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The Guardian - AU
The Guardian - AU
Comment
Paul Daley

Why stop at Fraser Island? Many more Australian places should have their offensive names changed

Butchulla people celebrate the official renaming of Fraser Island to K'gari on Wednesday.
Butchulla people celebrate the official renaming of Fraser Island to K'gari on Wednesday. Photograph: Darren England/EPA

The adoption of the Indigenous name K’gari for what was formerly Fraser Island is a timely reminder of the continuing First Nations-led quest to decolonise racially offensive Australian topographic and urban nomenclature.

Colonisation replaced many Indigenous placenames on the Australian map with those of (mostly) white men who murdered First Nations people. Countless continental features, meanwhile, have been renamed not to commemorate the massacred but the very act of massacring them.

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