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Mission: Essays, Speeches & Ideas
Mission traces a life of politics, ideas and inspiring words.
Whether he is recalling his boyhood in Hope Vale, Queensland, making the case for Indigenous recognition, or evoking a reconciled, multicultural Australia, Noel Pearson confirms he is one of Australia’s most powerful and influential thinkers – and an extraordinary writer.
Mission selects the best of Pearson’s work to date. There are indelible portraits of political leaders seen close up – Keating, Rudd, Whitlam, Turnbull and more. There is Pearson’s brilliant exploration of a Voice to Parliament, which led eventually to the Uluru Statement from the Heart. And there are acute analyses – of passive welfare; of the fate of the Labor Party; of identity politics, good and bad; and of education and the role of a great teacher.
The volume also contains a remarkable new extended title essay, in which Pearson reflects on his life and work so far.
Mission is honest, provocative and utterly original.
Whether he is recalling his boyhood in Hope Vale, Queensland, making the case for Indigenous recognition, or evoking a reconciled, multicultural Australia, Noel Pearson confirms he is one of Australia’s most powerful and influential thinkers – and an extraordinary writer.
Mission selects the best of Pearson’s work to date. There are indelible portraits of political leaders seen close up – Keating, Rudd, Whitlam, Turnbull and more. There is Pearson’s brilliant exploration of a Voice to Parliament, which led eventually to the Uluru Statement from the Heart. And there are acute analyses – of passive welfare; of the fate of the Labor Party; of identity politics, good and bad; and of education and the role of a great teacher.
The volume also contains a remarkable new extended title essay, in which Pearson reflects on his life and work so far.
Mission is honest, provocative and utterly original.
- GenresNonfiction
608 pages, Hardcover
Published November 30, 2021
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About the author
Noel Pearson
14 books7 followersNoel Pearson is the founder and director of the Cape York Partnership, and the author of Up From the Mission, two Quarterly Essays and many essays, articles and speeches.
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January 25, 2022I can’t help noticing how big Noel Pearson’s new collection – looking up to where it sits on my shelf – is. By way of comparison, my Secker & Warburg copy of Gunter Grass’ The Tin Drum does not quite measure up to its width, while the Edith Grossman translation of Don Quixote only narrowly exceeds its wingspan. It’s a book that competes for space – space to think, space to wrangle, space to expound – and wants, physically, for you to know it.
It would be unfair to attempt to summarise nearly 600 pages in an 800-word review – so I won’t. Consider it a summa. Its jaunty yellow cover belies the elegiac quality of its contents: Pearson’s light on the hill is dimmed.
A well-known public figure, Pearson’s arguments over the past 30-odd years won’t be rehashed here; a quick overview suffices to reveal them: personal responsibility … three tiers of Australian history (Indigenous, white colonist, and those migrations following the official ending of the White Australia policy) … the desire to see greater reconciliation in the form of acknowledgment and inclusion of First Nations in the political machinery.
What’s new here, at least in terms of publication – his last collection, Up From the Mission, appeared in 2009 – is the long titular opening essay. It begins, startlingly: “I blame my father. Or at least I try to.” The move is more than a little rhetorical; Pearson is making a point about his life’s work. It’s part of the book’s mournful tone: “I’ve blamed my father for neglecting myself. Like I thought he neglected himself. The truth is that I’ve never neglected myself; it is just that I’ve felt my father’s gentle admonition every time I don’t.”
Notwithstanding the oddly tortuous prose – it’s not typical of his style, or even representative of the book as a whole – Pearson is making a point about what it has meant for him to try to effect change within the existing system. Often he seems to wish he could have worked within it more, decrying the pathway to politics as one that favours those who are either born into it or grow up with it during their formative years – typically at university.
It also leads him to ask questions that, for others, might seem axiomatic. This is especially apparent in his consideration of equality and colour blindness in liberal democracies. “[I]s liberal democracy really colour-blind, or is its default colour white? I think it is difficult for white people who subscribe to the liberal democratic ideal to see how much of it happens to serve them, and how sceptical non-whites are of their claims to colour blindness.” Well, yes.
Like Stan Grant the younger, Pearson adopts the language and cadence of the preacher; both are from Christian backgrounds, Pearson’s specifically Lutheran. When he describes the abidance of faith, hope and love – as Gunter Grass did in his novel – it is with the sense of someone looking for wholeness, or peace, amid conflict.
Continue reading: https://www.smh.com.au/culture/books/...
It would be unfair to attempt to summarise nearly 600 pages in an 800-word review – so I won’t. Consider it a summa. Its jaunty yellow cover belies the elegiac quality of its contents: Pearson’s light on the hill is dimmed.
A well-known public figure, Pearson’s arguments over the past 30-odd years won’t be rehashed here; a quick overview suffices to reveal them: personal responsibility … three tiers of Australian history (Indigenous, white colonist, and those migrations following the official ending of the White Australia policy) … the desire to see greater reconciliation in the form of acknowledgment and inclusion of First Nations in the political machinery.
What’s new here, at least in terms of publication – his last collection, Up From the Mission, appeared in 2009 – is the long titular opening essay. It begins, startlingly: “I blame my father. Or at least I try to.” The move is more than a little rhetorical; Pearson is making a point about his life’s work. It’s part of the book’s mournful tone: “I’ve blamed my father for neglecting myself. Like I thought he neglected himself. The truth is that I’ve never neglected myself; it is just that I’ve felt my father’s gentle admonition every time I don’t.”
Notwithstanding the oddly tortuous prose – it’s not typical of his style, or even representative of the book as a whole – Pearson is making a point about what it has meant for him to try to effect change within the existing system. Often he seems to wish he could have worked within it more, decrying the pathway to politics as one that favours those who are either born into it or grow up with it during their formative years – typically at university.
It also leads him to ask questions that, for others, might seem axiomatic. This is especially apparent in his consideration of equality and colour blindness in liberal democracies. “[I]s liberal democracy really colour-blind, or is its default colour white? I think it is difficult for white people who subscribe to the liberal democratic ideal to see how much of it happens to serve them, and how sceptical non-whites are of their claims to colour blindness.” Well, yes.
Like Stan Grant the younger, Pearson adopts the language and cadence of the preacher; both are from Christian backgrounds, Pearson’s specifically Lutheran. When he describes the abidance of faith, hope and love – as Gunter Grass did in his novel – it is with the sense of someone looking for wholeness, or peace, amid conflict.
Continue reading: https://www.smh.com.au/culture/books/...
February 25, 2023
Pearson’s clarity, beautiful writing and deep intellect combine to do what he has dedicated his whole life to - to further the hope of the future for the First Nations people of Australia. He has pursued this in the areas of education, social welfare policy and constitutional recognition and provision for Aboriginal people to have a say in the way governments deal with matters that affect them.
Whatever you think about these matters, you haven’t really thought about them if you haven’t engaged with what Pearson says. He will challenge you - as he did me - to think again, to see the matters through other eyes, eyes that have live in the world I have only thought about.
As we stand on the cusp of a referendum on constitutional provisions for Aboriginal Australians, I found the book as a whole, and the last two essays - passionate pleas to proceed with acceptance of the call in the Uluṟu Statement from the Heart - deeply moving and deeply convincing. Like our First Australian brothers and sisters have done towards us, we need to let go of our mythical fears and historical self-justifications, and hear the request in the light of our actual history.
Whatever you think about these matters, you haven’t really thought about them if you haven’t engaged with what Pearson says. He will challenge you - as he did me - to think again, to see the matters through other eyes, eyes that have live in the world I have only thought about.
As we stand on the cusp of a referendum on constitutional provisions for Aboriginal Australians, I found the book as a whole, and the last two essays - passionate pleas to proceed with acceptance of the call in the Uluṟu Statement from the Heart - deeply moving and deeply convincing. Like our First Australian brothers and sisters have done towards us, we need to let go of our mythical fears and historical self-justifications, and hear the request in the light of our actual history.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews