But one of the key players in the war still, literally, looms large: John Batman.

This is a man who established roving parties in an attempt to round up Aboriginals, including an ambush on a family group at Ben Lomond. As the men, women and children fled, Batman ordered his men to fire upon them, allegedly killing at least a dozen. Four were captured, including two men who suffered severe wounds. When they were unable to walk, Batman recorded in his journal: "I was obliged to shoot them".

In 2018, a campaign successfully resulted in the Melbourne electorate of Batman being renamed Cooper.

Related: Patsy Cameron calls for reconciling past injustices before moving forward with treaty

On any measure of logic, these place names should be changed. But that process has slowed to a complete stop.

But two years later, the substantial "Batman Bridge" connecting the east and west banks of the Tamar/kanamaluka still honours his legacy. A paver in Launceston's Civic Square uncritically boasts that he "took credit for the settlement of Melbourne" and his achievements included "signing a treaty with the resident Aborigines". These pavers were unveiled two months after the renaming of the Batman electorate.

This is just one example of the continued whitewashing of Tasmania's history.

Take the far North-West Coast for example, where the name "Suicide Bay" is still in place for a location where shepherds shot and killed Aboriginals, as described by Tanaminawayt to George Augustus Robinson. "Victory Hill" is where six Aboriginals were killed. A rock off the coast still has a racist name too obscene to print.

So why is this important? These names form a continuous narrative that places colonialism and imperialism, no matter how violent, above its countless victims. When monuments remain to those who dehumanised Aboriginals, meaningful reconciliation is impossible.

And this has consequences on the national psyche.

We just need to look at some of the disturbing acts of racism in the media and the desecration of Aboriginal sites that occurred near and during National Reconciliation Week this week. The week may have passed without much mention due to the coronavirus pandemic, but that did not stop incidents occurring that proved Australia is going backwards on reconciliation.

Last weekend, Rio Tinto detonated explosives 11 metres away from rock shelters in the Pilbara where artefacts were found in 2013 dating back 46,000 years. The shelters were destroyed, ending a continuous strand of history of staggering proportions.

Related: Michael Mansell's vision for a Tasmanian treaty

And last week, on Nine News in Queensland, a racist and inaccurate segment was broadcast that claimed to "investigate" how Palm Island residents had spent $30 million awarded to them following a successful class action against the State of Queensland. The news report suggested that island residents spending the money, awarded after 18 families had their houses kicked in by police who aimed assault weapons at children, on supposed luxury items was a waste of taxpayer money. You wouldn't find Nine News following up how white beneficiaries of class actions against governments were spending their money.

The report followed a similar pattern of "othering" Aboriginal suffering and misrepresenting their cause. It pandered to the all-too-familiar racist pile-on that develops in Facebook comment sections, that in turn pushes the report further into news feeds.

This media misrepresentation has been apparent throughout Australia's history. The Mabo decision resulted in a vicious fear campaign that attempted to stifle land rights, claiming people's houses were not safe.

And more recently, politicians were allowed to dismiss the Uluru Statement from the Heart out of hand using similar tactics of invoking fear in the community. The proposals from this statement were a meaningful attempt at constitutional reform and self-determination to finally address the inter-generational poverty that continues in Aboriginal communities.

Instead, we live in an Australia where racist tropes still win viewers, our history excludes anything deemed uncomfortable, cultural desecration continues and reconciliation struggles to progress any further than the Welcome to and Acknowledgment of Country.

As Darlene Mansell told ABC Tasmania this week about regularly being called "half caste" as a child: "I don't think we've moved far from that."