Public History Review Vol. 28, 2021 © 2021 by the author(s). This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) License (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/), allowing third parties to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and to remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially, provided the original work is properly cited and states its license. Citation: Scates, B. 2021. Set in Stone?: Dialogical Memorialisation and the Beginnings of Australia’s Statue Wars. Public History Review, 28, 1–12. http://dx.doi. org/10.5130/phrj.v28i0.7494 ISSN 1833- 4989 | Published by UTS ePRESS | https://epress. lib.uts.edu.au/journals/index. php/phrj Set in Stone?: Dialogical Memorialisation and the Beginnings of Australia’s Statue Wars Bruce Scates DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5130/phrj.v28i0.7494 Monuments proclaiming the white colonisation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander lands are scattered across the Australian landscape. Over the length and breadth of the continent, possession is marked and proclaimed – from placenames that subvert Indigenous understandings of country, to plaque, cairn and statue marking the passage of white ‘pioneers’. The Explorers’ Memorial, set in the Esplanade Reserve in Fremantle, Western Australia, typifies the later genre. Raised in 1913 it honours three white men killed in the far North West over fifty years earlier. Their deaths occurred after several months of white violence and provocation. In Western Australia, as elsewhere, blood marked the shifting boundaries of the black/white frontier.1 The memorial harks back to ‘the heroic age’ of Australian statuary. At the turn of the nineteenth century, and well into the twentieth, White Australians hungered for founding myths of nationhood. Australia, as Graeme Davison put it, ‘seemed to be a land without monuments’. ‘Attuned to the classical traditions of Europe’ and ‘blind’ to countless millennia of ‘Aboriginal history beneath their feet’, the new settlers craved some ‘tangible reminder… of past triumphs and departed heroes’.2 And so – through stone and bronze – they crafted a coloniser narrative. It was a ‘pioneer mythology’ of white valour and Aboriginal ‘blood lust’ that would long pass unchallenged into Western Australia’s history books.3 It rationalised the dispossession of First Nations Peoples as progress and exonerated the theft and occupation of Aboriginal lands. Charting Commemorative Contours Public history is an historical practice embedded in place and much of the focus of our work has been on the shaping and reshaping of civic landscapes.4 With that in mind, let us walk (vicariously) around the base of this memorial, alert to its form, purpose and symbolism. The monument is ringed by four bronze plaques, each sculpted by the Italian artist Pietro Porcelli. Green with age and worn by the brisk salt air, they are read each day by eager tourists, passers- by, the idle and the curious. Their purpose is instructive – they tell a story and fashion DECLARATION OF CONFLICTING INTEREST The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. FUNDING The author(s) received no  financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. 1 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ http://dx.doi.org/10.5130/phrj.v28i0.7494 http://dx.doi.org/10.5130/phrj.v28i0.7494 https://epress.lib.uts.edu.au/journals/index.php/phrj https://epress.lib.uts.edu.au/journals/index.php/phrj https://epress.lib.uts.edu.au/journals/index.php/phrj http://dx.doi.org/10.5130/phrj.v28i0.7494 a mythology. Frederick Panter, James Harding and William Goldwyer, the fronting plaque declares, were attacked at night and ‘murdered’ in their sleep by ‘treacherous natives’. No explanation is offered for the killings but that single word ‘murder’ served to attribute blame. The land where these men died is portrayed as hostile and alien, ‘Lone Wilds’ peopled by no one of consequence. This was a ‘terra incognito’, a blank space on the map awaiting discovery by Europeans. Aboriginal people are caricatured as savages, the explorers eulogised as ‘intrepid pioneers’.5 As we turn the corner, those dead white men stare back at us, each of the explorers’ faces rendered in bas relief by Porcelli’s steady hand. Portraits in bronze, their features are idealised, sanctified by martyrdom. They bear no resemblance to the battered skulls Maitland Brown scraped clean in the bush and carried back to Fremantle. ‘Sanctified by their martrydom’ – a memorial portrait commemorating the explorers’ murder by Aboriginal people. These photographs were used as a model for Pietro Porcelli’s bas reliefs (below), the commanding visual text of the Explorers’ Monument. (Battye Library) Brown is described as the ‘intrepid leader of the government search and punitive party’. The monument stands as ‘an appreciate token of remembrance’ to this service to the state. A life substantial bust of this ‘pioneer pastoralist and premier politician’ crowns the granite pedestal, its gaze fixed upon the Indian ocean beyond. Across these waters Brown and his party travelled over a thousand miles north, determined to find the explorers and to avenge them. Finally, the memorial pays tribute to its sponsor. Turning the corner, we are confronted by George Julius Brockman, portly but dignified, dressed in a style that befits a public benefactor. For Brockman, this monument served to enshrine himself in history. He would die six months before it was completed, but not before commissioning that bas relief of himself. This reminds us of the power and privilege that arguably lies behind the building of every great memorial. Lady Forest herself would unveil the structure, lending Imperial sanction to this statement in the public domain. And white power and privilege was expressed Scates Public History Review, Vol. 28, 20212 in other ways as well. In a sense, Brockman was the heir to the explorers’ ‘sacrifice’. He made his fortune on the land that they died for, a fortune based on the rich runs of the Northern cattle stations worked by cheap – often unpaid – Aboriginal labour. So this monument was much more than three mens’ memorial. It was raised as a tribute to Brockman’s generation, rugged pioneers, men of destiny and consequence, the enterprising white colonisers of what was seen as an ‘empty’ black continent.6 A fourth and final plaque depicts Maitland Brown’s discovery of the explorers’ remains. Two bodies are framed by a makeshift tent, visual ‘confirmation’ that these men were butchered in their sleep. A third body lays several feet distant, a revolver (with four shots discharged) suggestively beside it. Approaching the scene are two figures chained by the neck. These are the ‘hostages’ who led Brown to the camp. For days these Karajarri men had been locked in the hold of Brown’s boat, subject to interrogation and abuse. White men flanked by their horses complete the scene. Well- equipped and heavily armed, the punitive party took the guise of a military expedition. And the figure of Brown himself commands this visual ensemble- one hand raised in the air, mounted tall on horseback. Regardless of ‘risk’ to himself, he would bring black ‘murderers’ to ‘justice’.7 The killing began with the hostages, amongst the first of many black deaths in custody. Brown never bothered recording their names. One of the prisoners died quickly, shot in the back as he ran for the safety of a thicket. The other lived just long enough to confess to the explorer’s ‘murder’; at least that is what Maitland Brown would tell the authorities back in Fremantle. One thing is beyond dispute: the shooting of the hostages began a killing spree of terrible proportions. A few days later Brown and his party encountered a group of hostile ‘natives’. They were ‘ambushed’, he told the Governor, yet another claim historians must read with scepticism. That skirmish cost the lives of around twenty Aboriginal people. None of the ‘ambushed’ whites were killed or seriously wounded. Brown’s account of the incident laboured a by now familiar narrative of white courage verses wanton savagery: the natives stood their ground with the savage, though not cool, pluck of an Englishman, and not one of the number wounded uttered a sound expressive of either fear or pain… they disdained to throw down their arms, resisting savagely to the last. It was evident that this was the first lesson taught to the natives in this district of the superiority of civilised men and weapons over the savage… they live only for the present these natives – strategy, cunning, lying and a thirst for blood are the first creeds taught to them.8 Pietro Porcelli’s bas reliefs (Photograph Bruce Scates) Scates Public History Review, Vol. 28, 20213 In truth, it was Brown’s ‘thirst for blood’ that seemed insatiable. In the same week he sailed for Fremantle, Brown took two more ‘natives’ captive, presumedly to stand trial for the deaths of the explorers. One escaped, the other died trying. For each of the dead explorers, at least three Aboriginal people had been killed. Such was the arithmetic of white terror on the frontier. Contested Commemoration In many ways the memorial raised in Fremantle typified the monuments of its age. ‘Australian frontier history’, as Don Watson had observed, ‘was rapidly followed by the erection of [such] monuments’. Tributes to the imagined virtues of white settlers, they rationalised the occupation of First Nations’ lands ‘The killing began with the hostages’. The London Illustrated News (7 October 1865) reports the murder of white explorers on the Westralian frontier. The claim that these men were ‘murdered in their sleep’ by ‘treacherous natives’ was a convenient fiction. The evidence of the Inquest revealed that Goldwyer stood guard outside the tent and that his revolver had been fired several times. Porcelli’s bas relief of the killing. Note the position of the body. (Photograph Bruce Scates) Scates Public History Review, Vol. 28, 20214 as the inexorable march of progress.9 And yet – in other ways – this memorial is quite exceptional. White violence on the frontier often had – as Watson, Griffiths and others have remarked – a secretive character. Pastoralists and police spoke of ‘dispersing’ the natives; that very phrase ‘settlement’ belied the forcible dispossession of Aboriginal people from their lands.10 The Explorers’ Monument, by contrast, reflects what Bernard Smith once called ‘the ethics of conquest’.11 There are few explicit references to the murderous work of punitive parties on colonial monuments. But here white violence against Aboriginal people is publicly proclaimed, acknowledged and exonerated. A ‘subversion of the whole commemorative framework’. Rae Minniecon speaks at the installation of the counter memorial in April 1994. The new plaque was one of the first public recognitions of prior sovereignty in Australia. An instance of dialogical memorialisation, it critiques the lies of white history. (Photograph Bruce Scates) And there is a second (and for the purposes of this article) far more critical point of distinction. Tributes to white pioneers once sat comfortably in white Australia’s civic landscape. Calls to remembrance, they enshrined, paradoxically, a ‘cult of disremembering’.12 The Explorers’ Monument, by contrast, became a site of active contestation, its remaking a subversion of a whole commemorative framework. In 1994, the United Nations Year of Indigenous peoples, a fifth plaque was laid at the memorial’s base. It acknowledged ‘the right of Aboriginal people to defend their land’, outlined ‘the history of provocation that ended in the explorers’ deaths’ and commemorated ‘all … Aboriginal people who died during the invasion of their country’. This is a striking instance of what historians have called dialogical memorialisation, one view of the past taking issue with another. From its opening line ‘This plaque was placed here by people who found the monument before you offensive’ to its closing statement in language – Mapa Jarriya- Nyalaku – this counter monument decries a history ‘from one perspective only’. It displaces ‘the perspective of the white ‘settler’ and offers an Indigenous reading of violence on the frontier.13 The remaking of the Explorers’ Memorial was one of the first Australian expressions of what’s come to be called ‘the Statue Wars’. In time, the processes of dialogical memorialisation undertaken in Fremantle may well be adopted elsewhere.14 For over a century, monuments to Cook, Macquarie and others reduced complex and often contradictory historical actors to simplistic, one- dimensional caricature. Heroic statuary bled the past of its complexity and rendered it lifeless in stone or bronze. But, as the articles assembled here Scates Public History Review, Vol. 28, 20215 attest, there is a pressing need for new, inclusive and explicitly disruptive narratives. And that willingness to reckon with and repudiate a racist present and past is at once local and global in its span. In recent months the Black Lives Matter Movement has highlighted the moral and political imperative to remove those Great White Men figuratively if not literally from their pedestals.15 Such monuments, as we’ve seen, were planted in public spaces as statements of white power and privilege. And their continued presence there – unaltered – perpetuates a historical continuum of violence, discrimination and dispossession. It denies Indigenous sovereignty and traps Australia in its past. The fate of the monuments examined in this volume will almost certainly be decided on a case- by- case basis. Local communities, not government edicts, are likely to drive that process. This purging of the past may be a necessary corrective to white history. But how these decisions are taken, and whose voices are empowered in that process, is equally important. For generations, white history has marginalised or excluded Indigenous perspectives. The challenge now is to enter into dialogue, embrace what the Constitutional Convention at Uluru called a process of ‘truth telling’ and transform symbols of a racist past into platforms for reconciliation.16 Reflection and Re- appraisal It is now three decades since agitation to change the Explorer’s memorial began. At this critical juncture in Australia’s history, as we grapple with the legacy of a deeply troubled past, now might be the time to take stock. Accordingly, the remainder of this article will shift our focus, away from what Maria Nugent called the ‘the history told on [a] memorial’, to ‘the history of the memorial itself ’.17 This inquiry into the politics of remembrance will address three related questions, and all at the core of critical public history. Firstly, when, how and why was that monument remade in Fremantle, what was significance of the project, and how did it proceed? Secondly, and equally importantly, what did that project fail to do? Recent work on memorial cultures shifts our focus to alternative visions, asking us to consider the monuments and anti- monuments that were never actually raised. What might those other possibilities have been in Fremantle? Finally, and most importantly, what remains to be done? Decolonising Australia’s commemorative landscape is a vast and daunting project. As any number of Indigenous commentators have noted, there is much unfinished business here. We begin with what was achieved. A counter monument was raised in Fremantle. And when this project began back in 1988, that did not seem likely at all. Agitation to change the Explorers’ Monument took place against the divisive backdrop of Australia’s bi- centenary celebrations. It was an unfortunate time for the practice of history. From the spectacle of tall ships arriving in Sydney harbour to the concocted community of ‘Bicentennial Barbies’, Australians were enticed to celebrate their nationhood, a common destiny in which, we were told, we all had an equal share. At one level, the rhetoric and re- enactment of 1988 was comical and carnivalesque, a bicentennial ditty, bellowed inanely across the airways, capturing the mood of the day: Let’s lend a hand And show the world How great we all can be All those years of sweat and tears It’s our Bicentenary18 At another, that repeated refrain – ‘Celebrate, let’s make it [great]’! – embraced that ‘cult of disremembering’ again. It enshrined the beginnings of an ancient continent from the moment of white occupation and wilfully, brazenly, ignored the dispossession of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples from their lands. Scates Public History Review, Vol. 28, 20216 As with other protests that erupted across the country, the critique of the monument challenged this pluralist and unproblematic construction of Australia’s past. It was predictably condemned, in some quarters, as unwelcome and unnecessary, a precursor to what came to be called the ‘Black Armband’ view of history.19 The Fremantle Gazette pilloried critics of the monument as ‘emotional and subjective’, historians were accused (bizarrely) of misusing public funds and ‘urging a sense of guilt on the white community.’ Letters in response (and some plaintive protest at misquotation) were seldom published in reply.20 The use and abuse of the past in Australia’s bicentenary has been the subject of considerable inquiry, including scholarly reflection on the nature of public history itself. In a volume exploring the politics of 1988, Graeme Davison drew a stark dichotomy between what he called monumental history – a history sanctioned and solid in the public domain – and critical history – engagement with, and contestation of, the meanings of the past. Critical history, he concluded, often had an ‘essentially ephemeral’ character. In contrast to cairn, plaque and statue, its memory traces are ‘tattered banners’, ‘discarded handbills’, ‘faded graffiti’.21 Fleeting and physically fragile, these memory traces lack the authority of what Chris Healy aptly dubbed ‘brass dogma’.22 Davison would probably qualify that argument today (he is too reflective a historian not to) but there may be an echo of his thesis in recent commentary on Australia’s Statue Wars. ‘What has happened to statues?’ Julia Baird asked in a bristling and brilliant opinion piece, ‘they have been rolled into harbours, set aflame on their plinths, defaced with graffiti, hung with signs… public reckoning[s] with the ongoing legacy of slavery, the horrors of colonial expansion, and the fact that we have not considered violence against people of colour, or women’.23 Public reckonings, yes – and necessary ones. But also actions that usually leave no physical trace. Banners and handbills are buried in waste tips or ephemera collections, dissenting graffiti is quickly scrubbed away. An image of Edward Colston’s empty plinth after the statue of the slave owner had been cast in Bristol harbour is telling: History defined by its absence. One wonders what future generations will make of such empty space. Will absence induce, as a recent on- line forum on the Statue Wars suggested, a kind of historical amnesia?24 Monument means ‘to remember’ – and, in the case of the slave trade, there is surely a moral injunction not to forget. In other circumstances, the Explorers’ Memorial may well have suffered a similar fate. In June 1990, after long delay over the construction of the counter memorial, Maitland Brown’s bust was ‘chiselled’ from its granite pedestal and carried off in the night.25 Some would view this as a wilfully destructive act, an erasure of history. But there is another reading. The severing of Aboriginal heads was commonplace in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, sometimes in the name of science, often, as was the case with the resistance leader Yagan, a ghoulish instance of trophy hunting on the frontier.26 In that light, the beheading of a statue had enormous symbolic power. A subversion of longstanding historical practice, it was a creative reworking of a ugly colonial past. Even so, a replica of Brown’s bust was quickly reinstated, proving, some would say, Graeme Davison’s point. This was a powerful protest, but also an ephemeral one. In that light, the triumph of the counter monument is it’s permanence. Far more than that rusting dogma in bronze, it adds a new voice, a strident voice to the public domain. And what a powerful statement it is making. Today, it is accepted protocol (in many quarters) to acknowledge country, to recognise prior sovereignty, and even words like ‘invasion’ are at last entering public discourse. That was not the case in 1988. The counter memorial in Fremantle was approved four years before Mabo, two decades before the constitutional convention at Uluru, and long before the Black Rights Movement took to our streets. I am not claiming this statement was unprecedented. Hardly. From the moment of the first incursion on Aboriginal lands, first Nations people have asserted and reasserted their sovereignty. What I would suggest is that this plaque, acknowledging the right of Aboriginal people to defend their land, and addressing ‘settlement’ as ‘invasion’, is a measure of shifting public perceptions. A statement that was at once long overdue, and yet – paradoxically – ahead of its time. Scates Public History Review, Vol. 28, 20217 That counter monument made a powerful statement but equally important is the way that statement was made. The project began, as historical work often does, with a lecture in a classroom. Informed by the work of scholars like Henry Reynolds and Tom Stannage, the killings at La Grange were used to chart the changing pattern of violence on the frontier. That lecture was subsequently published, part of a collection edited by Stannage and Lenore Layman examining the politics and practice of commemoration in Western Australian. Arguably all history is an act of collaboration – but public history more so. What might have remained solitary research in the archives, framed by a single authorial voice, quickly widened out to a major civic campaign.27 That campaign has left its memory traces. The submissions of what was styled ‘the Public Action Project’ can still be found in the archives: circularised letters to the Mayor and Councillors of Fremantle, reproductions of archival evidence in weighty appendices; careful re- assessment of primary and secondary sources; liaison with press and government, endless fact- checking time and again. That labour was a vast and collective undertaking, all in the working party (and many others besides) played a part.28 The frame of reference here was wide, expansive and inclusive- elders of Perth’s Indigenous communities, historians and community leaders rallied around, reshaped and refined the submission.29 By far the most important part of that campaign was the involvement of Indigenous communities. This was facilitated by the work of Ray Minniecon, now a revered elder within First Nations communities, then a young Aboriginal theology student at Murdoch University. A descendent of the Kabi Kabi nation and the Gurang Gurang Nation in South East Queensland, Ray Minniecon travelled to Bidyadanga (La Grange) and gathered stories from the vibrant oral culture of the Karajarri people. At La Grange, they still remembered the massacre. And they numbered old men, women and children amongst its victims. Ray Minniecon would continue to work with both the Baldja network in Perth and Karajarri people up north. In 1994, he would speak at the installation of the counter memorial, in a ceremony ‘initiated and controlled by Aboriginal people’.30 What was achieved and how it was achieved is important. But like most movements for social change this project manoeuvred across a spectrum of possibilities. Yes, a counter memorial was raised – but not the first preference put to the Fremantle City Council. That involved not one plaque but several. They encircled the original monument, engaging not just with its text, but also with the visual narrative of its bar reliefs. Through text and image, the Explorers’ Monument spoke to the public. In this proposal, a series of counter memorials would speak back- critiquing each of the original monument’s claims, holding it accountable to history.31 That counter history would reproduce extracts from the Explorer’s diaries and contemporary accounts of the punitive expedition – demonstrating the murderous racist mindset of white colonialism. What the Fremantle city council ultimately agreed to was a truncated version of that extended counter- narrative. Arguably that was a lost opportunity, an opportunity to treat the Explorers’ Memorial for what it is, an artefact in civic space, inviting further, deeper and ongoing interrogation.32 That call for ongoing interrogation suggests yet another lost opportunity. Encouraged by the project’s initial success, Ray Minniecon and the La Grange community proposed a second memorial to frame the plaque that was passed by Council. It was a brilliant example of Aboriginal irony. The explorers killed and died for water; the new monument they suggested was a stylised version of a water hole, a central fountain offering water to all. The original monument was built by Pietro Porcelli, an Italian sculptor whose ancestry and artistry assured him of an honoured place in a city of immigrants. This new monument was designed by Ronny Cameron, an Aboriginal artist then incarcerated in Fremantle jail. The Explorer’s Memorial is an incitement to racial hatred – the proposal from Bidyadanga announced a gesture of reconciliation. ‘Let us all sit down together in Peace’ is inscribed in language at the base of the memorial.33 The Council – long divided over the question of the monument34 – had no funding line for so visionary a project, and the Fremantle Gazette warned ratepayers would be asked to foot the bill. So, what the Council Scates Public History Review, Vol. 28, 20218 termed an additional memorial was never raised. In the six years to follow, the Explorer’s tribute occupied a kind of limbo. It was discredited but not publicly repudiated, symbolic – perhaps – of white Australia’s failure to come to terms with its racist past. Then in 1993, during the Festival of Fremantle, ‘the monument idea was resurrected’ by the Baldja network. Baldja means coming together – and the monument would be a focal point for that group and others during the United Nations Year of Indigenous People. The original proposal was re- affirmed, this time with unanimous approval – and funding – by the Fremantle City Council. The First Report of the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation described this process as a ‘re- writing of history’: An important aspect of the whole recognition was the participation of all parties  – the Baldja Network, City of Fremantle, the historians, and in particular the people of La Grange, whose history they were commemorating. “We wanted the interpretation that murderers were justifiably punished amended to show Aborigines died defending the country from white invaders,” Glad Milroy of the Baldja Network said, “and it was important that it be done with the support, approval and involvement of people from La Grange”.35 That brings us to the final theme of our inquiry. What remains to be done? There are many who feel dialogical memorialisation offers a chance to ‘amend’ a ‘one- sided history’.36 The Australian Heritage Council recently cited the case of the Explorers’ Memorial as an instance of Indigenous communities contesting colonial narratives, asserting their sovereignty, and turning symbols of a racist past into positive statements of reconciliation. It notes that the intervention in Fremantle was not an attempt to ‘edit history’. Rather it was an attempt at a more open and expansive dialogue with the past. It sees history not as some final statement – but a contingent and contested narrative.37 Fremantle, in all this, seems to signal ‘a way forward’.38 And Indigenous Communities, as the Council of Aboriginal Reconciliation put it, invite all to ‘Walk Together’. But reflecting on the chequered history of the Explorers’ Memorial and on recent controversies inflamed by the Statue Wars might well take that invitation literally. Dialogues begin conversations – they should not end them. Walking Together The plaque raised in Fremantle was a necessary corrective to old lies writ deep in Australia’s history, the lie of Terra Nullius, of peaceful settlement, of brave pioneers murdered in their sleep. But correcting the history books, the plaques, the bronze dogma, isn’t enough. How do we truly decolonise the commemorative landscape? How, as Mariko Smith aptly puts it, can we ‘re- signify monuments’? How do we bend cold stone to accommodate multiple and complex narratives? And, most important of all, how can we ensure the centring of an Indigenous voice?39 As earlier noted, the Statement from the Heart at Uluru appealed to all Australians to embark on a journey of truth telling. To do that, white Australians must listen now to new stories, stories that transcend the particularities of white archives, stories told in new and often challenging ways. ‘The whitewash was scrapped away’ – reads a headline from the Herald after that ‘historic ceremony’ in Fremantle.40 But what lay beyond the whitewash, what did we see and hear in its place? We saw Noongar men from Pinjarra dance as they have done since time immemorial, steeping through and beyond history, keeping culture, alive and vibrant and strong. We heard Doris Edgar and John Dodo speak to us in language, a living testimony too long denied legitimacy in the history books – community memories of the trauma colonisation visited on this country, and words that stood witness to the triumph of survival. Their voices took issue with deep and enduring injustices. But they also offered choice and hope and healing. They addressed this country’s future as much its past. The ceremony ended as elders from Scates Public History Review, Vol. 28, 20219 Bidyadanga scattered dust from the site of the massacre and two white children laid wreaths of flowers decked in Aboriginal colours.41 This article ends then where it began, on Whadjuk- Noonyar Land in the Esplanade Park Fremantle. On that sunny April day in 1994, Ray Minnicon also stepped forth to speak. His life and work are an example of the bridging of cultures, and he told us how monuments that had once narrowed and distorted our view of the past can now open hearts and minds. This particular monument is a window into our past. It is a window into the way in which our country was invaded and the atrocities which have taken place with that invasion. But it is not only a window into our past, it is also a window into our present and if we want to understand the particular situation which we as Aboriginal people and non- Aboriginal people face in this country, then we would do well to look into and explore the windows of the past. Monuments like this are dotted all across the Australian landscape.42 Noonyar dancers circle the Explorers monument: ‘alive and vibrant and strong’. White observers, including local, state and federal politicians, witnessed the ceremony, but none spoke at the podium that day. This was an event that would centre Indigenous voices. (Photograph Bruce Scates) Endnotes 1. For an extended account of events that led to the creation of this memorial see Bruce Scates, ‘A Monument to Mur- der’, in Studies in Western Australian History, vol 10, 1989, pp21- 31. The author thanks Paul Ashton and the editors for the invitation to contribute to this volume, two anonymous referees and Rae Frances for critical comment. 2. Graeme Davison, The Use and Abuse of Australian History, Allen and Unwin, Sydney, 2020, p37. 3. See, for example, J.S. Battye, Western Australia: A History from its Discovery to the Inauguration of the Commonwealth, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1924, p200; L.C. Burgess, Pioneers of Nor’West Australia, Constantine and Gardner, Ger- aldton, 1905; for the first extended critique of this ethos see Tom Stannage, Western Australia’s Heritage: The Pioneer Myth, University Extension, University of Western Australia, Nedlands, 1985, pp21- 31. 4. See, for example, Delores Hayden, The Power of Place: Urban Landscapes as Public History, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass, 1995, passim. 5. These cite the original inscription. For an early and revealing analysis of explorer narratives of landscape see Simon Ryan, The Cartographic Eye: How Explorers Saw Australia, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1996. 6. ‘Maitland Brown Memorial’, Sunday Times, 5 February 1913; Mary Anne Jebb, Blood, Sweat and Welfare: a history of white bosses and Aboriginal Pastoral Workers, University of Western Australia Press, Nedlands, 2002, ch 1. 7. Aside from the reading of the plaques see David Francisco, The Panter- Harding- Goldwyer relief expedition of 1865: Being a copy of a diary kept by one of the members of the expedition led by Mr. Maitland Brown to the Roebuck Bay District in search Scates Public History Review, Vol. 28, 202110 of Messrs Panter, Harding and Goldwyer, whose murdered bodies were found at their camp on Lake Ingedana, Royal Western Australian Historical Society, Nedlands, 1928. 8. Maitland Brown, Journal of an Expedition in the Roebuck Bay District Under the Command of Maitland Brown, Esq., in Search of Messrs. Panter, Harding and Goldwyr, Perth, 1865, pp17- 20, reprinted from The Perth Gazette and W.A. Times, 19 and 26 May 1865. 9. I owe this quotation to Tom Griffiths, ‘Past Silences: Aborigines and Convicts in our History Making’, in Australian Cul- tural History, no 6, 1987, pp18- 19; see also Don Watson, Caledonia Australis: Scottish Highlanders of the Frontier of Australia, Penguin, Sydney, 2009. 10. ibid ; Chilla Bulbeck, ‘Aborigines, memorials and the history of the frontier’, Australian Historical Studies, vol 24, no 96, April 1991, pp168- 78. https://doi.org/10.1080/10314619108595878 11. Bernard Smith, The Spectre of Truganini, Australian Broadcasting Commission, Sydney, 1980. 12. To borrow Stanner’s oft cited phrase, WEH Stanner, After the Dreaming: Black and White Australians: an Anthropologists View, Australian Broadcasting Commission, Sydney, 1969, p25. 13. Text taken from the counter memorial. 14. Bruce Scates, ‘Monumental errors: how Australia can fix its racist colonial statues’, in The Conversation, 28 August 2017 (Online). Available: https://theconversation.com/monumental- errors- how- australia- can- fix- its- racist- colonial- statues- 82980 (Accessed 5 October 2020). 15. Bruce Scates, ‘Call to topple statues is an opportunity for debate, in Sydney Morning Herald, 11 June 2020 (Online). Available: https://www.smh.com.au/national/call- to- topple- monuments- is- an- opportunity- for- debate- 20200611- p551qs.html (Accessed 25 September 2020). 16. The First Nations National Constitutional Convention 2017, ‘Uluru Statement from the Heart’ (Online). Available: https://fromtheheart.com.au/uluru- statement/the- statement/ (Accessed 19 September 2020). 17. Maria Nugent, ‘Historical encounters: Aboriginal testimony and colonial forms of commemoration’, in Aboriginal History, vol 30, 2006, p36. https://doi.org/10.22459/AH.30.2011.04 18. ‘Celebration of a Nation’, reproduced in Kim Anderson, Jacqueline Kent and Clare Craig (eds), Australians 1988, Fair- fax, Syme and Weldon Associates, Willoughby, 1989, p20. 19. Anna Clark, ‘History in black and white: a critical analysis of the black arm band debate’, in Journal of Australian Studies, vol 26, no 75, 2002, pp1- 11. https://doi.org/10.1080/14443050209387797 20. See, for example, ‘We’re not often wrong’, in Fremantle Gazette, 1 November 1988. Also, ‘Memorial idea sets problem’, in West Australian, 19 October 1988 and my letter in reply, ‘Story behind NW Deaths’, ibid, 24 October 1988. 21. Graeme Davison, ‘The Use and Abuse of Australian History’, in Susan Janson and Stuart Macintyre (eds), Making the Bicentenary, Australian Historical Studies, Melbourne, 1988, pp55- 76. https://doi.org/10.1080/10314618808595790 22. Chris Healy, From the Ruins of Colonialism: History as Social Memory, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1997, p23. 23. Julia Baird, ‘The toppling of statues is enriching not erasing history and it has thrilled my heart’, in Sydney Morning Herald, 13 June 2020 (Online). Available: https://www.smh.com.au/national/the- toppling- of- statues- is- enriching- not- erasing- history- and- it- has- thrilled- my- heart- 20200612- p5523r.html (Accessed 1 September 2020). 24. See the discussion between Paul Ashton, Anna Clark, Kiera Lindsay, and Mariko Smith on the ‘Public Protest and Public History: The Statue Wars’, hosted by the Australian Centre for Public History, History Week, 2020 (Online). Available: https://www.facebook.com/AustralianCentrePublicHistory/videos/659011108297512/ (Accessed 9 September 2020). 25. ‘Statue Loses its Head’, in Fremantle Herald, 14 June 1990. 26. See Paul Daley’s account of the comparatively recent repatriation of Yagan’s remains, ‘The story of Yagan’s head is a shameful reminder of colonialism’s legacy’, in The Guardian (Online). Available: https://www.theguardian.com/australia- news/postcolonial- blog/2017/aug/31/the- story- of- yagans- head- is- a- shameful- reminder- of- colonialisms- legacy (Accessed 7 September 2020). 27. Bruce Scates, ‘Frontier Violence in Western Australia’, lecture delivered at Murdoch University, 21 March 1988, author’s archive; ‘A Monument to Murder’, passim. 28. Author’s archive. These documents can also be sourced in the Fremantle City Archives and are reproduced in Public Action Project, ‘Unmasking the Monument’, Raelene Frances and Bruce Scates (eds), The Murdoch Ethos: Essays in Aus- tralian History in Honour of Foundation Professor Geoffrey Bolton, Murdoch University, Murdoch, 1989. The Project began at Murdoch University and included staff, Bruce Scates (Project Leader), Rae Frances (co- convenor of the course on black/ white relations in which this project was based) and students Brian Aldrich, Justin Carroll. Chris Carter, Michael Gallagher, Steve Hall, Vicky Hart, Carol Mann, Judy Martin, Vicki McFadyen, Rae Minniecon and Elizabeth Thornber. 29. Signatories included Indigenous spokespersons from both community and government agencies, namely Tom Babban, Robert Bropho, Ken Colbung, Len Colbung, Len Collard, Dannie Ford, Sealin Garlett, Elizabeth Hayden, Cedrick James, Darryl Kickett, Gladys Milroy, Sally Morgan, Isobelle Proctor, Keith Truscott, Mara West, Joan Winch and Ken Wyatt. Scates Public History Review, Vol. 28, 202111 https://doi.org/10.1080/10314619108595878 https://theconversation.com/monumental-errors-how-australia-can-fix-its-racist-colonial-statues-82980 https://theconversation.com/monumental-errors-how-australia-can-fix-its-racist-colonial-statues-82980 https://www.smh.com.au/national/call-to-topple-monuments-is-an-opportunity-for-debate-20200611-p551qs.html https://www.smh.com.au/national/call-to-topple-monuments-is-an-opportunity-for-debate-20200611-p551qs.html https://fromtheheart.com.au/uluru-statement/the-statement/ https://doi.org/10.22459/AH.30.2011.04 https://doi.org/10.1080/14443050209387797 https://doi.org/10.1080/10314618808595790 https://www.smh.com.au/national/the-toppling-of-statues-is-enriching-not-erasing-history-and-it-has-thrilled-my-heart-20200612-p5523r.html https://www.smh.com.au/national/the-toppling-of-statues-is-enriching-not-erasing-history-and-it-has-thrilled-my-heart-20200612-p5523r.html https://www.facebook.com/AustralianCentrePublicHistory/videos/659011108297512/ https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/postcolonial-blog/2017/aug/31/the-story-of-yagans-head-is-a-shameful-reminder-of-colonialisms-legacy https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/postcolonial-blog/2017/aug/31/the-story-of-yagans-head-is-a-shameful-reminder-of-colonialisms-legacy 30. ‘History Re- Written: City of Fremantle Monument’, Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation, Walking Together: The First Steps, Report of the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation to Federal Parliament, 1991- 94, Australian Government Printing Service, Canberra, 1994, p203. Robyn Ninyette and Peter Scott also facilitated liaison between Noonyar people in Perth and the La Grange community. 31. ‘Report and Minutes of Ordinary Meeting of the Finance and Expenditure Committee of the Fremantle City Council… 16 November 1988: item FE124, pp.1- 5, author’s archive (and Fremantle City Archives). 32. This testimony would include Panter’s Report to his superiors in Perth not long before the explorers’ deaths, offering Aboriginal people ‘a pass to kingdom come’; F.K. Panter to W. Hogan, 19 October 1864, Special Police Files, acc no 129, 7/22. 33. R.J. Cameron, ‘Plan of the Proposed Memorial in Remembrance of the Aboriginals that died at the Injudinah Swamp Massacre’, June 1989, author’s archive (and Fremantle City Archives). 34. In 1988, opinion on the council was divided. Whilst a majority supported proposal for a counter monument some Councillors called for the memorial to be removed, describing it as an ‘unfortunate reminder’ of Western Australia’s past. The former labour leader Alderman Bill Latter was the proposal’s most vocal supporter. Author’s notes on discussion by the Fremantle City Council, 18 October 1988; ‘A Case of Black and White’, Fremantle Gazette, 25 October 1988. 35. ‘History Re- Written’, pp202- 203. Along with Gladys Milroy (a signatory to the original submission) Mike Cox, Wendy Casey, Charlie and Everett Kickett and John Roe played a key part in this process. Valuable assistance was rendered by Council officers Ken Posney and Ros Porter. 36. ibid. 37. Australian Heritage Council, March 2018, ‘Protection of Australia’s Commemorative Places and Monuments: Report Prepared for the Minister for the Environment, and Energy, the Hon Josh Frydenberg MP’, pp16- 17. (Online). Available: https://www.environment.gov.au/system/files/resources/4474fb91- bd90- 4424- b671- 9e2ab9c39cca/files/protection- australia- commemorative- places- monuments.pdf (Accessed 10 September 2020). 38. Scates, ‘Monumental errors’. 39. See Mariko Smith’s observations on a discussion as part of ‘Public Protest and Public History: The Statue Wars’. See also Mariko Smith, ‘Tear it Down’, Australian Museum (Online). Available: https://australian.museum/learn/first- nations/ tear- it- down/ (Accessed 19 September 2020). 40. ‘Fremantle Review’, in Fremantle Herald, 16 April 1994. 41. For an account of the ceremony see Bruce Scates, ‘Remaking out History’, Labour History, no 67, November 1994, pp164- 5. https://doi.org/10.2307/27509287 42. The full text is in the author’s archive but Ray Minniecon’s speech is also cited in Scates, ‘Monumental errors’. Scates Public History Review, Vol. 28, 202112 https://www.environment.gov.au/system/files/resources/4474fb91-bd90-4424-b671-9e2ab9c39cca/files/protection-australia-commemorative-places-monuments.pdf https://www.environment.gov.au/system/files/resources/4474fb91-bd90-4424-b671-9e2ab9c39cca/files/protection-australia-commemorative-places-monuments.pdf https://australian.museum/learn/first-nations/tear-it-down/ https://australian.museum/learn/first-nations/tear-it-down/ https://doi.org/10.2307/27509287