Author(s): Ashley Hay (Editor); Teela Reid (Contribution by)

Essays & Letters

Truth-telling in a post-truth world.Four years on from the Uluru Statement from the Heart, there’s a clear divide between the groundswell of popular support to recognise the rightful place of First Nations people in Australia’s democratic life and ongoing political inertia in the same space. Griffith Review 76: Acts of Reckoning is a wide-ranging discussion of the multifaceted issues at play in Australia’s fraught journey towards a full settlement with Indigenous peoples. What might be possible for Australia’s narrative when reconciliation between the world’s oldest continuing culture and one of its newest nation states is achieved? And how can this take place in an era of quick assumptions and divides, alternative facts and cancellations? Examining questions of history, truth-telling and decolonisation and revisiting colonial figures and assumptions and their ongoing legacies – in Australia and beyond –Acts of Reckoning reframes the past in order to form new futures, and celebrates how much work is already underway.