The Australian War Memorial's refusal to acknowledge the Frontier Wars between Indigenous Australians and white settlers is historically dishonest and is holding back reconciliation, writes Alan Stephens.

The Australian War Memorial is one of Australia's most visited and influential national institutions. Seven hours a day, 364 days a year, it is filled with children and adults from all parts of the country.

For many, the AWM provides their main exposure to the story of war - indeed, to Australian history.

According to the Memorial's website, its mission is "to commemorate the sacrifice of those Australians who have died in war".

In order to fulfil that mission, the AWM should both honour and educate. That is, it should illustrate and acknowledge the experiences of the men and women who have served; and it should tell us clearly and honestly why we have gone to war, and what that has meant for our nation.

It is within that context that the refusal of the people who control the AWM - politicians, the governing council, and retired generals - to recognise the most important conflict ever fought by Australians is nothing less than a national scandal.

That conflict was of course the Frontier Wars, fought from 1788 to the 1920s between Indigenous Australians and an invading coalition of white settlers, militia, police, and colonial soldiers.

A standard diversionary tactic used by deniers of the Frontier Wars is that it was not a "real" war, an assertion the director of the AWM, Dr Brendan Nelson, has made on numerous occasions.

Yet most of our leading historians have no doubt that the first Australians' defence of their land, rights, and values was conducted in the manner of a "war".

Henry Reynolds presents an overwhelming case for that conclusion in his recent book, The Forgotten War; while John Connor has described the 140-year-long struggle as a "sustained conflict that can only be defined as war".

Former chief of the Australian Army and Vietnam veteran, General John Coates, has endorsed those findings, as have other contemporary senior military commanders.

Stereotypes of Australian Aboriginals are often derogatory - they are fringe dwellers, substance abusers, passive "leaners" on society, and so on. The claim that they did not even fight a "war" for their country reinforces that stereotyping.

The contrast with New Zealand's Maoris, famed as warriors, and formally recognised in their nation's history through the "Maori Wars", is both striking and, apparently, damning for the Aborigines. Yet the facts indicate otherwise.

The war for New Zealand lasted 27 years and resulted in 2100 Maori deaths. By comparison, the war for Australia lasted more than 140 years and resulted in 20,000-30,000 Aboriginal deaths, perhaps many more.

It is worth noting that about 500 Australians died during the Vietnam War, which is now the subject of regular, large, government-funded commemorations; and 27,000 died in World War II, the only war of necessity Australians have fought since Federation.

As is the case with much of the history of white settlement, rejection of the Frontier Wars has its origins in Australia's officially-racist past. In this case, mendacious legislation governing the AWM seems to have been deliberately drafted with the intention of excluding the Frontier Wars.

According to the Australian War Memorial Act (1980), the AWM's purpose is to recognise "active service in war or warlike operations by members of the Defence Force". The act then defines "Defence Force" as "any naval or military force raised in Australia before the establishment of the Commonwealth".

That definition allows the AWM to commemorate the wars of choice fought by white "Australians" in the Sudan, South Africa, and China before Federation, but excludes the war of necessity fought by Indigenous "Australians" for Australia itself between 1788 and the 1920s.

In other words, pre-Federation white volunteers who chose to fight overseas for the British crown and its commercial and colonial interests have been legally defined as "Australians", while pre-Federation Indigenous warriors who fought invaders for their homeland, their families, and their way of life, have been officially defined out of our war commemoration history.

As Professor Jeffrey Grey has observed, Aboriginal Australians have not been "conceded the dignity due to worthy opponents".

The implications of this wilful distortion of our history are profoundly disturbing, both for Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians, and should be addressed by the government and the AWM's council as a matter of national importance.

The establishment of a Frontier Wars wing at the AWM - not a gallery, or a hall, or some other token affair, but a separate, comprehensive wing - would be the single most powerful action official Australia could take to promote reconciliation and honesty.

A Frontier Wars wing would fundamentally change both the perception Indigenous Australians have of themselves, and the distorted perception many Australians have of our history. And it would fundamentally change the relationship between black and white Australians, for the better.

Dr Alan Stephens is a Canberra-based historian and former RAAF pilot. View his full profile here.