The supposed torchbearers of the reconciliation project have played a significant role in platforming and promoting Aboriginal nationalism. It is relevant to ask to what extent the resilience of this ideology, writ large in the Uluru Statement and remote-area referendum results, is due to the reconciliation process itself
The 1937 manifesto of the New South Wales Aboriginal Progressive Association, which had sibling organisations in other states: 'We have no desire to go back to primitive conditions of the Stone Age. We ask you to teach our people to live in the Modern Age, as modern citizens' How times have changed!