The real history on colonising Australia

There is still a great deal of truth telling to be told, and if we are to take seriously this need for telling the truth about our history, we must start at first principles.

What if the sovereignty of the First Nations was recognised by European international law in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries? What if the audacious British annexation of a whole continent was not seen as acceptable at the time and the colonial office in Britain understood that ‘peaceful settlement’ was a fiction? If the 1901 parliament did not have control of the whole continent, particularly the North, by what right could the new nation claim it?

The historical record shows that the argument of the Uluru Statement from the Heart is stronger than many people imagine and the centuries-long legal position about British claims to the land far less imposing than it appears.

Eminent historian Henry Reynolds will join us in person to discuss Truth-Telling, his book that is about the present as it is the past. Henry pulls the rug from legal and historical assumptions, with his usual sharp eye and rigour. His work shows exactly why our national war memorial must acknowledge the frontier wars, why we must change the date of our national day, and why treaties are important. Most of all, it makes urgently clear that the Uluru Statement is no rhetorical flourish but carries the weight of history and law and gives us a map for the future.

Henry Reynolds is an Honorary Research Professor, Aboriginal Studies Global Cultures & Languages at the University of Tasmania. His primary work has focused on the frontier conflict between European settlers in Australia and Indigenous Australians.