Rewriting the narrative: Confronting Australia’s past in order to determine our future

Abstract

Since colonisation, history has been whitewashed to suit the socio-political aims of the settler. The $50 million redevelopment of the landing site of Captain Cook, disingenuously renamed the ‘Meeting Place Precinct’, is stark evidence of this. This essay argues that in order to arrive at a comprehensive understanding of history, Australia must engage in a process of national re-founding via truth-telling and active listening between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples respectively. Keywordshistory wars; frontier violence; British invasion