Abstract
In an era of reconciliation and truth-telling, many have questioned the symbolic power of statues. A storm of controversy across the globe galvanised an electric energy in which many statues were damaged or toppled. Statues became lightning rods for social conflict. This article explores earlier clashes over statues in Perth in the late 1970s and 1980s, revealing that while the statue of a colonial figure was untouchable despite the dark side of his history, the statue of an Aboriginal leader erected to recognise Western Australia’s First Peoples was decapitated. The article concludes with a discussion of methods for dealing with the dark history of these silent sentinels from the past.
Highlights
Statues preserve the memory of leaders and heroes and transmit archetypal stories
Statues are not timeless stone or bronze images, obsolete survivals from the past. They are animated by collective memory as it continually reconstructs the past according to the beliefs and needs of the present
In Perth, protests against the statue of Governor Stirling were brushed aside in 1979 and Aboriginal dispossession was rarely acknowledged when the statue of Yagan was under consideration
Summary
The City of Perth Council agreed to make a site available for a statue to Yagan on Heirisson Island at the eastern entry to the city in 1978 despite the 150th Anniversary Board’s rejection of the idea of commissioning a statue of him.[21] Ronald Berndt, Professor of Anthropology, wrote to the West Australian newspaper: Not to honour Yagan as a present-day symbol is to lose sight of our own history, and to ignore the immense and painful struggle of Aborigines over 150 years to regain their self-respect and identity as significant citizens of this State. Two months later the statue was again decapitated, this time by a selfproclaimed ‘British loyalist’ on the day of Lady Diana Spencer’s funeral This is thought to have been in reaction to Nyoongar elder Ken Colbung’s alleged comment that her death was ‘Nature’s Revenge’ for Yagan’s killing by the ‘English’.
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