S.W. Griffith: A Suitable Case for Indictment?

Abstract

In his 2021 book ‘Truth-Telling: History, Sovereignty and the Uluru Statement’, Henry Reynolds called for an inquiry into the historical record of Samuel Walker Griffith, Federation ‘father’ and first Chief Justice of the High Court of Australia. Reynolds’ iconoclasm targeted a historical figure whose name is memorialised in a Riverina town, a Canberra suburb and a Queensland university. Reynolds charged that Griffith was morally and politically responsible for the violence carried out by an agency of the Queensland government, the Native Police. This historically grounded allegation relates to Griffith's pre-Federation Queensland political career, 1874–93, when he served intermittently as Premier, Attorney-General and Colonial Secretary. In this article we consider the historical record of S.W. Griffith as law-maker and ministerial decision-maker, asking what elements of fact and context may be brought to the important work of reckoning with a violent colonial past and its memorialisation in the present.