Acknowledging who we are

IN RESPONSE to Christopher Nagle’s letter regarding Acknowledgements of Country (ST 23/7/24), I offer first the gracious words of Noel Pearson, eminent lawyer, intellectual and First Nations activist, who has written that Australia’s history is based on three great narratives.

The first is that we have the longest living culture on earth, a culture that sustained and shaped this land for 60,000 years, and whose people still have much to offer us in generously sharing the wisdom of the land.

The second narrative starts with colonial settlement and describes the achievements of 235 years, the prosperity created through the development and diversification of industry, the building of fine institutions through education and hard work, and the creation of solid governance structures that provide us with stability and security.

The third narrative is our becoming the most successful multi-cultural country on earth. We have abundant evidence of this success in our own community.

Australia is all of these narratives. Too often we privilege the second and third of them, keeping in the shadows the dispossession of our First People and ignoring the gifts of a culture they are only too happy to share with us. Those times at which Acknowledgements of Country are given draws our attention to that first narrative.

First Nations people deserve our respect. Importantly, they deserve the right to be centre stage in decision-making about their own affairs. That’s what the referendum’s loss cost them.

I don’t expect that this letter will stop the state of high agitation and teeth-gritting that Christopher Nagle experiences when he is asked to contemplate, for him, the unimaginable.

First Nations people had a highly complex and sophisticated system of law and culture that we substantially destroyed in South-Eastern Australia but which survives to the extent that it still defines the lives of all First Nations Australians. In paying respect through the Acknowledgement of Country, we attempt to bridge the gap we have created between First and Second Australians.

It is a fact that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island people were here for at least 60,000 years. How can we dismiss as ideology an intention to acknowledge their presence, their culture and their wisdom, whilst also recognising, implicitly or explicitly, that of course we have become a modern, prosperous, innovative country.

We should also recognise that we have more than enough resources, drawn from this country, to give back to First Nations people so that they can determine their future for themselves, within and alongside this great nation of Australia.
 

Marg Lynn, Secretary, Bass Coast South Gippsland Reconciliation Group