Nathanael Edwards — The Weight of Silence

The truth is, the Australian frontier never really closed – it merely changed shape. The Coniston Massacre of 1928, where up to 2OO souls were slaughtered, is often described as the last officially sanctioned massacre of Indigenous people. History tells us it was not an ending but a bullet point in a system that has never stopped targeting First Nations lives. The crossed rifles are not only symbols of the past – they are symbols of the present. They represent the long-held view that First Nations people are targets, threats or disposable bodies when it comes to pastoral wealth, mining expansion, policing and mythmaking. The massacres of the past have manifested into modern forms – deaths in custody, police shootings, child removals, racialised surveillance and state violence cloaked in policy and procedure. The fact First Nations people continue to die at the hands of the state today confirms that the “open season” on First Nations lives has never been officially closed.”

— Nathanael Edwards

It’s important we understand this – First Nations children are being removed from their families at higher rates than any other time in living memory. A dingo mask symbolises how harmful narratives were used – and still are – to justify taking our children. The title echoes the cries of parents during the Stolen Generations, yet speaks just as clearly to us today. Despite decades of inquiries, apologies and promises of reforms, our children continue to be taken from culture, community and kin, then placed into systems that often fail to understand or honour who they are. For many families, the cycle of forced separation has never ended – it has simply adapted into new forms of policy and intervention. 'Help, White Man Stolen My Babies' is not a historical statement – it is a contemporary living one.”

— Nathanael Edwards

The systemic theft of First Nations people’s wages, savings, pensions and entitlements by the government of the day is one of the most entrenched and deliberately concealed injustices in Australian history. This injustice continued for almost 100 years, with the consequences still impacting First Nations families today. For decades, every aspect of First Nations labour was controlled, underpaid or simply stolen. Workers who were skilled stockmen, domestics and station hands were contracted for a fraction of the white wage. While First Nations people toiled, the government grew wealthier. Wages were withheld “for protection,” locked in trust accounts, mismanaged, raided or secretly diverted into government revenue. The system was designed to lock First Nations people into lives of poverty. When financial control finally shifted in the early 1970s, generations of First Nations workers discovered their accounts almost empty. When the workers demanded answers, they were met with feeble excuses. The State protected itself – not the people they’d stolen from.”

— Nathanael Edwards

At the heart of Queensland’s Protection Acts were laws that openly declared a First Nations person was worth one-eighth of a white man. A statewide system of exploitation was built on that shameful belief. This was not a mistake. It was a formula. A racist ledger. Aboriginal stockmen were the backbone of the pastoral industry. They outrode, outworked and outlasted the white workers who replaced them – yet they were legally paid less than a child’s pocket money. Their wages were seized, “held in trust,” stolen or funnelled into State revenue. Workers who kept Queensland’s rural economy alive were rewarded with deliberate poverty.”

— Nathanael Edwards

In a 1984 television interview, mining magnate Lang Hancock described First Nations people as “a problem” and proposed a solution – to sterilise “half-castes” so they would “breed themselves out.” This was not metaphor or exaggeration – it was a public call for the national genocide of First Nations people of mixed ancestry, broadcast without shame, pushback or consequence. The word HALF-CASTE was a colonial label used to justify segregation, forced removals, eugenics and the surveillance of First Nations identity. The text becomes a scar, a historical document etched into skin. A reminder that racial classifications were not abstract ideas, but tools of violence. 1984 Problems is a reminder that the stories written on our skin are stories Australia must finally reckon with.”

— Nathanael Edwards

The buried truth of British nuclear testing on First Nations land is uncovered. This was a chapter in our history defined by denial, contamination and imperial interests put ahead of First Nations lives. Between 1952 and 1963, with full agreement from the Australian Government, Britain detonated atomic weapons at the Montebello Islands, Emu Field and Maralinga. One patrol officer, Walter MacDougall, was impossibly tasked with “warning” communities across hundreds of thousands of square kilometres. The archival record makes the hierarchy of value clear. In 1956, Chief Scientist Alan Butement criticised MacDougall for placing “the affairs of a handful of natives” above the ambitions of the British Commonwealth. First Nations lives were treated as expendable – collateral damage in the pursuit of nuclear power. After the tests, fallout known as Black Mist was seen drifting across Country. This toxic cloud caused sickness, blindness and deaths, yet was never fully acknowledged or recorded. There’s been enough concealing and compromising. This work confronts the violence lurking beneath national narratives of progress and alliance.”

— Nathanael Edwards

The Native Police were presented as the keepers of “order.” In reality, they were the armed wing of colonial expansion – assembled to ensure land and resources shifted into colonial hands, destroying First Nations sovereignty by any means necessary. Violence escalated as the settlers pushed deeper into Country. This system relied on a strategic power imbalance – First Nations troopers, under white command, were coerced into roles that exploited cultural fractures and turned survival into complicity. The pig’s mask echoes the violence and deceit hidden behind official uniforms. It unmasks the massacres, burnings, forced removals and night raids executed under the banner of settlement – actions that would today be recognised internationally as state-sanctioned atrocities. This work insists on a truth Australia still resists – violence was not a failure of the colonial system – it was its design.”

— Nathanael Edwards

Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, there are documented cases of settlers and station owners giving First Nations people poisoned flour, tea, sugar, damper and water – everyday items turned into weapons. Instead of nurturing and sustaining, these daily staples were designed to kill. Communities were quietly erased without a gunshot. The blue bottle is a symbol of the colonial lust for land that demanded First Nations absence. It represents the settlers who chose silence over accountability, the authorities who looked away, and the communities who drank, ate, and died without justice. For many, this became their real “last supper.” Unlike the biblical reference – a meal shared among companions – this “Last Supper” was forced upon First Nations people who were never invited, never warned and never mourned by those who benefitted from their deaths.”

— Nathanael Edwards

The truth is, the Australian frontier never really closed – it merely changed shape. The Coniston Massacre of 1928, where up to 2OO souls were slaughtered, is often described as the last officially sanctioned massacre of Indigenous people. History tells us it was not an ending but a bullet point in a system that has never stopped targeting First Nations lives. The crossed rifles are not only symbols of the past – they are symbols of the present. They represent the long-held view that First Nations people are targets, threats or disposable bodies when it comes to pastoral wealth, mining expansion, policing and mythmaking. The massacres of the past have manifested into modern forms – deaths in custody, police shootings, child removals, racialised surveillance and state violence cloaked in policy and procedure. The fact First Nations people continue to die at the hands of the state today confirms that the “open season” on First Nations lives has never been officially closed.”

— Nathanael Edwards

While First Nations men and women were equal enough to fight, bleed and die for the nation, they weren’t equal enough to be recognised as citizens. On the battlefield, First Nations and non-First Nations soldiers fought side-by-side. Uniforms erased colour – danger erased difference. But when the war ended, equality vanished at the dock. First Nations veterans came home to a country that excluded them from swimming pools, restaurants, clubs and pubs — and their basic rights. As Elder Dot Peters said, “They could die for their country, but it would be more than 2O years before they could even vote.” First Nations soldiers received little of what white veterans were granted – no soldier-settler blocks, no equal pensions and no formal recognition. First Nations people defended a country that refused to defend them.”

— Nathanael Edwards

Throughout history, the British Empire encouraged the migration of “free settlers” to Australia. These settlers arrived with government support – free land, tools, rations and even convict labour. What the colonial record rarely acknowledges is this – the land they received for “free” was never free. It was taken – seized, allocated, surveyed and renamed, all without consent from the First Nations people who had lived on it for tens of thousands of years. Behind the mask, the man stands as both witness and critique. We are asked to reconsider who benefited, who paid the cost and whose history has been mythologised in the shadows of empire. Settlement is seen for what it really was – invasion with paperwork.”