AustLit
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"We seek a Makarrata Commission to supervise a process of agreement-making between governments and First Nations and truth-telling about our history." - Uluru Statement from the Heart.
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Honesty is fundamental to the act of conciliation and respect between two warring parties coming together after conflict. This is why in 2019, the Reconciliation theme is also 'grounded in truth'. Below we have included some non-fiction and literary contributions of both Indigenous writers and non-Indigenous writers who have contributed to this 'truth-telling'.
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This image has been sourced from online.See full AustLit entry''I will continue my work on my land, building a future. It is the only thing that is certain to me now and I want to advance while I can. I am trying to light the fire in our young men and women. We are setting fires to our own lives as we really should, and the flame will burn and intensify – an immense smoke, cloud-like and black, will arise, which will send off a signal and remind people that we, the Gumatj people, are the people of the fire. There are people of the fire around Alice Springs – and I reach out to them, too.
(...more)Dr. Galarrwuy Yunipingu entered the struggle for land rights in the 1960s with his father Mungurrawuy, who as Gumatj clan leader, fought and lost the battle to stop a bauxite mine operating on his land. Yunupingu was his father's interpreter throughout the historic Gove land rights case in 1971. -
NRW 2019: Grounded in Truth
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"Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples have long called for a comprehensive process of truth-telling about Australia’s colonial history. Our nation’s past is reflected in the present, and will continue to play out in future unless we heal historical wounds."
Source: Reconciliation Australia
AustLit hosts a "Stories for Reconciliation" bookclub in collaboration with the University of Queensland:
Click here to find the readings.
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This image has been sourced from online.See full AustLit entry'The White Possessive explores the links between race, sovereignty, and possession through themes of property: owning property, being property, and becoming propertyless. Focusing on the Australian Aboriginal context, Aileen Moreton-Robinson questions current race theory in the first world and its preoccupation with foregrounding slavery and migration. The nation, she argues, is socially and culturally constructed as a white possession.
'Moreton-Robinson reveals how the core values of Australian national identity continue to have their roots in Britishness and colonization, built on the disavowal of Indigenous sovereignty.
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'This "Disposition to live in their own Country" - still the key to Aboriginal self determination - has been frustrated for us by European ownership of the law. Your laws say that you occupied our country by peaceful settlement, under the doctrine of Terra Nullius. The fact that hundreds of thousands of Aboriginal people have been killed through poison, disease, starvation and bullets make a mockery of peaceful settlement. The International Court of Justice, in its 1975 opinion on the Western Sahara case, put the doctrine of Terra Nullius, as it applies to territories with tribal inhabitants, into the rubbish bin of history. (...more)See full AustLit entry
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An idea whose time has come - Dean Parkin
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Arthur explores 'the concept and history of the term "Antipodes" and show(s) ways in which that hypothetical space was utilised as a setting for European utopian fiction long before there was any concrete empirical knowledge of the region in Europe'. (...more)See full AustLit entry
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Cover image courtesy of publisher.See full AustLit entry'A call for a radical restructuring of the relationship between black and white Australia.
'Australia is wreaking devastation on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. Whatever the policy- from protection to assimilation, self-determination to intervention, reconciliation to recognition- government has done little to improve the quality of life of Indigenous people. In far too many instances, interaction with governments has only made Indigenous lives worse.
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'Despite this, many Indigenous and non-Indigenous leaders and commentators still believe that working with the state is the only viable option. -
Cover image courtesy the author.I'm Not Racist, but ... is a collection of social observations, thoughts and conversations that will challenge the reader to consider issues of imposed and real Aboriginal identity, the process of reconciliation and issues around saying 'sorry', notions of 'truth' and integrity, biculturalism and invisible whiteness, entrenched racism and political correctness.' Source: Publisher's blurb. (...more)See full AustLit entry -
See full AustLit entry
'US slave owners wrote and spoke about liberty, equality and the pursuit of happiness. Similar hypocrisy, buried in the foundations of settler Australia, has escaped comparable scrutiny.' (Introduction)
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Larissa Behrendt on "Speaking Out" on the ABC
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This image has been sourced from the ABC.See full AustLit entryAcademic, lawyer and writer, Larissa Behrendt graduated from Harvard Law School with a doctorate in 1998. Her thesis was later published as the book Achieving Social Justice : Indigenous Rights and Australia's Future (2003). She is admitted to the Supreme Court of NSW and the ACT as a barrister.
Since 2001 Behrendt has been Professor of Law and Director of Research at the Jumbunna Indigenous House of Learning at the University of Technology, Sydney and has published extensively on property law, Indigenous rights, dispute resolution and Aboriginal women's issues.
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