Warriors without a war

Opposition to the naming by the Western Australian Barnett government of a prominent Perth city square after Noongar resistance warrior Yagan highlights the failure to recognise the Aboriginal War of 1788–1901. Whilst many view the place naming as an honour, others see it as an insult to a man murdered in 1833 for opposing the brutality anddispossession of European settlement. Yagan was a warrior at war. At the time of his capture in 1832 local settler Robert Lyon argued for his treatment as a prisoner of war. ‘What war?’ you may ask. There is no Aboriginal War officially recognised or commemorated by the Australian nation, or by the institution tasked with that duty, the Australian War Memorial.