This Quarterly Essay from March 2018, written by Mark McKenna, historian at the University of Sydney, reflects on the Australian government's response to the Uluru Statement from the Heart, which was released in May 2017. It was a dispiriting time when the Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull, provided an old-school, knee-jerk, shut down to the three eminently worthy suggestions of constitutional recognition and reform, a First Nations voice to Parliament, and Truth and Justice sessions as per South Africa's model. This negative, entitled, parsimonious shut down caused me to once again despair for this country of mine. We will never be reconciled with our past, and never grow into a mature nation, until we can listen to the voices of the First Nations of Australia and do what they ask of us by way of reparation.
The essay began with the reminder of the long history of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people petitioning the powers that be for recognition that they are the First Nations of this land, that they never ceded Sovereignty and that the Australian government represents a people who murdered, stole and attempted the destruction of their culture. From the 2 Wiradjuri elders, Jimmy Clements and John Noble, who walked over 150 kilometers to be at the opening of Parliament House in 1927, to claim his sovereign rights, and so goes the historical record - 1934 Yorta Yorta activist William Cooper, Yirrkala petitioners 1963, leaders of the 1967 Referendum, the founders of the Tent Embassy, the authors of the 1988 Barunga statement and now the 2017 Uluru Statement from the Heart....it is a long and unbroken history of claiming their rights. And yet, we continue to ignore them and to silence the history of dominance and attempted cultural genocide. Not words used in this Essay, as the author Mark McKenna is not a polemicist, instead he writes in the non-inflammatory tones of an Australian historian who knows that all he needs to do is write down the facts and they will provide their own searingly embarrassing and frustrating history of a violent nation, then a privileged nation, then a conservative nation working to deny Australia's First Nations of justice.
I encourage every Australian to read this essay. I entered its pages hurt and angry and ended them with a better understanding of both the distant past and the recent past, and I particularly enjoyed the story of the signage at Kurnell, which was an excellent reminder that we can and do constantly rewrite history to make it relevant to the people of the present. The essay argues that it is not beyond us to reconcile with the First Nations people, in fact it is the only way forward, to truly understand and know ourselves is to meaningfully reconcile that Australia has a black and white past, and a black, white and multicultural future.