Welcome to GR Online, a series of short-form articles that take aim at the moving target of contemporary culture as it’s whisked along the guide rails of innovations in digital media, globalisation and late-stage capitalism.
Mistrusting the news
Some of what we call ‘fake news’ today is what we used to call propaganda. When the US-born Briton and fascist politician William Joyce, known as Lord Haw-Haw, broadcast radio programs during World War II designed to mislead and demoralise the Allied opponents of Nazi Germany, he would present a mix of fake and factual information.
The Pause
This hospital has a long history of taking on challenges. It’s coped with AIDS. Coped with SARS. Coped with Ebola. But right now, all hospitals in New York are pushed to their limits. The swell in numbers of confirmed cases is the problem. This virus is ‘out of control’.
Science in an age of scepticism
The risk associated with trust is that a person or institution we trust may fail to behave as we expect or hope. This highlights the difference between trust and reliance: we can rely on inanimate objects, such as our car or phone, but strictly speaking we are not betrayed if they don’t work properly. The same is not true in trust-based relationship...
2020: The year of reckoning, not reconciliation
I refused to sing the Australian national anthem and honour a flag that showed the Union Jack, the symbol of another country. Searching for a sense of belonging in a system that routinely denied both my true identity and the history of my people was a constant battle of two worlds colliding. It is a perplexing experience to feel lost in your own country.
Trust and the competition delusion
The competition delusion sees competition and co-operation as two ends of an ideological spectrum. And it presumes that, where one has to choose, competition should be presumed preferable to co-operation.
For the love of our children
I think that as a nation, Australia has an opportunity to embrace the mother tongues of where we live, whether by supporting local language centres or lobbying for First Nations language programs to be taught in local schools and as part of early-childhood curriculums. This will allow us all to feel a sense of belonging in relation to our cultural history as a nation…
On ‘Ninu’ and ‘Two sisters’
These two autobiographies are written in English and interspersed with language – that of the Pitjantjatjara from the Central Australian desert in South Australia and the Walmajarri from the Great Sandy Desert in Western Australia… Together they are two of the most significant female stories that our country is honoured to have in print today.
On ‘Kurlumarniny’ and ‘Yijarni’: Two books in language
These books are linguistic legacies for Nyangumarta and Gurindji speakers and readers, a vital recording of history, and a great act of continuing language acquisition and fluency. They document the years before and during the monumental Pilbara station workers’ strike of 1946 in Western Australia and the subsequent Wave Hill Walk-off of 1966 in the Northern Territory.
2019: Future voices
Archie Roach and Jack Charles…shared the stage that night. This was an important moment for literature, too – these two men would both release memoirs in the following months about their triumphs and disasters, their pain and survival: Jack Charles’s Born-again Blakfella (Viking) was released in August, and Archie Roach’s Tell Me Why: The story of my life and my music (Simon & Schuster) was released in November. Both became instant bestsellers.
Can you hear me now?: 2008–2018
In particular, there was a great recognition of female Aboriginal writing – we had this possibility of being able to imagine ourselves as Alexis Wright, for our work to be read widely and for our stories to have a global impact. A major anthology of our literature was available in bookshops and featured in curriculums throughout the country.
Speaking for ourselves: 1997–2007
In 1994, one in every ten Aboriginal people aged over twenty-five reported to the Australian Bureau of Statistics that they had been removed from their families in childhood, a figure confirmed by research conducted since the Bringing Them Home report. Australia-wide, those directly affected by these removal policies number in the tens of thousands.
The books we carry on our backs: 1796–1996
During the period of colonisation, Aboriginal customs and languages were prohibited from being used and spoken, which meant that many languages and their stories disappeared from circulation. A great linguistic dispossession occurred, hand in hand with a great dispossession of homelands and family structures.
