Myall Creek Memorial marks 25 years amid ongoing silence on Frontier Wars

On the 25th anniversary, the Myyal Creek Monument stands as a silent rebuke to the national silence surrounding Australia’s border wars.

Cold, blush, annual commemoration on Sunday morning, June 8 Myall Creek massacre It started in a field outside Myyal Creek Memorial Hall. Coordinator Myyal Creek Friends (Sydney Branch), Graham CordinerHe recalled that the participants were held in 1998 in the Monument Hall behind the first meeting of Myall Creek Memorial Group.

He pointed to the hall and said:

This is a monumental hall for soldiers killed in wars. And we honor it. We honor this. And the days of Anzac.

But today we honor another day and another war, border wars. And if you look like this, we go from here, this world, from this world, and we walk from the top to another world, different from myself. And we’re going into another area, a much larger area.

With the act of recalling the fall of Cordiner, Myyal Creek, 28 women, children and elderly men who were killed in the massacre were entering our real size as a nation. He said the four local mayors walked with the monument group and that the Gwyder Shire Council worked with the community and helped create this monument and that this activity was magnitude.

Cordiner continued:

“Today, Myyall Creek is a place of peace. Once upon a time, people would not come here because of the trauma associated with the site. But now, when Myall Creek’s senior elderly Sue Aunt said, when the interviewer asked him to summarize Myyal Creek, and when you thought about the context of this context.

While leaving a two -kilometer walk to the nearby monument site, Cordiner asked the crowd to see the march as a pilgrimage. And so, our Myyal Creek pilgrimage began among the low screams of a cockto herd.

What was done by the British settlers, destruction, deserted, hidden from history. Anthropologist in 1968 Weh Stanner He spoke about the “Cult of Forgetfulness”. Australia could not only accept the persecution of the past, but also chose not to think about them until the point of forgetting that these events were. He produced what Stanner said.Great Australian silence”.

As an example of the silence of the Great Australia and the cult of forgetting, Australian war monument. Excluding for decades Border wars – The only war fighting in Australia was a censorship of critics of the Australian war monument, which was generously financed. Why was he remembered when the dead of the wars in Australia were ignored in overseas wars in Numerous other countries in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan and Europe, Africa and Asia?

Journalist and writer in 2024 David Marr declared:

“The war monument is not interested in the conquest of this continent.”

President of the Old War Monument Council, Brendan Nelson– promised To ensure in 2022 “A much deeper depiction and presentation of violence against the people of Aboriginal” As part of the museum’s new galleries. This continues to be a promise that is not fulfilled. Visit the Australian War Monument and you will see that border wars do not exist, and that the realities are still covered in the silence of the Great Australia.

The Myall Creek massacre monument is a very powerful monument, because the Great Australia deals with the silence of the Great, remembering that a Goomerai clan is disintegrated in a certain massacre of the first nations, as the colonial border expands from Sydney, hundreds of massacres full of bones.

The monument consists of a 600 -meter road to the slope with several oval -shaped rocks containing plaques describing an amphitheater near the parking lot and the story of the massacre. The road leads to a large granite rock that has a large monolite overlooking the massacre area, which has a plate dedicated in memory of the massacred Wirrayaray people, a strong monument for a brutal stone age for a stone age.

The Myall Creek monument was opened in 2000, so the 2025 monument marked the 25th anniversary of the monument.

In the amphitheater, Wirrayaraay Elder Susie Blacklock And his nephew Paula Hayes welcomed the country and celebrated the quarter -century of the monument.

Aunt Susie spoke first. He was an important advocate of the monument, believed that it was important to remember his predictions and to honor his memory. The idea of a monument for the massacre was discussed in 1998 and the monument was opened in 2000.

It was an honor to be here 25 years later since they first gathered in this place on the terrible day when Myyal Creek’s grandchildren were killed:

“We are here to celebrate, we are here to mourn. His souls rose to celebrate. They are no longer connected to the graves they are.”

Paula Hayes invited us to the country and asked us to accept those who had fallen and thank those who struggled to build this monument to remember them:

Our people, our nation and all the people around, were badly made by the white generation per day. But at the end of the day, Aunt Susie, Uncle Mo and Invell, and all the people who participated in this journey, it was a very difficult journey to reach this second stage today. They develop every year when they look around the committee, the workers.

And seeing all this and seeing all this is clean. Because when my father brought me here, it was just a goat runway. It was just the whole rubbing and a goat runway. And it was a long, long journey, especially for the harsh struggle of the committee.

All the people who have been traveling for a long time, you know, you have come and see something that has never been done before. And we are proud of that. I am proud of that. I am proud of Aunt Keith and Susie. To see the dance, who came and today, it’s great to see.

Then, on the evening of 10 June 1838, we observed one minute silence for family members who were unnecessarily and violently murdered.

The Myyal Creek massacre monument is on the west of Invell in NSW on the road between Warialda and Bingara. He honors indigenous people fighting to defend their countries.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vgpazln2wgw

Dr John Jigkens is a writer and journalist currently working in the community news room Mr Byron Bay.

Support independent journalism subscribe to IA.