Podcast Transcript: Frontier War Stories Episode 9, in which host Boe Spearim speaks with guest Fred Cahir about the Frontier Wars on Wadawurrung Country.  Frontier War Stories podcast series available on podbean: here.

“As much as guns and warships, maps have been the weapons of imperialism.”
J. Brian Harley

ABOUT THE HISTORY SKIPS PROJECT

This project has been developed in Narrm on the sovereign unceded lands of the Kulin Nation.

We recognise the Boonwurrung and Wurundjeri custodians of this land and pay our respects to Elders, past present and emerging. We thank First Nations people for their tireless leadership.

This project has been developed by a group of un/settlers and we acknowledge there are likely to be flaws in our approach. We welcome all feedback and critique.

We draw on predominantly secondary sources for research, and would like to acknowledge the work of all the historians which we have presented on this site.

If you would like to gain a deeper understanding of the violent colonial history of the area now referred to as Victoria, Bruce Pascoe’s 2007 book Convincing Ground is a fantastic place to start.

Worimi woman Genevieve Grieves' has done a huge body of work on memorialisation in Narrm, in which she surveyed around 520 memorials, statues and monuments and found that only a small handful were not “dead white men”.

In an article in The Age in 2017, she said:

"Melbourne's memorial landscape only represents colonial landscapes and heroes. Indigenous people are not present. Women aren't represented."

The History Skips project is driven out of respect and deferral to First Nations sovereignty. It is an engagement with the continuing colonial dispossession and violence imparted by the colonial state of Australia.

We aim to acknowledge the violent colonial usurpation of sovereign Indigenous lands. The namesakes of our cities have been attributed to men of horrendous character and violent action and inaction - we understand this as one thing among many that needs to be addressed if "Australia" is to ever occur.

We acknowledge and own that there may be mistakes in our approach, and we are open to all feedback and criticism, and to any who want to travel this road with us.

You can contact us via Instagram or at historyskips@gmail.com