For Wurundjeri Elder Colin Hunter Junior, seeing John Batman remembered as a hero is painful.
"It's quite hurtful. It's quite hurtful as an Aboriginal person."
John Batman was a wealthy grazier and settler, who declared the site of Melbourne to be "the place for a village" in 1835.
He even suggested the land be called "Batmania".
His central claim to fame was a so-called treaty negotiated with local Indigenous elders, including the Wurundjeri, believed to be the only such agreement of its kind.
In exchange for items like knives, flour and blankets, Batman believed his treaty gave him access to around 60,000 acres of land.
The treaty was soon annulled, with colonial powers saying Batman didn't have the authority to make it.
Batman has also been criticised for, in effect, duping Aboriginal people into an unfair trade that they had little ability to understand.
But his name has remained, with an electorate, streets, parks and other landmarks named after him to this day.
That might be about to change.
One local council, Darebin, is changing the name of Batman park in the northern suburb of Northcote.
Darebin Mayor Kim Le Cerf says the name of the electorate should also be changed.
"Changing the name is really important, but making sure that we recognise John Batman's place in history and who he was to the Wurundjeri people and the broader Aboriginal community is also important."
Emily De Rango is one of the organisers of the "Rename Batman" campaign.
The campaign is making a submission to the Australian Electoral Commission, asking for Batman to be renamed when electoral boundaries are redrawn next year.
Emily De Rango says there are historical records of John Batman being involved as a bounty hunter of Aboriginal people in Tasmania.
"Batman was one of the people to found Melbourne as a colonial city, which makes him important in a way, but he's also somebody who was responsible for the murder of, and dispossession of, Indigenous peoples."
Batman isn't the only colonialist to come under fire.
Victorian MP Russell Broadbent has been leading a push to change the name of his McMillan electorate in Gippsland.
The regional electorate honours the memory of Scottish pastoralist Angus McMillan.
McMillan has been labelled "the Butcher of Gippsland" for his suspected involvement in the massacre of dozens of Aboriginal people in eastern Victoria in the 1830s.
Former New South Wales Governor Lachlan Macquarie had also been criticised for his role in the killing of Aboriginal people.
In one of the most deadly incidents, Governor Macquarie's soldiers killed 14 men, women and children at Appin, south of Sydney, in 1816.
Author and journalist Paul Daley has been researching the subject.
He says many place names don't just honour white colonialists, but the very act of killing Australia's first peoples.
"Massacre Bay, eight Skeleton Creeks in Queensland alone. Slaughterhouse Creek, that kind of thing. And then I just got onto the nomenclature of public buildings, roads, electorates and that sort of thing and what really struck me was that so many of these places that we see every day and that we take for granted and that we don't really question we name in honour of people, or men, who massacred Indigenous people."
As Australia prepares to mark the anniversary of the 1967 referendum, advocates say it's the right time to acknowlege Australia's violent colonial past.
But some residents of the Batman electorate disagree.
An online poll for a local paper last year found just 20 per cent of readers supported the name change.
SBS spoke to several residents in the electorate who said a name change wasn't a priority, and Batman should remain.
Colin Hunter sees it differently.
"Until you can accept the truth and acknowledge the past, how can you move forward in reconciliation? You can't."
Emily De Rango says it's important John Batman is remembered, but not the way he is now.
"I think there's a difference between remembering and recognising the people who had an important role to play, for good or ill, in our history and actively celebrating those people or place names. I think the last thing we want to do is erase evidence of our colonial history, because one of the big problems that Australian people face is that already we don't pay enough attention to it. We don't critically think about what happened."
The preferred name for Batman Park is "Gumbri," the last Aboriginal girl born on the Corranderk mission near Healesville.
Gumbri was also Colin Hunter Junior's grandmother.
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