Policing and Desecration
Excerpt from The Pull It Down Reader
Another excerpt from The Pull It Down Reader, written by James and Matt to accompany Matt’s new children’s book, Pull It Down.
This excerpt discusses the policing and desecration of monuments on Aboriginal Land:
Indigenous cultural sites and colonial monuments are policed in very different ways and are given vastly different levels of protection. Many important Aboriginal monuments have been damaged or destroyed by colonisers during the colonisation process. Aboriginal monuments that have survived the last two centuries of colonisation remain at risk of government sponsored vandalism and destruction.
Threats to Indigenous cultural sites include mining, western farming practices, and the construction of infrastructure such as roads. Murujuga and Juukan Gorge are two clear examples.
Murujuga on the Burrup Peninsula is a rock art site belonging to Yaburara, Ngarluma, Yindjibarndi, Mardudhunera and Woongoottoo people, and contains the world’s largest collection of petroglyphs (rock engravings). The oldest rock art at Murujuga dates back approximately 40,000—50,000 years, making it older than the Grotte Chavet-Pont d’Arc in France (which is currently — incorrectly — listed as the world’s oldest).
Some of the unique petroglyphs at Murujuga include the spotted giant flat-tailed kangaroo, a species of megafauna that became extinct 30,000 years ago. Murujuga also contains etchings of the Tasmanian devil and tiger which have been extinct for 2,000 years on the mainland. Perhaps the most important cultural artwork at Murujuga is the world’s oldest known depiction of a human face.
Murujuga, an extremely significant Aboriginal monument, is currently under threat from erosion by emissions from Yara Pilbara Fertilisers Plant and Woodside Karratha Gas Plant. The Western Australian government is pursuing further industrial development in the area with a new ammonium nitrate plant owned by Orica.
Juukan Gorge is another cultural place of great significance, named after a Puutu Kunti Kurrama ancestor and containing at least 47,000 years of important cultural and historical information. Indigenous people used Juukan Gorge as early as 47,000 years ago and it is likely that they maintained the site continuously, including through the last ice age. The Western Australian government allowed mining company Rio Tinto to destroy Juukan Gorge, blowing it up to expand mining operations in 2020.
Countless Indigenous cultural sites have also been vandalised and destroyed by individual non-Indigenous people. Culturally significant scar trees have been tagged with writing, ring barked, burnt and cut down. Many thousands of years of Indigenous history at rock art sites have been defaced and significant Aboriginal rock arrangements have been dismantled or destroyed. The heritage-listed Kuyung stone arrangement near Lake Bolac is a 176-metre-long site depicting a juvenile eel and was constructed by Djab Wurrung people 1,500 years ago. Due to colonisation, this important Indigenous ceremonial and meeting place is now occupied and designated as ‘private’ land. In 2021, a non-Indigenous farmer destroyed the lower section of the Kuyung stone arrangement. The farmer stated that he was unaware of the significance of that section of the Kuyung site, apologised and was not charged. In almost all cases of Indigenous cultural sites being damaged or destroyed by an individual, there are no consequences.
In stark contrast, colonial monuments are heavily policed and protected by Australian governments. Australian politicians frequently call for increased penalties for the damaging of colonial monuments. These penalties are already legislated to include thousands of dollars in fines and years of imprisonment.
For example, in 2020, political leader Gladys Berejiklian described anticolonial text added to James Cook statues as ‘un-Australian’, noting that significant penalties were already in place for vandalism and adding, ‘If we do need to go further we will’.
In 2024, a statue of colonial British monarch Alexandrina Victoria was pulled down in Geelong. Politician Bev McArthur called for ‘tougher penalties for statue topplers’ and described the act as a ‘disrespectful and criminal attack on our history from those with no respect, intelligence or understanding of the many benefits of Western civilisation’.
In the lead up to ANZAC Day 2024, politician Bridget Vallence joined local Returned and Services Leagues (RSLs) in calling for harsher penalties to protect monuments commemorating the participation of Australian soldiers in wars of imperialism. These colonial monuments had been ‘tagged with texta’ and ‘scratched’, and in one case a flagpole had been pulled down. ‘In my view’, she said, ‘given the sacred nature these war memorials have for our community and country, I consider there needs to be a higher tariff of between 15 to 20 years [incarceration]’.
Meanwhile, the national leader of the RSL called for an Australian government-led ‘education and respect program’ and for ‘increased security’ at war memorials.
Colonial monuments are also protected through heritage listing, a process through which certain sites and structures are sanctified. The colonial building Glenmore Homestead, for example, was constructed no more than 160 years ago, an insignificant amount of time relative to the history of Darumbal Land upon which this structure has been imposed. Nevertheless, through its listing on the Queensland Heritage Register, the homestead has been deemed by the Queensland government as ‘important in demonstrating history’, ‘important in demonstrating the principal characteristics of a particular class of cultural places’, ‘important because of its aesthetic significance’ and as having ‘a strong or special association with a particular community . . . for social, cultural or spiritual reasons’.
Glenmore Station is still owned by the Birbeck family. In her book Black Witness, Durumbal and South Sea Islander journalist and academic Amy McQuire describes how, in 1865, station owner Samuel Birbeck called the Native Police on a group of Darumbal people he observed peacefully traversing their Country. The next day, 18 Darumbal people were massacred and buried in a mass grave. Today, the Birbecks are also memorialised in the colonial naming of Mount Birbeck, an example of stolen landform as colonial monument.
While Indigenous monuments are primarily threatened by colonisers, colonial monuments are primarily threatened during times of popular anti-imperialist and anti-colonial liberation struggle. For example, colonial monuments have been damaged or altered with increasing regularity during the period around Australia Day, an annual celebration of Britain’s invasion and theft of Aboriginal Land.
As we write this reader, the Zionist entity’s campaign of genocidal colonialism in Palestine, Lebanon and neighbouring lands is ongoing. These events — and the fact of a unified armed resistance — have generated an increase in the western popular comprehension of imperialism and colonialism. This has naturally led to an escalation in anti-imperialist direct action, including the alteration of colonial monuments on Aboriginal Land.
Since October 2023, a statue of colonial British monarch George Frederick Ernest Albert in Melbourne has been beheaded, while statues of the above mentioned Alexadrina Victoria in Geelong, James Cook in St Kilda and William Crowther in Hobart have been pulled down. Crowther was a colonial politician and pseudoscientist who mutilated Aboriginal bodies and traded in their remains.
The statue of James Cook was quickly repaired and reinstated, and the plinth’s new spray-painted text — reading ‘the colony will fall’ — was removed. However, the slogan, along with the image of Cook’s absurdly severed ankles, was replicated and endured in the form of risograph posters, embroidery, print publications and other revolutionary media.
Imperialist military monuments along Canberra’s ANZAC Parade and other sites surrounding the Australian War Memorial have been altered multiple times during this most current iteration of the US and Zionist campaign of genocide and colonial expansion, reflecting a growing public awareness of Australia’s role in the occupation of Palestine. For example, the Australian National Korean War Memorial and Australian Vietnam Forces National Memorial — memorialising Australia’s role in separate US imperialist invasions and occupations — were amended with red spray paint to read ‘blood on your hands’ and ‘from the River to the Sea’.
Public opposition to colonial monuments on Aboriginal Land also increased during the popular uprisings of 2020, which grew outwards from the US in the wake of George Floyd’s murder by US police. As African Americans confronted the violence of policing, monuments to colonisers such as Christopher Columbus were publicly altered, toppled or removed across America, and this anticolonial momentum soon reached Europe. A statue of slaver Edward Colston, for example, was torn down and rolled into the Bristol harbour in England, and a statue of the genocidal monarch Léopold Victor was defaced and removed in Antwerp, Belgium.
On Aboriginal Land, a rally was organised to protest the police violence responsible for Aboriginal deaths in custody and to demonstrate solidarity with the international abolitionist uprising. Mounted and pedestrian police were pre-emptively deployed specifically to encircle and protect the statue of James Cook in Hyde Park.
Pull It Down and The Pull It Down Reader are designed by Dennis Grauel and published by Slingshot Books. The reader is risograph-printed by Helio Press.
Both books are available from Slingshot Books online, or from your local independent bookstore.
