Essay Archives

Preparing the treaty generation

ON 25 JULY 2016 I was in a paediatric roundtable at Melbourne’s Royal Children’s Hospital, where we discussed early...

Resilience and reconstruction

Wiyi yani, Galinda yani 'All women, all girls' Wina nginyji: Mimi, Ngowiji, Ngarranyi, Ngawiy, Jugu, Manay, Ngaja, Manggay, Gunday, Jimarri, 'Whether you...

By June Oscar

For her, we must

I LISTENED TO the radio broadcast of Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull’s Closing the Gap address in parliament on 12...

By Marcia Langton

Time to mention the war

The Queen? The Queen never been fuggin walk around here! Uncle Jimmy Pike, Walmajarri artist[i] IN 2002, BUNDJALUNG songman Archie Roach...

By Melissa Lucashenko

Relics of colonialism

We will make better decisions on all the great issues of the day and for the century to come, if...

By Jenny Hocking

Proud or shameful legacy

IT IS TAKEN as a universally acknowledged truth in Western democracies that a strong rule-of-law tradition fosters stability and...

By Godfrey Smith

Cross-border conversations

SOME FIFTEEN YEARS ago, a group of Pakistani women embarked on an experimental journey that was to become a...

By Urvashi Butalia

Empire of delusion

ANYONE INTERESTED IN power must visit Persepolis. Its ruins stand defiantly in a parched valley in southern Iran, the...

By Michael Wesley

Without hindsight

THE COUNTDOWN TO leave the European Union began in the British summer of 2017, but nobody in the country...

By Salil Tripathi

Imperial amnesia

THERE IS A statute of limitations on colonial wrongdoings, but none on human memory, especially living memory. There are...

By Shashi Tharoor

When Chifley met Nehru

IN A LONDON hotel, two prime ministers sit down to breakfast. One is tall, lean, white-haired and speaks in...

By David Fettling

Imagination as emancipation

THERE IS A condition described by Maya Angelou in the first instalment of her memoir I Know Why the...

By Fred D’Aguiar