REFLECTION ARTICLE

Implementing the Tandanya-Adelaide Declaration at the Australian War Memorial

Margaret Farmer^*

Australian War Memorial, Canberra, Australia

Abstract

The archives of the Australian War Memorial (herein referred to as the Memorial) were established in 1917 with a national aim – to preserve as ‘sacred things’¹ the records made by the Australian Imperial Force in the war of 1914–1918. Over time, the Memorial and its archives have expanded to include Australia’s involvement in earlier British Imperial wars to recent conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, and peacekeeping and humanitarian operations; however, the Memorial resisted, amidst intense national debate, the 40-year call for extensive coverage of the wars on Australian soil, by which Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples were violently displaced and colonised and the nation state of Australia was formed.

In September 2022, it was announced that the Memorial’s Council had made the decision that there would be ‘a much broader, a much deeper depiction and presentation of the violence committed against Indigenous people’,² and in February 2023, it was confirmed that the Memorial would have ‘a proper recognition of the frontier conflict’ in its galleries.³ This is an important endeavour that requires unwavering implementation of research and curatorial best practice in relation to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples’ knowledges, cultural material, intellectual property, and experiences of war, violence, discrimination and trauma.

As the Memorial seeks to open and develop its archives to support its forthcoming truth-telling, Memorial curators are working to implement the Tandanya-Adelaide Declaration (2019) (herein referred to as the Declaration) and Indigenous Cultural and Intellectual Property protocols to establish ‘an ethical space of encounter, respect, negotiation and collaboration’.⁴

Keywords: Australian War Memorial; Australian Wars; decolonising; Frontier Wars; Indigenous Cultural and Intellectual Property protocols.

 

 

The Australian War Memorial (herein referred to as the Memorial) and its collections were established with a national aim: to commemorate through understanding the service and sacrifice of the Australian Imperial Force (AIF) in the war of 1914–1918. Over time, the Memorial has expanded to include Australia’s involvement in earlier British Imperial wars to recent conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, and peacekeeping and humanitarian operations. However, until recently, the Memorial resisted, amidst intense national debate, the 40-year call for extensive coverage of the wars on Australian soil. In September 2022, it was announced that the Memorial’s Council had made the decision that there would be ‘a much broader, a much deeper depiction and presentation of the violence committed against Indigenous people’,⁵ and in February 2023, it was confirmed that the Memorial would have ‘a proper recognition of the frontier conflict’ in its galleries.⁶ This is an important endeavour that requires unwavering implementation of research and curatorial best practice in relation to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples’ knowledges, cultural material, intellectual property, and experiences of the Frontier Wars. It also requires trauma-informed practice with respect to experiences of violence, forcible removal and separation from Country, and colonisation when engaging with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities and stakeholders. As the Memorial seeks to open and develop its collection and archives to support its forthcoming truth-telling, Memorial curators are working to implement the Tandanya-Adelaide Declaration (herein referred to as the Declaration) and Indigenous Cultural and Intellectual Property (ICIP) protocols to establish ‘an ethical space of encounter, respect, negotiation and collaboration’.⁷

This reflection has three parts. Firstly, in keeping with the Declaration’s injunction that it is ‘[o]ur duty to acknowledge our colonial history’⁸ it describes the original conception of the Memorial and the lead up to the Memorial’s commitment to the Frontier Wars (also known as the Australian Wars).⁹ Critically, this includes acknowledging the attitudes that informed previous decisions on representation of the Frontier Wars at the Memorial. The reflection then describes the Memorial’s current work engaging in capacity uplift in relation to First Nations communities, content and knowledges;¹⁰ before concluding by reflecting on the Declaration’s words ‘a fair and healing remembrance of the colonial encounter’.¹¹

Part I: ‘[W]e are what we choose to remember, but we are also what we choose to forget’¹²

Commemoration through understanding

The Australian War Memorial was first conceived in 1916 by Charles Edwin Woodrow (CEW) Bean, Australia’s official war correspondent, who accompanied the AIF on Gallipoli and in Europe. After witnessing the carnage on the Western Front, Bean determined that the courage, sacrifice and contribution of the men of the AIF should be remembered in their homeland. Bean envisaged a memorial, museum and archive that would ‘commemorate through understanding’.¹³ The Memorial was to be a place for both the living – to remember, grieve, and understand – and the fallen – as a tomb fitting of their sacrifice, and a place for their spirit to reside. For the newly federated nation of Australia, a memorial located on home soil would also be a critical assertion of national identity.

Once planning began for a museum and memorial in Australia, the Australian War Records Section was established in 1917 to collect documentation, such as commanders’ war diaries, previously submitted to the British. Led by Captain John Treloar, the section quickly expanded to collect artefacts (then known as ‘trophies’), photographs, film and art.

Due to the Depression, work on the building was delayed, and so the Memorial was only officially opened in 1941, after the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939.

Two major consequences for the Memorial’s institutional identity and archival collections flow from this history. These are the close connection of the Memorial with Australia’s post-Federation national identity; and that the Memorial’s archival collections hold relatively little First Nations-related content unless it is related to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people’s military service within the Australian Defence Force (ADF) or is otherwise related to activities of Australian military personnel.¹⁴ The Memorial is, however, now seeking to develop its collections in relation to the Frontier Wars.

Calls for inclusion of the Frontier Wars at the Australian War Memorial

The first proposal that the Memorial address the Frontier Wars was made in 1979 by Professor Geoffrey Blainey.¹⁵ This was given serious consideration by Memorial Council member William David Lindsay (WDL) ‘David’ Ride;¹⁶ however, in March 1982 the Memorial’s Council received advice from consultant historian Mr A Hill, who dismissed the argument that ‘the dispossession of the [A]boriginal peoples by British settlers beginning in 1788 … was Australia’s first war’,¹⁷ considering it a racial rather than an international conflict.¹⁸ The Memorial’s Council gave the question further consideration in 1984, following a submission by Memorial Council member and Labor Member for Lilley, Mrs Elaine Elizabeth Darling ‘Concerning the Depiction of Aboriginal Wars’ at the Australian War Memorial, proposing the collection of Aboriginal weaponry and representation of Aboriginal warfare in response to ‘the invading races’.¹⁹ This time, the idea was rejected as being ‘outside the functions and powers of the Memorial as prescribed in the Australian War Memorial Act 1980’ and as being more appropriate for the Museum of Australia.²⁰

The calls continued with increasing intensity. Over time historical research established that the nature of Frontier colonial violence and Aboriginal resistance was war, as articulated in Arrernte and Kalkadoon film-maker Rachel Perkins’ three-part documentary series (and now book) The Australian Wars, which first screened on Australia’s Special Broadcasting Service (SBS) in September 2022, and ‘called on the Memorial to acknowledge and recognise the frontier wars and those who died as a result of them’.²¹

Commitment

On 29 September 2022, the Memorial’s then Chair, Dr Brendan Nelson AO, made a public statement that ‘The [Memorial] Council has made the decision that we will have a much broader, a much deeper depiction and presentation of the violence committed against Indigenous people’.²² This commitment was confirmed by the Memorial’s current Chair, the Honourable Kim Beazley AC, who stated on 6 February 2023 that ‘[The Memorial will] have a proper recognition of the frontier conflict’.²³ Mr Beazley further stated that the Memorial has ‘to have Frontier Wars reflected in it because it is by that means we [Australia] established ourselves’.²⁴

Part II: Towards ‘an ethical space of encounter, respect, negotiation and collaboration’²⁵

An aspiration and methodology

As stated above, the Declaration offers valuable language for the Memorial’s aspiration in relation to the Frontier Wars: to become, in the words of the Declaration ‘an ethical space of encounter, respect, negotiation and collaboration’.²⁶ These key descriptors – encounter, respect, negotiation and collaboration – are valuable as touchstones and methodologies that can be practised and embedded not just in the Memorial’s archival collections but across the institution.

Engaging in the Memorial’s first broad presentation about the Frontier Wars at the 2023 Australian Institute for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island Studies (AIATSIS) Summit, in Noongar Boodja Perth, the Memorial’s Indigenous Liaison Officer, Michael Bell, and its Assistant Director National Collections, Brian Dawson, described these commitments as ‘represent[ing] the start of a new journey of collaborative, respectful truth-telling about an important element of Australia’s military history’.²⁷ Requesting community engagement, they outlined a ‘provisional concept for the new galleries’, stating that:

‘It is probable that we will concentrate on war and war-like events …

We have not begun to determine the detailed nature of the inclusion of the frontier wars in the galleries as we want to ensure we receive the required permissions in order to conduct our truth-telling and learning in a responsible and respectful way.

We are proposing … to focus on campaigns of resistance. …

We would welcome engagement and working with communities and the descendants of victims and survivors of the frontier wars over the next five years during the gallery development process.’²⁸

At the 2025 AIATSIS Summit in Garramilla Darwin, Bell and Dawson gave an update of the Memorial’s progress, explaining that while an exhibition development team was yet to be appointed, it was because, in Bell’s words, ‘We’ve had to go backwards, in order to go forwards’.²⁹ He was speaking of the necessary preliminary work uplifting the Memorial’s collective capacity in relation to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities, content and knowledges, and in which the methodologies of respect and encounter are currently best embodied.

In May 2023, the Memorial adopted the Australian Museums and Galleries Association First Peoples: A Roadmap for Enhancing Indigenous Engagement in Museums and Galleries (the AMaGA Roadmap). The Memorial then adopted industry best standard ICIP protocols for each curatorial area, effective 1 June 2023. For example, the archives adopted the International Council of Archivists’ Tandanya-Adelaide Declaration (2019) as a guiding framework, and have looked to the National Archives of Australia’s Our Way protocols; and the Art Section adopted Creative Australia’s Protocols for using First Nations Cultural and Intellectual Property in the Arts as well as Terri Janke’s True Tracks protocols and the collaborative model of the International Spectrum of Public Consultation. In 2024, the Memorial worked with Indigenous law firm Terri Janke & Company to conduct a Cultural Safety and Diversity Audit. In 2025, the Memorial commenced implementing the recommendations from that audit towards increasing the diversity of Memorial staff and the cultural safety of Memorial staff and visitors; also working with Terri Janke & Company to develop a Memorial-wide ICIP Framework to be made available on the Memorial’s website.

Re-reading the archive and collection review

The Memorial is engaging in collection review, collection development and reparative cataloguing. Critical work was commenced in the 1990s to research and extend documentation of Indigenous (Aboriginal, Torres Strait Islander, South Sea Islander and Papuan) military service. More recently, extensive collection survey and collection development work was undertaken for the Memorial’s 2016 touring exhibition For Country, For Nation that brought focus to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples’ longstanding traditions of fighting for Country and of service in Australia’s military forces. Nonetheless, there is still much to be done in both areas.

During ongoing upgrades of the Memorial’s Collection Management System (CMS) and Digital Asset Management System (DAMS), the Memorial’s CDAMS team and curatorial areas have worked to ensure that these systems have the data fields and features required for enhanced cataloguing. For the Memorial, reparative cataloguing means improving descriptions by more accurately or appropriately identifying makers, and naming object types, by identifying and adding language and conflict terms, restrictions due to secret-sacred content, warnings in relation to cultural content and inappropriate language, and the amendment of titles to reflect contemporary language. Outdated or racist titles and descriptions are archived, to preserve the record.

In 2023, Official Records, Private Records and Published (Library) Collection curators commenced meeting monthly to identify collection content that has been created by Indigenous (Aboriginal, Torres Strait Islander, South Sea Islander and Papuan) makers or has notable Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander-related content. Now joined by Digitised Collection curators, this group is developing Finding Aids for this Indigenous content and also for Frontier Wars-related content. Critical to this task are re-readings of the archive that are revealing documentary evidence of conflict, and documents, including valuable records of language, which demonstrate more respectful encounters and collaboration. Re-reading these records through the lens of contemporary scholarship shows how each is part of a much larger national story of violence, colonisation and defence of Country, and provides opportunities for truth-telling. Critically, as stated above, this includes re-reading the Memorial’s own corporate records and acknowledging the attitudes that informed previous decisions on representation of the Frontier Wars at the Memorial.

In July 2025, the Memorial commenced a whole-of-Memorial collection review for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander content.

Collection development

The Frontier Wars is a priority area within the Memorial’s Collection Development Policy. There are already over 70 artworks by over 80 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists and artist groups relating to frontier warfare in the collection, which represents every Australian state. Since the Official and Private Records commenced collecting Frontier Wars related material, the Memorial has acquired 48 documents to begin a Frontier Wars formed collection, 7 Frontier-related items for the Maps and Charts collection and a Private Record.

Training

The Memorial has invested in cultural awareness training for staff, and its senior leadership team is required to complete the AIATSIS Core Cultural Learning training. The Memorial’s Senior Management Group received training in ICIP principles and protocols in May 2025, and a large staff cohort received training on ICIP and the Memorial’s ICIP Framework in October 2025.

Trauma-informed practice

As an institution that works intensively with war and the impact of war, the Memorial is committed to trauma-informed practice and psychological safety.³⁰ Collectively, the Memorial is working towards methodologies that see staff and visitors ‘safely in and safely out’.

RAPWG film screenings

In 2026, the Memorial’s Reconciliation Action Plan Working Group (RAPWG) is in its sixth year of running an internal film screening programme that aims to increase staff understanding of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures, histories and knowledges. The Memorial’s RAPWG screens 4–5 films per year, followed by a Question-and-Answer (Q&A) session. The Memorial’s RAPWG Film Programme convenors have frequently reached out to film-makers for the benefit of their participation in the Q&A session, which allows Memorial staff to learn from creatives and professionals who have worked in collaboration with community utilising best practice. For example, the RAPWG screened the three episodes of Rachel Perkins’ 2022 documentary series The Australian Wars in May 2023, and after the third episode, Memorial staff were deeply honoured to be joined for discussion by Rachel Perkins, the late historian Professor Lyndall Ryan OAM, and Wiradyuri historian Mina Murray. In 2024, RAPWG Film Screening attendees were joined by the National Film and Sound Archives (NFSA) Indigenous Engagement Team, including Gillian Moody and Caitlyn Le Roy, who talked about their work with the Strehlow Research Centre. Memorial staff have twice appreciated the insights of Professor Tom Murray in relation to cross-cultural collaboration when making his films The Skin of Others (2020) and Dhakiyarr vs The King (2005).

Consultation and community engagement

The Memorial has established an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Advisory Group that assists in the Memorial’s Gallery Development programme. The Memorial’s ICIP Framework and other stakeholder engagement policies set out commitments and methodologies for community engagement.

Research and participation in communities of practice

The Memorial seeks to learn from recent cultural projects that have brought focus to and understanding about Australia’s Frontier Wars. Since the 1990s, there has been a stream of significant exhibitions and cultural projects that have articulated the nature and events of these wars, their impact and the ongoing strength of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and cultural practice. The Memorial is researching these projects and beginning to engage with the creators of past and similar initiatives to discuss methodologies.³¹ Memorial staff are also increasingly attending and participating in conferences such as the annual AIATSIS Summits, the Tandanya-Adelaide Declaration Symposium (2024), the Dhuluny: 200 Years of Wiradyuri Resistance Conference (2024) as well as specialty area and Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museum (GLAM)-sector conferences. The Memorial is grateful to be part of a community of practice, from which it can learn and to which it can contribute.

Part III: Towards ‘fair and healing remembrance’³²

Reflecting on implementing the Declaration at the Memorial towards and alongside the presentation of broader and deeper content on the Frontier Wars, it is clear that the opportunity and challenge for truth-telling at the Memorial is to contribute to the collective understanding about the wars at the heart of the Australian story, to enhance our capacity to live in better relationship with each other.

Of the violent colonisation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders, Rachel Perkins said, ‘until it is recognised as a war and memorialised as a war, it will never be entirely over’.³³

Wiradjuri and Kamilaroi public intellectual Stan Grant wrote in the Sydney Morning Herald on 28 March 2019 that ‘A nation is ultimately a story; a story that binds people in ways that law cannot’.³⁴ Grant argued for ‘a truth telling that sets us all free’, expressing his view of the importance of ‘acknowledging a shared history that could – told honestly and well–bring us closer together’.³⁵ Those participating in the 2017 National Constitutional Convention wrote in the Uluru Statement From The Heart of truth-telling and a Makarrata as capturing ‘our aspirations for a fair and truthful relationship with the people of Australia and a better future for our children based on justice and self-determination’.³⁶ Dr Samuel Duckett White, Army Visiting Fellow at the Australian War Memorial (2024–2027), has written that ‘Understanding and accepting the violent colonial experiences of the past is necessary for makaratta (truth-telling) and to inform the Australian public about critical modern issues …’.³⁷ He continued to say, ‘by re-evaluating the colonial experiences, Australians can approach modern issues demonstrating what the Wiradyuri call yindymarra winhaganha – a process of self-reflection to better the world we live in’.³⁸

There is a strong stream within Australian academic and cultural production of reflective practices that aim to better the world we live in, and I suggest that there is resonance between these reflective practices, the Wiradyuri concept of yindyamarra winhanganha – defined as ‘the wisdom of respectfully knowing how to live well in a world worth living in’,³⁹ and the purpose of the Memorial’s foundational and ongoing role of ‘commemoration through understanding’.

Finding common ground is a critical part of the methodologies of negotiation and collaboration; important now, and necessarily ongoing in relation to the presentation of Frontier Wars content at the Memorial. For key to what is being undertaken is the slow development of trust.

Dr Kate Warren has observed that, ‘cultural practices of memorialisation are tied up as much with imagining possible futures as they are about commemorating the past’.⁴⁰ I think this is true of the Memorial and is why people hold such strong and varying views about its work. It is what is at stake in the work towards presenting broader and deeper coverage of the Frontier Wars at the Memorial, which will bring new inflection and renewed meaning to the Memorial’s founding purpose and guiding principle of ‘commemoration through understanding’.

Bean envisaged the Memorial as a warning of the grievous human cost of war and as an ‘object lesson’ of the need to work for the conditions for peace; saying in 1923, ‘The collection … [is] … an object lesson of the idea for which those men strove – that is, to rid the world of the dreadful system which settles disputes by warfare’.⁴¹ In keeping with this ambition, the Memorial is located on a line of sight that extends from Mt Ainslie to Parliament House to ensure that those with the authority to commit Australia to conflict look upon an inescapable reminder of the consequences of war. Implementation of the Declaration and presentation of the Frontier Wars at the Memorial as ‘a fair and healing remembrance of the colonial encounter’⁴² will result in an important extension of this line of accountability.

Notes on contributor

Margaret Farmer is a New Zealand-Australian curator, writer and editor. As Senior Curator, Honour Rolls, Official and Private Records at the Australian War Memorial, and a member of the Memorial’s Reconciliation Action Plan Working Group, she is involved in several capacity building and research initiatives towards the Memorial’s presentation of Frontier/Australian-Wars-related content. These include being project manager of the Memorial’s Cultural Safety and Diversity Audit (2024) and the development of the Memorial’s Indigenous Cultural and Intellectual Property Framework (2025). Margaret was lead curator of the Memorial’s special temporary exhibition The Courage for Peace (October 2019–June 2020), and four-part exhibition series A Home on a Southern Hill (November 2016–August 2018). Previous exhibitions include the City of Sydney public art program We Make This City (November 2011 – May 2012), and the UNSW touring exhibition Terra Alterius: Land of Another (2004–2006). Margaret’s abiding interest lies in creative and curatorial practices that build connection and possibility in relation to complex histories and threatened futures.

Notes

1.	C.E.W. Bean, ‘Australia’s Records: Preserved as Sacred Things – Pictures Relics and Writings’, The Anzac Bulletin, vol. 40, 1917, reproduced on the Australian War Memorial website, available at: https://www.awm.gov.au/articles/blog/australias-records-preserved-as-sacred-things, accessed 17 February 2026.
2.	Brendan Nelson, quoted in ‘Press Conference at The Australian War Memorial’, The Hon Matt Keogh MP, Minister for Veterans’ Affairs, Minister for Defence Personnel, E&OE Transcript, Joint Press Conference, Australian War Memorial, Thursday, 29 September 2022, available at: https://minister.dva.gov.au/news-and-media/minister/press-conference-australian-war-memorial, accessed 13 October 2025; Patricia Karvelas, ‘The Australian War Memorial’s Promise of a “Deeper Depiction” of the Frontier Wars Signals an Important New Chapter’, ABC News, Sunday, 2 October 2022, available at: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-10-02/australian-war-memorial-frontier-wars-national-history-chapter/101490802, accessed 13 October 2025.
3.	Kim Beazley, quoted in Christopher Knaus, ‘Kim Beazley Backs “Proper Recognition of Frontier Conflict” at Australian War Memorial’, The Guardian, Monday, 6 February 2023, available at: https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/feb/06/kim-beazley-recognition-frontier-wars-conflict-australian-war-memorial, accessed 13 October 2025.
4.	International Council of Archivists, Tandanya-Adelaide Declaration, 2019, available at: https://www.ica.org/?s=tandanya, accessed 22 April 2026, p. 2. Hereafter, International Council of Archivists.
5.	Nelson, Op. cit.
6.	Beazley, Op. cit.
7.	International Council of Archivists, Op. cit., p. 2. M. Farmer, ‘Implementing the Tandanya-Adelaide Declaration at the Australian War Memorial’, Presentation, Tandanya-Adelaide Declaration Symposium, Ōtautahi Dunedin, New Zealand, 25 October 2024; M. Farmer, ‘The Frontier Wars at the Australian War Memorial: Commemorating the Past, Creating Possible Futures’, Presentation, AAANZ 2024 Conference Past, Present, Possible Futures, Canberra, Australia, 6 December 2024; M. Farmer, ‘Truth-Telling and Future-Shaping Exhibitions’, AIATSIS Summit 2025, Garramilla Darwin, Australia, 4 June 2025; M. Bell and B. Dawson, ‘The Australian War Memorial’s Journey to Broader and Deeper Representation of Frontier Wars in the Memorial’s Galleries’, AIATSIS Summit 2025, Garramilla Darwin, Australia, 4 June 2025.
8.	International Council of Archivists, Op. cit., p. 2.
9.	At the time of writing, it is Memorial style to use ‘Frontier Wars’, accordingly, this term has been utilised throughout.
10.	This is being led by the Memorial’s Reconciliation Action Plan Working Group (RAPWG), which for the period January 2018 to January 2026 has been championed by the Head of the Memorial’s National Collection branch, MAJGEN Brian Dawson OAM (Ret’d), and guided by the Memorial’s Indigenous Liaison Officer, Michael Bell, along with, for the period October 2024 to February 2026, Hollie Gill, Indigenous Assistant Curator, Art Section. The author is a member of the Memorial’s RAPWG and is contributing to this work through a number of initiatives, and it is in that capacity that she has written this reflection. The author would like to thank Michael Bell, Brian Dawson, Hollie Gill and Thomas Rogers for their comments on this article.
11.	International Council of Archivists, Op. cit., p. 2.
12.	Ibid.
13.	Michael McKernan, Here Is their Spirit: A History of the Australian War Memorial 1917–1990, University of Queensland Press in association with the Australian War Memorial, Canberra, 1991, p. xii.
14.	Here the term ‘First Nations’ is used to refer to the First Nations peoples of all nations. Within this article, the term ‘Indigenous’ refers to Aboriginal, Torres Strait Islander, South Sea Islander and Papuan peoples. This is consistent with Australian War Memorial use of the term ‘Indigenous’, arising from Australia’s military history, to refer to the Indigenous peoples of territories that have been administered and/or occupied by Australian forces. When referring to specific communities or language groups, the Memorial seeks guidance from those in authority about respectful and appropriate language protocols.
15.	Geoffrey Blainey, Letter to Robin Wade, 2 April 1979, AWM315 234/003/007 02. McKernan, Op. cit., p. 293.
16.	WDL Ride’s suggestions for ‘Primary Displays’ and ‘Themes within topics of Primary Display’, circulated to the Memorial Executive, July 1979, AWM315/234/007 03. Throughout this reflection, for simplicity, the word ‘Council’ is used to refer to the Australian War Memorial Council, noting that this has formerly been constituted as the ‘Board’.
17.	A. Hill, Report, ‘Australian War Historical Study’, submitted to the National Capital Development Committee in February 1981, and presented to Dr Ride and the Director, 13 January 1982, AWM315/328/001/020. In relation to this argument, Hill cited Peter Stanley’s presentation ‘“While Acting under Orders”: The Slaughterhouse Creek Massacre of 1838’, Unpublished Manuscript, 1981. Australian War Memorial History Conference, Australian War Memorial, Canberra. For additional discussion, see Thomas J. Rogers, ‘Displaying Frontier Violence at the Australian War Memorial’, in Cameo Dalley and Ashley Barnwell (eds.), Memory in Place: Locating Colonial Histories and Commemoration, ANU, 2023, noting that the Australian War Memorial has now firmly committed to presenting the Frontier Wars at the Australian War Memorial.
18.	Hill, Ibid. McKernan, Op. cit., p. 294.
19.	Elaine Darling, ‘Submission Concerning the Depiction of Aboriginal Wars at the Australian War Memorial by Mrs Elaine Darling’, undated, circa 1984: AWM315/271/004/100. Mrs Darling served as the Member for Lilley, Queensland, an inner metropolitan seat in Brisbane, for 12 years from October 1980 to February 1993, and on the Australian War Memorial Council from 1983 to 1987: Parliamentary Handbook, available at: https://handbook.aph.gov.au/Parliamentarian/UD4, accessed 17 February 2026.
20.	‘Extract from Minutes for Council Meeting held on 12 November 1984’, AWM315/271/004/100.
21.	M. Bell and B. Dawson, ‘The Australian War Memorial’s Journey to a Broader and Deeper Representation of the Frontier Wars in the Memorial’s Galleries’, AIATSIS Summit 2023, Noongar Boodja Perth, 6 June 2023.
22.	Nelson, Op. cit.
23.	Beazley, Op. cit.
24.	Ibid.
25.	International Council of Archivists, Op. cit., p. 2.
26.	Ibid.
27.	Bell and Dawson (2023), Op. cit. The paper further canvassed ‘the exhibitions, installations, publications and commemorative sculptural works that have been developed to acknowledge and commemorate Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander service and the impact of frontier wars’.
28.	Bell and Dawson (2023), Ibid.
29.	Bell and Dawson (2025), Op. cit.
30.	While Memorial staff do not follow any one particular model of trauma-informed practice, they learn from workshops such as those run by the Australian Society of Archivists or by the Blue Knot Foundation.
31.	This work and preliminary findings were described in M. Farmer, ‘Truth-Telling and Future-Shaping Exhibitions’, AIATSIS Summit 2025, Garramilla Darwin, Australia, 4 June 2025.
32.	International Council of Archivists, Op. cit., p. 2, which specifies ‘fair and healing remembrance of the colonial encounter’.
33.	The Australian Wars, SBS Australia, Third Episode.
34.	S. Grant, ‘$500 Million War Memorial Upgrade Should Recognize Unspoken Conflicts’, The Sydney Morning Herald, 28 March 2019, available at: https://www.smh.com.au/national/500-million-war-memorial-upgrade-should-recognise-unspoken-conflicts-20190328-p518nz.html, accessed 15 October 2025.
35.	Ibid.
36.	Available at: https://ulurustatement.org/the-statement/view-the-statement/, accessed 12 February 2026.
37.	S.C. Duckett White, ‘(Flint)lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels: A Modern Military Interpretation of Frontier Economic Warfare’, Journal of Historical Encounters, vol. 10, no. 2, 2023, pp. 52–62.
38.	Ibid.
39.	Per translation on the Charles Sturt University homepage, available at: https://www.csu.edu.au/, accessed 15 October 2025.
40.	Kate Warren, Anthea Gunn and Mikala Tai, ‘Artists, Institutions, Publics: Contemporary Responses to Conflict’, published in the 2020 Australian and New Zealand Journal of Art, Special Issue: War, Art and Visual Culture, available at: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14434318.2020.1764227, accessed 22 April 2026.
41.	‘Mr C.E.W. Bean’s View’, 1923 AWM 93 12/12/6; C.E.W. Bean, ‘Note on the Principles Governing the Exhibition of Relics at the Australian War Memorial’, 1953, AWM315 328/001/004.
42.	International Council of Archivists, Op. cit., p. 2.