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My people die young in this country

Stan Grant’s NAIDOC Week 2016 Address

As we debate whether this country was invaded, it's worth remembering the facts about the crossing of the mountains and the conflict that then erupted around the settlement of Bathurst. Martial law was declared. By law, Indigenous people - Wiradjuri people, my people - could be killed with impunity. Within a matter of years half of the Wiradjuri population of Bathurst were annihilated. William Cox who built the road across the Blue Mountains and received the first land grant on the western plains, advised a public gathering that the best thing that could be done would be to shoot all the blacks and manure the ground with their carcasses which is all the good that they were fit for. Just shoot us and manure the ground with our carcasses.

When I crossed the Blue Mountains today, I crossed the Cox's River. William Cox is immortalised and so many of my people were forgotten. If we are in any doubt about what to call those conflicts we need only go back to the reporting of the time. The Sydney Gazette which was carrying reports on the Napoleonic Wars in Europe was also reporting the conflict of Bathurst. And in the reporting of the day, in the words of the Sydney Gazette, this was an "exterminating war", an exterminating war. Windradyne, a name that should fall from the lips of every Australian schoolchild as surely as we can recall the names of the great American Indian chiefs; Geronimo, Sitting Bull. As sure as we can recall the Battle of Little Bighorn, we should recall the conflict of Bathurst and the name Windradyne. Windradyne led my people, the Wiradjuri people, in a guerrilla war that lasted for years, chased off livestock, speared settlers, burned homesteads to the ground. Retaliation.

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