A war memorial sponsored by weapons dealers is no place for quiet reflection on Anzac Day | Paul Daley

Checking in on Anzac Day commemorations at the Australian War Memorial today? If so, besides paying appropriate respect to our service personnel, perhaps consider just how contorted the official memorialisation of war has become in this country.

It is about bringing insight into what war does to individual humans and societies. Needless to say, most of what it does is hideous, as demonstrated by the worst conflagration since the second world war that is now playing out in Ukraine.

But with the dawn of every Anzac Day in recent years, the memorial falls ever shorter of that duty.

In recent years there has been a global renaissance in the way all sorts of collecting institutions tell their stories and face the often unpalatable truths about some objects in their collections and the histories behind them.

This renaissance extends to an ever more prudent consideration of who sits on their management boards and, critically, their sources of sponsorship.

There is, of course, another grievous omission from the memorial: its refusal to adequately chronicle Aboriginal resistance in the frontier conflicts with Indigenous people that were, effectively, the wars for Australia.

Nelson (a former defence minister who has sent Australians into conflict) was undoubtedly the most high-profile and politically influential of directors.

This week Guardian Australia revealed the memorial had sought a new funding deal from Lockheed Martin despite being inundated with opposition from many veterans, historians and retired memorial staff.