Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised this article contains images and names of deceased people.
In May 2020, the international mining giant Rio Tinto made a calculated and informed decision to drill 382 blast holes in an area of its Brockman 4 mining lease that encompassed the ancient rock shelter formations at Juukan Gorge in Western Australia’s Pilbara region.
The Puutu Kunti Kurrama Pinikura people, who are the traditional owners of that land, lost their material connection to sacred sites of ceremonial, clan and family life, the basis for their political and social organisation. The Australian people lost a significant chunk of their national estate. For this hefty price we all paid, Rio Tinto lawfully gained access to $135 million dollars of high-grade iron ore.
In 2018 government senators voted for a motion declaring “It is OK to be white”. Though later disowned, at the time the vote was supported by the likes of Christian Porter and Matthias Corman. Only a few weeks ago our acting prime minister – Michael McCormack, the man who last year blamed the summer apocalypse on exploding horse shit – happily deployed the radical racist right slogan “All lives matter”. Our prime minister, when not on holiday, will happily tell Cricket Australia what to do rather than censure his own MP, Craig Kelly, who, in the week of the attack on the US Capitol – its home of democracy – repeated Trump’s big lie that the election he overwhelmingly lost was stolen. Trump was impeached, Kelly was protected.
Actor Simon Baker on Indigenous massacres: owning history isn t easy
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Simon Baker is remembering his time at the Garma Festival in a remote corner of Arnhem Land, an annual celebration of traditional cultures that is chock-full of music, dance, storytelling and some great barbecues. It is also a forum for some heavyweight discussions.
He was there in 2017, just two months after a meeting of Indigenous community leaders at Uluru had ended with the Uluru Statement of the Heart calling for – among other kinds of recognition – a change to the constitution that would enshrine a distinct place for Indigenous voices in the Australian Parliament. Prime minister Malcolm Turnbull was there. So was Bill Shorten, then leader of the opposition.
History has been brought to the forefront in 2020. We have witnessed not only a once-in-a-century pandemic, but also a global protest movement for racial justice following the death of a Black man, George Floyd.
Such protests have happened before, but not with this immediacy or level of intensity. The Black Lives Matter movement garnered support in at least 60 countries across all continents bar Antarctica.
Floyd’s death epitomised the power and violence of colonialism and slavery, reminding us their legacies are all too real.
And the Black Lives Matter movement has catalysed a reckoning with history. Activists have toppled celebratory statues