The false narratives we’ve been told that become embedded as social norms, require determination and resolve to change.

The narrative that places indigenous ways of knowing outside the dominant culture had their origins in the colonial mindset that one was superior to the other.

“When a place and its people are cast as lesser, it makes it a whole lot easier to justify taking everything away from them.” – Ivy Brashear, Appalachian Transition Director at the Mountain Association for Community Economic Development, U.S. (Yes! Winter 2020)

In her essay 2020: A year of reckoning, not reconciliation,(Griffith Review, Matters of Trust, February 4, 2020) Teela Reid writes:

” … marking 250 years since the invasion of Indigenous lands, is Australia ready to Gari Yala (speak truth) and reckon with its past?  Let’s be clear: Captain Cook did not ‘discover’ the continent known as Australia.

Now is not the time to be a quiet Australian. Now is the time to show up for the reckoning that I long ago promised my Pop.”

Gari Yala. (speak truth)          National Reconciliation Week: 27 May – 3 June

    Read the full essay at this link.