The announcement was welcomed by Indigenous leaders. Chair of the Eden Local Aboriginal Land Council BJ Cruse,who has campaigned for the name change,said it was an important and positive action by the government.
“We appreciate this special gesture of respect,” he said.
“We are keen to promote Indigenous heritage in the local area and the name change will go a long way to allow us to achieve that. We name places not after someone else,we give it a name for the significance of that place and what it means and how it serves our people.”
Yvonne Weldon,the chairwoman of the Metropolitan Local Aboriginal Land Council and the first Aboriginal candidate for lord mayor,said there must now be consultation with local elders.
“Let’s make sure it is renamed with respect;to engage with the traditional elders down that way is paramount,” she said. “Let’s get it right with the traditional language to be utilised.”
A report by historian Mark Dunn states that after Boyd’s experiment importing labour from Vanuatu and New Caledonia failed,he turned to the exploitation of island communities who were only just coming into contact with European forces in maritime and sandalwood trades.
“[Boyd’s] operations marked the beginnings of a labour trade that would later become known as blackbirding when it resurfaced as a source of labour for Queensland sugar and cotton plantations from the 1860s until the turn of the twentieth century,” Mr Dunn wrote.
Boyd’s intentions were hardly a secret at the time,the historian said.
“Black Lives Matter obviously puts this into a 21st century context,but even at the time his contemporaries were saying he was trying to get slavery in through the back door. Contemporary critics were calling him out for what he was up to.
“How we deal with the past changes as we get more information,we reassess how we look at things,individuals and events. That’s not unusual,that’s how history works.”
Historian Marion Diamond,author ofBen Boyd of Boydtown,said there was a distinction between renaming the national park and renaming Ben Boyd Road in Neutral Bay,which she thinks should remain unchanged.
“I don’t believe in airbrushing bad people out of history,” she said.
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“Changing the name of the national park seems like Fraser Island re-becoming K’Gari and I am all in favour of that. I think you have got to take the good with the bad,you can’t rename everything because someone associated with it did bad things.”
NSW Environment will now work with the Aboriginal community to identify a new name for the park which will be ultimately approved by the Geographical Names Board.
Boyd died in 1851 on Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands after he went ashore to shoot game. Two shots were heard,but Boyd never returned.
In the days that followed,his crew raided and destroyed a number of villages. Reports say Boyd’s head was cut off and his skull kept locally in a ceremonial house.
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