Yagan’s Head
The repatriation of an Indigenous warrior’s remains, and the desecration of Yagan’s memorial.
Dec 17, 2006
Yagan was a Nyoongar guerilla who coordinated military resistance against European invaders in Perth, Western Australia, in the early 1800’s.
Following a number of successful military engagements, a price was put on his head, and he was soon shot by a “settler” keen to collect the bounty. (You can see why we have a problem with the word “settler”. There was nothing “settled” about it!)
As was the standard practice of these “settlers” at the time, Yagan's head was hacked off and shipped to London, where it was displayed publicly in true empire style. A century later they finally lost interest in their gruesome trophy and disposed of it in an unmarked hole in the ground. Then a decade ago the head was rediscovered, exhumed and returned to traditional owners in Perth. However, controversy still surrounds the head of Yagan, with Indigenous and non-Indigenous groups alike arguing over its significance and ultimate fate.
Community requests to raise a commemorative statue were rejected in the 1970’s, in favour of a monument to Governor Stirling being erected instead. So the Nyoongar community took matters into their own hands, rejecting government funding and raising the money themselves. They commissioned a life-size bronze statue of Yagan, naked, with spear in hand.
When Yagan’s head was returned from Britain in 1997, British loyalists decapitated the statue in a symbolic repetition of history – an act of colonial defiance. (Who said the past is behind us?) The statue was later repaired, and then the same vandals beheaded it a second time.
Following the second restoration of the desecrated statue in 2002, there began a public outcry against the statue’s nakedness. Non-Aboriginal lobbyists began to campaign for the statue’s genitals to be covered.
The colonists try to cover up plenty of things in this country. But, like Yagan’s head, the past is not easily buried.
