It is a long, complicated and sorry story, and what is needed is a much greater awareness of these issues by ordinary people. It is a real shame that the good will of 1967 was not harnessed to include acknowledgement that they are Australia’s First Peoples in the constitution.Īll this is part of the unfinished business of our nation, and unfortunately it has become politicised. Prior to that only a very small minority who were judged ‘white enough’ were allowed to vote but they had to give up all associations with their own people to be granted this right. The indigenous people are not even acknowledged in our constitution, and they were not counted as citizens until a referendum was passed in 1967. Grant opens with a declaration ‘These are the things I want to say to you. Described as a personal meditation on race, culture and national identity, Talking to My Country is part memoir, part letter and part history lesson. (Though some recent award-winning picture books for children may change that for the next generation.) Talking to My Country is one of those rare books that has the potential to change the way people think. Aboriginal heroes of resistance get no place in our national war memorial, and their names are largely unknown. And because there was ‘no war’ there was no treaty. It would have acknowledged that there were Aboriginal systems of law and governance in place. The frontier wars were never ‘declared’ because to declare war would (a) have been against the orders of the British Government which condemned the violence if not the taking of land and (b) it would have acknowledged that there were people living here on the land they were fighting for. land that could under international law be taken because it doesn’t belong to anybody, and it was used with disastrous effect because the Aboriginal concept of shared ownership of land didn’t fit with European legal concepts of titles as proof of ownership. ‘Terra nullius’ is a legal term meaning ‘nobody’s land’ i.e. Whereas New Zealand had a treaty with its indigenous people back in the 19th century (The Treaty of Waitangi, 1840) Australia maintained the ‘terra nullius’ fiction right up till the Mabo land rights case in 1992 and this fiction was reinforced by the courts.

Talking To My Country by Stan Grant