Stan Grant, Australian journalist and Wiradjuri man, has been a long time advocate for insisting Australia tear down it's monuments that immortalise white colonisers that tore apart Indigenous people through violence and brutality. As Americans tore down a statue of a confederate, he wondered why we didn't tear down the statue of Captain Cook in Sydney that lauds a man that, upon landing, set the course for the dispossession and brutalisation of a people who still suffer the effects of that today.

He writes:

When I drive through the Blue Mountains west of Sydney to return to the country of my ancestors, the Wiradjuri, I cross the Coxs River named after William Cox the pioneer and road builder. In the 1820s, at the height of conflict between the Wiradjuri and the British — described in the Sydney Gazette as an "exterminating war" — the same William Cox called for the massacre of Aboriginal people.

And it's like this all across Australia - the names of places that either replace indigenous names with white ones or, as leader Noel Pearson argues, have become merely names that no one really knows the origin of, such has been our Australian silence about it's past.

Noel Pearson writes, in the National Indigenous Times, that:

There is little awareness of the provenance of these place names. People seem not to know that Coolum is an Aboriginal name, as are the great majority of the town names on the Sunshine Coast. It is strange indeed to drive through places with virtually no Aboriginal presence, but all bearing these ancient names. Many Australians simply do not know the difference between Aboriginal and English names....

....when I visit Yuurrgubarraalbigu, on the coast near the old Cape Bedford Mission, I pass a hill with the prosaic but official name of Round Hill, but its true name is Dhamal Nubuun: One Foot. It is ridiculous that a place that had a name at the time of Jesus of Nazareth is no longer officially known by this name.

So the decision to rename the seat of Batman with the name Cooper is momentous and a fantastic thing to happen. The Australian Electoral Commission changed it to Cooper in commemoration of the indigenous rights activists, and kept the name Corangamite (our electorate, and an indigenous name) which they were going to change to Cox, named for an Olympic swimmer.

The name Batman has always been a big name in Melbourne where streets and buildings are named after him. Let's look at this man's history for a bit, shall we? Batman was known to:

• have been part of “roving party” leader in Tasmania sent out to hunt down Aborigines.
• and thus made his name as a bounty hunter hunting and killing Tasmanian Aborigines
• acted in his own self interest to protect his own land and investments by killing 'blacks'
• shot wounded natives that 'couldn't keep up' when he attempted to bring them to his farm
• was referred to by artist John Glover as “a rouge, cheat, thief, liar, a murderer of blacks and the vilest man I have ever known”.
• whilst he signed a treaty with the Wurundjeri owners of Melbourne, it was only a calculated possession of the land

Perhaps, rather than being immortalised, he should be forgotten, or at least just become one of the figures in our dark history that we shouldn't hold up high as the great founding father of Melbourne. Let's learn about him, sure, but let's remember the truth, not gloss over genocide.

Cooper, however, is someone that should be remembered, and to be honest, I'm deeply ashamed that I knew about him. @melbourneswest wrote about yesterday, describing it as a 'is a wonderful step forward for reconcilation between Australia's first nations peoples and it's government'. I wanted to add a little for Steem readers to show why we should really celebrate this great decision, and support the changing of many more Australian place names to ones that honour the Aborginal honours of this land rather than commemorate their dispossession.

Cooper, a Yorta Yorta man, fought for representation in parliamen. He sought enfranchisement, land rights and federal control of Aboriginal affairs in his role as secretary of the Australian Aborigines’ League. He also personally lodged a protest against the murders of Jews in the 1938 - this was the only protest of its kind in the world. Think about that for a minute! The only protest of it's kind in the world!! So whilst Batman was all for slaughtering a people, Cooper was (and quite likely as his people had been on the receiving end of it) vocally decrying what had happened.

Here's what I have read about Cooper. Rather than paraphrase it myself, I'd rather just include excerpts from an article in IndigenousX by Daniel James, as it's a fascinating story and I don't want to ruin what's perfectly well written elsewhere!

The march on the German Consulate was a poignant moment of advocacy in a lifetime of activism to improve the lives of our people. A Yorta Yorta man born circa 1861 on country, Cooper grew up on the Maloga and Cummeragunja missions where he also worked as a shearer and labourer. It was in this hotbed of learning and activism and under the tutelage of Thomas Shadrach James his friend and brother-in-law, Cooper would not only learn to read and write but would also, much more importantly, find his voice.

His voice and the voices of those around him would be heard. Cooper joined the Australian Workers’ Union, where his gift for speech and letter writing (see an example here) made him a strong representative for Aboriginal communities across rural and regional Victoria and New South Wales. It was years of activism that eventually lead to the establishment of the Australian Aborigines League in 1934 to provide a formal advocacy body to highlight the plight of Aboriginal people all over the country. Cooper was a founding member along with, Margaret Tucker, Eric Onus, Anna and Caleb Morgan, and Shadrach James.

Another act of Cooper’s advocacy was to lead the first Aboriginal, deputation to a prime minister. Cooper and his comrades had collected the signatures of 1814 Aboriginal Australians from across the country to ask the government to take federal control of Aboriginal affairs. This act was in truth the first steps towards what eventually would become the basis for the 1967 referendum. Cooper asked the government to forward the petition to King George VI, the government refused but the cause was not lost.

Perhaps Cooper’s greatest act of advocacy was to rally fellow leaders such as Doug Nicholls and William Ferguson to call for the establishment of Day of Mourning on January 26 every year. A day to recognise the impact that European settlement has on Aboriginal Australians. I would argue that it was this act that led to what was then called, National Aborigines Day, and which has done more to tap away at the Australian psyche and its treatment of the First Peoples.

It's his leadership, not Batmans, that Melbournians, and all Australians, should celebrate. He's an important figure in our nation's story. What he did was incredible in the times he lived in and he has had a lasting impact on the nation.

I love Noel Pearson's plea that we don't neglect Indigneous history lest we lose an important part of Aboriginal Culture and by extension, what makes us - all of us in Australia - who we are:

In 2001, the world watched aghast as the Taliban dynamited and destroyed the 1700-year-old Buddhas of Bamiyan in Afghanistan. Treasures of older lineage are in danger of being lost to our nation through blindness and neglect rather than vandalism.

We should be erected statues for the Indigeneous figures in our history, and bringing them into national consciousness through the naming of places and the recognition of what they have been and done, rather than ignoring their efforts for the sake of remembering so called founding fathers that were essentially murdering assholes.

Maybe they should start replacing some of Melbourne's street names too.

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