From Batman to Cooper

On Thursday the 6th, all of the students and staff in Northcote High gathered for a whole school assembly. During this assembly, a monumental change occurred that has and will continue to impact this 94 year old school. Batman House was re-named to Cooper House.

To fully understand this change, let’s look at who Batman was. Batman, full name John Batman, was known as many things. Some might call him a “pioneer of Melbourne,” or the “founder of Melbourne,” whereas others might call him a cheat, a liar, and a thief, just to name a few. He is famous (or infamous, depending on your interpretation) for his exchange with the native Indigenous people for ownership of thousands of hectares of land in return for blankets, food and tools. Make of that what you will.

Of course, trading something with a group of people who don’t speak the same language as you gets complicated, and then when the trade involves switching land that goes as far as Geelong (from Melbourne) for rather trivial things that the other party doesn’t need is most likely going to result in the party exchanging these things getting called out.

Though John Batman wasn’t called out for exploiting the Indigenous Peoples, he was called out for a different reason. On the 26 August 1835, Governor Richard Bourke issued an announcement which stated “agreements” (Like Batman's Treaty) were "void and of no effect as against the rights of the Crown.” (The Crown of England). Bourke’s reasoning was that Batman had tried to “negotiate” with the Wurundjeri Elders, but that the British did not recognise Aboriginal/Torres Strait Islander people as the owners of any lands in Australia. On top of this, Batman had purchased the lands for himself, not for the Crown.

It is now believed that the Wurundjeri Tribe Elders were under the impression that Batman was bartering for a transaction called “Tanderrum”, in which he was offering gifts in exchange for the Wurundjeri tribe’s permission for safe passage and temporary use of land.

But it doesn’t stop there, John Batman is also said to have gotten his wealth, made his name and built his estate from helping in a government-sanctioned genocide of the Aboriginal Australians inhabiting Tasmania known as “The Black War.”

So with all this information, I hope you’ve reached your own conclusion about John Batman.

To fully understand the Northcote High School house name change, we have to know who Cooper was. William Cooper was an Activist who rallied for the rights of Aboriginal Peoples, and he even -at one point- rallied for the rights of Jewish people in Germany (Several weeks after Kristallnacht “The Night of the Broken Glass”; a violent riot that decimated Jewish hospitals, houses, synagogues and more), going to the German Consulate in Melbourne and delivering a petition condemning the acts against Jewish people in Germany.

William Cooper did not reach as many of his goals as he wanted to, but he succeeded in creating Aborigines’ Sunday - Now known as NAIDOC week - and serving as an influence to the Indigenous Rights Activists that came after him.

So, why is this so significant? If we didn’t have John Batman, we wouldn’t be here as we are today, but the things that Batman did ultimately made him a bad person, and went against two of our School Values, Fairness and Humanity. School Houses should celebrate our school values, and having Batman represent one of them certainly does not fit this criteria. However, William Cooper did things that impacted Australia positively, effectively helping to restore a sense of Fairness and Humanity to the Indigenous Peoples.