Bay), NSW, in April 1770, as part of the HMS Endeavour voyage (Australian Museum, 2021). These plants were not given formal Western scientific names until they were published in 1782 as part of the genus Banksia by Carl Linnaeus the Younger (1741–1783) (Linnaeus, 1782). His father, Carl Linnaeus (1707–1778), developed the system of classifying and naming organisms with binomials, first published in his Systema Naturae in 1735. As Banksia serrata was the first ‘named’ species in the Banksia genus, it is also the primary reference point or ‘type’ for defining the nomenclature of the genus. It is critically important to acknowledge that Indigenous Elders already knew the plants that Europeans ‘discovered’—and subsequently named in Australia—and had intimate knowledge of them for millennia.

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The naming of plants is a complex problem—who gets to name, what names can be used, what and who are they named for? These issues extend to the art world. Who gets to paint? Who gets to be painted? Who gets to curate? Daniel Boyd’s painting of Sir No Beard goes towards a critical analysis and reinterpretation of much of the erasure of First Nations knowledge and culture. What Boyd seems to be doing is illustrating colonial mastery and domination by placing a pirate’s patch on Joseph Banks’ eye. This small detail presents the famous colonial Banks as an imposter, and as a thief.

‘We Call Them Pirates Out Here’ Boyd continues his work of debunking Australian botanical and colonial myths via art with several other key paintings. His seminal painting, We Call Them Pirates Out Here (2006), presents the viewer with a familiar image of Cook’s first landing at Kamay, in 1770. But Boyd re-presents Cook as a pirate, just like he does with Banks. The curators of the 2022–2023 exhibition describe the painting by saying that Cook has been ‘rendered powerless’, the invaders are ‘divested of their power’ (Parker Philip & Vink, 2022). The original familiar painting, from which Boyd creates his satire, was painted by E. Philips Fox in 1902. Fox was an artist who studied at the National Gallery of Victoria art school, and then lived and worked in Europe for four years in the late 1880s before returning home. It’s possibly not surprising— though no less disturbing—that his 1902 painting was grandiose, patriotic and subsequently inherently violent towards First Nations people, both in the scene he depicts but also in terms of falsely representing Cook as a grandiose hero of his time. Of the work, Boyd states: [Cook] was just a lieutenant on a ship, and I just wanted to share the importance and the legacy and the power that Banks actually had. His position to the Crown, and also to make people aware of how Banks’ knowledge of the natural world affected so many people, and how he was able to monetize plants, and how that affected so many people around the world. (D. Boyd, personal communication, July 3, 2022)

It also bears mentioning that the E. Philips Fox’s painting contributed to a long period of cultural and historical misinformation about the day Cook landed, as it was published in many Australian art books. In Boyd’s hands, the scene becomes one of misfortune and misinformation, of chaos and of theft.

‘Floating Forest’ In a book written by Captain Cook about his voyages, Voyages of Discovery, there is a superior and condescending tone of the narrative voice. On page 21, Captain Cook, Mr Banks and Dr Solander have landed on a place called Otaheite (later renamed Tahiti) where ‘hundreds of natives’ came up to them

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and presented them with branches of trees as ‘symbols of peace’ (Cook, 1970, pp. 20–21). What grabs attention is that the text mentions breadfruit on that exact page: through groves of coca-nut and bread-fruit trees, beneath the trees were the habitations of the natives, consisting of only a roof, destitute of walls. The breadfruit is about the size of the horse-chestnut; and the fruit is not unlike the cantaloupe melon in appearance. It is somewhat of the consistency of new bread, and is roasted before it is eaten. (Cook, 1970, p. 21)

It is interesting to read this first-hand early description of breadfruit by colonials, as Boyd completely decolonises Cook’s breadfruit description through his 2017 Untitled BGTJS painting of a Fijian man carrying bundles of breadfruit on a stick. The young man is standing at a three-quarter position, but his gaze is steady and straight to the viewer, as it was originally a photograph. This Fijian man is evidence of a colonising and exploiting of Pacific Island and Great Ocean peoples as breadfruit became a symbol of slave-trading and slave-­feeding in the Caribbean. Daniel Boyd’s connection with breadfruit worked as a metaphor for dark events in history. He states: I was living in Cairns a few years ago and we bought some breadfruit from the local market in Cairns. That was more just as a study. I never consumed it. Even though it’s endemic to Vanuatu, I was interested in these global systems of the economic legacy of the Dutch East India Company… and piracy and imperialism and empire. This was a matter of situating the breadfruit within that context, and I guess breadfruit was a way for me to demystify the attributions and to question the heroic narrative that’s associated with the Caribbean. (D.  Boyd, personal communication, July 3, 2022)

In Boyd’s 2022 exhibition, there is another painting titled Floating Forest, which is relevant to this breadfruit story of enslavement and of cost-effective feeding of plantation workers. Floating Forest is a work by Boyd that depicts Captain William Bligh’s ship ‘Providence’ upon its arrival at Port Royal in Jamaica in 1793. Laden with 2126 breadfruit and other spice and dye plants from Asia and the Pacific, mainly Otaheite/Tahiti, the voyage was commissioned by none other than Joseph Banks. Cook’s documented travels also include an earlier discussion of the breadfruit, as the book’s trip was dated 1769. This indicates that Banks first came across the fruit in Tahiti in 1769, but he didn’t commission the shipload until 1793, some twenty years later. It seems British enslavement, at scale, took two decades to fully enact. Boyd adds: I think there are people without any knowledge or any experience with the British relationship to Australia and definitely to the Caribbean. If you see Mutiny on the Bounty [a 1962 film based on the mutiny aboard the Bounty ship in 1789], it’s never going to inform how you understand the particular colonial landscape or First Nations people. I wanted to use the breadfruit to kind of talk about what

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was actually going on [aboard the ships]. I wanted to share those ideas that have been pushed to the side of history or in the background. I wanted to comment on a heroic representation of pretty dark events in the history of everything. (D. Boyd, personal communication, July 3, 2022)

Boyd’s Floating Forest is a compelling painting. Unlike other paintings in Boyd’s colonial/decolonial oeuvre, this work uses a teal colour and black rather than the artist’s signature black and white. Somehow, this evokes the inky blue darkness of dusk. The boat’s ropes and rig lines are silhouetted against this teal sky, which makes the composition intimidating and menacing. In this painting, particularly, Boyd’s use of tiny glue dots on the surface are especially in evidence and seem to add another spiderweb layer of intrigue. Boyd’s tiny glue dots are known as a means of both referencing traditional painting practices and acting as lenses. The lenses are there to adjust our focus and help us see the true stories, painful and sorrowful and shameful as they are. They are emblematic of the way light (Western knowledge) can blind us from what we need to see (black truth). The mostly white dots are portals to better see the hidden stories. He explains: I mean, I think with this kind of heroic tale and these cinematic representations, it skews reality. When someone understands a heroic tale through a cinematic experience, then they tend to take that narrative and project it out into space. Be careful creating these new narratives, that they don’t mitigate other ways of representation, and you don’t have those biases associated with it. (D.  Boyd, personal communication, July 3, 2022)

Boyd’s artwork includes a dedication to the period of what is referred to as ‘blackbirding’ in Australia, where people from South Sea Islands were snatched off the beaches and brought to Queensland to work as slave labourers on sugarcane plantations. In my discussions with him for this chapter, Boyd tells me that his own great-great-grandfather Samuel Pentecost was forcibly taken from Malakula Island, Vanuatu, and brought to Queensland to work for no pay. In the book Secret Cures of Slaves, author Londa Schiebinger (2017) writes about slaves being tossed into mass graves at the end of cotton or sugarcane rows if they died from exhaustion or malnutrition on site. I’ve also read of slaves being only fed bananas or dumb cane which made their tongues swell and certainly stopped any verbal backlash. As Boyd tells me, the Queensland economy was built on the backbone of free labour of First Nations and Pacific Island peoples. Wages were stolen, and people were exploited. Along with domestic servitude, this free labour created capital and profit for generations of white Australians (D. Boyd, personal communication, July 3, 2022). Unfortunately, such brutality continued through Australian history and in Boyd’s own family lineage. Samuel Pentecost’s son, Boyd’s great-grandfather, was stolen from his parents up in Mossman Gorge and taken to Yarrabah Mission. Boyd transfers an image of Harry Mossman, photographed by

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anthropologist Norman Tindale, for his 2022 Sydney exhibition. This is one of the most unadorned of his portraits: it has a calm, proud and direct appeal. It presents as an instance of Boyd creating new commemorations of those people who truly deserved our respect and reverence.

Conclusion Daniel Boyd’s artwork manages to delve into Australia’s past, where crimes were committed and then commemorated. Theft, enslavement and exploitation were enacted upon First Nations people. The truth of First Nations knowledge, cultural and agricultural practice, however, has not been acknowledged nor commemorated. There is a constant non-Indigenous process of requiring Western or modern evidence for First Nations knowledge that always already existed. The frustrations of these hypocrisies and deceits are layered into Boyd’s paintings. His glue lenses heighten the truth beneath the hyperbole, the real stories beneath the nationalistic dogma. There are more truths to bear witness to. There are more lies to debunk. Boyd’s art works towards those processes of revealing the truth about Australian history.

References ABC News. (2022, July 21). Smithsonian to return ancestral remains to Indigenous Australians, ABC News. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9PNFc2YYrLg Atlas of Living Australia. (2022). Species: Banksia Serrata. Atlas of Living Australia. https://bie.ala.org.au/species/https://id.biodiversity.org.au/taxon/apni/ 51293610 Bacon, J. M. (2018). Settler colonialism as eco-social structure and the production of colonial ecological violence. Environmental Sociology, 5(1), 63. Browning, D. (2022, July 3). We come to take you home, ABC TV. https://www.abc. net.au/religion/watch/compass/we-­come-­to-­take-­you-­home/13942646 Casid, J. H. (2005). Sowing empire: Landscape and colonization. Minnesota Press. Christopher, E. (2021, June 4). From the Caribbean to Queensland. The Conversation. https://theconversation.com/from-­the-­caribbean-­to-­queensland-­re-­examining-­ australias-­blackbirding-­past-­and-­its-­roots-­in-­the-­global-­slave-­trade-­158530 Clarke, P. (2008). Aboriginal plant collectors. Rosenberg. Cook, J. (1970). Captain Cook’s voyages of discovery. Heron Books. Dietrich, A. (1866). Plants of New Holland collected by Mrs. Amalie Dietrich at the Brisbane river, Col., Queensland by order of Mr Joh. Ces. Godeffroy & Son in Hamburg. Berlin: Godeffroy. Parker Philip, I., & Vink, E. (2022). Daniel Boyd: Treasure Island. Art Gallery of New South Wales. Parveen, N. (2021, March 18). Kew gardens director hits back at claims it is ‘growing woke’. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/science/2021/mar/18/ kew-­gardens-­director-­hits-­back-­at-­claims-­it-­is-­growing-­woke Powerhouse Museum (Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences). (2022). Eucalyptusdom exhibition. Powerhouse Museum. https://www.maas.museum/event/eucalyptusdom/

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Schiebinger, L. (2017). Secret cures of slaves. Stanford University Press. TallBear, K. (2011). Why interspecies thinking needs indigenous standpoints. Cultural Anthropology. https://culanth.org/fieldsights/260-­whyinterspecies-­thinking-­needs-­ indigenous-­standpoints The Age. (2002, May 29). Remains of Truganini coming home after 130 years. The Age. https://www.theage.com.au/national/remains-­of-­truganini-­coming-­home-­ after-­130-­years-­20020529-­gdu8yv.html

CHAPTER 19

Asserting Indigenous Agencies: Constructions and Deconstructions of James Cook in Northern Queensland Bronwyn Fredericks

and Abraham Bradfield

Who among those who saw the sails disappear northwards after the crew of the Endeavour has finished repairing their vessel would have thought that four generations later, the captain’s descendants would return with such vengeance, with a fever for gold and for land, leaving demoralised strugglers begging, sneaking and apologising for an existence in their own country? Noel Pearson (2011, p. 31)

Introduction Amplified by Black Lives Matter (BLM), questions over whether Australis’s colonial past and present should be celebrated through public monuments, statues, place names, and re-enactments have provoked debate amongst a broad section of the community. Public views towards the existence of colonial monuments within settler-colonial spaces vary between and among Indigenous and non-Indigenous populations, with responses not always aligning with commonly held preconceptions of the government of the day. Arguments for the continued existence of monuments within public spaces are often based on the notion that they are valuable archives of Australian history and should

B. Fredericks (*) • A. Bradfield University of Queensland, Brisbane, QLD, Australia e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 B. Carlson, T. Farrelly (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook on Rethinking Colonial Commemorations, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-28609-4_19

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therefore be recognised and celebrated as such. In some cases, monuments have encouraged constructive agonistic dialogue through which Australia’s contested and violent past is confronted and unpacked. In others, they have provoked antagonistic responses that have resulted in violence, destruction, vandalism and, in some cases, their forced or agreed removal. In this chapter, we consider how colonial monuments in Cairns and Cooktown, situated in North Queensland, Australia, maintain white hegemonic discourses of colonisation where coloniality is envisioned as ‘progress’ and ‘modernity’. We discuss how monuments, statues and re-enactments function as sites of colonial resistance. Through their contextualisation, monuments reveal unstable terrains that “problematize[s] not only hegemony and domination but resistance as well” (Oakes, 1997, p. 252). For some Aboriginal people in Cooktown, resistance comes not from outright opposition to colonial narratives, but rather through repositioning figures such as Captain James Cook within Indigenous perspectives that emphasises Aboriginal agency and sovereignty.

Contested Place Statues and monuments of Cook and other colonial figures provoke widespread discussion over Australia’s colonial history. Yet, through their decontextualisation, they overwhelmingly present selective, monovocal accounts of history that are removed from the contested and pluralistic contexts in which they are embedded (Fredericks, 2020; Moreton-Robinson, 2007). Margaret Somerville (2010, p. 330), Professor of Education at the University of Western Sydney, has written that “Australian scholars and researchers cannot begin to articulate a position about place without confronting the complex political realities of Indigenous/non-Indigenous relationships in place”. Professor Bronwyn Fredericks (2020, para. 9), Aboriginal scholar and pro-vice-­chancellor (Indigenous engagement) at the University of Queensland, explains that such complexities arise predominantly “because of the dispossession of Aboriginal people”. Through their interactions with the monuments that attempt to shape and communicate the meaning of place in Australia, Indigenous and non-­ Indigenous activists are exemplifying place as contested, fluid, unstable, multivocal and existing within an interface or border-zone (Bhabha, 2012; Gupta & Ferguson, 2008; Mignolo, 2002; Oakes, 1997). As locations where Cook made ‘first contact’ with Indigenous people, coastal shores and beaches are such border zones on which colonial narratives, re-enactments and monuments are often placed (Moreton-Robinson, 2015a). Like many places situated in settler-colonial environments, the beach has entered the Australian imagination as inclusive, yet it is one that remains predominantly white, exclusive and alienating to many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people (Moreton-­ Robinson, 2015a; Moreton-Robinson & Nicol, 2006).

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Much of what is written about Cook’s encounters along the east coast of the Australian continent comes from his and Joseph Banks’ diary entries, which were sent to the Admiralty in London in October 1770 (National Museum Australia, 2021a). While a primary source that provides rich historic accounts relevant to both Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples, the diaries’ narrative is nonetheless situated within a European/colonial perspective and agenda that seeks to document interactions with the so-called Other and provide a written account that accompanied the expansion of the British Empire. History, and the national discourses that accompany it, are never singular but rather understood in relation to local contexts and diverse interactions with and within place. In Australia, the local context must include the accounts, testimonies and oral histories of Indigenous peoples. Monuments celebrating Cook are dependent on Aboriginal knowledge, such as the 1822 memorial plaque at Kurnell, Sydney, which depended on Indigenous oral histories to identify the location of Cook’s arrival to memorialise that place (Healy, 1997). This demonstrates some willingness to understand knowledge of Cook from an Aboriginal perspective but only in relation to the dominant culture and for the purpose of filling a knowledge gap. There is no acknowledgement of the source of information. Professor of Human Geography at Oxford University, Linda McDowell (1999, p. 4) observes that it is “socio-spatial practices [that] define places and these practices result in overlapping and intersecting places with multiple and changing boundaries, constituted and maintained by social relations of power and exclusion”. Cook’s encounters during his voyage southward were equally informed by Aboriginal peoples and the places where lived experiences overlapped and intersected. Monuments and re-­enactments function as indexes of such intersections, reflecting power-­dynamics and resulting in diverse readings that shape the meanings of place, how it presented within the nation imagination and who it excludes (Anderson, 2006). Writing on monument buildings as reflections of membership, and therefore places of inclusion and exclusion, French philosopher Henri Lefebvre (1991, p. 116) observes how the “analysis of any space brings us up against the dialectical relationship between demand and command, along with its attendant questions: ‘Who?’, ‘For whom?’, ‘By whose agency?’, ‘Why?’ and ‘how?’” (see also Bruner, 2004). While monuments function as indexes of history, they are always socially constructed representations targeted towards specific ‘members’ (Babidge, 2015; Carlson & Farrelly, 2022a, 2022b). They exist within a political ecology that “is the product of all the hard work of observers, opinion-­ makers, teachers, writers, artists of various sorts, archivists and the builders of monuments, museums, texts, databases and commemorative events” (Muecke, 2008, p. 34). As metaphors for Indigenous/settler relations, narratives of Cook are diverse and vary in accordance with spatialised colonial histories and encounters (Hokari, 2011). In some Indigenous accounts, Cook represents an oppressive invading regime, while in others he is presented as a figure whose ‘abilities’ and introduction of new technologies provided new ways of apprehending and

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interacting with the world. Regardless, Cook is always situated within a time and place that is relevant to local communities and language groups, providing a means of narrating colonial relationships and the political economy (Rose, 2001). For the Gurindji people, whose country lies in Northern Central Australia, some oral histories account for how Cook travelled from Sydney to the Northern Territory bringing with him the ‘Book’ [European law] that was imposed on Aboriginal people. From Gurindji perspectives, Cook’s law lacked legitimacy, morality and authority as he was separated from Gurindji Country and Dreaming, and therefore brought the ‘wrong way’ (Rose, 1992). In contrast, Rembarrnga artist, Paddy Fordham Wainburranga, describes Cook as belonging to the Yirritja, one of the two moiety groups of the Yirrkala community in North-East Arnhem Land, who, like ancestral beings, faced numerous challenges. In one account, Cook battled Satan, shaping country with modern infrastructure such as the Sydney Harbour Tunnel. Cook brought new technologies that were seen to ultimately benefit Yirritja people (Neale, 2008). Embedded in storytelling, Indigenous histories enable a subjective agency that allow those who tell them to address parts of the narrative most relevant to their time, place and purpose. Histories, however, should not be seen as universal, but they are not singular and nor do they belong to one individual. Monuments and re-enactments are never literal presentations of the past, but rather form part of a performative ‘world-making’ process (Bruner, 2004), told through narratives imbued with memory, experience and imaginings relevant to the temporal moment. Professor of Culture and Communication at Melbourne University, Chris Healy (1997, p. 26) writes how monuments are “spaces where the possibilities between history and memory can be acted out, spaces that denote sites of history and can connote environments of memory”. Through their (re)telling, historical narratives reflect how one negotiates, apprehends and wishes to view and be viewed in the world. Monuments of Cook provoke conflicting narratives that both celebrate white colonial nation-­ building—predominantly through silencing Indigenous agency, voices and sovereignty—and, as will be considered through the case study of colonial re-­ enactments in Cooktown, provide an outlet through which Cook’s encounters are juxtaposed with narratives of Indigenous leadership, diplomacy and resistance. Through monuments, the paradoxical nature of place and conflicting narratives intersect, reflecting diverse lived experiences that contest the notion that “borderlands are just such a place of incommensurable contradictions” (Gupta & Ferguson, 2008, p. 18). In agreement with Timothy Oakes (1997, p. 509), Professor of Geography at the University of Colorado, we concur that “place can be associated with a new spatial politics of resistance, an effort to reinscribe a place-based territorial identity in opposition to the spatial colonizations of capitalist modernity”. Colonial monuments and re-enactments both resist and maintain a white modernity at the exclusion of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. Our aim, in this chapter, is not to provide an objective analysis of ‘cancel culture’ or

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debate whether colonial monuments should remain in the twenty-first century but to emphasise the complexities and paradoxes of colonisation, which must be confronted and unpacked as part of an ongoing pursuit.

Place as Socially Organised Indigenous people, particularly in urban Australia (Fredericks, 2013), are often imagined within white hegemonic discourses as the passive and disempowered victims of colonial dispossession. Urban settings vis-a-vis regional and remote locations are commonly envisioned as abnormal spaces or anomalies (Fredericks, 2020) in which Indigenous people are seen not to belong ‘naturally’ (Behrendt, 1995; Fredericks, 2004). National discourses in Australia overwhelmingly fail to acknowledge that such urban spaces—and the architecture, people, institutions, town planning and landscaping within them—remain on Indigenous country. Fredericks (2020), for example, has written about how some universities can act as monuments of European knowledge and dominance, reshaping the landscape by normalising European occupation while maintaining myths of terra nullius (see also Butler, 2000). She argues that this ultimately positions Aboriginal people as anomalies where they either remain within the background (as footnotes to dominant colonial narratives) or are excluded altogether. For many Indigenous people, monuments contribute to whether a space— be it university, hospital, park or the broader landscape—is deemed welcoming, safe or threatening. The ways in which space is organised symbolises and communicates whose authority takes precedence, whose voices are prioritised and what narratives are deemed legitimate or important (Carlson & Farrelly, 2022a, 2022b). This can significantly impact how spaces are used, or whether services are accessed or avoided (Fredericks, 2009b). For example, a study found that placing artwork depicting colonial landscapes at the waiting area of a health centre in Rockhampton, Queensland, increased feelings of discomfort, distrust and alienation among Aboriginal patients and visitors (Fredericks, 2009b). Fredericks (2009b, p.  33) observes that for many Aboriginal people, such imagery asserts and emphasises: European settler history and the claiming and clearing of Aboriginal land and erasure of Aboriginal sovereignty. They act as markers and borders of the colonial frontier and centre white power within the building, making visiting Indigenous women into ‘non-locals’ or ‘strangers’ who were allocated the use of the ‘back room’ along with Indigenous men and children.

For some local Aboriginal residents and visitors to Northern Queensland, statues of Cook reiterate similar narratives of terra nullius and symbolise the continuation of colonial frontiers that treat Aboriginal people as ‘non-locals’ or ‘strangers’. For others, however, the same monuments are integrated in local narratives and are embraced as meaningful cultural frontiers that generate

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discussion about Australia’s colonial history and relations between Aboriginal and non-Indigenous people in both the past and present. This contention exemplifies the complexity of the intercultural in which competing ideas and responses collide in ways that can provoke constructive dialogue, maintain power imbalances or simultaneously do both (Bradfield, 2019). The land on which a contentious 10-metre-tall statue of Captain Cook is erected in Cairns has recently been purchased in a deal between its former owner, James Cook University, and state and federal governments. This will see the expansion of Cairns University Hospital, set to be completed in 2025 (Warren, 2021). The expansion will increase the region’s health capabilities and services, providing additional hospital beds and training facilities. The fate of the statue has been the cause of much debate, with some calling for its removal and others for it to remain. The appropriateness of keeping a statue that has generated strong opposition and is the cause of anxiety, however, must be called into question, particularly since the land is now being used for health and healing. Like the painting within the health centre in Rockhampton, the statue has the potential of further alienating Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, marking the hospital as culturally unsafe. After seeking community input to find an “appropriate location” for the statue (Bowles, 2021), James Cook University sold it to a demolition contractor for $1 who aims to restore it to its “former glory” (Bowles, 2022).

Cook’s Town? Gangaar, or what is now also known as Cooktown, lies in Far-Northern Queensland, 244  km north of Cairns and 1987  km north of Brisbane. According to the 2016 census, 14.5% of Cooktown’s population identify as Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander with a median age of 21 (Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), 2020b). The highway that follows the coastline connecting Cooktown to the more populated city of Cairns is known as the Captain Cook Highway. Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander people comprise of 10% (23,961) of Cairn’s population, which is slightly less than Cooktown but above Queensland’s state average of 4% (ABS, 2020a). Like many regional and urban centres, Cairns, which lies on Gimuy Walubara Yidinji country (DATSIP, 2021), is home to many Indigenous language groups and is a busy hub with high mobility and a steady influx of international and domestic visitors. As their names suggest, Cairns was named after the former governor of Queensland, Sir William Wellington Cairns (Joyce, 2006), while Cooktown is named after the British explorer deemed to have ‘discovered’ Australia, Captain James Cook. In 1770, Cook’s vessel, the Endeavour, was beached on Guugu Yimithirr shores for 48 days. Despite its European name, Cooktown forever remains on Guugu Yimithirr country. In 1874, the name of the settlement was changed from its former more possessive form, Cook’s Town (Ward, 2020). Yet the countless monuments, artworks, architecture, street and building names,

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and town-planning suggest that it very much continues to be the subject of Cook’s existence. Many have written on how European placenames have functioned as expressions of colonial occupation and supremacy through a process of naming the world and rendering Indigenous places and histories as supposedly unnamed (Kearney & Bradley, 2009; Moreton-Robinson, 2004a; Smith, 2012). Reuben Rose-Redwood, Professor of Geography at the University of Victoria, Canada, states that “monuments and place names have long told a particular narrative of history, by placing European colonizers up on a pedestal” (in DeRosa, 2020, para. 7). By simply glancing at the names of various towns, roads, buildings, bays, mountains and other sites of interest throughout Northern Queensland (and, in fact, the world), one encounters a colonial cartography of imperialist possession (Bourke, 2021). Cook gave English names to a total of 106 locations during his voyage in Australia (Cook Shire Council, 2015). Kuku Yalandji, the place where the Endeavour first encountered troubles, was named Cape Tribulation, the reef on which the Endeavour was beached was named Endeavour Reef, while Waalumbaal Birri, the river that connects Cooktown to the reef and Pacific Ocean, was named Endeavour River (see Image 19.1). The island off the Cape York Peninsula where Cook laid claim to Australia in the name of King George III was fittingly called Possession Beach (Moreton-­ Robinson, 2015a, p. 3). Place naming was used not only as a means of claiming land and waters in the name of the British Empire but also to communicate, map and warn future

Image 19.1  Endeavour River, Cooktown Queensland, 2019. (Photograph: Bronwyn Fredericks)

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colonisers of the lay of the land so that they may find safe passage. The heads of the Tweed River, for example, were named Point Danger due to the perilous shoals Cook encountered on that stretch of water (Turnbull, 2010). Unlike the local Aboriginal populations, Cook was fully aware that, from the moment of his arrival, more Europeans would likely follow, and that lands and surrounding waters (under a colonial ethos) had now become the possession of the British Crown to use as it saw fit. Place names are monuments in and of themselves standing as reminders of European invasion, expansion and the ongoing colonial project (Wolfe, 1999). Monuments celebrating Cook are as much projections towards an imagined future as they are accounts of the past. Cook became, and arguably still is, the promise of a (white European) future that braids “the time of the past with time of the present to produce memory in and of time, backwards and forwards” (Healy, 1997, p. 17). Cooktown, as a geographic location and place (Image 19.2), is a colonial monument to Cook. The first impressions of the town are that it is one that prides itself on Cook’s and his crew’s interactions with local Aboriginal people and the surrounding environment during the repairs of the Endeavour after it received significant damage on the Great Barrier Reef. Additionally, the town celebrates historic events such as the Goldrush in the 1870s, which saw the town became a major economic, trading and cultural hub. For Aboriginal peoples, however, the goldrush further entrenched the stranglehold of colonisation and resulted in violent altercations that led to an increase in killings and pushed Aboriginal peoples to fringe-dwelling communities on the outskirts of town (McKenna, 2016; Pearson, 1998, 2017). Historian Mark McKenna (2016, p. 171) observes that to “read the Cooktown and Brisbane newspaper reports of frontier violence on north Queensland’s goldfields in the 1870s and 1880s is to confront one of the brazen examples of a ‘relentless war of extermination’ in Australia’s colonial history”. The establishment of missions that housed Indigenous peoples from different kin-based areas, now known as nations or countries (Babidge, 2015), was not only a tool of colonisation but became necessary for survival at a time when colonial frontiers were becoming increasingly violent. Guugu Yimithirr lawyer, academic, scholar and founder of the Cape York Institute for Policy and Leadership, Noel Pearson (2017, p. 272) writes, The life choices available to the Guugu Yimithirr on the frontiers of Cooktown in the 1880s had nearly collapsed and were diminishing fast. Without the Cape Bedford mission, the Guugu Yimithirr had no good survival options. Yes, like missions throughout colonial history, the Cape Bedford mission both provided a haven from the hell of life on the Australian frontier and facilitated the process of colonisation.

For many, Cook symbolises a pivotal moment in history that instigated Indigenous people’s oppression as well as measures to protect, control and manage their dispossession, all the while maintaining white supremacy. The

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Image 19.2  Cooktown, Queensland, 2019. (Photograph: B. Fredericks)

celebration of Cook as a pioneering figure has always been present in Cooktown, with the earliest commemoration occurring in 1887. In 1885, the Cooktown Courier stated that the forthcoming lighthouse “will be gleaming over the waste of waters, carrying comfort and an assurance of safety to mariners who have to thread the intricate navigation of our coast…no better monument could be erected to the memory of Captain Cook” (Aussie Towns, 2021, para. 22). Like place names, the lighthouse symbolises the continuing and unfolding process of settler occupation and possession. Such a quote encapsulates the white colonial mentality that envisions the waters as ‘waste’, the coast as theirs to possess and Captain Cook as a pioneer. Where the gleaming light signified ‘assurance’ for the white mariners offshore, it was anything but for the local Aboriginal populations onshore and the indentured South Sea Islanders brought to Australia on what were effectively slave ships (Byrne et al., 2020; Hopkins-Weise, 2002). Cooks Monument, the first built commemoration of Cook in Queensland, was erected in 1887 in Cooktown and comprises of a sandstone obelisk laid on a granite base (see Image 19.3). A statue of Cook was originally intended to accompany the monument but was abandoned when the premier of Queensland, Sir Samuel Griffith, visited Cooktown and stated that commemorating the event rather than the person was more important (Queensland Government, 2016). Several drinking fountains surround the base of the monument and

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Image 19.3  Cooks Monument, Cooktown, Queensland, 1888, designed by Colonial Architects Office, manufactured by Hobbs & Carter. (Photograph: Bronwyn Fredericks)

were once used as drinking sources. Today, they are abandoned and commonly littered with condoms and other materials that tend to keep people away (see Image 19.4). Today, Cook’s voyage of ‘discovery’ continues to be presented as a feat of European adventure, ingenuity and tenacity. It is one where numerous perils and pitfalls were both faced and overcome. In a 2021 piece for the travel section of The Australian, reporter Jeremy Bourke (2021) describes Cook’s journey as a “great escape story” through which he sells tourism within Northern Queensland via a language of adventure and the embrace of the unknown frontier. Further, the Cooktown and Cape York Expo is advertised by encouraging the public to plan “your adventure” (Cooktown & Cape York Expo,

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Image 19.4  Drinking Fountain of Cooks Monument, Cooktown, Queensland, 1888, designed by Colonial Architects Office, manufactured by Hobbs & Carter. (Photograph: Bronwyn Fredericks)

2021). Such narratives of discovery are predominantly based within and targeted towards non-Indigenous audiences (Image 19.5). Cook’s adventure and interactions with the Guugu Yimithirr resulted in intercultural exchanges that, while should not be deemed as acts of ‘discovery’, did help record Aboriginal knowledges and languages (or versions of it), which now serve as important historical records. Around 150 Guugu Yimithirr words for local flora, fauna and people were recorded by Sydney Parkinson (botanical illustrator), Cook and other members of his crew (McKenna, 2016, p. 166). The word kangaroo, for example, derives from the misinterpretation of the Guugu Yimithirr word gangurru (Dixon, 2008, pp.  131–132). Despite its pronunciation being lost in translation, such documentation signifies an attempt by the colonisers to learn about the so-called Other while also directly contradicting the doctrine of terra nullius by acknowledging Aboriginal

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Image 19.5  Cooks Monument Plaque, Cooktown, Queensland, 1888, designed by Colonial Architects Office, manufactured by Hobbs & Carter. (Photograph: Bronwyn Fredericks)

peoples’ prior presence. The docking of the Endeavour also allowed Botanist Sir Joseph Banks to record unique species such as the Black Mountain skink, Black Mountain boulder frog and Black Mountain gecko, which are all endemic to Guugu Yimithirr country and can be found in Kalkajaka National Park.

The ‘Giant’ of Sheridan Street Situated on Sheridan Street and visible to passing traffic and those arriving in Cairns by plane, lies a 10-metre-tall statue of Captain James Cook. The structure has been the cause of much debate and controversy pertaining to its cultural appropriateness. The privately owned statue, described by Aboriginal author Tony Birch (2021, para. 6) as “John Cleese performing Basil Fawlty in period dress”, was commissioned by a local developer in the 1970s to make the unit blocks he was building stand out (Rigby, 2020). The statue, which once stood alongside a motel, has since become a tourist attraction and has subsequently been used to advertise local businesses (Bateman, 2017). Although many of the businesses the statue once drew attention to have now closed, its sheer size continues to dominate the landscape and command attention.

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Explanations of whom the figure depicts ranges from it being Cook trying to stop Aboriginal people throwing a spear at him, to flat denial it was ever intended to be the explorer—instead suggesting it was originally a highwayman, vagabond or even a pirate. Considering the practices of forced dispossession, theft and pillaging that arose from colonisation, association with piracy is not a far stretch. In 2006, Kudija/Gangalu artist Daniel Boyd reinterpreted E. Phillips Fox’s 1902 painting, Landing of Captain Cook at Botany Bay (on which the statue in Cairns is likely based), in a work titled We Call Them Pirates Out Here (Fredriksson & Arvanitakis, 2017). In the painting, Boyd replaces Fox’s blue skies with menacing storm clouds, the British flag with the Jolly Roger, Cook wears an eye patch with a parrot mounted on his head, along with other popularised pirate iconography. A notable alteration observed by Maria Nugent (2009), a research fellow in the Australian Centre for Indigenous History at Australian National University, is the transformation of two spear-­ throwing Aboriginal men who feature in Fox’s work but appear as native grass trees in Boyd’s. Grass trees have historically been known by white Australians as ‘black boys’ on account that they are thought to resemble the image of a native standing on one leg with spear in hand (Jess, 1878). For Boyd, the Aboriginal men reflect how Cook and the colonisers saw them: as inhuman features of the land, and subjects of Western scientific ‘discovery’. In a 2013 work titled Captain James Crook, Biripi artist Jason Wing similarly depicts Cook as a thief by covering a bronze bust of Cook with a balaclava (National Gallery of Australia, 2021). A giant towering over Cairns, the statue holds some comedic value that mirrors the absurdity of the notion that Cook ‘discovered’ Australia, or that his predecessors ‘civilised’ Indigenous populations. Similar satirical comparisons were made in 1970 when a series of postage stamps were released in commemoration of Cook as part of Australia’s bicentenary. One of the stamps depicted Cook as a “giant to emphasise his stature amongst discoverers” (Ward, 2019, p. 11). Some members of the public likened the image to the fictional explorer Gulliver from Jonathan Swifts’ 1726 book, Gulliver’s Travels (Ward, 2019). In Swift’s novel, Gulliver sets upon a voyage to civilise the foreign ‘savages’ he encounters. When shipwrecked on an island resided by tiny people, Gulliver becomes a giant in comparison. Despite his stature, Gulliver’s own incivility is exposed when he encounters the advanced society of the locals he seeks to ‘enlighten’. Similar comparisons can be made of colonisation in Australia where despite notions of white supremacy, many non-Indigenous people continue to struggle with accepting the benefits and advancement of Indigenous knowledges, technologies and cultures. The pose and gesture of Cook in the Cairns statue is most likely inspired by Fox’s 1902 artwork, which was commissioned by the Australian government to commemorate federation in 1901 (Nugent, 2009, 2015). Fox’s painting depicts Cook in an act of conciliation upon arriving at Kurnell, Botany Bay, and his first contact with the local Gweagal people. In the painting, Cook can be seen reaching out to command his crew to refrain from firing on two Aboriginal

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men who have their spears raised in the background (Ward, 2019). The painting attempts to capture the chaos and uncertainty of colonisation in a single frame, depicting the possession of land and the anxieties associated with first contact. In a vibrant setting that portrays an atmosphere of movement and angst, Cook stands as a reassuring figure who anchors the chaos and provides a sense of stability with his ability to control his crew, the land and native populations. Nugent (2009, pp. 204–205) observes: Conciliatory gestures such as Cook’s outstretched arm, like all symbols of peacemaking, are by their very nature also reminders of conflict and war. And so it works in Phillips Fox’s history painting of Captain Cook’s first landing. For Cook’s outstretched arm to make sense as a conciliatory gesture the violence that it (supposedly) calls to halt must be depicted.

The gesture of the outstretched arm takes on new meaning when Cook is extracted from the surrounding scene of Fox’s painting and the imagined context in which he intervenes on his crew. Cook’s pose, which replicates other gestures portrayed in colonial artwork of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, has been likened by some to the Nazi Sieg Heil salute and is seen to reflect his true form, that is, as a symbol of imperialistic fascism rather than a peacekeeper whose leadership curtailed bloodshed. Whether intended or not, the irony of the statue’s commanding gesture of ‘conciliation’ (as shown in Fox’s painting) and its contemporary association with the Sieg Heil is not lost on those who see it. Aboriginal poet PS Cottier (2018) has suggested that, due to the symbology of and public revulsion towards the genocide committed by the Nazis during the Second World War, similar acts that go unrecognised or are silenced within many colonial narratives (Evans, 2004; Maynard, 2017; Wolfe, 2006)—that statue’s association with Sieg Heil is perhaps an accurate depiction of Cook and what he stood for. For some, the statue serves as a billboard for imperialism, inflicting its commanding presence on those who walk below it. In efforts to counter such presentations, some communities in Northern Queensland have recently purchased advertising space for seven roadside billboards with the aim of generating greater awareness of Indigenous sovereignty as well as the history and impact of colonisation (Allam, 2021). The billboards contain imagery of enslaved Aboriginal men and women who were sold to travelling human zoos and slogans such as “Wrong Way Go Black”. They practise a form of truth-­ telling that exposes the silences that monuments and colonial re-enactments often contain.

Toppling the ‘Giant’ Social justice movements such as BLM have called for the removal of colonial monuments worldwide (Abraham, 2021; Lindsey & Smith, 2021; Yeats, 2021). With assistance of social media, activists have mobilised and organised

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campaigns to remove such structures, by force if necessary. The organisation Topple the Racists, for example, circulated a map that identified 125 colonial monuments in the United Kingdom, with the aim of forcefully removing them (Elsom, 2021). In June 2020, a statue of slave trader Edward Colston was ceremoniously toppled and dumped into the Bristol Harbour. Similar demonstrations occurred in Australia (although no statues have been toppled at the time of writing), including in Hyde Park in Sydney where police stood guard overnight protecting a statue of Cook from protestors (Carlson & Farrelly, 2022a, 2022b; Yeats, 2021). Lefebvre (1991, p. 222) observes that “turmoil is inevitable once a monument loses its prestige or can only retain it by means of admitted oppression and pression”. Such loss of prestige and legitimacy is prevalent among many of the protesters involved in BLM and other activist campaigns and is growing in the wider public. As part of the 2020 BLM movement, a commemorative statue in Victoria, Canada, erected in 1976  in commemoration of the 200-year anniversary of Cook’s departure from Britain, was dowsed with red paint, symbolising the bloodshed in his and the British Crown’s name (DeRosa, 2020). This form of protest is common practice and has been replicated in numerous other colonial settings throughout the world, including Australia (Gregory, 2021). Despite acknowledging the contention around the statue, its owner expressed his disappointment that the protestors neglected to raise their concerns through ‘calm’ and ‘rational’ dialogue. Such positioning places onus on Indigenous people to accommodate hegemonic expectations of rational consultation, while failing to reciprocate. Governments continuously fail to enact meaningful co-­ design practices (Fredericks & Bradfield, 2021) and consult Indigenous people via a ‘calm’, ‘rational’ and ‘collaborative’ discussion over numerous matters, including erecting such public monuments in the first place. While the public has a right to engage in a dialogue over what monuments should exist in public spaces, the forums and platforms to have such conversations are often restricted (Carlson & Farrelly, 2022a, 2022b). Other acts of resistance have taken place in Australia where statues and monuments celebrating Cook have been used as props to challenge dominant and often uncontested colonial narratives (Gregory, 2021; McKenna, 2018; Yeats, 2021). On 26 January 2017, a sign reading “Sorry” was hung from the Cook statue in Cairns. An act described by some as vandalism, others such as Indigenous Elder and scholar Professor Gracelyn Smallwood saw it as an ironic, witty and poignant statement about Australian colonialism and an effective way to provoke debate over the appropriateness of celebrating Australia Day, the day that instigated European invasion (Bateman, 2017). Smallwood commented that the sign was changing the “face of racism in Australia” and that it made a “brilliant statement” regarding reconciliation (Bateman, 2017, para. 8). Writing from her perspective as an Indigenous art and history curator, Margo Neale (in Veth et al., 2008, p. 69) has similarly observed:

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Through inversion, parody and irony, Indigenous history tellers challenge codes of entry into and exclusion from the ‘official’ histories and suggest how Indigenous sources may be read back into history, a black history which is complex and comprehensive, not limited to written modes of expression, nor confined to a past on the margins where it remains outside the mainframe and effectively invisible.

The use of humour and irony is commonplace in many protest movements, particularly among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people (Beetson, 2017; Branagan, 2007; Duncan, 2014). In 2019, David Stevens, a traditional owner from North Stradbroke Island, was charged with wilful damage when he unscrewed a metal plaque off a Cook memorial and used it as a hotplate to BBQ a steak on Australia Day (Stevens, 2019). This ingenious form of protest, which involved him “cooking on Cook”, poetically commented on white Australian iconography of having a “BBQ on Australia Day” while making a poignant argument relating to the celebration of colonisation. Stevens claimed that he did it for his ancestors, as Cook has been made into a hero when he was “a rapist, murderer and genocider of the crown” (Stevens, 2019, para. 8). The photograph taken of the streak grilling on the plaque was appropriately named “Steaking a Claim” (National Museum Australia, 2021b). Steven’s views are shared by a majority of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, with a survey conducted by the Australian Museum demonstrating that an overwhelming 87.7% of its Indigenous respondents had negative connotations with the name Captain James Cook, associating him with words such as ‘murderer’, ‘killer’, ‘slaughter’, ‘liar’, ‘theft’, ‘pillaging’ and ‘greed’ (McBride & Smith, 2019). Stevens’ use of humour, however—like other forms of protest—is accompanied by an anger that demands attention change, and ultimately growth (Carlson & Farrelly, 2022a, 2022b). On Australia Day protests in 2022, a banner reading “cook was cooked” was once again hung over the Cairns statue (Calcino, 2022). The slogan, made in reference to Cook’s death in Hawaii in 1779, plays on the historical debate over whether the native Hawaiians who killed Cook were cannibals and consumed his body. In a lecture for the American Indian and Indigenous Studies programme at Cornell University, Moreton-Robinson (2021, 2022) unpacks the possessive nature of this debate, arguing that through its privileging of white patriarchal voices, Cook’s complicity in violating Hawaiian sovereignty is excused via silencing Indigenous people’s agency and accounts. In what can be described as a contrapuntal inversion of dominant white narratives, it is the white colonial state, and not the Hawaiians, who cannibalistically consume and feed off Cook’s monuments to sustain their unjust and inhumane attempt to possess Indigenous sovereignty and proclaim their own as superiority. Hanging the sign “cook was cooked”, like “sorry” before it, or metaphorically “cooking on cook” are ways that Indigenous voices and the caveats that colonial narratives overlook (Carlson & Farrelly, 2022a, 2022b) are reinserted into the national conversations that often deny Indigenous agency.

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Tony Birch, Aboriginal author and founding member of the Melbourne School of Discontent, states, “In general, I agree with the need to decommission and remove any monument that uncritically celebrates empirical conquest and violence” (Birch, 2021, para. 3). He goes on to argue that acts of vandalism do have their place in cutting through colonial deafness. Speaking to both the absurdity of the Cook statue in Cairns and the devastation it symbolises, Birch questions the need for monuments at all, arguing that the very prospect of creating a large-scale testament to Cook merely emphasises the fragility of colonialism and exposes the absurdity of trying to possess and control an enduring and eternal Indigenous country. Competing online petitions in Australia have sought to have the statue both removed and protected, with comparable petitions found in other settler contexts including Hawaii, Canada, the USA and within the United Kingdom. Emma Hollingsworth (2021), an Indigenous resident in Cairns, for example, has gained over 19,400 signatures in support of its removal. Hollingsworth (2021) states that the statue is a “slap in the face” to Indigenous peoples as well as non-Indigenous Australians who have joined the campaign. Conversely, a petition calling for the statue’s protection has gained over 5000 signature, justifying its argument via the scaremongering mantra of “where will it [political correctness against white Australia] stop” (Bakeet, 2020). In March 2022, James Cook University announced that the statue was sold to a demolition contractor for $1 (Bowles, 2022). Its new owner will transport the structure 102 km to a private property in Far-North-West Queensland to restore it with the intent of displaying it once more to the public. While its new owner acknowledged its contentiousness, he expressed that there was overwhelming support for the statue to remain in the public, “For every one person you find that says they don’t like it or what it represents, you’ll find another nine that say they do like it…I respect everyone’s opinions and I just hope that everyone respects mine” (Davis & Rigby, 2022, para. 6). Warren Entsch, Liberal Party member for the division of Leichhardt in Cairns, has stated in parliament that calls for the statue’s removal “is just another example of a noisy few trying to whitewash and rewrite our history with their change-culture mentality” (in OpenAustrlia, 2020, para. 1). He goes on to claim that the same people “conveniently forget or simply do not know the history of Cook’s 1770 scientific voyage” (para. 2). Entsch’s characterisation of Cook’s voyage as “scientific”, however, exposes his own ignorance through his failure to acknowledge the secret mission assigned to Cook to colonise the land. As Kate Fullagar (2021, para. 19), Professor of History at the Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences at Australian Catholic University, observes, “whether deliberate or not, histories of the voyages’ scientific enquiries often sanitise Cook by focusing on the sheer volume of the gains, rather than on their decidedly western metric, methods, or effects”. Such characterisations also discount the pre-existing knowledge systems and ‘native science’ (Cajete, 2000) that predates European arrival.

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Monuments and Contested Place Objections to the removal of colonial monuments are often based on the misguided notion that, through their dismantlement, aspects of Australian history will become threatened by a racial divide that severs an otherwise unified nation (Carlson & Farrelly, 2022a, 2022b). Terms such as ‘Australian History’ are synonymous with whiteness and acts of possession, while ‘division’ is framed through a fear of losing white supremacy and the power to define and control narratives of inclusion and exclusion (Moreton-Robinson, 2007, 2015b). This is an ironic standpoint considering that colonial structures and Western epistemologies have contributed to archival silences (Attwood, 2017; Piggott, 2021) and a forgetting described as white ‘amnesia’ (Birch, 1997; Healy, 1997, 2008), which has contributed to the continuation of what Stanner (2011) called the “Great Australian Silence” in 1968. Mark McKenna (2016, p. 176) has argued that “no matter how much our present-day sensibilities might wish to ‘move on’ from histories of violence and oppression, it remains a perpetual obligation to remember the way in which the land was conquered”. Colonial monuments rarely acknowledge this history and have therefore become sites where contested readings of history come to a head. In response to what has become publicly known as the ‘cancel culture’ movement, former Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton has stated, “I don’t think ripping pages out of history books and brushing over parts of history you don’t agree with, or you don’t like is really something the Australian public is going to embrace” (Rouse, 2020). Reductionist attitudes such as these represent ongoing national debates over what content should be taught within the national curriculum, from whose perspective it should be positioned and the role of critical race theory in exposing how racism is socially acquired, taught and maintained (Bargallie, 2020; Moreton-Robinson, 2004b, 2016). Dutton’s view on the need to ‘embrace’ history as historical archives (Piggott, 2021) is selective and biased towards Eurocentric authorship. Monuments that acknowledge the massacres and atrocities inflicted on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are rare. When such occurrences were acknowledged and addressed in historic accounts, they were often subverted through language such as ‘dispersal’, ‘civilising’, ‘pacifying’ and ‘protecting’, which were all too often synonymous with massacres and other violent acts inflicted on Indigenous people (Attwood, 2017, p.  27). These are the narratives that are ‘brushed over’, resisted within history books and are widely unembraced by the Australian public (Maynard, 2017; McKenna, 2002). European readings of history are based on notions of measurable and linear time; Aboriginal histories on the other hand are place-based and in a continuing state of emergence (Healy, 1991; Memmott & Long, 2002). For Aboriginal people, history is embedded in place/country. It is maintained through responsibilities to care for and nurture the lands, seas and beings within it, passing on memories and oral histories from generation to generation (Morgan, 2008; Rose, 2000). As place-based accounts are rooted in living memory, Indigenous

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histories remain eternal with stories transforming over time in accordance with contemporary experiences and interactions. Historian Steven Muecke (2008, p. 37) has argued that readings of history should not place “time as a founding methodological concept”, suggesting that history needs to transcend time and the culture-nature divide reflected in Western epistemologies. Monuments, such as statues of Cook, and events, such as colonial re-enactments, are not bridges linking the past to the present but rather are emerging and lived representations of a past that is both continuous and adaptive to the present. Through epistemic understandings of historical objectivity, European accounts of history are compartmentalised and often envisioned as fixed events rooted in the past (Wolfe, 1999). Through their perceived objectivity, dominant historical representations may be easily distorted, romanticised and fabricated, as they take a form as an imagined replication of the past, rather than a lived transmission of it. Anthropologist and historian Patrick Wolfe (1999) argues that colonialism is a structural process that flows through space and time and cannot be reduced to a singular event or regime. Colonial monuments and re-enactments do not merely represent history but reiterate an embodied coloniality that maintains the delusion that Cook accomplished his secret directive of possessing the Southern Continent peacefully and with the “consent of the natives” (Elias et al., 2021; Moreton-Robinson, 2009). Monuments help portray historical narratives that ensure citizens imagine themselves as members of a ‘moral community’ worthy of celebrating (Attwood, 2017, p. 29). As Indigenous people did not consent to their own dispossession, Cook had to reconcile his mission through other means. Goenpul and Quandamooka scholar, Distinguished Professor Aileen Moreton-Robinson (2007, 2009) has argued that this was primarily through possessing the land, while simultaneously demonstrating the native’s inability to value European material possessions and understand concepts of private property and ownership. This was demonstrated to Cook by the Guugu Yimithirr’s lack of interest in the items he gifted them (McKenna, 2016). Moreton-Robinson (2007, p. 30) reflects that for “Cook to be able to take possession of the east coast of Australia within the consent of the ‘natives’ means he has to position Aboriginal people as will-less things in order to take their land in the name of the King”. Professor of History at Monash University, Bain Attwood (2017, p. 25) describes the dilemma of taking legal possession of land already occupied as necessitating acts of “disavowal” which “acknowledged Aboriginal people were the original people of the land only to argue that they were not actually in possession of it”. Maria Nugent’s (2015) analysis of colonial re-enactments of Cook’s landing in Kurnell demonstrates how, through performance, non-Indigenous actors simultaneously aim to recreate the past while revising and reconciling history for white sensibilities (see also Gapps, 2002). Indigenous actors play a supporting role within this narrative—colonisation undoubtedly took place on their country—but they are not its lead, for the modern nation is envisioned as being built because of Europeans achieving what Indigenous people were thought incapable of doing, possessing country. Monuments of Cook stand as

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mythologised falsehoods that propagate narratives of ‘will-less’ Indigenous people and wilful colonisers who took possession and made use of the land to build a nation. In other words, monuments are ways of disciplining racialised white populations “to invest in the nation as a white possession that imbues them with a sense of belonging and ownership” (Moreton-Robinson, 2007, p. 39). Indigenous epistemologies provide frameworks through which we can re-­ envision how history is discussed and engaged with in national discourses (Fredericks, 2009a; Moreton-Robinson, 2016). Statues of Cook may easily topple, but the pages of the history will forever remain. Arguments such as Dutton’s (in Rouse, 2020), which suggest that by tearing down these monuments aspects of Australian history will be denied, or that the “parts of history you don’t agree with” will be avoided, are misguided. To encounter the memory and legacy of Cook, all one must do is look at the surrounding built and social environment. This is particularly made explicit in  locations such as Cooktown. Acts such as toppling a statue, cooking a steak on a plaque or hanging a sign over Cook’s neck that reads “Sorry” are seen as threatening as they directly contest accounts of history removed from their oppressive colonial context. Through acts of protest, activists are reiterating how colonial monuments exist within contested spaces, hence making a more astute depiction of a living history and unresolved relations. Re-enactments such as the performance of Cook arriving at Cooktown, which are now equally organised, negotiated and constructed with Aboriginal collaborators, situate a history shared amongst Indigenous and non-­Indigenous people. By embedding Indigenous perspectives and understandings of historic occurrences, colonial accounts become nuanced and reflective of a pluralistic intercultural border zone. In reference to such re-enactments, Ward (2020, p. 18) observes: Each time the performance is held it is refined, and the moments that resonate most in the present are emphasised and changed. The performance is not so much about how historically accurate the re-enactment is; it is about what the performers choose to remember, how they remember, and what is produced that allows a process of reconciliation of the past to occur.

Toppling statues of and monuments to Cook has less to do with his role as a historical figure, or the attempt to deny, reverse or silence his contribution to Australia’s colonial history. Rather, these acts are concerned with the way historical narratives are presented or, more importantly, what is negated in them. As we discuss in the final section, re-enactments of historical events can aid dominant white colonial structures, but also have the potential to contest their authority. Through organising and co-designing colonial re-enactments, a new historical dialogue has opened, which is representative of a cultural interface and reflective of the complexities of living within ongoing settler-colonial environments.

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Recollecting, Recreating and Redefining Reconciliation Colonial re-enactments relating to Cook primarily centre on his arrival on Dharawal country, or what is now also known as Botany Bay. Like many other settler-colonial nations, Australia continues a long tradition of fantasied re-­ enactments that celebrate Cook and colonialism as symbols of so-called progress, modernity and nation-building (Healy, 1997). The 1970 bicentennial re-enactments of Cook’s arrival on the Endeavour, which was staged for television, took place at Botany Bay, and was witnessed by an estimated 50,000 people who lined Sydney’s shores (Ward, 2019, p.  10). It was presented as symbolising the “birth of modern Australia”. During the same time, Cooktown held its own celebrations of Cook’s arrival on Guugu Yimithirr country. Both were attended by Queen Elizabeth II (Schlunke, 2015). The bicentennial celebrations were accompanied by the motto declaring “200 years of progress” (Ward, 2019, p.  7). Over 50  years later, similar attitudes that frame Cook’s arrival as the inception of nation-budling continue, with the then Prime Minister Scott Morrison stating that Cook’s voyage “is the reason Australia is what it is today and it’s important we take the opportunity to reflect on it” (Prime Minister of Australia, 2019, para. 6). While true that colonisation has in part helped define Australia, to suggest that it is the singular reason for its wealth and prosperity is to discount the more than 65,000  years of the Aboriginal cultures that predates it. It also veils the slavery, oppression, dispossession and dehumanisation of Indigenous peoples on which ‘prosperity’ was built. Cook’s arrival is shared history, but while it may serve as an origin story for many white Australians, for Indigenous people it is but a drop in the ocean. Celebrations, re-enactments and commemorations of Cook’s arrival have regularly been met by protest from Aboriginal and Torres Strait peoples who see the occasion not as the birth of a nation but as a Day of Mourning (Schlunke, 2015; Ward, 2019). In 1970, this was expressed through acts such as releasing funeral wreaths into Sydney Harbour and conducting silent vigils throughout the nation (Darian-Smith & Schlunke, 2020). Similar celebrations and objections occurred in Cooktown when Queen Elizabeth II visited and greeted local children as they waved the Australian flag and the Union Jack. Since 1960, the Cooktown Re-enactment Committee has organised and recreated Cook’s landing at Waymburr with 30 members of the public dressing in period clothing and rowing to shore on whaleboats to recreate interactions between Cook’s crew and Guugu Yimithirr (Gapps, 2011; Ward, 2020). The Cooktown and Cape York Expo where the re-enactments take place is a 10-day event focusing on celebration, reconciliation and regional economic renewal (Cooktown & Cape York Expo, 2021). While monuments throughout North Queensland often emphasise Eurocentric readings of Australia’s colonial history, the event organisers have made a conscious effort to situate the celebration within an Indigenous context, “without debating Indigenous authenticity” (Cooktown & Cape York Expo, 2021). Acknowledging the impact of colonisation, organisers changed the event’s name in 2020 from “Cooktown Discovery

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Festival” (TropicNow, 2020). Event organisers have primarily used Guugu Yimithirr language on their website, with colonial European names being complementary. The Expo seeks to emphasise a shared history that celebrates acts of reconciliation such as that which occurred between Cook and the Guugu Yimithirr people. Over the course of the 48 days that the Endeavour was being repaired at Waymburr, the Guugu Yimithirr met with the colonisers on six occasions where they exchanged gifts and engaged in what were described as relatively amicable interactions (National Trust, 2014). When Cook and his crew caught 12 turtles from sacred waters in which hunting was forbidden, an altercation between the two parties arose. Cook and his crew were unaware that hunting was forbidden in the area. This restriction was in place so that turtles could breed and rejuvenate for the following season. When several Guugu Yimithirr people saw the turtles on the Endeavour, they attempted (unsuccessfully) to release the maarmingu females back into the water (Toovey & Alexander, 2020). In a conscious decision to retaliate through destroying the possessions of the outsiders, the Bubu Gujin, a local Guugu Yimithirr clan group, set fire to Cook’s camp (Moreton-Robinson, 2007). The fire naturally caused some anxiety among the crew who responded by firing their muskets (Moore, 2019). After several warning shots, an Aboriginal man was hit, and the altercation intensified. The Bubu Gujin later ‘smoked’ country by discarding the items Cook had gifted them and setting the surrounding grasses alight to cleanse country of the outsiders and restore balance (Moore, 2019, 2021). The location of the encampment is marked by Cooks Monument, a sandstone spire erected in 1887. The re-enactment tells the account of Yarrbarigu, an Guugu Yimithirr Elder—simply known in Banks’ journal as the ‘Little Old Man’ (Toovey & Alexander, 2020)—who laid down his lance and approached Cook during their conflict. Upon seeing that Yarrbarigu posed no threat, Cook returned the spearheads he had previously taken from the Guugu Yimithirr people. This exchange, which for the Guugu Yimithirr was a component of a peace-making ceremony known as ngalangundaama (McKenna, 2016, p. 205), was rightly interpreted by Cook as a form of agreement between the two parties and ultimately prevented further conflict between the Guugu Yimithirr and the colonisers (Kim & Stephen, 2020). Guugu Yimithirr and other Bama (Aboriginal people) of Cooktown and the surrounding countries continue to share stories of Yarrbarigu’s efforts, which ultimately ensured those who were thought to be mere visitors were welcomed and protected while on their country (Moore, 2019, 2021). Although offered as an example of what Cook acknowledged as an act that ‘reconciled tensions’ (National Museum Australia, 2021a), the story should not be misconstrued as a narrative of white benevolence, atonement or real agreement (Nugent, 2015). It may simply have been a form of communication and action undertaken to avoid further conflict from both Cook and the Guugu Yimithirr people. Cook’s decision to refrain from killing any Indigenous people, as he had done to Aboriginal populations at Botany Bay (FitzSimons,

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2019), and Indigenous peoples elsewhere (Obeyesekere, 1997), should not be praised as a compassionate act. As Nugent (2015, p.  194) observes, re-­ enactments of colonisation often attempt to “re-script the story as a cross-­ cultural conciliation event” in which Cook’s role in Australia’s colonisation is turned into “a gesture of peacemaking”. While some Indigenous people acknowledge Cook’s bravery and leadership, this cannot be detached from an oppressing colonising regime in which “he was the leader of a genocidal colonizing force that brought great trouble to this land” (McBride & Smith, 2019, p. 17). The Guugu Yimithirr people never granted Cook and his crew consent to possess the land, nor the turtles that sparked the initial conflict. Some have observed the serendipity of Cook arriving on land that for the Guugu Yimithirr was an area of country reserved for meetings and conflict resolution (Jacobsen, 2018; Ward, 2020). It was ground where blood could not be spilt (McKenna, 2016, p. 202). If the Endeavour had docked just a few kilometres either direction, Cook’s, the Guugu Yimithirr’s and Australia’s fate may have been very different. It is important to note that it was Guugu Yimithirr people who initiated acts of diplomacy, performing ngalangundaama and bringing peace for the good of all. The rocks where the event took place are now heritage listed and known as Reconciliation Rocks (Toovey & Alexander, 2020). The fact that such an interaction occurred at this specific site of cultural importance cannot be written out of the narrative. The role of place, which is equally embedded within the cultures of Aboriginal people, must be acknowledged as a contributing agent that led towards this act of reconciliation (Memmott & Long, 2002). The interaction is now celebrated by some sectors of the population as the first example of ‘reconciliation in Australia’ (Moore, 2021; Toovey & Alexander, 2020). Situating the event within an Aboriginal context challenges the power dynamics, supremacy and benevolence that are often attributed to colonisers within dominant historical records. It was Aboriginal systems of governance and Indigenous agency and leadership that resulted in the peaceful outcome for Cook, his crew and the Guugu Yimithirr people. Alberta Hornsby has praised Guugu Yimithirr diplomacy, stating that there is much to learn about how to approach reconciliation through this exchange (in Ward, 2020, p. 11). Hornsby (in McKenna, 2016, p. 206) writes: This is a really outstanding story of the extent that Aboriginal people go through today to extend that peace to others they share this country with. This visit of Cook is a very important part of our community history. It paved the way for this nation we now call Australia. It’s good that we celebrate this history because there’s such a lot in the story that we can learn from. The interaction between Cook and our Bama, we’re still giving that interaction today.

The re-enactment performed in Cooktown today remains meaningful to some Aboriginal residents who view it as an opportunity to both celebrate their

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local community and encourage intercultural understandings between Aboriginal and non-Indigenous peoples (McKenna, 2016). Sharnie Kim and Adam Stephen (2020), journalists for ABC Far-North, document how, for some community members such as Hornsby, Cook’s interactions with the Guugu Yimithirr and other Aboriginal people are empowering, servicing as a testament to the strength, diplomacy and leadership of Aboriginal people (Kim & Stephen, 2020). While Eurocentric narratives of first contact and colonial interactions are often distorted, the re-enactments in Cooktown are one way through which historical accounts can be told from Aboriginal perspectives. They enable a narrative and agency that is often silenced, narratives of Indigenous humanity and goodwill despite the cultural ignorance and insensitivity of invading outsiders (Veth et al., 2008). It continues traditions of oral history embedded in place (Healy, 1991) while positioning stories in the present and emphasising their continuation. Like the actions of Yarrbarigu over 250 years ago, it is Indigenous people who remain at the forefront of driving intercultural understanding and conciliation.

Conclusion Reconciliation between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and the more recent non-Indigenous arrivals to Australia continues to be debated within regional and national dialogues. This has particularly been the case in relation to the recent reprisal (but by no means new) BLM and Black Deaths in Custody movements, as well as adjoining dialogues relating to the so-called history wars and cancel culture movements. Opinions of what ‘reconciliation’ is, its value and what it should entail vary from it being a process of genuine intercultural exchanges that result in healing; a tokenistic gesture that fails to enact meaningful accountability and change; or the outright refusal and/or denial that there is anything that requires conciliation in the first place. As we have discussed throughout this chapter, public monuments, statues, re-enactments and memorabilia corresponding to Captain James Cook, and the subsequent arrival of European colonisers, are interlocked with discussions of national identity, the place of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and reconciliation. In a settler society that is still attempting to confront its colonial past, we are left questioning: How monumental is Cook, and what place should he hold in the national imaginary? For many Indigenous people, monuments celebrating Cook re-assert colonial narratives of white possession through the attempted erasure of Indigenous voices, histories and bodies. This ultimately decontextualises narratives of settler-­colonialism from Indigenous ontologies and standpoints. Debates concerning the morality of James Cook—was he a plenipotentiary, pioneer, or pirate?—do have their place in national conversations. The monuments that celebrate his existence, however, have less to do with judgements of Cook’s biography and are more concerned with the oppressive colonial regime he

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symbolises and the ongoing pursuit of justification for the possession of Indigenous land and the dehumanisation of Indigenous people. In response, activists are demanding wider recognition for what has been undisputedly known since time immemorial: that prior to, during and after Cook’s arrival, the lands and seas now shared with non-Indigenous peoples were and remain Indigenous country flourishing with places imbued with living memory and knowledge. Despite their stature, statues of Cook, such as the one on Sheridan Street in Cairns, symbolise a desperate colonial attempt to retain a grasp of something that is forever slipping through one’s fingers, that is, the idea that the colonisation of Australia was a peaceful, lawful, legitimate and uncontested act. The myth of terra nullius and the white Australian origin story represented in monuments and the seemingly indestructible materials from which they are moulded, can easily disintegrate through their toppling or via simple acts of resistance such as hanging a sign that reads “Sorry”. While some activists have called for the removal of colonial monuments, the re-enactment of Guugu Yimithirr people’s interactions with Cook (as opposed to Cook’s interactions with ‘the Indians’) demonstrates that history can be positioned within Indigenous frameworks and retain meaning for both Indigenous and non-Indigenous people. If historical monuments and re-­ enactments are taken as performative acts of ‘world-making’, we must consider a new normal (Fredericks & Bradfield, 2020) and envision what kind of world we wish to live in. How might historical narratives better represent shared histories that are equally informed by Indigenous agencies and worldviews? Only through listening to and reflecting the voices and authorship of those whose cultures and traditions have and continue to shape the places of our shared existence may we begin to engage in acts of conciliation like those initiated by the Guugu Yimithirr some 250 years ago.

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Australian Bureau of Statistics. (2020a). 2016 Census QuickStats: Cairns. https:// quickstats.censusdata.abs.gov.au/census_services/getproduct/census/2016/ quickstat/306 Australian Bureau of Statistics. (2020b). 2016 Census QuickStats: Cookrown. https:// quickstats.censusdata.abs.gov.au/census_services/getproduct/census/2016/ quickstat/SSC30680 Babidge, S. (2015). “Who belongs in the nation?” Courting Blakness recalibrating knowledge in the sandstone university. In F.  Foley, L.  Martin-Chew, & F.  Nicoll (Eds.), Courting blakness: Recalibrating knowledge in the sandstone university (pp. 112–117). UQP. Bakeet, I. (2020). Petition: Save the Captain Cook statue in Cairns. https:// www.change.org/p/cairns-­r egional-­c ouncil-­s ave-­t he-­c aptain-­c ook-­s tatue­i n-­c airns?recruiter=1068160612&utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium= twitter&utm_campaign=psf_combo_share_message&utm_term=psf_combo_share_ initial&recruited_by_id=0c1c3540-­734e-­11ea-­bce1-­2be6762c3129&share_bandit_ exp=message-­22850101-­en-­AU Bargallie, D. (2020). Unmasking the racial contract: Indigenous voices on racism in the Australian Public Service. Aboriginal Studies Press. Bateman, D. (2017, January 26). Captain Cook statue vandalised in apparent protest against Australia Day. The Cairns Post. https://global-­factiva-­com.ezproxy.library. uq.edu.au/redir/default.aspx?P=sa&an=CAIRPO0020170126ed1r0000j& cat=a&ep=ASE Beetson, B. (2017). Exploring Aboriginal identity through self-portraiture. Thesis, Doctor of Visual Arts, Queensland College of Art. https://research-­repository. griffith.edu.au/handle/10072/376769 Behrendt, L. (1995). Aboriginal urban identity: Preserving the spirit, protecting the traditional in non-traditional settings. Australian Feminist Law Journal, 4(1), 55–61. Bhabha, H. K. (2012). The location of culture. Routledge. Birch, T. (1997). “Black armbands and white veils”: John Howard’s moral amnesia. Melbourne Historical Journal, 25(1), 8–16. Birch, T. (2021, 14 January ). Do monuments hold any value? Indigenous X. Retrieved from https://indigenousx.com.au/do-monuments-hold-any-value/ Bourke, J. (2021, September 22). In Cook’s wake: Retracing the master navigator’s endeavours in Queensland. The Australian. https://www.theaustralian.com.au/ travel/in-­the-­wake-­of-­captain-­cooks-­east-­coast-­voyage-­in-­queensland/news-­story/ 6d5af3b0a61492141e59595d2140c2a2 Bowles, A. (2021, December 16). Cairns’ Captain Cook statue to move to ‘appropriate’ location, public submissions to open. TropicNow. https://www.tropicnow.com. au/2021/december/16/cairns-­captain-­cook-­statue-­to-­r elocate-­to-­appropriate­location-­public-­submissions-­to-­open Bowles, A. (2022, March 18). Cairns man says he’ll restore Captain Cook statue to ‘former glory’ after token $1 sale. TropicNow. https://www.tropicnow.com. au/2022/march/18/cairns-­man-­says-­hell-­restore-­captain-­cook-­statue-­to-­former-­ glory-­after-­token-­1-­sale Bradfield, A. (2019). Decolonizing the intercultural: A call for decolonizing consciousness in settler-colonial Australia. Religions, 10(8), 469. https://doi.org/10.3390/ rel10080469 Branagan, M. (2007). Activism and the power of humour. Australian Journal of Communication, 34(1), 41–54.

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Bruner, J. (2004). Life as narrative. Social Research: An International Quarterly, 71(3), 691–710. Butler, K. (2000). Overcoming Terra Nullius: Aboriginal perspectives in schools as a site of philosophical struggle. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 32(1), 93–101. Byrne, C., Dooley, T., Manne, T., Paterson, A., & Dotte-Sarout, E. (2020). Island survival: The anthracological and archaeofaunal evidence for colonial-era events on Barrow Island, north-west Australia. Archaeology in Oceania, 55(1), 15–32. https:// doi.org/10.1002/arco.5202 Cajete, G. (2000). Native science: Natural laws of interdependence (1st ed.). Clear Light Publishers. Calcino, C. (2022, January 28). Protesters target Cook statue. Cairns Post. https:// global-­factiva-­com.ezproxy.library.uq.edu.au/redir/default.aspx?P=sa&an=CAIR PO0020220127ei1s0000o&cat=a&ep=ASE Carlson, B., & Farrelly, T. (2022a). Monumental upheavals: Unsettled fates of the Captain Cook statue and other colonial monuments in Australia. Thesis Eleven. https://doi.org/10.1177/07255136211069416 Carlson, B., & Farrelly, T. (2022b). Monumental changes: History isn’t always written by the victors. From the European South, 10(2022), 11–24. https://www.fesjournal. eu/numeri/aftermaths-­v ulnerable-­t imes-­v anishing-­p laces-­t oxic-­e rasures/ #monumental-­changes-­history-­isnt-­always-­written-­by-­the-­victors_551 Cook Shire Council. (2015). Cook’s landing—Fast facts. http://www.cooktownandcapeyork.com/do/history/cookslanding Cooktown & Cape York Expo. (2021). Cooktown & Cape York Expo. https://cooktownexpo.com.au/ Cottier, P. (2018). Tuesday poem: The worst statue in Australia? https://pscottier. com/2018/02/26/tuesday-­poem-­the-­worst-­statue-­in-­australia/ Darian-Smith, K., & Schlunke, K. (2020, April 29). Cooking the books: How re-­ enactments of the Endeavour’s voyage perpetuate myths of Australia’s ‘discovery’. The Conversation. https://theconversation.com/cooking-­the-­books-­how-­re-­ enactments-­o f-­t he-­e ndeavours-­v oyage-­p erpetuate-­m yths-­o f-­a ustralias-­ discovery-­126751 DATSIP—Department of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Partnersips. (2021). Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultural heritage database and register. https:// culturalheritage.datsip.qld.gov.au/achris/public/public-­registry/home Davis, S., & Rigby, M. (2022, March 18). Cairns’ gigantic Captain Cook statue purchased by demolition company owner. ABC News. https://www.abc.net.au/ news/2022-­03-­18/cairns-­captain-­cook-­statue-­finds-­new-­home/100918772 DeRosa, K. (2020, August 27). Vandalism of Cook statue raises questions about role of monuments: Historians. Times Colonist. https://www.timescolonist.com/ news/local/vandalism-­of-­cook-­statue-­raises-­questions-­about-­role-­of-­monuments-­ historians-­1.24193493 Dixon, R.  M. (2008). Australian Aboriginal words in dictionaries: A history. International Journal of Lexicography, 21(2), 129–152. Duncan, P. (2014). The role of Aboriginal humour in cultural survival and resistance. Thesis, Doctor pf Philosophy, School of English, Media Studies and Art History, University of Queensland. https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:345997 Elias, A., Mansouri, F., & Paradies, Y. (2021). Race relations in Australia: A brief history. In Racism in Australia Today (pp. 33–94). Springer.

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Elsom, J. (2021, February 4). Now statues of Captain Cook are targeted by Black Lives Matter campaigners in updated ‘hitlist’ of historical figures they want to see ‘toppled’. Daily Mail. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-­9221611/Now-­ statues-­Captain-­Cook-­targeted-­Black-­Lives-­Matter-­campaigners.html Evans, R. (2004). “Plenty shoot ‘em”: The destruction of Aboriginal societies along the Queensland frontier. In A.  D. Moses (Ed.), Genocide and settler society: Frontier violence and stolen indigenous children in Australian history (pp.  150–173). Berghahn Books. FitzSimons, P. (2019). James Cook: The story behind the man who mapped the world. Hachette Australia. Fredericks, B. (2004). Urban identity. Eureka Street, 14(10), 30–31. Fredericks, B. (2009a). The epistemology that maintains white race privilege, power and control of Indigenous studies and Indigenous peoples’ participation in universities. Critical Race and Whiteness Studies, 5(1), 1–12. Fredericks, B. (2009b). ‘There is nothing that identifies me to that place’: Indigenous women’s perceptions of health spaces and places [Paper in: Critical Indigenous Theory. Frow, John and Schlunke, Katrina (eds) [co-editor Moreton-Robinson, Aileen.]. Cultural Studies Review, 15(2), 29–44. https://doi.org/10.5130/csr. v15i2.2036 Fredericks, B. (2013). ‘We don’t leave our identities at the city limits’: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people living in urban localities. Australian Aboriginal Studies, (1), 4–16. Fredericks, B. (2020). Collaborative creative processes that challenge us as “anomaly”, and affirm our indigeneity and enact our sovereignty. M/C Journal, 23(5). https:// journal.media-­culture.org.au/index.php/mcjournal/article/view/1674 Fredericks, B., & Bradfield, A. (2020). We don’t want to go back to ‘normal’, when ‘normal’ wasn’t good for everyone. Axon, 10, 2. h t t p s : / / w w w. a x o n j o u r n a l . c o m . a u / i s s u e -­v o l -­1 0 -­n o -­2 -­d e c -­2 0 2 0 / we-­don-­t-­want-­go-­back-­normal-­when-­normal-­wasn-­t-­good-­everyone Fredericks, B., & Bradfield, A. (2021). Co-designing change: Discussing an Indigenous voice to parliament and constitutional reform in Australia. M/C Journal, 24(4). https://journal.media-­culture.org.au/index.php/mcjournal/article/view/2801 Fredriksson, M., & Arvanitakis, J. (2017). Introduction: Property, place and piracy. In J. Arvanitakis & M. Freriksson (Eds.), Property, place and piracy. Routledge. Fullagar, K. (2021). State of the field review essay remembering cook, again: The state of a mixed-media field. Australian Historical Studies, 1–21. https://doi.org/1 0.1080/1031461X.2021.1958879 Gapps, S. (2011). HMB endeavour in the tropics. Australian National Maritime Museum. Gapps, S. G. (2002). Performing the past: A cultural history of historical reenactments. Thesis, Doctor of Philosophy, University of Technology Sydney. https://opus.lib. uts.edu.au/handle/10453/20121 Gregory, J. (2021). Statue wars: Collective memory reshaping the past. History Australia, 18(3), 564–587. https://doi.org/10.1080/14490854.2021.1956333 Gupta, A., & Ferguson, J. (2008). Beyond ‘culture’: Space, identity, and the politics of difference. Routledge. Healy, C. (1991). ‘We know your mob now’: European and Aboriginal histories of Captain Cook. Oral History, 19(2), 27–33. http://www.jstor.org.ezproxy.library. uq.edu.au/stable/40179225 Healy, C. (1997). From the ruins of colonialism: History as social memory. CUP Archive.

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Healy, C. (2008). Forgetting aborigines. UNSW Press. Hokari, H. (2011). Gurindji Journey. University of NSW Press. Hollingsworth, E. (2021). Tear down the Captain Cook statue in Cairns! https://www. change.org/p/cairns-­regional-­council-­tear-­down-­the-­captain-­cook-­statue-­in-­cairns Hopkins-Weise, J. (2002). Pacific Islander involvement in the pastoral industry of the Gulf of Carpentaria. Journal of the Royal Australian Historical Society, 88(1), 36–53. Jacobsen, D. (2018). Aboriginal domestic tourism leadership towards reconciliation in Australia. Journal of Geographical Research, 1(1). https://doi.org/10.30564/ jgr.v1i1.399 Jess, Y. (1878). Recent journey of exploration across the continent of Australia: Its deserts, native races, and natural history. Journal of the American Geographical Society of New York, 10, 116–141. https://doi.org/10.2307/196436 Joyce, R.  B. (2006). Biography—Sir William Wellington Cairns—Australian Dictionary of Biography. https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/cairns-­sir-­william­wellington-­3141 Kearney, A., & Bradley, J. J. (2009). ‘Too strong to ever not be there’: Place names and emotional geographies. Social & Cultural Geography, 10(1), 77–94. Kim, S., & Stephen, A. (2020, June 19). Cooktown’s Indigenous people help commemorate 250 years since Captain Cook’s landing with re-enactment. ABC Far North. abc.net.au/news/2020-­06-­19/cooktown-­indigenous-­commemorate­captain-­cook-­250th-­anniversary/12363526 Lefebvre, H. (1991). The production of space (Vol. 142). Oxford Blackwell. Lindsey, K., & Smith, M. (2021). Setting the scene. Public History Review, 28, 1–17. Maynard, J. (2017). Genocide by any other name. In Genocide perspectives V: A global crime, Australian voices (pp. 47–54). UTS ePress. McBride, L., & Smith, M. (2019). First Nations community consultation report. Sydney: Australian Museum. McDowell, L. (1999). Gender, identity and place: Understanding feminist geographies. University of Minnesota Press. McKenna, M. (2002). Looking for Blackfellas’ Point: An Australian history of place. UNSW Press. McKenna, M. (2016). From the edge: Australia’s lost histories. Melbourne University Publishing. McKenna, M. (2018). Quarterly essay 69 Moment of truth: History and Australia’s future 69. Black Inc. Memmott, P., & Long, S. (2002). Place theory and place maintenance in Indigenous Australia. Urban Policy and Research, 20(1), 39–56. Mignolo, W. (2002). The many faces of cosmo-polis: Border thinking and critical cosmopolitanism. Duke University Press. Moore, T. (2019, November 28). How turtles almost sparked a war with Captain Cook. Brisbane Times. https://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/national/queensland/how-­ turtles-­almost-­sparked-­a-­war-­with-­captain-­cook-­20191128-­p53f6d.html Moore, T. (2021, June 4). First act of reconciliation between Indigenous Australians and Cook recognised. The Sydney Morning Herald. https://www.smh.com.au/environment/conservation/first-­act-­of-­reconciliation-­between-­indigenous-­australians-­ and-­cook-­recognised-­20210604-­p57y3p.html Moreton-Robinson, A. (2004a). Whiteness, epistemology and Indigenous representation. In Whitening race: Essays in social and cultural criticism (Vol. 1, pp. 75–88). Aboriginal Studies Press.

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Moreton-Robinson, A. (2004b). Whitening race: Essays in social and cultural criticism. Aboriginal Studies Press. Moreton-Robinson, A. (2007). Sovereign subjects: Indigenous sovereignty matters. Allen & Unwin. Moreton-Robinson, A. (2009). White possession: The legacy of Cook’s choice. In Imagined Australia: Reflections around the reciprocal constructions of identity between Australia and Europe (pp. 27–42). Peter Lang Publishing. Moreton-Robinson, A. (2015a). Bodies that matter on the beach. In A.  Moreton-­ Robinson (Ed.), The white possessive: Property, power, and Indigenous sovereignty (pp. 33–46). University of Minnesota Press. Moreton-Robinson, A. (2015b). The white possessive: Property, power, and Indigenous sovereignty. University of Minnesota Press. Moreton-Robinson, A. (2016). Critical Indigenous studies: Engagements in first world locations. The University of Arizona Press. Moreton-Robinson, A. (2021, October 22). Place names, monuments and cannibalism: James Cook and the possessive logics of patriarchal white sovereignty, AIIS Sperker Series, Cornell University. Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=5L_QMLWcE5k Moreton-Robinson, A. (2022). Monuments, place names and Black Lives Matter: Memorialising Captain James Cook. Legalities, 2(1), 67–81. Moreton-Robinson, A., & Nicoll, F. (2006). We shall fight them on the beaches: Protesting cultures of white possession. Journal of Australian Studies, 30(89), 149–160. Morgan, B. (2008). Country—A journey to cultural and spiritual healing. In S. Morgan, T.  Mia, & B.  Kwaymullina (Eds.), Heartsick for country: Stories of love, spirit and creation (pp. 201–220). Freemantle Press. Muecke, S. (2008). A touching and contagious Captain Cook: Thinking history through things, 14. UTS ePress. National Gallery of Australia. (2021). Defying Empire. https://nga.gov.au/defyingempire/artists.cfm?artistirn=37727 National Museum Australia. (2021a). Cook’s Journal. https://www.nma.gov.au/exhibitions/endeavour-­voyage/cooks-­journal National Museum Australia. (2021b). Recasting Cook. https://www.nma.gov.au/ exhibitions/endeavour-­voyage/recasting-­cook National Trust. (2014). James Cook, the Endeavour River and Cooktown. https:// web.archive.org/web/20150128113418/http:/www.nationaltrust.org.au/qld/ JamesCooktheEndeavourRiverandCooktown Neale, M. (2008). ‘Out-of-country’: Too many Cooks spoilt the broth. In Strangers on the shore: Early coastal contacts in Australia (pp.  68–80). National Museum of Australia Press. Nugent, M. (2009). Captain Cook was here. Cambridge University Press. Nugent, M. (2015). “An Echo of That Other Cry”: Re-enacting Captain Cook’s first landing as conciliation event. In K. Darian-Smith & P. Edmonds (Eds.), Conciliation on colonial frontiers (pp. 193–209). Routledge. Oakes, T. (1997). Place and the paradox of modernity. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 87(3), 509–531. Obeyesekere, G. (1997). The apotheosis of Captain Cook: European mythmaking in the Pacific. Princeton University Press.

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OpenAustrlia. (2020). Cairns: Captain Cook statue: 17 Jun 2020: House debates. https://www.openaustralia.org.au/debates/?id=2020-­06-­17.57.1 Pearson, N. (1998). Guugu Yimidhirr history: Hope Vale Lutheran. In J. Kociumbas (Ed.), Maps, dreams, history: Race and representation in Australia (pp. 131–236). Department of History, University of Sydney. Pearson, N. (2011). Up from the mission: Selected writings. Black Inc Pearson, N. (2017). Up from the mission. Black Inc. Piggott, M. (2021). What are silences?: The Australian example. In Archival silences (pp. 26–53). Routledge. Prime Minister of Australia. (2019, January 22). Honouring Captain James Cook’s voyage [Media Release]. https://www.pm.gov.au/media/honouring-­captain-­james-­ cooks-­voyage Queensland Government. (2016). Cooks Monument and Reserve. https://apps.des. qld.gov.au/heritage-­register/detail/?id=601044 Rigby, M. (2020, June 17). Cairns historian reveals origin of roadside Captain Cook statue’s ‘Nazi salute’. ABC Far North. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-­06-­17/ cairns-­captain-­cook-­statue-­origin-­records/12363260 Rose, D. B. (1992). Dingo makes us human: Life and land in an Australian Aboriginal culture. Cambridge University Press. Rose, D. B. (2000). Dingo makes us human: Life and land in an Australian Aboriginal culture. CUP Archive. Rose, D.  B. (2001). The saga of Captain Cook: Remembrance and morality. In B. Attwood & F. Magowan (Eds.), Telling stories: Indigenous history and memory in Australia and New Zealand (pp. 61–80). Corows Nest: Allen and Unwin. Rouse, A. (2020, June 16). More than 12,000 Australians call for Captain Cook statue to be TORN DOWN over his links to ‘colonialism and genocide’. Daily Mail. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-­8424545/Thousands-­call-­Captain-­ Cook-­statue-­REMOVED-­links-­colonialism-­genocide.html Schlunke, K. (2015). Entertaining possession: Re-enacting Cook’s arrival for the Queen 1. In Conciliation on colonial frontiers (pp. 227–242). Routledge. Smith, L. T. (2012). Decolonizing methodologies: Research and indigenous peoples (2nd ed.). Zed Books; Otago University Press. Somerville, M.  J. (2010). A place pedagogy for ‘global contemporaneity’. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 42(3), 326–344. https://doi. org/10.1111/j.1469-­5812.2008.00423.x Stanner, W. (2011). The dreaming and other essays, 16. ReadHowYouWant.com. Stevens, K. (2019, March 1). Aboriginal man ‘tore the plaque off a Captain Cook statue and used it to barbecue a steak on Australia Day before cleaning it and putting it back’. Daily Mail. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-­6758825/ Aboriginal-­t ore-­p laque-­C aptain-­C ook-­s tatue-­b arbecue-­A ustralia-­D ay-­ faces-­court.html Toovey, T., & Alexander, J. (2020). Reconciliation rocks, Cooktown: A site of unique significance. Signals, (131), 50–53. TropicNow. (2020). Cooktown Festival gets new name and focus. https://www.tropicnow.com.au/2020/june/18/cooktown-­festival-­gets-­new-­name-­and-­focus Turnbull, P. (2010, October 13). James Cook’s hundred days in Queensland. Queensland Historical Atlas. https://www.qhatlas.com.au/content/ james-­cook%E2%80%99s-­hundred-­days-­queensland

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Veth, P., Sutton, P., & Neale, M. (2008). Strangers on the shore: Early coastal contacts in Australia. National Museum of Australia Press. Ward, C. (2019). Captain Cook: A catalyst for contestation. https://historycouncilnsw.org.au/wp-­content/uploads/2019/09/Charlotte-­Ward_Copy-­of-­Captain-­ Cook_-­A-­Catalyst-­for-­Contestation.docx-­1.pdf Ward, C. (2020). Reconciling his history: How revisiting the memory of Cook’s visit facilitated a process of reconciliation within the Cooktown community from 1998 to 2019. Aboriginal History, 44. Warren, E. (2021). Land secured for Cairns university hospital project. https://www. warrenentsch.com.au/land-­secured-­for-­cairns-­university-­hospital-­project/ Wolfe, P. (1999). Settler colonialism and the transformation of anthropology: The politics and poetics of an ethnographic event. Cassell. Wolfe, P. (2006). Settler colonialism and the elimination of the native. Journal of Genocide Research, 8(4), 387–409. https://doi.org/10.1080/14623520601056240 Yeats, C. (2021). Should they stay or should they go? Public History Review, 28, 152–156.

CHAPTER 20

Futuring Ruins: The Grassroots Design Activism of the Department of Homo Affairs Clare M. Cooper

Introduction We must make just and liberated futures irresistible. We are all the protagonists of what might be called the great turning, the change, the new economy, the new world. And I think it is healing behavior, to look at something so broken and see the possibility and wholeness in it. (brown, 2017, p. 19)

Grassroots collectives in marginalised communities engage in futuring1 other ways of being together beyond violent regimes through stories, art, music and design activism to confront symbols of dominion and white supremacy. This public futuring practice invites us in to consider alternative systems, visions and ways of celebrating difference that serve to counter feelings of hopelessness and build agency across movements that challenge the status quo. As an illustration of powerful grassroots design activism, this chapter focuses on the work of queer collective Department of Homo Affairs (DOHA), drawing particular attention to their work in resisting new monuments to dispossession and genocide. As a case study and exemplar of current, creative and iterative collective interventions emerging from fiery solidarity, urgency and friendship, this collective engages in multifaceted activism that engages 1

 See list of terms.

C. M. Cooper (*) University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW, Australia e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 B. Carlson, T. Farrelly (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook on Rethinking Colonial Commemorations, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-28609-4_20

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Image 20.1  Aunty Rhonda Dixon-Grovenor alongside her daughter, Nadeena Dixon, a Gadigal, Yuin, Wiradjuri artist and activist addressing the crowd at the Stop All Black Deaths in Custody rally at Belmore Park, 6 June 2020. (Photo used with permission from photographer Paul Gregoire and Aunty Rhonda Dixon-Grovenor)

humour, recoding state messaging and inviting others to participate in energised performative events that reframe state propaganda as anti-social justice futures. This ongoing research is inspired by the public statements of Gadigal, Bidjigal, Yuin Elder Aunty Rhonda Dixon-Grovenor and also heavily informed by three recent publications exploring emergent practices in activism: Joyful Militancy: Building Thriving Resistance in Toxic Times (2017) by Nick Montgomery and carla bergman, and Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds (2017) and Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good (2019) by adrienne maree brown (Image 20.1).2 Over the past three years, the call to action from Dixon-Grovenor at public gatherings on Gadigal lands for climate justice and against Black deaths in custody has been clear: we must work together, with love, to create a different future, a future where care for Country is at the heart of our decision-making, where “the truth is told and we’re all able to sit at the table together—listening to and respecting each other” (Gregoire, 2020b, para. 81). Dixon-Grovenor invites us to envision inspired and inspiring Indigenous leaders celebrated on their own lands in place of the violent colonial figures. This is not only an act 2  Both bergman and brown choose to publish their names in lowercase, which I have reflected in this paper.

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Image 20.2  DOHA’s FRAGILE sticker (front and back) handed out at the BLM rally in Djarrbarrgalli, 5 July 2020. (Author’s own photos, used with permission of DOHA)

of defiance, but an invitation to healing through public art and design. When interviewed regarding colonial statues on Gadigal lands, Dixon-Grovenor called for them to be replaced with statues of Aboriginal people (Image 20.2): It would just mean so much. [Indigenous people] could walk with their heads held up. …All around the world these racist statues are being pulled down because people are sick of it, they’re sick of this in-your-face racism. (Dixon-­ Grovenor, cited in ABC News, 2020, para. 13)

It was shortly after this call-to-action that DOHA designed and distributed fluorescent orange and black “FRAGILE” stickers at Black Lives Matter rallies, with “IF YOU SEE SOMETHING SAY SOMETHING!” stamped in black ink on the back above a prompt to visit the MonumentAustralia.org.au site.3 These stickers were seen on colonial statues and monuments all over Gadigal, Gweagal-Bidjigal and Dharawal lands—hi-vis indicators of a symbol on the brink of falling, yet to be a ruin, inevitable. This simple yet effective example of design activism is an incredibly context-responsive and playful device. It takes an existing symbol—the hi-vis “FRAGILE” sticker mostly used to mark temporary packaging—and adds visual and textual wit by including the governments’ own slogan, first used here to encourage terrorism-related paranoia and encourage racial profiling of Muslims after the September 11 attacks in the US, and invites (and perhaps incites?) participation in marking colonial monuments as on the brink of destruction. There is a plethora of First Nations artworks that could be seen to inspire DOHA’s activism and the evolving discourse relating to how symbols of colonisation connect into the Black Lives Matter struggles. For example, artworks by Biripi artist Jason Wing, Kamilaroi Dharug artist Travis De Vries (see Image 20.3), Tlingit and Unangax̂ artist Nicholas Galanin (featured on the cover of this book) and Kuku Yalanji artist Tony Albert all playfully re-historicise and 3

 This website lists the locations and details of colonial monuments all over Australia.

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Image 20.3  Travis De Vries, Cook Falling, Tear it Down (2019). (Reproduced with permission from the artist)

employ futuring in ways that highlight the ongoing violence of colonial symbols and invite us to imagine a world where they are in ruins, and where the so-called heroes are revealed as crooks. De Vries explains that his work asks the question: Who are the heroes? Through combining two significant historic images—the “vandalised” monument of James Cook and the planting of the American flag at Iwo Jima—he asks: “Is it those who construct narratives where colonial progress is good or those who tear down the false history and shine a light on the oppression of a people” (De Vries, 2020, para. 2).

Grassroots Design Activism: Inviting Us in Using Humour and Pleasure The most recognisable tropes of activism are not to everyone’s taste: the shouting, listening to speeches for hours, the hand-painted cardboard placards— and, if you’re organising, the long meetings, the cold-calling, petitions, the infuriating traps of community organising and the inevitable feeling of futility that often accompanies political agitation when those in power make it clear that they are not listening. It’s definitely not something most people look forward to engaging in in their free time. It’s often dry and exhausting, but it doesn’t have to be.

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When interviewed by Krishnan Guru-Murthy on BBC Channel 4 News in 2019, Canadian author and activist Naomi Klein noted that avoiding activism because of its aesthetics is “a terrible reason to let the world burn” (Channel Four, 2019, 27:10): “You know, activism is messy. It’s always a little cringey. …I admire people who are able to be in it with both feet, because that is what this moment requires” (24:05). In Joyful Militancy (2017), Montgomery and bergman argue that rigid radicalism4 cannot be countered by critique alone, asking: How can we be otherwise? What makes it possible to activate something different? How to protect the something different once it gains traction? How to share experiences of places and spaces where something different is already taking place—where people feel more alive and capable? (p. 23)

Similarly, in The Sweetness of Salt (2019), prominent American activist and scholar Alexis Pauline Gumbs highlights the ways in which her Black feminist mentors foregrounded pleasure in their activism, from the colour choices for the flyers (neon pink, not the standard Kinko’s pastels) to the protest routes needing to be “danceable in heels” (p. 73). Those engaged in creative activism recognise that many political messages fall on tired ears and overstimulated eyes. Grassroots collectives of artists and designers are looking for alternative ways to work together to engage the public in political discourse, producing what could be described as conversation starters that link directly to ways to support or amplify a specific social justice issue. So how then are emergent forms of activism offering new ways in for those who agree with the arguments but are put off by the cliches, tropes and aesthetics (or lack thereof)? Many activists use humour, not just to creatively communicate but as a way to stay energised: [Humour] can complement other forms of activism, bringing creative rather than didactic elements. Although anger is an important emotion in activism, it is not sustainable for long periods and can contribute to burnout. …Humour can balance highly critical, disturbing messages with elements of light-heartedness, perspective and hope. (Branagan, 2007, p. 4)

In attempting to define design activism, British design scholar Anne Thorpe states the importance of the generative offering. Protest can be resistant and disruptive to the status quo, but activism (and more specifically, design activism) “always reveals, unveils, or frames an issue. In a classic sense, activism often reveals an injustice or wrongdoing, but it may also frame a better alternative” (Thorpe, 2011, p. 5). When rethinking (and challenging) the violent visual communication of current colonial commemorations, we can draw inspiration from the examples 4

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of internationally significant grassroots collectives: the powerful visual communication of Gran Fury during the AIDS crisis (Heller, 2012), the arresting materials of the feminist coalition Guerrilla Girls, the silkscreened anti-­apartheid posters of the Medu Art Ensemble, the anti-fascist public print materials of the Taller de Gráfica Popular (Art Institute Chicago, n.d.), Atelier Populaire’s graphic  protest of USA-exported capitalism and imperialism, and the striking banners of Indonesia's Taring Padi collective, to name a few. These collectives committed themselves to creating memorable social justice campaigns across the range of media that was available to them. What differentiates the activism at play today—and specifically design activism—is the tentacular ways in which it must engage with evolving digital platforms, public spaces and events and the ways in which alternative futures are creatively proposed. These emergent strategies—often centring sustainability, care and pleasure—acknowledge the complex system within which the iterative messaging is operating and makes visible the spheres of power and influence at play regarding specific social justice issues. In Design Activism: Challenging the Paradigm by Dissensus, Consensus, and Transitional Practices (2013, p. 29), Alastair Fuad-Luke notes that there is an ongoing dialogue to “define the territory, language, and syntax of design activism” due to the continual evolution its component terms, each of which imply a desire to change what already exists”. Design researchers and practitioners Tau Ulv Lenskjold, Sissel Olander and Joachim Halse articulate their interest in design activism as a particular mode of engagement “that denotes collaboration rather than persuasion” (2015, p. 67). As the following case study shows, grassroots design activism is not restricted to any one discipline of design (Markussen, 2013) but draws on many design methods and tools to communicate, and to make abuse of power visible by using or hacking the same modes and platforms where these abuses take place, including social media, outdoor advertising and public monuments and in internationally significant public celebrations (and commemorations), such as the annual Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras.

Department of Homo Affairs (DOHA) The Department of Homo Affairs is a collective of radical queer activists and artists working across Gadigal, Dharawal, Arrernte and Wurundjeri lands. We use playful and disruptive action to ridicule and expose Australia’s border politics and cultures of white supremacy and xenophobia. Collective action is our medium to connect with each other and our broader communities and is a way to act out the stories we want to hear. (Department of Homo Affairs, 2020, para. 22)

DOHA are a prime example of joyful militancy, pleasure activism and emergent strategy through grassroots design activism that challenges the ridiculous and offensive nature of pro-colonial ceremonies, monuments and performances of settler-colonial legacy. Their creative collective work is crafted in response to

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calls to action from Indigenous community leaders (Gregoire, 2020b; Gweagal-­ Bidjigal Sovereign Tribal Elders Council, 2020; Munro  in Department of Homo Affairs, 2020, para. 5). DOHA are simultaneously living, performing and futuring other worlds in which monuments to dispossession and genocide are already ruins, and where the colonial agenda is treated like a virus. Like many feminist, non-hierarchical groups before them, their work “encourages consciousness and political debate…their unexpected avenues of expression disturb complacency” (Branagan, 2007, p.  3) through expressing collective power and proactively hacking the dominant narratives of the time, enacting these futures through a variety of social and material means discussed in this chapter. Even in the naming of the collective—DOHA—is mocking, a parody of the Department of Home Affairs, an Australian Government interior ministry established in 2017 responsible for national security, law enforcement, emergency management, border control, immigration, refugees, citizenship, transport security and multicultural affairs. Peter Dutton—then immigration minister—was the first to head the department. An ex-police officer and politician with a record of inhumane policy development, his leadership of this department has resulted in the ongoing torment of asylum seekers through Operation Sovereign Borders. Dutton is the epitome of what DOHA seeks to challenge: the violent disregard for Indigenous sovereignty and the struggle of refugees seeking asylum (DOHA, 2018). DOHA’s provocations appear when you would least expect them, from masking colonial monument plaques to performing in the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras. The tone is always cheeky, the demands are always clear: destroy white supremacy and its enduring colonial legacy. Get involved. That DOHA’s activism manifests across a variety of media, digital and physical platforms, and at key historical moments, is clear evidence that their work is a strong example of context-responsive design activism. Inspired by ongoing global Indigenous resistance, DOHA’s interventions demand attention, involvement and action, but the nature of their works challenge the dry and tired old activist tropes that have failed to engage the masses in resistance movements.

Resist Racist Replicas and Turn Back the Float The mythology that Australia was ever empty is tied to the delusion that it is now full. (DOHA, 2020, para. 13)

The series of DOHA’s interventions into the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras parades between 2018–2021 were inspired by Aboriginal South Sea Islander dancer Malcolm Cole’s performance as Captain Cook in the First Nations float of the 1988 Sydney Mardi Gras (Leighton-Dore, 2019). Cole’s memorable float was a powerful statement of queer First Nations leadership on Gadigal land, loudly and proudly critiquing colonialism through LGBTQIA

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Image 20.4  DOHA in action: ‘We stopped them in their tracks at various points along the parade, with the aim of turning back the unwelcome float’ (DOHA, 2018). Members of DOHA jump the security fences in mock-Federal Police costume and masks to chaperone a mock-Endeavour replica and holding a banner reading, ‘TURN BACK THE FLOAT! JUSTICE FOR REFUGEES’. (Photo taken on Gadigal land at Taylor Square, Darlinghurst, during the 2018 Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras. Photo used with the permission of DOHA and photographer Alex Davies)

PLUS_SPI culture and continuing the founding motivation of the event as a political protest (Image 20.4). In their 2018 polemic ‘Communiqué from the Department of Homo Affairs’, DOHA outlined the motivations behind their initial unsanctioned intervention into the 2018 Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras parade as an act of solidarity with asylum seekers, following a call from RISE (Refugees, Survivors and Ex-Detainees, riserefugee.org) to “use [our] social capital to apply consistent pressure on the political parties complicit in the inhumane treatment of asylum seekers and refugees” (RISE, n.d.). Their action drew attention to these human rights abuses committed by both the Liberal and Labor Parties, whose Mardi Gras floats were intercepted and stalled as a result. Photocopied flyers were distributed to the crowds, drawing attention to the absurdity of these parties being able to be included at the event: “While the Liberal and Labor Parties celebrate marriage equality they are abusing Refugees and people seeking Asylum. HUMAN RIGHTS ABUSERS ARE NOT welcome here” (DOHA, 2018, para 6). The following year, Indigenous-led collective Wreck the Endeavour mobilised in opposition to the $6.7 million commemorative voyage of the replica

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HMB Endeavour, the ship used by Lieutenant James Cook in 1770 to chart the East Coast of what was then known to the British as New Holland (Australian Museum, 2021). This colonial commemoration event was proposed by the sitting Australian prime minister in his own parliamentary seat of Cook. As part of the broader #Resist250 movement, spokesperson Wiradjuri and Gamilaroi artist Lorna Munro called the proposal a false “re-enactment” of circumnavigation, a “tour of trauma” and a “celebration of the dispossession of Indigenous peoples” (Gregoire, 2020a, para. 9). Wreck the Endeavour and the Gweagal-Bidjigal Sovereign Tribal Elders Council called on others to show solidarity in order to stop the racist replica’s voyage via social media pages. DOHA’s response to this was to design and distribute digital materials under the hashtags #Resist250 and #WreckTheEndeavour and to stage another performative intervention as part of the Sydney Mardi Gras parade in March of 2020, just prior to the COVID-19 lockdowns  (Marsters, 2020). This suite of activity, including social media, printed flyers, sculpture, costuming and a follow-up published communique, shows the tentacular creativity of this action. The 2020 flyer (Image 20.5) is an excellent example of the tone used across DOHA materials, mimicking the arrogant and declarative nature of Liberal Party of Australia press releases.

Image 20.5  ‘If you see something, say something’. DOHA’s photocopied flyer that was distributed during the 2020 Sydney Mardi Gras parade (front and back). (Courtesy of DOHA, 2020)

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Colonial Virus: Do You Have It? (Image 20.6) The Australian federal government rhetoric in response to the COVID-19 pandemic sits in sharp contrast to their response to the ongoing pandemic of racism that Indigenous peoples have been fighting since 1788, which has taken far more Black lives in Australia (Bond et al., 2020, p. 248). Black Lives Matter event organisers in Australia faced criticism for organising gatherings during COVID-19 restrictions that might put the health of the public at risk, but they were joined by medical professionals and academics in arguing that racism is also a health issue in urgent need of attention (Paradies et al., 2008; Bastos et  al., 2018). In their recent article in the Medical Journal of Australia, Aboriginal Health Worker and Associate Professor Chelsea Bond, in collaboration with Torres Strait Islander Epidemiologist and Associate Professor Lisa Whop and collaborative race researchers David Singh and Helena Kajlich, highlight the issues of racialised health disparities caused by institutional racism. They argue that we need an Australian health system “that has a steadfast commitment to Black lives: not as in need of saving, but as deserving of care; one that matches the staunchness of grieving Black families marching the streets of our capital cities in the midst of a pandemic” (Bond et  al., 2020, p. 248).

Image 20.6  Black Lives Matter public mourning gathering in Djarrbarrgall, Sydney, 5 July 2020. (Author’s own photo)

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For many Australians, it took the murder of African-American man George Floyd by police in May of 2020 to move them to participate in rallies, calling for an end to racist policing, in particular Black deaths in custody. Thousands gathered on several occasions as part of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement during COVID-19 restrictions, demanding justice for the families of those who have died and for those who continue to be subjected to racist violence on a daily basis. At least 540 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have died in custody since the end of the 1991 Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody (Australian Institute of Criminology, 2023; Guardian, 2021). During the global BLM marches, DOHA used Instagram5 and Twitter (https://twitter.com/AffairsHomo) to draw attention to the continuing atrocities committed on stolen land in Australia due to ongoing colonial legacy. The conversation around racist monuments was not new here, thanks to activist interventions and artworks such as the aforementioned works by Indigenous artists, but it had yet to hit the mainstream as it did in 2020. The federal treasurer at the time took to Twitter to call the 2017 graffiti on the base of the Hyde Park Cook statue “A national insult & disgrace. Does not keep one indigenous child safe, in school or end up in a job. Grow up idiots #auspol” (Morrison, 2017). This message blatantly disregards the ongoing trauma these colonial memorials cause for Indigenous Australians. The graffiti simply read, “CHANGE THE DATE/ NO PRIDE IN GENOCIDE”, referring to the movement to change or abolish that what is currently celebrated as ‘Australia Day’ (January 26) in recognition of this as a day of mourning for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. As activists in US cities defaced and tore down the monuments to confederate figureheads and slave traders (The New York Times, 2020), the Australian Federal Police committed large numbers of officers to defend statues of James Cook in Sydney’s Hyde Park, reigniting debates about the legitimacy of these ‘permanent’ monuments to colonisation. During the COVID-19 lockdowns, DOHA created two additional approaches to their public design activism over this time: an invitation to mark monuments in a state of pre-ruin by sticking “FRAGILE” stickers onto them (see Image 20.2), and a public poster series that co-opted the Australian Government’s COVID-19 public health materials to draw attention to the colonial project as a health issue.

Stopping the Spread of the Colonial Virus In yet another example of design activism and joyful militancy, DOHA hacked the graphic design elements and “Stop the Spread” tagline of the Australian Government response to COVID-19 and designed and distributed street 5  Linktree from @the_department_of_homo_affairs Instagram account, accessed November 28, 2021, https://linktr.ee/the_department_of_homo_affairs.

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Image 20.7  ‘Colonial virus: do you have it?’ DOHA distributed this poster design digitally and in public paste-ups on walls and poles on Gadigal Wangal lands between August and September of 2020. https://decoloniseproject250.wixsite.com/mysite Accessed October 21, 2020. (Courtesy of DOHA)

posters which redirect the public’s attention to challenging ongoing colonial violence. The author has unfortunately not been given permission to reproduce the federal Health Department posters6 in this chapter for effective visual comparison. DOHA’s “COLONIAL VIRUS.  DO YOU HAVE IT?” poster (Image 20.7) mimics the colour palette, typography, illustration approach and 6  As of the date of publication, the posters could still be found on this government website: https://www.health.gov.au/resources/publications/coronavirus-covid-19-print-ads-simplesteps-to-stop-the-spread.

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even logo placement to the degree that the public recognises the poster as official government health communications, double-takes and then looks closer—disarming and then amusing readers in a way that prompts conversation around racism being a serious health issue, disproportionately affecting the lives of Indigenous Australians, but one that also threatens our collective ‘healthy’ futures. Continuing their creative multi-platform approach to inviting people into their design activism, DOHA complemented this poster campaign with the creation of a Grindr account for the “250 year old male” Cook statue going by the name “Go’n Down” that encouraged potential lovers with “knowledge of ropes, chains, knots a must” to meet him in the park and to “teach [him] a lesson that will go down in the history books”. Both the Grindr account and the posters emerged from DOHA’s film project, MEMORIAL 4A MEMORIAL: HOW 2 SAY GOODBYE, where a documentary crew captures the momentum building as people prepare to farewell a colonial monument—effectively futuring a moment of reckoning.

Pleasure Activism Countering Rigid Radicalism and Paralysis In continuing their activism borne from friendship and joyful militancy, DOHA are not only affecting change in the realms of social justice within which they are agitating, they are inspiring others to resist and to get involved. Their work is incredibly important in challenging the aforementioned tropes and clichés of activism, the antithesis of the kind of solidarity that brown decries in her book, Pleasure Activism: I think about that a lot: what does it take to actually shift the feel of organizing? The way we feel our existence? We’re not meant to suffer along. We’re meant to experience pleasure and togetherness. (brown, 2019, p. 48)

Pleasure is centred not only in DOHA’s invitation to inhabit a future in which colonial monuments (and what they represent) are in ruins, but also in the politics of their collective practice. If pleasure activism is “us learning to make justice and liberation the most pleasurable experiences we can have on this planet”, the members of DOHA are pleasure activists in that their work shows true hope in justice and liberation, “growing a healing abundance where we have been socialized to believe only scarcity exists” (brown, 2019, p. 13). From DOHA’s public statements and actions it is clear that they are also a living example of emergent strategies aligning with brown’s own description, engaging in “plans of action, personal practice and collective organizing tools that account for constant change and rely on the strength of relationship for adaptation” (brown, 2017, p. 23).

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When focusing on the role of friendship in sustaining activism, Montgomery and bergman (2017, pp. 96–97) ask if it can be “revalued in an expansive but specific way”: Friends, chosen family, and other kin intimately connected in a web of mutual support. …Intersecting currents of disability justice, youth liberation, queer movements, feminism, ecology, anarchism, Indigenous resurgence, and Black liberation have all emphasized the centrality of nurturing strong relationships.

If friendship is the soil from which a new politics will emerge (paraphrasing Austrian philosopher, theologian and social critic Ivan Illich, cited in Montgomery & bergman, 2017, p. 92), perhaps this new politics proposes that love, kinship, friendship and pleasure are key drivers in sustainable activism and broader social justice movements. DOHA are modelling the worlds they want to bring into being, worlds that disrupt terror, colonialism, oppressive politics of exclusion and marginalisation. DOHA are queer friends creating radical acts of resistance using parody, satire and humour to subvert and challenge the status quo. Their acts of solidarity with other marginalised groups, and the ways in which they honour intergenerational kinship, First Nations peoples and the queer community serve to reinforce the values to which they aspire in ways that can perhaps “undo patterns that Empire has ingrained” (Montgomery & bergman, 2017, p. 96).7

Conclusion: Design Activism as a Politics of Prefiguration and Everyday Practice The term “politics of prefiguration” has long been used to describe the idea that if you embody what you aspire to, you have already succeeded. That is to say, if your activism is already democratic, peaceful, creative, then in one small corner of the world these things have triumphed. Activism, in this model, is not only a toolbox to change things but a home in which to take up residence and live according to your beliefs, even if it’s a temporary and local place, this paradise of participating, this vale where souls get made. (Solnit, 2016, pp. 80–81)

American writer, historian and activist Rebecca Solnit has authored twenty books on feminism, Western and Indigenous history, disaster and social change. When she wrote Hope in the Dark during the Bush presidency in 2004, Solnit was writing in celebration of the kind of creative activism embodied by DOHA, 7  Montgomery and bergman use the word Empire to “name the organized destruction under which we live. Through its attempt to render everything profitable and controllable, Empire administers a war with other forms of life… Empire works to monopolize the whole field of life, crushing autonomy and inducing dependence” (2017, p. 25).

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borne of friendship and solidarity, as opposed to “a defeatist, dismissive frame of mind that is far too widespread” (Solnit, 2016, p. 137).8 DOHA’s playful, staunch and iterative interventions can be seen as context-responsive grassroots design activism that challenges current politics and futures a more just society, where perpetrators of colonial violence are held to account. The arrests of several DOHA collective members during their performative interventions during the 2020 and 2021 Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras parades, and the police protection of the Hyde Park Cook statue in July 2020, show that these public events and monuments are not just symbols but actual sites of power and struggle. DOHA’s work suggests that this important struggle does not end with bringing down these manifestations of colonial power alone. DOHA’s ongoing design activism asks us to face our complicit role in the abuse of asylum seekers on stolen land, and to recognise that Black Lives Matter struggles on this continent are a continuation of centuries of First Nations’ resistance to colonisation, white supremacy and state violence. Through their collective creative process, DOHA’s work invites us to join them in futuring a society where social justice is loud, proud and pleasurable, and where the racist system is the main monument to have been brought to ruin. Acknowledgements  I acknowledge the Gadigal and Wangal of the Eora nation as the traditional custodians of the stolen lands on which this chapter was researched and written. I pay my respects to their living cultures and social justice leadership. This always was and always will be Aboriginal land. I also want to express my thanks to the DOHA collective for their powerful work. I acknowledge and respect their desire for their identities to remain anonymous.

Glossary of Terms Futuring  Futuring is best known through the field of futures studies, futurology or foresight thinking (2006; Inayatullah, 2008; Fry, 2009). Futuring is not predicting futures. It’s a way of combining informed projections with imaginative critical design to invite us to think differently about our current predicaments. This process can help us step back from moments of panic and proactively design steps to change things for the better—not 20 years from now, but from today. Rigid Radicalism  Term used by Montgomery and bergman in Joyful Militancy (2017) in an effort to describe what has also been known as sad militancy, grumpy warriorcool, manarchism, puritanism (p.  21), but that its origins “are as diverse as the phenomenon itself”. (p. 22) 8  Solnit revised Hope in the Dark in 2016, including a new foreword and afterword that contextualised its continuing relevance text twelve years on.

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References ABC News. (2020, June 16). Four ways to help settle Australia’s colonial statue debate. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-­06-­16/four-­ways-­to-­help-­settle-­australias­colonial-­statue-­debate/12356234 Art Institute Chicago (n.d.). What may come: The Taller de Gráfica popular and the Mexicanpoliticalprint.https://www.artic.edu/exhibitions/1906/what-­may-­come-­the-­ taller-­de-­grafica-­popular-­and-­the-­mexican-­political-­print Australian Institute of Criminology. (2023). Deaths in Custody in Australia. https:// www.aic.gov.au/statistics/deaths-custody-australia Australian Museum. (2021, November 25). Not a discovery voyage. https://australian. museum/learn/first-­nations/unsettled/recognising-­invasions/not-­a-­discovery-­ voyage/ Bastos, J. L., Harnois, C. E., & Paradies, Y. C. (2018). Health care barriers, racism, and intersectionality in Australia. Social Science & Medicine, 199, 209–218. Bond, C. J., Whop, L. J., Singh, D., & Kajlich, H. (2020). Now we say Black Lives Matter but… the fact of the matter is, we just Black matter to them. The Medical Journal of Australia, 213(6), 248–250. Branagan, M. (2007). The last laugh: Humour in community activism. Community Development Journal, 42(4), 470–481. Bresson, P. (2020). #BushfireBrandalism [Video]. Vimeo. https://vimeo.com/ 388792422 brown, a. m. (2017). Emergent strategy: Shaping change, changing worlds. AK Press. brown, a. m. (Ed.). (2019). Pleasure activism: The politics of feeling good. AK Press. Channel Four. (2019, October 16). Naomi Klein on Extinction Rebellion, the Green New Deal and fast fashion [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=JpFZmisvrQQ De Vries, T.  Tear it Down, Cook Falling. (2020). https://travisdevries.com/tear-­ it-­down-­cook-­falling/ Department of Homo Affairs. (2018, March 5). Communiqué from the Department of Homo Affairs. Overland (online). https://overland.org.au/2018/03/communique-­ from-­the-­department-­of-­homo-­affairs/ Department of Homo Affairs. (2020, March 4). Communiqué from the Department of Homo Affairs—#resist250. Overland (online). https://overland.org.au/2020/03/ communique-­from-­the-­department-­of-­homo-­affairs-­resist250/ Fry, A. (2009). Design futuring. University of New South Wales Press. Fuad-Luke, A. (2013). Design activism: Challenging the paradigm by dissensus, consensus, and transitional practices. In S. Walker & J. Giraud (Eds.), The Handbook of design for sustainability (pp. 57–72). Bloomsbury Academic. Gregoire, P. (2020a, June 3). “Built upon our genocide”: An interview with Wreck the Endeavour’s Lorna Munro. Sydney Criminal Lawyers. https://www.sydneycriminallawyers.com.au/blog/built-­u pon-­o ur-­g enocide-­a n-­i nter view-­w ith-­w reck-­ the-­endeavours-­lorna-­munro/ Gregoire, P. (2020b, July 3). Australia has a black history: An interview with Gadigal elder Rhonda Dixon-Grovenor. Sydney Criminal Lawyers. https://www.sydneycriminallawyers.com.au/blog/australia-­has-­a-­black-­history-­an-­interview-­with-­gadigal-­ elder-­rhonda-­dixon-­grovenor/

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Guardian, The. (2021, April 5). Deaths inside: Indigenous Australian deaths in custody 2021. https://www.theguardian.com/australia-­news/ng-­interactive/2018/aug/ 28/deaths-­inside-­indigenous-­australian-­deaths-­in-­custody Gumbs, A. P. (2019). The sweetness of salt: Toni Cade Bambara and the practice of pleasure (in five tributes). In a. m. brown (Ed.), Pleasure activism: The politics of feeling good (pp. 65–80). AK Press. Gweagal-Bidjigal Sovereign Tribal Elders Council. (2020). Home [Facebook page]. Facebook. https://www.facebook.com/gweagal.bidjigal Heller, S. (2012, January 12). How AIDS was branded: Looking back at ACT UP design. The Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2012/01/ how-­aids-­was-­branded-­looking-­back-­at-­act-­up-­design/251267/ Inayatullah, S. (2008). Six pillars: Futures thinking for transforming. Foresight, 10(1), 4–21. Leighton-Dore, S. (2019, February 22). Revisiting the first Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander float at the Sydney Mardi Gras. SBS News. https://www.sbs.com.au/topics/pride/mardigras/article/2019/02/27/revisiting-­first-­aboriginal-­and-­torres-­ strait-­islander-­float-­sydney-­mardi-­gras Lenskjold, T. U., Olander, S., & Halse, J. (2015). Minor design activism: Prompting change from within. Design Issues, 31(4), 67–78. Markussen, T. (2013). The disruptive aesthetics of design activism: Enacting design between art and politics. Design Issues, 29(1), 38–50. Marsters, A. (2020, March 1). A group of activists is removed from the Mardi Gras route after staging a protest against the Liberal Party. SBS News. www.sbs.com.au/news/ protesters-­target-­liberal-­party-­float-­at-­sydney-­gay-­and-­lesbian-­mardi-­gras Montgomery, N., & bergman, c. (2017). Joyful militancy: Building thriving resistance in toxic times. AK Press. Morrison, S. [@ScottMorrisonMP]. (2017, August 6). A national insult & disgrace. Does not keep one indigenous child safe, in school or end up in a job. Grow up idiots #auspol [Image attached] [Tweet]. Twitter. https://twitter.com/ScottMorrisonMP/ status/901309027027623936 New York Times. (2020, June 24). How statues are falling around the world. https:// www.nytimes.com/2020/06/24/us/confederate-­statues-­photos.html Paradies, Y., Harris, R., & Anderson, I. (2008). The impact of racism on Indigenous health in Australia and Aotearoa: Towards a research agenda. Cooperative Research Centre for Aboriginal Health. https://www.lowitja.org.au/content/Document/ Lowitja-­Publishing/Racism-­Report.pdf RISE. (n.d.). RISE: Refugees, Survivors and eX-detainees. http://riserefugee.org/ Solnit, R. (2016). Hope in the dark: Untold histories, wild possibilities. Haymarket Books. Thorpe, A. (2011). Defining design as activism. Submitted to Journal of Architectural Education. designactivism.net/wp-­content/uploads/2011/05/Thorpe-­defining designactivism.pdf

CHAPTER 21

‘It’s Just Always Been There’: Rutherford Falls, Monuments and Settler Colonial Hegemony Tristan Kennedy

Introduction The first season of Rutherford Falls, produced by Michael Schur, Sierra Teller Ornelas and Ed Helms, is one of the first mainstream televisual interrogations of the history wars in a colonised nation-state. The central achievement of this programme is the exposure of the fragility of the settler colonial grasp of an often-mythologised history and national identity. In the era of bingewatching television, this 10-episode season stands as a ground-breaking text on which to base an analysis of a hegemonic settler colonial narrative that undergirds the ontological and epistemological silencing of Indigenous peoples. The show picks up on recent debates around the globe surrounding the meaning and relevance of colonial monuments in contemporary streetscapes and exposes the collisions between Indigenous and settler colonial histories. Rutherford Falls has, through the global spread of video-streaming services, foregrounded Indigenous voices in current and emerging debates surrounding the removal of monuments that commemorate past actions of settler colonisers. The currency of Rutherford Falls across vast geographies of colonised nation-states enables a globally relevant discussion of settler colonial hegemony, colonial monuments and their removal, and has potential to foster new global Indigenous alliances.

T. Kennedy (*) Monash University, Melbourne, VIC, Australia e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 B. Carlson, T. Farrelly (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook on Rethinking Colonial Commemorations, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-28609-4_21

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Background A contemporaneous interrogation of the relevance of colonial monuments, Rutherford Falls is ground-breaking for its centring of Native American voices and perspectives. As actor Michael Greyeyes notes, “The circumstances within our show are fictional, but they reflect historical precedent across Turtle Island” (Picciuolo, 2021, para. 4). The town, established in upstate New York on the unceded lands of the fictional Minishonka Native American nation, is analogous with settler colonial towns and cities across the colonised lands of the world. At the heart of this story is one inconveniently located statue memorialising the town’s settler-founder Lawrence Rutherford, affectionately known to some as ‘Big Larry’. The inconvenience of the statue, located in the middle of a city street, has prompted the town’s mayor, Diedre Chisenhall (Dana L. Wilson), to commence proceedings to relocate the statue in the interest of public safety. The show explores the complex collisions of Native American and settler colonial perspectives on land, citizenship and sovereignty, with a focus on the relationship between Minishonka Cultural Centre curator and community member Reagan Wells (Jana Schmieding) and Nathan Rutherford (Ed Helms), an enthusiastic citizen-historian and descendent of the town’s founder. Rutherford Falls declares its premise at the outset. The question of settler colonial monuments on the sovereign lands of Indigenous peoples is one which sets at odds two very distinct perspectives. For the Minishonka, the memorial to settler coloniser Lawrence Rutherford and the hegemonic settler colonial narrative it represents has been central to the Native-Settler discord for generations. Indeed, later in the series, Minishonka Elder Rayanne (Geraldine Keams) informs Nathan that Lawrence Rutherford had always been seen as a ‘monster’ by the Minishonka community who had dubbed him ‘mal merde’ from French for ‘bad shit’. Rayanne notes that Lawrence Rutherford “was a real bastard to our people” (Skoden, 2021). For settler coloniser Nathan Rutherford, on the other hand, the statue represents the genesis of a town and history that is central to his settler colonial identity. Despite the negative connotations for the Minishonka people, the statue has remained in place, seemingly unquestioned, until it presented an inconvenience for settler motorists. Rutherford Falls is contemporaneous with growing global criticism of monuments that reify the foundations of hegemonic settler colonial identity on the back of the dispossession and marginalisation of Indigenous peoples. Similar to global movements to remove and reconsider colonial monuments, the issues canvassed in Rutherford Falls are not simply about the statue. They are about the persistent hegemonic settler colonial narrative that these statues reinforce. Rutherford Falls exposes a familiar site of conflict where settler colonial narratives are privileged and normalised as an unassailable basis for national identity. It pokes fun at the absurdity and mythology of these narratives in light of their hypocrisy and privileges Native American voices in the debate. The import of Rutherford Falls in the context of global indigeneity is that it requires self-reflection by settler colonisers while fostering global networks of

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solidarity among Indigenous peoples and nations. Paired with the cast and crew’s ongoing presence on social media, the show’s global reach signals an engagement through deterritorialised networks of Indigenous activists and communities. This chapter is an interrogation, firstly, of the relevance of Rutherford Falls to the growing calls across the globe to remove colonial monuments and dismantle settler colonial hegemony and, secondly, of the way digital technology permits the exchange of stories, perspectives and opinions across vast geographies that speak to global Indigenous peoples’ entanglement with settler colonialism.

Hegemonic Settler Colonial Narratives The meaning of any text, artefact or action is, of course, relative to the backgrounds and perspectives of the audience. As we have seen across the globe, the meanings attributed and read in colonial monuments are highly contested and reliant upon such diversity. The Reiterdenkmal statue (also known as the Equestrian Monument) in Windhoek, Namibia depicts a German soldier atop his horse and represents, for colonialists, the arrival of German colonisers and the establishment of the state of South West Africa in 1884. For Indigenous Ovaherero and Nama people, it represents genocide inflicted on them by colonising forces (Figueira, 2021). Similarly, the statue at the heart of Rutherford Falls represents for Nathan Rutherford the story of his own existence. But for Minishonka man Terry Thomas (Michael Greyeyes), the statue represents an ‘unfortunate genocide’ (History Fair, 2021). Historian Patrick Wolfe explains that colonisation is not simply a static event occurring on the day of arrival of colonial invaders (Wolfe, 2006). Colonisation requires persistent reiteration and reestablishment in the face of contestation. Statues are not only time stamps symbolising the moment of first contact; they are key sites for reiteration of the settler colonial narrative. These monuments represent a visual articulation of settler colonial hegemony: the constant establishment and reestablishment of a narrative which privileges settler colonial interests over the sovereignty of Indigenous peoples. The hegemonic narrative in this instance is reiterated through these monuments as well as through institutions such as education, the media and politics so as to assume a taken-for-­ granted quality in the quotidian lives of citizens in a settler colonial nation-state. They serve to reinforce the cultural authority and coercive power of the settler-­ state. Gramsican scholar Perry Andersen writes: If hegemony were either just cultural authority or coercive power, the concept would be superfluous: there are many clearer names for each. Its persistence as a term is due to its combining of them, and the range of possible ways it can do so. (Anderson, 2017, p. 180)

The continued violence of colonisation experienced across the globe and that readily meets the United Nations definition of genocide (UN General

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Assembly, 2022 [1948]) is one of the most extreme examples of coercive power. But as Anderson notes (2017), maintaining cultural authority through more than coercive power is a key element of hegemony. The imposing reminders of initial genocides exhibited by the presence of colonial monuments, such as that of Lawrence Rutherford, serve to impose and normalise settler colonial cultural authority. In the town of Rutherford Falls, there remains a statue in the middle of the street despite posing a safety risk to motorists. This statue, like many across the globe, serves to reinforce hegemonic coercive power and cultural authority through the deliberate exhibition of the settler colonial narrative and its physical presence in the middle of a street. Calls to remove statues and monuments that celebrate hegemonic narratives reverberate across the world as global political activism gains momentum. In 2017, in Charlottesville, Virginia, violent clashes erupted when a ‘Unite the Right’ rally protesting the proposal to remove a confederate monument to Robert E.  Lee resulted in the murder of an anti-racist counter-protestor (Atkinson, 2018). Two years earlier in 2015, the world of social media briefly focused its attention on the ‘Rhodes Must Fall’ movement, which succeeded in forcing the removal of a monument to colonial politician Cecil John Rhodes at the University of Cape Town (Knudsen & Andersen, 2019). More recently, in July 2021, a Canadian statue memorialising Queen Victoria in Winnipeg, Manitoba was defaced and torn down by protesters who cited the links between colonisation and the unmarked graves of up to 1500 young children in state care (Millions, 2021). And, most recently, in Naarm (Melbourne), Australia, a statue of Captain James Cook was covered in red paint as a protest of the continued celebration of ‘Australia Day’ on 26 January, recognised by Indigenous Australians as a day on which to mourn the commencement of settler colonial invasion. Indigenous activist Crystal McKinnon, from the Warriors of Aboriginal Resistance (WAR), told local reporters: It shows how frustrated and angry the community is with the continued celebrations of invasion, colonisation and murder. People are frustrated and angry and this is one of the ways that is being expressed. (Knowles & Aili, 2022, para. 17)

The defacement of the Captain James Cook statue reflects growing discussion about the removal of colonial statues and the commencements of a process of ‘re-storying’ (Antonello, 2021) by Indigenous peoples and their allies. As Sentance suggests, the removal of colonial statues, such as that of Captain James Cook, would be part of a “re-imagin[ing] of a more just society” (2021, p.  7) and a shift away from the hegemonic settler colonial narrative which underpins the continued oppression of Indigenous peoples. Recent scholarship and social commentary have highlighted a contemporary issue arising through discussions of the maintenance of historical monuments which celebrate one side of settler colonial history (Frank & Ristic, 2020; Mitchell, 2020; Shepherd, 2020). Stanner, in 1938, remarked at the one-sided remembering in Australian society, “There are no national monuments to a

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vanishing people, yet there is a monument to a mythical Dog on a Tucker-Box nine miles from Gundagai” (1979, p. 2). While more than 50 years later, there are now more monuments dedicated to Indigenous individuals and communities, though broadly, they still occupy an uneasy place in the Australian narrative. As anthropologist Elizabeth Furniss points out, a monument to Kalkadoon and Mitakoodi peoples 60 kilometres east of Mount Isa in Queensland has been met with a varied reception. Since its erection the memorial has been repeatedly vandalised with racist graffiti, spray paint and bullet holes. In contrast… ‘a memorial commemorating [settler colonisers] Burke and Wills expedition … just a kilometre down the road has remained completely untouched by vandalism’. (Furniss, 2001, p. 291)

The calls for removal inevitably arouse enthusiastic opposition from colonial sympathisers and neo-nationalist groups who, as race scholar Alana Lentin points out, are in fear of a fictive “white genocide” (2020, p. 2). In most cases, such opposition relies on further vocal references to national pride and reification of the hegemonic settler colonial narrative. Atkinson observes that alt-­ right protestors, like those who regularly mobilise in defence of colonial monuments, often carry a doctrinal “belief that whites are in imminent danger of cultural, political, economic, and even physical annihilation by some combination of Jews, immigrants, Muslims, African Americans, white liberals, feminists, and communists” (2018, pp. 310–311). In the first episode of Rutherford Falls, Nathan Rutherford’s push to retain the statue of Big Larry incites similarly fervent rhetoric from ‘Debbie’ (Peggy Dunne), a member of the Rutherford Falls community, who shouts across the town square, “Hey Nathan, right on! Let’s take our country back!”. To which Minishonka woman Reagan Wells questions quizzically, “take it back from who?” (Pilot, 2021). Reagan’s response is an often-unanswered line of questioning in the debate around settler colonial monuments and highlights what white ethno-nationalists perceive as an imminent threat (Kelly & Lobo, 2017). The groundless fear that settler colonial nation-states are under imminent threat of being overthrown by minorities is tied to the shaky foundations of settler colonialism itself (Langton, 1996, Chalmers 2020). Such precarity demands continual maintenance of the narrative of national identity embedded in colonial monuments. Social psychologists Damien Riggs and Martha Augoustinos suggested “the predication of white belonging on the disavowal of Indigenous sovereignty [and] the ongoing assertion of the primacy of white ways of knowing form the basis of colonial power” (2005, p. 462). That is, statues commemorating colonial figures such as Captain James Cook and Lawrence Rutherford are symbolic of the hegemonic settler colonial narrative which undergirds the legitimacy of white ownership of the land and the dismissal of Indigenous peoples as sovereign citizens. The anxiety regarding the imminent threat of annihilation appears common to settler colonial nationstates whose very existence is based on questionable claims to sovereignty (Russell, 2021, Smallwood, 2019).

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The ontological collisions presented in Nathan Rutherford’s struggle with the challenge to his own identity as a descendent of the town’s founder and Reagan Wells’ everyday lived experience expose the contradictory meanings tied to the statue of Big Larry. For Nathan, the statue represents his identity as a descendent of the town’s founder. His very existence as the town’s historian and only remaining descendent of Lawrence Rutherford living in Rutherford Falls is undermined by the removal of the statue. As Nathan grapples with this crisis of identity, he remarks: “That statue is core to who I am. And, if it can just be picked up and tossed around willy nilly with no regard for its historical specificity, then literally who am I?” To which Reagan replies: “OK what you’re describing, is my entire life. It’s literally something I have to deal with every day” (Pilot, 2021). Nathan’s presence on stolen lands is legitimated, albeit precariously, through the conspicuous statue of Big Larry and its reification of the hegemonic settler colonial narrative. Reagan Wells’ story as a Minishonka woman is also represented in the statue of Big Larry. But for Reagan, the statue represents the dispossession of Minishonka lands, culture and identity. Nathan Rutherford’s discomfort demonstrates the inextricable ties between settler colonial monuments and settler colonial hegemony. The ‘historical specificity’ embedded in the bronze statue is a persistent reminder of the pseudo-­ legal genesis of the town of Rutherford Falls. Similarly, the statue of Captain James Cook at Laperouse, in Sydney, is a reminder of the so-called discovery of the nation-state of Australia (Nugent, 2003) based on the legal fiction of terra nullius (Langton, 1996). These often imposing, physical reminders operate as mechanisms of power and control that underpin a ‘possessive logic’ that Indigenous scholar Aileen Moreton-Robinson suggests, “is operationalised to circulate sets of meanings about white ownership of the nation, as part of common-­sense knowledge, decision making and socially produced conventions” (2004, p.  2). In the opening lines of Rutherford Falls, a local police officer investigating a car accident involving the statue states: “it’s just always been there” (Pilot, 2021), showing how the statue and the hegemonic settler colonial narrative are internalised by townsfolk as common-sense knowledge about the natural order of society. Colonial monuments are easily defended unquestioningly by settler colonisers, who subscribe to this assumed natural order as unassailable symbols of national identity (Lindsey & Smith, 2021). Nathan Rutherford’s first appearance in Rutherford Falls shows him proudly lecturing school children with the story that: “Four-hundred years ago brave settlers landed in a new world. They cleared dense forests, survived unforgiving winters, and befriended their Native American counterparts” (Pilot, 2021). This version of history along with Nathan’s explanation that the statue of Big Larry was established to represent a “uniquely fair and honest deal” (Pilot, 2021) brokered between settler colonisers and the Minishonka people becomes normalised for these children as the unquestionable true version of the history of the town of Rutherford Falls. Nathan’s lecture is contrasted with the subsequent introduction of Reagan Wells who is practising a pitch to attract further funding for the Minishonka

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Cultural Centre declaring that “the history of Indigenous people is the greatest story never told” (Pilot, 2021). For Reagan, an empty, underfunded and underpatronised cultural centre is the result of the silencing of Indigenous knowledges and culture for 400 years. Later in the series, it is revealed that Nathan’s Aunt Joan (Nancy Berggren) has hoarded Minishonka cultural items in her garage (Rutherford Inc, 2021). The juxtaposition of this theft and concealment with a well-funded Rutherford Museum demonstrates precisely the silencing of Native American culture and claims to sovereignty that might otherwise challenge the hegemonic settler colonial narrative that Big Larry represents.

Recognising Settler Privilege Despite his self-appointed position as the town’s settler-pedagogue, it is not beyond Nathan to recognise the awkwardness with which settler colonial narratives sit. When challenged by a young student wearing a T-shirt displaying the words ‘land back’ in the Rutherford Museum, Nathan clearly shows his discomfort at the obviously one-sided settler colonial narrative. When asked why there was only a statue made of settler coloniser Lawrence Rutherford and not of a Minishonka person, Nathan, clearly grasping for a suitable and appropriate response, replied: “Bronze was very expensive at the time, so they really only had a budget for the one” (Pilot, 2021). Nathan offers a tenuous excuse that it would have been too expensive to adequately acknowledge Minishonka people rather than entertain the idea that a Native American statue next to a settler coloniser might undermine the hegemonic settler colonial narrative that holds Lawrence Rutherford as the sole and heroic founder of Rutherford Falls. This dismissal of the Minishonka statue is a dismissal of Native Americans’ existing relationship with the land prior to the arrival of settler colonisers. As Patrick Wolfe notes, “Territoriality is settler colonialism’s specific, irreducible element” (2006, p. 388). That is, colonisation is always about land. It is about the occupation and control of land, legitimised through a colonial narrative that positions Indigenous peoples as inferior and incapable of maintaining a meaningful connection to the land. A statue memorialising a settler coloniser reinforces settler colonial occupation and control of the land. The deliberate absence of a monument to Minishonka, in this case, is an overt tactic to deny meaningful occupation and control of the same unceded territory. That Nathan can recognise the hypocrisy of the settler colonial narrative is one of the more salient achievements of Rutherford Falls. The show demonstrates that it is within the intellectual grasp of even the most committed settler coloniser to engage critically with and challenge the hegemonic settler colonial narrative. That is, upon considering the true history of the land on which one stands, it is difficult to avoid consideration of the tainted nature of settler colonial claims to sovereignty. Memorialising settler colonial relationships with cityscapes and townscapes is fraught with an inconvenient truth. An honest engagement with such truths, as exhibited in Rutherford Falls, is a positive step

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in relationships between settler colonisers and Indigenous peoples across the globe. Cultural Studies scholar Colleen McGloin argues that such discomfort with the inconveniences of colonisation and the privileges afforded to non-­ Indigenous peoples connected to the marginalisation and oppression of Indigenous peoples is a foundation on which to build a healthy and transformative alliance (2015). Thinking critically about the presence of settler colonial monuments and the corresponding silencing of Indigenous people and culture is a fruitful basis from which to engage in this conversation and a decolonial strategy. A key decolonial achievement of Rutherford Falls in its first season is to bring to light the inconsistencies between hegemonic settler colonial narratives and the true histories of colonised lands across the globe.

Indigenous Voices and Decolonisation Rutherford Falls presents a sound argument for decolonisation of our streetscapes. Following an emerging trend, particularly through new digital technologies, of centring Indigenous voices (Fredericks et al., 2021), the show brings Indigenous voices and perspectives to the conversation with the privilege and power that, until recently, has not been afforded to Indigenous peoples. The show, through overt mechanisms of the apparent white supremacist sympathiser Professor Tobias James Kaufman (Paul F. Tompkins) and cameo characters, such as ‘psycho Debbie’, highlights the absurdity and immoral politics of colonisation tied to these statues. The more subtle unpacking of settler colonial discomfort with the colonial project highlights the efficacy of Rutherford Falls as an interrogation of settler colonial politics. Such an interrogation stands as an effective contribution to the wider transformative process of decolonisation. The rise of global movements that resist monuments like Reiterdenkmal in Namibia, the Cecil John Rhodes statue in South Africa and Captain James Cook statue in Australia demonstrate a global mobilisation of Indigenous peoples and their allies in the pursuit of decolonisation. At the heart of Rutherford Falls is a call to decolonise our own cities and townscapes. Like recent movements to tear down colonial statues across the globe, it responds to a recognition that a key foundation of settler colonial hegemony is the selective celebration and remembering of colonial figures and the subsequent silencing and removal of Indigenous voices and perspectives. Decolonisation is not a simple process of halting colonial discourse and starting a fresh. It is a complex process of epistemological reckoning. It is an acknowledgement that at the heart of colonisation is the privileging of a colonial episteme. That is, a way of knowing which is held to be the most normal and civilised way of being debasing all others and that often gets taken for granted as a universal truth. From the arrival of imperial invaders on unceded sovereign lands, the focus of this episteme has been on the extermination of Indigenous knowledges and ways of being and the imposition of Eurocentric,

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Western epistemologies and ontologies. Wolfe refers to this as the settler colonial ‘logic of elimination’ (2006). The pervasiveness of these Western ways of knowing have permeated so many aspects of our lives and resulted in pain, suffering and misery for Indigenous peoples. Statues, as we have seen in Rutherford Falls, are large imposing reminders of the primacy of hegemonic settler colonial narrative grounded in this Western knowledge. Decolonisation demands that these physical and imposing reminders, along with the settler colonial narrative they uphold, are challenged, questioned and dismantled in order to transform the experiences of those who have been marginalised by taken-for-­ granted ways of understanding the world. Decolonisation requires critical reflection on the way stories are told in settler colonial nation-states. It demands consideration of the privilege that is afforded to only one side of a story. It requires an unpacking of the discourse that is celebrated and maintained through settler colonial statues. Decolonisation also offers a call to action for Indigenous peoples and their allies to present new ways of thinking and being that reject the hegemonic settler colonial narrative which marginalises Indigenous peoples and culture. Race scholars Eve Tuck and Wayne Yang proffer that: Decolonizing studies, when most centered in Indigenous philosophy, push back against assumptions about the linearity of history and the future, against teleological narratives of human development, and argue for renderings of time and place that exceed coloniality and conquest. (2018, p. xiii)

Rutherford Falls pushes back against the assumptions about colonial history in the United States that are tied to the various meanings in the statue of Big Larry. Through centring Indigenous voices in the dialogue and Indigenous perspectives through the fictional Minishonka community, the show is an exercise in truth-telling that brings to light the contested histories of settler colonial towns, cities and nation-states across the globe.

Deterritorialised Digital Media Deterritorialisation is an effect of the spread of globally connected digital technology. In geographically vast countries such as Australia, individuals were once at the mercy of the limited reach of institutional and media messaging and communication. Local issues remained local and rarely gained attention on wider national and international scales. Identity was tied to the bounds of physical space. This was particularly the case for Indigenous peoples whose voices were silenced by those who set out to reinforce the hegemonic settler colonial narrative. That is not to say that Indigenous peoples did not produce vast volumes of literature and commentary (see Heiss & Minter, 2008). It is that this oeuvre was confined to specialist attention and excluded from curricula or mainstream conversation except as mediated through a settler colonial lens.

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The advent of digital technology and the associated opportunities for mobility and relationship-building reflect a shift that began over two decades ago towards what media and communications scholars David Morley and Kevin Robins called the “new media order” (1995, p. 11). That is, a change in the regulation of the media market from a national political regime to one of “economic and entrepreneurial imperatives” (1995, p. 11). It is now possible to remain connected through synchronous communication technology to communities and networks across the globe. Globalisation theorist Arjun Appadurai has notably theorised the translocal experiences of refugees and the maintenance of national and cultural identity in a deterritorialised world through the use of global media technologies (2003). Scholarship continues to grow around the unique translocal experiences of Indigenous peoples as they connect, travel and forge alliances among global Indigenous communities (Carlson & Berglund, 2021). Rutherford Falls speaks to global formations of hegemonic settler coloniality and is a catalyst for the establishment of global Indigenous solidarity precisely because of the reach of global digital media. Indeed, the media attention paid to the removal of the statue in Rutherford Falls arises through a video of Nathan Rutherford’s tirade against townsfolk that goes viral on YouTube before being removed by directors of Rutherford Incorporated, a large corporation on whose board Nathan Rutherford has a ceremonial, non-­voting position, as a corporate face-saving strategy (Buckheart Lodge, 2021). Local issues become global issues through deterritorialised digital media. Appadurai positioned locality in a deterritorialised world as contingent on “the growing disjuncture between territory, subjectivity, and collective social movement” (2003, p.  217). Appadurai sees this as an increasing struggle against forces of globalisation and global capitalist expansion. While he does mention colonisation (in fact, it is an unavoidable core facet of global movement in his conceptualisation), it should be noted that in contrast to the nation-state (to which Appadurai is principally referring), Indigenous communities have extant experience of colonisation that has disregarded their sovereignty and forcibly prohibited the production of locality. This growing disjuncture between locality and territoriality provides a platform for Rutherford Falls to effect global solidarity. An Indigenous person on Dharug lands in Northern Sydney can download or stream Rutherford Falls. Through the cast’s social media presence (especially through the #N8vtakeover, discussed further below), Indigenous Australians are able to engage in the conversation about Native American experiences of hegemonic settler colonial narratives on one side of the world and offer comparative perspectives of similar hegemonic settler colonial narratives in Australia. The global discussion and social movement promoting Indigenous perspectives of hegemonic settler colonial narratives was further facilitated by actor Ed Helms who gave Native American actors from Rutherford Falls control of his Twitter account, followed by over one million users, with the hashtag #N8vTakeover. As Hutchings and Rodger point out:

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social media platforms like Twitter are important tools that can be utilised by Indigenous peoples to make explicit and powerful challenges to Settler [sic] ideas of what defines contemporary Aboriginality. (2018, p. 88)

Each Native American colleague of Helms shared a combination of their own stories, reflections on Rutherford Falls and the experiences of being Native American. Some used Helms’ account to tell the story of Native American peoples and the lands that were taken by settler colonisers—stories that are excluded from the hegemonic settler colonial narrative. This tweet from 29 November 2021 emphasises Native American survival despite the hegemonic settler colonial narrative perpetuating the myth that Native Americans were ‘wiped out’ by smallpox and other diseases that they were not biologically or genetically capable of surviving: Finally, I want you to know abt Eastern tribes. People of first contact—we were dealing w Americans b4 there was an America. We taught Jamestown to eat corn instead of each other, survived slavery, war, malaria/yellowfever/small pox and Covid and WE ARE STILL HERE. #N8vTakeover/ (Helms, 2021c)

While these diseases impact Indigenous peoples unequally (Haring et  al., 2021), communities continue to survive. This story runs a similar line to the myth of the ‘dying race’ (Walker, 1977) of Indigenous peoples in the Australian hegemonic settler colonial narrative. Others used Helm’s account to engage in political activism, raising issues that are important to Native American communities but are excluded from the hegemonic settler colonial narrative. A current issue in Indigenous communities, addressed in a tweet from 27 November 2021, is food sovereignty: Ya know, after all that Native ppl have offered American culture, tribal communities suffer way higher rates of food insecurity that the general pop. It chaps my ass. I’m v passionate about Native food sovereignty. I want Native ppl to be full w our traditional foods. #N8vTakeover. (Helms, 2021b)

Having control over the production and consumption of healthy food in colonised lands across the globe is vital for individual and community health (Ray et  al., 2019) as well as for decolonisation and Indigenous autonomy (Radu et al., 2020). Others used the account to make visible the subtle critical examination of settler colonial hegemony that exists in Rutherford Falls’ script. In this tweet from November 26, parallels are drawn between the impact of immediate trauma on Nathan Rutherford and the trauma felt by Black and Indigenous People of Colour (BIPOC) across the globe who experience this and intergenerational trauma on a daily basis.

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IDK if this translates, but Nathan losing his land/name/livelihood ‘identity makes him lash out at loved ones. It’s such a small level than what BIPOC ­experience, but trauma creates ripples of trauma. Do we give grace to the BIPOC people experiencing this daily? #N8vTakeover. (Helms, 2021a)

While the tweets about food sovereignty and historical narratives appear ostensibly off-topic in a discussion of colonial monuments, they, combined with tweets about intergenerational trauma, highlight the efficacy of Rutherford Falls in generating a discussion about colonial monuments and the hegemonic settler colonial narrative that they represent and reiterate. Rutherford Falls’ success in interrogating the hegemonic settler colonial narrative is, through deterritorialised digital media, a catalyst for the establishment of networks of global Indigenous solidarity. Rutherford Falls not only became available across the globe through streaming services such as Peacock in the United States and Stan in Australia, it gained considerable interest on social media. Through the actors’ personal accounts (particularly Michael Greyeyes, Jana Schmieding and Ed Helms), the conversation about Indigenous voices and perspectives on settler colonialism and colonial monuments spread across the globe. It represents a novel avenue for the dissemination of Native American culture and perspectives and has, for the most part, been received positively by Indigenous peoples around the world. The Twitter takeover is an act of decolonisation by ceding a ‘loud’ non-Indigenous voice (Ed Helms) and replacing it with Indigenous voices. Helms’ gesture and the positive response from Native American and Indigenous peoples around the globe highlight the ‘unprecedented … level of visibility social media has given Indigenous [peoples]’ (Carlson & Dreher, 2018). Raising this on a global platform means the message is shared among Indigenous and non-Indigenous followers readily.

Conclusion Rutherford Falls is not just a story about a town in upstate New York, USA. It isn’t even just the story of Indigenous-Settler relations in North America. Through its location in time and space—a globalised and deterritorialised world—it is a major step forward in considering the complexities of global Indigeneity. It canvasses similar Indigenous perspectives of settler colonial hegemony and inspires further development of strong ties between Indigenous peoples across the globe. The statue at the centre of Rutherford Falls is clearly a catalyst for a much bigger examination of the epistemic collisions between settler colonial hegemony and Indigenous people and culture. By celebrating the statue and its history, Nathan Rutherford highlights the codification of the statue as a symbol of both his family history and the town’s expression of a persistent hegemonic settler colonial narrative. His positioning of the statue as a symbol of an unfulfilled and legally binding agreement between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples paved the way for proceedings to legally return land to the Minishonka

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Nation. While the statue, for Nathan, was a symbol of his own identity; for the Minishonka, it was a constant reminder of the dispossession and marginalisation they continue to face. Both interpretations are held in the statue of Big Larry. Likewise in Namibia, South Africa, Canada and Australia, the statues of colonial figures remain in place, representing conflicting histories and always reiterating the hegemonic settler colonial narrative in towns, streetscapes and minds. Through decolonial privileging of Indigenous voices, the writers and producers of Rutherford Falls have extracted both sides of the story and contributed to a contemporaneous reflection on the position of colonial monuments across the globe. Rutherford Falls is a timely exposition of the debate surrounding settler colonial monuments, their meaning and their removal. While the show is set in the United States, in a fictional town with members of a fictional Native American community, the resonance with Indigenous peoples across the globe is immutable. It interrogates the entrenched settler colonial hegemony in colonial monuments and how calls for their removal expose the collisions of Indigenous and settler colonial ontologies. Rutherford Falls shows us that, across a deterritorialised and digitally mediated globe, decolonisation, in which the settler colonial narrative is called out for its inaccuracies and ideological undercurrents of wanton destruction, theft and oppression, is possible.

References Anderson, P. (2017). The H-word: The peripeteia of hegemony. Verso Books. Antonello, A. (2021). Monumental geo-politics: Ocean, land and captain cook in interwar Australia. History Australia, 0(0), 1–15. https://doi.org/10.1080/14490854. 2021.1991812 Appadurai, A. (2003). The production of locality. In Counterworks (pp.  208–229). Routledge. Atkinson, D.  C. (2018). Charlottesville and the alt-right: A turning point? Politics, Groups, and Identities, 6(2), 309–315. https://doi.org/10.1080/21565503.2018. 1454330 Buckheart Lodge. (2021). In Rutherford falls. Peacock. Carlson, B., & Berglund, J. (2021). Indigenous peoples rise up: The global ascendency of social media activism. Rutgers University Press. Carlson, B., & Dreher, T. (2018). Introduction: Indigenous innovation in social media. Media International Australia, 169(1), 16–20. Chalmers, S. (2020). Terra nullius? Temporal legal pluralism in an Australian Colony. Social & Legal Studies, 29(4), 463–485. https://doi.org/10.1177/0964663 919875991 Figueira, G. P. (2021). ‘That Horse Will Never Rise Again’: An exploration of narratives around the iterations of the Reiterdenkmal Statue in Namibia. International Journal of Heritage Studies, 27(9), 920–936. https://doi.org/10.1080/13527258.2021. 1883712 Frank, S., & Ristic, M. (2020). Urban fallism. City, 24(3–4), 552–564. https://doi. org/10.1080/13604813.2020.1784578

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Fredericks, B., Bradfield, A., Nguyen, J., & Ansell, S. (2021). Disrupting the colonial algorithm: Indigenous Australia and social media. Media International Australia. https://doi.org/10.1177/1329878X211038286 Furniss, E. (2001). Timeline history and the Anzac myth: Settler narratives of local history in a north Australian town. Oceania, 71(4), 279–297. https://doi. org/10.1002/j.1834-­4461.2001.tb02754.x Haring, R. C., McNaughton, L., Seneca, D. S., Henry, W. A. E., & Warne, D. (2021). Post-pandemic, translational research, and indigenous communities. Journal of Indigenous Research, 9(2021), 5. Heiss, A., & Minter, P. (2008). Macquarie PEN anthology of aboriginal literature. Allen & Unwin. Helms, (Ed.). (2021a, November 26) [@edhelms]. IDK if this translates, but Nathan losing his land/name/livelihood’ identity makes him lash out at loved ones. [Tweet]. Twitter. Twitter.com/edhelms Helms, (Ed.). (2021b, November 27) [@edhelms]. Ya know, after all that Native ppl have offered American culture, tribal communities suffer way higher rates of food insecurity. [Tweet]. Twitter. Twitter.com/edhelms Helms, (Ed.). (2021c, November 29) [@edhelms]. Finally, I want you to know abt Eastern tribes. People of first contact—We were dealing w Americans b4 there was an America. [Tweet]. Twitter. Twitter.com/edhelms. History Fair. (2021). In Rutherford falls. Peacock. Hutchings, S., & Rodger, D. (2018). Reclaiming Australia: Indigenous Hip-Hop group A.B. original’s use of Twitter. Media International Australia, 169(1), 84–93. https://doi.org/10.1177/1329878X18803382 Kelly, D., & Lobo, M. (2017). Taking it to the street: Reclaiming Australia in the top end. Journal of Intercultural Studies, 38(3), 365–380. https://doi.org/10.1080/ 07256868.2017.1314256 Knowles, R, & Aili, M. (2022). Captain Cook statue doused in red paint as Naarm’s Invasion Day rally cancelled. NITV News. Knudsen, B. T., & Andersen, C. (2019). Affective politics and colonial heritage, Rhodes must fall at UCT and Oxford. International Journal of Heritage Studies, 25(3), 239–258. https://doi.org/10.1080/13527258.2018.1481134 Langton, M. (1996). What do we mean by wilderness?: Wilderness and terra nullius in Australian art [address to the Sydney institute on 12 October 1995]. Sydney Papers, The, 8(1), 10–31. Lentin, A. (2020). Why race still matters. John Wiley & Sons. Lindsey, K., & Smith, M. (2021). Setting the scene. Public History Review, 28, 1–17. https://doi.org/10.5130/phrj.v28i0.7789 McGloin, C. (2015). Listening to hear: Critical allies in indigenous studies. Australian Journal of Adult Learning, 55(2), 267–282. https://doi.org/10.3316/ informit.329714556829580 Millions, E. (2021). Toppling colonialism: Historians, genocide, and missing indigenous children. Prairie History, 5, 2–5. Mitchell, M.  N. (2020). We always knew it was possible. City, 24(3–4), 580–593. https://doi.org/10.1080/13604813.2020.1784580 Moreton-Robinson, A. (2004). Whitening race: Essays in social and cultural criticism. Aboriginal Studies Press. Morley, D., & Robins, K. (1995). Spaces of identity: Global media, electronic landscapes and cultural boundaries. Routledge.

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Nugent, M. (2003). Botany bay: Voyagers, aborigines and history. Journal of Australian Studies, 27(76), 27–33. Picciuolo, C. (2021, July 13). Interview with ‘Rutherford Falls’ Star Michael Greyeyes. O’odham Action News: Home. https://oan.srpmic-­nsn.gov/interview-­with-­ rutherford-­falls-­star-­michael-­greyeyes/ Pilot. (2021). In Rutherford Falls. Peacock. Radu, I., Parent, É., Snowboy, G., Wapachee, B., & Beaulieu, G. (2020). 13 degrowth, decolonisation and food sovereignty in the Cree nation of Chisasibi. Food for Degrowth: Perspectives and Practices, 154. Ray, L., Burnett, K., Cameron, A., Joseph, S., LeBlanc, J., Parker, B., et  al. (2019). Examining indigenous food sovereignty as a conceptual framework for health in two urban communities in northern Ontario, Canada. Global Health Promotion, 26(3_ suppl), 54–63. Riggs, D. W., & Augoustinos, M. (2005). The psychic life of colonial power: Racialised subjectivities, bodies and methods. Journal of Community & Applied Social Psychology, 15(6), 461–477. https://doi.org/10.1002/casp.838 Russell, E. (2021). Crossing the minefield of anxiety, guilt, and shame: Working with and through Pākehā emotional discomfort in Aotearoa New Zealand histories education. New Zealand Journal of Educational Studies. https://doi.org/10.1007/ s40841-­021-­00233-­0 Rutherford Inc. (2021). In Rutherford falls. Peacock. Sentance, N. (2021). Remembering, re-storying, returning. History Australia. https:// doi.org/10.1080/14490854.2021.1991815 Shepherd, N. (2020). After the #fall. City, 24(3–4), 565–579. https://doi.org/10.108 0/13604813.2020.1784579 Skoden. (2021). In Rutherford falls. Peacock. Smallwood, S. E. (2019). Reflections on settler colonialism, the hemispheric Americas, and chattel slavery. The William and Mary Quarterly, 76(3), 407–416. https://doi. org/10.5309/willmaryquar.76.3.0407 Stanner, W. E. H. (1979). White man got no dreaming: Essays 1938–1973. Australian National University Press. https://openresearch-­repository.anu.edu.au/handle/ 1885/114726 Tuck, E., & Yang, K. W. (2018). Series editors introduction. In L. T. Smith, E. Tuck, & K. W. Yang (Eds.), Indigenous and decolonizing studies in education: Mapping the long view. Routledge. UN General Assembly. (2022 [1948], 9 December). Convention on the prevention and punishment of the crime of genocide (Vol. 78, p. 277). United Nations, Treaty Series. Walker, K. (1977). An aboriginal view of Australian history. The Australian Journal of Indigenous Education, 5(4), 14–16. https://doi.org/10.1017/S03105822 00009275 Wolfe, P. (2006). Settler colonialism and the elimination of the native. Journal of Genocide Research, 8(4), 387–409. https://doi.org/10.1080/1462352060 1056240

PART III

Removal and Rectification

CHAPTER 22

The Need for Context: Archaeology’s Contribution to the ‘Statue Wars’ Claire Baxter

Introduction The ‘Rhodes Must Fall’ campaign in Cape Town in 2015, in which South African students demanded the removal of a monument to Cecil Rhodes from their university campus, set off similar debates and protests worldwide, with other societies also questioning their public monuments and debating the values that were being commemorated. The United States, the UK and Australia are among the many countries where these debates have occurred and are the focus of this discussion, mostly due to the volume that has been written online and in the press in these countries. In the United States, the debate largely focuses on Confederate memorials erected after the Civil War (Astor, 2017; Belvedere, 2017; Caldwell & Cornish, 2018; Cotter, 2017; Dalbey, 2017; Hale, 2017; Hanson, 2017; Harris, 2017; Isbell, 2017; Katz, 2018; McWhorter, 2017). In the UK, those who made their fortunes from slave-trading or colonial activities are under scrutiny, for example, Rhodes, Colston and Codrington (Chaudhuri, 2016; Dalrymple, 2019; Simpson, 2015; The Telegraph, 2018), while in Australia it is the colonial figures such as Macquarie, Phillip and Cook whose roles are being reassessed (Daley, 2018; Grant, 2017; Hickey, 2017; news.com.au, 2017; Steger, 2017; Taylor, 2017). In all cases the debate is around whether monuments should remain or be removed. Those advocating to keep them argue that removing them is like hiding an unwanted part of history, destroying any opportunity to learn from

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them and provoke conversations. On the other hand, those wanting to remove them argue that they do not reflect the values of their respective societies any longer and instead are reminders of oppression and exclusion for certain groups. Relocating the monuments to museums or statue parks has been suggested as a third option, a kind of middle ground. But, as archaeologists, we know that removing an artefact from its context can change that object’s meaning. If we want to relocate monuments with the purpose of providing an educational opportunity, it is therefore necessary to record and preserve their context, like we would for any other such object. This chapter uses the statue parks in Budapest, Moscow and Lithuania, which were created after the fall of communism, as examples of the ways in which contexts of relocated monuments have been preserved and communicated, with the aim of providing recommendations as to what might be emulated or improved upon should other societies choose to relocate disputed monuments. Despite the voluminous literature on the topic of statues produced in the last few years, archaeologists have not been particularly vocal in the debate, especially outside of the United States. Perhaps this is due to the time period of the material under discussion, however, as the monuments are a type of material culture, and as the discussion is about removing them from their physical context, it seems that there is a role for archaeology in the debate.

Why Monuments Matter Changing political regimes are often accompanied by changes to the memorial landscape to privilege a preferred historical narrative and try to ideologically control public space (Choi, 2014). But even as early as the French Revolution (1789–1799), there were debates as to whether the destruction of monuments was necessary or whether it was valuable cultural heritage that was being destroyed, even if it related to an unpopular and deposed monarchy (Marschall, 2017). Monuments are important because the individuals or events chosen for memorialisation reflect the values that a society is trying to communicate about itself and what it considers to be important (Cummings, 2013). Often these decisions are imposed top-down by the ‘elites’ of a society (Buffington, 2019; Cummings, 2013; Forest & Johnson, 2002; Gromilova, 2014). However, memorialisation is also a process and the monument’s meaning changes as social interests and ideologies change (Choi, 2014; Dwyer & Alderman, 2008; Forest et al., 2004; Leib, 2002). The choice of what monuments to keep and preserve is therefore as much a communication of collective memory and political ideology as their creation in the first place (Diener & Hagen, 2013; Forest & Johnson, 2019; Hagen, 2009). Through action such as protests, the non-­ elites can also influence the meanings of monuments from ‘below’, talking back to the ‘elites’ and redefining a society’s history and identity by acting collectively to honour, profane or destroy monuments (Forest & Johnson, 2002; Gable, 2018; Turai, 2009).

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Monuments were never intended as neutral landscapes but instead are infused with messages of power, particularly in the case of Confederate statues in the United States (Edmonds, 2017; Forest & Johnson, 2019), where they may be considered “tangible reminders of black people’s illegitimacy, inferiority and insignificance” (Carter, 2018, p.  140). In Australia, Wiradjuri and Kamilaroi journalist and writer Stan Grant describes how a monument to Captain Cook with a plaque stating that he ‘discovered Australia’ “speaks to emptiness, it speaks to our invisibility; it says that nothing truly mattered, nothing truly counted until a white sailor first walked on these shores” (Grant, 2017, para. 7). While in the UK, writer, musician and professor of contemporary literature Amit Chaudhuri (2016, para. 4) says that a statue of Rhodes speaks to institutional racism and “unequal access to opportunity and mobility”.

The Debate and the Need to Preserve Context At its most extreme, the debate about the removal of controversial statues can be summed up as accusations of racism on the one side (Boroughs, 2015; Cotter, 2017; Hale, 2017; Harris, 2017; Schutte, 2015), versus accusations of Stalinism and a desire to erase history on the other (Knaus, 2017a; news.com. au, 2017; Simpson, 2015; Steger, 2017). But, as usual, there are many gradations in between. A minority of academics reflect the extreme views (for example Elam, 2017), but the majority agree on a desire to preserve history and use the monuments as tools for public education, while changing their context in the landscape to make them less one-sided and removing their potential to be threatening (Meeks, 2017; Leventhal, 2018, 136). Removing statues to an educational setting, as opposed to a place of honour, would prevent amnesia, allow more contextual information to be presented and also send a message that the memorialised individual’s values and actions are no longer part of the construct of the population’s admiration and celebration (Dalbey, 2017). The statues themselves are just objects and do not have meaning in and of themselves. Instead, their meaning is derived from the way in which they are represented (McLean, 1998, cited in Dietrich, 2011, 25). Therefore, a large part of the educational value of the statues is in how they are re-contextualised. What is meant by ‘contextual information’? Art education scholar Melanie Buffington (2019, p. 16) suggests that there are three different kinds of context: “the history of the person or event being depicted, the time in which the object was created, and the present time in which the work is being viewed and understood”. To this may also be added physical context; the location in which the object was installed, which is the focus of this chapter. Removing a monument from its context can drastically alter its meaning and politics, and it is therefore important that the original context is recorded (James, 1999). Monuments are pieces of material culture, just like other archaeological artefacts, and there is therefore a place for archaeological methods and expertise, such as the recording of context, to be taken into account as part of this debate. The physical context of a statue can also tell us something

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of its purpose. For example, a statue of a Confederate general located at a memorial on a battlefield or in a cemetery may have been erected as a commemoration, reflecting values of loss and sorrow, as well as bravery. The same statue situated on the steps of a courthouse or government building may instead be a statement about who is in power and be designed to intimidate (Cosson & Landrieu, 2017; Dalbey, 2017; Wahlers, 2016). American museum educator Janeen Bryant has found this to be the case, saying, “I often consider the monuments … as a social marker of claimed territory for white people/ whiteness—a visual cue of which town/courthouse/pit-stop is safe and not safe” (Bryant et al., 2018, para. 19).

The Statue Parks The author visited each of Budapest’s Memento Park, Lithuania’s Grutas Park and Moscow’s Park of Arts during the northern hemisphere summer of 2019 and documented the various ways in which context was presented at each site. The parks in Hungary, Lithuania and Moscow are not the only examples of statue parks around the world. One in New Delhi containing colonial statues (McGarr, 2015) and a smaller post-apartheid version in South Africa (Wight, 2014) are two other examples; however, largely due to time and budget constraints and the practicalities of visiting, the three parks in eastern Europe were selected for this analysis. Memento Park, Hungary The first park visited, Budapest’s Memento Park, was opened in 1993 following a similar debate to those going on in other countries at the moment, with some wanting to destroy the statues and others wanting to preserve them as “creations of documentary value” (Memento Park, 2018, p. 4). A list of 42 statues was compiled by a committee and the decision was made to create a statue park, although this created a second debate about the tone of the park and whether it should be one of shame or of irony. In the end, the committee chose a design from an architect named Akos Eleod which claims to “culturally and elegantly display a sensitive subject” (Memento Park, 2018, p.  4). The architect explains that his vision was to create a park that is “not about the statues or the sculptors, but a critique of the ideology that used these statues as symbols of authority” (Eleod, cited in Memento Park, 2018, pp. 6–7). Eleod deliberately tried to avoid creating an ‘anti-propaganda park’ as that would be following the same mentality as the dictatorship. The park’s tour guide also explained that the park is not intended to be a socialist Disneyland but instead is supposed to be about tyranny and its use of propaganda. It aims to educate younger people who did not live through the era, as well as to remind the older generation, who are becoming increasingly nostalgic for the socialist period, about the dangers of totalitarianism. The guidebook also points out that the park is about “Not irony—remembrance” (Memento Park, 2018, p. 8).

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The park is approximately half an hour from Budapest city centre by bus. There are three different ways to visit the park: by guided tour, walking around by yourself or walking around with a guidebook. The author attempted all three methods, with differing results. Overall, the interpretation is quite neutral, with very little being provided without paying the extra money for the guidebook or the guided tour. The statues have been removed from their pedestals and generally placed closer to the ground so that they can be examined more closely. There is very little written information in the form of plaques or information boards presented next to the statues, typically just the name of the statue or monument, the name of the artist and the year of creation, and the name of the location where it stood. There is a number alongside the plaque that corresponds with a number in the guidebook, which gives a lot more information. Besides listing the original location of the statue on the plaque, no other information about the physical context of the statues is provided next to them. The tour guide also did not discuss this in much detail, although the guidebook does provide this information for some of the statues, as well as photographs of how the statues looked in their original location. One example shows a statue of Lenin and describes its physical context in terms of height and relationship to other aspects of the memorial which are now missing and gives a brief description of the significance of the location where it was sited: “where the capital’s mass political and military rallies were held” (Memento Park, 2018, p. 18). Similar information is provided for the Liberating Soviet Soldier statue, which the guidebook describes as having formed part of the liberation monument commissioned by the Soviet commander of the army that expelled the Nazis from Budapest. According to the book, the location of Gellert Hill was chosen as it could be seen from anywhere in the city. It was positioned in front of the Genius of Freedom, a female figure holding a palm branch above her head, suggesting that the Soviet soldier was protecting freedom (Memento Park, 2018). Grutas Park, Lithuania Lithuania’s Grutas Park is approximately 120  km south-east of the capital Vilnius, near the town of Druskininkai, and can be reached by car or by public bus, which takes approximately two hours from Vilnius. The park was opened in 2001 following a competition held by the Lithuanian government for tenders for a park or museum to house the statues. The statues were all removed between 1989 and 1991 and came from all over Lithuania, unlike Memento Park which just contains statues from Budapest. Despite being located off the tourist trail, the park receives approximately 100,000 visitors per year (Gromilova, 2014) with entrance to the park costing EUR7.75 for adults. There is an optional audioguide which cost an additional EUR13.30. The statues are mostly located along two looped paths through woodland, totalling approximately 3.2  km of walkways. The park also has a cafe, a mini-zoo, a

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playground and some other exhibits, such as a picture gallery, and two museums containing smaller items such as busts, as well as more information about communism. The park is surrounded by wire fences spaced with guard towers, which according to the Grutas Park website is to create the feeling of being in Siberia. The available interpretation on the statues themselves is mixed. Some have no interpretation at all, some just list the name of the person depicted and others list biographical information and/or have a photograph of the statue in  location before it came down. Some of the statues have a corresponding narration on the audioguide, which in some cases gives additional information, and, in others, seemingly repeats the biographical information on the accompanying interpretation boards. Of all the visitors in the park on the day of the author’s visit, not one was spotted with the audioguide, and its price relative to the cost of the ticket made hiring it unattractive. The fact that the audioguide was not promoted by the worker at the ticket desk meant that it would have been very easy to miss the fact that it was available. Renting the audioguide also required filling out a form listing name, address and passport number, so that if the audioguide was not returned or was damaged, the person who had signed it out could be held responsible for the cost of replacing it. This served as another reason many would be unlikely to hire it out. In terms of the contextual information provided alongside the statues, some of the statues were accompanied by photographs of where they originally stood. Where these photographs were available, they were useful in demonstrating the relationship of the statue to its originally intended surroundings. For example, a statue of Lenin, placed on the ground, surrounded by tall trees and viewed from a boardwalk a couple of metres away, looked fairly small and unimpressive. But the photograph accompanying it showed the same statue placed in an open square where it suddenly looked much larger and more imposing. Similarly, a bust of Baltusis-Zemaitis also placed at eye level in the park and surrounded by tall trees, looked a little broken and forlorn. The accompanying photograph, however, showed the same bust mounted atop a tall column on top of steps in a public square. In both cases, the monuments looked a lot more threatening and imposing in the photographs than they did in the park. Without the images it would be difficult to understand their impact on the landscape. For this reason, the photographs were a useful tool in preserving and communicating their original physical context. However, many of the photographs were severely faded, and were absent on the majority of the statues. Most of the statues had some information about where they had been located, but this was often just the name of the city or town, and for those unfamiliar with those places, it was not meaningful. There was not much information given about why certain locations were chosen, or what the impact was on people visiting that location. For example, there is exhibited a street sign ‘Lenin Street’ which the audioguide points out is an authentic street sign, but there is no information about where it came from or where Lenin Street was.

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One exception was the Mother of Cross Hill statue, which was located immediately past the entrance to the park. For this statue, the audioguide mentioned that the hill that it was standing on had deliberately been reconstructed to resemble the statue’s original site. It also gave information about how this statue was supposed to be located in Alekseevka in Russia as a memorial to the Lithuanian 16th division which fought there as part of the Red Army in 1943. However, the Russians did not think the finished statue was Soviet or ideological enough in style and they rejected it. It was then placed in Kryzkalnis in Lithuania instead as a tribute to mothers. Park of Arts, Russia The Park of Arts, or Fallen Monuments Park, is located next to Gorky Park along the Moskva River in central Moscow. Unlike the other two parks, it is within the city itself and can be reached on foot. This park does not have an entrance fee and is open 24 hours with no fences or gates. There are no brochures, guidebooks or audioguides, and the website is limited, being part of the broader Gorky Park website. As such, on the author’s visit, there was no information about the founding of the park; however, this is given in secondary sources such as Forest and Johnson (2002), who state that the monuments were originally placed in a field behind the Central House of Artists, some of them having been damaged either during or after moving. They were abandoned in the park until they started to become a tourist destination, and in 1996 the Moscow city government made them into a formal display by restoring them, installing plaques naming the individuals depicted, and naming the park the ‘Park of Arts’. The park was transferred to the oversight of Muzeum, a subsidiary of the Moscow Committee on Culture, and was added to with contemporary art, a rose garden, busts of cultural icons and abstract religious art. There are over 1000 sculptures in the park in total (according to the Gorky Park website), although the number of these representing Soviet leaders and ideologies is much smaller, perhaps around 30. It is not always easy to tell which items directly relate to Soviet ideology, however, as the statues are mixed in with other sculptures such as modern art and busts of writers and artists. In terms of interpretation, there is very little. The majority of statues just have the name of the person depicted, name of the sculptor, year it was created and the material it was made from. Some of the statues with expanded information mention where the statue was located; however, this is only very brief. For example, one statue of Stalin just states it was to be erected in front of the Bolshoi Theatre. Another of Dzerzhinsky states that it was located in Lubyanskaya Square, home to the headquarters of the KGB, which seems significant; however no further information is given. There is also no information as to why they were located where they were, or images to show how they may have looked in their original location, such as what buildings were around them, or whether they were at

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eye-­level or on tall plinths. In the case of Dzerzhinsky, the plinth has also been installed in the park, showing how the statue originally looked when it was in position in Lubyanskaya Square; however, this is the only statue for which this has been done, and there is no information as to why this was done for this particular statue and no others.

Discussion As shown by these three case studies, the way in which context is presented varies greatly between sites. In Moscow’s Park of Arts, there is almost no context presented. Lithuania’s Grutas Park is heavy on biographical detail and presents physical context well on some of the statues via the use of photographs. Budapest’s Memento Park is probably the most rounded in terms of presenting information about all four types of context, but only if the visitor spends extra money to take the guided tour or buy the guidebook. But the recording of physical context has not been applied consistently in any of the three case studies examined here. Where they were provided, the photos at Grutas Park in Lithuania, and in the guidebook at Memento Park, are valuable; however, the information is not provided for every statue. According to museum designer and former lecturer in museum studies at New  York University, Paul Williams (2008, p. 185), the “size, location, character, tone and accessibility of the commemorative space are vital in restating the importance of an event, and often in reshaping its memory”. If these elements are vital in constructing the meaning of a space, they are also important in providing context for a monument that stood in that space when that monument is relocated. The photographs in Grutas Park do help with this, and the guidebook for Memento Park provides some details for some of the statues; however, this is usually limited to a single sentence stating, for example, that the square was used for parades, and does not go into detail as to the size, location, character, tone and accessibility of the space. In addition, removing the statues from their pedestals and presenting them lower to the ground deprives them of the threatening effects they may have once had, and therefore tones down the menace they may have once imposed (deTar, 2015), making it more difficult to imagine their impact. Again, this is where the photographs at Grutas Park were valuable, as it made it easier to imagine how dominant the statues were in their original position and relative to the space around them. Another criticism of Memento Park is that having a large number of statues in a small space creates an impression of an ideological saturation of public space, whereas in reality it may not have been so all-encompassing (Velikonja, 2009). This could possibly be overcome through a map, or other archaeological techniques such as laser scanning of the objects and their environment before they are removed, showing the statues’ original locations throughout the country or city. This would enable visitors to see how densely packed, or spread out, the monuments originally were, rather than leaving the impression of encountering a socialist statue at every turn. None of the parks provided

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this, instead just listing their location, in the case of Memento Park and Grutas Park, which required the visitor to be familiar with the layout of the city or country. Photographs, laser scanning and plans or grids are commonly used by archaeologists when recording the context of objects, in order to show their position as well as their proximity to other objects (Greene & Moore, 2010; Maloney, 2013). While not all aspects of archaeological recording (such as, e.g., stratigraphy) will be relevant here, the basic principle of recording an object’s relationship to other objects does apply, and some of the archaeological techniques such as photographing and mapping objects before removal are applicable. As well as helping in presenting the information to the public, such data also helps to preserve the archaeological record, meaning that future researchers can reinterpret the evidence without having to rely solely on the subjective interpretations of their predecessors (Greene & Moore, 2010). As archaeologists are experienced in recording the contexts of objects, there is clearly a role for archaeology to play in this discussion. It is not just descriptions of the space itself that were largely missing from the three parks discussed, but also information about how that space was used. Descriptions of how people used or experienced a space or an object can help to make interpretation more relatable (Leeds Museums and Galleries, 2017; Museum Galleries Scotland, 2019; Thompson, 1994; V & A Museum, 2013). The Victoria & Albert Museum suggests that the most obvious way to connect people with objects is to use real individuals and quotes or humour (V & A Museum, 2013), and the British Museum also recommend using “quotes to include voices from the past, add personal points of connection, and acknowledge other views” (Batty et al., 2016, p. 78). For example, what impact did a statue of a slave-owner such as Codrington have on a British student of Caribbean origin at Oxford? Did a First Nations Australian feel welcome in a park with a statue of Captain Cook that claims he discovered Australia? How did an African American feel walking past a statue of a Confederate general on their way into the local courthouse? If “it is not only planners and designers who determine the meaning of these public spaces; the attitudes and use patterns of the people who visit them also shape their real consequence” (Williams, 2008, p. 185), then collecting stories from people about their everyday experience of any statues earmarked for relocation to a statue park would be a way of addressing this and adding an extra layer of context as well as making the context relatable to different audiences. The audioguide at Grutas Park did tell a story about how an elderly lady would come and hang a basket of rotten produce from the outstretched hand of a Lenin statue. Authorities got tired of removing the basket but did not think it was right to imprison an old lady, so the statue got replaced with a more streamlined Lenin, which had no protruding arms from which to hang items. Similarly, at Memento Park the tour guide talked about the resistance to the Soviet Heroic Memorial, which became a gathering place for punks during the 1970s and 1980s as the triangular army cap on one of the figures represented makes it appear to have a Mohawk haircut. Another statue to have been

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the butt of jokes during the Soviet period was the Monument to the Hungarian Socialist Republic. This is a large statue of a man in a running pose, trailing a flag or banner behind him. Both the guide and the guidebook say it was known as the ‘cloakroom attendant’ as it was positioned running out of the trees in the City Park as if to say, “Sir, you forgot your scarf!” (Memento Park, 2018, p. 47). However, with the exception of these two statues, there is little information presented in the parks about the ways in which the public used the spaces in which the statues stood, or the way in which that use and sentiment changed over time. The stories that were presented did enliven the narrative and present a different perspective on the statues; however, they were only accessible by paying extra for the audioguide, guidebook or guided tour. Museum studies have shown that the majority of people spend little time at each individual exhibit, stop at less than half the exhibits and frequently don’t read labels in museums (Australian Museum, 2019). For this reason, it is important to keep the information panels brief, and to provide clear and concise information. And yet, as we have identified in this chapter, context is important, and there are (at least) four different kinds of context that can be provided. To this end, it is important to identify the aim of the park, and who the audience is (Australian Museum, 2019; V & A Museum, 2013), in order to ensure the presentation of information is as clear and targeted as possible. Memento Park claims that it deliberately does not provide context so that visitors can give the statues their own meaning (Ratz et al., 2008). In reality this is difficult and assumes a high level of prior knowledge, although it might be appropriate for local visitors who remember the period. Objects have little intrinsic value, and so their importance to heritage comes from association and context, usually connected with a specific environment (Thompson, 1994). For this reason, the lack of context at Memento Park and Park of Arts, while perhaps avoiding top-down constructions and biased interpretations, also does not give enough information to make the objects meaningful to those who have not encountered them in their original states and locations. Most people visiting a communist statue park, for example, will probably have a basic idea of who Marx and Lenin were, and so a full history of at least these two men, as provided in Grutas Park in Lithuania, is perhaps unnecessary, unless the aim of the park is to present the history of communism. But if the aim is to show the way in which public monuments were used as propaganda for the regime, then the contexts of why those statues were erected and why certain locations were chosen is more critical. The full biographies of the individuals could perhaps be accessible in a different way, such as an audioguide, for those who are interested in more detail. The difficulties of the statue park solution are, in some ways, the same as have been raised for putting the statues in a museum, and this solution is essentially a museum, just a different form. It is difficult to write the history of very near pasts as we do not have the required distance to fully understand the meaning of events, are too emotionally involved, and often sources are not fully available (Garton Ash, 2002). However, in this case, it could be argued

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that an unbiased, factual historical account is not necessarily what is required. Instead, if the aim is to tell a story about people, how they felt in the presence of the statues, the way statues’ meaning changed over time and the arguments around taking them down or leaving them up, then the time to record these stories is now, while the people having these feelings and conversations are still alive and able to tell their stories. That said, there are still judgements to be made about what stories are collected, who gets to tell them, what arguments and facts are presented, and what language is used, and this would be difficult for a curator to do in an unbiased manner (Auslander, 2018; Bryant et  al., 2018). Of the three statue parks, the one in Lithuania is clearly presenting a one-sided view, but it is relatively upfront about this fact. Budapest feels more neutral; however, they have also avoided much discussion of home-grown communism, instead presenting it as something imposed on them by invaders. And Moscow avoids the issue altogether by not presenting any information at all. It has been suggested (Clements, 2012; deTar, 2015; Diener & Hagen, 2013; Williams, 2008) that the way in which communism ended in Hungary and Lithuania made it easier for them to create these kinds of parks and to decide to remove their monuments. One of the reasons given for this is that in these countries, communism was seen as an ideology imposed on the country from outside, and also a regime with a finite end, whereas in Moscow it is more difficult, as many of the current leaders have direct links to the communist regime, which was centred in the city. In this way, the removal of statues in Eastern Europe has been compared to a process of ‘decolonization’ suggesting that Hungary and Lithuania were able to use Russia as an ‘alien outsider’ against which they have been able to form a new national identity. This is something Russia cannot do, since there the current political elites held high positions in the Soviet state apparatus (Dietrich, 2011; Forest et  al., 2004). This makes a difficult history even more difficult to discuss and is maybe one reason for the limited information given at Moscow’s Park of Arts. In this way, it would appear that the situation in Australia especially is more similar to Moscow, where the current leaders and politicians are largely white, from European backgrounds, and who have, perhaps indirectly, been privileged by colonialism. On the other hand, the creation of the parks in Hungary and Lithuania still garnered much controversy, showing that the decision to create them, and also the way in which they have been interpreted, were not a simple one (Light, 2000; Light & Young, 2011; Simon, 2014; Wight, 2014; Williams, 2008). It is also worth noting that neither park gives much information about home-grown collaborators, and one leaves with the impression that it was very much a regime imposed upon them from the outside (Williams, 2008). To this point, academic program director at the Vienna Wisenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies, Eva Kovacs (2003) also suggests that the history being presented at Memento Park in Hungary ignores the Kadar era, perhaps to distance visitors from the recent past, or perhaps to present a more severe form of communism than that experienced by Hungarians under Kadar.

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Another danger of interpretation is that the narrative becomes another top-­ down enforced message, this time coming from the creators of the park to the visitors. Just as objects do not have intrinsic meaning without context, the object’s meaning can be changed or influenced by the interpretive text that accompanies it (Museum Galleries Scotland, 2019). It is therefore necessary to walk a fine line between providing enough context, and not asserting too much influence or bias on the viewer. Presenting a plurality of views and contexts would help to avoid this and make for a more rounded and democratic interpretation. As the Americans for the Arts (2019), and many others (Edmonds, 2017; Hale, 2017; Knaus, 2017b; Taylor, 2017), point out, community engagement is key to the success of any solution for contested monuments. Otherwise, it remains the dominant group setting the terms of the debate and potentially still positions the oppressor at the centre, with the oppressed groups on the margins (Amin Husain, cited in Stiem, 2018, para. 52). Engaging different groups from the community will help to bring these peripheral stories to the forefront and reduce the agency of the individual whose monument is being relocated. An example of where a statue has been relocated and contextualised in the United States is in Austin, where a statue of Jefferson Davis at the University of Texas, Austin campus was removed after a committee had researched the history of the monument and gauged the intent of its donor (Harris, 2017). It was relocated to the Dolph Briscoe Center for American History, where an exhibit was designed to tell the story of the statue’s creation, placement and subsequent controversy, touching on race relations and the way the confederate monuments were contested even at the time of their creation, rather than focusing on Jefferson Davis himself and his role in the Civil War (Caldwell & Cornish, 2018). Time and budget constraints prevented this example from being included in this study; however, it would be an interesting comparison, alongside the recent display of an Edward Colston statue in Bristol’s M Shed Museum, and other examples where additional context has been added to monuments in their existing locations, such as a statue of Confederate soldiers at the University of Mississippi (Cobb, 2017), Maitland Brown Memorial in Fremantle, Western Australia (Australian Heritage Council, 2018), and the Codrington Library in Oxford, where secondary plaques have been added to existing monuments to give a more comprehensive picture of their history.

Conclusion Monuments are important to societies as they communicate the values that a society is choosing to celebrate and commemorate. However, these values are not set in stone and over time the meaning of a monument can change, sometimes moving into a contested state. This has occurred over the past decade in the UK, the United States and Australia, among many other nations, where statues of individuals associated with colonialism and slavery are subject to debate. Leaving the statues in place is becoming increasingly untenable as they

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are being subjected to vandalism and unauthorised removal, as well as being a focus for rising tensions. Yet destroying them also destroys the opportunity to use them for educational purposes and as a catalyst for discussions. One of the solutions suggested as providing a ‘middle way’ between these options is the creation of statue parks, such as those created in Budapest, Moscow and Lithuania after the fall of communism. However, an investigation of the contextual information provided at these parks shows that none of them really offer a good example that could be followed in the UK, the United States or Australia if a similar process was to be followed in those societies. The Park of Arts in Moscow presents very little contextual information, resulting in something more akin to a sculpture garden rather than an educational facility. Grutas Park in Lithuania and Memento Park in Budapest present some useful information, such as through the use of photographs of the statues in their original locations; however, this information is not consistently applied. All three parks lack personal, relatable stories about how the statues spread ideology or impacted everyday life in their respective towns and cities. In addition, much of the information is only available through the purchase of optional extras such as an audioguide, guided tour or guidebook, which the majority of visitors do not seem inclined to do. Whether statue parks are an appropriate solution for societies in the United States, the UK and Australia would need to be assessed on a case-by-case basis, as there are other factors such as cost and available space which would need to be taken into consideration. As this chapter has noted, however, if such parks are created, then the need to properly contextualise the relocated statues is an important factor in making them effective in preserving history and educating the public. None of the statue parks examined here have provided full and consistent contextual information, reducing the educational value of their presentations. It is therefore important that statues and monuments are treated like any other artefact or piece of material culture, and if they are being relocated, then they should be subject to proper archaeological recording.

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Turai, H. (2009). Past unmastered: Hot and cold memory in Hungary. Third Text., 23(1), 97–106. https://doi.org/10.1080/09528820902786735 V & A Museum. (2013). Gallery text at the V & A: A Ten Point Guide. V & A. http:// www.vam.ac.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0009/238077/Gallery-­Text-­at-­the-­V-­ and-­A-­Ten-­Point-­Guide-­Aug-­2013.pdf. Velikonja, M. (2009). Lost in transition: Nostalgia for socialism in post-socialist countries. East European Politics and Societies., 23(4), 535–551. https://doi. org/10.1177/0888325409345140 Wahlers, K. E. (2016). North Carolina’s heritage protection act: Cementing confederate monuments in North Carolina’s landscape. North Carolina Law Review., 94(6), 2176–2200. Wight, A.  C. (2014). Tracking Discourses of Occupation and Genocide in Lithuanian Museums and Sites of Memory. Ph.D. thesis, University of Plymouth. Williams, P. (2008). The afterlife of communist statuary: Hungary’s Szoborpark and Lithuania’s Grutas Park. Forum for Modern Language Studies., 44(2), 185–198. https://doi.org/10.1093/fmls/cqn003

CHAPTER 23

Dis-Placing White Supremacy: Intersections of Black and Indigenous Struggles in the Removal of the Roosevelt Statue at the American Museum of Natural History Wil Sahar Patrick, Reuben Rose-Redwood, and CindyAnn Rose-Redwood

Introduction On 10 October 2016, over 200 activists assembled outside the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) in New York City calling for the removal of an Equestrian Statue of Theodore Roosevelt and the renaming of Columbus Day as International Peoples Day. The protest was organised by the Indigenous and decolonial activist groups, NYC Stands with Standing Rock and Decolonize This Place, to challenge the ongoing legacies of white supremacy, Indigenous dispossession and anti-Black racism enacted through the honorific commemoration of figures such as Roosevelt and Columbus. The protesters led an Anti-­ Columbus Day tour inside the museum, highlighting the racist stereotypes depicted in its exhibits, and carried signs with messages such as “DECOLONIZE THIS MUSEUM”, “ABOLISH WHITE SUPREMACY” and “BLACK LIVES MATTER” (Sidahmed, 2016). Unlike protests against Confederate or Columbus statues and monuments, which generally afford readings as either anti-Black or anti-Indigenous, the

W. Sahar Patrick • R. Rose-Redwood (*) • C. Rose-Redwood University of Victoria, Victoria, BC, Canada e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 B. Carlson, T. Farrelly (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook on Rethinking Colonial Commemorations, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-28609-4_23

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equestrian statue features former US President Theodore Roosevelt mounted on horseback trailed by two men—one Black and another Indigenous—who are both on foot and in a subordinate position to Roosevelt, thereby forging anti-Black and anti-Indigenous violences together in bronze (Image  23.1). The positionality of the Black and Indigenous figures below and following slightly behind Roosevelt in itself speaks volumes, illustrating how the ideology

Image 23.1  The Equestrian Statue of Theodore Roosevelt (sculptor James Earle Fraser, unveiled in 1940) and the enactment of white supremacist monumentality at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. (Courtesy of photographer Edward H. Blake, as modified by Wikimedia Commons, 2015)

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of white supremacy places white masculinity over and above both Black and Indigenous peoples. The Roosevelt statue has therefore served as an important focal point where Black and Indigenous struggles against white supremacy have intersected on the streets of the imperial metropolis. In the US context, this confluence of Black and Indigenous counter-­ monumental struggles stands in strong contrast to accounts that draw stark distinctions between Black and Indigenous movements, where Black struggle is viewed as primarily targeting neo-Confederate monumentality whereas Indigenous struggle is framed around confronting monuments to historical colonisers. In The Black Shoals: Offshore Formations in Native and Black Studies (2019), Tiffany Lethabo King describes the incoherence produced by the artistic interventions of Black activists on the statuary of Christopher Columbus. The support for these acts by local Black Lives Matter organisations created dissonance for those who distance Black struggle from historical and ongoing colonisation as articulated through the discourse of conquest. Attempts to partition the wave of counter-monumental actions as simply Black or Indigenous impose a narrow frame of reference and fail to acknowledge how the trajectories of these two formulations intersect through the confrontation of statuary that commemorates white supremacy and settler colonialism in the landscape. Recognising that Black and Indigenous struggles are constituted through non-identical trajectories emerging from their own distinct traditions within scholarship and praxis, this chapter considers how such struggles nevertheless have the potential to intersect in spaces of strategic solidarity. We begin by providing an overview of scholarship on the geographies of monumentality and commemorative landscapes generally and in relation to struggles against white supremacist, settler-colonial monumentality in particular. In doing so, we argue that the production and maintenance of monumental spatial formations and commemorative landscapes have been an integral part of the political infrastructure that co-constitutes settler-colonial world-making yet can also serve as key focal points for engaging in cosmopolitics, or the process of composing a commons to negotiate a shared world that promotes flourishing. This work is by no means an easy task. We therefore consider some of the theoretical and political impasses and points of friction between Black and Indigenous movements as well as how building solidarities can work towards negotiating disagreements and broadening the horizon of possible worlds by performing the commitment to create new political subjectivities and communities. By way of example, we examine the movement to remove the Roosevelt statue in New York as an illustrative case to better understand how counter-monumental struggles can open a space to nurture the possibilities for intersectional solidarity. Before proceeding further, a brief explanation of our own positionality in relation to this work is in order. Two of the authors (Wil and Reuben) are white, settler men and the third author (CindyAnn) identifies as a woman of colour of Indo-Caribbean background who is a first-generation immigrant to both the United States and Canada. At the time of writing, each of us resides

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in Coast Salish Territories of the Ləkʷəŋən and W̠SÁNEĆ peoples in what is otherwise known as Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. However, CindyAnn grew up in New York City and Reuben has extended family in the city as well. As a person of colour who has experienced racism firsthand, CindyAnn has found that it is important to work together across racial, ethnic and cultural lines in order to build solidarity to break down racial hierarchies of power that seek to oppress people of colour and Indigenous peoples. Wil and Reuben have both strived to engage in solidarity work in our scholarship and activism, and we think it is crucial to foreground Black and Indigenous voices when considering the violent legacies of white supremacist, settler-colonial monumentality and counter-monumentality.

The Spatial Politics of Monumentality and the Remaking of Commemorative Landscapes Despite the shadows that monuments cast over us in everyday life, they are elusive figures that defy an easy definition due to their deceptive malleability. Statuary, memorials, obelisks, plaques and monumental architecture such as cathedrals, museums and legislatures project a stability, authority and resilience from their materials that make them appear simultaneously both historical and eternal. Monumental landscapes present the political order of things as legible in common spaces (Azaryahu, 1997; Latour & Hermant, 2006; Lefebvre, 1991; Miles, 1997; Zukin, 1996). Associated with past figures, monuments compose heritage into political anchors in space (Anderson, 1983; Hobsbawm & Ranger, 1983). Through the making of national identity and an associated national public, monumentality works to delimit political subjects and excludes those absent from the national imaginary (Fenster, 2004; Foote, 2008; Johnson, 1994; Light, 2004; Schein, 2018; Till, 2005). Monuments sanctify and valorise conquests of flesh and land as heroic through a transmutation of violent people, events and histories that normalises conquerors into men of peace (Foote, 2008; Mitchell, 1992). The motif of equestrian white generals towering over Black or Indigenous peoples placed in juxtaposition is an explicit demonstration of domination in racialised space (McLean, 1998; Savage, 2018). As has been witnessed over the last decade with increasing ferocity, monuments and the orders that they uphold are not unassailable or permanent fixtures of our shared spaces; rather, monumentality becomes a political arena where groups struggle for their own presence or to remove antagonistic figures (Dwyer & Alderman, 2008; Lefebvre, 1991). Monuments are strongly associated with memory and acts of commemoration, where commemoration describes the complex memory work that is done through the construction of public identity in common space by selectively interpreting the past (Holmes & Loehwing, 2016). French historian Pierre Nora (1989) examines the construction of memory sites, or lieux de mémoire, as an archival or extrinsic form of memory imposed to anchor memory due to

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the erosion of a real environment of memory, or milieux de mémoire, which Nora associates with peasant culture and pre-industrialised society. Of these lieux de mémoire, Nora argues that architectural sites like Versaille are ensembles tied to place while statuary sites depicting the dead have intrinsic value and altering their location does nothing to change their impact. However, contrary to this argument, other scholars have maintained that monuments are intimately associated with the places in which they are located. Monuments have strong relationships with certain socio-political groups that are bound to place, especially those espousing place-based nationalisms, and there are indeed consequential effects in cases where monuments are removed or relocated (Tunbridge & Ashworth, 1996). The incongruity between a group and the heritage displayed by local monuments can lead to dissonance, especially when a commemorative site is imposed on a diverse population. Different sites alter the interpretation of monuments, and certain landscapes may find themselves within the process of accretion where new statuary gains meaning from sharing space with other monuments (Dwyer, 2004; Foote, 2008; Savage, 2009). Not all locations are equal: the prominence and visibility of a monument gives authority and legitimacy to affiliated socio-political groups (Marschall, 2010), and in the context of the United States, statues were central to the construction of white spaces. For instance, the Robert E. Lee Equestrian Monument in Richmond, Virginia and the other statues on Monument Avenue were planned alongside the development of a segregated suburban real estate venture (Savage, 2018). Moreover, the exile of monuments from central places to monument graveyards or less-frequented spaces serves to banish the statue and its associated groups from the public, often leaving an empty plinth in its place (Williams, 2008). However, relocating a statue to a museum may accidentally convey more legitimacy than intended. As curator Elizabeth Merritt explains: [M]useums are physical spaces that convey authority. As well, statues remain powerful—and physically imposing—visual forms that will keep speaking even when they are in new settings. And, too, they can and certainly will shape social experiences in ways that curators may not be able to anticipate. (Merritt, 2018, para. 7)

In addition to misunderstanding the purpose of museums, the proposal to move contentious monuments to new locations raises the question as to whether the institutions should continue investing them with value. French theorists Bruno Latour and Henri Lefebvre provide distinct but complementary frameworks for understanding the inherently contested condition of space. Anglo-scholarship has frequently framed actor-network theory (ANT) and Marxism as antagonistic, though Latour and ANT have been taken up constructively by Marxian geographers (Castree, 2004; Swyngedouw, 2004). While Lefebvre prioritises an opposition to the machinations of state and capitalism dominating space and Latour’s political ecology strives to

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describe how a good common world can be negotiated in space, both theorise the role of the monumental landscape in constituting the political fabric of society. Within Lefebvre’s political theory, monuments are the anchors that project the governing political ideal, acting as centres of strength that fix systems of reference in space. As discussed above, monumental sites produce identity for different groups. Lefebvre argues that groups cannot constitute or recognise themselves as subjects without holding their own spaces, and new systems of reference need to invest themselves in spaces to survive; the failure to produce space condemns ideas to dissolve into “mere signs” (Lefebvre, 1991, pp. 416–7). Space is the site and medium of struggle where values, ideas and systems of reference are confronted in a process of judgement that Lefebvre calls the trial by space, which puts the idea under scrutiny radically into question. How each trial by space unfolds is contingent on the relationships and formations of each place. Similarly, the discussion of monuments in Latour and French psychologist and writer Émilie Hermant’s Paris: Invisible City (2006) describes how monuments are not an extrinsic source of memory, but participants full of meaning that create order in space: The monumental “lieux de mémoires” are not the metaphorical place-holder of an absent social structure; on the contrary, it is the structure that is the metaphor of all these representations, which in turn offer the only literal definitions of the social world ever to be encountered. (Latour & Hermant, 2006, p. 90)

Opposed to Nora’s notion of lieux de mémoires, Latour emphasises the relationality of monuments by theorising them as materials that participate in politics through their circulation of normative orders for the world. Latour’s political theory of cosmopolitics is where “objects of vigorous controversy” are negotiated among a multiplicity of groups without presuming an a priori point of agreement (2004, p. 111). First developed by Belgian philosopher Isabelle Stengers, cosmopolitics asserts that the politics in nature and facts cannot be separated from the values attached to them (Blok & Jenson, 2011). We therefore cannot assume that political groups live in the same world: We perhaps never differ about opinions, but rather always about things—about what world we inhabit. And very probably, it never happens that adversaries come to agree on opinions: they begin, rather, to inhabit a different world. (Latour, 2003, p. 455)

These different worlds that groups inhabit, the cosmoses of cosmopolitics, are composed of assemblages that enact the normative order of the cosmos in the world through their material components: the cosmogram. American historian and philosopher of science John Tresch (2012) coined the term ‘cosmogram’ to describe how ensembles of public materials

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co-­constitute propositions for how the world ought to be. Rather than inert materials or symbols, Tresch theorises cosmograms as instruments or machines that maintain, support and extend normative orders: “[a cosmogram] is not just a symbol or a representation, not a reflection or a projection; it is an instrument, a machine for founding, maintaining, and extending a specific natural and social order and the emotions that support it” (2007, p. 92). More than this, Tresch asserts the substantive contribution of artefacts to the co-­ constitution of a cosmos as a cosmopolitical infrastructure. However, the necessity for cosmograms to hold space open for a particular world simultaneously makes them available to contestation, since, as Tresch argues, “because they are concrete and public, cosmograms are themselves continually exposed to contestations, additions, deletions, and replacements; a permanently universally valid presentation of the universe, whether by Borges or by Carnap, belongs to science fiction” (2007, p. 93). The contestation of cosmograms in the negotiation of the common world creates a landscape of change where values and their associated materials and systems of reference are tried for their place in the commons. For Latour, these trials of strength are not Hobbesian exercises of power but reflections of how sturdy the attachments are within the network of allies (also, see De Vries, 2016; McGee, 2014). The emphasis that cosmopolitics places on monuments as vulnerable participants rather than representational symbols echoes Lefebvre’s theorisation of space and the morphologies in it as the medium and site of struggle within the trial by space. Against the monolithic statuary approved by the state, Black and Indigenous activists have taken it upon themselves to utilise strategies of counter-­ monumentality to confront colonial, white supremacist commemoration by erecting their own cosmograms and reclaiming space. The presence of monuments that are antithetical to racist and colonial world-making contests the dominant order (Dwyer, 2004). The Madre Luz monument in Baltimore, constructed from papier mache to challenge the Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee Monument in Wyman Park (now Harriet Tubman Grove), was installed in 2015 and quickly removed by the police since the Madre Luz was erected without a permit. However, it prompted Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake to initiate a Special Commission to Review Baltimore’s Confederate Monuments, which saw the removal of the Jackson-Lee monument (Osborne, 2017). Embodying the presence of oppressed communities ostracised from common spaces can also occur through performative practices that may be enacted without physically constructing a counter-monument. Jarrett Martineau (2015) of the Frog Lake First Nation describes the prefigurative practice of resurgence through affirmative enactment. The strategies of Idle No More that Martineau discusses counter colonial erasure through the defiant re-placing of Indigenous peoples: “[t]he flash mob round dance was mobilized as a tactical form of resistant performance that self-authorized Indigenous presence in public spaces and brought Indigenous cultural and ceremonial practices into the view of Settler society” (2015, p. 233). The commemorative performances of Idle No More celebrated Indigenous resilience and called upon settlers to reconsider colonial

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history and build “new relationships of solidarity” (Martineau, 2015, p. 234). These strategies of counter-monumentality seek to provoke trials by space, either through erecting a competing statuary or through performing embodied resistance, and broaden the horizon of future worlds that publics can build together.

Solidarity and Making Worlds Together The call for interracial solidarity animates discussions in Black and Indigenous thought, and counter-monumental movements have seen coalitions of people of colour and Indigenous peoples coming together with their supporters to campaign against white supremacist, settler-colonial monumentality. Due to the increasing calls for alliances and coalitions between racialised groups, there has been a recent increase in scholarship analysing the frictions that emerge between Black and Indigenous formulations that complicate easy alliances. The opposition of Black and Indigenous communities against any given statue is animated by the distinct trajectories of their own formulations and, at times, these have been theorised to exist at cross-purposes or as areas of friction. Impasses present tension between Black and Indigenous communities; however, the ongoing engagement and coming together at monumental sites presents opportunities to navigate these disagreements by building solidarities. Rather than roadblocks, these junctures offer experimental sites for working through the contradictions at the intersections between different political formulations and have potential to create new futures. While there is an implicit notion that Black and Indigenous formulations can unify over shared struggles against white supremacy, there are impasses and disruptions produced by critical engagements between Black and Indigenous frameworks (Bruyneel, 2021; Day, 2015; Karuka, 2017; Kauanui, 2017; King, 2019; Leroy, 2016; Rifkin, 2019; Samudzi & Anderson, 2018). A strategy to foster solidarity in this context is to triangulate the shared experiences of ongoing domination by white, settler society; however, this framing can have the effect of centring whiteness in the production of Black and Indigenous politics (Rifkin, 2019, pp. 6–7). The heterogeneity within both Black and Indigenous formulations has resulted in the coexistence of reformist and radical traditions, and some of the latter maintain that civil rights and legal discourses as avenues for pursuing self-determination and autonomy are limiting to both Black and Indigenous struggles (Corntassel, 2008; Coulthard, 2014; Sexton, 2016; Simpson, 2006, 2011, 2014). There are concepts fundamental to Indigenous studies that are directly in contention with theorisations in Black studies; the importance of sovereignty to Indigenous struggles rubs against notions of Blackness as unsovereign, which can produce tensions when the two traditions are in conversation. Discussions across Black, Indigenous and settler-colonial studies have produced mistranslations through the interpretation of Black or Indigenous struggle through frameworks unattuned to their original developments and contexts

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(Rifkin, 2019). Indigenous sovereignty is a fundamental concern for Indigenous activists asserting the presence and autonomy of their nations against the colonial imposition of the United States. However, Black thought has theorised Blackness as the figure of the unsovereign, and some scholars (see Chandler, 2013; King, 2019; Sexton, 2016; Wilderson, 2010) have questioned whether any sovereignty can accept Blackness. On the one hand, Black scholar Jared Sexton argues that pursuing a politics of abolition affirms ‘the unsovereign slave’ and cannot include a politics of resurgence and must dissolve concepts of nationhood (2016, p. 593); on the other hand, Black theorist Tiffany Lethabo King (2019) sees the capacity for a sovereignty to include Black bodies as a litmus test for different Indigenous sovereignties to produce mutual futures for Black and Indigenous peoples. In discussing solidarity, Michi Saagiig Nishinaabeg scholar Leanne Betasamosake Simpson argues that grounded normativity and a nation’s own political thought provide the basis for co-resistance between Black and Indigenous peoples sharing the same land. Simpson (2016) argues that building relationships between Black and Indigenous communities is vital because who Indigenous peoples achieve liberation with matters. For Simpson, Nishinaabeg political thought places responsibilities to share space with the Black community and creates systems to ensure mutual respect of one another’s governance and sovereignty: Within Nishnaabewin, I have ethical obligations to the Black community. My people and the Wendat shared land and then respected each other’s self-­ determination and jurisdiction, and I believe Nishinaabeg political practices compel me to do the same. (Simpson, 2016, pp. 230–1)

Simpson’s porous notion of sovereignty that seeks to recognise the Black community is developed from her nation-based grounded normativity—the very concepts that Sexton argues are incompatible with abolition. There are no easy answers that will reconcile the tensions and occasional cross-purposes that exist between these two traditions of thought. Recognising that Black and Indigenous formulations are non-identical trajectories emerging from their own distinct practices within scholarship can help contextualise the ongoing intersections of solidarity and engagement in strategic partnerships. Simpson’s expression of building co-resistance and political mechanisms that produce mutual respect for governance and sovereignty is a clear articulation of solidarity. Reviewing the literature that interrogates the concept, however, complicates assumed ideas of solidarity by articulating what makes building solidarities between communities valuable to movements. In Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Brazilian philosopher Paulo Freire theorises an influential conception of solidarity as a mutual process where oppressors engage in a radical posture by becoming comrades in the struggle of the oppressed. Since a reversal of the oppressor-oppressed duality does not resolve the dialectical contradiction of the situation that produces oppression, solidarity is a

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process to change the underlying situation. To do this, the oppressor must engage in ‘true solidarity’ and fight at the side of the oppressed to transform reality (Freire, 2000, p. 49). However, this theorisation of solidarity is confined by the axis of oppression and not a relationship between groups experiencing oppression, who are already theorised to be comrades in struggle. While this framework for solidarity can be easily applied in situations where there is a clear dynamic of oppression—white-Black or settler-Indigenous—it can trouble Black and Indigenous formulations if they are cast as an oppressor in Freire’s axis. There is also the question of whether one can assume solidarity among an oppressed group or between oppressed groups as a given. As explored above, there are tensions between and within Black and Indigenous formulations that cannot be ignored or subordinated. Geographer David Featherstone’s theorisation of solidarity follows Freire in conceptualising solidarity in relation to oppression, as he defines “solidarity as a relation forged through political struggle which seeks to challenge forms of oppression” (Featherstone, 2012, p. 5). While solidarities can be forged ‘from below’ between communities striving against oppression together, it can also be imposed by a ‘pressure from without’ which creates opportunities for new relations and communities through antagonism and contestation. Featherstone highlights how solidarities are inventive assemblages that construct new political imaginaries by building alliances that contest oppressive material relations. Solidarities construct and map grievances in dialogue between the dynamic trajectories participating in a political movement (Featherstone, 2008). The importance of changing the world inherent in creating solidarity frames Featherstone’s concept of “prefigurative solidarities” (2012, pp. 186–7), which describes how activists enact the spaces they seek to create in the world. In Anarchy as Order (2010), sociologist Mohammed A.  Bamyeh figures solidarities as the relations that manifest commitments and form communities. Although this is a much broader theorisation of solidarity than that of Freire and Featherstone, Bamyeh articulates important distinctions that hone in on the particular aspects of solidarity which make it valuable to activists. He recognises four perspectives of solidarity deriving from different kinds of belonging: material, humanist, spiritual and emancipatory. While all of these would be familiar to activists, emancipatory solidarity describes “expanding the boundaries of possible action” and through advocating for the liberation of others, one recognises their own limitations (Bamyeh, 2010, p. 201). Each of these perspectives is partial and by identifying distinct forms of belonging, Bamyeh argues that instead of pursuing a more perfect ethic, a more complex ethic should be sought. King (2019) highlights another perspective in her consideration of the solidarities that emerge from erotic lives and how the choice of who one shares their life with impacts the political arenas they enter. This broader conception of solidarity encapsulates the revolutionary form of solidarity discussed above as well as understanding the forms of community like whiteness or nationalism that liberatory struggles often confront.

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For Bamyeh, community is the product of shared values, and the kind of value determines the character of the solidarity. Rigid or solid solidarities are derived from unchosen categories that assume a given community like one’s state, nation, race or religion. By contrast, fluid solidarities come to community from chosen values and are negotiated in civil society without the coercion of centralised apparatuses, primarily the state: “Fluid solidarity can only live in civil society—where life has meaning to the extent that it is conducted in a negotiable arena of social action and social organization” (Bamyeh, 2010, p. 39). Rather than adopting solid solidarities chosen on behalf of institutions, organisations or states, fluid solidarities are the result of reflection, learning, debate and intentional affiliation. The desire for new institutions that reflect our fluid solidarities is realised in the drive to rearrange social life in the world. When engaging in cosmopolitics, activists constantly renegotiate the protocols surrounding solidarity. Accomplices Not Allies: Abolishing the Ally Industrial Complex has been a popular zine published by Indigenous Action, since its publication circulated within organising communities, which critiques the term ‘ally’ and how it has become an identity that exploits solidarity and support. In response to the commodification of allyship, the authors agitate to abolish the ally as such and take up the process of becoming an accomplice: Accomplices aren’t motivated by personal guilt or shame, they may have their own agenda but they are explicit. Accomplices are realized through mutual consent and build trust. They don’t just have our backs, they are at our side, or in their own spaces confronting and unsettling colonialism. (Indigenous Action, 2015, p. 96).

Indigenous Action Media stresses the importance of direct action in the development of solidarity as a commitment to shared struggle that is demonstrated and performed rather than merely declared: Don’t wait around for anyone to proclaim you to be an accomplice, you certainly cannot proclaim it yourself. You just are or you are not. The lines of oppression are already drawn. Direct action is really the best and may be the only way to learn what it is to be an accomplice. We’re in a fight, so be ready for confrontation and consequence. (Indigenous Action, 2015, p. 96)

The process of becoming an accomplice echoes the lost meaning of an ally: one who fights beside you. Beginning from a similar premise, anarchist activist Cindy Milstein theorises solidarity as a weapon that builds relationships to sustain community contestations against systems of power. Solidarity asks “which side are you on” in response to an antagonism and through engagement provides not just an answer, but an experiment in self-governance and self-­ organisation (Milstein, 2015, pp. 155–6). Wielding solidarities, for Milstein, is a radical form of prefiguration that “opens up reflexive space for us to undo ourselves, becoming the new people better capable of inhabiting the new society we’re struggling to create” (Milstein, 2015, p. 142). The through-line in

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these theorisations of solidarity involves the negotiation of commitments between communities through direct action and the prefiguration of a better world. In Designs for the Pluriverse, Colombian-American anthropologist Arturo Escobar outlines ontological approaches for forging new communities and through them designing world-making collaborative practices to build a pluriverse, or “a world where many worlds fit” (2018, p. xvi). Drawing on political ecology and Latin American decolonial, feminist visions of the world, his proposed pluriverse is premised on constructing convivial societies of political equality through autonomous design, where communities engage in a reflexive world-making praxis. Solidarities are new forms of world-making and meaning-­ making that emerge from internally diverse communities in resistance due to the “plurality and disagreement” within them (Escobar, 2018, p. 182). The frictions or tensions in communities or between neighbouring communities should be expected, and the contradictions offer material for broadening the horizons of possibility when considering new worlds in the struggle for liberation. Like Simpson, Escobar underscores the importance of building structures that allow communities to confidently relate to one another and promote sharing while maintaining their own autonomy, which requires preparation, strategising and deliberation. Yet, as bell hooks writes, “[s]upport can be occasional. It can be given and just as easily withdrawn. Solidarity requires sustained, ongoing commitment” (2015, p. 67). Returning to Latour’s and Lefebvre’s own theorisations of monumentality as sites of world-building, contesting rigid solidarities that have been made solid through a state or private entity anchoring a monument in space creates arenas where communities and individuals can come together in solidarity and build community. Joined by a shared antagonism for white settler statuary, the practice of unsettling colonialism or challenging anti-Blackness and anti-­ Indigeneity through counter-monumental actions experimentally enacts the worlds that communities wish to build together. Monumental sites become spaces of complexity, disagreement and learning where the frictions between formulations and trajectories can be negotiated and reality transformed. The current counter-monumental movement across North America has opened spaces for the articulation of solidarity between Black and Indigenous communities, negotiating impasses and providing opportunities to work towards reconciling incommensurability through shared struggles.

The Roosevelt Equestrian Statue as a Focal Point for Black and Indigenous Counter-Monumental Struggle There are few statues or monuments that encapsulate the hubristic claims for a racial hierarchy of white supremacy over both Black and Indigenous peoples more so than the Equestrian Statue of Theodore Roosevelt, which stood in

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front of the American Museum of Natural History in New York City for over three quarters of a century. First unveiled to the public on 27 October 1940, the Roosevelt statue was created by the well-known US sculptor James Earle Fraser to commemorate the 33rd Governor of New York State and 26th President of the United States (New York Times, 1940). Portraying Roosevelt on horseback towering above a Black and Indigenous man on each side, the Roosevelt statue has become a focal point of contestation as a material embodiment and symbol of white supremacy. The statue’s sculptor described its symbolism by noting that “[t]he two figures at [Roosevelt’s] side are guides symbolizing the continents of Africa and America, and if you choose may stand for Roosevelt’s friendliness to all races” (American Museum of Natural History, 2019, para. 3). Yet Roosevelt’s views on the superiority of the white race are well-documented, and it is clearly evident that he “believed firmly in the existence of a racial hierarchy, which shaped his attitudes on race relations, land rights, American imperialism and the emerging—and disturbing—science of eugenics” (Klein, 2020, para. 2). As historian Thomas Dyer observes in his important book, Theodore Roosevelt and the Idea of Race (1980), Roosevelt was a firm believer in “the ideology of white racial destiny and supremacy”, and his various writings include numerous “passages extolling the racial superiority of the white American, deploring the decadence of the Indian, and celebrating the power of the American environment to assimilate and homogenize diverse racial groups” (Dyer, 1980, pp.  8–9). Roosevelt was in regular correspondence with the likes of racist thinkers such as Madison Grant, author of The Passing of the Great Race (1916), and Henry Fairfield Osborn, a staunch eugenicist who served as president of the American Museum of Natural History for over two decades. Inspired by such race theorists, Roosevelt “became more and more obsessed with the spectre of [white] race suicide” in his later years (Dyer, 1980, p. 17), a sentiment that continues to animate the racist right in the twenty-first century. Given Roosevelt’s espousal of white supremacist ideology and the equestrian statue’s placement of Roosevelt physically above a Black and an Indigenous man, the activists who protested for the statue’s removal in 2016 described the statue as a “stark embodiment of the white supremacy that Roosevelt himself espoused and promoted”, which was why the “statue is seen as an affront to all who pass it on entering the museum, but especially to African and Native Americans” (Sidahmed, 2016, para. 3). Here we see how supporters of the statue’s removal have called attention to both Roosevelt’s problematic legacy as a proponent of white supremacy, on the one hand, and his elevated stature above the Black and Indigenous in the statue itself as an embodiment of the very white supremacist ideology that Roosevelt promoted, on the other hand. From this viewpoint, these two reasons for removing the statue—Roosevelt’s white supremacy and his placement vis-à-vis the Black and Indigenous bodies in the statue—are directly related to one another, with the latter embodying the former in material form. We shall see, however, that some have sought to

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separate these two issues as a means of recuperating Roosevelt’s legacy by disassociating it from the problematic aspects of the statue. Although the effort to remove the Roosevelt statue gained momentum in 2016, this was not the first time that its monumental presence as a fixture in New York’s cultural landscape was challenged. On 15 June 1971, six young Indigenous activists—three men and three women—were arrested for vandalising the Roosevelt statue (Oelsner, 1971). Responding to the US federal government’s takeover of Alcatraz Island in San Francisco following a 19-month occupation by the United Indians of All Tribes, the accused were reportedly caught by police ‘defacing’ the Roosevelt statue and memorial with messages such as ‘Returns Alcatraz’ and ‘Fascist Killer’. When a New York Times reporter asked two friends of the accused why the Roosevelt statue was targeted to express these messages, they suggested that it was because the statue was ‘racist’. As a representative of the National Indian Youth Council explained, “[i]f you’ve seen the statue … you could guess why [it was targeted]” (Oelsner, 1971, p. 37), likely referring to the positioning of the Black and Indigenous men below Roosevelt as a monumental, heroic figure. Interestingly, in this case, the Roosevelt statue was vandalised as an expression of solidarity with an Indigenous movement on the other side of the country, thereby underscoring how counter-monumental forms of resistance cannot be understood in isolation from the broader social and political currents of their time. Similarly, when the Roosevelt statue became a focal point of counter-­ monumental resistance in October 2016, this occurred at a time when the Indigenous-led Standing Rock protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline, efforts to rename Columbus Day as Indigenous Peoples Day and the Black Lives Matter movement were all gaining momentum. This was also a moment when right-wing populist and white supremacist movements were rallying in support of then-presidential candidate Donald Trump in the lead up to the 2016 US presidential election. It was within this context that over 200 activists converged at the American Museum of Natural History in New York for an ‘Anti-Columbus Day’ decolonial tour of the museum organised by NYC Stands with Standing Rock and Decolonize This Place. As part of this ‘tour’, organisers called for the removal of the Roosevelt statue; revamping of outdated exhibit content related to Indigenous, African and Asian peoples; repatriating artefacts to Indigenous communities and renaming Columbus Day as Indigenous Peoples Day. As the protest came to a close, activists placed a parachute over the Roosevelt statue to hide it from view amid a heavy security presence, but the statue was not torn down (Melgarejo, 2016). In the years that followed, activists redoubled the efforts to have their demands met. To mark Indigenous Peoples Day on 10 October 2017, activist groups including NYC Stands with Standing Rock, Decolonize This Place and Black Youth Project 100 renewed their call to remove the Roosevelt statue at the second annual protest at the American Museum of Natural History (Whitford, 2017). Several weeks later, the self-proclaimed ‘Monument Removal Brigade’ splattered red paint on the Roosevelt statue. In a communique

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released online, the group explained their action by noting that the statue is a symbol of “patriarchy, white supremacy, and settler-colonialism”—“Now the statue is bleeding”, they observed, “We did not make it bleed. It is bloody at its very foundation” (Monument Removal Brigade, 2017, para. 1; also, see Moynihan, 2017). These events occurred two months after the Unite the Right Rally, where white supremacist groups rallied to oppose the removal of two Confederate statues and the renaming of Robert E.  Lee Park in Charlottesville, Virginia, killing one anti-racist activist and wounding various others in the process. In response, efforts to remove white supremacist symbols from public spaces garnered considerable public attention across the United States. At this time, the Roosevelt statue—and calls for its removal by Black and Indigenous activists and their accomplices—took on an increased significance as part of the national debate over reckoning with the troubled legacies of white supremacy and racism in the United States. In New York City, Mayor Bill de Blasio had established a Mayoral Advisory Commission on City Art, Monuments, and Markers in September 2017 as a response to the Unite the Right Rally, which was tasked with developing guidelines and recommendations for dealing with controversial monuments (Neuman, 2017). The Commission released their report in January 2018 (Mayoral Advisory Commission, 2018). Of the controversial monuments that the Commission investigated—including the Dr. J. Marion Sims Monument, a Marker for Marshal Philippe Pétain, the Equestrian Statue of Theodore Roosevelt and the Christopher Columbus Monument—the only statue that was recommended for removal was the Sims monument, erected in honour of a nineteenth-century gynaecologist who conducted research on enslaved Black women, which was recommended for relocation to the Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn where Sims himself is buried (Cotter, 2018). Most of the Commission’s recommendations concern the production of a multiplicative commemorative landscape to create a diversity of monuments within the city to represent the plurality of the communities who live there. When considering the fate of the Roosevelt statue, the Commission could not reach consensus and therefore did not recommend its removal. Recognising the need for continued dialogue about the Roosevelt statue’s fate, the American Museum of Natural History curated an exhibit, Addressing the Statue, which opened to the public in July 2019 (Coleman, 2019). The exhibit provided a diverse set of perspectives on the statue, including the viewpoints of both proponents and opponents of the statue’s removal. The museum also updated some of its displays, including the “Old New York diorama that includes a stereotypical depiction of Lenape [Indigenous] leaders … [which] now has captions on the glass explaining why the display is offensive” (Coleman, 2019, para. 16). Yet the inclusion of such captions begs the question: If the museum’s displays include offensive portrayals of Indigenous peoples, why not replace this out-of-date content altogether instead of continuing to perpetuate such stereotypes? This same question could be posed of the Roosevelt statue as well as in other cases in which there are calls to merely add ‘context’ rather than

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removing a problematic statue, monument or other commemorative object. This question acquired even greater salience a year after the museum’s exhibit was launched in response to the murder of George Floyd, a Black man, by a white Minneapolis police officer on 25 May 2020. Floyd’s murder by police in broad daylight sparked a global movement for racial justice linked to Black Lives Matter that sought to challenge the ongoing legacies and power structures of white supremacy—with statues, monuments and place names that honour slave-traders, colonisers, Confederate leaders, and other white supremacists becoming major focal points for anti-racist and anti-­ colonial resistance. Following Floyd’s killing, the American Museum of Natural History changed course and requested that the City of New York remove the Roosevelt statue from the museum’s entrance on Central Park West. In a statement, the museum’s president, Ellen Futter, explained that the museum’s leadership and staff were: profoundly moved by the ever-widening movement for racial justice that has emerged after the killing of George Floyd. … We have watched as the attention of the world and the country has increasingly turned to statues as powerful and hurtful symbols of systemic racism. (Associated Press, 2020, para. 6–7)

The political winds had changed, and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio supported the museum’s request to remove the Roosevelt statue, noting that “it explicitly depicts Black and Indigenous people as subjugated and racially inferior. … The City supports the Museum’s request. It is the right decision and the right time to remove this problematic statue” (Associated Press, 2020, para. 3). The decision to remove the Roosevelt statue was finalised in a unanimous vote by the New  York City Public Design Commission in June 2021 (Zornosa, 2021), and it was eventually decided in November 2021 that the statue would be sent to Medora, North Dakota, on long-term loan to the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library when it opens in 2026 (the statue will remain in storage until then) (Bahr, 2021). The rise and fall of the Roosevelt statue exemplifies the role that monuments play in the practices of world-making and how the making of worlds can generate a cosmopolitics of conflicting historico-geographical imaginaries and materialities. As a cosmogram, the monument is an instrument that co-constitutes the legacy of Roosevelt and the racist politics that he wished to implement in the world. The creation and maintenance of the Roosevelt statue was an integral part of the production of the American Museum of Natural History as a place of memory in honour of Theodore Roosevelt as the conservationist president. In addition to the statue, the museum also has a Theodore Roosevelt Memorial Hall with its own bronze Theodore Roosevelt Statue, Theodore Roosevelt Rotunda and Theodore Roosevelt Park. Moreover, at the same time that the museum requested that the Roosevelt Equestrian Statue be removed, it was also announced that the museum would name its Hall of Biodiversity in honour of Roosevelt (Pogrebin, 2020). In doing so, the museum’s leadership

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sought to reaffirm its honorific celebration of Roosevelt’s legacy while disassociating the Roosevelt statue—with its problematic portrayal of racial hierarchy—from Roosevelt himself, even though Roosevelt subscribed to the very ideology of racial hierarchy expressed in the statue. This honorific sentiment was also articulated by Roosevelt’s great-grandson, Theodore Roosevelt IV, who, as a museum trustee, supported the removal of the statue but claimed that it did not reflect Roosevelt’s true values or legacy (Pengelly, 2020). The cognitive dissonance of holding such a view is palpable, yet if a family or institution has invested considerable energy in world-making to honour a particular individual’s legacy, the act of openly questioning that legacy may call into question the very foundation of the ‘world’ they have devoted so much time to build. Seen in this light, the activist demand to remove the Roosevelt statue was a cosmopolitical act of world-(un)making and remaking that questioned both Roosevelt’s legacy and its expression in monumental form. This statue became a focal point at the intersection of Black and Indigenous struggles against anti-­ Black racism and colonisation through its depiction of subservient figures following in Roosevelt’s wake. As previously discussed, much news coverage focuses on Indigenous peoples targeting Columbus statues and Black people confronting neo-Confederate monumentality to portray two contemporaneous but distinct movements, yet there are examples such as that discussed here of Black and Indigenous activists crossing this supposed boundary. On the ground, the interventions of Black and Indigenous activists can cut through the fraught and at times conflicting political trajectories that have been theorised. Solidarity expressed through the praxis of action strikes at the colonial roots that dispossessed Indigenous peoples from their lands while simultaneously confronting the enslavement and domination of Black people through a critical interrogation of the connections between settler colonialism and white supremacy. The Roosevelt statue has stood as an anchor that makes these relationships clearly legible in urban space, yet, as a result of Black and Indigenous activism, Roosevelt’s statue will no longer cast its shadow on Central Park West. However, Roosevelt’s legacy continues to be lionised within the halls of the museum. When the political necessity of removing the statue became apparent even to those who had previously resisted its removal, they sought to reframe the matter by disentangling Roosevelt from the statue that bears his likeness. This has served as a strategy for recuperating Roosevelt’s legacy so that the world-­ making of Rooseveltian memorial space could proceed unabated at the American Museum of Natural History and beyond. Yet the anti-racist and decolonial ‘tours’ of the museum enacted their own ‘worlds’ of counter-­ memory that centred Black and Indigenous voices and called forth different narratives of the past and reimaginings of a future where the racial hierarchies of white supremacist ideology are no longer placed on a pedestal in the public spaces of the twenty-first-century city.

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Conclusion In this chapter, we have argued that monumental sites co-constitute settler-­ colonial politics, which enact settler-colonial, white supremacist spaces in the city. As a political technology of world-making, the function of cosmograms requires a prominent presence in common spaces that simultaneously makes them vulnerable to contestation and the prospect of a trial, where a statue and the values associated with it are placed under scrutiny. Through the framing of cosmopolitics, practices of world-making revolve around questions that contemplate which things communities want to include in the world—and these controversies force participants to reevaluate their own relations as the tethers that hold the cosmogram are investigated. Communities that are assumed to be pre-constituted are fraught with schisms as the trial introduces new demands that participants choose their side and ultimately what world they want to inhabit. While acknowledging the tensions that exist in conversations between Black and Indigenous formulations, we explored how solidarity is put forward as a path to negotiate the frictions that emerge from their encounters. Disagreements stemming from the internal plurality of these formulations in resistance can prompt new possibilities for a shared future. Moreover, the concept of solidarity, when considered in the light of radical activists engaged in anti-racist and anti-colonial movements, becomes a prefigurative practice to design new political imaginaries organised around fluid values. Sharing struggles animates the commitments that groups have for one another without neglecting the autonomy of their own communities, and in contesting monuments at an intersection of Black and Indigenous trajectories, like the Equestrian Statue of Theodore Roosevelt, activists from those communities can develop mutual respect, grow relationships and build trust. The Roosevelt statue is bound for a period of storage before the completion of the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library in Medora, North Dakota. Relocating the cosmogram to another site of prominence only serves to reaffirm the importance of the statue by consecrating it in the new monumental site and legitimises the continuing commemorative project of Rooseveltian cosmopolitics. While the direct actions and co-resistance of Black and Indigenous activists managed to expel the statue from New York, the American Museum of Natural History failed to address the root of white and settler supremacy at the heart of Roosevelt’s politics and subsequent commemoration. Controversy may have quieted around the museum despite the ongoing memorialisation of Roosevelt, but the trial of Roosevelt has followed the equestrian statue to North Dakota where local Indigenous nations have already voiced their opposition to its relocation. Medora lies at the entrance to the Theodore Roosevelt National Park on land dispossessed from the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nation. Their Chairman Mark Fox has said that his nation was not consulted and that “[i]f the state of North Dakota or the [library] asked for our endorsement directly. … My answer would be hell no. … I think

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it’s ignorant and inappropriate” (Kunze, 2021, para. 13). Rather than suppressing the controversy surrounding Roosevelt’s legacy, the question of Roosevelt’s role in the conquest of North America has spread as the public’s attention follows the statue to North Dakota. Back in New York, Decolonize This Place has issued a statement regarding the relocation of the statue in solidarity with the North Dakota nations over “the latest example of garbage transfer” by moving the Roosevelt statue from one colonised land to another (Decolonize this Place, 2021, para. 1). The attempt to smother the monument controversy by shipping away the blatant image of Roosevelt’s imperialism and racism may instead have made the museum vulnerable to a direct contestation without the equestrian statue to avert the condemnation of the museum’s commemoration. Within their statement, Decolonize This Place criticises the refusal of the museum to meet their demands and how the resettlement of the statue does not absolve the institution: “Even without the statue, the [AMNH] will still have its Teddy Roosevelt problem to deal with, since much of the museum is itself a monument to his imperial presidency” (Decolonize this Place, 2021, para. 4). Through the trial of the Roosevelt statue, much has come to light about how the history of Roosevelt and the history of the museum co-constitute one another. The American Museum of Natural History itself has become the object at the heart of the vigorous controversy and all of its memorials to Roosevelt—the sculpture, the hall, the rotunda, the park—are targets so long as the museum stands as a monument to the ongoing violence against Black and Indigenous peoples enshrined in the legacy of Roosevelt. As scholars critically engaging with the controversy in the spirit of solidarity, we support the demands by Indigenous and Black communities and activists in New York and North Dakota to unilaterally remove the Equestrian Statue of Theodore Roosevelt. The decision to relocate the statue to the planned Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library actively evades calls for decolonisation, and renaming the Hall of Biodiversity in his honour reifies Roosevelt’s memorialisation, which erases Indigenous and Black peoples in public space in order to celebrate a figure committed to eugenics and imperialism in his private life and as president. Dismantling the constellation of materials that compose the Rooseveltian world-making project will not erase the 26th President of the United States from American history, but the removal of Roosevelt’s commemoration would demonstrate a commitment to developing solidarity and building better worlds.

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CHAPTER 24

Edifying: The Deathscapes Project and the Landscape of Settler-Colonial Monumentality in Australia Suvendrini Perera

and Joseph Pugliese

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised that this chapter contains the names and images of people who have died and includes stories of deaths in custody.

Introduction Introducing the Monuments Project that she leads, an attempt on an unprecedented scale to remake the ‘commemorative landscape’ of the United States, the poet and scholar Elizabeth Alexander describes the work in progress as follows: “We are going to be edifying, that is to say, adding, building, contributing to the landscape. … And we are exhilarated” (Alexander, 2020b, para. 7). Alexander’s play on edifying beautifully encompasses the material, symbolic and pedagogic transformations of the monumental landscape at which the project aims, whether they involve fleeting acts of making spaces visible anew, or more lasting forms of recontextualisation or relocation of existing monuments. Elsewhere Alexander describes the Monuments Project as a vast

S. Perera (*) Curtin University, Perth, WA, Australia e-mail: [email protected] J. Pugliese Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW, Australia © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 B. Carlson, T. Farrelly (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook on Rethinking Colonial Commemorations, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-28609-4_24

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collective remapping in space and time, the production of an “ongoing cartography of our country’s history” (Alexander, 2020a, para. 8). Inspired by Alexander’s cartographic vision, in this chapter we consider our project: Deathscapes: Mapping Race and Violence in Settler States (https:// webarchive.nla.gov.au/awa/20201103065140/http://pandora.nla.gov.au/ pan/173410/20201103-1648/www.deathscapes.org/index.html), as an attempt to rechart and to make visible anew the historical landscape of monumentality.1 We explore the edifying dimensions of the Deathscapes Project in Australia: that is, its work of ‘adding, building and contributing to’ specific landscapes and geographies of settler monumentality. We understand the term ‘monumentality’ to signify a material and symbolic topography that extends further than isolated statues or buildings. Across the globe, the protests that followed the killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor in the United States clarified that the logic of Black Lives Matter is a localised and spatial logic: the logic of everyday lives lived in nominated topographies, delineated in the names of public spaces—squares, parks and streets—and shaped in the seemingly enduring shadow of monuments of racial power. The built environments of US cities, their highways and skyscrapers, stand as monuments to the same forces that erected statues of Confederate generals. In the Australian context, the names of powerful settler families—Canning, Stirling, Forrest, Macarthur, Wentworth, Wallis—shape our built environment and the very infrastructure of the state; the name Forrest, for example, appears on many street signs, buildings and statues in Western Australia. The entrenching of settler monumentality across the material and symbolic terrain of the nation works hand in hand with the active and ongoing destruction of Indigenous monuments. One recent globally infamous instance is the blasting of 460,000-year-old rock art at Juukan Gorge in Western Australia by Rio Tinto under its mining licence (Young & Toscano, 2020). At the other end of the country, in Victoria, an 800-year-old Directions Tree was felled to make way for a state highway, causing profound grief and pain among Djab Wurrung women (Higgins, 2020). An artwork in England that memorialised the nuclear explosion on unceded land at Maralinga, South Australia, carried out by the British and Australian governments, was removed by order of a local council (Ferguson, 2021). Many memorials to massacres of Indigenous people continue to be vandalised in Australia. We mark these acts of destruction and desecration as part of the landscape of settler monumentality. Our chapter, however, focuses on the reworking of the monumental settler landscape through what we term, following Alexander, as acts of edifying. We discuss two instantiations of activist refigurings of the landscape of monumentality in the states of New South Wales and Western Australia: the staging of public interventions at sites of settler monumentality by local activists, and embodied acts of contestation of the edifice of colonial law during deaths in custody inquests. 1  Although the Deathscapes Project is transnational in character, here we limit ourselves to the work of its Australian hub.

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Bloody Foundations, Lethal Presents The colonial statues and monuments that have been installed in the cityscapes of Australia stand tall on their bronzed pedestals and marble columns, continuing to exercise symbolic command over the lands their subjects laboured to arrogate under the flag of empire. Around them stand the grand edifices that administer and enforce the structures these figures put in place: courts of law, parliaments, prisons, churches, asylums. Exposing their bloody foundations does not entail an archaeological approach. On the contrary, as the Deathscapes project evidences, these bloody foundations are daily exposed to view through the embodied racialised deaths of Indigenous people in custodial cells, prisons, parks and other civic spaces; and of illegalised refugee bodies stowed away in camps, detention hotels or demountable prisons. In our introduction to the volume Mapping Deathscapes we note that “the Deathscapes Project begins at the colonial border, where the deaths of Indigenous people in custody and the deaths of refugees at sea or in detention centres are connected through the intersecting structures of settler sovereignty” (Perera & Pugliese, 2022, p. 22). At the border, two forms of sovereign violence intersect: the eliminatory violence of settler colonialism (Wolfe, 2006), with its aspiration to expunge the presence of the Indigene from the land and to assert its own usurping sovereignty in its place, and the exclusionary practices of border control which cement this sovereignty by determining who may or may not enter the new territorial entity of the settler nation. In its focus on the nexus between the settler state’s ongoing usurpation of Indigenous sovereignty and its militarisation of the border to assert this illegitimate sovereignty, the Deathscapes Project brings into view the refugee and asylum seeker deaths that result from this lethal assemblage of settler power. Border deaths effectively shore up the violently imposed borders that were carved into Indigenous lands and waters and that, in the process, attempted to erase sovereign Indigenous nations. Situated within the context of this lethal assemblage, colonial statues and edifices emerge as nodal points that oversee settler geographies of violence, at once anchoring and continuing to license the originary violence that attended acts of settler foundation-making. Deathscapes draws attention to the fact that colonial statues, monuments and edifices cannot be hived off as historical artefacts. Their legacies of violence remain active, not only in their continued uses, but in their symbolic power and the space they occupy as objects of ‘national heritage’. The infrastructural fabric of the Australian settler state is constituted by the violence that these colonial figures unleashed, violence which continues virulently to shape and inform the colonial present. In this context, colonial monuments—statues, court houses, squares and other public spaces—need to be seen as instantiations of the architectonics of empire. In other words, as the settler colony is the bastard progeny of empire, the very architectural fabric of settler cities works, in the colonial present, to mark the power of imperial sovereignty to dominate and occupy Indigenous space. At the same time, colonial monuments are

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continually mobilised as sites of resistant edifying: that is, as spaces where acts of collective renaming and remaking bring into graphic focus the embodied relations between past and present forms of settler violence. Both the embodied violence of colonial monuments and the resistant energies they engender are powerfully articulated by Clint Smith in the US context, in his acclaimed work, How the Word Is Passed: I come from a city abounding with statues of white men on pedestals and Black children playing beneath them. … Every day, Black children walk into buildings named after people who never wanted them to be there. Every time I would return home, I would drive on streets named for those who would have wanted me in chains. Go straight for two miles on Robert E. Lee, take a left on Jefferson Davis, make the first right on Claiborne. Translation: Go straight for two miles on the general who slaughtered hundreds of Black soldiers who were trying to surrender, take a left on the president of the Confederacy who made the torture of Black bodies the cornerstone of his new nation, make the first right on the man who permitted the heads of rebelling slaves to be put on stakes and spread across the city in order to prevent the others from getting any ideas. What name is there for this sort of violence? What do you call it when the road you walk on is named for those who imagined you under a noose? What do you call it when the roof over your head is named after people who would have wanted the bricks to crush you? (Smith, 2020, paras. 8–10)

Smith’s questions bring into focus the lived racialised violence that reaches into the texture of everyday life: walking down a street, attending school, playing in the park. Even as these practices are conducted in civic spaces, they are all inscribed by the threat of a palpable white supremacist history that exercises its right to kill—symbolically (in the naming of your school) or literally (by the spectre of the noose that swung in the public park or courthouse square). What is the name for this sort of violence? Perhaps we could call it the intimate civic violence of the racial state. By articulating the effects of this unnamed violence, by so precisely delineating its dimensions and its spatial hierarchies, Smith begins the work of dismantling the structure of this violence that is both intimate and monumental, personal and public. Smith’s work, in other words, evidences the project of edifying his city.

Monumentalising Colonial Violence Smith’s questions about the crushing spatial geographies of monumentality also find expression in Achille Mbembe’s critical reflection on the role of diverse colonial monuments—statues, effigies, public works—in South Africa. Mbembe (2017, p. 126) notes how, in the context of the colony, they “perform th[e] function of entrapment”. The colonial work of entrapment extends across a range of domains—from the individual to the public, from the psyche of the

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colonised subject to the disposition of space in a civic square dominated by a colonial monument. Situated in this relational network of colonial power, entrapment operates along two intersecting axes. On the one hand, it works to inscribe “the structures of the unconscious” (Mbembe, 2017, p. 127) of the colonised so as to produce positions of subjection: “The potentate must inhabit its subjects in such a manner that the latter can no longer see, hear, smell, touch, stir speak, move, imagine, or even dream except in reference to the master signifier that weighs over them, forcing them to stutter and falter”. These power-effects of domination and subjection are materially rendered through the very weighty substances of stone, concrete, bronze and iron that constitute colonial monuments and infrastructure. Both the density and immobility of these materials underscore the dead weight of colonial rule as a triumphalist form of power which asserts that it cannot be budged or dislodged. This is the totalitarian dream of the colonial potentate: that the master signifier, as embodied by these monuments and infrastructure, can exercise a form of absolute rule of subjection over the colonised. Mbembe brings this totalitarian dream into focus by naming the gamut of sensoria that must be subjugated by the master signifier of the colonial potentate: sight, hearing, smell, touch, movement, thought and even dreams—all must be entrapped and governed under the law of the master. This is, of course, the colonial fantasy. As we discuss in detail in the context of the Deathscapes project, for the colonised, this totalitarian phantasmagoria is precisely that which is actively contested, mocked, evaded and what must be toppled. That these colonial monuments need to be installed at all across the different spaces of the colony gestures to something other than a triumphalist stance on the part of the coloniser. These solid and weighty monuments speak to the profound anxiety of the coloniser with regard to their troubled hold on power in the context of the colony. They stand, despite their seemingly immovable monumentality, as aspirational symbols of totalising colonial power that are always already at risk of being toppled. The Deathscapes website evidences the range of acts aimed at contesting the law of the colonial potentate—as exemplified by monumentalising institutions, such as heritage prisons and courts of law.

Edifying in the Shadow of the Law Courts of law are key infrastructural apparatuses by which the colonial state works to secure and reproduce its hold over colonised territories and subjects. In the Australian context, where Indigenous people never ceded their sovereignty or their lands, courts of settler law are fraught spaces that, specifically in the context of coronial inquests into Indigenous deaths in custody, fail to deliver justice. We discuss below three Deathscapes case studies of deaths in custody: those of two young Indigenous people, Ms. Dhu and Mr. David Dungay, and of the refugee Mr. Fazel Chegeni Nejad.

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‘1788 Shame’: Historical Accounting and the Death in Custody of Ms. Dhu The death of Ms. Dhu, a 24-year-old Indigenous woman of the Yamatji Nanda Nation and Banjima family group, is perhaps the most infamous among instances of women’s deaths in custody. The stark fact of a 24-year-old Aboriginal woman’s death, within two days of being taken to prison for fine default, could not but provoke public outcry. In a campaign led by her grandmother, mother and other family members, together with the Western Australian First Nations Deaths in Custody Watch Committee, Ms. Dhu’s death gained national attention. A clear sequence of events was responsible for Ms. Dhu’s death. Police were looking for her violent partner, who was wanted on charges relating to violence against a previous companion, when they knocked on her door. Under Western Australia’s antiquated laws, a warrant had been issued previously for Ms. Dhu on charges of fine default, for offences such as unpaid parking tickets, swearing in a public place, and disorderly behaviour, including waving her finger in a police officer’s face (Bui et al., 2017). She was required to spend four days in jail in order for the fines, amounting to about $3600, to be acquitted. Instead, they cost Ms. Dhu her life. At the time of her arrest, Ms. Dhu was suffering from a broken rib, caused by her partner, which was turning septic. As Ms. Dhu became increasingly ill in her cell, she repeatedly cried out for help. Again and again, her pleas were mocked and downplayed by both prison and medical staff, who were convinced she was a junkie and malingerer. On two visits to hospital, staff neglected basic procedures such as temperature checks. Ms. Dhu was taken to hospital a third time after being found unconscious in her cell following a fall. She died two days after her arrest from untreated injuries. Two colonial institutions, the police and medical system, were thus instrumental in the death of this young Indigenous woman (McGlade, 2021; Perera, 2021). During the inquest, her family and supporters mobilised a nation-wide campaign that targeted key institutions and spaces of the setter-colonial state, including its law courts and public squares. Several images of their campaign, featuring protests led by Ms. Dhu’s grandmother, Aunty Carol Roe, are documented on the Deathscapes case study, ‘At a Lethal Intersection: The Killing of Ms Dhu’ (Bui et al., 2017). In one image by Charandev Singh, Ms. Dhu’s grandmother, Aunty Carol Roe stands with her fist raised in protest outside Perth’s Central Law Court. Her figure embodies and activates the rupture of the colonial potentate’s desired “permanent state of trance, intoxication” on the part of the colonised (Mbembe, 2017, p.  127). With fist raised in the Black Power salute, Aunty Carol Roe rends the cultivated veneer of settler law’s claims to ‘law and order’. Holding a sign that reads “1788 shame [Australian] government thou shalt not steal”, she exposes the foundational violence of settler law as inscribed in the historical moment of British colonial invasion, 1788, and the consequent

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usurpation—theft—of Indigenous sovereignty and land. The monumental classical pillars of settler-colonial law, the backdrop to her protest, are disclosed as being built on illegitimate and blood-soaked foundations. As Indigenous people continually spell out, the settler regime of ‘law and order’ operates to facilitate and secure the settler project of elimination through the twinned processes of incarceration and death in custody. The police function as frontline troops to secure this colonial ‘law and order’ (Cunneen, 2001). Amanda Porter (cited in Gregoire, 2021, paras. 39–40) explains: This is why policing and the criminal jurisdiction remain one of the most significant sites of the ongoing colonisation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples today. And it always has been. The Frontier Wars have never ended. Police are still enforcers of property and alien laws. They still enforce the illegal occupation of sovereign Aboriginal land.

Underlining this relationship, the Deaths in Custody Watch Committee of WA (as it was then known) orchestrated a series of projections of Ms. Dhu’s image onto landmark sites in the city of Boorloo. The hashtag #JusticeforMsDhu was beamed onto the edifice of WA’s state parliament. A figure of an Aboriginal woman transformed into a target was projected on to the old Perth Watch House, the scene of incarceration and death for numerous Indigenous people since colonisation. Through these projections the activists transformed the cityscape, albeit fleetingly, on several nights (Image 24.1). Standing outside the settler structure of the courthouse during the inquest, the figure of Aunty Carol Roe speaks to the fact that the colonial monument of the court of law is an “expression of the power of disguise” and an “extension of a form of racial terror” (Mbembe, 2017, p. 128). Both in its embodiment as “black letter law”, as synonym for the enlightened “rule of reason”, and, in its architectural habitus, as the classically proportioned court of law, these monumental forms of settler governance stand, as Aunty Carol Roe’s act of protest spells out, as “spectacular expressions of the power of destruction and theft that animated [and continue to animate] the entire colonial project” (Mbembe, 2017, p.  128). As a spectacular expression of power, the settler courthouse strives to project and impose its illegitimate rule of law over the colonised: through its neoclassical façade, it attempts to ground its legitimacy in the iconographic traditions of imperial architecture. Settler rule of law is thereby enshrined in the architectonics of empire. The posters bearing the face and name of Ms. Dhu that frame her grandmother’s act of contestation and truth-telling re-signify the meaning of the law court’s white classical columns: they now stand as metonyms of the whitewashing of this violent history, the consequent effacement of its institutionalised acts of racial terror and its structural production of injustice for its Indigenous victims and their families. As Singh’s low-angle shot makes clear, the imperial architecture of the courthouse has been established on the foundations of dead and living bodies of Indigenous people: here, Ms. Dhu and her family. The

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Image 24.1  Deaths in Custody Watch Committee’s projection of Ms. Dhu’s image in the city centre, Boorloo 2017. (Photo: Michelle Bui)

imposing verticality of its classical columns, accentuating its spectacular power, is challenged by the vertical thrust of Aunty Carol Roe’s fist, clasped in a Black Power salute that defies the courthouse’s imposition of a colonial regime of law and governance. Embodied in her gestural challenge to the settler courthouse and its system of law is an interrogation of its capacity to deliver justice, precisely because it is pivotal to the criminalisation and elimination of Indigenous people: “the existing criminal justice system is not only alien and damaging to us but also the ultimate enforcer of colonial oppression, rethinking justice from the ground up is what Indigenous peoples—and arguably all peoples—must do” (McCaslin & Breton, 2008, p. 512). In one of the marches to mark the anniversary of the death in custody of Ms. Dhu, Indigenous-led protestors occupied a civic space (Image 24.2), Forrest Place, a major square at the very centre of the city of Boorloo (Perth). By staging a smoking ceremony, Elders cleansed and purified this public space to mark it as a space to enact collective mourning over the death of Ms. Dhu; simultaneously, this settler space was re-signified as a place from which to issue the ongoing call for justice. Forrest is a name that rebounds from numerous statues, road signs and civic spaces across the state of Western Australia. John Forrest, a land agent, explorer and surveyor—trades indistinguishable from the appropriation and dispossession of Aboriginal country—went on to become the state’s first premier. His brother, Alexander also an explorer, was responsible for renaming a mountain range in Wunaamin-Miliwundi country the King

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Image 24.2  Protest march on the anniversary of Ms. Dhu’s death in custody, Forrest Place, Boorloo, (Perth), 4 August 2015. (Photo: Marziya Mohammedali)

Leopold Ranges, for the Belgian monarch whose brutal and exploitative reign in the Congo was responsible for millions of deaths. In 2020, as statues of Leopold were toppled across Europe, the state government of Western Australia announced that the ranges would return to their Indigenous names. The name of Forrest, however, still remains on numerous streets and parks, while the Forrest family is associated with a vast network of intersecting mining, trade, financial and philanthropic interests, all buttressed by immense wealth, land holdings and political influence (Mitchell, 2019). At the heart of Forrest Place, the smoking ceremony for Ms. Dhu creates a space in which these ongoing forces of colonial power are briefly set in abeyance, held at bay by a powerful calling to account by those displaced and dispossessed by the wealth and power amassed by settler dynasties. Dreams of Freedom: Inquest for Mr. Fazel Chegeni Nejad As evidenced throughout the Deathscapes site, state violence towards Indigenous peoples and refugees is enacted through shared technologies and practices. The death of the 22-year-old refugee Hamid Khazaei from sepsis parallels Ms. Dhu’s death in custody from the same cause, only a month earlier (Bui et al., 2018). In their early 20 s, both these young lives were casualties of systemic racialised abuse and lethal neglect in custody. Recognising the

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connections between the two deaths, the Indigenous Social Justice Association conferred an Aboriginal Passport on Hamid Khazaei’s family in an act of solidarity, and in appreciation of the Khazaei family’s readiness to donate their son’s organs to Australians despite the fact that it was only at the point of death that Hamid was allowed to enter Australia after a simple cut on the foot was left untreated in offshore detention on Manus Island (Smith, 2014). In their moving act of corporeal generosity, Hamid Khazaei’s family breached the exclusionary borders of the Australian settler state. This act of unconditional donation reconfigured the denied-refugee/hostile-host relationship of the Australian state: the bodies of a number of Australia’s needy citizens become the welcoming hosts who embrace Hamid’s gift of life. In turn, through the granting of an Aboriginal passport, the Aboriginal donors conferred a reciprocal gift in the process reclaiming their sovereign rights as hosts. In August 2018, the inquest for the death in custody of another refugee, Mr. Fazel Chegeni Nejad, was held in Courtroom 51 of the Central Law Courts in Boorloo (Perth), the same room in which the inquest for Ms. Dhu was conducted. Indeed, this room would become all too familiar to members of the Deathscapes team during the next two years as we took on the task of presenting daily dispatches from inquests for a number of other refugee deaths in custody. Dispatches from inquests were not initially part of our conceptualisation of the Deathscapes Project; rather, they developed organically from our daily experience of deaths in custody inquests. It became increasingly clear to us that the inquest as an event far exceeds the text of the coronial findings or transcripts published at the end of the proceedings. The inquest is a situated event that unfolds in a specific location, within its own temporality; its actors include not only its legal protagonists, but a cast that includes family members, supporters, protesters, bystanders and so on. As a public event, with its prescribed protocols, scripts, props and rituals, the inquest performs the ceremony of justice. Its distinctive processes are enshrined within the edifice of the law; yet this edifice is one subject in various ways to the unruly and heterogeneous forces that may contest its authority and signify otherwise than its formal proceedings. What unfolds in the course of these inquests is nothing less than an embodied contestation—by the families and supporters of those killed by the state—of the pretence that the rule of law will deliver justice for its racialised victims. Through the chronicling of these extraneous forces in our daily dispatches, we attempt to tell another story of the inquest, one in which the monumentality of the law, the courtroom, and the official findings are all subject to question. Mr. Fazel Chegeni Nejad, a Failli Kurd from Iran, was recognised as a refugee by the Australian government. The trauma of his torture in Iran, the scars of which he bore on his body, was compounded by his experience in Australia. Of his case, the journalist Michael Gordon (2015, para. 7) wrote, “Of more than a dozen deaths of asylum seekers in mainland and offshore detention centres and in the community in recent years … a case can be made that Chegeni’s is the most troubling”. The last 50 days of Mr. Chegeni Nejad’s life were spent

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in the North West Point Immigration Detention Centre on Christmas Island, the most remote of Australia’s onshore detention camps. He is the first person known to have escaped from this highly securitised prison, located at the very extremity of Australian territory, by scaling its electrified fence. He was found some 36 hours later in the surrounding jungle. He was 34 years old. He had been held in detention for 1477 days. The inquest for Mr. Nejad, as for other refugees who die in Australia’s onshore detention system—those held in its offshore prisons on Manus Island or Nauru are excepted from this accountability under the law—are enabled by Recommendation 11 of the 1991 Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody (RCIADC): That all deaths in custody be required by law to be the subject of a coronial inquiry which culminates in a formal inquest conducted by a Coroner into the circumstances of the death. Unless there are compelling reasons to justify a different approach the inquest should be conducted in public hearings. A full record of the evidence should be taken at the inquest and retained. (RCIADC, 1991, Recommendation 11)

The establishment of the Royal Commission and the release of its recommendations are considered a turning point for justice in Australia. The requirement that a coronial inquest be held, in public view, and that a full record of evidence be taken and retained were key measures calculated to establish principles of accountability and transparency on the part of the law, specifically to Aboriginal families and communities, but also to the communities and families of all who die in custody. Yet the bulk of the RCIADC’s more than 300 recommendations remain unfulfilled. An installation at the exhibition Sorry For Your Loss in 2018 featured shredded pages of the RCIADC report to represent the overall ineffectiveness of these recommendations nearly three decades later, as Aboriginal people continue to die in detention and suffer disproportionately higher rates of incarceration. The edifice of settler law, including its attempts at renovation and repair, stands on shaky foundations. Standing before Perth Central Law Courts, on Day 9 of the inquest for Mr. Chegeni Nejad, when suppression orders prohibited the publication of much of the proceedings, our dispatch reflected on the strange edifice of settler law: [There is] a strange and lurid light on the Central Law Courts, where the inquest is proceeding. These courts are part of the District Court complex, a distinctive structure that sutures the fragment of a neo-classical portico to a type of brutalist glass tower that overlooks it. Contemplating this hybrid facade, with its deliberate welding together of old and new, its theatrical statement portal and accompanying plaque promising a new era of equality “before the law,” I am prompted to reflect on the strange edifice of justice in the settler state, and the mechanisms by which Australian law attempts to acknowledge that which it simultaneously continues to displace and deny. … In the strange and hybrid edifice of the law, with

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its competing agencies and their contradictory claims and agendas, its visible gaps and patches, its asymmetrical entry points, cracks and fissures, is there still room to envisage a possibility of justice, so long deferred, for Fazel Chegeni Nejad? (Bui & Perera, 2018, para. 8)

In marked contrast to the strong presence of a network of family, kin and supporters at the inquests for Mr. Dungay or Ms. Dhu, inquests for refugees and asylum seekers are invariably lonely, starkly clinical events detached from community and far away from family. Fellow detainees or asylum seekers and refugees face a number of constraints in attending court. Countering this silence and isolation, day after day, the Deathscapes team wore small folded paper cranes to recreate something of Fazel Chegeni Nejad in the near empty courtroom, commemorating this gentle man who had made origami cranes to distribute to people in hospitals and care homes. Outside the Central Law Courts, a handful of coloured paper cranes were laid on the pavement, contrasted against the drab surroundings. Like the Dunghutti artworks the Dungay family displayed outside the courtroom (Pugliese, 2018), the cranes sought to bring into the inquest all that is not simply excluded, but denied, within the edifice of the law. The cranes represented Fazel Chegeni Nejad’s hopes of freedom, invoking the traditional Japanese belief that one who folded a thousand cranes would eventually achieve a single wish. Like his attempt to climb onto roof-tops to experience a sense of freedom, the crane stood for the hope of soaring above the razor wire and electrified fences that had confined him in various forms of detention for over four years. ‘Incompatible with survival’: The Death in Custody of Mr. David Dungay On the afternoon of 29 December 2015, on his return from the prison exercise yard in Long Bay Hospital at Long Bay Correctional Centre, Mr. David Dungay, a 26-year-old Dunghutti, purchased a packet of biscuits. After he was locked back in his cell, two officers tried to get Mr. Dungay to relinquish his biscuits. They were, apparently, concerned about his blood sugar levels—even though they never consulted correctional nurses to confirm the validity of this stated medical concern. Mr. Dungay refused. The officers then decided to call in the Immediate Action Team (IAT) to forcibly remove Mr. Dungay from his cell and move him to another cell with a camera so he could be monitored. The violent practices that were inflicted upon Mr. Dungay’s person by the IAT were captured on the officers’ body cameras and CCTV footage. Handcuffed and with his head pressed down, in the process of the cell transfer Mr. Dungay began to spit blood, dropped to his knees and repeatedly screamed, “I can’t breathe”. He repeated this cry 12 times. In the video footage, the officers are heard to reply that if he can speak, he can breathe; they also “remonstrate with David to stand up and stop spitting blood” (Coroner’s Court of

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NSW, 2019, p.  13). In the course of the inquest, the officers dismiss Mr. Dungay’s urgent cries that he can’t breathe as “diversionary tactics” (Coroner’s Court of NSW, 2019, p.  40). In the space of less than an hour, a young Aboriginal man died at the hands of the authorities of the state. As with Ms. Dhu, there was a failure to deliver appropriate medical duty of care to Mr. Dungay. In the course of the inquest, Professor Brown was called to give expert evidence on the quality of the medical assistance given to Mr. Dungay during the process of his cell extraction and transfer. After listing a catalogue of systemic failures to offer appropriate medical care, “In summary, Professor Brown noted that the medical treatment provided by Justice Health staff overall ‘was of a low standard’ and lacking in essential aspects, and that the lack of provision of continuous basic life support ‘rendered the resuscitation attempts by Justice Health doctors and nurses effectively without value, and was incompatible with survival’” (Coroner’s Court of NSW, 2019, p. 79). We would transpose the final phrase of Professor Brown’s summary—“incompatible with survival”—as materialising the systemic racialised forces that worked in the killing of both David Dungay and Ms. Dhu. The settler system of racialised incarceration, punishment and elimination of Indigenous people is, essentially, incompatible with their survival once they enter the carceral complex. And the ‘procedural fairness’ of settler law masks the structural, because racialised, asymmetries of power that underpin it, that ensure its smooth reproduction, its ongoing violent impact on Indigenous people, and its systemic failure to deliver justice to victims and their families (Perera & Pugliese, 2019). Since the establishment of the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, no correctional or police officer in Australia has ever been successfully indicted with regard to an Indigenous death in custody. As at Ms. Dhu’s inquest, the family of Mr. Dungay and their supporters mobilised in front of the courthouse, Downing Court Centre, Sydney, and transformed the court precinct through the staging of a number of activist events. By mobilising Indigenous artwork, posters and banners, they indigenised a white settler space, assertively marking their presence through the embodied gesture of the Black Power salute. Tellingly, Mr. Dungay’s inquest was conducted in what had previously been a department store: the imposing Mark Foy’s emporium, a term forged in the crucible of empire (Pugliese, 2018). The building’s shopping quarters, cafe and ballroom had been retrofitted to house the settler state’s emporium of law. In rooms that had once been sites of shopping and entertainment, criminal trials and coronial inquests now unfold. That the inquest into an Indigenous death in custody was conducted in a building designed as a shopping emporium spoke to the settler state’s framing of Indigenous lives as expendable, fungible and, ultimately, eliminable. In his analysis of colonial monuments and infrastructure, Mbembe (2017, p. 128) notes that “there is no domination without a cult of spirits. … The cult of spirits always requires a means of conjuring up the dead—a necromancy and geomancy.” Both an Indigenous necromancy and a geomancy were conjured

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up in the course of Mr. Dungay’s inquest. The inquest conjured up, intersectionally, the geomancy of Indigenous place that has continued to endure regardless of the serial acts of settler effacement and the necromancy of Indigenous lives eliminated in the process of settler nation-building. “Necromancy and geomancy”, Mbembe writes, “constitute the shadow or the pen that carved the postcolony’s profile into a space … that was ceaselessly violated and spurned” (2017, p. 128). The settler emporium-cum-courthouse exemplifies the literal carving into Indigenous lands of the violent nexus of settler culture: racial capital/settler law, and their consolidation into the lethal configuration of the prison-industrial complex, a key site for the contemporary elimination of Indigenous captives and for the making of killer profits on the back of an ever-expanding system of carcerality. The Dungay family and supporters marked this lethal configuration by taking their activism to the monumental building complex of Correctional Services New South Wales, just down the street from the Downing Centre Court emporium. As the site that houses prison management in the state, it is the nerve centre of the prison-industrial complex. And as the vocal protests outside the building made clear, Correctional Services New South Wales was fully implicated in the killing of David Dungay. Speaking to the lethal role of the corrections system in the killing and ongoing incarceration of Indigenous people, Porter situates it within the settler state’s theft of Indigenous sovereignty and the foundational illegitimacy that continues to inscribe it: “The corrections systems raise those same questions around governance, authority and legitimacy, as Indigenous people have always been outside and beyond the remit of the law in these ways” (cited in Gregoire, 2021, para. 56).

Edifying Topographies The Monumental Carceral Fortresses of the Settler State: Long Bay Gaol Mbembe (2017, p. 126) writes: “Alongside statues exist other objects, monuments, and infrastructure: train stations, the palaces of governors, bridges, military camps, and fortresses”. Under the rubric of ‘fortresses’ we include the prison complexes of the settler state. These prison complexes were designed as literal fortresses within which Indigenous people, as political prisoners, were sequestered, punished and killed. The architecture of these settler prisons was modelled on the medieval fortresses of Europe. We say political prisoners as Indigenous people were, and are, captured and imprisoned because of the “criminogenic effects of colonialism” that “contribute to crime and victimisation” (Cunneen & Tauri, 2017, p. 57). In what follows we discuss two such prison fortresses, Long Bay gaol in Warrane (Sydney) and the Round House-­ Rottnest Island carceral complex in Walyalup (Fremantle) in Western Australia. The prison in which Mr. Dungay was killed, Long Bay Correctional Complex, was built on the lands of the Bidjigal and Gadigal people of the Eora

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Nation. The Long Bay area, originally called ‘Boora’, was the “principal camping place for the [A]borigines between Sydney and Botany” (Department of Corrective Services, 2004, p. 7). The site’s sand dunes “provided protection from the wind and a warm, soft place to camp. Burials are known to occur in the dunes” (Department of Corrective Services, 2004, p.  5). Following the arrival of the First Fleet in 1788, a campaign of removal was initiated by the British settlers. A smallpox epidemic facilitated the decimation of Boora’s Indigenous people and the ongoing expropriation of their land. In the course of the nineteenth century, the Long Bay Correctional Complex was built on this principal Indigenous camp site. The prison, then, was literally founded on Indigenous remains. The turn of the twentieth century Female Reformatory and Male Penitentiary at the site were designed in Federation Gothic style by the colonial architect Walter Liberty Vernon. Modelled on the architecture of medieval European fortresses, they stand as imposing buildings with crenulations and turrets, complete with medieval castle gatehouses at their entrances (Department of Corrective Services, 2004). The choice of the architectural style of the medieval fortress for the building of Long Bay reformatory and penitentiary was based on nineteenth-century British models. In mapping the history of British penal architecture, Seán McConville (2003, p. 10) writes: “All buildings are a combination of function and expression, and perhaps none more so than those where state business is conducted. The large castle and fortress-like prisons of the early nineteenth century showed the might of the state in a traditional style … it was almost as though the weight of stone would crush the malefactors and suppress crime.” The weight of stone of Long Bay carceral fortress symbolically crushed the life of out of Mr. Dungay. As European fortresses served the purpose of protecting the sovereign from assailants and securing hold over territory, the settler state’s carceral fortresses replicate these effects in the colony: they play the dual purpose of facilitating the elimination of Indigenous people from their lands and securing the state’s hold over them. The state’s carceral fortresses are the anchor points of settler power in the colony. That is why Indigenous people have consistently turned their focus not just on the toppling of colonial statues, but on the abolition of the prison system itself (Aroah Rule et al., 2021). As Porter underscores in her marking of the nexus between the settler-carceral system and Indigenous imprisonment, “This understanding is part of the remit of abolition politics and resistance” (cited in Gregoire, 2021, para. 41). The now-global movement of toppling colonial statues must, in other words, also focus its energies on abolishing one of the key centres of power through which the settler state secures its illegitimate hold: the prison-industrial complex, and its multiple and diffuse sites of sequestration, torture and killing of Indigenous people. Reflecting on the significance of colonial monuments, Mbembe suggests that:

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In reality, the majority of the statues represent the ancient dead of the wars of conquest, occupation, and “pacification”—the lugubrious dead, raised to the status of tutelary divinities by vain pagan beliefs. The presence of the lugubrious dead in the public arena is meant to haunt the memories of the ex-colonized, to saturate their imaginary and the spaces of their lives. (Mbembe, 2017, p. 128)

Transposing Mbembe’s insight, we argue that the key infrastructural monuments of the settler-colonial state also represent, in their civic and quotidian forms, settler conquest, occupation and ‘pacification’. Courthouses and prisons are highways of necro-transport and other settler institutions and spaces exemplify the settler logic of Indigenous elimination and replacement in contemporary practice. Built on the blood-soaked soil of innumerable Indigenous massacres and other campaigns of ‘pacification’, they indeed function to embody a “funerary power that tend[s] to reify the death of the colonized [and to] deny that their life had any kind of value” (Mbembe, 2017, p. 128). In other words, the key institutions and spaces of the settler state must, for its racialised victims, be seen as necropolitical continuums that are invested with the same funerary power embodied in colonial statues. The settler state’s key institutions of power occupy the nation’s public arenas and continue to haunt the lives of those who have lost loved ones in cells and prisons, saturating their “imaginary and the spaces of their lives” (Mbembe, 2017, p. 128). However, precisely what the survivors of the racialised violence of the settler state refuse and defy is the message that the lives of loved ones killed at the hands of the state had no value. The Round House—Rottnest Carceral Monument Complex The oldest building in Western Australia is the Round House Prison, opened in 1831. Situated on a cliff top known as Arthur’s Head, Darren Holder notes that the Round House, “like European castles”, is “a reminder that authority sits high above” (Holder, 2017, para. 6). The Round House forms the apex of a triangle with the Explorer’s Monument to Maitland Brown, a pastoralist who led “a punitive search party and … retributive massacre of Indigenous people at La Grange Bay in 1865”, and the statue of C.Y O’Connor, the engineer who excavated Fremantle Harbour and sought to build a pipeline to carry water to the mining town of Kalgoorlie (Holder, 2017, para. 7). This characteristically settler geomancy, the triangulation of monuments to imprisonment, massacre, exploitation and excavation of land and sea, faces a fourth, essential, point of the configuration, situated across the harbour: Rottnest Island Prison built on the island of Wadjemup. Although for most West Australians today Rottnest signifies only as holiday resort, Noongar historian Glen Stasiuk (2021) points out that this involves the repression of the island’s “hidden history related to Aboriginal incarceration, dispossession and death”:

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Rottnest Island has had many (colonial) names, many stories of European discovery, shipwrecks and settlement … [to] today’s visitors enjoying the delights of the Island and its vista. What people often neglect and “push to the side” is its Aboriginal—or more specifically its Noongar history, cultural importance, cosmology and name: Wadjemup. What is harder to disregard … is its colonial links to the Aboriginal community; namely the Rottnest Island prison in the 19th and early 20th centuries. (Stasiuk, 2021, para. 1)

In a practice familiar throughout the British Empire, “Thousands of Aboriginal prisoners themselves (some as young as eight) built the Panopticon-­ style prison, known as the Quod, on Rottnest Island in 1863. It had small cells (3 × 1.7m) … with no windows, no beds, no bucket for the basics of sanitation” (Stasiuk, 2021, para. 4). Noongar activist and lawyer Hannah McGlade estimates that over 21 men died in each of these cells, with a total of over 370 known deaths over the years of its operation: “It would be correct to say … that this is the largest mass burial site in Australia” (McGlade, 2018, para. 3). The Quod on Rottnest Island, as McGlade and Stasiuk detail, must be understood in connection with the structure of the Round House prison in Fremantle. Over the decades, the Round House served as a prison, a police lock-up and a portal through whose tunnels Aboriginal prisoners were ferried, in manacles and neckchains, across the waves to the Quod on Rottnest Island. The two prisons are not only spatially connected through this painful traffic of Indigenous men and boys across the water—many of them never to return to their own country. They are architecturally and structurally linked, “incorporating a Panopticon design and principle” (Stasiuk, 2021, para. 5). While Stasiuk (2021, para. 4 ) is careful to distinguish the brutal structures of the Quod and the Round House from “what Bentham envisaged from his project design which was intended to be a more humane method of incarceration”, what we underscore here is how closely these antipodean carceral structures are enmeshed with their metropolitan sites of origin. And the relationship cannot be confined only to architectural elements. The designer of the Round House, as Stasiuk (2021, para. 5) notes, was Henry Reveley, “whose father assisted Bentham in designing the Panopticon prison”. Bentham was one of a web of connections of the Reveley family that included Mary Wollstonecraft, the pioneering feminist thinker; Wollstonecraft’s partner, the philosopher William Godwin; and Godwin’s friend and collaborator, the poet William Blake. After Wollstonecraft died, her young daughter Mary, future author of Frankenstein and wife of the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, was raised for a period as a sibling of Henry Reveley, future architect of the Old Perth Court House and the Round House. This was a dense familial and cultural cluster of the foremost social reformists and revolutionary visionaries of the period (Ashe, 2020). Rather than a remote offshoot, or deformation of its origins in the lofty ideals of the Enlightenment and Romantic eras, we view the Round House-Rottnest carceral complex as one that embodies a critical, though hidden, relation with metropolitan high culture. The Round House-Rottenest Island prison

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complex stands as a monument to the racial logic of empire, in which violence and enlightenment, liberal humanity and stark inhumanity, operate hand in hand. The configuration of settler monuments and carceral spaces of the Round House-Rottnest complex is inscribed by that “geomancy” that Mbembe (2017, p.  128) identifies in his analysis of colonial monuments. In context of the Round House-Rottnest carceral monument complex, the colony carves its monuments of occupation—prisons, statues, harbours—on unceded Indigenous lands. Haunting these violated sites is a layered Indigenous history, the very Noongar geomancy of the land, that endures despite the settler erasures and over-building. Simultaneously, this geomantic configuration is also haunted by the necromancy of the Indigenous dead: prisoners, slaves, the massacred. Locating the Round House and Rottnest Prison in their imperial context, McGlade has noted that these structures are “evocative of the slave forts of West Africa and connect our history and the treatment of Aboriginal people, to British slavery” (McGlade, 2018, para. 14). The slave fortress and the island prison are twin features of the geography of empire from the west coast of Africa to the first antipodean prison colonies in what are now Tasmania and New South Wales. Within this colonial cartography, the settler colony of Australia produced its own internal geography of island prisons, from Palm Island, to which entire Aboriginal families were removed, to the lock hospitals of Bernier and Dorre islands. Contemporary island prisons for asylum seekers and refugees, whether on Christmas Island where Fazel Chegeni Nejad was incarcerated or offshore on Manus Island and Nauru, form part of this continuum of colonial island prisons. These histories of island incarceration were made visible in the 2015 performance Call to Account staged across three states (Perera & Pugliese, 2018) to call attention to abuses in offshore detention of refugees. Underlining the link between the incarceration of Aboriginal people, Noongar Elder Uncle Ben Cuimermara Taylor led the reading of charges against the state for its abuses in offshore detention in front of the Round House, now a heritage-tourist precinct. He was joined by a cast of Indigenous, migrant, refugee and settler Australians, citizens and non-citizens. Yamaji historian Robin Barrington drew a direct link between past and present by locating the current removal and separation of refugee families against her own family’s histories of removal and incarceration in Fremantle. In a concurrent staging of Call to Account at another colonial monument, Mrs. Macquarie’s Point, in the heart of Warrane (Sydney), looking out at Fort Denison, one of Australia’s first penal islands, in Sydney Harbour, journalist John Highfield, descendant of settlers, marked how the incarceration and transportation were technologies practiced by settlers since colonisation. The Call to Account performance may be seen as an activist exercise in remapping space and time that precisely exposes how historical colonial monuments (the Round House, Fort Denison) are intimately connected to contemporary spaces and practices of settler elimination and

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incarceration. Such activist events emerge, in other words, as performative interventions that materialise what Alexander (2020b, para. 8) calls an “ongoing cartography of our country’s history”.

Coda: Edifying in Fremantle2 We conclude by turning to a final attempt at edifying the landscape, a contestation of monumental history, gathered in the shadow of Cantonment Hill, in Walyalup at sunset, on a site looking out to Fremantle harbour, in the season of Makuru. Australia’s first COVID lockdown is drawing to a close. Across the world, Black Lives Matter protesters are coalescing and colonial monuments are falling. Then Prime Minister Scott Morrison has declared that no such protests should occur in Australia, since there was no slavery here (later he would retract this statement). Off in the distance, just out of view but an enduring presence, is the island of Wadjemup. We stand before a local landmark, a sculpture known as Rainbow, by artist Marcus Canning. The site, Number 1 Canning Highway, is at a local crossroads, with Stirling Bridge across the water. The sculpture, a series of multicoloured shipping containers linked into the shape of an arch, invokes the inclusive openness of a port city. It is a monument to rainbow optimism that puts our best face forward. Yet these containers of which it is made up are also the quintessential symbol of transnational flows of capital and commodities predicated on the violent asymmetries of racial capitalism and its extractive economies. The fraught power of the container, as both carceral instrumentality and vector of mobile commodities, is perhaps nowhere more graphically materialised than in its use to traffic asylum seekers and refugees across state borders—often with lethal outcomes (Pugliese, 2007, pp. 159–60). As darkness falls, Hannah McGlade, Noongar activist and human rights academic, speaks directly addressing the then prime minister’s claims that Black Lives Matter protests were uncalled for in Australia: Across the world, people are making a powerful stand against racial oppression, violence and inequality that is rendering Black lives very unsafe. Since 1990 more than 434 Aboriginal people have died in police and prison custody. Since George Floyd was killed in Minneapolis … we have here in Perth witnessed the death of an Aboriginal man at Acacia prison, and an Aboriginal woman at Bandyup is in critical condition after being body-slammed by guards …. The Prime Minister thinks that Black Lives Matter should not be imported into this country from overseas. He said we had no slavery in this country. The first building erected in the Swan River Colony was the Roundhouse … to incarcerate Aboriginal men who resisted colonists’ attempts to enslave and indenture them to wealthy pastoralists. Many of the men forcibly taken in neck chains to Rottnest, Wadjemup, died at the island … I am the great-­granddaughter

2  This section was  previously published, in  slightly different form, in  the  journal Overland in an essay titled “Off-Shore: Lockdown Topographies” by Suvendrini Perera (2020).

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of Ethel Woyung who was indentured as a girl and whose brother Mindum was incarcerated at Wadjemup …. When we say Black Lives matter, here in Australia, we are speaking of Ms Dhu, Cherdeena Wynne, Chad Riley, Joyce Clarke, and many more. We remember the two young men who died after being chased into the Derbarl Yerrigan river on a cold and windy day by police. And we remember our people once pursued on order of Governor Stirling and chased into the Murray River (Pinjarra River) and shot at. They were massacred, men, women and children. … They told us not to come [today]. They told us to be silent. We will not be silent. We will say their names. (McGlade, 2020, paras. 2–18)

As McGlade speaks, the ghost of Alfred Canning, for whom this highway is named, is not far away. Canning is another architect of the settler infrastructure of this state. His projects include the Rabbit Proof Fence and the Canning Stock Route, designed to open beef markets for the graziers of the north. Following his work on the stock route, Canning faced a Royal Commission of inquiry on charges relating to his treatment of the Indigenous people in its path. They included: Forcing the natives to accompany the party; Chaining by the neck natives who had done nothing to deserve being deprived of their liberty …; Unnecessarily depriving natives of their water supply by deepening and squaring their native wells rendering it impossible for old men, women and … [children] to reach the water; and causing the water to be polluted by animals falling in; Hunting native women on foot and horseback, sometimes with rifles, for immoral purposes; Using threats and giving bribes to native men to induce them to direct their women to have connection with the members of the expedition. (quoted in National Museum of Australia, 2016, para. 7, italics in original)

Canning was acquitted on all charges. On this site at 1 Canning Highway, in the shadow of Cantonment Hill, overlooking the Derbarl Yerrigan and extending out to the harbour, we have decided to project the names of some of the hundreds of Indigenous people who died in custody on the Rainbow sculpture by Marcus Canning (Qwaider & Perera, 2020). The last of the Makuru sun inflames the arc with a fiery intensity before subsiding into a steady half-light over the port city and the harbour beyond (Image 24.3). The names keep coming: Christine Jones. Ms. Dhu. Lloyd Boney. Alfred Dougal. David Gundy. David Dungay. Cherdeena Wynne. Chad Riley. Mr. Ward. And so many more. Acknowledgements  Our heartfelt appreciation to the families of those who have died in custody, and whose stories are relayed on the Deathscapes site. Thanks to the researcher-activists who worked on the Deathscapes Project: Michelle Bui, Ayman Qwaider and Charandev Singh, some of whose photos we include. They were indispensable to the various acts of edifying described here. Special thanks to Marziya Mohammedali, Chris Lewis, Mark Binns and Anonymous for generous permission to

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Image 24.3  Saying Their Names, Walyalup (Fremantle), June 2020. Projection by Steve Aliyan. Photo: Anonymous. (Reproduced with permission) feature their photographs; and to Hannah McGlade for her ongoing collaborations with Deathscapes. Finally, our thanks to the Deaths in Custody Watch Committee of WA for initiating the Ms. Dhu projections; to Researchers Against Pacific Black Sites for the performance Call to Account and to the WA Museum of Freedom and Tolerance for collaboration on the projections at Walyalup.

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Bui, M., Chan, D., Perera, S., Pugliese, J., Qwaider, A., & Singh, C. (2017). At a Lethal Intersection: The Killing of Ms Dhu. Deathscapes. https://www.deathscapes.org/ case-­studies/ms-­dhu/ Bui, M., Chan, D., Perera, S., Pugliese, J., Qwaider, A., & Singh, C. (2018). Extraterritorial Killings: The Weaponisation of Bodies. Deathscapes: Mapping Race and Violence in Settler States. https://www.deathscapes.org/case-­studies/ case-­study-­4-­extraterritorial-­killings-­the-­weaponisation-­of-­bodies Bui, M., & Perera, S. (2018). A series of dispatches from the coronial inquest currently underway in Perth for Mr Fazel Chegeni Nejad. Deathscapes. https://webarchive. nla.gov.au/awa/20201103065140/http://pandora.nla.gov.au/pan/173410/ 20201103-1648/www.deathscapes.org/case-studies/ms-dhu/index.html Coroner’s Court of New South Wales. (2019, November 22). Inquest findings into the death of David Dungay. http://www.coroners.justice.nsw.gov.au/Documents/ DUNGAY%20David%20-­%20Findings%20-­%20v2.pdf Cunneen, C. (2001). Conflict, Politics and CrimeAboriginal Communities and the Police. Routledge. Cunneen, C., & Tauri, J. (2017). Indigenous criminology. Policy Press. Department of Corrective Services. (2004). Long Bay correctional complex: Conservation management plan. Clive Lucas Stapleton and Partners. Ferguson, D. (2021, July 21). ‘Not in this town’: artwork about Britain’s ‘nuclear colonialism’ removed. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2021/jul/17/not-­i n-­t his-­t own-­a r twork-­a bout-­b ritains-­n uclear-­ colonialism-­removed?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other Gordon, M. (2015, November 15). Fazel is free now, God gave him a visa. Sydney Morning Herald. https://www.smh.com.au/national/fazel-­is-­free-­now-­god-­gave-­ him-­a-­visa-­20151113-­gky50c.html Gregoire, P. (2021, May 28). Questionable Jurisdiction: Academic Amanda Porter on Policing First Nations. Sydney Criminal Lawyers. https://www.sydneycriminallawyers.com.au/ blog/questionable-­jurisdiction-­academic-­amanda-­porter-­on-­policing-­first-­nations/ Higgins. I. (2020, November 1). The destruction of a mighty fiddleback in Victoria sparks a common conundrum for Aboriginal Australians. ABC News. https://www. abc.net.au/news/2020-­10-­31/indigenous-­heritage-­djab-­wurrung-­tree/12830616 Holder, D. (2017, September 8). Echoes of a shameful past. Fremantle Herald. https:// heraldonlinejournal.com/2017/09/08/echoes-­of-­a-­shameful-­past/ Mbembe, A. (2017). Critique of Black Reason. (L. Dubois, Trans.). Duke University Press. McCaslin, W.  D., & Breton, D.  C. (2008). Justice as healing: Going outside the Coloniser’s cage. In N. Denzin, Y. Lincoln, & L. T. Smith (Eds.), Handbook of critical and indigenous methodologies. Sage Publications. McConville, S. (2003). The architectural realization of penal ideas. In L. Fairweather & S. McConville (Eds.), Prison architecture: Policy. Architectural Press. McGlade, H. (2018, May 31). Rottnest Island “tent land” closure an important day for Aboriginal people. ABC News. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-­05-­31/ quod-­rottnest-­island-­aboriginal-­land-­mass-­burial-­gravesite/9811930 McGlade, H. (2020). June 17. Kaya Nidja Noongar Boodjah. https://www.sbs.com. au/nitv/article/2020/06/17/kaya-­n idja-­n oongar-­b oodjah-­p erth-­b lack-­l ives-­ matter-­rally-­2020?fbclid=IwAR1ZLd5YzuNaBkVPR9Ivyy8X8tJT7WUnPBvWRmJ 0VTTMv42RgcSPu5_R8RY

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CHAPTER 25

The Problem and Potential of Anti-Black Monuments in Museums Modupe Labode

and Tsione Wolde-Michael

Introduction In the wake of racial justice protests that rocked 2020, Movement for Black Lives (M4BL) organisers’ demands for radical reforms took centre stage. Publics around the globe pushed their institutions and governments to not simply issue Black Lives Matter (BLM) solidarity statements but to create altogether new structures. This included a critical examination of anti-Blackness and public memorialisation. Led by Black organisers, calls to remove racist monuments took root in cities and towns across the globe.1 These demands for removal in many instances were not new. In fact, in the United States (U.S.) they are part of an understudied tradition of Black protest and iconoclasm against racist monuments that has persisted since the nineteenth century (Wolde-Michael, 2021).2 The activism in the wake of George Floyd’s murder builds on the wave of successful monument removals after the 2015 murder of nine Black people 1  We define racist monuments as any monument that uplifts white supremacist values, demeans people of colour, and/or perpetuates false historical narratives that centre whiteness. We define anti-Black monuments as racist monuments that specifically perpetuate harmful narratives and/or images about Black people. 2  We also acknowledge the ways this African American tradition has been influenced by longstanding protests against racist monuments by Native Americans as well.

M. Labode (*) • T. Wolde-Michael Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, USA e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 B. Carlson, T. Farrelly (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook on Rethinking Colonial Commemorations, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-28609-4_25

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attending a prayer service at Charleston, South Carolina, Mother Emanuel AME Church. The shooter’s veneration of the Confederate battle flag revived debates about public symbols that encouraged anti-Black violence, including monuments. Pushed by activists, this discourse garnered widespread response and political traction that had hitherto come only in fits and starts. Today, with removal becoming more mainstream and many monuments already defaced or damaged, a critical question remains: where might they go and for what purpose? While much attention has been given to the removal of racist monuments, little critical or sustained conversation has been generated on what their afterlives should be. Museums have often been proposed (typically by those outside of the field) as places where these objects might logically go. However, that assumption rests on the erroneous notion that museums are ubiquitously equipped to preserve and interpret racist monuments. It also does not take into account a robust theory of care for museum staff, visitors, or the monument itself. Notably, it also does not account for the care of impacted communities, which is a topic alluded to here but is deserving of more focused and lengthy inquiry. This chapter begins with the protests, cranes, and ropes with which Black communities have confronted anti-Black monuments and works through the preliminary considerations of placing such challenging objects in a museum, outlining factors which have been obscured from public debate. The authors— both experienced Black curators with initially opposing views on whether anti-­ Black monuments should be acquired and/or displayed in museums—began this writing project as an exercise to discuss their standpoints and wrestle with possible outcomes inside the museum. Ultimately, they found common ground in the problems and potential of exhibiting racist monuments.

Black Communities and Anti-Black Monuments: An Historical Overview The recent removal of anti-Black monuments from public view is just the latest episode in the United States’ long history of placing—and contesting—commemorative markers, monuments, and memorials. In the years between the Civil War and the outbreak of World War I, the United States and Western Europe embarked on a frenzy of public commemoration, dubbed ‘statue mania’. During this time, the landscape in the United States became dotted with numerous Confederate and other anti-Black monuments (Doss, 2010). These anti-Black monuments valorised white supremacist politicians and public figures, the Confederate cause, and the racialised violence against Black people and their allies. Representations of Black people in these monuments were generally limited to commemorations of ‘faithful slaves’, who, in Confederate apologists’ self-serving revisions of southern history, were loyal only to their enslavers (Janney, 2006; Handley, 2007). In recent decades, scholars have

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established that the white supremacist ideologies of the people who funded, installed, and defended anti-Black monuments cannot be separated from the physical monuments. Scholars of landscapes remind us that all monuments designate, realign, and claim space (Upton, 2015; Savage, 1999) for values that the community (or at least that element of the community that supports the monument) deem worthy of honouring, celebrating, and maintaining. Anti-­ Black monuments, then, demonstrate that the community honours white supremacy and supports the domination of Black lives. Historically, speeches, essays, and oral histories reveal that Black people fully understood what was at stake with the symbolism of Confederate and other similar monuments. Black intellectuals including Frederick Douglass, Freeman Henry Morris Murray, and artist Meta Vaux Warwick Fuller critiqued such monuments for failing to recognise Black people as historical actors and for legitimating the Confederate cause (Douglass, 1876; Ater, 2011; Murray, 1916). These sources also reveal that shortly after these monuments were put in place, Black people on the ground, often at great personal risk, countered them with routine mockery and vandalism. In Charleston, South Carolina, for example, Black people led a decades-long campaign against a monument to native son John C. Calhoun, a politician who enthusiastically endorsed white supremacy and defended slavery. After white Charlestonians erected the first Calhoun monument in 1887, they were infuriated when Black people were not overawed by the monument, but instead subjected it to mockery and derision. For the monument’s supporters, this irreverence was dangerous, as it was an expression of the inner lives of Black people who, contrary to white politicians’ assertions, did not embrace white supremacy (Brundage, 2008). Black people consistently attacked the monument with rocks and bullets, damaging it to such an extent that the city commissioned a new monument, which placed Calhoun over 115 feet above the ground. The height may have protected the figure, but it did not stop the violent resistance. Lucille Williams recalled throwing rocks at the monument when she was a schoolgirl in the 1930s because Calhoun “didn’t like us” (Kytle & Roberts, 2018, p. 113). It is likely that young Lucille learned both about Calhoun’s virulent anti-Black racism and how to respond to the monument from others in Charleston’s Black community (Wolde-Michael, 2021; Kytle & Roberts, 2018, pp. 107–113). In the 1960s, Black protesters occasionally gathered around or vandalised Confederate monuments, boldly flouting the concept of ‘whites only’ spaces. In 1966, students at Tuskegee Institute (now Tuskegee University) coalesced around the city’s Confederate monument—a soldier holding his rifle barrel with both hands as the butt rests near his feet atop a stone plinth—after an all-­ white jury acquitted a white man who killed Tuskegee student Sammy Younge, Jr. As the crowd  chanted in grief and rage, several students vandalised the monument with paint, inscribing Younge’s name and the phrase “Black Power” (Cox, 2021, pp. 100–104). Earlier in 1966, during the March Against Fear, civil rights protesters climbed onto and mocked the Confederate monument in

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Granada, Mississippi. This monument was similar to the Tuskegee monument, but its base featured a relief of Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederacy. White politicians, infuriated by the marchers’ transgressions, warned that this lack of deference to monuments was a harbinger of a future Black insurrection. Law enforcement officials and incarcerated Black men from the notorious Parchman Prison guarded Confederate monuments in other towns on the marchers’ route (Cox, 2021, pp.  93–99). The marchers kept their distance from the monuments because, as Hosea Williams shouted to the officials, if there was any confrontation, “you will beat these poor boys when they are back in jail” (Cox, 2021, p. 96). By using captive Black men to defend a Confederate monument, white authorities made plain the coercive power of both the Confederacy and its afterlife in the carceral state. As more Black people assumed elected office in the 1970s and 1980s, anti-­ Black monuments largely remained in place. This new group of politicians expended their political capital on pressing issues such as voting rights and economic inequality. White power brokers used their authority to keep anti-­ Black monuments in place, sometimes maintaining them with public funds (Cox, 2021, pp. 108–120; Palmer & Wessler, 2018). The monumental landscape did change in many parts of the South as Black communities worked to place monuments commemorating Black history and the Civil Rights movement in public spaces. As Dell Upton has described (2015), in general, white power brokers were unwilling to remove anti-Black monuments, but would allow civil rights monuments to be placed adjacent to Confederate or other anti-Black monuments. This created what Upton describes as a ‘dual heritage’ landscape. Those who hoped that the Black history monuments would confront or serve as a counterpoint to Confederate monuments were disappointed. In many places the spatial parity of the monuments encouraged the white communities to interpret Confederate and Black history monuments as having equal moral and historical standing. Further, some Confederate apologists interpreted the dual heritage landscape as a commemorative revival of the repudiated policy of ‘separate but equal’; the Confederate soldier monument represented the community’s white residents while the newer monuments were for the Black residents. Because dual heritage landscapes appear ‘fair’, in that the anti-Black and Black history monuments stand in proximity, a perverse result was that those activists who continued to advocate for the removal of anti-­ Black monuments at times appeared to community officials to be eccentrics who were overly attached to reminding the public  that Confederate monuments are about white supremacy. With no sense of irony, the United States has enthusiastically cheered the removal of monuments in other parts of the world as an indication that autocratic regimes were falling, either through popular action, as in the Soviet Union and Eastern bloc, or through U.S. military invasion, as in Iraq. Meanwhile, many communities in the U.S. have refused to remove symbols of the Confederacy. From the end of the twentieth century into the twenty-first

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century, local and national civil rights groups led boycotts and other protests to put pressure on states to remove Confederate symbols from state flags and bar Confederate flags from state houses.3 In response, white-controlled state legislatures passed statutes, frequently  stylised as historic preservation measures, that prohibited removing  monuments and other Confederate symbols (Southern Poverty Law Center, 2019). Efforts to remove anti-Black monuments gained momentum in the 2010s in the aftermath of several extraordinarily violent and racist events: the 2015 murder of nine congregants at the Charleston’s Mother Emanuel AME Church by a white supremacist; the ‘Unite the Right’ rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017 at which a white anti-racist activist was killed; and the months of protests in 2020 after the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Minnesota. These events made undeniable connections between white supremacy, white nationalism, the Confederate battle flag, racist monuments,  and anti-Black violence. Activists’ response to these events was shaped by the emergence of the Movement for Black Lives, which came to national prominence during the protests after the 2014 killing of Michael Brown by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri. This movement gave activists the intellectual framework to view monuments in the context of systemic, global, anti-Black racism. Many protesters came to see these monuments as both symbols and manifestations of the systemic racism that resulted in over-policed neighbourhoods, food deserts, and efforts to suppress the Black vote. The tactic of bringing protests to the streets and the use of social media led many to see their local activism as part of a regional, national, and international movement. Protesters mobilised longstanding methods of Black iconoclasm such as graffiti, rocks, paint, bullets, and Molotov cocktails as they confronted anti-­Black monuments (Holley, 2015). In 2015, Bree Newsome scaled a 30-foot-­tall flagpole to bring down the Confederate banner on the South Carolina statehouse grounds. Maya Little, a graduate student in history, led numerous protests against a monument featuring a Confederate soldier on her North Carolina campus and endured harassment, retaliation, and costly legal battles (Purifoy, 2019). After the murder of George Floyd in May 2020, crowds around the country mutilated, vandalised, and in some cases toppled monuments that had long been identified as symbols of white supremacy. After the 2015 Charleston AME Church Massacre, many cities, counties, schools and colleges, and other public agencies began to respond to demands that they address the Confederate symbols—including monuments—in their public spaces. Some cities, including Baltimore, Charlottesville, and Richmond, 3  Several southern states began flying the Confederate battle flag or integrated the banner into state flags in the 1950s and 1960s as a direct response to the Civil Rights movement. The prosegregation Dixiecrats (officially known as the States’ Rights Democratic Party), who broke from the Democratic Party in the 1948 presidential election, revived public display of the flag when they embraced it at as their party’s symbol.

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convened commissions to advise mayors on how the monuments should be treated. The mayor of New Orleans ordered the removal of several Confederate monuments, but as in other places, the municipal establishment ignored local activists, who had called for removal as part of a wide-ranging programme of confronting white supremacy, including tackling food deserts, police brutality, and inequalities in housing and education (Mock, 2017; Landrieu, 2018). As removing or relocating monuments became a possibility, several southern legislatures passed new laws (or strengthened existing statutes) to make monument removal illegal and attempted to prosecute those who participated in removing monuments (Southern Poverty Law Center, 2019). After the protests of 2020 tapered off, governments, private stakeholders, and organisations found that they could no longer ignore those who asked for monuments commemorating racists and white supremacists to be removed. And as monuments were removed, these entities confronted the symbolic and practical matter of deciding what to do with toppled monuments.

From Monumental Space to Museum Object Removal of monuments, whether by protesters or by construction crew, leads to questions concerning the storage and disposal of the remains of the structure. The most common, if temporary, resolution for many of these monuments is storing them on government-owned property—ranging from municipal warehouses to the grounds of a wastewater treatment plant—until a final decision is made (AP News, 2020). Subsequently, cultural heritage professionals, activists, scholars, and others have engaged in a disjointed and often abstract discussion about the fate of such dismantled monuments. Among the most common suggestions is preserving  the monument—or parts of it—in a museum. In these conversations, the type of museum is rarely articulated (such as museums specialising in art, ethnography, science, or history) and it is generally assumed that the museum is a mainstream museum, that is, a museum that is not operated by or focusing on the experiences of specific ethnic or racial groups. Further, the discussion usually presumes that only certain pieces of a monument will be transferred—the bronze sculpture or a portion of the stonework—instead of the column, plinth, and other features that define a monument. The rationale for placing the sculptural elements of a monument in a museum rests on several, typically  unstated, assumptions about monuments and museums. Some observers believe that museums are the institutions best able to interpret these monuments and place them in ‘objective’ historical or social context. Others, who value museums but rarely visit them, are apt to see museums as a type of public warehouse for important pieces of material culture that should be safely housed, even if these items are not

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exhibited. For those who view monuments as outdoor or public art, placing sculptures from monuments in museums seems obvious.4 Museum professionals, not surprisingly, have a more nuanced understanding of what it means to accession a monument, or pieces of a monument, into a permanent collection. Some museum professionals are exasperated that many of those who assert that anti-Black monuments belong in museums seem to be unaware of the costs and responsibilities museums assume when they acquire any object. Rarely do those suggesting museums as sites for removed monuments take into account matters of storage, cataloging, access, interpretation, and the like. In most cases, when a museum takes ownership of an object, the institution is obliged to provide the resources to preserve and maintain that object for an undefined length of time, usually described as ‘perpetuity’. Therefore, accepting heavy, bulky pieces of monuments would require an indefinite expenditure of human and financial resources, such as ensuring that the floor is strong enough to hold an object which might weigh over a ton. When civic leaders assert that monuments belong in museums, some curators and educators are frustrated that their community leaders may be trying to avoid discussions about history, racial inequality, justice, and equity. Yet, the museum would likely open itself up for scrutiny and criticism about its display and interpretation of the monument. Still other museum professionals believe that accessioning a racist monument is a moral question about the allocation of resources that could otherwise be diverted to acquire new or steward existing collections related to marginalised histories. They ask why a museum should expend funds on a white supremacist object, when the material culture of many people harmed by white supremacists remains underrepresented in the museum’s collections. And still others maintain that racist monuments defy effective interpretation altogether when placed in the often elite/white space of a museum. Cognisant of the historical role of mainstream museums in upholding white supremacy, these professionals are sceptical of institutions’ ability to display and safely interpret the meaning of these monuments for Black communities. Perhaps it is telling that Black museums around the country have not rushed to bring such monuments into their collections either. As museum consultant Janeen Bryant stated at a 2018 conference panel for the American Alliance of Museums, “As a native southerner, I consider the monuments and Confederate flags as a social marker of claimed territory for white people/whiteness” (Bryant et  al., 2018). Cautionary examples such as the 4  Although our discussion about iconoclasm, monuments, and museums focuses on anti-Black monuments, museums in the U.S. already hold numerous monuments and examples of iconoclasm. For instance, galleries featuring art from Ancient Egypt and the Roman Empire often hold objects that were regarded as monuments and were mutilated for reasons of political or religious iconoclasm. Further, many monumental works in museums—ranging from Khmer deities carved in stone to wood vigano, which are homes of the ancestors of the Mijikenda people of East Africa— were looted from their homelands. Ideally, the powerful global forces—from colonialism to the western art market—and the monuments currently held in museums should be considered when a museum acquires an anti-Black monument (Press, 2019).

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insensitive museum display of a monument removed from Natchitoches, Louisiana—a bronze sculpture showing a subservient Black man tipping his hat—inform these concerns (Handley, 2007). Speakers on the conference panel also recognised that when museums accession and exhibit these objects, they run the substantial risk of  transferring the museum’s legitimacy and authority to these anti-Black monuments and thus  inadavertantly  endorse the monuments’ toxic legacies (Bryant et al., 2018). Whether for reasons of cost, space, interpretation, ethics, politics, or physical care, many museums operate out of an abundance of caution when they refuse to accession racist monuments in their collection. While the debate among museum professionals remains broad and unsettled, there are serious consequences to temporary stewards of removed monuments not taking heed of the field’s conversation. Local governments and educational institutions that own monuments have commonly ignored museums’ concerns about the display, interpretation, and preservation of these objects and some have simply sold the monument to the highest bidder. As a result, several anti-Black monuments are now displayed at sites that trivialise, minimise, or reinforce the objects’ association with white supremacy. For example, an individual purchased the massive sculptural group depicting Robert E. Lee and a Confederate soldier on horseback from the city of Dallas, Texas, for $1.4 million. This person donated it to a private luxury golf resort, where it is on prominent display on a newly constructed plinth, greeting visitors to this privatised space (Shinneman, 2019). Neo-Confederate groups, which have long resisted monument removal, regularly attempt to acquire toppled Confederate sculptural elements. By contrast, some owners of Confederate monuments have been wary of working with those critical of the monuments’ racism. For instance, Hamza Walker, the director of LAXART, an experimental art space in Los Angeles, purchased Charlottesville’s Stonewall Jackson figure for an ambitious exhibition he is co-curating which will juxtapose Confederate monuments with works of contemporary art (Finkel, 2022). His effort to acquire the Calhoun figure from Charleston was blocked by a lawsuit that contends, among other charges, that the planned exhibition will “denigrate and demean figures such as John C. Calhoun” (Whalen, 2021). Admittedly, a serious discussion of the problems and potentials of accessioning and exhibiting anti-Black monuments in museums is only now emerging. In order to fully contend with those possibilities a robust ethic of care must be developed along with a critical examination of a museum’s capacity to appropriately steward such an object.

Towards an Ethic of Care Taking in racist monuments is an ethical issue that requires sustained thought and care, with implications that touch all areas of museum work and stretch beyond an institution’s four walls. As such, an ethic of care for the visitors, object(s), and staff should be primary in determining if and how racist

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monuments are preserved and interpreted. In this way, museum budgets also become ethical documents that dictate the ability of care to be supported in theory and practice, with the corresponding human and material resources. There are a variety of robust literatures around care—namely a body of Black feminist literature which defines care as a radical political act of survival, a Foucauldian literature that examines care as a neoliberal form of domination and subjectification, and a more recent multidisciplinary literature coming out of Disability Studies, Queer Theory, Black feminism and Native Studies on the relationship between refusal, personhood, and who is seen as worthy of care (Rosenbaum & Talmor, 2022). Among these, Black feminist theory provides a useful guiding framework for understanding the risks and rewards of accessioning and exhibiting anti-Black monuments in museums. The considerations that follow are indebted to Black women in the 1980s and 1990s seeking to merge African diasporic and feminist values by outlining a Black feminist ethic of care (Collins, 1990, pp. 215–216). Their epistemology emphasises knowledge production through connection, in which truth emerges through care and collective knowing. In particular, this Black feminist ethic of care values personal expression and selfhood as relational and enriching to group understanding, endorses the critical merger of emotion and intellect, and tests the capacity to develop radical empathy (often while assuming some personal risk in doing so). As public historian Aleia Brown reminded participants in a 2020 interactive Twitter chat sponsored by the National Council on Public History, “In the hierarchy of jobs, caretaking of any kind is relegated to the lowest rung. It’s feminized and downgraded as a non-technical skill. I’m pushing us to consider the rigor and attentiveness needed to do work with care” (Brown, 2020). As Brown states, care work in museums is predominantly done by women. Professional roles in physical collections care are low pay, frequently occupied by temporary workers, and operate within a museum hierarchy that artificially divides and diminishes those who specialise in the work of daily collections care from those who make the decisions on an object’s interpretation, usually curators. The emotional care labour conducted by experts both in collections management and in curatorial interpretation, particularly by staff of colour, is often dismissed, underpaid, or unpaid altogether. For staff with expertise in areas of BIPOC histories or art, the burden of care becomes a double-edged sword— they must simultaneously perform care work that is outside their job functions while their recommendations on how to best approach that care work, informed by expertise and lived experience, are discredited by upper-level museum administrators. Further, with some exceptions, care work is usually done with minimal consultation from communities, the only mandated exceptions coming largely from the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA). These realities only become exacerbated when a museum that is ill-prepared to steward an anti-Black monument does so. In taking seriously an ethic of care in relation to racist monuments then, a museum must consider its professional fitness to confront issues of interpretation, preservation, and the well-being of their employees. What follows is not

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a comprehensive checklist, but rather a series of points for museum professionals to consider when contending with anti-Black monuments. In doing so we acknowledge that this work may take place in a variety of museum and interpretive contexts, and that these comments may be most relevant to those working within general history or mainstream art museums. Not every racist monument should go in a museum and not every museum is equipped to steward such a monument. Assessing whether a museum is prepared to responsibly display the monument, engage visitors, and generate strong interpretation hinges on the organisation’s mission, its aligned resources, its primary audience, and educational function. Because this process is otherwise reflexive and internal for museums, a more formal self-evaluation process is recommended to consider if a museum is equipped to manage such complex interpretation for its audience and if the racist monument is the only object that might address the specific theme to be explored. However, this cannot be a professional exercise alone. Museums that would steward racist monuments should also be able to engage in the affective and political work that Black Studies scholar Christina Sharpe calls “wake work”—imagining new ways forward amidst ongoing white supremacy and anti-Black violence.5 Interpretation is one of the most critical points of consideration in developing an ethic of care because of what is at stake for visitors, especially those of whom are BIPOC. Namely, the context of the encounter with the monument along with its interpretation can create the experience of care, confusion, or harm. This is because museums are traditionally sites of power and authority, rooted in a colonial practice in which objects are displayed for their didactic value to construct the citizen (Bennett, 1995). As a result of that legacy, many mainstream museums continue to ignore or marginalise Black history and BIPOC visitors through their exhibitions and collections. This traditional approach also presumes that visitors are passive viewers and that the monument itself can do the work of teaching history (a notion championed by those who believe removing monuments is erasing history) when it in fact cannot. Attention to an ethic of care in interpretation is crucial because museums addressing the subject of anti-Black violence are not just contending with the past, they are memorialising an ‘ongoing event’ (Sharpe, 2016). Museum’s pedagogical practices must, therefore, disrupt the white supremacy implicit in museum practice and demonstrate a considerable degree of care in executing newer practices. For instance, constructivist educational principles are now 5  Sharpe writes, “If, as I have so far suggested, we think the metaphor of the wake in the entirety of its meanings (the keeping watch with the dead, the path of a ship, a consequence of something, in the line of flight and/or sight, awakening, and consciousness) and we join the wake with work in order that we might make the wake and wake work our analytic, we might continue to imagine new ways to live in the wake of slavery, in slavery’s afterlives, to survive (and more) the afterlife of property” (2016, pp. 17–18).

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widespread in museum education as a sharp pivot from the antiquated approach of museums seeing visitors as passive recipients of knowledge. When interpreting anti-Black monuments though, this constructivist model with its emphasis on inviting the visitors to dialogue and using questions to explore meaning, should be carefully re-evaluated. The ability to answer and engage in an ethical dialogue that does not cause further harm would require all visitors to be aware that their very experience in viewing the monument is shaped by histories of race and racism. We realise that this forces a reconsideration of one of the most influential and fruitful ideas in museum interpretation, which is a necessary task when building an ethic of care to steward racist monuments. Similarly, design considerations should be carefully weighed, particularly if the monument is to be exhibited in a predominantly white institution. Questions interrogating whether or not the racist monument should be elevated on display with the plinth, exhibited upright to meet most visitors at eye-level, or shown toppled, should be taken seriously with attention to BIPOC audience experience. Black feminist theory, with its emphasis on the communal nature of knowledge production, ask us to avoid the compartmentalisation that can accompany ‘special exhibits’, such as showcasing a monument, but instead think across the entirety of a museum. Relevant questions include: How will exhibit location change interpretation? Will there be some orientation to the encounter with the monument? What objects or exhibits will the monument be displayed in relation to? Does it align or appropriately contest other objects on the museum floor? How will work with the racist monument prompt the museum to rethink its relationship with an impacted community? How will these communities be a part of the curation process? Without intentional and community-informed interpretation, exhibition of monuments in museums risks reinscribing the white supremacy of both the monument and the museum setting. Black feminism reminds us that an ethic of care requires trusting and leading with voices from the margins. Therefore, the interpretation of anti-Black monuments must centre Black people and their political, cultural, and intellectual traditions. More specifically, museums should address the violent anti-Black context in which the racist monuments were created, centre the lesser-known histories of Black communities past and present, and not become overly preoccupied with dominant narratives that can further marginalise Black histories of protest and subjectivity. Just as Holocaust museums or a lynching memorial centre  victims  and survivors first, so too should museums exhibiting monuments privilege the perspectives of harmed communities. Whether the physical evidence of destruction is apparent or not, the embedded history of Black resilience and resistance should be made clear. The Black iconoclastic protest tradition—past, present, and future—is critical to this approach. Black iconoclasts have correctly viewed these monuments as racist, and documentation of their protest (which historically has been rendered invisible) along with the

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new paths forward they charted are essential to a full interpretation (Flewellen et al., 2021). Approaches to effectively exhibiting anti-Black monuments are still highly speculative, with few current examples of such interpretive work being taken on inside the museum setting. One such example comes from the Houston Museum of African American Culture, which became one of the few Black-led, community-based museums to accept a Confederate monument. The Spirit of Confederacy depicted an angel in the form of a young, winged nude white man, whose crossed arms rest on a palm frond and sword, and had been part of a monument in a local park. In a 2020 press release, the museum acknowledged that other Black organisations in Houston criticised the museum for accepting the sculpture but averred that displaying the work was consistent with its mission and years of programmes and exhibitions. The museum agreed to accept and display the Confederate sculpture because it was ‘evidence’: “Years from now, when conspiracy mongers suggest that slavery was made up and that there were no white supremacists advocating for it, like the ones who claim there was no Holocaust, a museum in Houston, Texas will have the empirical evidence” (Houston Museum of African American Culture, n.d.). The ethic of care which focused on the Black community informed the placement of the sculpture, which was installed in an outside space that was surrounded by a high fence, which prevented the sculpture from dominating the landscape. Adjacent to the bronze figure was an installation of sculpted eyeballs by Bert Long, Jr., the late Houston artist who repeatedly depicted observing, wide-­ open eyes in his work. John Guess, then the museum’s director, described the relationship between the two works: “those eyes reflect Black Americans … that are constantly looking at [the Confederate figure]” (Di Liscia, 2020). Black iconoclasm also points to a range of radical possibilities. When considering the debate on racist monuments it is worth noting that despite publics who are directly harmed by the monument taking matters into their own hands, the destruction of monuments is rarely considered a viable first option by public officials or museum professionals. Perhaps this is because public polls to date have overwhelmingly demonstrated disapproval of monument destruction (Barakat & Finley, 2020; Power Poll, 2020). Even as the values for which the monument was constructed have been disavowed, some argue that because the monument has value, it should be preserved. The question museum professionals in particular must ask is precisely what value does the racist monument have? While some might say that selective destruction of racist monuments is against the field’s inclination to preserve or that it signals an erasure of history, we argue that the aversion to monument destruction is also rooted in avoiding engagement with the longstanding history of Black iconoclasm against racist monuments. However, if taken seriously in the process of rethinking best practices around these objects, Black iconoclasm reveals preservation and conservation—fields otherwise seen as neutral—as political and ethical battlegrounds with serious outcomes within and beyond the museum walls. Forged in a hostile, if not deadly, environment in the U.S., the Black iconoclastic tradition also

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pushes us to revisit standards for care and even consider deliberate monument disposal as a viable option.6 More recent public discourse on monuments has spotlighted positions that support preserving racist monuments specifically because of their artistic value. In reality, racist monuments in the U.S. range from unique sculptures created by internationally renowned artists to mass-produced stone or zinc alloy soldiers.  The differences in these monuments  are largely derived from the wealth, connections, and aesthetic taste of those who commissioned the works. Black communities historically and today have known these monuments were not primarily placed in public space because of their artistic merit nor was their primary purpose beautification. When white civic groups and organisations like the United Daughters of the Confederacy commissioned anti-Black monuments, they did so to intentionally claim public space for white supremacy (Cox, 2003). Tellingly, Black communities have yet to describe a beautiful racist monument as less a product of racialised power, less vile, or less harmful than an ungainly monument. The basic truth is that the artistic value (or lack thereof) of anti-Black monuments and the racist harm are  inseparable. Therefore the preservation of anti-Black monuments on the basis of their artistic  merit  alone  calls into question why the aesthetic value of a monument means more than the well-being of Black people. When monuments are placed in museums, meaningful interpretation occurs when their historical relevance takes precedence over the aesthetic value. We argue that an artist made anti-Black sculpture does not necessarily matter more than one that is mass produced because the fundamental work the monument is doing is still racist and it actively harms Black communities in the present. We posit an ethic of care then that maintains that not all racist monuments need to be preserved, that selective destruction should be a viable option, and that aesthetics cannot trump harm done to people in the present. Should a monument be accessioned,  we support expansive cataloguing practices that ensure the monument’s object  record reflects its connection to categories including anti-Blackness, white supremacy, African American history, and Black resistance. Furthermore, we advocate for changed preservation and care standards allowing for accessioning a racist monument without a commitment to conservation or preservation work being done at all, regardless of the monument’s condition. This could involve revising standards for storage or display, 6  It is striking how few examples there are of state-sanctioned destruction of Confederate monuments in the United States. Among the few exceptions are the 2021 demolition of a 75-foot tall obelisk in Asheville, North Carolina, that commemorated a local Confederate officer and politician. Notably, the base of the monument, which memorialized another Confederate officer-politician remains in place due to lawsuits (Arnaudin, 2022). A striking example of a poetic engagement with the Black iconoclastic tradition comes from the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center, a community museum in Charlottesville, Virginia. It proposed to melt the city’s Robert E. Lee Confederate statue and transform the bronze into a work of public art. The city awarded the monument to the museum based on this proposal. However, as of this writing, lawsuits bought by groups that sympathetically  interpret Confederate figures are stymying the project (O’Hare, 2021; Armus, 2022).

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including conditions such as humidity, temperature, exposure to light, and type of housing. While this might require new museum policies, such provisions  would offset the resources that would otherwise go into assessing and treating a demanding object in perpetuity. Alternatively, if preservation of the monument is important, a commitment to preserving any destruction of the monument, rather than restoring the monument to pristine condition, is vital to capturing the entire life of the object and ensuring its visibility and interpretation, not as another layer of perspective but as the primary and most accurate way to interpret the racist monument (Flewellen et al., 2021). Of the few museums that have exhibited toppled, vandalised sculptures from monuments, several examples suggest that standard museum practices—such as object mounts and conservation—can be deployed in ways that avoid reinforcing the white supremacy that led to the initial placement of the monuments in public space. For instance, the bronze representational figures of Edward Colston, a seventeenth-century English slave trader, and Jefferson Davis, exhibited in Bristol, England, and Richmond, Virginia, respectively, were placed on exhibition in a prone position instead of upright, still covered in the paint and graffiti that protesters threw on the sculptures in June 2020. By rejecting the common museum practice which would view graffiti as a blemish to be corrected, communities and museum professionals were also commenting on how museum methodologies, such as stabilisation and preservation of bronze sculptures, can refuse to validate the objects’ white supremacy. Similarly, choosing not to include the plinth or display the sculptural figures upright also resisted the museum setting potentially reinscribing power onto these objects. Rather than simply seeing the destruction as an added layer of interpretation, the museum professionals should highlight the object’s most significant time period and arguably its most accurate moment of interpretation: when the monument became the focal point of historical and contemporary anger at racialised violence. Black communities historically and in the present have been the primary actors in exposing and contesting the violence that these monuments have always represented and enacted since their erection. As such, communities’ collective knowledge—forged by lived experience, raw emotion, and the Black iconoclastic tradition—makes their inclusion in the decision making around object care and interpretation key. Still, at least in Bristol,  some community activists who helped bring the Colston monument down felt outside of the interpretive process (Brantley, 2021). Although the focus here is on internal museum processes, the ethic of care we propose requires a deep commitment to community engagement and co-curation out of respect for this expertise. This would mean having ample museum resources to conduct community-­based work, changed stewardship guidelines inclusive of shared ownership, and substantially expanded exhibit timelines. With early thoughtful examples like these, the prospect of exhibiting racist monuments has become a more common, though still highly contested, topic in the museum field. Still, components of the care required to ethically accession and/or exhibit such objects remain under-examined, including the care considerations needed for museum staff.

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The ability to appropriately care for museum staff is vital when considering whether or not an institution is prepared to steward a racist monument. After George Floyd’s murder in 2020, museums the world over claimed newfound commitments to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) and social justice work. Yet few museums saw those commitments through internally before broadcasting these values in more public-facing ways. As a 2018 Mellon Foundation study of staff diversity in art museums demonstrated, the field has struggled to incorporate these values in meaningful and sustainable ways, including in the intellectual leadership of those museums, which remained 80 per cent white. Notably, there is not a comparable study of racial and ethnic diversity of staff at other types of museums, such as history, science, design, and so on (Westermann et al., 2019). When racist monuments become a way to signal care for social justice or DEI without the structures in place to care for museum staff internally, the monument becomes an empty signifier that doubly harms staff. First, the monument is brought in without the necessary infrastructure to support staff contending with it daily. This work includes leading tours, engaging with the media, monitoring the physical safety of visitors, developing and implementing communication strategies, and  determining social media response to race-­ baiting provocateurs. Second, the monument is activated as a marker of the museum’s progress in ways that silence staff grievances on the very issues of DEI and social justice. While exhibitions are important, they are not indicators of museum’s internal culture or care practices. An ethic of care with bringing in anti-Black monuments first requires an honest and thorough assessment of a museum’s capacity to take in such a challenging object. If the internal work has not been done—be it in creating diverse staffing structures to support interpretation, adequately resourcing BIPOC subject areas, or ensuring physical and psychic safety—then exhibiting, let alone accessioning, a racist monument should not be considered. In the event that this internal work is underway and successful, serious consultation with staff specialising in the monument’s care and corresponding content area (Black history, Black art practice, Black visual culture, etc.) should be pursued. As specialists, their recommendations on alternative care guidelines, interpretive approaches, and whether or not to accession the monument in the first place should be heeded. Special attention should be given to the voices of experts of colour in these roles as their personal experiences and emotional responses are relevant to creating an environment of understanding and sharing alternative ways of knowing. Additionally, a robust plan for staff well-being should be developed. This includes considerations for the staff interacting with the monument more directly who must contend with the emotional labour of added DEI work, their psychic self-care, and risk to their physical safety.  This work, which staff shoulder on behalf of the museum, is mostly  siloed and unseen and contributes to an exploitative work environment. Museums considering accessioning and exhibiting racist monuments should recognize that such work

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requires technical skills and should provide robust support systems and commensurate compensation. Additionally, education on the role of the monument, the interpretation, and the purpose of accession and display should be shared widely among staff in the form of presentations, Q & A sessions, open houses, or written pamphlets. Where possible, training for difficult interactions with the public should be pursued as well. Such measures demonstrate  a museum’s awareness of and preparedness for the personal risk BIPOC staff regularly assume when interacting with the general public around racially charged subjects. It also acknowledges in material ways that these professionals are often the museum’s public face in engaging communities directly impacted by the racist monument and its possible exhibition. The same degree of thoughtfulness that has been given to removing racist monuments has seldom been extended to the question of what afterlife these monuments might have and where. The wholesale rejection of displaying anti-­ Black monuments in museums avoids difficult conversations that need to be had and subsequent changes that need to be made in the museum field to align anti-racist theory and practice. It also dismisses the potential of museum work to be radically reimagined. As Black feminist scholar Jennifer Nash argues, Black feminism “has long been invested in the ‘open end’, in radical possibility, orienting itself toward a yet-unknown future” (2011, p. 16). We extend that argument here as Black feminism has a critical role to play in reimagining an ethic of care in museums—one of the least developed areas by those considering the accessioning and/or display of racist monuments. At the same time, the problems that anti-Black monuments pose cannot be trivialised. In line with Black feminist theories, Black people are worthy of care over objects to white supremacy and their longstanding political and intellectual tradition of iconoclasm is instructive. The answer as to whether or not racist monuments belong in museums, then, is complex and depends on the readiness of an institution to engage in such demanding work. In this process, the focus on ethical care work to engage communities and their collective knowledge should not be minimized. The aforementioned considerations, however preliminary, offer an initial guide towards making that internal assessment. While not comprehensive, like the process of creating this chapter, the very exercise of outlining the problems and potentials of exhibiting racist monuments is meant to be transformative, whether or not museums bring in these difficult objects.

References AP News. (2020, July 14). Confederate statues stored at Richmond waste water plant. AP News. https://apnews.com/article/us-­news-­levar-­stoney-­va-­state-­wire-­ wastewater-­richmond-­07095de6084c0d73b2421d527e56d397 Armus, T. (2022, June 26). Lawsuit seeks to stop Charlottesville Lee statue from being melted down. Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-­md-­va/ 2022/06/26/charlottesville-­robert-­lee-­statue-­lawsuit/

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Arnaudin, E. (2022, May 26). Local historians reflect on the Vance Monument, one year after its removal. Mountain Xpress. https://mountainx.com/arts/ local-historians-reflect-on-the-vance-monument-one-year-after-its-removal/ Ater, R. (2011). Remaking race and history: The sculpture of Meta Warrick Fuller. University of California Press. Barakat, M., & Finley, B. (2020, September 29). Poll: Virginia evenly divided on Confederate statues. Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/ poll-­virginians-­about-­evenly-­divided-­on-­confederate-­statues/2020/09/29/36800 a9c-­025e-­11eb-­b92e-­029676f9ebec_story.html Bennett, T. (1995). The birth of the museum: History, theory, politics. Routledge. Brantley, R. (2021, June 6). The M. Shed Colston ‘consultative display’—What’s in and what’s out? Bristol Radical History Group Blog. https://www.brh.org.uk/ site/2021/06/the-­m-­shed-­colston-­consultative-­display-­whats-­in-­and-­whats-­out/ Brown, A. (2020, July 8). An evening with Aleia Brown: Twitter chat. The Black Freedom Project Notion Site. https://blackfreedomproject.notion.site/AN-­ EVENING-­WITH-­ALEIA-­BROWN-­TWITTER-­CHAT-­e3e6215cb08340fdbe45 5a2499164e93 Brundage, W. F. (2008). The Southern past: A clash of race and memory. Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Bryant, J., Filene, B., Nelson, L., Scott, J., & Serif, S. (2018, May 17). Are museums the right home for Confederate monuments?. Smithsonian Magazine. https://www. smithsonianmag.com/history/are-­museums-­right-­home-­confederate-­monuments-­ 180968969/ Collins, P. H. (1990). Black feminist thought: Knowledge, consciousness, and the politics of empowerment. Unwin Hyman. Cox, K. J. (2003). Dixie’s daughters: The United Daughters of the Confederacy and the preservation of Confederate culture. University Press of Florida. Cox, K. J. (2021). No common ground: Confederate monuments and the ongoing fight for racial justice. University of North Carolina Press. Di Liscia, V. (2020, August 31). At this museum of African American culture, displaying a Confederate statue is a ‘part of healing’. Hyperallergic. https://hyperallergic. com/583649/houston-­museum-­of-­african-­american-­culture/ Doss, E. (2010). Memorial mania. University of Chicago Press. Douglass, F. (1876). Oration by Frederick Douglass, delivered on the occasion of the unveiling of the Freedman’s monument in memory of Abraham Lincoln in Lincoln Park, Washington, D.C, April 14, 1876. With an appendix. Retrieved from the Digital Public Library of America. http://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/011697835 Finkel, J. (2022, May 2). Los Angeles alternative space LAXART lays down roots with $5m new building. The Art Newspaper. https://www.theartnewspaper. com/2022/05/02/laxart-­new-­5m-­building-­los-­angeles Flewellen, A. O., Dunnavant, J., Odewale, A., Jones, A., Wolde-Michael, T., Crossland, Z., & Franklin, M. (2021). ‘The future of archeology is antiracist’: Archeology in the time of Black Lives Matter. American Antiquity, 86(2), 224–243. https://doi. org/10.1017/aaq.2021.18 Handley, F.  J. L. (2007). Memorializing race in the Deep South: The ‘good darkie’ statue, Louisiana, USA. Public Archaeology, 6(2), 98–115. https://doi.org/10.117 9/175355307X202884 Holley, P. (2015, June 23). ‘Black Lives Matter’ graffiti appears on monuments across the U.S. Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-­mix/

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wp/2015/06/23/black-­lives-­matter-­graffiti-­appears-­on-­confederate-­memorials-­ across-­the-­u-­s/ Houston Museum of African American Culture. (n.d.). Statement from the Houston Museum of African American Culture on receiving Confederate monument. https:// hmaac.org/hmaac-­receives-­confederate-­monument-­from-­the-­city-­of-­houston Janney, C. (2006). ‘Written in stone’: Gender, race, and the Heyward Shepherd Memorial. Civil War History, 52(2), 117–141. https://doi.org/10.1353/cwh. 2006.0027 Kytle, E. J., & Roberts, B. (2018). Denmark Vesey’s garden: Slavery and memory in the cradle of the Confederacy. New Press. Landrieu, M. (2018). Speech upon the removal of Confederate statues from New Orleans, May 19, 2017. In D. Allison (Ed.), Controversial monuments and memorials: A guide for community leaders (pp. 165–172). Rowman and Littlefield. Mock, B. (2017, May 29). How Robert E. Lee got knocked off his pedestal. Bloomberg. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-­05-­29/how-­activists-­targeted-­ new-­orleans-­confederate-­statues Murray, F.  H. M. (1916). Emancipation and the freed American in sculpture. Murray Brothers. Nash, J.  C. (2011). Practicing love: Black feminism, love-politics, and post-­ intersectionality. Meridians, 11(2), 1–24. https://doi.org/10.2979/meridians. 11.2.1 O’Hare, E. (2021, October 21). City receives just one local proposal for Confederate statue, and the organization wants to melt Lee down. Charlottesville Tomorrow. https://www.cvilletomorrow.org/city-­r eceives-­j ust-­o ne-­l ocal-­p roposal-­f or­confederate-­statue-­and-­the-­organization-­wants-­to-­melt-­lee-­down/ Palmer, B., & Wessler, S.  F. (2018, December). The costs of the Confederacy. Smithsonian Magazine. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/costs-­ confederacy-­special-­report-­180970731/ Power Poll. (2020, January 24). Overwhelming Power Poll: The state should move Nathan Bedford Forrest bust to a museum. Power Poll. https://www.powerpoll. com/tn/memphis/articles/overwhelming-­power-­poll-­the-­state-­should-­move-­ nathan-­bedford-­forrest-­bust-­to-­a-­museum-­598 Press, M. (2019, July 31). What centuries of damage to ancient Egyptian artifacts may mean. Hyperallergic. https://hyperallergic.com/511565/striking-­power-­ iconoclasm-­in-­ancient-­egypt/ Purifoy, D. (2019, January 14). ‘Shrieking Sam’. Scalawag. https://scalawagmagazine. org/2019/01/silent-­sam-­essay/ Rosenbaum, S., & Talmor, R. (2022). Self-care. Feminist Anthropology. https://doi. org/10.1002/fea2.12088 Savage, K. (1999). Standing soldiers, kneeling slaves. Princeton University Press. Sharpe, C. (2016). In the wake: On Blackness and being. Duke University Press. Shinneman, S. (2019, September 20). Dallas’ Robert E. Lee statue has landed at Black Jack’s Crossing in Terlingua. D Magazine. https://www.dmagazine.com/frontburner/2019/09/dallas-­r obert-­e-­lee-­statue-­has-­landed-­at-­black-­jacks-­crossing-­ in-­terlingua/ Southern Poverty Law Center. (2019). Whose heritage? Public symbols of the Confederacy. https://www.splcenter.org/20190201/whose-­h eritage-­p ublic-­s ymbols-­ confederacy

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Upton, D. (2015). What can and can’t be said: Race, uplift, and monument building in the contemporary South. Yale University Press. Westermann, M., Schonfeld, R., & Sweeney, L. (2019). Art museum staff demographic survey. The Andrew W. https://mellon.org/news-­blog/articles/art-­museum-­ staff-­demographic-­survey-­2018/ Whalen, E. (2021, December 21). SC heritage group backs lawsuit against proposal to loan Calhoun statue to LA art show. Post & Courier. https://www.postandcourier. com/news/sc-­heritage-­group-­backs-­lawsuit-­against-­proposal-­to-­loan-­calhoun-­ statue-­to-­la-­art-­show/article_3182448c-­6267-­11ec-­b9d5-­1b01cfeb3bfe.html Wolde-Michael, T. (2021, May 5). We should think differently about the preservation of racist monuments. Hyperallergic. https://hyperallergic.com/643843/we-­ should-­think-­differently-­about-­the-­preservation-­of-­racist-­monuments/

CHAPTER 26

Local Empire: George Frampton’s Leeds Queen Victoria Memorial Rebecca Senior

Introduction Most often place applies to our own “local”—entwined with personal memory, known or unknown histories, marks made in the land that provoke and evoke. (Lippard, 1997, p. 7)

This chapter uses the ‘local’ as a methodological framework to present a short history of an imperial monument: sculptor George Frampton’s 1905 Queen Victoria Memorial in the city of Leeds, England (Image 26.1). It is divided into sections on geography, space, and time, which analyse how the monument was designed to work as a local extension of the imperial project. Adopting approaches from cultural geography and art history, Part I reveals how iconography intersected with place to authorise the monument’s celebration of empire in spaces across Leeds during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Part II explores a series of counter-hegemonic gestures, including activist graffiti and works by contemporary artists, which challenged the monument’s status as a local object of empire in 2020/2021. Arguing that temporality was a key condition of localised imperialism, it situates these interventions in the context of the global movement to disrupt and dismantle colonial commemorations. The chapter concludes with an analysis of R_VICKY, a text-­based response to the Queen Victoria Memorial by contemporary artist Samra Mayanja (2021). Situating Mayanja’s work against the backdrop of sociopolitical conflict over

R. Senior (*) Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, Yale University, London, UK © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 B. Carlson, T. Farrelly (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook on Rethinking Colonial Commemorations, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-28609-4_26

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Image 26.1  George Frampton, Queen Victoria Memorial, 1905, Leeds, England. Bronze and Portland stone. (Photograph: Author)

the future of imperial monuments, it proposes that R_VICKY critiques imperial nostalgia to draw out tensions underlying local identities of place. By approaching the local as a geographic, spatial, and temporal phenomenon, the chapter reveals its significance in the making—and unmaking—of the British empire in monumental sculpture. Monuments commemorating monarchs and colonial administrators were erected in  locations throughout the British empire during the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries. The reproduction and circulation of these objects created what Patrina Dacres (2018, p. 501) called a “strategy of bodily

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insistence, around which a sense of a shared belonging to empire could be built and sustained”, where sculptural representations of absentee colonisers, such as Queen Victoria, became important symbolic and physical assertions of imperial authority. Ideologically, monuments were important sites for promoting hegemonic visions of empire and the past two decades have seen a welcome increase in scholarship that interrogates such propaganda in visual and material cultures (Arnold, 2004; Barringer et  al., 2011; Codell, 2012; Dias & Smith, 2018; Hall, 2000; Marschner & Hatt 2022; McAleer & MacKenzie, 2015; Willcock, 2021). Monuments have also been the subject of analysis in disciplines where space and identity are interrogated through an imperial lens. In cultural geography, monuments have been scrutinised as authoritarian markers of public space (Alderman & Inwood, 2013; Johnson, 1995, 2002; Mitchell, 2001; Tyner et al., 2014), which enabled landscapes to become “conduits for not just giving voice to certain visions of history but casting legitimacy upon them—a way of ordering and controlling the public meaning of the past” (Alderman & Inwood, 2013, p.  188). Scholars from art history  and cultural studies have adopted postcolonial approaches to monuments as cultural products of imperialism, and interrogated local/global, periphery/centre, provincial/international binaries to promote diasporic creative practices marginalised by the colonial canon (Carroll, 2018; Cherry, 2014; Hodge & Yousefi, 2015; Holloway, 2016; Wawrzyńczak, 2020; Willcock, 2021). Work in the multidisciplinary field of memory studies has also explored tensions inherent in the spatialisation of place and emphasised the significance of monuments as relics of national memory that existed outside imperial centres of power (Hernandez, 2021; Mitchell, 2013; Till, 2005; Sierp & Wüstenberg, 2015). In 1997, art critic, activist, and curator Lucy Lippard drew from these areas to construct her idea of the local as a cultural journey through the North American landscape. The Lure of the Local: Senses of Place in a Multicentred Society emphasised the appeal of a local, place-based identity in an increasingly globalised, capitalist society (Bonin & Morris, 2012; Lippard, 1997). Featuring nostalgic anecdotes of Lippard’s socially and racially privileged experiences of places, the book included works from writers, artists, and residents as important alternatives to hegemonic forms of representation (Kwon, 2002). Though monuments commemorating authoritarian ideologies were a very un-local form of cultural production for Lippard (MacCannell & Lippard, 2001), she acknowledged that the local was a highly politicised phenomenon and often fraught with tension; a place where nostalgia, comfort, personal memories, insularity, narrow mindedness, and provincialism all co-exist (Lippard, 1997). This chapter draws from Lippard’s assertion that the local contains a multitude of meanings and uses it to explore the construction/deconstruction of imperial hegemonies in the iconography, location, and history of the Queen Victoria Memorial in Leeds.

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Part I Making a Local Imperial Icon A Leeds memorial committee was formed shortly after the death of Queen Victoria in January 1901 to erect a monument that celebrated her ties to the city, and the city’s ties to the British empire. The committee raised over eight thousand  pounds in public and private donations, and the sculptor George Frampton was selected to design the monument (Read, 1982). Placed directly outside Leeds Town Hall in Victoria Square, the Queen Victoria Memorial was unveiled by the Lord Mayor Edwin Woodhouse in front of a large crowd on 27 November 1905 (Image 26.2). The monument’s imposing physical presence is evident from a photograph of its unveiling, where it can be seen towering over the mass of spectators. An enthroned figure of the queen in bronze was positioned on the top of a rectangular plinth made from Portland stone. Two bronze allegorical figures titled  Peace and Industry were inserted in arch-­ shaped niches below the queen, and a sculptural frieze ran round the base of the monument featuring the words India, Australia, Canada, and Africa. Crests of the monarchy and the city were placed on faces of the plinth, above inscriptions which read, “Raised by voluntary subscription of citizens of Leeds in the

Image 26.2  Town Hall, Victoria Square, Queen Victoria Statue unveiling, 27 November 1905. (Photograph. By kind permission of Leeds Libraries, www.leodis.net)

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year 1901” and “Victoria 1837–1901”. Paired with the fact that the figures of Queen Victoria, Peace, and Industry were all larger than life-sized, their positions on the plinth exalted them literally and metaphorically from the viewers below. The monument remained outside the town hall until it was relocated to Woodhouse Moor—a large civic park approximately two miles from the city centre in 1937, where it remains to this day (Image 26.3). Queen Victoria was the linchpin of Frampton’s design. Depicting the queen as an imperial icon and local representative of civic cohesion, Frampton connected the civic mission of Leeds with the wider project of empire. Portraits of Queen Victoria appeared on a large collection of cultural objects produced and circulated throughout the British empire during the nineteenth and twentieth

Image 26.3  At the Woodhouse Moor location: George Frampton, Queen Victoria Memorial, 1905, Leeds, England. Bronze and Portland stone. (Photograph: Author)

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centuries. Busts, statues, coins, medals, ceramics, paintings, and photographs all played an important role in authorising Britain’s dominance over the people and countries it colonised (Beattie, 1983, pp.  206–214; Droth et  al., 2014, pp. 56–147; Marschner & Hatt 2022) and monuments commemorating the queen were especially important in legitimising British imperial power outside traditional, metropolitan centres of colonialism (Aldrich & McCreery, 2016, pp.  51–76; Boetcher, 2019; Dacres, 2018; Martin, 2014; Plunkett, 2022; Stocker, 2016). As Jennifer Powell (2011) has shown, over one hundred and fifty statues of Queen Victoria were erected across the empire, with the majority remaining visible in public spaces long after her death. The next part of this chapter explores how the Queen Victoria Memorial in Leeds reinforced the imperial identity of an industrial, regional city during the early twentieth century. It analyses overlaps in meaning between location and iconography and reveals the importance of geographic and spatial locals to promoting a celebratory fantasy of the British empire in this period.

Geographic Local: The Monument and Leeds Mechanised textile production was the catalyst for Leeds’ transformation from a market town to an industrial city during the nineteenth century. New mills and factories precipitated a rapid expansion in the number of labouring class workers, and the influx of financial and legal services brought dramatic social and economic changes, which shaped Leeds as a metropolitan centre of the industrial revolution (Fraser, 2019). Unlike other regional industrial cities in this period, Leeds did not develop a trading infrastructure that was based on imperial activity (Driver & Gilbert, 2000; Ward, 1994). However, imperialism was promoted in Leeds as an ideology that could encourage civic, political, and cultural cohesion. As Brad Bevan has shown, this manifested in various forms of popular entertainment, including plays, processions, and ceremonies such as the unveiling of the Queen Victoria Memorial, which aligned Leeds’ civic and cultural identity with the British empire (Bevan, 2017, pp.  15–30). Many Leeds residents also contributed to the spread of economic imperialism by inheriting and/or investing intergenerational wealth in imperial pursuits, and it has long been acknowledged that the industrial revolution played a pivotal role in prompting the empire ‘at home’ during and after Queen Victoria’s reign (McGoldrick, 2020). By erecting a monument to Queen Victoria in Leeds, the mayoral committee and all those who contributed financially through the subscription model were prompting Leeds as a city  of the empire. Recent studies on sculptural representations of Queen Victoria have proposed that the circulation of her portrait throughout the empire was disrupted by the localised agendas of the communities who commissioned, erected, and lived with such representations (Dacres, 2018; Martin, 2014; Stocker, 2016). In Leeds, this manifested in the iconography of Frampton’s monument, where a symbiotic relationship between

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royal, imperial, and local imagery represented Leeds as a centre of British imperialism, despite its distance from the larger mechanisms of empire. The Portland stone plinth was the centrepiece of Frampton’s Queen Victoria Memorial in Leeds, with each of the four sides featuring interconnected images. On the north and south faces Frampton placed stone carvings of the royal coat of arms and the Leeds city crest (Image 26.4), with the bronze figures of Peace and Industry inserted into niches to the east and west. Peace was modelled in the form of a youthful allegorical female figure, holding a small globe in one hand and supporting a laurel branch in the other (Image 26.5). Industry was a contemporary allegory of industrialised Leeds; a bare chested, muscular, male

Image 26.4  Detail of Leeds City Crest: George Frampton, Queen Victoria Memorial, 1905, Leeds, England. Bronze and Portland stone. (Photograph: Author)

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Image 26.5  Detail of Peace: George Frampton, Queen Victoria Memorial, 1905, Leeds, England. Bronze and Portland stone. (Photograph: Author)

figure whose lower half was clothed in a large swathe of textile fastened together with a belt (Image 26.6). The figure rested both arms on industrial objects, including cogs, a large spinning wheel, and other abstracted machine parts. Both allegorical figures were placed above a frieze featuring the names of countries and continents under British colonial rule, and there were several owls—a symbolic image that appeared on many architectural pediments, friezes, and buildings in Leeds—on the monument’s base pedestal. As a distinctly local commemoration, the plinth’s iconographic emphasis on the history of Leeds and the city’s role in the industrial revolution was unique among the plethora of monuments to Queen Victoria from this period. Yet Frampton’s figure of the enthroned queen also ensured that the monument promoted collective

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Image 26.6  Detail of Industry: George Frampton, Queen Victoria Memorial, 1905, Leeds, England. Bronze and Portland stone. (Photograph: Author)

imperialist sentiment, reflecting the tension between “the stability of her [Queen Victoria’s] image and the elasticity of its meaning” (Martin, 2014, p. 197). The figure of the enthroned Queen Victoria was the last in a series of figures of the queen  Frampton designed for monuments erected across  the British empire  during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In 1898, Frampton began work on his first enthroned statue of Victoria, which was unveiled near Government House in Kolkata, India, in 1902 and moved to the front of the Victoria Memorial Hall in the city in 1921 (Image 26.7) (Barnes & Steggles, 2011; Droth et al., 2014, pp. 56–147; Plunkett, 2022; Thakurta, 1995). In October 1904, another statue of Victoria by Frampton was unveiled

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Image 26.7  Detail of Kolkata figure of Queen Victoria: George Frampton, Queen Victoria Memorial, 1902, Kolkata, India. Bronze and Portland stone. (Photograph: Author)

outside the Manitoba Legislative Building in Winnipeg, Canada (Baker, 1983, p.  119). Unlike the figure in Kolkata, where the queen appeared aged and slumped on her throne, Frampton depicted the Manitoba Victoria as youthful and upright, holding a sceptre and orb in her arms and wearing her coronation robes. Less than a year later in April of 1905, the Earl of Derby unveiled another monument to Queen Victoria outside the town hall of St Helens, an industrial town in Merseyside on the northeast coast of England, which featured an identical figure to that on the Manitoba monument (Morris & Roberts, 2012, pp. 186–187). The figure on the Leeds monument was the last to be unveiled in November 1905 (Image 26.8). As a cultural product of nationalised memory, all these figures commemorated British empire through a singular, exclusionary narrative of power, authority, and domination. Yet, their inclusion on monuments in different civic centres of the empire was intended to emphasise the local importance of that city in relation to other metropolitan centres of colonialism. The next part of this chapter explores the relocation of the Queen Victoria Memorial to different spaces across Leeds, and how it reinforced what geographer R. H. Schein called the “normative power” of its surrounding landscapes (Schein, 2003).

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Image 26.8  Detail of Leeds figure of Queen Victoria: George Frampton, Queen Victoria Memorial, 1905, Leeds, England. Bronze and Portland stone. (Photograph: Author)

Spatial Local: The Monument in Leeds When the Queen Victoria Memorial was relocated from outside Leeds town hall to the corner of Woodhouse Moor in 1937, its landscape changed from a city centre to a suburban park. This altered the monument’s function as a localised imperial symbol by placing it within a new space and community in the city. The following section explores the impact this removal had on the monument’s meaning, proposing that the park offered new spatial narratives of authoritarian control, which echoed  those represented by the town hall (Azaryahu & Foote, 2008).

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Leeds town hall was designed to be the most architecturally impressive civic building in nineteenth-century England. Featuring an elevated, classical arcade of columns around a central clock tower, the elaborate scheme was completed in 1857 and the inauguration ceremony held on 7 September 1858. The ceremony was one in a series of public events from this period where honouring the empire was synonymous with social cohesion (Bevan, 2017, pp. 15–30). Attended by Queen Victoria and the royal family, the town hall opening was the largest civic celebration in the city’s history, with the royal procession watched by over half a million people. After ascending the stone steps with Mayor Woodhouse, the Queen entered the main chamber, Victoria Hall, knighted the mayor, and announced the building open on behalf of Prime Minister Edward Smith-Stanley, the Earl of Derby. An article in the Leeds Mercury recorded the day’s events and reinforced the queen’s importance as a symbol of social cohesion: We can imagine the QUEEN addressing her good people of Leeds, and exhorting them to become models of a great municipal community. … May her own spirit still dwell amongst us, as the spirit of mild, firm, wise, and righteous administration. (The Queen in Leeds, 1958, p. 2)

‘Righteous administration’ was a key phrase that legitimised not only Victoria’s rule over England and the British empire, but also the Mayor’s authority over Leeds and its citizens. The public square in front of the hall was named Victoria Square and a statue of the queen was present during the opening ceremony to commemorate the occasion and fortify the queen’s presence in Leeds. The Leeds Mercury article also drew parallels between the industrial and imperial legacies of the city, stating that “For a portion of two days, through the condescending kindness of HER MAJESTY, this old and busy seat of industry becomes in a sense the seat of Empire” (The Queen in Leeds, 1958, p. 2). Frampton’s monument was erected over forty years after the town hall inauguration ceremony, yet it reinforced the Leeds Mercury writer’s sentiment and queen’s importance to the hegemonic spatial order represented by the town hall and surrounding inner-city area. Positioning the monument in such a way that the figure of Victoria faced outwards from the town hall, Frampton aligned the enthroned queen with an authoritarian rule that was global, national, and local, including the queen’s control over the British empire, the government’s control over the nation, and Woodhouse’s mayoral control over Leeds citizens and land. As a result, complex and overlapping systems of  authoritarianism became synonymous with the civic mission of the city. The monument was moved to Woodhouse Moor in 1937 to make way for a new road system. Bought as Leeds’ first public park in 1857, Woodhouse Moor was the closest green space to the city centre, and often used for official feasts and celebrations alongside recreational activities (Booth et al., 2020). Here the monument occupied a space that was geographically and ideologically localised

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from the city centre. It was placed at the north-easterly entrance to the moor in a flower garden that had once housed small statues of ‘Adam’ and ‘Eve’ in a relatively inconspicuous location compared to its former position outside the town hall. However, as a municipal park landscape, Woodhouse Moor offered important, if less obvious, connections between the monument, city, and empire. The Queen Victoria Memorial was one of three monuments relocated to the moor from Victoria Square in 1937. During the 1890s a bronze statue of Prime Minister Robert Peel on a stone plinth had been moved from a central city street to Victoria Square. Designed by little-known sculptor William Behnes in 1852, the memorial was paid for by public subscription and relocated to the south-eastern entrance of Woodhouse Moor in 1937 (Read, 1982, p. 113). In the same year, a memorial commemorating the Duke of Wellington by the sculptor Carlo Marochetti was also moved to the north-westerly entrance of the moor from Victoria Square that featured a bronze statue of the duke in the dress of a Field Marshall on a granite plinth (Read, 1982, p. 113). Like Queen Victoria, the Duke of Wellington and Robert Peel’s national identities were forged through their portraits, which appeared on a variety of cultural objects including monuments, statues, and busts during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Wellington’s image was circulated across the British empire, promoting his political and military career as an imperial fantasy of triumphant conquest, while commemorations of Peel were largely isolated to England, where his establishment of a military police force and authoritarian approach to his political career were widely celebrated (Howarth, 2013; Reisig, 2010). The transportation of these three monuments—Queen Victoria, Robert Peel, and the Duke of Wellington—to Woodhouse Moor resulted in a new spatial order of memory. Celebrating a diverse assemblage of authoritarian ideologies, the monuments shaped the experience of the moor for those who walked through and inevitably encountered at least one on their journey as a localised extension of local, national, and international civic imperialism.

Part II Temporal Local: Revisionist Approaches in the Twenty-First Century Monuments commemorating nationalist and imperialist sentiment like those to Queen Victoria, Robert Peel, and the Duke of Wellington have been challenged by people looking to disrupt triumphalist fantasies of the British empire. Such interventions have exposed monuments as whitewashed versions of history, which mask the oppression, violence, and turmoil that shaped colonisation. Exploring creative interventions by artists and citizens as transformative acts of visual vandalism, the next part of this chapter proposes that the Queen Victoria Memorial’s celebration of imperialism was also a tool of its unmaking. Anti-colonial efforts to reinterpret, destroy, and remove monuments across the world have disrupted their revelry of  the British empire (Dresser, 2007;

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Hatt, 2022; Leung, 2009; McGarr, 2015; Price, 2021), while inter-­disciplinary scholarship has exposed imperial stability as a colonial fiction, maintained in part through the reproduction of ‘icons’ like Queen Victoria in visual culture (Cooper & Stoler, 1997; Peckham, 2015; Siddiqi, 2008). Paired with iconography that celebrated a hegemonic vision of empire, the physicality of public monuments to Queen Victoria, which were often large scale and constructed from heavy, durable materials such as stone and bronze, was also an apt metaphor for the colonial presumption of political, social, and economic stability during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Efforts to challenge this perception of stability have included ephemeral interventions, which utilised creative techniques to dismantle the supposed permanence of monuments by disrupting their material forms. On the evening of 9 June 2020, the Queen Victoria Memorial in Leeds was covered in graffiti. ‘BLM’, the acronym for the Black Lives Matter movement, was written alongside the words ‘murderer’, ‘racist’, ‘slave owner’, ‘slag’, ‘justice’, and ‘educate’. Circles of pink graffiti were also sprayed on the breasts, hands, and face of the figure of Peace (Image 26.9). On 23 June 2020 Frampton’s statue of Queen Victoria in Manitoba was splashed with white and red paint in response to global anti-racist protests. One year later—during a protest against Canada’s residential schools after the discovery of the unmarked grave sites of Indigenous children—the Manitoba statue was graffitied again, before being toppled from its pedestal. The destruction of Frampton’s statues reflected a wider movement to expose injustice by disrupting representations of Queen Victoria (Boetcher, 2019; Hatt, 2022). Photographs of the graffitied monuments were shared widely on international news and social media platforms; connecting local imperial objects with a new, global visual culture of protest against social and racial injustice (Chaudhuri, 2016; Hicks, 2020; Olusoga, 2020). Ephemeral materials, including graffiti, placards, and posters, played an important role in revisionist approaches to the memorial landscape by subverting the material hierarchy of traditional monument construction. The most widely shared example of this phenomenon in the UK appeared in the days after the statue of slaver Edward Colston was toppled from his monument in Bristol during a Black Lives Matter Protest, when dozens of placards and signs were photographed in front of an empty plinth. The graffiti on the Queen Victoria Memorial in Leeds also disrupted its place-bound celebration of imperialism by severing its connections to the geographic and spatial local. Placing it in dialogue with this global movement against oppressive ideologies, graffiti transformed the monument into symbol of collective action that could exist ‘ex-situ’ (Aroussiak & Hirsch, 2018; Sugino, 2020). As the fates of other public monuments were brought into question, local councils, public policymakers, and heritage organisations in the UK were forced to grapple with challenging questions about the histories those monuments suppressed, exploited, and manipulated. Leeds City Council was one of  several local authorities to announce a city-wide review of its statues and monuments (Macpherson, 2020; Mullen & Newman, 2018). Part of the

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Image 26.9  Detail of graffiti on Peace: George Frampton, Queen Victoria Memorial, 1905, Leeds, England. Bronze and Portland stone. (Photograph: Author)

review included a questionnaire asking residents how they felt about current statues with the aim to uncover ways to address the gaps and opportunities for future memorialisation (Lowe, 2020). Fifty-five per cent of the seven-­ hundred email responses expressed views that were grouped under the overarching theme of ‘Against removal or review’, while fifty-two per cent of those responses were grouped under the subtheme of ‘It’s part of our history’. Thirty-four per cent of all respondents offered ‘suggestions for future statues/ installations/art’, while only ten  per cent supported ‘removal or review as a whole’. Though the majority of respondents indicated “no ground swell of anger towards Queen Victoria or Robert Peel statues”, the reference group agreed that the statues of the city “over-celebrated Empire, Christianity and

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‘great’ white men” (Lowe, 2020, p. 7). The review demonstrated that multi-­ layered, complex, and contradictory interpretations of the past shaped visitors’ experiences of the graffitied Queen Victoria Memorial. The final part of this chapter explores the tensions in these interpretations by placing monuments in the context of a renewed nostalgia for empire in the UK. Proposing that this was both a local and national phenomenon, it analyses a work by contemporary artist Samra Mayanja, which used the local as a framework to unpick nostalgic impulses towards the Queen Victoria Memorial in Leeds.

Artist Responses to the Leeds Monument Less than a year after the graffiti appeared on Frampton's Leeds Queen Victoria memorial, the Conservative UK government proposed a parliamentary bill that increased the maximum prison sentence for ‘damage to a statue’ to ten years (UK Home Office, 2020). This was part of a series of reforms designed to threaten citizens’ rights to protest in public space and reflected far-reaching anxieties over an increase in critical approaches to British imperial history (Taylor, 2022). Several scholars have interrogated how Brexit and political conservatism ensured that a patriotic nostalgia for empire reached new heights in 2020 (Gust, 2016; Khan, 2019; Sanders, 2020). Focusing on objections to the interrogation of Britain’s colonial past in the museum sector, Katie Donington (2019) revealed the power of nostalgia as a social and political force that motivated campaigns against anti-colonial projects. Nostalgia for empire also hindered movement towards more equitable memorial landscapes (Toppling Statues Webinar, 2020). Imperial monuments were reinvigorated as icons of British imperialism as members from right-wing groups, including the English Defence League, the Democratic Football Lads Alliance, and Britain First, ‘defended’ statues during protests against social and racial injustice; protecting the provincial illusion of Britishness (Sabbagh, 2020). Creative interventions by artists along with graffiti, placards, and posters on and near these monuments offered important opportunities for citizens to address this fraught conflict over national memory (Hatt, 2022). In Leeds, the Queen Victoria Memorial was the subject of work by contemporary artists who interrogated the monument’s celebration of empire. In February 2019, artist James Thompson produced the film work Recording Performance (Negative), which depicted the destruction of a series of plaster moulds taken from the monuments on Woodhouse Moor (Thompson, Recording Performance (Negative), 2019). Disrupting the sense of hegemonic space represented by Victoria Square, Thompson placed the moulds on the town hall steps before smashing each one in a performance that returned parts of the Woodhouse Moor monuments, including a nineteenth-century monument to the mayor of Leeds Henry Marsden that was moved to Woodhouse Moor in 1952, back to their intended civic location. In 2021, Thompson revisited another work around the memorial to Queen Victoria for an edited collection of artist’s reflection on monumentality in Leeds (Senior, 2021). Recording

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Performance II, the Memorial to Queen Victoria statue on Woodhouse Moor, Leeds, was a performance with artist and writer Samra Mayanja, where both artists pushed clay into spaces on the monument to interrogate the physicality of space surrounding the monument in relation to their own bodies (Thompson, 2021). Mayanja’s contribution to the same volume—R_VICKY—also focused on the Queen Victoria Memorial (Mayanja, 2021). Its subtle interrogation of the tension between local and nostalgic impulses towards the monument is the subject of the final part of the chapter. R_VICKY was a part of an imaginary ‘Public Consultation on Leeds Monuments 2021’ issued by Leeds City Council’s fictional ‘Department of Poetics’. The work only included a three-page text response to question five— “Are there any monuments you miss?”. Asking about monuments that were missed as opposed to those in the present or future, Mayanja subverted the council’s statue review, and the response offered a discursive narrative filled with sentimental longings for places, people, and moments past. The piece was assembled from forums, memories, and conversations. It began with a section describing the respondents’ past experiences of ‘local’ pubs, clubs, and a bakery, which had either been demolished or were no longer operating in urban areas close to Leeds city centre. Nostalgia for the disappearing landscape was present in the humorous personal anecdotes about nights out at gigs, cheap legs of lamb, and tasty coconut tarts. Mayanja deliberately played with language to anthropomorphise these places. Describing how the “Victoria pub on the corner didn’t survive the fire” and lamenting that “they killed the Hayfield”, Mayanja (2021, p. 1) drew from news reports that used similar, sentimentalised language to describe the destruction of imperial monuments. The first section concluded with the line—“To beat it down, was, as the Prime Minister has said, ‘to lie about our history’” (Mayanja, 2021, p. 1). The second page of the response shifted the focus onto ‘Vicky’—a fictional character based on the Leeds Queen Victoria Memorial. Continuing the anthropomorphic approach to buildings and objects, Mayanja constructed Vicky as a real person through the sentimental longings of the respondent who felt deep, yet unnatural, romantic affection for the monument. Asserting that “Vicky showed me a kind of nurturing that I couldn’t leave” (Mayanja, 2021, p.  2), the respondent recalled how they spent their time curing her of her loneliness, introducing her to the family and spending a day cleaning the statue of the words “slave owner” and “racist”. Midway through this section the respondent lamented how “a statue erected in tribute to her was thrown into my waters” (Mayanja, 2021, p. 2). Here Mayanja drew parallels between the ownership of local landscape (“my waters”), the toppling of the Colston monument into Bristol harbour, and the globalisation of historical and contemporary imperialist ideologies. The hyper-sentimentality of the respondent’s longings cumulated in their urge to “take a ladder to her feet and kiss as much of her as I could reach” (Mayanja, 2021, p. 2), finally possessing the monument for themselves. Hyper-sentimentalised responses to the destruction of imperial monuments in the UK were echoed in Mayanja’s critique of this ownership, where grieving

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an object was conflated with grieving a person. The final part of Mayanja’s piece imagined a violent end for the Queen Victoria Memorial. Describing how “She was carted off in chains and cut up into bits”, the respondent mourned the geographic distribution of her parts “to the furthers points north, east, south and west” and how “the dust they swept up from chopping her up is being used for a new cycle lane on Easterly Road” (Mayanja, 2021, p. 3). Concluding with “Rest in peace Sheepscar. Rest in peace The Hayfield. Rest in peace Vicky” (Mayanja, 2021, p. 3), the section exposed the tension inherent in the monument as a localised expression of imperialism that is also signifies multiple histories, encounters, stories, and meanings. In R_VICKY, Mayanja negotiated the contradiction between nostalgia for an object and place that was also a site of provincial, imperialist messaging. Using the form of a council-­ mandated review as a framework, Mayanja critiqued imperial nostalgia as a way of resisting critical engagement with history as a socially constructed fiction. The local appeared throughout Mayanja’s work: in buildings and objects alongside nostalgic yearnings, romantic fantasies, and isolated personal geographies. Mayanja’s R_VICKY brings together many of the concerns addressed throughout this chapter and offers a fitting conclusion in a piece that interrogates the locality of empire in monuments. The chapter was not written to provide a neat overview of a monument’s history, but to interrogate the local as an extension of the imperial project and offer new ways to approach changing approaches to colonial commemorations. In doing so, it evidences the importance of supporting creative, critical engagement with imperialism and demonstrates what is local about historical, contemporary, and nostalgic approaches to the British empire. Acknowledgements  I would like to thank the Henry Moore Foundation and the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art for their generous support, along with Samra and all the artists who participated in the Commemorative Space project.

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McGoldrick, J. (2020). Follow the money! Acknowledging colonialism in Leeds industry. Leeds Museums and Galleries. https://museumsandgalleries.leeds.gov.uk/collections/acknowledging-­colonialism-­in-­leeds-­industry/ Mitchell, D. (2001). The lure of the local: Landscape studies at the end of a troubled century. Progress in Human Geography, 25(2), 269–281. Mitchell, K. (2013). Monuments, memorials and the politics of memory. Urban Geography, 24(5), 442–459. https://doi.org/10.2747/0272-­3638.24.5.442 Morris, E., & Roberts, E. (2012). Public sculpture of Cheshire and Merseyside (excluding Liverpool). Liverpool University Press. Mullen, S., & Newman, S. (2018). Slavery, abolition and the University of Glasgow. Report and recommendations of the university of Glasgow history of slavery steering committee. University of Glasgow. https://www.gla.ac.uk/media/Media_607547_ smxx.pdf Olusoga, D. (2020, June 8). The toppling of Edward Colston’s statue is not an attack on history. It is history. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jun/08/edward-­colston-­statue-­history-­slave-­trader-­bristol-­protest Peckham, R. (2015). Empires of panic: Epidemics and colonial anxieties. University of Hong Kong Press. Plunkett, J. (2022). A tale of two statues: Memorializing Queen Victoria in London and Calcutta. 19: Interdisciplinary Studies in the Long Nineteenth Century (33). https://doi.org/10.16995/ntn.6408 Powell, J. (2011). The dissemination of commemorative statues of Queen Victoria. In P. Curtis & K. Wilson (Eds.), Modern British Sculpture. Royal Academy of Arts. Price, D. (2021). Binding Trauma. Art History, 44, 8–16. Read, B. (1982). Victorian sculpture. Yale University Press. Reisig, M. D. (2010). Community and problem-oriented policing. Crime and Justice, 39(1), 1–53. Sabbagh, D. (2020, June 10). Campaigners fear far-right ‘defence’ of statues such as Churchills. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/10/ far-­right-­protesters-­plan-­defence-­of-­statues-­such-­as-­churchills Sanders, R. (2020). Brexit and empire: ‘Global Britain’ and the myth of Imperial Nostalgia. The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History. https://doi.org/1 0.1080/03086534.2020.1848403 Schein, R. H. (2003). Normative dimensions of landscape. In C. Wilson & P. Groth (Eds.), Everyday America: Cultural landscape studies after J.B Jackson (pp. 199–218). University of California Press. Senior, R. (Ed.). (2021). Commemorative space: Artist reflections in monumentality in Leeds. Corridor8. https://corridor8.co.uk/wp-­content/uploads/2021/04/ Commemorative-­Space-­2021.pdf Siddiqi, Y. (2008). Anxieties of empire and the fiction of intrigue. Columbia University Press. Sierp, A., & Wüstenberg, J. (2015). Linking the local and the transnational: Rethinking memory politics in Europe. Journal of Contemporary European Studies, 23(3), 321–329. Stocker, M. (2016). An imperial icon indigenised: The Queen Victoria Memorial at Ohinemutu. In K. Pickles & C. Colebrone (Eds.), New Zealand’s Empire (pp. 28–50). Manchester University Press.

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Sugino, C.  A. (2020, September 1). Iconography in the age of black lives matter. Monument Lab. https://www.monumentlab.com/bulletin/iconography-­in-­the-­ age-­of-­black-­lives-­matter Taylor, M. (2022, January 13). How will the police and crime bill limit the right to protest?. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/law/2022/jan/13/ how-­will-­the-­police-­and-­bill-­limit-­the-­right-­to-­protest Thakurta, T. G. (1995). Traversing past and present in the Victoria Memorial, CSSSC Occasional Paper 153. Calcutta: CSSSC. The Queen in Leeds. (1958, September 7). Leeds Mercury. Thompson, J. (2019). Recording performance (negative) [film and performance]. Retrieved from https://yorkshire-­sculpture.org/sculpture-­network-­artist/james-­ thompson/ Thompson, J. (2021). Recording performance II, the memorial to Queen Victoria statue on Woodhouse Moor, Leeds. In R. Senior (Ed.), Commemorative space: Artist reflections in monumentality in Leeds. Corridor8. https://corridor8.co.uk/wp-­ content/uploads/2021/04/Commemorative-­Space-­2021.pdf Till, K.  E. (2005). The New Berlin: Memory, politics, and place. University of Minnesota Press. Toppling Statues Webinar. (2020, 23–24 November). [Audio recordings]. Public Statues and Sculpture Association https://pssauk.org/event/toppling-­statues-­webinar/ Tyner, J. A., Inwood, J. F. J., & Alderman, D. H. (2014). Theorizing violence and the dialectics of landscape memorialization: A case study of Greensboro, North Carolina. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 32(5), 902–914. https://doi. org/10.1068/d13086p UK Home Office. (2020). Police, crime, sentencing and courts bill 2021: Criminal damage to memorials factsheet. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/police-­ crime-­sentencing-­and-­courts-­bill-­2021-­factsheets/police-­crime-­sentencing-­and-­ courts-­bill-­2021-­criminal-­damage-­to-­memorials-­factsheet Ward, J. R. (1994). The industrial revolution and British imperialism, 1750–1850. The Economic History Review, 47(1), 44–65. Wawrzyńczak, A. D. (2020). How local art made Australia’s National Capital (1st ed.). ANU Press. Willcock, S. (2021). Victorian visions of war and peace: Aesthetics, sovereignty, and violence in the British empire. Yale University Press.

CHAPTER 27

The Struggle Continues Down South: Dismantling of Colonial Monuments and Symbols of Colonialism and White Supremacy Michelle A. Harris and Eric E. Otenyo

Introduction The doctrines of white supremacy and global racism were dominant ethos of the colonial and neocolonial projects. The plunder and underdevelopment of Africa was, in part, an effort to subjugate people deemed to be inferior to Europeans. Not surprisingly, the sociopolitical and economic struggles for freedom and independence were organised through formal parties, liberation wars, interest group activism, and a variety of social movements. While the movement’s leaders faced the uphill task of navigating through neocolonial economic arrangements and persistence of a capitalist system that reinforced existing power structures, it is not lost to us that artefacts preserving the status quo endured. Many of these artefacts—in the form of monuments, memorials, and historical sites—not only commemorate past events or experiences but, due to their enduring material nature (i.e., built of materials that were meant to outlast their creators), they, in fact, take on the mantle of a bequest or a

M. A. Harris (*) University at Albany (SUNY), Albany, NY, USA e-mail: [email protected] E. E. Otenyo Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, AZ, USA © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 B. Carlson, T. Farrelly (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook on Rethinking Colonial Commemorations, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-28609-4_27

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testament. This therefore means that monuments mediate between their past and a future and, in the case of colonial monuments, they normalise racism. It is entirely possible that the current wave of social movements and student decolonisation activism aimed at breaking down commemorative symbols of settler colonialism is arguably a continuation of established manifestations of popular struggles. As political scientist expert on social movements Sydney Tarrow (1998) observed, social movements are “collective challenges, based on common purposes and social solidarities, in sustained interaction with elites, opponents, and authorities” (p. 4). In our view, even though groups that seek to remove colonial era monuments do not have organisational structures and the current cycles of contention appears to be sporadic or episodic, there is some degree of continuity in their effort to assertively deconstruct the colonial state’s symbols. And the networks and connective structures seem to draw a large following among African youth who articulate an anti-racist frame with a goal to challenge white supremacy. Their strategies follow a familiar pattern of confronting the ruling elite, demonstrations, boycotts, and physical defamation and removal of colonial commemorations. However, we cannot ascertain that these actions are modular in the sense that imitations lead to successful outcomes in all countries. Tarrow (1998) has suggested that cross-case influences do occur during social movements. In his formulation, the possibility of successful examples becoming a model for other collective actions is always real. Following Almeida (2019), we regard the outcomes of the current struggles to have brought about some changes that awaken Black racial consciousness through elevating discourse on race discrimination. Evidently, in the African context student activism to dismantle symbols of oppression borrows from the American civil rights template shaped by Southern Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and their allies fighting from below. For instance, activist students defined the erection of monuments as a problem of continued racism and not as forms of historical heritage or masterful artworks. The definitions in both instances attempted to justify removal of statues and monuments as a just cause in need of immediate solutions and mobilised to elevate the problem of monuments to the public agenda. We are not aware of large-scale studies that consider the possibility that the social movements to dismantle symbols of colonial and white supremacy structures are coordinated. Instead, we hypothesise that the similarities across continents, though disjointed, are a cause to undo an unfinished common human tragedy. Thus, a diffusion perspective is helpful to the extent that it offers opportunities for understanding different innovations in the struggles to dismantle racist structures. If there are innovations that have been adopted in different political and social conditions, we get to learn more about the factors and activist entrepreneurs that shape the outcomes and legitimation of new symbols. In addition, the perspective might be useful in teasing out characteristics of social movements that challenge global racism projects. This, by itself, is an important addition to understanding symbolic politics and the use of monuments in the colonial project.

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Perhaps, from a social science theoretical angle, we may be looking at a study of diffusion of social movement tactics. In this case, the diffusion of ideas across time and space yields remarkably similar outcomes. Although this study assumes that to be the case, there is the potential that our assumptions and selection of countries in Southern Africa points to an incoherent set of observations about the targeted symbols of racism and oppression. In that case, each area discussed might be a discrete case of political mobilisation and activism devoid of any similarities with the better studied and understood social movements in developed countries. And for the southern African examples, the evidence is clear that the symbols evoked emotional responses and required little political persuasion on the part of the masses but not necessarily to the ruling classes. Our major observations are drawn from South Africa, Malawi Botswana, and Zimbabwe. One of the differences between the old activism and the new activism is the increased use of social media platforms to awaken the spirit of resistance and change. Thus, while the old forms of agitation relied on protests and direct action, the current focus on dismantling symbols of white power has benefitted from presence on Twitter, Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, and other internet communication platforms. Still these virtual mobilisations of protests and ensuing movements remain, at the core, efforts to challenge existing forms of oppression and a continuation of the liberation of Africa and all people of African heritage and a popular movement for international human rights and dignity of all people (Baldwin, 1995; Clayton, 2018; Jackson, 2009; Taylor, 2016). Although African liberation wars and popular uprising against formal colonial rule came to a close in the 1960s, South Africa waited a little longer before the apartheid regime collapsed in 1992. Then, popular struggles culminated in the change of guard from white minority rule to Black control of the political apparatus of the state. Regime change was achieved not only through local liberation and agitation but by wider international social movements and activism. For example, the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) pushed President Ronald Reagan’s administration to sign the Anti-Apartheid Act (Morris, 1992). And Reagan’s successor, George H.  W. Bush, personally responded to the growing calls for a free South Africa by urging President Frederick de Klerk to release Nelson Mandela (Fitzwater, 1990). Although Bush did not agree with CBC by lifting the 1986 sanctions against South Africa, enough consensus existed to bend the trajectory of white oppression and settler colonialism in South Africa. South Africa’s white regime repealed the Group Areas Act (enacted in 1950), the Population Registration Act (enacted in 1950), lifted the state of emergency, and legalised political parties. A global push for dismantling of the apartheid pariah state became the moral triumph of the human experience. For example, some commentators view the global outcry to release Nelson Mandela from prison through music concerts as an international spectacle. In

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June 1988, for instance, through the auspices of the British Anti-Apartheid Movement (AAM), global celebrity figures like Stevie Wonder, Whitney Houston, Sting (Gordon Sumner), and Miriam Makeba, among others, held concerts watched by over 600 million people in 67 countries in a grassroot event described as “the zenith of the campaign to bring apartheid to international consciousness” (Graham & Fevre, 2020, para. 2). The effort led to the historic outcome in 1994, when Blacks took over political power from white minority rulers in South Africa. Mandela himself recognised that even though he and others had brought the apartheid system to an end, the work was not complete (Blakemore, 2020). The context of unfinished work to end white supremacy and all its vestiges informs the argument that we posit in this chapter. Erasing formal statutes that undergird a system that degrades the human soul and elongates the physical and emotional suffering of a population explains the current wave to eradicate the problematic symbols of racism and oppression. We contest the reactionary counter narrative of cancel culture reinforced in right-wing and neo-­conservative media outlets. We first present the cases as has been reported in different social and political settings. After that, we attempt to articulate three ideas to unpack continued activism in the South African region.

Data from the Cases South Africa Since South Africa’s white minority government was among the last to end formal apartheid, the enduring symbols of racism are, for the most part, still intact. The process to dismantle monuments is ongoing. While some of the protests to remove relics of colonial oppressors were a result of organised activism, reports of erasing of statues on private farms and some cemetery busts of leaders of the Boers have also been vandalised as part of the movement to rid the country of symbols of its oppressive past. In most instances, a few white farmers have had to grapple with gravesite attacks meant to degrade their heritage and racial pride. Among some of the defaced grave mementos of Boer pride was the stealing of the bronze bust of Gen. Jakobus Herculaas de Le Ray (1847–1914), who was a leader in the South African war (1899–1902) and a staunch Afrikaner Nationalist in the Transvaal region. He served as a senator in the union and was a key player in the construction of the racist agendas. The bronze statue on his grave was vandalised. There are probably many other similar examples, but we reflect on the mementos in public spaces. One of the signposts of racial repression was John Vorster Square which donned Vorster’s bust. It was removed in 1997. Vorster, who as Minister of Justice, was famously associated with the Rivonia Trial (October 9, 1963–June 12, 1964) which led to the life imprisonment of Nelson Mandela. In April 2015, students removed a statue of British colonialist Cecil John Rhodes from Cape Town University campus. Students had long agitated for

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the statue to be removed because it was offensive to glorify a brutal coloniser. Although the statue was removed, another one was retained at Company’s Square, a city park in the Pretoria. Adekeye Adebajo, Nigerian novelist captured the moments in his book The Trial of Cecil John Rhodes (2021). Adebajo decries Nelson Mandela’s utopian approach to reconciliation with people who had committed racial genocide and showed little interest in wealth distribution or ending racial injustices that Black people have faced in South Africa. The protests, which morphed into a student-led effort to reduce the cost of higher education activism, termed #FeesMustFall national campaign, were evidence of the legacy of economic injustices that have continued through the postcolonial era. In his book #RhodesMustFall:Nibbling at Resilient Colonialism in South Africa, Francis Nyamnjoh (2016), a sociologist based at the University of Cape Town, contends that the demonstrations served to unearth the deception of the ruling elite. With these anti-Rhodes activisms, students across the region had the opportunity to explicitly and directly debate the conquest of and lack of human decency which the colonial state meted to Africans in the southern part of Africa. Their goal was to articulate a decolonisation framework that challenged anti-Black racialism (Wa Bofelo, 2017). In June 2020, protests erupted demanding the removal of the statue of Paul Kruger from Church Square, in the capital city of Pretoria. Kruger, the third president of the Republic of South Africa, was one of the most brutal and racist Dutch rulers of the country. Kruger’s history is replete with dishonourable and bloodthirsty acts of racial injustice and oppression. Not surprisingly, protesters sprayed on the statute words like ‘Killer’ and ‘We can’t breathe’ echoing the Black Lives Matter (BLM) events surrounding the murder of George Floyd in Minnesota (CBS NEWS, 2020; VOA, 2020). Some protestors demanded that instead of statues of racists, South Africa install those of African leaders like Steve Biko. However, Kruger’s name on the tourist wildlife park was retained as were statues of Barry Hertzog, another apartheid leader before 1945. Protests and demands for monument removal also erupted in the case of charismatic leader Mahatma Gandhi, whose role in the struggle against apartheid and colonialism is respected. However, in recent times, his remarks on race have been scrutinised and subjected to deconstruction. The criticisms against Gandhi are not just within his native India but in South Africa, where he first practiced law and led the Natal Indian Congress (McGivering, 2015, March 13). In 2015 students protested and demanded that his statute be removed from Johannesburg University after historians found that he made remarks that referred to Africans in derogatory terms such as ‘kafirs’. Although some of the protesters in Johannesburg wore African National Congress (ANC) caps, the party distanced itself from the protests against Gandhi. Gandhi was reported to have been racist against Africans while simultaneously rejecting white racism against Indians and coloured people (Reddy, 2016). Students in the University of Ghana later joined in the movement to deconstruct his saintly and ‘great soul’ image. Many participated in an online

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hashtag #GandhiMustFall petition (Barnagarwala, 2019). Although Gandhi’s statue at its Legon University campus was relocated to the Kofi Anan Center of Excellence Area, the network of students to protest Gandhi’s statues has grown in Ghana, South Africa, and Malawi. One important addition to the process of disrupting negative images of Africans is the growth in statues of heroes who fought against racism. Perhaps, Nelson Mandela’s bronze statue in Pretoria (unveiled in 2013 at Union Building) and Museum built in Umtata in 2000 will serve as a postcolonial commemorative artefact for generations to come. It replaced the numerous oppressive and traumatising memorials of the colonial and Apartheid era. Noteworthy is the fact that Mandela’s statue in Pretoria was installed at the very spot where James Barry M. Hertzog, an Apartheid champion and prime minister (1924–1939) of South Africa, statue originally sat. Hertzog’s effigy was moved elsewhere in the neighbourhood of the Union Building (Maromo, 2013). Malawi At independence, Kamuzu Banda, Malawi’s first president, sought to both articulate a new form of postcolonial nationalistic rhetoric and to retain much of the colonial system. Although the country discarded its old colonial name Nyasaland, virtually all physical monuments were retained untouched. His successors carried on with similar practices and, much like in other parts of Anglophone Africa, externalised the country’s development efforts by relying on loans from international financial institutions such as the World Bank and bilateral aid from the UK. As a result, dependency became a feature of the country’s modus operandi. The country not only sought development assistance from its former colonial master but reached out to individual members of the Commonwealth such as India. India’s support was buttressed through the presence of thousands of Indian traders who dominated the commercial districts in the city of Blantyre. And, as India’s economy grew, it became more assertive, competing against China’s rise on the continent and offering assistance that included cultural instruments. This playbook is familiar. It is quite common for western countries and China to build cultural centres in and export symbols of their own sense of power and identity to dependent African nations. In that vein, amid stiff opposition from student activists and their allies, India’s government moved to erect Mahatma Gandhi’s statue at the heart of the business centre at Blantyre. The opposition, which organised as the Gandhi Must Fall group, argued that the statue be removed due to his use of racial slurs. It filed a court case against the Government of Malawi (Ministry of Information and communications Technology), Blantyre City Council (BCC), and contractor for erecting the $10 million effigy at the behest and financial support of the Government of India. A high court granted an injunction temporarily suspending the installation (Wire, 2018). While the government saw

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the gesture by the Indian government as a form of diplomatic appreciation of India’s role in building commercial ties with Malawi, the activists resisted that rationalisation. On their part, those opposing the statute argued that Malawi should be celebrating its own people and not foreigners who control its commercial sector. The statue was erected but has remained uncovered. Botswana Botswana, too, had been touched by the ruthless Cecil Rhodes. He had helped British settlers establish camps for colonialists travelling from Harare (old Salisbury) to Mafikeng in South Africa. At the onset of British expansionism, Rhodes had attempted to swindle land from the Batswana kgosi (chief), Sekgoma Letsholathebe. Rhodes relics, including railways, are still visible in Gaborone and have attracted some Botswana political activism directed towards erasing his footprints. Thus, when students in South Africa agitated against Rhodes’ effigy, a few Batswana too celebrated the anti-racism efforts. Botswana has developed its own way of rejecting colonial rule in the region—by erecting commemorative statues of three chiefs on the Central Business District of Gaborone, the nation’s capital. The Dikgosi Monument represents three dikgosi (chiefs): Sebele I of the Bakwena, Khama III of the Bangwato, and Bathoen I of the Bangwaketse. This trio are celebrated for travelling to Britain in 1885 to persuade the British Crown to prevent occupation of Botswana by the apartheid-minded British South Africa Company. The bronze statues remind Botswana of the chiefs’ role in preservation of its nationhood and subsequent independence from Britain. Batswana also have a plaque celebrating their role in fighting against Nazis and their racist sympathisers during World War II. Regardless of the celebration, the over 10,000 African troops serving within the African Auxiliary Pioneer Corps of the British Royal Pioneer Corps experienced racism from the British army leadership corps and ranks. One might suggest that this form of educational gesture hides the true nature of colonial subjugation of Botswana people. The country, like other African countries, had to fight against British domination and cede off its status as Bechuanaland Protectorate. Botswana’s ruling elite consolidated its anti-­ colonial commemoration infrastructure by constructing in Gaborone a statue of its first president, Sir Seretse Khama (Setlhabi, 2016, p. 371). This trend is likely to continue as an attribute of self-determination and national pride. A better articulation of the nationalist and decolonisation education project was actualised through the construction of museums. This precluded existing colonial museums that presented a distorted and incomplete history of the colonies. African countries at independence constructed new national museums to not only archive their struggles for freedom and nationhood but to reassert their national identities after unchallenged and often misleading narratives of colonial legacies (Arinze, 2003; Hall, 1996). For Botswana, a National Museum was established through legislative framework (National Museum and

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Art Gallery Act, 1967). This law coming just after the country’s independence in 1966 was about postcolonial memorialism and commemoration of the country’s emergence from the shackles of British control. Zimbabwe Like other free African nation-states, Zimbabwe’s first sign to remove a colonial relic preceded the current wave to eliminate relics of oppression and colonial racism. The action was the change of name of the country from South Rhodesia (named after Cecil Rhodes) to Zimbabwe. Prior to that, North Rhodesia had been renamed Zambia. This trend was followed by massive changes of names of streets in cities such as Harare, Bulawayo, and other towns. For example, Julius Nyerere Street in Harare had previously been known as Moffat Street. Kings Street was renamed Julius Nyerere Way, Rhodes Avenue was renamed Herbert Chitepo Avenue, Victoria Street became Mbuya Nehanda, and Speke Avenue became Agostinho Neto Avenue. The project to rename streets continued into 2019 as a key aspect of the pan-African and nationalist project. The government honoured and named streets for many of the pioneer anti-colonial leaders including Angola’s Agostinho Neto, Jomo Kenyatta of Kenya, Patrice Lumumba of Congo, Botswana founding leader Sir Seretse Khama, and Cuban revolutionary Fidel Castro, among others.

An Explanation of Heightened Activism, Outcomes, and Cases In explaining the behaviour of social activists in the reported instances, we posit three frames of analytical ideas and explanations. The three derivative collective ideas are (a) the assertion and ideological affirmation of African identity and the effort to reclaim African indigeneity, (b) the unfinished politics of self-­ determination and building new symbols of unity, and (c) the discourse of healing from the disease of racism and the lingering trauma of settler colonialism, imperialism, and racist policy actions (CDC, 2021; Winters, 2020). These explanatory variables are not, by any means, mutually exclusive but are reinforcing and derived from the plausibility of those who have fought colonialism. The Assertion and Ideological Affirmation of African Identity and the Effort to Reclaim African Indigeneity This element can be best understood through revisiting ideas like Négritude of Léopold Senghor, Ujamaa of Julius Nyerere, or the various pan-African innovative ideologies of Kwame Nkrumah and others. The ideology of Négritude helps us to internalise colonial commemorations as a form of speech. Symbols like statues and colonial flags communicate a message of subjugation. In its original form, Négritude was a psychological response to the dehumanising

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cultural and social conditions of colonialism. It took the form of a literary and ideological movement that challenged colonialism and its manifestations (Irele, 1965). Novelist Ngúgí wa Thiong’o and other writers pushed this agenda forward when they argued that the work of liberating Africans out of the colonial and neocolonial metaphysical empire would be best done through use of African languages (1986). He therefore called for increased use of indigenous languages in public spaces. On his part, Nkrumah (1965) posited the urgency of Africans halting the extension of the colonial racist project even after formal political and flag independence. Through the Ujamaa movement, Nyerere espoused a self-help philosophy aimed at the rejection of capitalist exploitation of Africans, which is arguably at the heart of the colonial project. He rejected exploitation carried out upon the masses whether carried out by people of a different race or by Blacks (Saul, 1972). Nyerere’s ideal society was about equality, freedom, unity, and an attitude that ensured all members of society were cared for (Mohiddin, 1972). He probably intended to remind Africans that the colonial impact through Western education and other commemorative symbols shifted the political and social gravity towards Europe. The colonial artefacts were meant to indicate that African and Indigenous cultural artefacts and institutions were worthless (Mohiddin, 1972). A more controversial but popular and coherent anti-racist ideology was Mobutu Sese Seko’s “authentic Zaire” (authenticité) movement, described by Mabika Kalanda as an attempt to get rid of “mental alienation” (quoted in Howe, 1972, p. 3). There is no doubt that its impact has been huge. Mobutu remarked, “For us authenticity consists of becoming aware of our personality, our own value, and basing our action on premises derived from national realities, so that this action is really our own from the outset” (quoted in Howe, 1972, p. 3). With this formulation, Mobutu ordered that Congo change its name to Zaire (derived from the original Kikongo name of the River Congo, Nzadi) and then order all Zaireans to abolish their ‘Christian’ names to embrace culturally appropriate indigenous names. Mobutu changed his European names of Joseph Desire to Sese Seko kuku ngbendu wa Za Banga (which means fearless) and also embraced wearing of African garb like the Abacost (derived from á bas le costume, or down with the suit). The movement also meant changing names of streets and landmarks, with Mount Stanley (who was a European explorer) becoming Mount Ngaliema. It was promoted to continue the anti-colonial goal of reclaiming African identities and use of names that made sense to the common African peasant. Thus, Leopoldville became Kinshasa and Stanleyville was renamed Lubumbashi, just to name a few cities. And, in Kinshasa, new memorials of freedom fighters like Patrice Lumumba replaced the statue of Leopold II. The doctrine of authenticity was also about African pride. Many statues erected by colonial Belgians were uprooted. This process was evident in most of Africa before the current anti-­ colonial wave of removal of racist statues and other monuments.

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The Unfinished Politics of Self-Determination and Building New Symbols of Unity There is some degree of theoretical clarity inherent in the policy to remove colonial memorials. Perhaps, this argument can also be made for postcolonial countries that have successfully conducted succession and other forms of self-­ determination. Indeed, notable African nationalists saw self-determinism and nation-building buttressed with cultural decolonisation as a moral weapon against colonial systems that exploited and impoverished Africans (Neuberger, 1986). The existing conventions reveal an attempt to remake a new world and bury the past. While a huge part of the history cannot be erased, unprecedented measures have been put in place to create not only a new order but to reaffirm African agency. In that vein, self-determinism explains a part of the drive to bring down relics from the past. A typical clarion call is captured in Adom Getachew’s (2020) phrases “Decolonize this place!”, “Decolonize the university!”, and, most appropriately, “Decolonize the museum!” Most African countries, including South Africa, established national heritage councils that reshaped national museums to reflect the changes from colonial rule to African governance. In those clarion terms, like ‘Decolonize the university’, is the raison d’être for student protests challenging relics and Eurocentric curricula (Brook, 1996). Curriculum reforms involved radical changes in social sciences and promotion of units that would enhance national unity while overhauling white-dominated cultures. It also explains student rage and defacing and tearing down of colonial statues and public monuments across the continent, for example, recorded in various accounts (see Becker, 2018; De Jorio, 2006; Johnson, 1995; Larsen, 2012). By demanding that museums be built to showcase the triumph of Africans over their colonial masters, countries sent a statement about self-­ determination. And because colonial people were treated as people without history, removal of statues and redesign of new curricula represent a renewal and affirmation of African and Indigenous humanity. The Discourse of Healing from the Disease of Racism, Ethnocentrism, and the Lingering Trauma of Settler Colonialism and Imperialism Colonial oppressors built empires premised on ethnocentrism, a belief that European cultural systems were superior to those of Indigenous people. Thus, when interacting with various Indigenous and African groups, the colonialists treated their hosts with prejudice and intolerance that had psychological and health implications. Many of the effects of exclusion, discrimination, and oppressions exist and exacerbate poor health conditions among marginalised groups. The chronic disease has taken too long, and it requires healing. Data now backs the assertion that historical trauma and the stress of contemporary racism is a key variable in poor health outcomes among Indigenous people (Paradies,

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2016; Smallwood et al., 2020). Many students who took part in the movement to bring down Cecil Rhodes’ statue from the University of Cape Town reported that the removal was a cathartic moment (CBS NEWS, 2020). Monuments and statues seem to produce a kind of low-key chronic mental torture and activists seem to reach a breaking point where they declare that the presence of certain symbols is unbearable. This occurrence leaves very little room for compromise with authorities that are viewed as complicit in the racialised economic and political system. Thus, movement to remove the various statues and monuments is, by and large, a strategy for psychological liberation from the enduring burdens of colonial and postcolonial political and economic systems.

Discussion In this chapter, we examined the possibility that social movements and policy prescriptions established to challenge white supremacy in Africa could generate a continent-wide or region-wide movement through the diffusion of ideas, and found this was not necessarily the case. There is, however, a general elite awareness of the need to revisit the continued existence of symbols of colonialism and racial injustice. Significant differences exist in elite approaches to heeding to the activism mainly driven by student activists and nationalist allies. And importantly, the vestiges of apartheid are strong in South Africa. This makes it particularly difficult to generate sufficient interest in the symbolic as opposed to major reforms, which include land reforms and provision of employment to South African Black youths. In other words, the magnitude of bread-and-­ butter problems that were, in the first place, a product of racist colonial wage laws is in the way of the more symbolic and emotive issues of monument removal. Our observation is that most of the activism concerning monument removal is not driven by party politics. Instead, it is a function of latent youth and student activism. There is a possibility that the more radical members of nationalist parties like the African National Congress (ANC) are sympathetic to the effort to replace the vast majority of the relics of colonialism and settler domination but there are seemingly more urgent agendas to push onto the policy stream. As a result, the movement to remove monuments has not been buttressed by legislative gains, which was the case in the better understood civil rights movement in the United States. According to Almeida (2019) the civil rights movement of the 1960s and 1970s resulted in enactment of voting rights and legalised ban of discrimination based on race and national origin. But the movement did not ban display of the Confederate flags or monuments associated with white supremacy. The latter became a feature of the continuation of the civil rights struggle in a more concerted form after the 2016 election of President Donald Trump, a self-declared nationalist who embraced right-wing, neo-Nazi, and other white racist groups. Another possibility is that ruling coalitions are too fragile to generate interest in areas that weaken South Africa’s ability to remain the continent’s largest

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economic powerhouse in the wake of rising global competition from, especially, China. In this case, perhaps supporting executive policies that erode the immediate past history of monuments that held together the ruling elites whose corporate hold of economic commanding heights is still a matter of less concern. Further, there is a possibility that ruling elites prefer that the education system becomes the locus for deconstruction of ideas of dominance rather than street activism that only yields symbolic, but not structural, changes. In sum, this chapter demonstrates the importance of the continuation of the deconstruction of global racism. Even as the different countries grapple with erasing symbols of white supremacy and oppression, the distinctness of each country must be contextualised in light of the different political and social realities. Elimination of monuments that represent the degradation of human beings is a noble agenda for global solidarity. Identification and elimination of the various monuments, structures, and symbols of racism is a work in progress that must be continued. The colonial project cannot be said to have ended without the removal of its symbolic structures and monuments.

Conclusion It is easy to forget that upon independence, African countries commenced programmes to undo relics of colonialism. Many countries instituted bureaucratic ministries and departments to reclaim African indigenous cultures, including use of languages and redesign of school curricula. Efforts to erect statues and monuments such as stadiums named for freedom fighters became the norm. Although this nationalist project was not framed as cancel culture, it represented the first wave of conscious state and public activism geared towards elimination of hallmarks of racism and oppression. Then as now, the movement achieved varying degrees of success. To assess the effect of the movement to remove monuments, we would unfortunately have to look at how political elites respond to the activism. Over the past years, we can extrapolate that the sense of urgency in implementing the policy to remove these relics has been very much a function of the strength of public outcry, whether led by opposition parties, civil society, social media activists, or students. Each country seems different depending again on interest groups’ ability to influence ruling elites. In some cases, the relative indifference or public disinterest in these issues has created an atmosphere where incentives for official inaction are commensurate with the relative insignificance of these emotive and symbolic issues compared to politics of unemployment, bread-­ and-­butter issues. For the most part, the cases in the Southern African region point to a strong loosely united movement that has awakened the spirit of reclaiming African humanity. The movement is a form of psychic energy and political reaction to continued hate crimes against Black people. The global movement fuelled by the rise of social media represents a different dimension of the search for an inclusive and multicultural rejection of political, economic, and social racism.

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This movement has seized the opportunity arising from the glaring inequalities in policing Black communities and the disproportionate number of coronavirus infections within non-white societies. The successful framing of racist monuments in public spaces as a human rights issue has contributed to the heightened scholarly attention evidenced in this publication. Those seeking to develop further awareness of the problems of countries retaining racist symbols in public spaces can further this goal by expanding the research into areas we did not cover. More generally, this chapter suggests that colonial monuments must always be interrogated in the context of white supremacy, whiteness, and structural racism. For us, removal of statues and relics of colonialism is a part of the unfinished struggle for inclusivity across countries.

References Adebajo, A. (2021). The trial of Cecil John Rhodes. Institute for Pan African Though and Conversation (IPATC), University of Johannesburg. Almeida, P. (2019). Social movements: The structure of collective mobilization. University of California Press. Arinze, E. (2003). African museums: The challenges of change. Museum International, 50(1), 31–37. Baldwin, L.  V. (1995). Toward the beloved community: Martin Luther, king Jr., and South Africa. Pilgrim Press. Barnagarwala, T. (2019, March 5) Debate rages on about Mahatma’s legacy in Africa: Gandhi statue in Ghana to be relocated 3 months after it was pulled down. https://indianexpress.com/article/world/debate-­rages-­on-­about-­gandhis-­legacy-­ iafrica-­g andhi-­s tatue-­i n-­g hana-­t o-­b e-­r elocated-­3 -­m onths-­a fter-­i t-­w as-­p ulled-­ down-­5611009/. Becker, H. (2018). Changing urbanscapes: Colonial and postcolonial monuments in Windhoek. Nordic Journal of African Studies, 27(1), 1–21. Blakemore, E. (2020, July 17). How Nelson Mandela fought apartheid -and why his work is not complete. National Geographic. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/ history/article/nelson-­mandela-­fought-­apartheid-­work-­not-­complete Brook, D.  L. (1996). From exclusion to inclusion: Racial politics and educational reform in South Africa. Anthropology & Education Quarterly, 27(2), 204–231. https://doi.org/10.1525/aeq.1996.27.2.04x0228t CBS NEWS. (2020, June 19). In Africa, toppling statutes is a first step in addressing racism, not the last. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ in-­africa-­toppling-­statues-­is-­a-­1st-­step-­in-­addressing-­racism-­not-­the-­last/ CDC. (2021, April 8). Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Media statement from CDC Director Rochelle P.  Walensky, MD, MPH, on racism and health. https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2021/s0408-­racism-­health.html Clayton, D. M. (2018, March 21). Black Lives Matter and the civil rights movement: A comparative analysis of two social movements in the United States. Journal of Black Studies. https://doi.org/10.1177/2F0021934718764099. De Jorio, R. (2006). Politics of remembering and forgetting: The struggle over colonial monuments in Mali. Africa Today, 52(4), 79–106. http://www.jstor.org/ stable/4187740

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Fitzwater, M. (1990). Statement, press secretary on President George Bush’s telephone conversation with President Fredrik Willem de Klerk of South Africa, (February 10, 1990). Archives, https://bushlibrary.tamu.edu/ Getachew, A. (2020, August 2). The slow road to real ‘decolonization’, New York Times, Opinion. p. 7. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/27/opinion/sunday/ decolonization/statues.html. Hall, M. (1996). Archaeology Africa. David Philip. Howe, M. (1972, June 23). Mobutu is building an “authentic Zaire.” New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/1972/06/23/archives/mobutu-­i s-­b uilding-­a n-­ authentic-­zaire.html Graham, M. & Fevre, C. (2020, April 4). Boycotts, rallies and free Mandela: UK anti-­apartheid movement created a blueprint for activists today. The Conversation. https://theconversation.com/boycotts-­rallies-­and-­free-­mandela-­uk-­anti-­apartheid-­ movement-­created-­a-­blueprint-­for-­activists-­today-­134857 Irele, A. (1965). Négritude—Literature and ideology. The Journal of Modern African Studies, 3(4), 499–526. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0022278X00006479 Jackson, T. F. (2009). From civil rights to human rights: Martin Luther king, Jr., and the struggle for economic justice. University of Pennsylvania Press. Johnson, N. (1995). Cast in stone: Monuments, geography, and nationalism. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 13(1), 51–65. https://doi. org/10.1068/d130051 Larsen, L. (2012). Re-placing imperial landscapes: Colonial monuments and the transition to independence in Kenya. Journal of Historical Geography, 38(1), 45–56. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhg.2011.07.004 Maromo, J. (2013, December 16). Zuma: Hertzog statue removed after exhaustive consultation process. Mail & Guardian. https://mg.co.za/ article/2013-­12-­16-­barry-­hertzog-­statue-­moved-­replaced-­by-­mandelasculpture/. McGivering, J. (2015, March 13). Is Gandhi a hero to Indians? BBC News https:// www.bbc.com/news/world-­asia-­431847578 Morris, M. (1992). African Americans and the new world order. Washington Quarterly, 15(4), 52. https://doi.org/10.1080/01636609209550115 Mohiddin, A. (1972). Ujamaa na Kujitegemea, 165–177. Socialism in Tanzania: An Interdisciplinary Reader vo. 1. Politics. Edited by Cliffe, L & J. S. Saul. East African Publishing House. Neuberger, B. (1986). National Self-Determination in postcolonial Africa. Lynne Rienner. Nkrumah, K. (1965). Neo-colonialism: The last stage of imperialism. International Publishers. Nyamnjoh, F.  B. (2016). #RhodesMustFall:Nibbling at resilient colonialism in South Africa. African Books Collective. Paradies, Y. (2016). Colonisation, racism and indigenous health. Journal of Population Research, 33, 83–96. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12546-­016-­9159-­y Reddy, E.S. (2016, October 18). Some of Gandhi’s early views on Africans were racist. but that was before he became Mahatma. https://thewire.in/history/ gandhi-­and-­africans Saul, J.  S. (1972). Nationalism, socialism and Tanzanian history. John S.  Saul. Pp. 65–75 Socialism in Tanzania: An Interdisciplinary Reader vo. 1. Politics. Edited by Cliffe, L & Saul, J. S. East African Publishing House.

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Setlhabi, K.  G. (2016). Evoking memory: Botswana Notes and Records, 48, 368–382.https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/90025352 Smallwood, R., Woods, C., & Power, T. (2020). Understanding the impact of historical trauma due to colonization of health and well-being of indigenous young peoples: A systematic scoping review. Journal of Transcultural Nursing, 32(1), 1. https://doi. org/10.1177/1043659620935955 Tarrow, S. (1998). Power in movement. Cambridge University Press. Taylor, K. T. (2016). From #Blacklivesmatter to black liberation. Haymarket Books. Thiong’o, N. (1986). Decolonizing the mind: The politics of language in African literature. J. Currey. VOA. (2020, December 16). Remove or keep a statue? South Africa debates painful legacy. https://www.voanews.com/africa/remove-­or-­keep-­statue-­south-­africa-­ debates-­painful-­legacy Wa Bofelo, Mphutlane. (2017, May 11). “Fallism and the dialectics of spontaneity and organization: Disrupting tradition to reconstruct tradition.” Pambazuka News. https://www.pambazuka.org/democracy-­governance/fallism-­and-­dialectics-­ spontaneity-­and-­organization-­disrupting-­tradition Winters, M.  F. (2020). Black fatigue: How racism erodes the mind, body, and spirit. Berrett Koehler Publishers. The Wire. (2018. November 1). Malawi court stays installation of Gandhi’s bust after petition claims he was ‘racist’ https://thewire.in/world/malawi-­gandhi-­statue-­racist

CHAPTER 28

Standing Strong: The Renaming of Toronto Metropolitan University Rachel DiSaia, Catherine Ellis, and Joanne Okimawininew Dallaire

Introduction Toronto Metropolitan University (TMU) is the fifth name of our university. It was established in 1948 in the city of Toronto, Canada, as the Ryerson Institute of Technology, in response to postwar demand for career-focused education modelled on the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Over subsequent decades, the institution’s name was changed three times to reflect both its evolving place within Canada’s higher education landscape and its aspirations for the future: Ryerson Polytechnical Institute (1954–1993), Ryerson Polytechnical University (1993–2000), and Ryerson University (2000–2022). Throughout these changes, ‘Ryerson’ remained constant. The name referred to Egerton Ryerson (1803–1882) who was—until recently—best known for his role as the province of Ontario’s first Superintendent of Education from 1844 until 1876, in which he established the province’s public education system, the first free, compulsory school system in Canada. He was also one of the founders of Ontario’s Normal School, which trained teachers, and Victoria College, which is now part of the University of Toronto. A statue honouring Ryerson was erected in 1889 next to the Normal School and unveiled on Queen Victoria’s 70th birthday. The Normal School site was later selected for the new Institute of Technology, and the presence of the statue inspired the R. DiSaia • C. Ellis (*) • J. O. Dallaire Toronto Metropolitan University, Toronto, ON, Canada e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 B. Carlson, T. Farrelly (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook on Rethinking Colonial Commemorations, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-28609-4_28

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idea to name it the Ryerson Institute of Technology—providing immediate credibility and recognition for the new institution by conveniently attaching itself to Ryerson’s reputation. In the early twenty-first century, growing awareness of the legacies of colonial administration in Canada focused attention on the role of education systems in creating and perpetuating racism and marginalization, particularly for Indigenous Peoples through Canada’s Indian Residential School System (residential schools). From the late seventeenth century onwards, Christian church-­ run boarding schools had been established in colonial North America to Europeanize Indigenous children. Federal government-funded residential schools operated in Canada from the early 1880s until the last school was closed in 1996. Residential schools forcibly removed over 150,000 Indigenous children from their communities and forbade them to speak their languages or recognize their cultures. Students were provided with very low standards of education, and the terrible food and living conditions in the schools contributed to chronic hunger, disease, and the death of many students. The physical, sexual, and emotional abuses suffered by students in these schools and the resulting intergenerational traumas were documented by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC), which reported in 2015 and made 94 Calls to Action to acknowledge the history of harm in the residential schools, support survivors, and guide policies to prevent a repeat of such abuses (Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, 2015a, 2015b). The TRC addressed Ryerson’s work in connection with residential schools, principally due to a plan he wrote in 1847 for the establishment of agriculture-­ focused boarding schools for Indigenous children. Ryerson’s plan long predated  the  federal government-fundedresidential schools, and his role as Superintendent of Education for Ontario was separate from the Canadiangovernment’s responsibility for the education of Indigenous children; however, by 2017, Ryerson was commonly labelled the ‘architect’ of the system and pressure grew for the university to address the multiple legacies of its namesake. Recognizing the impact of residential schools and colonization on Indigenous community members, the university had already taken a number of actions from 2010 onwards, including making public statements about the colonial legacy of Ryerson, installing a plaque near his statue to contextualize his role in the creation of residential schools, and engaging in a broad community consultation project to develop a pathway towards Truth and Reconciliation across campus. Pressure nonetheless continued, focused on the statue of Ryerson and the university’s name. During global protests calling out social injustice, colonization, and white privilege in the summer of 2020, the statue was defaced and multiple petitions were submitted calling for the university to be renamed. Shortly afterwards, the university president appointed a task force mandated to conduct a thorough review of Egerton Ryerson’s historical role and to recommend actions to address his legacy and evaluate the role of commemoration in the campus community. In 2021, the Standing Strong (Mash Koh Wee Kah

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Pooh Win) Task Force made 22 recommendations, including the renaming of the university, the adoption of new principles of commemoration, and the implementation of a wide range of actions to increase support for Indigenous and Black scholarship and advance reconciliation, anti-colonialism, and equity on campus. Drawing on our experiences as direct participants in the task force and the implementation of its recommendations, this chapter explores the distinctive approach taken by the Standing Strong Task Force and the process through which a new name for the university was selected and introduced. We highlight the benefits of approaching decolonizing initiatives on campus through an Indigenous lens, rethinking conventional community engagement strategies, and establishing a clear distinction between history and legacy when making decisions about ongoing colonial commemoration.

Process, Principles, and Project Design The Standing Strong Task Force was co-chaired by Joanne Dallaire, the university’s Elder and Senior Advisor on Indigenous Relations and Reconciliation, and Catherine Ellis, a faculty member in the Department of History (Ellis and Dallaire are co-authors of this chapter). The twelve additional members reflected the diversity of the university and included students, faculty, staff, alumni, and professionals with expertise in fields such as human rights, history, public art, human resources, and law. The task force was supported by senior executive and administrative leaders within the university as well as a full-time manager (chapter co-author Rachel DiSaia), a research team, and an external agency, but all operational decisions and outcomes were determined only by the 14 members, very few of whom had ever worked together before. Our mandate required the task force to present a report and recommendations to the university president within 10 months. Recommendations were to be based on thorough, open, and transparent consultations with the university community as well as the results of a substantial research program that included examinations of Egerton Ryerson’s relationship with Indigenous peoples, his links to the education system in Ontario, and the development of residential schools in Canada, as well as an external scan of other universities’ efforts to reckon with colonial legacies. The task force was also responsible for developing principles to guide recommended actions to respond to Ryerson’s legacy. Guided by Elder Dallaire and other Indigenous members of the task force, the group approached its mandate through an Indigenous lens, grounded in the belief that no one is above, no one is below, no one is ahead, and no one is behind. Regardless of age, stage, or position in life, everyone’s voice is equally valued and respected. Moreover, our goal was to reach a consensus among all task force members. Our work was informed by Indigenous understandings of consensus-building and a commitment to a reflective and respectful process that created an opportunity for every member to contribute and share their perspectives. Through intentional trust-building, the members fostered an

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environment where divergent perspectives and dissenting voices tested ideas and challenged assumptions. Members undertook their roles without any predetermined outcomes and the task force operated entirely independent of direction from university leaders. The outcomes of our work were strengthened by healthy discourse and committed debate. To fulfil our mandate within the ambitious timeline and in alignment with these foundational principles, the task force developed a process through which members would oversee and learn from three concurrent and interrelated streams of work: historical research, community engagement, and our own learning and unlearning. Throughout our work, we aimed to learn in new ways from historically excluded voices and to demonstrate respect for the value of each community member. Critically, members committed to complete confidentiality to create a space for discussion in which diverse perspectives and understandings could be explored with curiosity and individual views could evolve and grow throughout the process. Our weekly meetings were held entirely virtually due to the COVID-19 pandemic, which challenged traditional relationship-building strategies. To help centre the group and remind us of key principles, Elder Dallaire provided an Indigenous opening and closing for all meetings and the group also met informally to build rapport that allowed for openness and vulnerability. Elder Dallaire, a Cree pipe carrier, also sought out a Spirit Name for the task force. The name, Standing Strong, recognizes our ancestors and spirit helpers who were invited to join and guide our work.

History and Legacy A vital component of the task force members’ learning and our recommendations was the disentanglement of history and legacy. History is an evidence-­ based and analytical understanding of the past, usually developed by academic or other professional historians. When the historical record reveals truths that are more universally recognized as harmful (e.g., direct responsibility for slavery, internment camps, or residential schools), then the community is more likely to be able to acknowledge that harm and determine the best way forward with limited disagreement. Decision-making on the basis of legacy is often more challenging. Legacy is both the impact of something or someone and the ways in which that impact is experienced, understood, and remembered publicly by a variety of people over time. The understanding of legacy also takes into account public narrative, current context, and diverse perspectives. Legacy is often rooted in evidence-­ based history, but historical records are largely maintained by the systems that have benefited from colonization and thus historical findings can be biased and incomplete (Trouillot, 1995/2015). Accordingly, legacies are much more likely to be contested and actions taken in response to legacies are often more contentious. The task force understood the importance of access to historically accurate information to fulfil our mandate, inform our recommendations, and meet the

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community’s needs. At the same time, we recognized that in the case of Egerton Ryerson, history and legacy did not neatly align. Partial and inconsistent information about Ryerson’s career and divergent interpretations of his societal contributions underpinned both demands for actions, such as the renaming of the university and the removal of his statue on campus, and opposition to any such actions. In some cases, current community members’ experiences of pain and harm were ignored or disputed by those who fixated on the accuracy of the historical record. In other cases, community members who focused on securing specific actions by the university for deeply personal reasons found comfort in straightforward interpretations of the past that failed to recognize context or complexity. Both the work of our research team and extensive input from the community were therefore vital to task force members’ learning and decision-making. The circumstances of the pandemic and the tight timeline for the task force’s work meant that our researchers depended on traditional methods, including printed primary and secondary sources and local archival collections. We had to respond to concerns about the possible limitations of our sources and the credibility of colonial archives, while the community shared the impact of repeated claims that Ryerson was the ‘architect’ of residential schools. It was clear that long before the task force started its work, Ryerson’s legacy had become inextricably connected to residential schools, while the lack of accessible and unbiased historical information about him had led to frustration with the institution and created barriers to important critical discussions at the university. The task force research team developed a detailed and contextualized timeline of Ryerson’s life, work, and legacy (Starr et  al., 2021). These materials enabled task force members to enhance their knowledge about various facets of Ryerson, including his views on schooling for Indigenous children developed through his experiences in the 1820s as a Methodist missionary and teacher living with the Mississaugas of the Credit (Peace, 2019; Ryerson, 1883), as well as his plan for church-run, agriculture-focused boarding schools for Indigenous children in the late 1840s (Ryerson, 1847/1898). Reviewing Ryerson’s role as the province of Ontario’s first Superintendent of Education, our research drew attention both to his significance in the founding and development of Ontario’s public education system and to less well-known aspects of his work, particularly his tolerance for racially segregated and separate schools for Black students and for students from poor families (Henry, 2019; McLaren, 2004; Neff, 1994–1995). The research report also explored how Ryerson’s legacy developed in the decades immediately after his death and continued to evolve through public dialogue and the perspectives of different community groups throughout the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. The timeline was intentionally written to be accessible to non-specialists, and it can be read and downloaded through the task force’s website along with other supporting materials such as information about similar initiatives at other universities. We also included a summary of the historical research in the task force’s final report to enhance understanding of the basis for the task force’s recommendations

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and help increase our community’s knowledge (Standing Strong Task Force, 2021).

Community Engagement While our understanding of Ryerson’s life and work was informed by historical research, we recognized that his legacy was not necessarily directly connected either to the facts of recorded history or to the actions he undertook during his lifetime. Many years of efforts by both critics and defenders of Ryerson’s work had made it clear that there was no single understanding of his contributions to education policy or a universal experience of his legacy. Accordingly, we framed the community engagement component of our work primarily as an opportunity to learn more about his legacy and its impacts directly from community members without engaging in historical education or awareness-­raising, while remaining true to our Indigenous-led principles. With the assistance of an external firm, the task force launched an inclusive community engagement period designed to capture perspectives and ideas through multiple avenues. Given that the university had already completed substantial work with respect to Truth and Reconciliation (O’Neil Green & Dallaire, 2018), the task force sought to build on earlier truth-telling initiatives by posing new questions that would focus on both Ryerson’s legacy and the principles that should guide future decisions on commemoration. In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, we took the opportunities presented by the necessity of an entirely virtual environment to structure an engagement process that met people where they were, on their own time, and without significant barriers to participation. Our goal was to ensure that people could contribute in ways that felt safe, comfortable, and culturally relevant. Participants could choose to share ideas through an online survey, by hosting or participating in a community conversation, or by submitting emails and letters. We used CivilSpace, a user-friendly virtual engagement platform, for our online survey. The five guiding questions we developed were all open-­ ended and optional, allowing participants to provide only the information they wished to share. By including questions such as “Given what you may know of Egerton Ryerson’s legacy, how does that affect your view of commemoration today?” and “Given the university’s commitment to reconciliation, what ideas do you have to address the legacy of Egerton Ryerson?” we sought to ensure that responses would address the complexity of commemoration and reconciliation while providing participants with space to share a range of perspectives, including comments, questions, and suggestions about possible next steps. Along with the survey questions, we included seven optional demographic questions to help us understand who was participating and to facilitate iterative and targeted outreach as appropriate. Our community engagement analysis also followed conversations as they happened on social media, through op-eds and other media coverage, and in open letters that were shared in the university community. In alignment with the principle of valuing all perspectives equally,

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all identifying information was removed from responses before they were aggregated and shared with the task force, both to protect individuals and to mitigate against bias. Another distinctive and highly effective element of our approach was the inclusion of a community conversation toolkit. Recognizing that public or town hall-type ‘consultations’—whether virtual or in-person—are often sites of harm and did not align with the task force’s principles, we chose instead to develop a toolkit to guide independent, smaller-scale conversations with an optional report-back process. The downloadable toolkit supported those who wanted to organize their own discussions about the commemoration of Ryerson with a group of their choice, such as student clubs, employee groups, and community organizations. The toolkit included recommendations for effective virtual engagement, a conversation guide, and resources for accessibility support such as closed captioning and translation services, but all decisions about such conversations or the extent to which they used the toolkit lay with the participants. Community conversation hosts were not members of the task force, nor did they register with us, and participants had no obligation to report back to the task force. Some groups chose to report back directly, while others encouraged their participants to submit their reflections individually via email or the online survey. Since the task force’s recommendations were not based on voting or popularity, there was no limit on the number of times any individual could submit their views and ideas. We continued to welcome input after the end of the formal community engagement period, particularly as the sense of urgency surrounding our work increased following the confirmation of unmarked graves on the sites of former residential schools in May 2021 (Scott, 2021). In early June 2021, following a peaceful rally in response to this news, a small group of demonstrators pulled down and further defaced the statue of Egerton Ryerson on campus. The remaining pieces of the statue’s installation were put into storage by the university pending the completion of the task force’s work. We put a great deal of emphasis on strategic communications to ensure that the community was made aware of the task force’s work and to highlight opportunities for engagement. The co-chairs led two virtual presentations and Q & A sessions, which were recorded and made available via social media and on the task force website, which was updated frequently. Emails were sent to all students, faculty, staff, and alumni. To reach target communities within the university and the broader public, information and opportunities for engagement were shared through a variety of communications techniques and internal and public channels, including the university’s internal newsletters, social media, direct emails, and stakeholder email lists. Community members were encouraged to connect with our Engagement Manager if they had questions or required accommodations to participate. By targeting communications to groups of traditionally underrepresented individuals, we captured a more representative picture of the range of community perspectives.

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Over more than three months, the task force received input from almost 9000 students, university faculty, staff, alumni, and others about both Ryerson’s legacies and how they felt commemoration should be guided at the university. More than 250 people participated in community conversations that were reported back to the task force. Through these responses, we developed an understanding of common themes, concerns, and aspirations for the future. The results of the community engagement process were captured through a qualitative content analysis approach that reviewed each comment, identified overarching themes, and helped task force members understand the perspectives and concerns of all respondents. The results were shared in our What we Learned report, which was also made available on the task force’s website (Argyle Communications Inc., 2021). Leading themes included a desire for further concrete actions toward reconciliation to be accompanied by an acknowledgement of past errors, and for university leaders to reflect on their own roles in advancing reconciliation through both personal and institutional declarations. Regarding the statue of Ryerson on campus, there was little consensus. While some respondents wanted the statue to be permanently removed due to the harm it caused to community members, others wanted the statue removed to preserve and protect the monument itself. Similarly, some people wanted the statue to be kept in place with defacements intact as a statement of community understanding, but others firmly believed it should be cleaned and celebrated as originally intended. On commemoration, the dominant theme was a desire to stop commemorating Egerton Ryerson. Common sub-themes included stances against commemorating a historical figure who caused harm, a desire to address the impacts of commemoration, especially on Indigenous students, and questioning why Ryerson continued to be commemorated in the context of the university’s commitments to equity, diversity, inclusion, and reconciliation. In response to the opportunity to include additional ideas, respondents called for the university’s name to be changed and expressed urgency for the university to act, although often with a recognition that decision-making would be fraught and complicated. Comments strongly indicated a positive sentiment toward the task force and gratitude for the important work it was undertaking. Finally, we received many comments articulating a desire for the university to listen to and credit Indigenous individuals and organizations who had been working toward change for many years, and to be guided by their completed work rather than start from scratch.

Learning and Unlearning To support task force members’ own learning and unlearning, we invited scholars, Elders, Traditional Knowledge Keepers, and subject-matter experts to present on topics that members had identified. These presentations covered topics such as Ryerson’s life and legacy, statues and other forms of public art, the history of colonization, the naming of public spaces, Indigenous

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knowledges and experiences, the residential schools and the TRC, segregated and separate schooling in Ontario, and the uses of commemoration. The research team also discussed the results of their historical research and their findings about similar initiatives undertaken at other universities in Canada, the United States, and Europe. All of these sessions were critical to ensuring that members were working with a common and shared understanding of key themes and issues. This approach provided opportunities for us to explore various perspectives on both commemorations in general and the commemoration of Ryerson specifically. Task force members posed questions, shared their own knowledge and perspectives, and considered how these discussions could inform the eventual development of recommendations.

Making Recommendations The task force did not start to discuss recommendations until we had received and reviewed all the research reports and the results of the community engagement. The resulting 22 recommendations reflect our learning, the voices of our community members, and our university’s core commitments to being unapologetically bold, intentionally diverse and inclusive, dedicated to excellence, respectfully collaborative, and a champion of sustainability. Our recommendations were also informed by contemporary events and overdue reckonings that highlighted racial injustice and the genocide of Indigenous Peoples. The goal throughout our process was consensus among all members. This approach was informed by an Indigenous understanding of consensus-building and a commitment to a reflective and respectful process that created an opportunity for every task force member to listen and share their perspectives. Our recommendations were future-oriented and reflected the kind of ancestors we wish to become. While the historical research and community engagement provided a detailed picture of the past and present commemoration of Egerton Ryerson, our recommendations were not based on either vilification or vindication of the man himself. Instead, as we developed recommendations for the future of the university, we concluded that older forms of commemoration no longer aligned with our commitment to inclusion and reconciliation. Our recommendations were shaped primarily by our shared understanding of the ongoing harm experienced by our community members. Each of our recommendations purposefully addressed what we understood to be Ryerson’s ongoing impact and the scope of the university’s commemoration of him. Our overarching goal was to create a more inclusive campus culture and environment. The task force recommended that the university adopt five principles to guide decisions on commemoration: Transparency: Decision-making processes related to commemoration are clear, accessible, and communicated to the community.

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Respectful collaboration: Decisions about commemoration are informed by intentional community engagement and relationship-building. Purposeful representation: Commemoration across the university reflects the diversity of the campus and decisions are made in an equitable way that promotes inclusion. Truth and Reconciliation: Decisions about commemoration uphold commitments made by the university in response to documents such as the report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, Bill C-15, and the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Humility and continuous learning: With a commitment to ongoing learning and dialogue, the university reviews decisions about commemoration and takes responsibility and corrective actions that reflect new understandings of truth and impact. Regarding the commemoration of Ryerson through the university’s name, the task force found that while the university had benefited for over 70 years from the credibility his name provided, ‘Ryerson University’Ryerson University no longer reflected the university’s values and our community’s aspirations. We also understood that renaming could serve as an important action to advance reconciliation efforts. Accordingly, we recommended that the university be renamed through a process that engaged with community members and other stakeholders. We likewise recommended that other areas of commemoration of Ryerson be rethought, including the name and figure of the university’s mascot, a ram (originally chosen on account of Egerton Ryerson’s zodiac sign, Aries) who was called ‘Eggy’, an abbreviation of Egerton. We also recommended that the university not reinstall or replace the statue of Ryerson, and instead initiate an open call for proposals for the rehoming of the remaining pieces to promote educational initiatives. We recognized that a name-change alone would not erase the systemic barriers and inequities that Indigenous and Black community members face within the university. The university also needed to actively address Ryerson’s legacy through meaningful financial, educational, and cultural initiatives that uphold our institutional values. Other recommendations therefore focused on our responsibility to address colonial legacies and recognize that the community continues to be impacted by the actions of Ryerson and other colonial figures. The task force identified tangible ways in which the university could both promote an understanding of truth and participate in the process of reconciliation with Indigenous Peoples by increasing access to information, promoting Indigenous and Black scholarship, and using public space for community-building. Recognizing the university’s responsibility to educate and promote discussion, the task force recommended that the university develop a plan to ensure all academic programs contain mandatory learning opportunities about Indigenous history and Indigenous and colonial relations and that university

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employees be required to complete training about Indigenous and colonial relations and the residential schools. Finally, to maintain momentum and build trust in the community, we recommended that the university develop an action plan within five months to address all of the task force’s recommendations, provide sufficient financial and administrative resources to enable full implementation, and provide annual updates about the implementation.

Report The task force’s approach and values were intentionally reinforced in the structure and design of our final report. It was written to be highly readable and accessible and the look and feel were unique among university reports. The design and layout were created by Mariah Meawasige, a local Indigenous graphic artist, who blended elements of the past and present, such as the university’s colours (blue and gold) with a repeated stylized feather motif that symbolized the bravery and truths that were shared and honoured throughout the task force’s work. The report included a summary of the research findings and contextualized our recommendations. It also emphasized the value of the university’s history through a timeline of key events since the creation of the Ryerson Institute of Technology in 1948. In August 2021, the task force presented its recommendations to the university president, who recommended them to the Board of Governors. The Board approved their full implementation.

Renaming The university president quickly established the University Renaming Advisory Committee (renaming committee), which was mandated to conduct extensive community consultations and present a shortlist of possible names to the president in the spring of 2022. The renaming process was structured around many of the same values and approaches that the task force had successfully employed. By embracing learnings from the task force, university leaders confirmed their commitment to building and strengthening relationships with historically excluded and underserved communities. For example, the renaming committee employed a similar community engagement process to the task force, which resulted in input from over 30,000 people and more than 2300 unique name suggestions, all of which were shared in aggregated and anonymized form with renaming committee members. Respondents indicated a very strong preference for a new name that would reflect the university’s location, mission, and values. There was very little support for a name that would commemorate another notable person. Drawing on the direction provided through the survey, an external naming firm chosen by the university generated an additional 350 names for consideration.

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Renaming committee members did not consider popularity or personal preferences among names. Rather, they focused on the potential for a name to serve the university well over time. Like the task force, renaming committee members intentionally adopted a model of perspective-sharing and understanding that encouraged everyone to listen, learn and unlearn, and explore the strengths and gaps associated with various names. Drawing on the results of the community engagement survey and support from external professionals, the committee developed nine naming parameters to guide their discussions, including a name’s congruence with the university’s strategic vision, its distinctiveness and appropriateness within the higher education sector, and the potential for a name to promote pride and inclusivity among community members. The resulting shortlist was strategic, rational, and well-informed. In April 2022, the shortlist was presented to the university president, who selected a new name to recommend for approval. Following approval by the Board of Governors, the university announced its new name: Toronto Metropolitan University. This name reflects the energy and innovation of our community and the university’s location in the heart of Canada’s largest and most diverse city.

Moving Forward, Guided by Our Values and Principles The implementation of the task force’s other recommendations continues under the banner of our ‘Next Chapter.’ An action plan was presented in January 2022 and the community is regularly updated on the implementation of all the task force’s recommendations through a website and announcements. Following extensive community engagement, the university announced a new sports team name (TMU Bold) and mascot (falcon) in fall 2022. At the time of writing, new processes and policies on naming and commemoration are nearing completion, the university is exploring the feasibility of academic units for Indigenous Studies and Black Studies, and new scholarships and postdoctoral  fellowships have been launched  to support and recognize Black and Indigenous students and researchers. New public art has been unveiled  and public spaces are also being planned. Wherever possible, the implementation of task force recommendations is being embedded in pre-existing processes and structures across the university, and the Next Chapter framework explicitly recognizes and builds on longer-standing work to dismantle anti-Black racism and advance reconciliation on campus. The Next Chapter is now woven into the fabric of the university. For as long as the university was named after Egerton Ryerson, our narrative was centred on his legacy. Once our namesake was increasingly recognized as a symbol of colonialism, our institution was connected to racially segregated education, the genocide of Indigenous Peoples, and cultural erasure. With a new name and other actions underway, the university is boldly moving forward, guided by our values and principles of commemoration. We now have

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the opportunity to acknowledge and represent historical and present movements of Indigenous and Black resistance, as well as the resilience, excellence, achievements, and contributions of each and every community member.

References Argyle Communications Inc. (2021). Standing strong task force Appendix B: What we learned. https://www.torontomu.ca/content/dam/next-­chapter/Report/ Appendix-­B-­What-­we-­learned-­Aug-­17.pdf Henry, N. (2019). Anti-Black racism in Ontario schools: A historical perspective. Turner Consulting Group Research Policy Brief, 1, 2–5. McLaren, K. (2004). ‘We had no desire to be set apart’: Forced Segregation of Black students in Canada West public schools and myths of British egalitarianism. Social History/Histoire Sociale, 37(73), 28–50. Neff, C. (1994–1995). The Ontario Industrial Schools Act of 1874. Canadian Journal of Family Law, 12(1), 171–208. O’Neil Green, D., & Dallaire, J. (2018). Truth and reconciliation at Ryerson University: Building a new foundation for generations to come—Community consultation summary report. Ryerson University. https://www.torontomu.ca/content/dam/ aboriginal-­news/aboriginal-­report-­web.pdf Peace, T. (2019). Searching for order in a settlers’ world: Wendat and Mississauga schooling, politics, and networks at the beginning of the nineteenth century. In E.  Mancke, J.  Bannister, D.  B. McKim, & S.  W. See (Eds.), Violence, order, and unrest : A history of British North America, 1749–1876 (pp. 183–213). University of Toronto Press. Ryerson, E. (1847). Report of Dr. Ryerson on Industrial Schools, 26 May 1847. In Statistics Respecting Indian Schools. Government Printing Bureau (1898). Ryerson, E. (1883). The story of my life: Being reminiscences of sixty years’ public service in Canada (J. George Hodgins, Ed.). William Briggs. Scott, S. (2021, June 1). 215 innocent children. National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation. https://nctr.ca/215-­innocent-­children/ Standing Strong Task Force. (2021). Standing strong task force report & recommendations: Acknowledging the past, learning from the present, looking to the future. https:// www.torontomu.ca/content/dam/next-­c hapter/Report/SSTF-­r eport-­a nd-­ recommendations-­Aug_24_FINAL.pdf Starr, T. D., Dirie, A., Robertson, W., Driscoll, H., & Ellis, C. (2021). Standing strong task force Appendix D: Life and legacy of Egerton Ryerson. https://www.torontomu. ca/content/dam/next-­chapter/Report/Appendix-­D_Life-­and-­legacy_Aug-­26.pdf Trouillot, M.-R. (with Carby, H. V.). (1995/2015). Silencing the past: Power and the production of history. Beacon Press. (Original work published 1995) Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada. (2015a). Honouring the truth, reconciling for the future: Summary of the final report of the truth and reconciliation commission of Canada. https://ehprnh2mwo3.exactdn.com/wp-­content/ uploads/2021/01/Executive_Summary_English_Web.pdf Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada. (2015b). Truth and reconciliation commission of Canada: Calls to action. https://ehprnh2mwo3.exactdn.com/wp-­ content/uploads/2021/01/Calls_to_Action_English2.pdf

CHAPTER 29

The ‘Crowther Reinterpreted’ Project Bronwyn Carlson, Terri Farrelly, Judith Abell, and Jane Castle

*Please note—palawa (Tasmanian Aboriginal) terms from lutruwita (Tasmania) are from the palawa language known as ‘palawa kani’, which does not use capital letters.

Introduction In the city of nipaluna (Hobart), lutruwita (Tasmania), a bronze statue of William Crowther, known as a surgeon, naturalist and parliamentarian, has recently been the subject of what has been known as the ‘Crowther Reinterpreted’ project, led by the City of Hobart. Below the statue, a plinth states: ERECTED BY A GRATEFUL PUBLIC, AND SINCERE PERSONAL FRIENDS, TO PERPETUATE THE MEMORY OF LONG AND ZEALOUS POLITICAL AND PROFESSIONAL SERVICES RENDERED IN THIS COLONY BY WILLIAM LODEWYK CROWTHER,

B. Carlson • T. Farrelly (*) Department of Indigenous Studies, Macquarie University, Macquarie Park, NSW, Australia e-mail: [email protected] J. Abell • J. Castle Hobart City Council, Hobart, TAS, Australia © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 B. Carlson, T. Farrelly (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook on Rethinking Colonial Commemorations, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-28609-4_29

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F.R.C.S. ENGLAND. SOMETIME PREMIER OF TASMANIA. BORN 15TH APRIL 1817. DIED 12TH APRIL 1885.

According to the Australian Dictionary of Biography (ADB) (1969), William Lodewyk Crowther (1817-1885) was born at Haarlem, Holland, and came to Hobart Town when his father, Dr. William Crowther, brought the family over in 1825. Crowther apprenticed to his father and became a partner as a “surgeon apothecary and accoucheur” (ADB, 1969, para. 2). As a youth he developed a strong interest in trapping birds and animals and collecting skins and live specimens, and in 1839, on a return trip to England, he sold his whole collection which included a pair of Tasmanian devils and 493 skins, which funded a year of postgraduate study in Paris. Whilst in Europe, he married his cousin Sarah and returned to Hobart Town in 1842 and took over his father’s practice, where he became known for his surgical skills particularly in treating bladder stones. However, the ADB (1969, para. 3) records that: In 1860 he was appointed one of the four honorary medical officers at the Hobart General Hospital, but was suspended in March 1869 over charges of mutilating the body of William Lanney, the last male Tasmanian Aboriginal. An inquiry showed that two mutilations had taken place, the first at the Colonial Hospital, the other at the cemetery the night of the burial. Drs Crowther and G. Stokell, resident medical officer at the hospital, were suspected of the first, the Royal Society of Tasmania of the second. A petition with forty-eight pages of closely packed signatures was sent to Governor (Sir) Charles Du Cane seeking annulment of Crowther’s suspension, without success.

The following account of William Lanne (aka Lanney) has been compiled by City of Hobart’s Community Development Officer for Aboriginal Projects, Nunami Sculthorpe-Green (in City of Hobart, 2021 paras. 60-63): William Lanne (aka Lanney) was born around 1835. Lanne’s family were thought to be the last Aboriginal family still living traditionally on the mainland of Tasmania. They were removed and sent to Wybalenna in 1842. In 1847, along with the other survivors of Wybalenna, Lanne was sent to putalina (Oyster Cove) and then to the Orphan School in Hobart from 1847-1851. He was described as joyful and as having a love for the sea and the outdoors. While at Oyster Cove he started working on whaling ships—the Aladdin and the Runnymede. He was well known in the whaling community, especially for his great vision, and was said to have the ‘best eyes in the straits’. He remained close to his people and would often return to visit putalina. In 1864 he made official complaints to the colony about the treatment and conditions of the Aboriginal people still living at the Oyster Cove station. He became known as King Billy and it is for him that the native plant the ‘King Billy Pine’ is named. He died at the Dog and Partridge hotel (corner of Barrack

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and Goulburn streets in Hobart) on the 3 March 1869 at the age of 34 from a mix of cholera and dysentery. His funeral was held at St David’s Church. It is after his death that he was linked to William Crowther who became notorious for his acts in desecrating Lanne’s body in the stealing of his skull. The Tasmanian Aboriginal community fought a long battle to have his skull returned and buried properly. This happened in 1991, over 120 years after Lanne’s death.

Lanne is also known for being in a relationship with Truganini, a nuenonne woman from lunawanna-allonah (now known as Bruny Island). Truganini herself was to become the last survivor of those originally sent to Wybalenna, creating the commonly held myth that she was the ‘last Aboriginal Tasmanian’ (Bravo, 2012). But of course, Truganini and William were not the last palawa (Tasmanian Aboriginal people). Despite systematic, government-sanctioned attempts at genocide by settlers in lutruwita in what is known today as the ‘Black Wars’, palawa have managed to not only survive, but thrive. But thriving has required many battles, and this chapter presents the story of just one—the battle to have the dark side of Crowther’s legacy acknowledged, and to remove the colonial commemoration from Franklin Square that honours him. This story is told through an interview conducted by co-editors of this collection, Bronwyn Carlson and Terri Farrelly, with Crowther Reinterpreted project team members Judith Abell (Public Art Coordinator - Strategic) and Jane Castle (Program Lead, Creative City).

How Long Has There Been Protest Against Statue, and Who Has Been Involved in the Push to Address It?

the Crowther

The Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre speak about the fight to remove the statue having gone on for forty years. We don’t know if this is correct, but prior to the Crowther Reinterpretation Project, there has been little visual/physical change to the statue (as a comment on the need for its removal). A few years back there were a lot of Facebook proposals circulating for its removal/destruction. But we came to the current Crowther Reinterpreted project approach through several different points of engagement with the palawa community through a previous public art project (2016-2018: Two Islands by Nigel Helyer working with Tony Brown and Greg Lehman) and the development of our Aboriginal Commitment and Action Plan1 (the ACAP, endorsed by Council December 2019, published start of 2020). In each of these periods of engagement, there were many members of the palawa community expressing the pain of the existence of the statue and their desire for it to be removed.

1  See, https://www.hobartcity.com.au/files/assets/public/council/strategies-and-plans/ aboriginal-commitment-and-action-plan-2020-22.pdf

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As a result of this work, a clear action was included in the ACAP under the Visibility and Truth Telling action: Undertake an interpretation project to tell the layered story of Crowther in Franklin Square, in collaboration with Aboriginal people (2019, p. 14 ).

How Did You Arrive at the Decision to Conduct an Interpretation Project? Based on the above engagement, resulting ACAP and action, we had discussions with a number of palawa people (who had been key within the above projects) to debate how we go ahead. It was proposed amongst this small group that, given we had a very clear direction to act (from the engagement described above) and that this was an asset we looked after, we should go ahead and craft a project. Within the same discussions it was proposed that there be several temporary works on or near the statue, allowing for multiple voices to make comment through art, to raise the level of knowledge and understanding of Lanne’s story as it relates to the actions of Crowther. It was also agreed that we would then allow the public response to this process (over time), to define the next, permanent steps for the work. But there was always a commitment to finding a permanent response to the statue as a second stage. It was decided that the Crowther Reinterpreted project consist of a series of four temporary public art commissions by local arts practitioners, at least two of which should be palawa. The artists were asked to respond to the Crowther statue to promote community discussion. Each of the artists were awarded $5000 for the delivery of their temporary artworks and given two months on display.

How Did You Determine Who You Should Consult With, and How? As above, the engagement was broad, as it came through other projects, but the need for something to be done about the statue was one clear and consistent message from a variety of groups. The ACAP, in particular, was a very broad and detailed engagement process taking months and months, with many one-on-one interviews. Throughout the whole project, we have continued to engage in a variety of ways, including: • With members of the public through online survey • Informally via one of the artworks resulting from the project, a film by artist Jillian Mundy, which involved her speaking to approximately 100 people in Franklin Square across a period of about a month (while another one of the artworks, that by artist Julie Gough, was in place)

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• With stakeholders, both external to the City of Hobart, and employees overseeing aspects of the project, such as parks, planning, heritage, through one-on-one conversations • With the artists themselves as they developed their work • Formally, at the completion of the first stage of the project, with 21 palawa organisations and several palawa individuals; seven historical/heritage groups associations; five relevant government organisations; and three known Crowther descendants.

How Did You Choose the Artists and Their Installations? We advertised broadly, with a commitment that at least two of the four artists/ artist teams would be palawa people. Our selection panel included members from the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery (First Nations collections), Aboriginal Heritage Tasmania, City of Hobart’s Officer for Aboriginal Programs, Contemporary Art Tasmania and the City of Hobart’s Arts and Culture team.

Tell Us About the First Work—Truth Telling by palawa Visual Artist Allan Mansell—Which Was on Display from April to June 2021 (see Image 29.1) Allan Mansell’s work Truth Telling temporarily transforms Crowther into a memorial for William Lanne, with a new plaque memorialising “our King Billy, replacing a man who was in truth a criminal with a man that was in truth a leader”. The work included an explanation of Crowther’s treatment of Lanne’s body. In addition to removing Lanne’s head and sending the skull to the Royal College of Surgeons in London, it is speculated that Lanne’s hands and feet were also cut off, and the remainder of his skeleton removed. Acknowledging this, Allan coated the head of Crowther’s statue in red flexible vinyl printed with an image of Lanne’s face, and coated the hands in a rubberised red paint. He gave the statue an Aboriginal flag to hold in one hand, and a surgical saw in the other. At the feet of the statue is a bone. Allan explained the artwork as follows: The representation of the red hands and red head is the decapitation of head and hands. The flag represents the strength of the Aboriginal people of Lutruwita. The bone represents Coorinna (the Tasmanian Tiger), again abused and driven out by the colonists. It calls the tiger to come collect the bone, take it away, bury it…Come and collect your statue! Whoever! (City of Hobart, 2021)

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Image 29.1  Allan Mansell, Truth Telling, 2021. Mixed media installation at the William Crowther statue, Franklin Square, nipaluna (Hobart), lutruwita (Tasmania). Courtesy of City of Hobart and the artist. Photograph: Andrew Wilson

Allan’s was perhaps the most visceral of all of the works and invoked a strong response. We had the most survey responses while this work was up. For example, one respondent to the online survey we conducted stated: This temporary artwork is confronting in its bluntness and yet subtle in its execution and has already provoked terrific responses amongst the community. The fact that we are even having these open community conversations is an important first step in the healing process to a more equitable and humane society.

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We also received an email from palawa woman Michelle Maynard (in City of Hobart, 2022a, pp. 14-15), who stated: It’s hard to live in a city where genocide has been committed and to walk on this country everyday feeling like it’s all forgotten. Standing in front of Allan’s work filled me with mixed emotions. I felt so proud and glad that Allan was having an opportunity to speak truth through this work and be heard. For a moment I felt relief because it wasn’t just Allan being heard, it was all of us. Finally spoken, out in the open, devastating truth that resided heavy and heartbroken in my own heart. To have someone say, ‘hey we want to support you to tell your story…to express your thoughts and feelings about atrocities that have wounded your people’, it says we value you and your story, it says you and your history and your story are important. It’s a powerful thing, a kind of holding of aboriginal people to speak our truth. An important acknowledgement on so many levels. An act that allows healing. There needs to be much more of this.

The Second Work—The Lanney Pillar—Was a Collaboration by Filmmaker Roger Scholes and Trawulwuy Writer and Curator Greg Lehman, and Was on display from June to August 2021 (see Image 29.2) For this work, the artists created a three-metre high temporary, free-standing mixed and multimedia sculpture and placed it alongside the Crowther statue and presented a series of stacked wooden blocks showing archival images, historical artefacts, film stills and text, including the phrase ‘Lanney tells all— William Crowther stole my head’. The work particularly aims to present a portrait of Lanne’s life before Crowther through film footage and archival material set to a musical soundscape. Scholes and Lehman highlight the extraordinary life of William Lanne, who in 1867 sailed to England to meet Queen Victoria, and later in Hobart met the Duke of Edinburgh and advocated for his people. He was much respected, and the people of Hobart Town lined the streets for his funeral. A longer film created by the artists, titled The whaler’s tale, could be accessed by scanning a code on the installation’s base. This work, less blunt in its approach, was picked up and slightly redesigned for use in a number of State Library installations, accompanied by public lectures. The State Library/Archives has a very extensive collection of artefacts donated from the Crowther family and saw this project as a way to start conversations around the collection.

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Image 29.2  Roger Scholes and Greg Lehman, The Lanney Pillar, 2021. Mixed media installation at the William Crowther statue, Franklin Square, nipaluna (Hobart), lutruwita (Tasmania). Courtesy of City of Hobart and the artist. Photograph: Andrew Wilson

The Third Work—BREATHING SPACE by trawlwoolway Artist Julie Gough—Was on Display from September to October 2021 (see Image 29.3) The least overtly political of all of the works, many members of the public speak of this as the one that perhaps had the most impact while there, and also once removed again. Julie encased the entire statue in a wooden crate-like structure, removing it from view and thereby disrupting the Crowther statue, taking it away from the park temporarily and effecting some relief for those who find its presence distressing.

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Image 29.3  Julie Gough, BREATHING SPACE, 2021. Construction by Stuart Houghton. Timber, poster (digital file) installation at the William Crowther statue, Franklin Square, nipaluna (Hobart), lutruwita (Tasmania). Courtesy of City of Hobart and the artist. Photograph: Andrew Wilson

The Final Work—Something Missing by palawa Artist Jillian Mundy—Was on Display from Mid-November 2021 to Mid-January 2022 (see Image 29.4) Mundy’s work, a film made in collaboration with Troy Melville, was an informal extension of the project’s engagement process. While Gough’s BREATHING SPACE work was in place, Mundy, who is also a journalist, interviewed around 100 passers-by about their thoughts on the statue of Crowther, beginning with the question, “Do you know who is in the box?”

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Image 29.4  Jillian Mundy, Something Missing, 2021. Film, viewing enclosure made from repurposed materials, television screen, blackboard paint and chalk installation at the William Crowther statue, Franklin Square, nipaluna (Hobart), lutruwita (Tasmania). Courtesy of City of Hobart and the artist. Photograph: Andrew Wilson

There were a few surprises in this. So many of the people interviewed, despite reportedly passing by the statue on a regular basis, didn’t know anything about Crowther, and couldn’t identify who or what was in the box. Many, once they were aware of his actions, did not believe we should celebrate him via a statue, or felt the full story should be told publicly. Only a few said that nothing should happen and the statue should be left as is. It was possible to see the shift in interviewees throughout the film, from clear ambivalence to emotional response, the more they knew of the story. The film was presented in an enclosure made from repurposed materials constructed with the assistance of the Karadi Men’s Shed.

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How Did You Go About Consulting with Members of the Public? This was conducted using an online survey via the Yoursay platform, and an online forum, all over a 10-month period. The survey, which had 186 respondents, was more successful than the forum which had 31 participants and tended to be a place where a number of people came back repeatedly to criticise the whole project. Unfortunately, due to the nature of their criticism, this was not a safe place for comment from the palawa community or others with varied views. The survey provided a better sense of the spread of views. There were over 2500 visits to the Yoursay website in total. There was also considerable national media attention for the project, including print and online media in the Guardian, and radio and television on NITV.

For Those Who Are Against the Crowther Statue Being Kept on Display in Franklin Square, What Were They Wanting Done About It? Overall, the majority of respondents wanted either removal or reinterpretation of the Crowther statue, or both. The suggestions included: • partial removal onsite (a common suggestion was that just the head be removed) • removal • removal and destruction • removal and relocation • reinterpretation From our discussions with external stakeholders consulted with for the project, there was a unanimous desire for truth-telling on the Franklin Square site and for there to be enough information, on the site, for people to make up their own mind about the events before, of and since 1869. The temporary art projects were viewed as a good start to the process, already ‘making history’ by provoking discussion and increasing the level of knowledge around these events in the wider population. A substantial number of those that we met with expressed a desire for removal of the statue, although some wished for it to stay, either as a representation of the ideas of the time (its historic significance) or to remain as a provocation for change for the broader population—like a ‘stone in the shoe’. Few wished for the Franklin Square site to be a place for the memorialisation of Lanne, given the lack of relevance of this site to him and his lack of consent in being part of this chapter of history. The Royal Society of Tasmania made a formal apology to Tasmanian Aboriginal people in 2021 for the Society’s past actions, which it acknowledges has caused great harm that is still felt by today’s Tasmanian Aboriginal

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community. They supported the removal of the statue and the provision on the site of further interpretation. The Professional Historians Association (Victoria and Tasmania) (in City of Hobart, 2022b, appendix 7) supported the reinterpretation of the Crowther statue to be led by palawa voices, stating: PHA (Vic & Tas) strongly believe that the reinterpretation of the statue, whether that be through its removal, replacement or alteration, should be led by palawa voices. Throughout Australia white elites have used statues in an attempt to re-­ image an Aboriginal landscape as European. Being led by palawa voices would allow for a redress in the way that history, which has glorified white male power and privilege, has been told and memorialised in the past.

For Those Who Want to Keep the Crowther Statue on Display in Franklin Square, What Were Their Arguments for Leaving It Alone? The arguments for keeping the statue were predictable and are the same used for most colonial commemorations. They included: • That you can’t change history. • That the past is in the past. • That this is just another divisive project. • That Crowther was just acting in the interests of medical science. • That it is representative of “cancel culture” or “virtue signalling” or “woke, leftist agendas”. • That if you take down one statue, that all of the statues will be taken down. • That, apart from this act, Crowther did good things/was a good man. For example, one respondent stated: Leave it unchanged. I don’t think it is possible to legitimately interpret past events through contemporary perspective. Crowther was following a well-worn path of previous scientists who did what we now see as horrible acts, but many of which made them better informed and advanced knowledge in their field.

The Hobart Town (1804) First Settlers Association (in City of Hobart, 2022b, appendix 8), for example, stated they wanted the statue to remain in place: The removal of the statue does not change past events and attitudes and could be seen as removing evidence of past deeds both successful and tragic all of which played a part in the development of Tasmania as we know it. Some of our members are direct descendants of the original settlers who landed on the waterfront on February 20, 1804, with Lieutenant David Collins. There are also direct descendants of William Crowther alive today. We acknowledge that actions and attitudes of the nineteenth century are not acceptable in the

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twenty-first century. Removing the statue would be denying the facts and not contributing to present and future generations understanding what had taken place.

Human bodies were important for nineteenth-century medical students, and an extensive trade in dead bodies existed. William Crowther, a scientist and doctor, would have had seen the mutilation of William Lanne’s body as adding to the world’s knowledge of Aboriginal people. The fact that there was a backlash at the time resulting in Crowther’s resignation from the hospital is an important part of the story. His reputation recovered, however, and that would not happen in today’s environment.

How Did You Decide What the Proposed Permanent Outcome Should Be for the Crowther Statue? We drew on a range of perspectives and used the following tools to establish the best way to move forward: . The artists’ works themselves 1 2. The survey results 3. A series of in-depth conversations with direct stakeholders for the project at the culmination of the last work 4. Formal engagement with relevant stakeholders, internal and external to Council, requesting written submissions (via online survey, email or letter) 5. Assessment of the legislative framework for removal or reinterpretation onsite (relating to planning and heritage).

What Was the Proposed Permanent Outcome for the Crowther Statue? The proposed outcome was a two-step process consisting of: Step one: Removal of the bronze statue to a collection. This is still in negotiation, but the bronze statue would reside in the City’s valuables collection until a permanent home is found; plinth to be retained onsite; temporary signage to be installed on the site. Step two: Commissioning of permanent, interpretive elements for the site, of significant scale, to sit beside the empty plinth.

The reasons given for why the City of Hobart should accept the proposal were as follows:

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• Showing leadership—this is an opportunity to demonstrate leadership and confront the difficult history of an asset owned by Council, and set an example for the other Australian cities keenly observing the progress of the project to gain insight into how they might deal with their own difficult historic monuments. • Visibility and truth-telling—the City has made a clear commitment to visibility and truth-telling, and this requires physical changes to public spaces to tell these difficult stories where they can be seen by all. • Historical validity—considering the statue of Crowther raises questions regarding the significance and relevance of Crowther to contemporary Hobart • Connection to current values of the City of Hobart—is Crowther’s presence right for our city now and into the future? • Equitable representation—within the one formal, civic park in Hobart stand three statues, all of Caucasian males. • Cultural safety—the City has many processes in place to ensure physical safety of its residents, but there are few to ensure cultural safety. The palawa community have made it clear that the continued presence of the Crowther statue in Franklin Square is a culturally unsafe element. • The life of an asset—this project raises the question of just how long any one monument should stay in place (City of Hobart, 2022a, p. 19)

Was the Proposal Accepted? Yes! We achieved approval in August 2022 through City of Hobart Council for the removal of the bronze component of the Crowther statue to the City’s Valuables Collection, pending further negotiations with local collecting institutions, for a permanent location for this element. However, this partial removal is subject to receipt of planning approval by the Council and is to be paired with the instatement of temporary signage explaining the project on the Franklin Square site. We now have to develop a detailed proposal, in consultation with relevant stakeholders, for commissioning new, permanent, interpretive and/or sculptural elements to be installed beside the Crowther plinth. This will form the basis of a future report to City of Hobart Council. Following the completion of the Crowther Reinterpreted project, City of Hobart Council support the development of a Monuments Policy to inform future additions or removals to the City’s collection.

What Have Been the Strengths of the Crowther Reinterpreted Project? Two main strengths come to mind:

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1. Allowing the project to evolve through ongoing conversation with many different parties with some stake in this statue (or its removal). 2. Working with temporary art works as a way to engage the public in thinking about this statue differently or building their awareness, without the need to respond to an immediate decision to keep or remove it.

What Have Been the Challenges of the Crowther Reinterpreted Project? Working with art as a way to engage the public in thinking about this statue differently or building their awareness—this is a strength and a challenge, as art may have been the only way to break open this topic for conversation, but it did make the artists more vulnerable throughout the process. Also, the process of the project itself, from beginning to end, had many moments of re-traumatisation of members of the Aboriginal community, not to mention being subjected to blatant racism and hatred from some members of the broader community.

Is There Anything You Wish You Had Done Differently? While we’re not sure we could have done it differently, we wish the artists had been allocated more money to work with on the commissions. The budget was approved post-COVID and was more meagre than a usual budget as a result. We also wish it hadn’t been such a difficult/painful process for the artists and for the members of the Tasmanian Aboriginal community. And perhaps we could have commissioned a more detailed piece of research to discover more of the Crowther relatives. We did research this component of the project and thought we were in contact with all of the living relatives, but this was incorrect. However, one more positive outcome has been a developing relationship between some of Crowther’s descendants and the Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre.

What Are the Lessons Learnt, that You would Want to Pass On to Another Community? A local authority encouraging a difficult conversation is a rare thing, and we’ve received appreciative feedback around this. Beyond anything to do with the decision about the statue, just seeing a tiny (and as yet unformed or unresolved) beginning of a healing relationship between members of the Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre and a direct descendant of Crowther has been worth the work. At the beginning of this process, we didn’t think removal would be an option. It’s not that we didn’t think it should be done—we had heard and were acting on the basis of the Aboriginal engagement we had done prior—but that we thought it might be impossible within the strictures/structures we operate.

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We also didn’t have a good sense of what the broad public opinion was. Often when we went to talk about Crowther, non-Aboriginal people had little or no knowledge about him or his story. But as we worked through each of the artworks, it became more and more clear that this was the option that was widely desired and was the right thing to do at this point in time. So, it was a project that genuinely evolved throughout its life, and the public art component played a critical part in its evolution.

References Australian Dictionary of Biography. (1969). W.E.L.H. Crowther, ‘Crowther, William Lodewyk (1817-1885)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/ crowther-­william-­lodewyk-­3297 Bravo, K.  E. (2012). Black Female ‘Things’ in International Law: A Meditation on Saartjie Baartman and Truganini. Black Women and International Law: New Theory, Old Praxis (Jeremy Levitt, ed., Cambridge University Press)(2013), Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law Research Paper, (2012-25). City of Hobart. (2021). Crowther Reinterpretation project. City of Hobart, https:// www.hobartcity.com.au/Community/Creative-­H obart/Creative-­H obart-­ projects/Crowther-­Reinterpreted City of Hobart. (2022a). Agenda Community, Culture and Events Committee Meeting: Open Portion, Thursday, 4 August 2022 at 5.30pm Council Chamber, Town Hall. City of Hobart. City of Hobart. (2022b). Community Engagement Summary Report: Crowther Reinterpreted. City of Hobart.

CHAPTER 30

You Can Handle the Truth: Aboriginal Peoples, Colonial Commemorations and the Unfinished Business of Truth-Telling Bronwyn Carlson and Terri Farrelly

Introduction In 2021, while working on our book Monumental Disruptions: Aboriginal People and Colonial Commemorations in So-Called Australia (Carlson & Farrelly, 2023), we became aware of the ‘Crowther Reinterpreted’ project, conducted by Hobart City Council in nipaluna (Hobart), lutruwita (Tasmania). The project is discussed in detail in the previous chapter and consisted of a truth-telling process through public art installations and community consultation to inform a permanent response to a statue of William Crowther (1817–1885) that stood in nipaluna’s Franklin Square. Crowther has been celebrated amongst the settler community as a surgeon, naturalist and parliamentarian, however amongst the Aboriginal community, particularly the palawa (Tasmanian Aboriginal) community, as well as those who were aware of the darker side of his legacy, the commemoration is a source of pain and discomfort. Shortly after being appointed as an honorary medical officer at Hobart General Hospital in March 1869, Crowther was suspended over charges of stealing the body of palawa activist William Lanne. Crowther had removed Lanne’s head and sent it to the Royal College of Surgeons in London, also

B. Carlson • T. Farrelly (*) Department of Indigenous Studies, Macquarie University, Macquarie Park, NSW Australia e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 B. Carlson, T. Farrelly (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook on Rethinking Colonial Commemorations, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-28609-4_30

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removed their hands and feet, and then gave what was left to colleagues who removed the remainder of the skeleton (City of Hobart, 2021). Informed by the feedback collected during the process of community engagement and stakeholder consultation, the Crowther Reinterpreted project team formulated a proposal for a permanent response to the Crowther statue. In August 2022, this proposal gained a majority vote of acceptance by Hobart City Council. The bronze statue figure is to be removed (subject to planning approval) to the City’s Valuables Collection until a suitable permanent location is decided. The plinth, however, is to remain, and further consultation with stakeholders is to inform a proposal for the commissioning of new, permanent interpretative and/or sculptural elements to be added to the site (City of Hobart, 2022b). We witnessed the meetings of the Community Culture and Events Committee, and then the Hobart City Councillors, and listened to the thoughts and opinions of members of the palawa community, historians, representatives from various interest groups, community members, and the councillors themselves. In the lead up to these meetings and in the fallout after, we noted the flurry of posts across social media relating to the Crowther commemoration and the decision to finally address it. Among the speeches and posts that were against the statue’s removal, aside from instances of blatant racism, we noticed a familiarity about the arguments. This was because in the course of researching our Monumental Disruptions book, we had discovered these same arguments put forward in every instance we knew of where a problematic colonial commemoration was being challenged—and not just here on this continent colonially referred to as Australia but also across the globe. It seemed apt, therefore, that our contribution to this edited collection on rethinking colonial commemorations should be to address these arguments. And so, as a closing chapter, and in the spirit of truth-telling, we respond to the top ten most common reasons given for why contested colonial commemorations should not be removed.

‘You can’t erase/rewrite history’ We need to preserve our history warts and all.

In August 2017, following protests in the USA against Confederate monuments erected as a means of white supremacist domination over Black communities, the statue of Captain James Cook in Hyde Park, Warrane (Sydney), was spray-painted with the words “no pride in genocide” and “change the date” (in reference to the commemorations publicly endorsed on 26 January known as ‘Australia Day’). Other colonial commemorations across the continent had been similarly targeted as part of the repercussions of an angry and excited debate about the appropriateness of such colonial commemorations in contemporary Australian society, and their future in public spaces. The problem with many of these commemorations is that they are honouring people

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who were directly or indirectly responsible for the mass dispossession and even outright massacre of Aboriginal peoples. They are being held up as heroes, when in fact they are murderers, thieves and slave traders (Carlson & Farrelly, 2023). Wiradjuri journalist Stan Grant called for the Cook statue in Hyde Park to be amended, suggesting a revision to the existing inscription or the inclusion of an additional plaque recognising Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. These simple comments sparked a furore. The then prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, stated that the “editing” of statues and inscriptions was an attempt to deny, rewrite and even obliterate history (cited in McKenna, 2018). The then treasurer, Scott Morrison, stated that Australians “don’t get to choose when or how our story starts…or rewrite what has happened since” (cited in McKenna, 2018, p. 46). What Turnbull and Morrison and countless others fail to understand when they use this argument is that colonial commemorations such as statues of Cook are not themselves history. Instead, they are reminders, permanent markers, a link between the past and the present, a deliberate effort at shaping how we remember the past, and an attempt at influencing how we view the future (Carlson & Farrelly, 2023). If we take ‘history’ as a term to be generally understood as ‘past events’, then, as we have previously argued: Statues are not history—they are about history. And they’re not even very good at doing that. The Hyde Park Cook statue, for example, does not provide any information regarding the purpose or details of his voyage; it simply stated: ‘DISCOVERED THIS TERRITORY 1770’. To erect such a statue is to erase Aboriginal history, because it only presents one side of the story, and an incorrect one at that. (Carlson & Farrelly, 2022, p. 66)

Archaeologist Claire Baxter (2020, para. 2), who has also contributed a chapter in this book, has argued that statues are not history, but instead are archaeology: The value of statues is not in what they tell us about the individual being memorialised, but what they tell us of the society that created the statue, erected it, and perhaps altered, removed or replaced it. These statues are therefore a story of us. Who we venerated and celebrated, what stories we told, and what values we upheld.

To keep a colonial commemoration, such as the Cook Hyde Park statue in its current form without any truth-telling addition, is to normalise the version of history it proffers, while at the same time erasing any alternative versions (Baxter, 2019). Therefore, as the executive director of the American Historical Association James Grossman stated, to remove a statue isn’t to change history, but rather how history is remembered (in Glaude Jr., 2017).

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Removing statues is nothing new—ancient and modern civilisations alike have regularly removed commemorations that no longer reflected their societal values. To want to remove or rectify a colonial commemoration is not trying to erase or rewrite history. It is challenging the myths that these commemorations are attempting to uphold, such as the myth of discovery, and the myth of peaceful settlement.

‘Just get over it and move on’ The statue’s message can’t harm anyone now.

Why is it that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples should have to be the ones to ‘just get over it’? The very same could be said straight back to those who want to save colonial commemorations. This argument is ignorant of the agenda behind colonial commemorations. Cultural historian Chris Healy (1997, p. 4) wrote “it is always difficult to be sure if commemorations, or the many other ways in which we speak of history, are about revealing or disguising”. On this continent, colonial commemorations work to reinforce the erasure of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and assert white occupation and white supremacy. They are tangible icons that aim to fortify the ways “settlers and their descendants sought, through remembrance, to secure their stories of rightful possession” (Attwood, 2009, cited in Nettelbeck & Foster, 2010, p. 53.3). Aboriginal scholar Tony Birch (2020) has spoken out about this agenda for decades and describes colonial commemorations as purposeful attacks on Aboriginal peoples and on country that inhibit the potential for truth-telling through the attempt to create a mythological story of pioneer success. After taking a trip through the western district of Victoria, Birch (2005, p. 186) describes the numerous colonial commemorations he encountered as “‘I was here’ anxieties”, desperately attempting to erase the evidence of thousands of years of Aboriginal occupation to claim some semblance of white permanence from what has been, let’s face it, only a very brief presence. These commemorations are disguises, forms of denial, striving to memorialise settler sites of occupation on Aboriginal Country to give them a significance they are simply not entitled to, persistently working to mark and authenticate white ‘ownership’ (Birch, 2020). They are themselves an act of revisionism —an attempt to whitewash history. They struggle to enforce a fairy tale—of ‘discovery’, courageous explorers, brave pioneers, and colonisation not only without bloodshed but for the Natives’ own good. The threat felt by those who defend colonial commemorations is that this fairy tale these statues and monuments would have us believe is being shattered by truth-telling (Carlson & Farrelly, 2023). The refusal to address them is simply part of the continuum of colonisation. How Aboriginal people were treated back then was disgraceful but it’s in the past— we don’t do that now.

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The ‘just get over it’ argument is also ignorant of the fact that these colonial commemorations have not lost their power to oppress. ‘Australia’ was founded on a belief in white supremacy, and racism and race-based conflict has been a characteristic of Australian society ever since, particularly against Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples: Colonisation had, and continues to have, a devastating impact on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples—massacres and disease; mass dispossession of land; disruption of ties to Country and destruction of traditional lifestyles; violent separation of families and communities; forced rapid cultural change; marginalisation and exclusion from the dominant culture; racism and discrimination restricting access to healthcare, education, housing and employment; disproportionate incarceration; and the forcible removal of children. (Carlson & Farrelly, 2023, p. 38)

Racism is not some relic of the past. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples still have to talk about racism because racism still exists (Grant, 2020). It seems that at any given time, there is at least one story hitting media headlines that relates to racism against Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples—incidents such as deaths in custody, punitive policing, barriers within employment and education systems, cultures that tolerate racism and even use it for profit, and public experiences of verbal abuse and physical assault. At the time of writing, the current story in the media is that of Cassius Turvey, aged 15, who died on 23 October 2022 as a result of injuries received in an alleged attack that occurred while walking after school with friends in the north-­eastern Perth suburb of Middle Swan. The boys who were with Cassius at the time of attack allege they were approached by a group of men in a car who racially abused them and set upon them with weapons including a metal pole (Knowles & Perry, 2022). Turvey sustained serious injuries and was hospitalised. After being released, he was returned to hospital after suffering two strokes and a brain haemorrhage, where he later died. A 21-year-old man was charged with Turvey’s murder; however, the WA Police Commissioner stated: “We are not operating on any principles of racism or motivation at this point” (in Knowles & Perry, 2022, para. 15). Western Australian Premier Mark McGowan called for people to “let the law run its course” (in Knowles & Perry, 2022, para. 16). Noongar human rights lawyer Dr Hannah McGlade summarised the distress and frustration of thousands across Australia with the response of police and government, stating: “They have told Aboriginal people, to be quiet, not to jump to conclusions, that this was some accidental killing. And yet, we all know this would never have happened if he was white” (cited in Knowles & Perry, 2022, para. 22). Prime Minister Anthony Albanese later publicly acknowledged: “This attack, that is clearly racially motivated, just breaks your heart” (in Knowles & Perry, 2022, para. 13). At least 40 rallies were held across Australia in Turvey’s honour, as thousands mourned and demanded justice and change (Ho et al., 2022). However, McGlade has asserted that in her opinion,

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the law will never label what happened to Turvey as a racist attack because “There is no proper response to racial hatred or racist violence in Australia” (in Knowles & Perry, 2022, para. 20). It was 200 years ago, get over it.

Obviously tragedies such as what happened to Cassius Turvey are recent and raw. But even some of the traumatic events of what settlers refer to as ‘early colonisation’ days actually occurred less than 100 years ago. The Coniston Massacre, for example, which resulted in the slaughter of between 50 and 170 Warlpiri, Anmatyerr and Kaytetye adults and children in 1928. Some contend that massacres still occurred as recently as the early 1930s (Barker, 2016). Aboriginal geographer, anthropologist and academic Marcia Langton (2018, cited in Neath & Andrew, 2018, p. 143) has stated: I know in my own case when people say ‘just move on’ you can’t move on unless there’s some acknowledgement and sense of remorse expressed because if you are constantly told ‘it is not important’ you can’t move on. You care basically accused of worrying about nothing, as if Aboriginal lives are not important.

‘You don’t get to decide—it’s owned by the people’ It’s our history!

Who has the right to determine who we honour, what values we promote? Who decides which histories are to be promoted and which are to be denied? (Carlson & Farrelly, 2023). Let us remember, many of these commemorations are on public land—unceded land, and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples are also ‘the people’. Gamilaroi concept artist Travis De Vries has targeted the Hyde Park Cook statue in his work Cook Falling, Tear It Down (2019), depicting a group of Aboriginal activists in the process of pulling it down. De Vries has challenged our society’s acceptance of the permanence of these commemorations in our public spaces (in Stackpool, 2020). He notes that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples are also taxpayers funding the existence, upkeep and protection of these commemorations. In direct response to the 2017 vandalism to the Cook statue in Hyde Park and other colonial commemorations, the then minister for the Environment and Energy, Josh Frydenberg, tasked the Australian Heritage Council (AHC) with determining the adequacy and function of the existing legal protections for such commemorations in the event of damage or loss across all three levels of government (AHC, 2018). The AHC’s response concluded that the existing historic heritage legislation and various government anti-graffiti and criminal legislation were indeed adequate. However, the protection for Indigenous heritage places at state and Commonwealth levels was deemed inadequate. And here lies the hypocrisy. In May 2020, while people were arguing to protect

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statues of a host of ‘assorted bastards’ (Daley, 2017, para. 10), a mining company, Rio Tinto, destroyed a sacred site at Juukan Gorge, in Western Australia, with 46,000 years of Aboriginal history (Birch, 2020). And this incident is one of numerous examples of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander sites of significance failing to be held in anywhere near the same regard as colonial commemorations. Since the early days of colonisation, rock paintings, petroglyphs, stone arrangements and burial sites have been regularly and deliberately damaged, destroyed and disrespected. However, unlike statues, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander sites of significance such as these cannot be replaced. While many welcomed the ‘Crowther Reinterpreted’ project as an opportunity for truth-telling, a submission by the Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre on behalf of the Tasmanian Aboriginal community, expressed their distress at Council choosing the process of asking palawa artists to use the statue of Crowther—a symbol of racism—to encourage truth-telling, rather than simply remove it (in City of Hobart, 2022b). The submission stressed the immorality of the process, prolonging the agony for Aboriginal people having to continue to endure it and what it represents. Another submission from a community member asked why Aboriginal people should have to wait for settlers to dictate what happens to a statue that is an issue of cultural safety—a source of pain and trauma for Aboriginal people every day (in City of Hobart, 2022b). But what did expert historians think? The Royal Society of Tasmania submitted a statement acknowledging the harmful impact the Society’s actions have had on the Tasmanian Aboriginal community, which is still felt today. They noted that the Tasmanian Aboriginal community is deeply offended by the statue, and therefore support its removal (in City of Hobart, 2022b). Likewise, the Professional Historians Association (Victoria and Tasmania) also acknowledged the pain and suffering caused by the statue, and therefore strongly believe that the reinterpretation of the statue, whether that be through its removal, replacement or alteration, should be led by palawa voices. Throughout Australia white elites have used statues in an attempt to re-image an Aboriginal landscape as European. Being led by palawa voices would allow for a redress in the way that history, which has glorified male power and privilege, has been told and memorialised in the past. (cited in City of Hobart, 2022b, appendix 7) ‘But what about the descendants of the person commemorated?’ Often the descendants are in support of removal or at least rectification of some sort. There is a campaign to remove the statue of Sir Edmund Barton (1849-1920) from an Aboriginal burial site in Guruk (Port Macquarie), on the east coast of New South Wales. Barton, who became the first prime minister of the continent now known as Australia, had been a member of the Australian Natives’ Association (ANA). Despite what the name suggests, the Australian Natives Association was established by a group of young white men who had been born here, as opposed to their parents and grandparents who had been born elsewhere and come here as settlers. Membership was only open to white men (National Museum of Australia (NMA), 2021). While the ANA believed in

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using Aboriginal place names, and some form of compensation for Aboriginal peoples for their poor treatment, they also were strong advocates for the White Australia, as they believed “that Australia would have a better future if it was made up of only white migrants” (NMA, 2021, para. 5). Anne Barton, Edmund’s great-grandchild, has pointed out that while settler society has greatly controlled who and what is commemorated and where, if we are genuinely committed to reconciliation, then this statue of Edmund Barton on an Aboriginal burial site should be reconsidered in discussion with local Aboriginal people (Rubbo & Wyllie, 2020). At the end of the day, those that feel ownership, either through ancestry or interest, could always take custody of the commemoration in question and relocate it. History professor at the University of North Carolina, Karen Cox, has noted the example of historic houses: preservationist groups wishing to preserve them raise the funds to purchase them and relocate them onto their own property. Cox (in Grinberg, 2017, para. 33) offered the same solution to defenders of Confederate monuments—pay for them to be removed and relocated to their own property, where they can “then worship to their heart’s content”.

‘You can’t judge someone by today’s standards’ They were different times.

Criticise a colonial ‘hero’ and you will quickly be met with the response that we should not judge historical figures by modern standards. Instead, they should be considered within historical context—what was acceptable, what was expected, the nature of the times in which they lived. And most of all, we are told that should realise that these historical figures had ‘good intentions’. Be it for science or for God, they were supposedly acting with benevolence. However, these ‘good intentions’ cannot outweigh the hard fact that even back in the late 1700s and onwards, in European society, murder was still murder and was illegal and immoral. The writings of many settlers from the early days of colonisation expressed their disgust in the immoral treatment of Aboriginal people, particularly in terms of dispossession and murder. Even the writings of the subjects of contested colonial commemorations such as Lachlan Macquarie evidence that they were aware that what they had directly or indirectly committed was murder, and that it was wrong (Carlson & Farrelly, 2023). Even at the time some colonial commemorations were created, there were many who opposed them. At ‘Chippers Leap’, Greenmount, Western Australia, there is a monument to John Chipper and Reuben Beacham, who were ‘attacked by Natives’ in 1832. Beacham, a boy of only 11 years of age, was killed, but Chipper, who was speared, managed to escape. The monument was erected on the centenary of the event, and an article in the Swan Express (1932, p. 2) criticised it, noting:

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The story itself has no claim on public recognition, and is not of a nature to be handed down through the ages. The sooner it is forgotten the better. A strong, big boned, active man, Chipper was practically in the position of a father to the boy in the circumstances, yet he made not the least effort to save the child, but left him to his fate. In his official report, Chipper states that he heard the screams of the boy behind him, while he ran for his life. The boy was 11 years of age—a little chap he could have tucked under his arm! The record is of interest only as a picture of early life in the State, and the boy Beacham is more worthy of recognition on the tablet… while so many deeds of self-sacrifice and bravery are left unrecorded, the story of Chipper is not one that should be told to our children.

Elliott Chipper (2013), the great-great-great-grandchild of John Chipper, has called the commemoration out as a deliberate attempt by the Western Australian Historical Society to perpetuate the legend of the ‘brave pioneer’. Elliott Chipper (2013) flags two stories missing from the commemoration: why is it not called ‘Beacham’s Rock’ (perhaps because a dying child on the side of the road is not all that palatable), and what of the 12 Noongar people killed and hung from trees in retribution for the attack? And what about the colonial commemorations created in recent times? For example, a statue of Lachlan Macquarie was erected in Hyde Park as recently as 2013, despite it being well-evidenced that Macquarie ordered the mass murder of Aboriginal people (RMIT ABC Fact Check, 2017). The plaque beneath it states “He was a perfect gentleman, a Christian and supreme legislator of the human heart”.

‘You’re wrong—they didn’t even do those bad things’ The history is not agreed. His actions are not proven.

History is always open to debate, for the simple reason that there is usually more than one person involved, and, therefore, more than one account of any historical event. It is seemingly tolerable for history to be disputable when we are talking about keeping or even creating a colonial commemoration. But as soon as the discussion turns to removal or rectification, even in the face of documented evidence, denial is quick to follow. Recent years have seen the acknowledgement of the numerous deliberate massacres of Aboriginal peoples by settlers that occurred all over this continent. Some of these massacres are known, documented in written records. Some rely on oral histories handed down over generations. Others are lost forever. Commemorating these massacres is typically a difficult journey: When commemorating massacres of Aboriginal peoples, the challenge often lies in gaining the acknowledgement that such events actually occurred, and the recognition of the impact the massacre had and continues to have on the descendants of the survivors and on Aboriginal people in general. Just as there is ‘Holocaust denial’, there is ‘Aboriginal massacre denial’. Historians are frequently

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accused of lying or getting their facts wrong…Aboriginal people are regularly accused of exaggerating oral history, of falsely presenting ‘myth’ as fact. (Carlson & Farrelly, 2023, pp. 176–177)

The Noongar people of the Pinjarra region of Western Australian had to fight for more than 20 years for a memorial to the Pinjarra Massacre of 1834, which resulted in the deaths of 15 to 60 Pinjarra adults and children (Gartry, 2014). The sticking point was the term ‘massacre’—local council would not agree it was a massacre, preferring instead the term ‘battle’. After ten years, a compromise was reached, with the memorial erected acknowledging ‘confrontations’. A further ten years saw council finally start to acknowledge the continuing impact on Noongar people, and there are now plans to create a new, more elaborate memorial, this time to the ‘massacre’ (Warriner, 2019). A similar struggle has occurred in regard to acknowledging the Waterloo Bay Massacre of 1848–1849, the details of which have been debated since the 1850s. Aboriginal oral history maintains a death toll of 200 to 300 Wirangu and Kokatha adults and children, while many settlers have denied the massacre occurred at all. The District Council of Elliston, South Australia were unaccepting of the term ‘massacre’. It took decades of lobbying, and much research (Charter, 1989, cited in Foster et al., 2001; Haines, 2016, cited in Hastwell, 2019) for council to finally agree to the memorial to describe the event as a ‘massacre’, however they would not permit it to be described as ‘large’ (ABC News, 2017). There is nothing wrong with questioning history—indeed, we should scrutinise historians methods and findings and want to uncover as much of the ‘truth’ as we can. But when these debates ignore that regardless of numbers and semantics, suffering has occurred, and for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, many colonial commemorations continue to be a source of trauma, then they are deliberate attempts to perpetuate the attempt at Black erasure and white permanence.

‘But Aboriginal people did bad things too’ Yes, there was frontier violence—this is actually something Aboriginal people are trying to get recognised. Contrary to the myth of peaceful settlement, and the misconception that Aboriginal peoples provided no resistance, the frontier of early colonisation was extremely violent. Settlers were terrified of Aboriginal peoples, and armed conflict between the two went on for decades (Connor, 2002). Aboriginal attacks on settlers were often in revenge for incidents such as the rape and kidnapping of women and children, and tactics involved the burning of homes and crops, stealing stores and weapons, and occasionally killing people and livestock. Settlers frequently attacked in retaliation to such Aboriginal crimes, often indiscriminately massacring whole groups who just happened to be in the area, regardless of proof of involvement (Connor, 2002). Poisoning was another method used to dispatch groups of Aboriginal people,

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often because their presence was becoming an inconvenience. Flour would be laced with arsenic or strychnine, an act referred to as ‘the Harmony’, “because in this way peace was supposed to be achieved” (Blomfield, 1981, p. 119). To date, the Australian War Memorial refuses to recognise the Frontier Wars. Previous Director Brendan Nelson (in Green, 2014, para. 22) argued that legislation did not allow for the Frontier Wars to be recognised because it was debateable whether the Frontier Wars were a “declared war”. However, Peter Stanley (in Green, 2014, para. 13), the Australian War Memorial’s principal historian from 1987 to 2007, has countered that the legislation “does allow the Memorial to deal with ‘warlike’ actions—and frontier conflict looks warlike to me…If it’s not war, what is it?” The British strategically claimed Aboriginal peoples to be British subjects which made frontier conflict ‘civil disorder’ (Connor, 2002). To call the conflict war means that Aboriginal peoples were a foreign enemy, and this meant they had sovereign rights to their land, undermining the Crown’s claim to the continent. However, those settlers living amongst the conflict certainly described it as ‘war’. For example, following violent clashes between settlers and palawa in lutruwita (Tasmania) in the 1820s, a Launceston newspaper printed the following statement by ‘J.E.’, who many believe was the surveyor James Erskine Calder (1808–1882) (cited in Reynolds, 2021, para. 52): We are at war with them: they look upon us as enemies—as invaders—as their oppressors and persecutors—they resist our invasion. They have never been subdued, therefore they are not rebellious subjects, but an injured nation, defending in their own way, their rightful possessions, which have been torn from them by force.

The point is that we don’t have statues of those Aboriginal people and expect non-Aboriginal people to have to put up with them being in public spaces. Two particular Aboriginal attacks on European settlers, the Hornet Bank Massacre (1857, 11 murdered) and the Wills Massacre (1861, 19 murdered), are notorious for the role of Aboriginal people in the murder of settler adults and children. Reprisals carried out by settlers over the following year for the Hornet Bank massacre, however, resulted in an estimated 300 to 500 Iman people (Elder, 2003). An estimated 300 to 400 Aboriginal people were killed by the Native Police despatched by the Queensland government in response for the Wills Massacre, and it is estimated that further tens of thousands died as a result of the repercussions of the government’s retaliation (Reynolds, cited in Stünzner, 2016). For both cases, memorials exist for the settler victims, but nothing commemorates the Aboriginal victims (Piller, 2012).

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‘You’re just being divisive—haven’t you got more important things to worry about?’ You’re just shit-stirring.

When historian Henry Reynolds (1999, pp. 117–118) began publishing his work that exposed evidence of frontier violence, he was called a “shit-stirring academic” and was frequently accused of “deliberately stirring up trouble, provoking discontent, reviving old hatreds”. When Aboriginal scholar Bronwyn Carlson (co-author of this chapter) spoke on ABC Radio (in Kelly, 2017) about the need for the Australian public to reconsider some of our colonial commemorations, Carlson was flooded with a barrage of abusive and threatening vitriol via social media, phone calls and emails. The messages accused Carlson of lying, deliberately trying to incite trouble, being ‘backward’ and ‘ungrateful’, for example: For all the sorties [sic]…there has not been one thankyou. Thankyou for saving us from the Dutch and French. If they had landed first, (btw, Cook beat the French here by two weeks) then there would have been Genocide. Thanks for saving you mob from the Japanese. Thanks for decades of welfare dependency that I work my ass off for in blue collar. Shouldn’t you be addressing the real issues your people face?

Many of the messages Carlson received were critical of Aboriginal people wasting time protesting about colonial commemorations when there are so many ‘more important’ issues in their communities to worry about: If we want to talk about the truth why don’t we talk about the high rates of child sexual abuse in aboriginal [sic] communities, the high rate of domestic abuse the high rate of drug and alcohol abuse. Let’s talk about those truths rather than the crap nonsense you want to talk about. But of course talking about those truths would mean aboriginal people taking responsibility for these failures rather than blaming white society for them. So easy to blame someone else rather than admit the total failure that is the aboriginal way of life. But hey banning those statues will make all the difference.

When the Cook statue in Hyde Park was spray-painted in 2017, the then treasurer Scott Morrison tweeted “A national insult & disgrace. Does not keep one indigenous child safe, in school or end up in a job. Grow up idiots #auspol” (Morrison, 2017). This is the privilege of settler Australian society—to pass judgement on what issues should matter and should be a priority over others in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities, and that attention cannot be paid to more than one at any given time. Another argument is that of the cost of removing or rectifying a problematic colonial commemoration. In the case of the Crowther statue, the estimated cost of removal was estimated to be up to $20,000. The commissioning of

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new, permanent interpretative and/or sculptural elements has been estimated to possibly cost up to $50,000. This is a total cost of $70,000—a drop in the bucket when you consider the 250th anniversary of the arrival of Cook was allocated $50 million, and the redevelopment of the Australian War Memorial was allocated $500 million (Quinn-Bates, 2021). It’s unAustralian.

In 2017, when Stan Grant (2019, p. 144) criticised the Cook statue in Hyde Park for its ‘discovery’ claim, it was treated like an act of treason. Further attacks on Cook monuments in 2020 were criticised by the then New South Wales Premier Gladys Berejiklian as ‘unAustralian’ (in Kozaki, 2020). Earlier that same year, the then prime minister, Scott Morrison, had criticised the surge of panic buying (notably of toilet paper) as a result of uncertainty in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic as ‘unAustralian’ (SBS News, 2020). The term ‘unAustralian’ has been around since the early 1900s, when it was first used by the right in reference to any non-whites or non-desirable elements (such as communism) deemed a potential threat (Smith & Phillips, 2001). It fell out of use until a revival in the late 1990s. Sydney lawyer and Sydney Morning Herald columnist Tim Dick (2016) has analysed the use of the term in parliamentary records, and amusingly found the term had been used to describe things such as being pro-WorkChoices, being anti-WorkChoices, being against the Iraq invasion, being in favour of the Iraq invasion, gender-­ neutral language, and aspects of the British monarchy (which were undefined). On Twitter alone in 2016, Dick (2016, para. 14) found that ‘unAustralian’ had been used to describe: Nick Kyrgios. Lleyton Hewitt. Not watching Lleyton Hewitt. Watching tennis instead of cricket. Working the Monday before Australia Day. Calling sunglasses ‘shades’ instead of sunnies. Not calling McDonald’s ‘Maccas’. The Qantas Club ban on thongs. Not drinking beer. Taking your neighbour’s green wheelie bin. The Muslim naval officer who tweeted stuff The Australian didn’t like. The Australian. Pronouncing Nike properly. Promite. Vegemite. Returning from Bali without a Bintang singlet. A Bunnings without a sausage sizzle. Burgers without beetroot.

As a result, Dick (2016) concluded that given there is so little that has not at some time been accused of being ‘unAustralian’, this ‘lazy sentence filler’ should be retired from public discourse.

‘But even Aboriginal people don’t all agree it should be removed’ Just as in the non-Aboriginal community, and any community for that matter, there will never be an issue that will have unanimous Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander agreement. An example of this is the Uluru Statement from the Heart, a petition to the Australian government calling for “the establishment

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of a First Nations Voice [to Parliament] enshrined in the [Australian] Constitution” and “a Makarrata Commission to supervise a process of agreement-making between governments…and truth-telling” about the history of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples (The Uluru Statement, n.d.). In 2017, more than 250 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander representatives from across the continent met at the base of Uluru on the homelands of Anangu. The majority were signatories to the Uluru Statement from the Heart, but not all. Any change to the constitution has to be voted on by the Australian public by referendum and can only occur if it gains a majority vote. The then prime minister Malcolm Turnbull’s opinion was that the Uluru Statement’s proposal was “neither desirable or capable of winning acceptance at referendum” (in Wahlquist, 2017, para. 1), and under his leadership, it was rejected by the Liberal government. In 2022, the Australian Labor Party led by Anthony Albanese was elected to federal government and have committed to the Uluru Statement through a referendum (Morse, 2022). However, Albanese (in McIlroy, 2022) has stipulated that the government would remain sovereign, and the Voice would be limited to an advisory role. Some of the 250 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander representatives who met at Uluru in 2017 were not signatories to the Uluru Statement from the Heart, and instead walked out in protest. Aboriginal Tent Embassy representatives Gwenda Stanley and Clayton Simpson were two such representatives to reject the Uluru Statement and have raised concerns that it “threatens First Nations peoples’ sovereignty” (Webber, 2022, para. 2), and instead are calling for “an independent First Nations parliament over an advisory body” (para. 8). Many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people do not support constitutional recognition without truth-telling and treaty negotiations in place first. The Australian Greens party are calling for a Truth and Justice Commission to oversee just that, and Greens Senator, DjabWurrung Gunnai Gunditmara woman Lidia Thorpe (in Gregoire, 2022, para. 7), has argued: “People in this country need to share an understanding of our past and how this influences our present…Once everyone knows where we’re coming from, we can decide where we’re going, together”. The one point of consensus, however, is that truth-telling is long overdue, and that it should not be the responsibility of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. This frustration has commonly been expressed across social media platforms. For example, Bardi Kiji educational specialist Sharon Davis tweeted: “I am so tired of our mob leading “truth telling”. Why do we continue to self-flagellate? I want non-Indigenous Australia to take this load of truth-telling among themselves and then do something about it” (@Sharon_ Davis, 2022a). Davis later followed this up with a further tweet, stating: “Come see me when you get to the “do something” bit. I don’t need to relive the trauma of truth-telling” (@Sharon_Davis, 2022b). We have found this

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frustration to be common in regard to truth-telling and colonial commemorations. In our discussions with the project team from the Crowther Reinterpretation Project for our book (Carlson & Farrelly, 2023, p. 287) “it was reported that while members of the palawa community appreciated the level of consultation instigated by the project, many also pointed out that the future of the statue is a settler problem—the sentiment being, ‘you put it there, you sort it out!’”. The Aboriginal people protesting about the statue aren’t even ‘real’ Aboriginals.

Feminist scholar Sara Ahmed (2017, p. 37), a self-described ‘feminist killjoy’, aptly commented “When you expose a problem you pose a problem”. And posing a problem typically requires some sort of admonishment. Questioning Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander identity, and thereby authenticity is a common settler tool used to undermine anyone deemed to be causing trouble: Aboriginal people who protest, resist, seek acknowledgement of history and recognition of truth, push for restitution and demand equality are commonly positioned by settler society as ‘bad’—they are troublemakers, they are noncompliant, they are a problem. (Carlson & Farrelly, 2023, p. 15)

The politics of identity is an age-old strategy deployed by settlers to create and divide and to call into question the right for Aboriginal people to speak publicly on issues (see, Carlson, 2016). Clinging to the aspiration of a White Australia many settlers prefer to believe that the only ‘real’ or ‘authentic’ Aboriginal people reside in remote locations and have little interest in public life outside of their communities. This is not true of course. These ideas trace their genealogy to the long history of violent strategies that sought Aboriginal elimination (Wolfe, 2006). Questioning settler’s obsession with Aboriginal identity, Wiradjuri writer Anita Heiss has recently released a new edition of her book Am I Black Enough for You (2022). The original 2012 version was partly a response to the right wing social and political commentator Andrew Bolt who wrote derogatory articles including one entitled, ‘White is the new Black’ in 2009 (see Carlson, 2016, p. 105). In the article, Bolt was objecting to successful ‘light-skinned’ Aboriginal people ‘choosing’ to be Aboriginal when, in his mind, they should have chosen to identify as ‘Australian’. At the heart of his allegations was his logic that such ‘choices’ were either motivated by, or at least conveniently embraced, because of an ensuing public or professional elevation that would not otherwise have been accorded and private rewards that would not otherwise have been achieved on talent alone. Bolt was successfully sued for his racially motivated hate under the Racial Discrimination Act 1975 (Cth) in the Eatock v. Bolt case 2011 (Connor, 2011; Savage, 2011).

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‘We need to keep the statue so people can learn from it’ Remove this statue and what next? Where does it end?

When it comes to problematic colonial commemorations, there is no universal solution. Each needs to be addressed on an individual basis, by the individual communities they impact. And dealing with the commemoration is only the first step, because the real work is in addressing attitudes and awareness. While the commonly cited goal has been to acknowledge a ‘shared history’ (AHC, 2018, p. 16), even when the settler and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander versions of a particular event are recognised, they sit in juxtaposition, as competing narratives (Graves & Rechniewski, 2017, para. 1). Acknowledging a shared history may seem impossible, so what about creating a shared future? Addressing problematic colonial commemorations would be a step in the right direction. But what is it that we think we’re giving up or losing if these colonial commemorations were to be removed? What is at stake? To admit the true history of this continent, the true nature of those glorified in colonial commemorations, the truth of the massacres, what is to be lost? Is it the confidence that there has never been anything about which we could possibly be ashamed? Something which we should apologise for?...Addressing colonial commemorations without acknowledging, recognising and recovering from white supremacy risks simply perpetuating the original agenda of Black erasure and white permanence. (Carlson & Farrelly, 2023, p. 266)

Some colonial commemorations must be removed because they celebrate nothing but violence against Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples (Birch, 2020). However, some have a more complicated presence that requires consideration. Take the Freedman’s Memorial in Washington, DC, which famously portrays the figure of Abraham Lincoln, standing beside a kneeling Black man, naked from the waist up, whose chains are being broken. The statue has been highly criticised, yet Yale University’s David Blight (2020, paras. 1–2) has argued for it to remain, despite its racist imagery. The $20,000 required to build the monument in the 1870s was raised among Black Americans, most of whom had been formerly enslaved. The sculptor, Thomas Ball, worked from photographs taken of Archer Alexander, who had been formerly enslaved, and modelled the pose. Ball’s intention was to depict Alexander as an ‘agent in his own resistance’ (Blight, 2020). When the monument was dedicated in 1876, there was a parade that included a speech by famed abolitionist Frederick Douglass, with the full government and nearly every Black organisation in Washington in attendance. Blight (2020, para. 7) recommends: Rather than take down this monument to Lincoln and emancipation, create a commission that will engage new artists to represent the story of black freedom from one generation to the next. Let today’s imaginations take flight. Perhaps commission a statue of Douglass himself delivering this magnificent speech. So much new learning can take place by the presence of both past and present. As a

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nation, let’s replace a landscape strewn with Confederate symbols with memorialization of emancipation. Tearing down the Freedmen’s Memorial would be a terrible start for that epic process.

Some argue that problematic colonial commemorations should be kept for future generations, as evidence of the attitudes and institutional racism that allowed for their creation in the first place. Community consultation and engagement with key stakeholders conducted for the Crowther Reinterpreted project found that while a substantial number expressed a desire for removal of the statue, “some wished for it to stay, either as a representation of the ideas of the time (its historic significance), or to remain as a provocation for change for the broader population—like a ‘stone in the shoe’” (City of Hobart, 2022a, p.  16). However, learning and interpretation can happen without the commemoration itself still being there. It can be relocated elsewhere, allowing for the carefully considered provision of context and interpretation, in a location where members of the public can choose to interact with them if they wish (Grinberg, 2017). In some situations, rectification and balance are appropriate solutions, such as through the provision of additional plaques or the addition of another statue that tells another side to the history being presented by the original commemoration (Baxter, 2019). Rectification and balance can be a challenge, and such additions often face a precarious existence subject to regular attacks of vandalism, however, such changes can also work as a lead up to eventual removal. The meaning of some colonial commemorations can also evolve, even to the point where they now represent the protest made against them. Just like history books, colonial commemorations can be rewritten. This is arguably becoming the case with the Cook statue in Hyde Park, which has become a focus for discontent, and a symbol of protest demanding truth-telling. Other commemorations are kept for remembrance but are no longer revered. Rather they serve as evidence, such as memorials to settlers ‘Killed by Natives’, that stand as recognition of Aboriginal resistance, a violent rather than peaceful colonisation, and even reminders of what is absent, such as a missing memorial to those killed in reprisal attacks for the death of that particular settler. There have been calls for the protest against colonial commemorations to be left to form a permanent part of the monument. For example, historian Lisa Murray (in Taylor, 2018) suggested the protest messages spray-painted on the Cook statue in Hyde Park be kept as a record of its changing meaning. When the statue of Edward Colston in Bristol was toppled during the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests, pseudonymous street artist and political activist Banksy (2020) posted a sketch on Instagram of a group of people pulling down the statue, with the comment: What should we do with the empty plinth in the middle of Bristol? Here’s an idea that caters for both those who miss the Colston statue and those who don’t. We drag him out of the water, put him back on the plinth, tie cable around his neck and commission some life size bronze statues of protestors in the act of pulling him down. Everyone happy. A famous day commemorated.

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Remove, relocate, rectify, balance, rewrite—whatever the decision, what is important is the ongoing discussion about what we as a society value today (Handler, 2016). Herein, through talking and listening, lie the opportunities for healing (Carlson & Farrelly, 2023).

‘Removing the statue won’t change anything’ On the contrary, addressing a problematic colonial commemoration can change a lot of things. In addition, addressing missing commemorations, such as those memorialising atrocities, and those honouring Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander contribution can further foster truth-telling, and that can change everything. The temporary public art projects and accompanying community engagement that formed part of the Crowther Reinterpreted project was shown to have a significant impact on those consulted with (City of Hobart, 2022b). Many reported finding it was beneficial to be more informed, and that the experience gave them a practical example they could now better relate to regarding the importance of truth-telling. Some respondents appreciated the catalyst the project had provided for discussions and further learning (City of Hobart, 2022b). The acknowledgement of the previously mentioned Pinjarra Massacre as a ‘massacre’ has had a significant effect on the Noongar community who campaigned to have it recognised for more than 20 years. It has enabled people to “stand a little taller, hold their head a little higher” (Kearin, cited in Warriner, 2019, para. 36). Similarly, when the Wirangu finally achieved a memorial to the Waterloo Bay Massacre after decades of fighting to be able to refer to the event as a ‘massacre’, it has reportedly been a source of pride and vindication. Local Wirangu Elder Veda Betts (in Hastwell, 2019, paras. 56-59) has reported that since the creation of the memorial, the Wirangu community in the Elliston region were feeling more accepted and less marginalised: “Our spirits are lifted. People are starting to really respect and come to us. If we accept the past then we can understand our future together. We can look forward…this is not just an Aboriginal story, this is everyone’s story”. In 2009, an archaeological team from Flinders University were invited by Kimberley Land Council to search for archival evidence of a massacre of Aboriginal people of the Kutjungka region in the south-east of the Kimberley in 1922 that oral history and artworks by local Elders and descendants of survivors had recorded (Smith & Walshe, 2017). The team found a police diary missing four days’ worth of entries and burned human bone fragments. The descendants erected a memorial at the site to what is known as the Tjurabalan (Sturt Creek) Massacre, stating: In memory of the Aboriginal people, men, women and children, who were killed in this place.

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The reasons for the massacre are not known, but the story has been passed down to us from our old people, and we want it to be remembered. May they rest in peace. The Tjurabalan people.

It is a simple memorial, and while some might challenge the conclusiveness of the evidence, the point here is that for the descendants, a massacre did occur, and this monument erected in remembrance of those killed is of great significance. Of their experience working on the project and their findings, the Flinders University archaeological team (in Smith & Walshe, 2017, paras. 24-6) have stated: We believe our research confronts a significant cultural boundary that—apologies aside—political leaders have failed to address. We cannot undo the past, but we can acknowledge that these events are part of both Aboriginal and white histories—they are real and Aboriginal people still suffer the pain of the past … We ask little more than for archaeologists and scientists working with Aboriginal descent groups to achieve a level of closure, no matter how small, for the descendants of this and similar places of atrocities committed on the Australian frontier.

Unbelievably, it has taken until the new millennium for commemorations to finally recognise Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander service in the armed forces. When war memorials were erected commemorating the First and Second World Wars, the Boer War and the Vietnam War, and the Australian War Memorial was built, the contribution of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander defence personnel and their families and communities were all conveniently ignored. The past two decades have also seen the recognition of other aspects of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander contribution: acknowledging the guides who assisted European ‘explorers’, trackers who worked with police, heroic acts, and the courage and dedication of resistance fighters and activists. These are significant gains, but they have taken decades of struggle. However, perhaps the biggest gain is that more of us are starting to question the colonial commemorations that exist in our public spaces, and interrogate the agenda behind them, asking just who might benefit from what history that commemoration is presenting, and why (Carlson & Farrelly, 2023). As a society, there is a sense of pride to be had in efforts to at least have a conversation about what should be done about problematic colonial commemorations, and about missing commemorations, for these efforts reflect that we value truth and compassion. To have such conversations that can enable forgiveness and foster unity, and to actively participate in truth-telling, both locally and at a national level, is perhaps the one way that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples together with settler Australians can find that shared future. For Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, this can mean hope—for

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inclusion, for respect, and for a better future. But what is the benefit for settlers? What changes can truth-telling bring for them? The answer seems to be ‘liberation’ (Stevenson, 2018, cited in Couric, 2018). Sandy Hamilton, a direct descendant of one of the troopers who committed the Appin Massacre, is one of an increasing number of settlers who actively participate in massacre commemoration events alongside Aboriginal descendants of survivors (Allam & Earl, 2019). We close with Hamilton’s description of this participation as part of a process of grieving as well as a source of fulfilment: We are all Australians and need to take ownership of our history. We deserve to know the truth of how we came to be who we are. Then we can also make real choices about who we want to be as a society, as Australians. To go forward, we can’t start from a position of ignorance or denial, as unpalatable as it is. If we can bravely look at the past to see how today was created, then we have more agency in making tomorrow what we would like it to be. If we can embrace our history for all its successes and failings then we will be a more cohesive and compassionate nation, which will benefit everyone. (in Allam & Earl, 2019, paras. 21-24)

Acknowledgements  The authors would like to acknowledge the Macquarie University Research Acceleration Scheme, which provided seed funding towards the research discussed in this chapter. The authors would also like to acknowledge all those involved in the Crowther Reinterpreted project, as part of the project team, as those consulted with for their opinion, and as community members who gave their feedback—we are grateful for your courage.

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Index1

A Aboriginal, vii–ix, xi, xiii, xix, 3, 4, 6, 7, 20, 26, 37, 55, 58, 63–68, 105–110, 112–114, 116, 119, 120, 127–131, 133–136, 138, 139, 141, 144, 145, 147, 151, 152n1, 153, 155–164, 166, 167, 174–181, 186–188, 203, 213, 241, 242, 247–250, 249n2, 253–255, 258, 264–268, 266n8, 271, 273–281, 283–285, 289–291, 293, 352–356, 358, 359, 361–364, 366–374, 385, 393, 466–468, 470, 471, 473, 476–479, 558–561, 563, 568, 569, 571, 573–592 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander commemorative ceremony, 110 Veterans and Services Association (ATSIVSA), 106, 108, 109, 112 Activist, activism, ix, 5, 6, 8, 15, 29, 67, 118, 121, 152, 165, 166, 178, 181, 186, 279, 281, 286, 287, 299n2, 302, 331, 333, 352, 364, 365, 370, 375, 383–397, 403, 404, 411, 437, 439, 440, 443, 446, 447, 449–451, 453–455, 462, 467,

473, 474, 477–479, 485, 486, 488–490, 498, 505, 507, 527–538, 573, 578, 589, 591 Actor-network theory (ANT), 441 Adelaide, 61, 105, 109, 118, 163 Africa, African American, 77, 277, 303, 312, 319, 329, 332–335, 393, 405, 427, 485n2, 497 indigeneity, 534–535 Agency, 8, 198, 210, 289, 351, 383, 430, 472, 489, 492, 536, 545, 592 Algonquin, 6, 87 Alt-right, 405 American Museum of Natural History (AMNH), 8, 437–455 Andrew, Brook, 6, 130, 134, 147, 148, 168, 171, 172 Anglo-Saxon, 75–83 Anishinaabe, 88, 209 Anti-Black, anti-Blackness, 8, 437, 438, 448, 453, 485–500, 531, 554 Anti-Slavery Society (London), 156 Anzac, viii, 6, 57n1, 101–122

 Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes.

1

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 B. Carlson, T. Farrelly (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook on Rethinking Colonial Commemorations, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-28609-4

597

598 

INDEX

Aotearoa New Zealand, 3, 5, 25, 33–47, 35n3, 40n7, 83, 90, 101, 102, 105, 110, 111, 113, 147, 161, 174, 175, 183–185, 288 Apartheid, 29, 80–82, 141, 286, 325, 529–532, 537 Arab, 13, 16, 19 Archaeologists, archaeology, 8, 55, 66, 208, 419–431, 575, 591 Art history, 6, 8, 131, 220, 505, 507 Asylum seeker, 254–257, 259, 285, 389, 390, 397, 463, 470, 472, 478, 479 Austin (Texas, USA), 430 Australia, viii–xi, xix, 2, 4–6, 13–30, 37, 40n7, 53–69, 57n1, 64n2, 101–106, 108, 111–113, 115–121, 127–139, 134n4, 141, 144–147, 151, 155, 161, 163, 164, 173, 174n2, 175, 177–180, 179n4, 183, 185, 187, 189, 203, 211, 227–230, 242, 245, 246, 248, 249, 251, 253–260, 264, 265, 269–271, 279–283, 285–292, 310, 339, 340, 342–345, 347–349, 352–359, 363, 365, 367, 369–371, 373–375, 388, 389, 391–393, 404, 406, 408–410, 412, 413, 419, 421, 427, 429–431, 461–481 Australia Day, 55, 63, 277, 365, 366, 393, 404, 574, 585 Australian Aboriginal Progressive Association (AAPA), 178 defence force, 121 Imperial Force (AIF), viii, 105 War Memorial (AWM), 102, 116, 131, 131n3, 133, 138, 139, 139n7, 147, 288, 583, 585, 591 Authenticité, 535 Authenticity, 291, 301, 330, 371, 535, 587 B Backfire effect, 314 Bathurst, xiv Battle Mountain, vii Biculturalism, 43, 44, 113 Big River people, 153

Black, Bla(c)k, Blak African, 16 American, xix, 15, 335, 496, 588 Lives Matter (BLM), 2, 7, 83, 278, 287, 327, 364, 365, 374, 385, 392, 393, 397, 437, 439, 450, 452, 462, 479, 480, 485, 518, 531, 589 Power, 178, 179, 466, 468, 473, 487 studies, 439, 444, 494, 554 Blacktown Native Institution Project, 144, 147–148 Black Youth Project 100, 450 Boon Wurrung, 140, 165, 169 Botswana, 254, 533–534 Boyd, Daniel, 7, 138, 339–349, 363 Bristol, 3, 29, 217, 430, 498, 521, 589 British Colombia, 89, 94 Colonial office, 154, 155 Empire, 14, 22, 23, 25, 26, 75–78, 89, 121, 221, 224, 251, 253, 255, 260, 342, 353, 357, 477, 506, 508–512, 514, 516, 517, 522 Brown-Davis, S., 35 Bruny Island, xii, 153, 559 Budapest (Hungary), 3, 420, 422, 423, 426, 429, 431 Burra Charter, The, 54 C Cairns, 229, 347, 352, 356, 362, 363, 365–367, 375 Canada, Canadian, 3, 5, 6, 22, 46, 87–99, 197, 209, 220, 297, 310, 357, 365, 367, 387, 404, 413, 439, 440, 508, 514, 518, 543–545, 551, 554 Indigenous, 87–89, 544 Canberra, 108, 116, 120, 131, 134, 144, 146, 265, 269 Cape Barren Island, 131 Cape Grim, 153 Cape Patterson, 158, 159 Cape Town (South Africa), 14, 82, 320, 419

 INDEX 

Capitalism, 2, 16, 30, 220, 306, 441, 479 Carlson, Bronwyn, xi, 1–3, 5, 7, 20, 26, 66, 189, 212, 220, 264, 275–280, 286, 287, 353, 355, 365, 366, 368, 410, 412, 559, 573, 575–578, 580, 582, 584, 587, 588, 590, 591 Centennial Flame monument, 98 Centre for Independent Studies (CIS), 26–28 Charlottesville, Virginia, 277, 322, 330, 332, 404, 451, 489, 492, 497n6 China, Chinese, 15, 25, 26, 96, 228, 243, 248n1, 250, 255, 256, 259, 285, 532, 538 Christianity, 22, 194, 280, 519 Church/churches, 7, 193–201, 223, 463 Churchill, Winston, 18, 23 City of Hobart, 8, 557, 558, 561–566, 568–570, 574, 579, 589, 590 Civil rights, 23, 178, 181, 186, 323, 331, 334, 336, 444, 487–489, 489n3, 528, 537 society, 16, 447, 538 War, 184, 319, 328, 330, 419, 430, 486 Coal mining, 219, 220, 227–232 Codrington, Christopher, 419, 427 Collective memory, 7, 46, 231, 319–336, 420 Colonial, colonialism, colonisation amnesia, 33–47 history makers, 185 monuments, 34, 39, 41, 220, 231, 278–280, 298, 305, 330, 351, 352, 354, 355, 358, 364, 365, 368–370, 375, 385, 385n3, 389, 395, 401–406, 408, 412, 413, 463–465, 467, 473, 475, 478, 479, 527–539 mythologies, 14, 175 re-enactments, 352, 354, 364, 369–371 settler, 13–30, 37–39, 42, 44–46, 55, 56, 59, 65, 66, 88, 90, 113, 228, 241, 258, 269, 276, 286, 288, 327, 351, 352, 370, 371, 374, 388, 401–413, 439, 440, 444,

599

451, 453, 454, 461–481, 528, 529, 534, 536–537 (see also Settler, colonial) statues, ix, 5, 21, 23, 26, 33, 34, 38, 40, 46, 47, 83, 226, 385, 404, 408, 409, 422, 463, 475, 476, 536 violence, xi, 2, 6, 34, 41, 55, 67, 69, 75, 83, 232, 233, 259, 339, 343, 394, 397, 464–465 world, 78 Colston, Edward, 3, 29, 217, 220, 365, 419, 430, 498, 518, 521, 589 Columbus, Christopher, 3, 17, 220, 222, 298, 305, 310, 319, 437, 439, 453 Columbus Day, 437, 450 Comedy, 7, 8, 298, 299, 299n2, 302 Commemorative, commemoration, xi, xiii, xvii, 1–9, 14, 17–23, 29, 41, 42, 53–69, 83, 89–91, 98, 101–106, 108–115, 117–120, 122, 147, 165–168, 173, 174, 185, 189, 217–233, 263, 275–280, 288, 298, 319–336, 353, 359, 363, 365, 371, 387, 388, 390, 391, 422, 426, 437, 439–444, 451, 452, 454, 455, 461, 486, 488, 505, 512, 517, 522, 528, 532–535, 544, 545, 548–552, 554, 559, 568, 573–592 Communism, 420, 424, 428, 429, 431, 585 Community, communities, xvii, 2–5, 9, 44, 55, 56, 58, 59, 67, 88, 91, 101, 102, 108, 109, 111, 114, 118–120, 128, 131, 133, 135, 138–141, 144–148, 165, 177–180, 183–185, 188, 189, 194, 197, 199, 206, 209–213, 231, 243–246, 253, 254, 257, 258, 286, 289, 298, 299, 301, 302, 305, 311, 320, 327, 329, 351, 354, 356, 358, 364, 369, 373, 374, 383, 386, 388, 389, 396, 402–405, 409–411, 413, 430, 439, 443–448, 450, 451, 454, 455, 470–472, 477, 486–491, 493, 495–498, 497n6, 500, 510, 515, 516, 539, 544–555, 558–560, 562, 567, 568, 570–574, 577, 579, 584, 585, 587–591

600 

INDEX

Community Radio Federation, 152, 166 Confederate, Neo-Confederate, ix, x, 7, 43, 83, 217, 277, 306, 319–336, 393, 404, 419, 421, 422, 427, 430, 437, 439, 451–453, 462, 486–492, 489n3, 496, 497n6, 537, 574, 580, 589 Congressional Black Caucus (CBC), 529 Conquistador, 222, 329 Constitution, 117, 225, 243, 246, 254, 255, 257, 260, 264, 271, 283, 288, 335, 586 Context, viii–x, xiii, 4, 13, 14, 18, 19, 21, 34, 43, 44, 59, 61, 62, 75, 88, 102, 103, 115, 195, 196, 203, 204, 212, 222, 243, 250, 254, 271, 276, 284–286, 298, 299, 308, 309, 312, 340–344, 347, 352, 353, 364, 367, 370, 371, 373, 402, 419–431, 439, 441, 444, 450, 451, 462–465, 478, 489, 490, 494, 495, 505, 520, 528, 530, 539, 546, 547, 550, 580, 589 Cook, Captain James, vii–ix, xi, xii, 1–3, 7, 18–21, 25, 26, 29, 44, 55, 60, 64–67, 118, 119, 135, 173–189, 206–208, 276–280, 286, 310, 339–349, 351–375, 386, 389, 391, 393, 395, 397, 404–406, 408, 419, 421, 427, 574, 575, 578, 584, 585, 589 Cooks Monument, 359–361, 372 Cooktown, 352, 354, 356–362, 370–374 Counter -history, 319–336 -memory, 330, 453 -monument, 443 Country, viii–xi, xiv, xix, 4, 14, 15, 21–23, 25–27, 33, 35, 39, 54–56, 59, 60, 66–68, 78, 80, 81, 83, 88, 89, 92–94, 96–98, 101, 106, 112, 113, 116, 117, 119, 121, 128, 136, 145, 147, 148, 151, 152, 168, 169, 175, 178, 186, 213, 220, 225, 227, 228, 245, 246, 254–256, 259, 266, 275, 278–280, 284, 287, 289, 290, 298, 304, 315, 345, 351, 354, 358, 368, 369, 372, 373, 384, 405, 409, 419, 422, 426, 427, 429, 450, 452, 462, 468, 477, 479, 489, 491, 510,

512, 528–534, 536, 538, 539, 563, 576, 577, 586 Courting Blakness, 281, 289, 290, 292 Crowther, William, 557–574, 579, 584 Cuba, 17, 222, 223, 225, 336 Cultural heritage, 53–69, 97, 145, 420, 490 practice, 16, 41, 115, 128, 133, 144, 145, 147 D Dakota Access Pipeline, 307n3, 308n5, 450 Darug, 62–64, 147 Davis, Jefferson, 332, 430, 464, 488, 498 Day of Mourning, 55, 178, 371, 393 Deathscapes, 461–481 Deaths in custody, 128, 138, 276–278, 384, 393, 461, 462, 465, 466, 470, 471, 577 Decolonisation/decolonising, 47, 120, 197, 212, 218, 220, 227, 232, 268, 339–349, 408–409, 411–413, 429, 455, 528, 531, 533, 536, 545 Decolonize This Place, 437, 450, 455, 536 Deliberate misremembering, 6, 34, 39, 45 Department of Veterans’ Affairs (DVA), 102, 108, 109 Digital technology, 403, 408–410 Dispossession, vii, viii, x, 3, 14, 17, 23, 25, 29, 40, 41, 56, 60, 66, 67, 75, 76, 104, 145, 162, 189, 224, 249–250, 271, 275, 280, 352, 355, 358, 363, 369, 371, 383, 389, 391, 402, 406, 413, 437, 468, 476, 575, 577, 580 Disruption, xvii, 4–7, 46, 101–122, 177, 219, 220, 321, 444, 577 Document Centre of Cambodia, 129, 138, 146 Dog on the Tucker-box, Gundagai, 405 Dolph Briscoe Center for American History (University of Texas, USA), 430 Druskininkai (Lithuania), 423

 INDEX 

E Education, xi, 28, 46, 53, 57–59, 62, 63, 64n2, 68, 69, 79, 81, 87, 91, 97, 118, 144, 146, 179, 194, 241, 243, 247, 257, 268, 281, 323, 403, 421, 490, 494, 500, 531, 533, 535, 538, 543–545, 547, 548, 554, 577 Empire, 2, 14, 15, 17, 21–26, 29, 39, 42, 75, 76, 78, 103, 155, 174, 199, 223, 287, 332, 334, 341, 344, 347, 396, 396n7, 463, 467, 473, 478, 505–522, 535, 536 Endeavour, 66, 173–189, 244, 259, 325, 351, 356–358, 362, 371–373, 390, 391 Housing Project, 173 England, xii, 23, 28, 76, 135, 154, 156, 161, 167, 224, 278, 340, 344, 462, 498, 506, 509, 511–517, 519, 558, 563 Enslavement, 7, 40, 75, 219, 221, 273, 319, 322, 326, 327, 333, 335, 336, 347, 349, 453 Eora, 176 Erasure, 2, 4, 21, 34, 37, 41, 69, 175, 187, 204, 210, 304, 324, 326–327, 343, 344, 346, 355, 374, 443, 478, 496, 554, 576, 582, 588 Ethical, ethics, 87, 90, 189, 218, 227, 312, 445, 446, 492–500 Ethno-nationalist, 405 Eugenics, 449, 455 Eureka miners, 162 European, viii–x, 14, 16, 18, 19, 21–24, 26–28, 60, 63, 66, 79, 80, 82, 96, 121, 134, 151–154, 176, 177, 204, 205, 224, 243, 248, 255, 256, 340, 342, 343, 345, 353–358, 360, 365, 367–369, 372, 374, 429, 475–477, 527, 535, 536, 568, 579, 580, 583, 591 Extractivism, 217–233 F Fake news, 297, 303 Fallen Monuments Park (Moscow, Russia), 3, 425 First Nations, 3, 55, 88, 92, 96, 102, 111, 112, 120, 121, 133, 135, 151,

601

164, 165, 169, 209, 211, 213, 225, 227, 242, 243, 245, 248–250, 248n1, 259, 260, 282–284, 289, 340–349, 389, 396, 397, 561, 586 First Peoples, 101, 102, 104, 112–115, 117, 120, 129, 134, 146, 175, 226 First World War, viii, xv, 102, 103, 105, 118, 120, 121, 131, 139, 176, 486, 591 Flag, 23, 110, 111, 113, 114, 116, 135, 210, 278, 290–292, 297, 310, 312, 322, 326, 327, 331, 334–336, 363, 371, 386, 428, 463, 486, 489, 489n3, 491, 534, 535, 537, 561, 581 Flinders Island, 153 Floyd, George, 2, 15, 41, 327, 331, 332, 393, 452, 462, 479, 485, 489, 499, 531 1491s, the, 299n2 Fort William First Nation, 88 Freedom fighters, 158–160, 164, 166, 535, 538 Freemasonry, 244 Fremantle (Western Australia), 110, 114, 430, 474, 477–481 French Revolution, 3 Frontier Wars, 420 G Gadigal, 53, 59, 60, 67, 175–177, 179, 181, 186, 189, 384, 385, 388–390, 474 Gallipoli, 57n1, 102, 103, 118, 120, 121, 139 Gandhi, Mahatma, 531, 532 Gate Pā, 36, 37 Gellert Hill (Budapest, Hungary), 423 Gender, 7, 203–213, 258, 284, 328, 329 Genius of Freedom monument (Budapest, Hungary), 423 Genocide, 2, 6, 91–94, 96, 104, 128, 130, 137, 138, 140, 141, 144–146, 277, 279, 307, 319, 325, 328, 329, 335, 336, 364, 383, 389, 403–405, 531, 551, 554, 559, 563, 574, 584 Germany, 342 Geronimo, 164 Get Out, 312

602 

INDEX

Ghana, 13, 532 Gisborne, 174n1, 186 Glen Grey Act, 81 Global indigeneity, 402, 412 Gorky Park (Moscow, Russia), 425 Grant, Stan, ix, x, 279, 287, 419, 421, 575, 577, 585 Greece, 27 Green Ban, 180, 181 Greenbook, 308, 308n4 Griffith, Samuel, 7, 241–259, 249n2, 263–293, 359 Griffith University, 7, 61, 241, 258–260, 263–269, 265n4, 273, 274, 283, 284, 289 Grounded normativity, 445 Ground-penetrating radar, 167 Grutas Park (Lithuania), 4, 422–428, 431 Gumtree universities, 61 Guugu Yimithirr, 356, 358, 361, 369, 371–375 H Hamilton, Captain John, 33–42, 44–46 Haudenosaunee, 90 Hawai’i, 334–336, 366, 367 Hawaiki, 185, 186 Healing from racism, 534, 536–537 Hegemony, hegemonic, 14–18, 21, 23, 37, 76, 225, 320, 323, 325, 333, 352, 355, 365, 401–413, 507, 515, 516, 518, 520 High Court, 164, 246, 257, 265, 287n11, 288n12, 532 History Wars, The, 56, 67, 137, 374 Hitler, Adolf, 91 Howard, John, 27, 102, 104, 116, 121, 131, 131n3, 136, 137, 256, 277, 278, 281 Humour, 57n1, 298, 299, 299n2, 302, 366, 384, 386–388, 396, 427 Hungary, 3, 422–423, 429 I Iconoclasm, 217, 219–221, 232, 271, 485, 489, 491n4, 496, 500 Identity, xix, 5, 16, 17, 20, 24, 29, 41, 43, 53, 55–60, 67, 69, 81, 90,

102–104, 106, 173–175, 186, 187, 197, 203, 209, 212, 220, 231, 277, 286, 289–292, 335, 354, 374, 401, 402, 405, 406, 409, 410, 412, 413, 420, 429, 440, 442, 447, 506, 507, 510, 515, 517, 532–535, 587 Ideology, 16, 17, 21, 59, 61, 65, 66, 106, 146, 177, 181, 247, 259, 276, 280, 290, 322, 323, 420, 422, 425, 429, 431, 438, 449, 453, 487, 507, 510, 517, 518, 521, 534, 535 Ihumātao, 34 Immigration, 23, 96, 179, 243, 250, 255–257, 285, 389 Imperial, imperialism, ix, 17, 21–23, 38, 65, 77, 82, 101, 121, 221, 222, 225, 227, 271, 336, 340, 343, 344, 347, 364, 408, 439, 449, 455, 463, 467, 478, 505–511, 516–518, 520–522, 534, 536–537 India, Indian, 6, 24, 25, 28, 78, 90–92, 94, 96, 183, 222, 228, 243, 375, 449, 508, 514, 531–533 Residential Schools (see Residential Schools) Indigeneity, 105, 189, 203, 301, 320, 327, 402, 412, 534–535 Indigenous archaeology, 55 Australians, 24, 56, 101–122, 151, 174, 188, 269–271, 275, 393, 395, 404, 410 commemorations, 2, 4, 8, 102 curatorship, 211 knowledges, 46, 68, 88, 301, 329, 363, 407, 408, 550 museums, 210, 437–455 nation, x, 197, 281, 289, 319, 328, 333, 454, 463 queer, 209 Survivance, 209 voices, 120, 141, 288, 366, 374, 401, 408–409, 412, 413, 440, 453 Indigenous Freedom Fighters Day 20th January, 168 Indigenous Peoples Day, 450 Indonesia, 26 Intergenerational trauma, 91, 133, 138, 141, 289, 411, 412, 544 Interpretive, 9, 204–206, 229, 430, 494, 496, 498, 499, 569, 570

 INDEX 

Inuit, 88 Irony, 2, 68, 187, 299, 364, 366, 422, 488 J Jack of Cape Grim, 152, 153 Jackson, Moana, 34, 35, 38, 39, 46 James Cook University, xiii, 57, 60, 61, 64, 66, 67, 69, 356, 367 Japan, 15, 22, 228 Jim Crow, 319, 335 Johnson, Boris, 23 K Kalkadoon, vii, viii, xii, xiv, 58, 405 Kenya, 254, 534 Ko te kai a te rangatira, he korero (Conversation is the sustenance of chiefs), 46–47 Kryzkalnis (Lithuania), 425 Ku Klux Klan, 334 L La Perouse, Sydney, 134, 135, 176, 344 La Trobe, Charles, 155, 157, 158, 161 Land Back, 302, 309, 407 Land claims, 27 Lanne, William, 558–561, 563, 567, 569, 573 Latin American, 22, 223, 225, 448 Law, xiv, 16, 36, 40n7, 42–45, 65, 81, 82, 136, 161, 178, 225, 242, 244, 246, 247, 249, 251–255, 257, 258, 260, 264, 267, 269–271, 278, 282–286, 288, 290, 292, 333, 335, 354, 389, 462, 463, 465–474, 488, 490, 531, 534, 537, 577, 578 Lee, Robert E., 277, 322, 330, 332, 333, 404, 464, 492 Legacy, 6, 7, 13–15, 21, 29, 45, 46, 54, 60, 64, 66, 67, 69, 75, 79, 80, 83, 88, 90, 91, 96–99, 104, 146, 152, 167, 225, 241–243, 249, 251–259, 263–269, 271, 273, 282–285, 299, 304, 333, 340, 341, 343, 346, 347, 370, 388, 389, 393, 437, 440, 449–453, 455, 463, 492, 494, 516,

603

531, 533, 544, 545, 548, 550, 552, 554, 559, 573 Legal, 34, 37, 43, 147, 161–163, 226, 241–244, 249, 251, 254, 257, 259, 269–271, 284, 285, 288, 302, 311, 320, 331, 334–336, 369, 406, 444, 470, 489, 510, 578 Lenin, Vladimir, 423, 424, 427, 428 Lest We Forget, 166 Liberating Soviet Soldier monument (Budapest, Hungary), 423 Lieux de mémoire, 440–442 Lithuania, 4, 420, 422–426, 428, 429, 431 Logic of elimination, 60, 409 Lost Cause myth, 319–321, 326 Lubyanskaya Square (Moscow, Russia), 425, 426 Lutruwita, 6, 115, 152–154, 152n1, 156, 157, 159, 163, 165, 168, 557, 559, 561, 562, 564–566, 573, 583 M Mabo, 164, 287n11, 288n12 MacDonald, John A., 6, 89, 91–99 Macquarie, Lachlan, vii, viii, x, xii–xiv, 18, 21, 29, 55, 60, 62–64, 66, 67, 277, 279, 280, 419, 580, 581 Macquarie University, xiii, 57, 60–62, 64, 66, 67, 69, 264, 279 Maipi, Taitimu, 33, 40 Maitland Brown Memorial (Fremantle, Western Australia), 430 Make America Great Again, 23 Mandela, Nelson, 82, 529–532 Mandela Rhodes Foundation, 82 Maohi, 184 Māori, 3, 6, 25, 33n1, 34–46, 35n2, 35n3, 38n6, 101, 111, 113, 147, 174, 175, 182–187, 182n5, 196, 274, 343, 345 Marginalisation, 177, 257, 396, 402, 408, 413, 544, 577 Marx, Karl, 16, 25, 428 Massacre, ix, x, xiii, 3, 15, 63, 127, 128, 133, 135–139, 141–144, 148, 155–157, 249, 265, 266, 268, 368, 462, 476, 575, 578, 581–583, 588, 590–592 Maulboyheenner, 6, 151–172

604 

INDEX

Melbourne, 6, 59, 61, 104, 107, 120, 129, 136, 139, 152, 155–157, 163–166, 168, 171, 277, 282, 404 Memento Park (Budapest, Hungary), 3, 422–423, 426–429, 431 Memorial, xii–xiv, 5, 6, 13–30, 37, 38, 57, 110, 115, 117, 118, 127–149, 171, 172, 217, 220, 228–232, 228n5, 266, 267, 284, 288, 298, 320–322, 324–326, 329–330, 333, 353, 366, 393, 402, 405, 419, 420, 422, 423, 425, 440, 450, 453, 455, 462, 486, 495, 505–522, 527, 532, 535, 536, 561, 582, 583, 589–591 Memory colonial, 38 counter-memory, 330, 453 Indigenous, 137, 220 politics of, 281 race and, 13–30 settler, 13–30, 69 Métis, 6, 87, 88, 93 Middle East, 15, 19, 25, 96 Migration, 120, 175, 177, 179, 243, 257 Mi’kmaq Nation, 88 Mining, 27, 78, 158, 218–223, 225–232, 228n5, 278, 320, 330, 462, 469, 476, 579 Misremembering, 38 Mitakoodi, 405 Moana, 184 Monument Avenue, 441 to the Hungarian Socialist Republic (Budapest, Hungary), 428 Removal Brigade, 450, 451 Monuments Project, 461 Morrison, Scott, 23, 66, 276, 279, 371, 393, 479, 575, 584, 585 Morrison, Toni, 116, 320, 323, 324, 336 Moscow (Russia), 3, 420, 422, 425, 426, 429, 431 Mother of Cross Hill monument, 425 Murder, xiv, 2, 14, 15, 41, 90, 96, 160, 162, 163, 167, 247–249, 267, 279, 284, 330–332, 393, 404, 452, 485, 489, 499, 531, 577, 580, 581, 583 Museum, xiii, 7, 8, 17, 54, 121, 129, 130, 133, 137, 145–147, 187,

204–206, 208–213, 220, 231, 266, 268, 274, 281, 284, 292, 302, 304, 308, 309, 311–313, 324, 325, 332, 333, 340, 341, 344, 353, 420, 422–424, 426, 428, 437, 440, 441, 449–455, 485–500, 520, 532, 533, 536 Muzeum (Moscow, Russia), 425 Myall Creek, Memorial, 128, 141–144 Myth, mythologising, xii, 4, 7, 23, 25, 26, 29, 36, 65, 76, 103, 207, 265, 272, 285, 287, 297–315, 319, 320, 326, 329, 346, 355, 375, 411, 559, 576, 582 N Naarm (Melbourne), 6, 157–160, 162, 163, 165, 167, 277, 404 Nama, 403 Nationalism, 16, 56, 201, 441, 446, 489 National Resting Place, 144, 146–149 Native American, 3, 7, 46, 224, 301, 302, 314, 332, 402, 406, 407, 410–413, 449, 485n2 Nazi, 332, 364, 423, 533 Necro-transport, 476 Négritude, 534 N8vTakeover, 410–412 Neoliberal, 27–29, 68, 493 Neo-nationalist, 405 New Delhi (India), 422 New York Times, 22, 332, 449, 450 New York, US, 2, 177, 226, 298, 402, 412, 437–440, 449–452, 454, 455 New Zealand, see Aotearoa New Zealand Non-white, 13, 14, 17, 23, 270, 271, 312, 336, 539, 585 Northwest tribe, 153 Nova Scotia, 89 Nugent’s (2015) analysis of, 369 NYC Stands with Standing Rock, 437, 450 O Oñate, Juan de, 298 Ontario, 89, 92, 543, 545, 547, 551 Oppression, oppressor, oppressed, x, xi, 4, 25, 30, 34, 42, 96, 174, 178,

 INDEX 

187, 209, 248, 299, 305, 322, 324, 327, 329, 333, 358, 365, 368, 371, 386, 404, 408, 413, 420, 430, 443, 445, 446, 468, 479, 517, 528–531, 534, 536, 538, 583 Oral history, vii, 46, 135, 137, 144, 266, 282, 289, 328–329, 333, 353, 354, 368, 374, 487, 581, 582, 590 Oxford (UK), 58, 78, 82, 341, 344, 427, 430 P Pacific, 15, 24, 25, 182, 183, 185, 253, 285, 334, 340, 347 Pacific Island indebted labour, 243, 244 Pākeha, 43 Palawa, 152–162, 152n1, 165, 559–563, 566–568, 570, 573, 574, 579, 583, 587 Papua New Guinea, 26, 253, 254 Parihaka, 34 Park of Arts (Moscow, Russia), 422, 425–426, 428, 429, 431 Parliament Hill, 93, 94, 98, 99 Patriarchy, 30, 280, 451 Perth, xii, 61, 109, 111, 278, 466, 468–470, 479, 577 Port Phillip, 154–156, 160–162 Postcolonial, 13, 17, 43, 83, 120, 227, 324, 507, 531, 532, 534, 536, 537 Post-Soviet, viii, 57 Poverty Bay, 3, 186 Privilege, 13, 17, 23, 44, 55, 59, 68, 79, 82, 245, 269, 270, 272–275, 306, 322, 402, 403, 407–409, 420, 495, 497, 568, 579, 584 Protect Pūtiki, 34 Protest methods, 43 Pukehinahina, 36, 37 Purea, 184 Q Québec, 89 Queen Elizabeth, 135, 185 Queensland, vii, viii, xi, 7, 64, 144, 152, 228, 230, 241–249, 248n1, 251–255, 257, 258, 264–268, 271,

605

274, 281, 283, 289–291, 342, 348, 351–375, 405, 583 Queen Victoria, 21, 24, 29, 225, 277, 282, 404, 505–522, 543, 563 Queer, 209, 383, 388, 389, 396 R Racism, racist, 2, 3, 6, 13–30, 38–40, 44, 46, 75–83, 91, 96, 109, 114, 117, 120, 121, 135, 177, 188, 248–250, 259, 269, 273, 275, 277, 278, 281, 285–287, 308, 320–323, 325, 331, 334–336, 340, 342, 365, 368, 385, 389–393, 395, 397, 405, 421, 437, 440, 443, 449–453, 455, 485–487, 485n1, 485n2, 489–500, 518, 521, 527–539, 544, 554, 571, 574, 577, 578, 588, 589 Ramsay Centre for Western Civilisation, 27 Reason and reckoning, 7, 241, 263–293 Reconciliation, 68, 82, 91, 92, 97–99, 119, 141, 145, 164, 278, 279, 281, 286, 320–322, 326, 328, 330, 335, 365, 370–374, 531, 545, 548, 550–552, 554, 580 Redfern, 107, 134, 135, 174–180 Red shirts, 334 Re-enactment, 135, 144, 351–354, 364, 369–375, 391 Refugees, 177, 257, 389, 390, 410, 463, 465, 469–472, 478, 479 Reinterpret, 427, 517 Reiterdenkmal, 403, 408 Religion, 90, 96, 109–115, 121, 161, 163, 194, 199, 200, 243, 244, 282, 298, 447 Rememory, 320, 322–325, 328, 336 Renaming, 2, 29, 41, 55, 93, 98, 280, 323, 331, 345, 437, 450, 451, 455, 464, 468, 543–555 Repatriation, 147, 341 Republic, 24, 322 Reservation Dogs, 299n1, 299n2 Residential Schools, 3, 46, 89–91, 93–95, 97–99, 286, 518, 544–547, 549, 551, 553

606 

INDEX

Resistance, v, vii, xi, xii, 5–8, 14, 15, 42, 44, 82, 116, 134, 152, 157, 167, 168, 178, 180, 181, 187, 188, 259, 260, 267, 274, 281, 283, 284, 287, 322, 329, 333, 352, 354, 365, 375, 389, 396, 397, 427, 444, 448, 450, 452, 454, 475, 487, 495, 497, 529, 555, 582, 588, 589, 591 Re-storying, 404 Returned and Services League (RSL) of Australia, 102, 103, 105, 107–112, 114–117, 120 Revisionist, 15, 136, 324, 517–520 Rhodes, Cecil John, x, 3, 6, 14, 18, 29, 75–83, 220, 320, 404, 408, 419, 421, 530, 533, 534, 537 Rhodes Must Fall (RMF), 6, 14, 29, 75, 83, 320, 331, 404, 419 Right-wing, 26–29, 38n6, 280, 323, 450, 520, 530, 537, 587 Ritual, 101, 102, 105, 107, 109–111, 113, 115, 120, 121, 183, 223, 302, 322, 328, 470 Robbins Island, 152, 153 Robinson, George Augustus, 153–157, 161, 163, 164 Rome, 28 Roosevelt, Theodore, 8, 437–455 Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), 92 Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody (RCIADC), 393, 471, 473 Russia, 193, 194, 199, 425–426, 429 Rutherford Falls, 7, 8, 297–315, 401–413 Ryerson, Egerton, 46, 97, 310, 543–545, 547–552, 554 Ryerson University, 8, 543 S Sámi, 7, 193–201 Sandcreek Massacre National Historic Site, 139 Satire, 346, 396 School, x, 46, 78, 89–92, 94, 99, 135, 143, 151, 155, 197, 199, 200, 243–245, 276, 298, 302, 307, 312,

323, 346, 393, 406, 464, 489, 518, 538, 543–547, 549, 551, 553, 577, 584 Sculpture, 224–226, 228n5, 266, 282, 391, 425, 431, 455, 479, 480, 490–492, 496–498, 506, 563 Second World War, 90, 103–105, 109, 176, 195, 364, 591 Sedition, 333 Segregation, 3, 58, 81, 91, 117, 308n4, 319, 333–335 Self-determination, 35, 178, 179, 194, 197, 252, 444, 533, 534, 536 Servicepeople, 105, 107, 108, 113, 115, 120, 121 Settler colonial/colonialism, 13–30, 38, 42, 45, 90, 259, 269, 276, 327, 341, 374, 403, 405, 407, 412, 439, 451, 453, 463, 528, 529, 534, 536–537 hegemonic narratives of, 403 memory, 220, 476 mythologies, 14, 38, 69, 298, 299, 402 possession, 37, 38, 40, 41, 46, 66, 359, 374, 402, 406, 583 sovereignty, 33–47, 66, 300, 355, 402, 403, 405, 407, 411, 412, 444, 445, 463, 465, 467, 474 state, 8, 13, 34, 35, 37–39, 41, 45, 46, 55, 56, 58, 65, 269, 327, 345, 367, 401, 403, 405, 406, 448, 462, 463, 466, 470, 471, 473–476, 478 territoriality, 407, 410 Settlers’ Drive, 282, 283, 287–293 Sitting bull, 164 Six nations of the grand river, 90 Slavery, 14–16, 22, 24, 25, 83, 118, 119, 141, 225, 257, 281, 285, 326, 328, 331, 371, 411, 430, 478, 479, 487, 494n5, 496, 546 Smoking ceremony, 128, 134, 144, 468, 469 Social engineering, 189 justice, 7, 242, 364, 387, 388, 395–397, 499

 INDEX 

Soldier’s monument, 298 Solidarity, 7, 129, 141, 275, 278, 320, 323, 326, 383, 390, 391, 395–397, 403, 410, 412, 439, 440, 444–448, 450, 453–455, 470, 485, 528, 538 South Africa, 3, 5, 14, 22, 29, 57, 75, 77–83, 141, 227–230, 324, 325, 331, 408, 413, 422, 464, 529–533, 536, 537 Southern Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), 528 South West Africa, 403 Sovereignty, 33–47, 67, 111, 175, 260, 281, 282, 292, 298–301, 306, 328, 329, 352, 354, 364, 366, 389, 410, 411, 445, 586 Soviet Heroic Memorial (Budapest, Hungary), 427 Spanish Empire, 223 Spatial politics, 354, 440–444 Stalin, Joseph, viii, 425 Stalinism, viii, xiv, 279, 421 Standing Strong (Mash Koh Wee Kah Pooh Win) Task Force, 8, 544 Statue, statues colonial, ix, 5, 21, 23, 26, 33, 34, 38, 40, 46, 47, 83, 226, 385, 404, 408, 409, 422, 463, 475, 476, 536 parks, ix, xiii, 420, 422–429, 431, 531, 564 Suppression of Rebellion Act (1863), 37, 40, 43 Supremacy, 6, 8, 14, 17, 18, 22, 23, 33, 34, 37–40, 46, 75, 76, 146, 268, 270, 273, 274, 277, 305, 319, 329, 330, 335, 336, 357, 358, 363, 368, 373, 383, 388, 389, 397, 437–455, 487–492, 494, 495, 497, 498, 500, 527–539, 576, 577, 588 Sydney, vii, ix, xiii, 24, 59, 61–63, 67, 107, 130, 134, 134n4, 155, 156, 173–181, 183, 185, 188, 189, 228, 231, 243, 292, 345, 349, 353, 354, 371, 406, 410, 475, 478, 585 Sykes, A., 35

607

T Takaparawhā (Bastion Point), 34 Tasmania, xii, 6, 115, 119, 131, 135, 139, 145, 152–154, 152n1, 253, 341, 478, 557, 558, 562, 564–566, 568, 573, 579, 583 Te Tiriti o Waitangi, 35 Tı ̄puna, 185, 186 Tiritiri O Te Moana, 184 Tolaga, 184 Toronto, 97, 543 Toronto Metropolitan University (TMU), 8, 97, 543–555 Torres Strait Islander, 164, 249n2 Torture, 14, 90, 464, 470, 475, 537 Truganini, xii, 152, 157, 160, 162, 163, 165, 341, 559 Trump, Donald, ix, 23, 277, 331, 450, 537 Truth-telling, xiv, 2, 6, 8, 9, 55, 61, 66, 69, 88, 119, 133, 135, 138, 259, 266, 273, 275, 277, 280, 282, 283, 286–289, 299, 344, 364, 409, 467, 548, 560–562, 567, 570, 573–592 Tunnerminnerwait and Maulboyheenner Commemoration Committee (TMCC), 6, 151–172 Tupaia, 183, 184 Turanga, 173–175, 180–186 Tūranga-nui-a-Kiwa, 174n1 Turapina, 153 Turnbull, Malcolm, viii, 66, 279, 575, 586 Twitter, 113, 301, 393, 410–412, 493, 529, 585 Two-eyed seeing, 87–99 U Ū awa, 185 Ujamaa movement, 535 Uluru, 586 Uluru Statement, 138, 241, 264, 281, 290, 586 United Kingdom (UK), x, 3, 5, 14, 76, 83, 146, 211, 341, 342, 344, 365, 367, 419, 421, 430, 431, 505, 506, 518, 520, 521, 532

608 

INDEX

United Nations (UN), 403 United States of America (USA), ix, 3, 5, 167, 256, 302, 332, 367, 412, 419–421, 430, 431, 537, 574 Unite the Right, 277, 330, 332, 404, 451, 489 University of Cape Town (UCT), 14, 29, 75, 79, 82, 404, 531, 537 University of New South Wales, 24 University of Sydney, 28, 53, 57–61, 67, 69 University of Texas, 430 V Vandalism, vii, viii, xii, xiii, 8, 33, 34, 39, 42, 43, 45, 46, 187, 188, 310, 352, 365, 367, 405, 431, 487, 517, 578, 589 Van Diemen’s Land, 154 Venice Charter, The, 54 Veterans, 101, 102, 104–109, 111–114, 117, 118, 121 Vilnius (Lithuania), 423 Visual art, xii, 128, 129, 164, 283, 561–563 Voice, Treaty, Truth, x W Waiheke Island, 34 Waka, 185, 186 Walter, Trent, 156, 168, 171, 172 War, ix, x, xii, xiv, 15, 27, 34–38, 67, 69, 76, 77, 79, 82, 101–106, 108, 110–112, 115–117, 119–121, 131, 139, 151, 154, 156, 159, 161, 169, 184, 232, 265, 267, 268, 281, 284, 287–290, 322, 328, 330, 331, 334, 335, 358, 364, 374, 396n7, 401, 411, 419–431, 476, 527, 529, 583, 591 Warrane, xiii, 1, 2, 6, 160, 176, 277, 474, 478, 574 Warriors of Aboriginal Resistance (WAR), 404

Washington, George, 312, 323, 588 Waterloo, 173–181, 185–188 Waziyatawin, 309 Wednesday Action Group, 165 Welcome to Country, 109–111, 113–115, 118 Western civilisation, 23–29, 224 Westernport, 155, 157–159 Whakairo, 46, 182, 185 White genocide, 405 identity, 17 ignorance, 34, 39, 41, 42, 273 imperialist, 76 masculinity, 439 power, 13–30, 75, 355, 488, 529 privilege, 14–18, 22, 27, 82, 272, 285, 544 racism, 77, 79, 80, 82, 83, 531 settlers, 4, 26, 37, 38, 42, 63, 64, 80–82, 101, 139, 155, 250, 276, 287, 288, 327, 339, 340, 343, 448, 473 settler sovereignty, 33–47 supremacy, 8, 14, 17, 18, 22, 23, 33, 34, 37–40, 46, 75, 76, 146, 270, 273, 274, 277, 305, 319, 330, 335, 336, 358, 363, 368, 383, 388, 389, 397, 437–455, 487–492, 494, 495, 497, 498, 500, 527–539, 576, 577, 588 White Australia Policy, 15, 112, 117, 257, 270 White man’s burden, 22, 25, 26 Whiteness, xix, 13, 14, 16–18, 23, 41, 79–81, 189, 256, 273, 274, 281, 285, 290, 301, 305, 368, 444, 446, 485n1, 491, 539 Whitewash, white-wash, 29, 367, 576 Windradyne, xiv, xv Winnipeg, Manitoba, 404, 514 Wirrayaraay, 156 Woke culture, 23 Wombeetch Puyuun, viii Women, viii, 7, 37n5, 38, 57, 63, 103, 112, 130, 131, 151,

 INDEX 

153, 156–160, 163, 184, 206, 207, 244–250, 252, 254, 259, 268, 286, 321, 327, 334, 355, 364, 451, 462, 466, 480, 493, 582, 590 World-making, 354, 375, 439, 443, 448, 452–455 Woureddy, 153, 157 Wybalenna, 153–155, 558, 559

Y Yabun, 134 Yagan, xii, xiv Yankee, 158, 160 Yarra tribes, 155 Z Zheng, Admiral, 26

609