By Paul Smith
On Anzac Day the word ‘Remember’ is on everyone’s lips. But what Is it to remember – to re-member?
On re-membering.
Studies of memory show that a remembered experience has hundreds if not thousands of parts.
When I remember an experience, it is constructed anew from the ground up, each time with a slightly different set of parts and in a slightly different order. Every memory I have is not only about a thing or event in the past but also about the way I choose to re-member in the present.
Every experience I remember is re-membered.
The way I remember is mostly shaped by what is going on around me at the time.
Context shapes the way I re-member.
Though I am rarely deliberate in the way I choose to remember, I can deliberate. I can shape, change and choose the context in which I re-member.
The Anzac Day ceremony is about deliberating on who and how we choose to remember.
We gather on Aanzac Day to remember all Australians who died fighting for their country. There were Australians who died for no other reason than that they were here.
From 1788 to 1928, 140 years of Frontier Wars made all Australians, Indigenous and non-Indigenous alike, the people we are today.
The first war fought on Australian soil was Pemulwuy’s war, 1790 – 1802, a guerilla campaign waged by Aboriginal Australians, led by the great warrior Pemulwuy, against British colonists in Botany Bay, Liverpool, Parramatta and the Hawkesbury River.
Other warriors in other parts of Australia led similar campaigns. Musquito in Port Jackson and later in Hobart; Windradyne, central-western New South Wales; Yagan Western Australia; Tunnerminnerwait, Cape Grim Tasmania; Dundalli Moreton Bay; Jandamarra Tunnel Creek, Western Australia. There were many, many more.
They were Australians who died fighting for this country.
After five generations of forgetting and one generation of denial we cannot say with any credibility: We remember them. Rather, our responsibility, for the foreseeable future, is not to claim, falsely, to remember those first Australian Patriots, but to UNFORGET them.
We unforget them Lest we harbour false memories of who we have been as a people, while honouring those who fell serving the nation we are still becoming.
Australian Veterans are committed to reconciliation with former enemies. Strong bonds have been made with Turkish, Japanese and Vietnamese people in particular.
We are constantly being welcomed in friendship by former enemies to their country.
Recently I was welcomed to the country of the Arakwal people of the Bundjalung nation. This was an offer of friendship that non-indigenous Australians can fully appreciate when we acknowledge that the first Australians’ 140-year struggle to defend their land was the first war that made us the people we are today – Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians alike.
Reconciliation with former enemies will not be complete until the nation acknowledges the first Australian Patriots – the indigenous people who fell defending their homeland against British colonisation.
What might come of recognising the first Australian Patriots? There is Myth, much older than the Bible or the Epics of Homer, which may help us answer that question. The Mesopotamian Epic of Gilgamesh is, in part, about friendship – a friendship wrought of conflict. The two rivals fought each other to a standstill and then “became fast friends” – companions. While they fought each other, each cared nothing for the humanity of the other. When each failed to subdue the other they recognised each other as equals. The only possible relationship between equals is friendship.
Or is it? Here are two scenarios:
Two people fight, each intending to end the life of the other. They fail. They stop fighting and become friends. Together they do what neither could do alone.
Or…
… two people fight, one intending to end the life of the other; the other intending nothing but to preserve his own life. The one fails. By definition the other has succeeded. But the one refuses to acknowledge that there had been a fight and goes about his business as though the other is not there. Instead of friendship there is mutual suspicion.
Which is it? Can it be otherwise?
Why do non-Indigenous Australians still not acknowledge that Aborigines fought to defend their land? Why are those who fell defending their land not acknowledged as the first Australian patriots? Is it because the way the settlers fought was not honourable and far from glorious and therefore not worthy of being remembered? What would happen if we did acknowledge the first Australian patriots? Would it change the relationship between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians? Would suspicion give way to friendship and a truly equal partnership? Would this make a treaty achievable?
Does the veteran community hold the key to an honourable settlement to settlement? If ever there was a situation in Australian society where equality between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians becomes the norm it is in the military. How hard can it be for non-indigenous military and ex-service personnel to extend to those who died defending their homelands the same respect they have for the former Turkish, Japanese and Vietnamese enemy?
As an eminent Australian said, half a century ago…
IT’S TIME.
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