Commemorating Foundation: a study in regional historical memory

Abstract

There has been much debate in Australia about the national historical memory of British settlement and its counterpart of Aboriginal dispossession, but what do we see when this historical memory is examined not on the national but on the regional scale? This paper examines some of the changing forums for commemorating the foundation of South Australia, the Australian colony that has always regarded itself as distinctive in its protection of Aboriginal people as British subjects. In doing so we trace how and in what forms the history of the contested frontier has maintained different levels of visibility at different times, and what this might suggest about the politics of historical representation.