Thanks for attending!
Thank you for tuning in to the first webinar of our 2022 series, Critical Public Conversations: Undoing Australia. This keynote webinar titled ‘How should we tell the truth About Australia?’ featured Australian Centre Director Sarah Maddison and Deputy Director Julia Hurst discussing the politics of truth-telling in settler colonial contexts.
138 people joined over zoom, and 158 people viewed live or watched the recording on our Facebook page. Feel free to re-watch and share the recording via the link above. Read on for Themes and Questions raised, as well as links to our next webinar on 6 April.
Themes raised
Undoing "Australia"
“Australia” does not really exist: For millennia hundreds of sovereign First Nations have lived carefully and responsibly on this continent. These nations are still here. Mere moments ago – in the context of deep time – Europeans arrived and claimed this place as their own, and over the following century invented and imposed an imagined sovereignty and constructed the institutions of the place that is now called Australia.
"Australia” is not an irrefutable, uncontested, and natural fact: it is an idea that is created, invented, asserted, and done every day. As such, it might be undone.
Truth-telling
One of the questions that interests us concerns the role that truth-telling might play in deepening public understanding of Australia as a colonial project and, relatedly, what might be done to transform relationships between First Nations and the Australian state in light of these truths.
However, we remain unconvinced that the outcome of truth-telling in this place will be the kinds of transformations that many imagine: First Nations and settler states may pursue truth-telling processes for quite different ends. What First Nations seek in these contexts is most often not a transition towards a shared, integrated society, but a transformation of that society such that their sovereignties as distinct and self-governing peoples is recognised (Maddison & Shepherd, 2014).
There is significant risk that the (re)emergence of truth-telling as a political dynamic in so-called Australia will be another moment of an imagined political break with the past…informed by a drive toward rescuing settler futurity…To resist this, our history must by necessity and in truthfulness, remain complicated, multiple, and unfinished.
Maddison, S., & Shepherd, L. J. (2014). Peacebuilding and the postcolonial politics of transitional justice. Peacebuilding, 2(3), 253-269. doi:10.1080/21647259.2014.899133
Some questions from the audience
Thank you for your wonderful and thought provoking presentation. I’m curious about the South African TRC as a global model for truth telling. Is there any critique about how this process failed to consider the role of global capitalism (multinationals) and reparations for continuing racial injustice.
Considering the challenge of undoing ‘Australia’, what might be an ‘Undoing’ name for the Australia Centre? I do this by using a small ‘a’ for all words deriving from ‘Australia'
If First Nations sovereignties were to be meaningfully recognised in/by Australia, on what basis could the settler state rightfully enter a treaty process? Is there work to be done in re-constructing ‘australia’ as a political entity beyond the illegitimate construction of settler sovereignty we currently have?
Next webinar!
Dr Amy Spiers and Genevieve Grieves, Wed 6 April 12pm - 1pm AEST
Counter-monuments: Challenging distorted colonial histories through contemporary art and memorial practices
