By Georgina Hewson
BRISBANE, Aug 3 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – Like many indigenous Australians, Pat Dudgeon grew up in the shadow of a mountain range that made her feel inferior and “conquered” on her own traditional lands.
The King Leopold Ranges, a mountain chain in Western Australia, were named after the Belgian ruler King Leopold II, whose regime killed and maimed millions of Congolese in the late 1800s.
So, when the landmark was renamed Wunaamin Miliwundi on July 3 to honour its traditional owners, Dudgeon, who is a member of the Bardi Aboriginal community, saw the move as a positive step in Australia’s long road toward reconciliation.
“As an Aboriginal woman, I was really chuffed to see that happen – it was very empowering for me,” the psychology professor at the University of Western Australia told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
As protests over racial inequality continue to sweep across the world, Australia is seeing a renewed push for the removal of cultural reminders of colonialism which rights advocates say are harmful to the pride and health of Aboriginal citizens.
Thousands of landmarks and places across Australia bear names that are offensive to Aboriginal people and Torres Strait Islanders or that celebrate their oppressors, indigenous activists say.
They are calling for geographical locations to revert to names they were given by traditional landowners who can trace their lineage back 60,000 years, instead of those given by white settlers.
“It has troubled me for years that an extraordinary area of Western Australia should be named in honour of a person who is widely regarded as an evil tyrant,” said Western Australia Aboriginal affairs minister Ben Wyatt on the renaming of the King Leopold Ranges last month.
“It’s important to acknowledge and promote the long history of the Aboriginal peoples’ connection to this land, and the proud place it takes in Western Australia’s shared history,” he said in a statement.
In 2018, the Australian Electoral Commission agreed to change the name of the federal seat of Batman, in Melbourne, to Cooper in recognition of indigenous activist William Cooper.
John Batman, considered one of Melbourne’s founding fathers, was accused of involvement in the massacre of Aboriginal people in Tasmania during the early 1800s.
Also in 2018, a mountain in the northeast state of Queensland named after racial segregationist Jim Crow was renamed Baga to reflect the site’s indigenous heritage.
The list of name places that indigenous citizens and advocates hope to see changed next include a series Blackfellow Creek in Cairns and Black Gin Creek in Rockhampton.
“I think if you grow up in conditions where the most brutal of your oppressors… are celebrated and you have landmarks named after them, it’s a form of racism and oppression,” said Dudgeon.
