Before we start tearing down statues of Captain Cook and Governor Macquarie in a misguided attempt to atone for Australia’s racist past, we should get the facts straight about contemporary Indigenous Australia.

The political narrative behind the attempt to emulate the campaign in the United States to remove Civil War memorials is that Indigenous Australians still suffer racism, prejudice, and disadvantage due to the historic legacies of colonialism and dispossession — which the Cook and Macquarie statutes are said to symbolise.