Invitation to join the 2018 Frontier Wars March on Anzac Day, Canberra

1 February 2018

The Sovereign Union will again host the Lest We Forget March for Remembrance of the colonial battles, the massacres, poisoning of waterholes and flour and other forms of killing that pervaded the whole colonial expansion throughout this Continent, popularly referred to as ‘clearing the land’ not just of trees and forest to create open land pastures, but to clear away the original owners and occupiers. I need not expand further.

The Remembrance March that we started on Anzac Day 2011 was never intended, nor promoted, in any way shape or form to be seen as a demonstration, nor protest. It is what it is and that is a solemn March of Remembrance of those innocent people who dared to defend their sacred right to their Country and much blood was split in defence of their own land.

Any Australian ambition that focuses on any form of Recognition or Reconciliation can never be achieved in this country while ever our dead remain unburied.

It hurts all of us who have experienced these colonial ills, knowing that the Old People’s bones continue to lie in open places, where cattle and sheep have trodden the skeletal remains into the ground. Furthermore, there are those bodies whose remains have been ploughed under during the land use change from grazing to farmland irrigation and dry land cropping. In this regard, it should be understood that those surviving families, or neighbouring Nations, who knew of these mass killings are very familiar with the exact, and/ or, general location of where the remains were left to rot.

In 2018 we will again be hosting the March of Remembrance, as we have done for the last seven years. We appreciate and recognise your tolerance of what we have done during this time and we are pleased that we have not had to deal with unnecessary confrontation at this time, except for that one occasion.

We did appreciate your indulgence in having us lay the wreaths after the end of the formal Anzac ceremony.

I put it to the RSL, that the objectives of Reconciliation start with the full acknowledgement of the wrongdoings. We cannot heal as a Nation if we maintain denial of historical facts. In this regard I request, as the founder of this March of Remembrance, that the RSL take the next step forward, that is, prior to your Closing Ceremony on Anzac Day 2018 that a formal announcement be made on your program that will see us invited to lay a wreath/or wreaths prior the closing of the formal ceremony.

It is our intention to remain at the barriers and that when the announcement for us to lay the wreaths we will come from behind those barriers onto the parade ground and lay those wreaths on the cenotaph.

If we can achieve this, I believe that Australia as a Nation will grow in stature thanks to the efforts of the RSL and it will be seen as one of the greatest modern day efforts to heal a hurt Country.

I look forward to your reply,

Sincerely,
 
 
 
Ghillar
Michael Anderson
Convenor of Sovereign Union of First Nations and Peoples in Australia
and Head of State of the Euahlayi Peoples Republic
ghillar29@gmail.com, 0499 080 660
www.sovereignunion.mobi