Frontier conflict: ways of remembering contested landscapes.(Essay)

In June 2001, Sir William Deane, on his farewell tour of Australia before retiring as Governor-General of Australia, visited Warmun Aboriginal Community: a small community in the East Kimberley in the north-east of Western Australia. During this visit, the Governor-General attended a remembering ceremony held under the shade of a giant boab tree adjacent to the site of the Mistake Creek massacre (Figure 1), and his words on that poignant occasion were reported in newspapers across Australia: 'I would like to say how profoundly sorry I am that such events defaced our beautiful land. I hold out my hand in friendship and reconciliation'. (1) These few words were to become a flash-point in the brewing 'history wars' debate.

[FIGURE 1 OMITTED]

I did not attend the remembering ceremony, but I was in the Warmun Community a few days later. My visit coincided with a leading article in the national press by historian Keith Windschuttle, in which it was claimed that the Governor-General had been misled and that, according to his own research, there had been no massacre of Aboriginal people at Mistake Creek. Furthermore, he claimed to have found evidence of only four massacres since European colonisation, and suggested that none of these had occurred in the East Kimberley. (2)

The response of the Kija people--the Traditional Owners of much of the East Kimberley--was dismay and disbelief. From the oral accounts of their parents and grandparents, they were aware of at least twelve massacres on their land, including two at Mistake Creek, following the arrival of the first colonists in 1884. (3)

Central to this debate about the level of violence on the Australian frontier is the accuracy of oral accounts, or oral histories, and the difficulty some historians have with endorsing testimonies which are not supported by historical documents written by white people, usually people in authority. Whilst it is widely acknowledged and understood that individual oral accounts vary, it is also recognised that at the core of each account there it is usually a truth, particularly when there are common threads linking the same event. (4)

The aim of this paper is to demonstrate that memories about past events are often best recalled when they are impromptu--sparked by associations with features in the landscape--and that these memories are valuable additions to formally recorded oral histories. The Aboriginal cultural landscape of the East Kimberley is found in every riverbed and hilltop, and in the trees, in the rocks and under the soil. Events linked to such landscape features have been told to me whilst working in the East Kimberley as an archaeologist and heritage consultant, travelling in the company of Kija people across their traditional country. Much of the information told to consultants is confidential, but the recounting of historic events is seldom confidential, and forms part of a knowledge base readily shared by people with a strong oral tradition. Many of these accounts have related to postcontact events, or to sites occupied or visited by colonists. There are many examples of remembering the past in a cultural landscape: for example, a tree where an ancestor in chains was tethered overnight on his way to the Wyndham gaol; a large hollow log there the bones of victims were hidden; or a creek crossing where a massacre took place. Such features sit side-by-side with the symbolic landscape and the known landscape of bush foods, such as yam or bush tomato, or with places associated with exciting memories of a past hunting trip.

Some accounts of past events are supported by historic documents from the time of the event. Small details occasionally vary, but central to each account are common threads and the same participants. The truth underlying each account is sought, rather than devaluing the recounting of an event on the basis of variation or documented evidence, or seeking to support a particular political bias. (5) For example, during a discussion about the Mistake Creek massacre at the National Museum's 2001 forum Frontier Conflict: The Australian Experience, Keith Windschuttle admitted that he had not visited an Aboriginal community or spoken to the people whose oral accounts he was attempting to invalidate. (6) I would argue that the meaning of oral histories told by Aboriginal Elders, many of whom have no written tradition, is conveyed as much by the telling as by the words, words that do not easily translate to a written form for mass consumption by non-Indigenous literate societies. (7) Windschuttle and his colleagues make much of the fact that their reconstructions of colonial history are based on documented evidence; however, as discussed by others many times before, the written evidence for frontier violence in Australia is vast and extremely well documented. (8)