Donations

Lest We Forget the Frontier Wars – Anzac Day 25th April 2012


Frontier Wars remembered in Canberra 2012

Canberra 2011 - Frontier Wars Commemoration
Higher Quality Video: Go to VIMEO
More Aboriginal Videos by: Eleanor Gilbert
On Anzac Eve a vigil for peace, carrying paper lanterns, descends Mt Ainslie on which the Australian War Memorial stands in Canberra.

The following day, ANZAC Day 2011, Michael Anderson negotiates with police to permit the inaugral march remembering Aboriginal Nations and Peoples who defended Country against the invading forces from Europe.

Lead by Mick Thorpe and bearing signs respecting wars of resistance and massacres a diverse group respectfully falls in behind the Anzac Day march. Emotions rise as the crowd claps openly in respect for the courageous group, but ...

... at the end of the parade their progress is blocked by police, demonstrating that Australia is yet to attain a maturity.

Goodooga, NW NSW,
5th April 2012

Michael Anderson said today: "Last year we started Lest We Forget the Frontier Wars by joining on behind the Anzac Day march in Canberra and we received enormous support from the public at this time. Now we need to keep it going.

We have commenced a process to highlight the wars fought on Australian soil since 1788, when our country was taken by superior force, at gunpoint, and those who stood in the way were shot.

What we need to do now is to keep identifying that there has been warfare; that blood has been spilt on the wattle; and there is an ongoing war of attrition against Aboriginal Peoples to this day.

Our people are dying in custody for crimes white people don’t usually go to jail for, minor driving offences.

The 2012 Nyoongar Embassy on Heirisson Island, Perth, WA, is a classic example, where the authorities are using superior force for no reason at all, but to intimidate the occupants and suppress them, so they leave, even though the Embassy site was carefully chosen as ‘Crown Land’ under the colonial system of land tenure.

We are subject to continued war of attrition, including urban warfare. That’s what’s occurring here in this country.

To march on Anzac Day and identify all this present aggression and past aggression, like we did last year, is an absolute imperative for us as no-one is going to know what is going on unless we put it out there.

We all have had family who have participated in one war or another in the modern era, so it shows our own people are prepared to defend this country, even offshore to ward off any attempts to invade our country, or threaten our future generations.

All the Aboriginal diggers marching around the country on Anzac Day can also remember the Kalkadoon wars, Pinjara massacre, the Wiradjuri wars, Myall Creek, just to name a few. In 1788 Governor Phillip came here ‘under the rules and disciplines of war’ and in 1836 Britain concluded a Select Committee inquiry into their military operations against Aboriginal Peoples.

We cannot forget this, because too many of our people lost their lives in defence of their country and people’s lives continue to be lost.

There is a lack of the authority of leadership in this country that speaks to the real issues. Now we have a proposed Constitutional reform process that says the Aboriginal Sovereignty is too hard to deal with, let’s forget about it! We don’t need that patronising leadership, but instead we need forth right leadership that asserts our rights so that we take our rightful place in society.

The oppression that Aboriginal Peoples are subjected to is now being internalised by our youth, many of whom don’t see a future as Aboriginal people but they don’t want to assimilate, so they pay the ultimate price in the protest, by taking their own lives – ‘turning off the sun’.

The so-called ‘Closing the Gap’ through Basic cards and a dictatorship about how we should conduct our lives and live is social engineering at its best and genocidal in its intent, through assimilation.

This is why we should march independently on Anzac day to identify this war that we have suffered and continue to suffer. Joining the Anzac march is NOT a protest. It is a remembering of the wars and the losses of those who suffered.

If Australians can remember those who have fallen in defence of our country offshore, then they must accept to silent war that strikes on the mainland today and the losses that result from that and this is some thing we will not forget.

Those interested in joining us can gather at the lower end of Anzac Parade, Canberra, at 10am for the 11am march on 25th April 2012 interested and carry a banner for one of the wars or massacres that have occurred – please come and join us.

Mick Thorpe who led the 2011 Lest We Forget the Frontier Wars march in 2011 wore his grandfather’s medals and this year wants the Gippsland massacres, led by Angus McMillan, remembered.

Squatter Henry Meyrick wrote in a letter home to his relatives in England in 1846:
The blacks are very quiet here now, poor wretches. No wild beast of the forest was ever hunted down with such unsparing perseverance as they are. Men, women and children are shot whenever they can be met with … I have protested against it at every station I have been in Gippsland, in the strongest language, but these things are kept very secret as the penalty would certainly be hanging … For myself, if I caught a black actually killing my sheep, I would shoot him with as little remorse as I would a wild dog, but no consideration on earth would induce me to ride into a camp and fire on them indiscriminately, as is the custom whenever the smoke is seen. They [the Aborigines] will very shortly be extinct. It is impossible to say how many have been shot, but I am convinced that not less than 450 have been murdered altogether.[2]

For those who cannot come to Canberra on Anzac Day, take the initiative and do the same in your local area, then send us your report back to the Sovereign Union: media@nationalunitygovernment.org

Contact: Michael Anderson