Academic Dr Marlene Longbottom says the statue of Alexander Berry along the Princes Highway is offensive, saying it wipes away Aboriginal history.
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Dr Longbottom is a Yuin woman who grew up in Roseby Park mission (Jerrinja) and is the current Aboriginal Postdoctoral Research Fellow with the Ngarruwan Ngadju First Peoples Health and Wellbeing Research Centre at the University of Wollongong.
"To me personally, yes it is offensive - we drive past these monuments almost daily on the Berry bypass," Dr Longbottom said.
"The monument reflects the fact that Berry claimed the land as far as his eyes could see, however, it doesn't represent Aboriginal people of the local area.
"It actually wipes away our history and stories, by replacing over the top a narrative of a white settler who stole land along with the bodies of Aboriginal people."
On June 23, 1822 Alexander Berry invaded Aboriginal lands and set up a camp in Cullunghutti.
She said there is a false narrative that white settlers who colonised lands were heroes.
"These narratives have created stories that appear that white settlers were heroic and brave pioneers.
"However, there is a large omission of where the violence of the colony was often encountered by Aboriginal people.
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"The massacres that have occurred along the South Coast are not discussed because that is a part of history that people would rather not tell.
"For example, it is written that the Sawyers at Twofold Bay were killed by Aboriginal people. What isn't told, is that the white men stole Aboriginal women and the Aboriginal men were rescuing the Aboriginal women."
She said there was a side to Berry about which many people were unaware.
"Berry was a phrenologist and craniologist. It was a form of science that looked at the shape and bumps on skulls and was popular in that time in England.
"These studies often set the basis for the ways non-European people were classified, that laid the platform for the racialised science that followed with social Darwinism.
"Michael Organ's work notes that Berry exhumed the skull of Arrawarra and sent it to England. In Berry's letters, Arrawarra was perceived by Berry as a sinister and dark person. I know Arrawarra to be a resistance fighter and he was a clever man, a healer. This is somewhat different to the narrative Berry portrayed."
Dr Longbotton said the community needs to reconcile its own local history if it wants to move forward.
"Tell the truth. Who the man was. What he did and how his story came to be.
"Truth telling is at the very heart of the Uluru Statement.
"If we cannot reconcile our own local history and accept it for what it is - from both the settler and Aboriginal perspective we will never move forward."