{"id":987,"date":"2018-03-19T20:37:00","date_gmt":"2018-03-19T10:37:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.womenrep.org\/?p=987"},"modified":"2023-04-13T20:38:19","modified_gmt":"2023-04-13T10:38:19","slug":"recognising-history-to-guide-australias-future-republic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/womenrep.org\/?p=987","title":{"rendered":"Recognising History to Guide Australia’s Future Republic"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In a thrillingly analytical pre-cursor to Megan Davis’ commentary in the April edition of The Monthly (see News Update of 2 April 2018) comes republican historian Mark McKenna’s Quarterly Essay on the history of contact and Indigenous petitioning for recognition and acknowledgement. Almost at the very end, he writes:”The time for pitting white against back, shame against pride and one people’s history against another’s has had its day. After nearly 50 years of divisive debates over the country’s foundation and its legacy for Indigenous Australians, Australia stands at a crossroads – a moment of truth. We either make t<\/em>he Commonwealth (read “Republic” ed) stronger and more complete through an honest reckoning with the past, allowing ‘the ancient sovereignty’ of Indigenous Australia to ‘shine through as a fuller expression of Australia’s nationhood,’ or we unmake <\/em>the nation by clinging to triumphant narratives in which the violence inherent in the nation’s foundation is trivialised and retreat once more into the old “attitudes that helped us (<\/em>emphasis added ed)<\/em> to conquer and settle the country. Our history will always challenge and unsettle us”…. but we have to accept that it has “created Australia as much as Anzac, the White Australia Policy, immigration, the agendas of our governments and institutions, and the land itself…..We have long been on the cusp of re-founding the Commonwealth, but somehow the whole game – integrating the constitutional change embodied in the republic and reconciliation and understanding how they speak to one another – has continued to elude us.” [“Moment of Truth, History and Australia’s Future” by Mark McKenna, Quarterly Essay, Issue 69 2018]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In a thrillingly analytical pre-cursor to Megan Davis’ commentary in the April edition of The Monthly (see News Update of 2 April 2018) comes republican historian Mark McKenna’s Quarterly Essay on the history of contact and Indigenous petitioning for recognition and acknowledgement. Almost at the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-987","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-14","wpcat-14-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/womenrep.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/987","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/womenrep.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/womenrep.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/womenrep.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/womenrep.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=987"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/womenrep.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/987\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":988,"href":"https:\/\/womenrep.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/987\/revisions\/988"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/womenrep.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=987"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/womenrep.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=987"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/womenrep.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=987"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}