In Te Waka Hourua’s intervention, I read a refusal of this binary. By using black spray paint to erase all but a few words and phrases, the activists transform the figuratively white “backdrop” into the legible difference that stands out against the illegible redaction. Yet it is this redaction’s very illegibility that demands to be read — not as difference, but as a radical contestation of colonial world-making.

Schools are deliberate targets for government-funded mystification about Australia’s role in wars. Such instances of official remembrance crowd out the realities of war, and the consequences of Australia’s role in imperialism. As teachers, we should strive to resist this, and we should introduce our students to a fuller understanding of the history of the Anzacs.