War of words as Aboriginal leaders turn on Cook's statue in Sydney

A portrait of Captain James Cook. Photo / AAP file

Captaim James Cook's role in Australian history has come under the spotlight as Aboriginal leaders call for a 138-year-old statue of the explorer in Sydney to be changed to remove the claim that he "discovered this territory".

The debate, inspired by the removal of statues of Confederate leaders in the United States, has prompted calls to re-examine the appropriateness of other statues in Australia.

Stan Grant, an Aboriginal writer and television journalist, sparked the campaign, saying the engraving on the statue in Hyde Park, Sydney, was a symbol of the invisibility of Aboriginal people in Australia.

He said he did not believe the statue should be torn down - though some in the Aboriginal community have called for this - but he wanted the inscription changed because "clearly [Captain Cook] didn't discover Australia - Aboriginal people have been here".

"The inscription that Cook 'discovered this territory, 1770' maintains a damaging myth, a belief in the superiority of white Christendom that devastated Indigenous peoples everywhere," he wrote on the ABC website.

"Indigenous people become a postscript to Australian history."

Grant suggested the inscription could be changed to "he explored this territory"or that it could include mention of Australia's Aborigines, who are believed to have arrived about 60,000 years earlier.

The call was backed by Aboriginal leaders and prompted the City of Sydney's Lord Mayor to seek advice on this and on a statue of Lachlan Macquarie, a colonial governor accused of ordering a massacre of Aborigines in 1816.

But the moves have prompted fury among conservative historians, commentators and MPs. Tony Abbott, the former Prime Minister, seized on the debate to warn that a Labor Government would lead to "political correctness on steroids".

"You can just imagine all the statues of Captain Cook being taken down, all the statues of Governor [Arthur] Phillip [the founding governor of the British colony in New South Wales] being taken down," he told 2GB Radio.

Keith Windschuttle, historian and editor-in-chief of the conservative magazine Quadrant, said the inscription on the statue was "perfectly accurate" as Aborigines had discovered areas around what is now Sydney but Cook discovered the "whole entity".

Inscription on Captain Cook statue in Sydney is a 'damaging lie for Aboriginal people' says Stan Grant.https://t.co/1KF8eV0JNo

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