The ‘difficult heritage’ of the Native Mounted Police

Abstract

This article intervenes in the debate about whether and how the ‘Frontier Wars’ should be represented in Australia’s military heritage. If they were to be represented, those who resisted British colonial occupation would figure as Aboriginal patriots in a renovated heritage of Australian service to country. We point out, however, that certain historical actors have been, so far (and perhaps forever), excluded from such a revised Indigenous military heritage: those Aboriginal peoples who ‘served’ in the Native Mounted Police. While the archival record is patchy, scholarship tells us that, in their pacification of frontiers, the Native Mounted Police killed many Aboriginal peoples. Interrogating the meaning of war heritage in Australia, we discuss the politics of forgetting against the obligations of historiography to collective memory and ask: must scholarship always interrogate identity-sustaining myth, in service to the truth? To explore this question, we adopt Sharon Macdonald’s concept of ‘difficult heritage’.

Humans Making History through Continuities and Discontinuities in Art

“…By and large, oral histories cannot be created in ways that are similar to either of these (Burke et al . in press; Davidson et al . 2021).…”

Indigenous and other Australians since 1901: A conversation between Professor Tim Rowse and Dr Miranda Johnson

“…This will complement two other papers I have written on the nineteenth century: on the Native Mounted Police and on how pastoralists learned to practise some of the functions prescribed for 'protectors' (in press). 23 Second, I am collaborating 23 See Rowse and Waterton 2018;Rowse 2018. with colleagues at Western Sydney University to write about the ways that the 'Indigenous/non-Indigenous binary' has become significant in the production and consumption of Australian culture. With Fred Myers and Laurie Bamblett, I am editing a collection on that theme.…”

Speculating about genocide: The Queensland frontier 1859–1897

“…2 See especially (Ashenden, 2022, pp. 24-26;Bottoms, 2013, p. 181;Curthoys & Mitchell, 2018;Kearns, 2021;Marr, 2023;Reynolds, 2021;Rowse, 2018Rowse, , 2021Schultz, 2022, pp. 74-75;Wallis et al, 2023).…”