Clover Moore slammed by Indigenous leader for ‘inhumanity’

The head of one of Sydney’s biggest Aboriginal organisations has criticised Sydney Lord Mayor Clover Moore for stalling on plans to erect the CBD’s first Indigenous statue, describing the decision as “belittling and inhumane”.

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Sydney Lord Mayor Clover Moore won’t commit to putting up a tribute to a legendary Aboriginal woman because statues could be too “colonial”.

And that’s despite the campaign for the statue of Gadigal woman Patyegarang coming from the Metropolitan Local Aboriginal Council.

Sydney’s only other ­Aboriginal statue is of Wiradjuri matriarch Mum Shirl in Redfern.

CEO Nathan Moran, whose democratically-elected organisation represents 580 adult Aboriginal people and at least 200 in the City of Sydney, said the council has unfairly ­deferred the decision to its ­Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Advisory Panel, controlled by Ms Moore.

Ms Moore has also raised the possibility of a “citizens’ jury” deciding the matter, something Mr Moran said was not done when the City of Sydney spent $6 million turning Redfern Post Office into an Aboriginal cultural centre.

Sydney Lord Mayor Clover Moore has not yet committed to placing a statue of an Aboriginal woman in the city. Picture: AAP/James Gourley

Ms Moore did not rule out a statue of Patyegarang but said that, for some people, statues were a “particularly western or colonial approach” to honouring historical figures.

“The decision is not allowing us as Aboriginal people to determine what we need, it must fit in with her needs,” Mr Moran said.

“She believes that she knows best. It’s belittling and inhumane. It’s a continuum of her leadership and a dictatorship where it’s my way or the highway.”

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It comes amid calls within the Black Lives Matter movement for Sydney’s colonial statues to be pulled down.

In June, a Greens staffer and another woman spray-painted “No pride in genocide” on the Captain Cook monument in Hyde Park.

But Mr Moran, whose push is backed by City of Sydney councillor Kerryn Phelps, said: “I personally do not think any benefit would be drawn from statues being removed — I would just like to see our ­version erected.

“There are four statues of Matthew Flinders’ cat, but none of an Indigenous person.”

Metropolitan Local Aboriginal Council CEO Nathan Moran is upset the statue has not yet been approved. Picture: John Appleyard

Patyegarang helped devise the first dictionary of an Aboriginal language and was an ­invaluable translator between British and Indigenous people in early colonial Sydney.

The City is completing a Harbour Walk with Aboriginal culture acknowledged prominently along the foreshore.

That is set to include some sort of recognition of Patyegarang at Dawes Point.

Ms Moore said Mr Moran has been personally consulted about the Harbour Walk.

“The city doesn’t make ­decisions in the tradition of patriarchal governments in ­relation to Aboriginal communities and say what we thought should happen — everything we have done has come from them,” she said.

“It has been tradition for governments to put up statues and that has not been what our Aboriginal curators and artists have wanted to do.”

Ms Phelps said: “I thought this was going to be one of the most simple things to go through council but instead has become an unnecessarily difficult process.”

Originally published as Clover Moore slammed by Indigenous leader for ‘inhumanity’