“Everything has a history, and it matters,” wrote the American writer James Baldwin in 1965. We are all shaped by our history, no matter what we do. We carry it within us through generations, and we use it as a frame of reference for our identities.
So why are we so reluctant to see the past with clear eyes, to acknowledge and accept it for what it is? Why do we find it difficult to talk honestly about the dark times in our history? Why do we whitewash it and pretend to see it with rose-coloured glasses?
Stan Grant, the presenter of the ABC show Q+A and a Wiradjuri, Gurrawin and Dharawal man, had been hounded and bullied by racists after his comments on the monarchy during a coronation broadcast, contributing to his decision to step down as host. This incident has shown us once again that a large section of society is still reluctant to face up to our imperial past: the legacies of colonialism and the way it has impacted our lives, no matter our identities.
In the UK, this has been an ongoing conversation. Colonial history has not been taught here in schools, and most British people are unaware of the way their nation’s settler past affected countries and people around the world.
I was born in India and grew up reading the history of colonialism: the Amritsar massacre in 1919 where hundreds of unarmed innocent women, men and children were trapped and killed; the 1943 famine in Bengal during the British rule when more than 3 million Indians died of starvation and malnutrition and millions were driven into crushing poverty; the way “dogs and Indians” were banned from public spaces; the 1947 partition — one of the bloodiest in history — that displaced almost 15 million people, killing more than 2 million, and causing the abduction and rape of more than 75,000 women.
The trauma lives on in people’s bones, passed on from one generation to the next. When this is not taught in UK schools, students with Indian-South Asian heritage are confused about their place in modern Britain, while those who are white find it easy to assume that “everyone is equal” and that racism and discrimination are modern developments — imaginary concepts manufactured by the “woke” left.
I was on Q+A from a Melbourne studio in March during a book tour in Australia when I met Grant. I admired his commitment to Aboriginal rights and his love for Australia. These two things can — and should — stand side by side, because shaping modern Australia requires a commitment to seeing and acknowledging history as it happened, that colonialism is written in the DNA of the nation much like here in the UK.
There is one major difference in Australia, however. The violence happened on Australian land, on the land that First Nation communities had lived and thrived on for many tens of thousands of years before colonists arrived and tried to erase them from their own history. These peoples suffered extreme violence and displacement from their homes and ways of life, made to believe that their cultures, languages and rituals were “primitive” and inferior to those of Western society.
This sort of violence does not end with one generation; it lives on as intergenerational trauma. It lives on in stories we tell our children and those we were not allowed to tell. When people like Grant are silenced, and not allowed to talk about the impact the colonial past had on his people, and millions like him, this violence is repeated, the history of Indigenous peoples erased. It then becomes easier to assume that First Nations peoples do not still face barriers and discrimination in modern society.
As Grant said in his very touching parting speech last night, an acknowledgment of history — the honest version of Australia’s past — is the only way to acknowledge Indigenous peoples’ place in the country, on the land that always has belonged to them.
History has shaped the hierarchies and power structures in our society, the way norms and rules have been set out, the way expectations and roles are established. When we whitewash our history and refuse the talk about the violence perpetuated in the name of the Crown and British monarchy, we can also assume that structural and systemic racism does not exist, that these legacies of oppression and imperialism do not continue to pose a barrier and marginalise those who exist at the bottom of the hierarchies.
Unless we do so, we cannot start tackling racism and prejudice in an honest and open way. Unless we look at our past and confront it, no matter how intense the discomfort, we can never move forward to an equitable egalitarian society.
Do you agree it’s time Australians faced the truth about the nation’s colonial history? Let us know by writing to letters@crikey.com.au. Please include your full name to be considered for publication. We reserve the right to edit for length and clarity.
The problem is that the problem is not in the past. It exists today.
Charles III was heir to the British Crown. Claiming that crown was his right. The British Crown has no moral right to the Crown of Australia, however. None whatsoever, even accepting that the concept of ‘Crown of Australia’ makes any logical sense to begin with.
The average British citizen may be unaware of British history and the brutality that lay at the heart of Empire, however the Royals are not. When Charles accepted his title and role of King of Australia, he perpetuated this brutality anew. Knowingly.
This, in my view, is simply immoral.
I say this not because I claim any degree of First Nations heritage, but for exactly the opposite reason: I am from overwhelmingly British stock. I do not know what the long term answer is, whether it be treaty, or a voice to parliament, or declaration of a republic, but I do know that today, the ball and chain of our history weighs us down and impedes our movement forward as a nation as surely as the ball and chain weighed down our convict ancestors.
Stan Grant was right to speak truth when he did, no matter how uncomfortable it may have rendered some in the audience.
All the pomp and regal ceremony
Hides the brutalities behind the hegemony
Why does the British monarchy have no moral right to the crown of Australia? Are you denying the Australian Constitution? When Cook et al arrived in Australia, the indigenous peoples had not reached a stone-age culture. How do you suggest history might have been written instead of the way it was? I too am British born and an immigrant to Australia. Whether we become a republic or not is up to the people of Australia. But one thing of which I am certain – I have no guilt or responsibility in Australia’s recent history, nor will I ever accept blame for that. The present day penchant for viewing history through a contemporary prism is foolish and simplistic.
Thank you for sharing that, emem48.
Could you kindly elaborate on the points you made? I’d like to understand how your system of justice works.
Firstly, how would you describe the culture here prior to Cook’s arrival, if it hadn’t reached stone-age? What would you measure to arrive at that understanding? e.g. the use of stone tools or something else?
I have read that more than 1 million people inhabited this island prior to Cook’s arrival in 1770. Is that your understanding? I also read that their society had been operating continuously for tens of millenia, despite some challenging conditions of harsh nature and no possibility of buying things from any shops or other people because there were none. Would you agree their culture achieved that longevity, prior to Cook’s arrival?
Are you saying it was OK for the people Cook represented (British) in 1770 to kill the inhabitants and take the land?
How would that be any different from if some other foreigners were to arrive tomorrow at the same island and start killing people (us) and taking our land? That would be wrong, wouldn’t it?
What makes the events of 1770 right but the same thing in 2023 wrong, according to your understanding, assuming you think the behaviour would be wrong in 2023.
You’re living on stolen land.
A thief has no moral right to claim ownership of stolen property, neither do his or her descendants, and neither does the cultural status of the victims negate the criminality of the act. What your reference to the cultural status of indigenous Australians at the time of Cook’s arrival does reveal, however, is the unconscious arrogance and sense of superiority that has underpinned Britain’s view of itself and its place in the world for centuries: that the peoples of other nations and races are naturally inferior and deserve to live under England’s boot. In fact, if the buggers had any decency, they’d be grateful for their subjugation!
I do not hate my British forebears. The British people have brought many wonderful things to the world in both culture and knowledge. However, any honest evaluation of the Empire must also recognise the brutality that underpinned its establishment and maintenance. You don’t have to look to the Antipodes for evidence of this brutality though: just talk to the Scots or the Irish. Or, for that matter, consider England’s treatment of its own poor and dispossessed in the enclosure of the commons, or – perhaps more relevantly – their transportation to this country in prison ships.
You have missed entirely the point of my first post, though. I am not trying to rewrite history. I am referring to current events. Charles acceded to the throne in September 2022. His coronation, in case you missed it, was only a couple of weeks ago. Neither of these can be consigned to the bin of history just yet.
When his mother acceded to the throne seventy years ago, the world was a considerably different place. The year 1952 predates the civil rights movement and the end of the White Australia policy. Elizabeth II can therefore possibly be forgiven for her failure to address the injustices of earlier times. The same cannot be said of the current monarch. His coronation was the first chance in seven decades to formally recognise past faults and our more nuanced understanding of them. Unfortunately, this opportunity has been missed.
It is not the responsibility of current day non-indigenous Australians to address the Crown’s continuing claim to sovereignty over this land. It is not even the responsibility of British common folk. The country was taken in the name of the Crown. It continues to be held in the name of the crown. Only the Crown can offer redress for the situation.
How does one view history other than through a contemporary prism? We live in the here and now, and do not know what life was like hundreds or thousands of years ago.
Have you read Thomas Mitchell and Charles Sturt’s journals? They document how life was in Australia in the 1770’s.
Have you been to your local church in the here and now of a Sunday? You’ll see a bunch of people in the here and now celebrating how they think life was 2000 years ago 5000 kilometres from here.
Have you ever imagined what life was like in Australia 2000 years ago? One way to get a feel for it is to get a helicopter to drop you blindfolded somewhere out west. Look arouund you. That’s what it was like.
If you get thirsty or hungry, and you can’t find a shop, consider what stops you from dying. That’s right – human know how. Ingenuity. Can-do spirit. Neighborliness. Community. It existed for tens of millenia out there, transmitted by the local culture, which is the oldest continuous culture in the world.
The key to Graeski’s comment, and the misunderstanding in your reply, is the word ‘moral’.
The fear of truth telling runs deeply through many strata of our community. The wealth of some of our richest is founded on the blood and bones of those they slew, whose homes they destroyed and whose children they enslaved. This is not some distant past; this is in living memory. How many of our wealthiest families try to discreetly ignore their relations on the other side of town, relations engendered by the rapists they celebrate as pioneers and nation builders? Our very constitution is an explicitly racist document, consigning the conquered and enslaved peoples to the status of flora and fauna.
Our continuing failure to recognise, acknowledge and confront the truths of our settlement is a moral sickness that threatens the very survival of our society. Until we repudiate the first lie upon which our Commonwealth was established, we will continue to be poisoned by all the other lies which we tell ourselves.
Of course, this is challenging. Of course, there are many who will explode in sociopathic rage at the very idea of this challenge which threatens, not our material comfort, but those comforting myths about ourselves. But until we can honestly confront these truths, we will ever lack self-respect and we will ever remain a colony; never to achieve true sovereignty.
Well said Griselda!!!!!
Telling the whole truth is lefty woke bias.
Leaving most of it out and airbrushing smiles on faces is fair and balanced.
Irony detector, beep beep!
Grant says he is stepping back not because he’s defeated by trolls, but to regain some perspective. He says being part of the media is difficult. He wonders whether that makes him part of the problem. I presume he means unwittingly.
It’s easier to see his dilemma if you consider he is primarily a television journalist. Marshall McLuhan famously said the medium is the message. Neil Postman clarified what that means when he explained in Technolopolis that the Limitation of TV as a news medium is that it requires no history and no context.
TV news is a series of 30 second grabs. It’s just the action highlight. It’s just the shooter – not the 30 years of historical conflict that preceded an event – or 60 years or 300 years – it’s just todays breaking news, disconnected from all context, and then a rush to judgement repeated every hour on the hour, and the cut to some completely different 30 second segment, and the 4 minutes of ads.
Stan Grant knows there’s more to us than that.
Very true Frank.
Shanto Iyengar differentiates reporting into 2 types: episodic and thematic. Episodic reporting focuses on incidents, personalities and anecdotes over a thin slice in time. Thematic reporting focuses on the long view and the broad context in which individual events take place.
Most reporting is episodic and just dishes up disposable sugar hits of action and intrigue, with little attempt to explain the background behind a story. Gotcha interviewing is a particularly odious form of episodic reporting, where the interviewer tries to create an episode themselves by insisting on a sensational simplistic answer for a complex multi-dimensional question.
Thematic reporting attempts to provide insights into why stuff happens and why people/organisations/countries behave the way they do. Thematic reporting used to get a good run in quality newspapers but the journalists who did that stuff have mostly retired or been snaffled up by alternative media (like Rick Morton in the Saturday Paper, or, Michael West on his own website).
It’s possible to do a quick-take version of thematic reporting by properly presenting an alternative perspective on a story. The ABC has pretty much abandoned this in its current affairs programs (except for Four Corners occasionally). Speers and co go for the gotchas every time.
For me the nadir of this decline was when Sarah Ferguson had the Russian ambassador on the 7:30 report and shut down his attempt to give the (thematic) 30-year history behind the Ukraine war – none of your propaganda she barked at him and switched him back to answering gotchas.
Here’s a good link to the Iyengar model: https://www.frameworksinstitute.org/article/episodic-vs-thematic-stories/
Thanks N. I watched that Sarah Ferguson interview with the Russian ambassador Pavlosky, who maintained a nonchalance that left Ferguson’s grasping accusations ineffective. I don’t know why she did that. She’s normally more thoughtful and consequently more effective.
Dianne Benjamin’s Framework article about episodic vs thematic stories doesn’t really establish the concept of insightful thematic reporting, because the two thematic examples presented are actually episodic – each of them about the release of a report. The reports are summarised, and while each one has a theme, each news article fails to present a temporal development of the subject matter i.e. a history that would explain the problem in context. To be truly effective, the thematic treatment would require more words to accomodate the larger scope.
To make matters more confusing, Benjamin seems to start her last paragraph advocating episodic story telling, but then ends by advocating the thematic approach. Is that what you get when you read that last para, or am I missing something?
‘TV news is a series of 30 second grabs’ absolutely true, not only does it preclude any analysis, it conditions how many Australians communicate, or not.
One example is media (pack) focusing upon one issue or slip up by a non RW politician, then confronting them with ‘gotcha questions’ i.e. closed questions where the only response allowed is yes or no like an interrogation; it’s a form of authoritarianism that can kill shared conversations and understanding, maybe that’s the whole point?
Intergenerational trauma is a thing. If yourfamily has been stigmatized for generations, had their land stolen, you have seen your parents routinely humiliated, been enslaved and you are still stigmatized every time you go out in public you have intergenerational trauma. Its a thing and it causes huge problems for everyone.
That would apply to most people in the world .
Perhaps not the still stigmatised group. Their trauma is from what is happening now.
Not many Countries or Nations in the world have not been violently invaded by another group, with all the rape and pillage.
How come this intergenerational trauma doesn’t affect everybody?
Or is this how to explain today’s world?
How do you know that other people so recently and continually traumatized are not suffering similarly? Isn’t that what Pragya is saying? That it is experienced elsewhere?
She talks about the experiences of people who live in India. Although India still suffers from its colonial past, its colonisers are largely gone. It can talk about the brutality of its colonisation. The colonizing ‘forces’ still dominate Australia in every way and the people who have been attacking Stan (and others) are trying to ensure things stay exactly that way.
If in doubt about victimhood, whine anyway?
Yes, any reluctance on the part of The Other to respect their quite-obviously-inferior victimhood status is of course an outrageous stepping above their station in life.
Hey GPTChat, please adapt my limerick from t’uther thread.
Don’t Be A Victimhood Niggard, Boy
(A Limerick On Disciplining One’s Household Staff)
If you are Blak in Australia,
Or Brown – do behave like a failure,
I’m privileged & white,
Being above you’s my right,
No leaving that ghetto where I jail ya.
WW.
From my reading of history, the life and times of people in India didn’t change much when the Brits etc. arrived.
Wars between the Indigenous warlords and local chiefs were common. The caste structure also supplied an Indigenous Racism, compounded by Religion and Sects.
This article gives you a clue or two about how you can extend your knowledge base. Maybe that’s worth following up?
Try William Dalrymple’s “White Rajas” for some understanding of how a handful of clerks backed by a limitless supply of low caste sepoys came to rule the subcontinent.
When will one of the usual suspect luvvies claim that the antiModi graffiti on the hindu temple was evidence of the racism of this country?
As the mysterious assaults on some Indians in Victoria a couple of years back were pushed here by the resident racialist correspondent KN-R.
Please read “Inglorious Empire” by Shashi Tharoor, to learn how much and how dreadfully things did change when the Brits invaded (arrived).
Intergenerational trauma cannot be a thing…
Or else how did we ever get over any conflicts ever….
The war generations experienced some of the most horrific things imaginable and yet the Boomers are all happy , well adjusted racists (joking).
One of the key terms of the peace process in Northern Ireland was that terrorists and murderers had to be released from prison. In a relatively small community people had to accept that the people who had murdered their loved ones would need to go free so that there could be peace.
This is the only way history can ever be resolved – through drawing completely arbitrary lines in sands.
Otherwise we remain in a never ending cycle of conflict.
Intergenerational trauma is like some kind of sick social studies theory designed to keep indigenous people in a permanent state of victimhoom.
More like “…some kind of sick social studies theory designed to keep…” useless, unemployable BA grads. in well paid make-jobs.