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the outcome is to show that the museum is certain who is the guilty party in this history.The museum voice says:“Tension between Noongar people and British settlers reached breaking point in 1834.Many settlers became convinced that they needed to assert their authority with a showof force. A well armed group of men set out from Perth on October 25. Three days laterthis force trapped about 70 men, women and children of the “Murray tribe”... Britishwitnesses estimated that between 15 to 30 Aboriginal people died caught in cross firefrom both banks. Aboriginal oral tradition places the figure much higher. Two Britishsoldiers were injured – one, Captain Ellis, died two weeks later. The British partyquickly departed the scene of carnage leaving Aboriginal bodies where they had fallen.Ellis was buried with full military honours.”In this statement which was juxtaposed to the two statements quoted above, themuseum appears to be following its ironic theme by stating that the victors did not burythe bodies of the vanquished although their own dead was given a proper funeral.However, the meaning effect of the museum’s word choices are not confined to irony.In the paradigmatic choice of “British” as the word to describe the villains and victors,the museum also had available “settlers”, “colonisers”, “invaders”, “future Australians”or - following a quoted voice of 1834, George Fletcher Moore - “Europeans”. Bychoosing the word “British” the museum blames the British for the killing and achievesa comfortable moral and historic distancing for itself, and for many of its Australianvisitors – after all, there is a long history of antagonism between Australians and Britishwhich could make this choice of word seem logical.This is a crucial moment in the unravelling of this exhibition text because it shows thatthe museum, even in the choice of this single word, seems determined not to accepthistoric responsibility for the colonial enterprise although its actions as a culturalrepresentative of the coloniser clearly implicates it in colonial activities. For themuseum to push the blame away to the British is to fail to take historic responsibility forits part in history.Dealing with shameful historyHabermas’s (1988) consideration of the problem of the Nazi period of history forcontemporary Germans sheds light on ways to engage with shameful memory. Heconsiders the relationship between future generations and the atrocitites of the 1930sand 1940s and concludes that they are necessarily linked. He argues that there is noway to repudiate these events because they function also to produce the contemporarynation.“Our own life is linked inwardly, and not just by accidental circumstances, with thatcontext of life in which Auschwitz was possible. Our form of existence is connected withthe form of existence of our parents and grandparents by a mesh of family, local,political and intellectual traditions which is difficult to untangle – by an historical milieu,therefore, which in the first instance has made us what we are and who we are today.”(Habermas 1988: 43-44)He goes onto argue that the events are best treated as a filter.“The Nazi period will be must less of an obstacle to us, the more calmly we are able toconsider it as a filter through which the substance of our culture must be passed,insofar as this substance is adopted voluntarily and consciously.” (Habermas, 1988:45)295