Issue Details: First known date: 2018... 2018 Why Weren’t We Taught? Exploring Frontier Conflict Through the Lens of Anzac
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'This article examines public understandings of two key strands of Australian history that sit at opposite ends of a spectrum of remembrance: frontier conflict and Anzac. The former, W. E. H. Stanner argued in 1968, was subsumed in a vacuum of silence, lost to popular consciousness in a wilful act of forgetting. Despite a wealth of subsequent scholarship documenting the violence and dispossession that characterised European colonisation, considerable gaps in public awareness about these foundational events remain. Anzac, in contrast, has become a defining narrative of Australian history for large segments of the general population and the political class. Recent scholarship suggests that this prominence has served to mask other, important histories of the continent, including frontier conflict. In this article, we argue that this is neither a necessary nor essential binary, and further, that one can inform the other. The written reflections of 320 tertiary students enrolled in a course about Australian military history provide insights into the ways that frontier conflict is popularly understood and how the fascination with Anzac can be leveraged to raise awareness of the violent historical dimensions of colonisation.'  (Publication abstract)

Notes

  • Epigraph:

    How Australians will relate frontier conflict to cherished military traditions, to the ANZAC legend itself, has yet to be determined. Will white Australians come to accept fallen tribesmen as national heroes who died defending their way of life against powerful invaders? Will their actions ultimately seem more relevant than those Australians who died overseas pursuing the tactical ends and strategic objectives of a distant motherland? -- Henry Reynolds, “The Breaking of the Great Australian Silence: Aborigines in Australian Historiography 1955–1983

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon Journal of Australian Studies vol. 42 no. 1 2018 13441138 2018 periodical issue

    'The national consciousness of settler colonial societies such as Australia often blends a complex mix of local and Indigenous identities. Historically infused with a sense of inferiority—and the imperative to stamp ownership on the continent—the stories that settlers tell, and the images and propaganda they project, seek to address this feeling. Robert Frost’s poem argued that, for the United States, “the deed of gift was many deeds of war”. For Australians, by contrast, the frontier wars neither gave nor served as a foundational narrative. In their place, mythologies emerged: of Anzac, of an impoverished Indigenous population, of an industrial “golden age”, and of a free-spirited, urbane culture. We hope that you enjoy the eight articles in this issue of the Journal of Australian Studies, each of which grapples with a question of identity and clarifies and challenges these prevailing mythologies.' (Carolyn Holbrook, Julie Kimber, Maggie Nolan & Laura Rademaker : Introduction)

    2018
    pg. 19-33
Last amended 26 Mar 2018 11:32:16
19-33 Why Weren’t We Taught? Exploring Frontier Conflict Through the Lens of Anzacsmall AustLit logo Journal of Australian Studies
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