Recording: Truth-telling

PROF. ROBYNNE QUIGGIN AO: If only I could  command such a hush at other moments! Thank you,  
all. Thank you, all. Lovely to see such a  great turn-out today. Welcome. My name is  
Professor Robynne QuiggIn. I'm the  Pro Vice-Chancellor, Indigenous   Leadership and Engagement, here at UTS. Before we start proceedings, as we always do,  
we begin by acknowledging that all of us,  except for some Gadigal people that may be  
here with us today, are guests on the unceded  land of the Gadigal people. On our behalf,  
I acknowledge their ancestors, the  Traditional Owners that remain on  
this Country and this beautiful Country  that our campus is built on and that we  
have the great privilege of working on  and some of you, many of you, living on,  
and acknowledge that for generations and  generations they have cared for this place  
with deep knowledge systems and ways of being on  this Country that have cared for this place in an  
extraordinary way for many, many generations.? For those of you joining us online,  
I think you get through Slido a mechanism - you  can see I'm not terribly fluent in Slido - some  
way you can tell us which Country you are watching  from, so we would love to know that as well, if  
you know the name of the traditional Country that  you're on. I think there's some directions here.  
Open up Slido and find a link to the slides and  you can let us know where you're joining from.  
Thank you to our guests today and also  acknowledging other Aboriginal and Torres  
Strait Islander people in the room and the many  staff and others who've come to hear what I think  
will be a really fantastic conversation today,  an important conversation for our nation.  
As a public institution here at UTS, we  believe that education is not only about  
creating opportunities for all Australians and  the students that we welcome from overseas who  
study with us, but it's equally about creating  an opportunity for all students to gain a deeper  
understanding of Indigenous Australians  while they are here studying with us.?  
We're really proud of our upward trajectory of  our numbers on Indigenous students - under-grad,  
post-grad, our PhD students. In general, we have  an upward trajectory of bringing them in and  
recruiting, and also really looking after and  supporting our students for success while they're  
here with us. We're really proud of that. We're also really proud of our Indigenous  
Graduate Attribute Program, which is a program  that develops curriculum to be taught through  
our subjects that gives all students insights  into Indigenous perspectives relevant to their  
profession, relevant to the subject matter that  they come here to study. So it's very directed and  
linked to the education and the curriculum that  they have the benefit of while they're here.  
Our research centre, Jumbunna Research - Lindon  Coombes, the Director of Jumbunna Research, here  
today - provides impactful research and advice  to communities, to government, to businesses,  
on initiatives like Closing the Gap and critical  issues to our communities - criminal justice,  
child protection, land justice, Indigenous  knowledges - and is a sector leader in Indigenous  
data sovereignty and creative practice. Our policy setting here at UTS is to support  
self-determination, which creates a particular  environment, a particular ecology, and it gives  
great strength to the many kinds of collaboration  that we undertake here at UTS because it allows it  
to be Indigenous-led, it gives it a quality that  brings a great richness to our collaborations,  
and today's event is, in fact, a collaboration  with Centre for Social Justice and Inclusion,  
and we thank the Centre, the staff, for  all the work that it takes to bring us  
together for this. We have a great working  relationship absolutely characteristic of  
what is at the heart of reconciliation.? National Reconciliation Week occurs annually  
from May to June. These dates  commemorate two significant milestones:  
the successful Referendum and the High  Court Mabo decision respectively. But the  
week is also preceded by National Sorry Day on  May th, earlier this week, when we remember  
and reflect on the many First Peoples here  forcibly removed from their families and raised  
in institutions and forced into barely-paid  labour, if at all - if not slave labour.  
At its core, reconciliation is about  strengthening relationships between   Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people for the  benefit of all Australians. Key to reconciliation  
is our relationship, and the process must weave  together the threads of historical acceptance,  
race relations, equality and equity, institutional  integrity and unity. I think those are really  
key themes that we'll hear more about today. This year, the theme for Reconciliation Week is  
'Bridging Now to Next', reflecting the ongoing  connection between past, present and future.  
In connecting to the past, present and future,  there needs to be truth and acceptance of our  
nation's history and agreement that wrongs of the  past will never be repeated. Truth-Telling is a  
process of openly sharing historical truths of all  Australians and is deeply connected to justice.?  
It might seem obvious that we need a Truth-Telling  process in this country, but just to reflect for a  
moment on the why, a short glance back at history  and the events that book-end Reconciliation Week  
gives us a clue or lets us know the need for  this. Connecting the record on Terra Nullius,  
the idea that we were not here, that this was a  country belonging to no-one, the complete actually  
wiping us off the map of Australia's history,  is how this nation was originally founded,  
and it remained that until the late Eddie Mabo  corrected the record with the Mabo case. Sorry  
Day remembers the people, as I said, who were  removed from their families and communities  
by policies which, at best, were directed at  a misguided idea that we were better served  
away from our culture, away from our land,  away from our families; this misguided idea  
that we would somehow benefit from being raised  in institutions. At worst, the record, we know,  
shows that it was an attempt to smooth the  dying pillow and a mistaken belief that if you  
institutionalised us all and forcibly removed us,  you would wipe us off the map. This silencing of  
us has been unsuccessful but we need to remember  that these are the harsh and the brutal mechanisms  
and the untruths that have led to the way  Australia's history is often understood.  
As a nation, we can still be silenced and  silent on these events - on the massacres,  
forced dislocation from our land and water, and  our connection to people and the nation today.  
Truth-Telling, however, also calls out strengths  and resilience of Aboriginal and Torres Strait  
Islander peoples who have continuously lived  and practised culture on this land for more   than years. And with relationship at  its core, Truth-Telling calls out the stories  
of those also who have stood with us side by side,  so it is absolutely our stories as Aboriginal and  
Torres Strait Islander peoples but it is also  your stories that are key to Truth-Telling.  
The theme of Reconciliation Week, 'Bridging  Now to Next', references the strengths and   importance of our ongoing connection to our  land and waters, to our knowledge systems  
and our languages and our ways of being in the  world. So there's a real strength focus in the  
telling also of these stories and our history.  It's not all the deficit narrative or a tragic  
and sad narrative. There is a narrative of  strength and resilience and collaboration.  
However, in this week, around the anniversary of  the death of George Floyd, we are also seeing the  
report of a young disabled man in a shop, in  Coles, killed while being detained by police.  
We don't know the details yet, but we do know  that our children and our young people and our  
older people continue to be forcibly removed,  disproportionately removed, child protection,  
and the police and the courts - and while we want  to tell the stories of strength and resilience,  
we have to hold in the other hand the truth about  the kinds of mistreatment, lethal mistreatment,  
and the harm that is done still by  child protection, criminal justice   and the systems that are meant to look after  us but often do not look after our people.  
So in today's discussion, we'll unpack some of  the stories that are told and the ways that we  
tell them and we'll also look at what does truth  actually mean in this environment. I think you  
will all be able to agree with me that 'truth'  is contested in a way now. The word is in some  
ways problematic and is contested in ways that  we hadn't seen until the last or so years,  
or in a different way that it is contested. There  are also multiple and complex ways to communicate  
truth in an era of social media, broadcast,  but also there are multiple ways to tell  
these stories just around the kitchen table. So we're honoured today to have Lorena Allam,  
Kate Grenville, Lindon Coombes and Mariko  Smith. We'll invite each of them to come and  
speak for a few moments on their particular  work and then engage in a panel discussion.  
So I'd like to invite the stage Kate, Mariko  and Lindon. (Applause). Thank you. Thank you.?  
Just another reminder that you can enter questions  through Slido. So I'll just take a seat and from  
there, I will introduce our speakers to  you. Thank you. We'll begin with Lorena  
who is going to say a few words about her work.  Lorena Allam is descended from the Yuwalaraay  
and Gamilaraay people of north-west New South  Wales. She's a multiple Walkley Award winning  
journalist and was the first Indigenous  Affairs editor at the Guardian Australia.  
Over to you, Lorena, thank you.? LORENA ALLAM: Thanks, Robynne. Yaama,   everybody. Thank you for coming today to hear  this very important talk. I'm looking forward  
to hearing from my fellow panellists as well. As  Robynne said, I'm a Gamilaraay, Yuwalaraay woman,  
a small but mighty Nation from north-west New  South Wales. I joined Jumbunna quite recently,  
after a long career in the media at the ABC for  years and then The Guardian. Most of that time I  
think has been involved in Truth-Telling in some  form or another, as is the job of a journalist.  
I come from an industry background, so I'm  learning the ropes, learning to find time   to think and process about the concepts  of Truth-Telling and to help mob do that  
Truth-Telling. So I acknowledge my ancestors  and Elders. I acknowledge the Gadigal people  
and their ancestors, and to mob who are here  today, thank you for coming. I acknowledge your   ancestors too because they're always with us. So, as I say, Truth-Telling is supposed to be  
what journalism is all about: to challenge the  status quo, to ask questions, to not take things  
at face value. Journalism, as the old saying  goes, is meant to comfort the afflicted and  
afflict the comfortable, and I think Indigenous  journalists often provide the historical and  
social context for what our people experience.  We know that this context is often missing  
from mainstream reporting about our people and  our communities and our history. For example,  
bringing an understanding of Stolen Generation's  history, as Robynne talked about before, and what  
intergenerational trauma looks like in a community  that has been destroyed by child removals is  
really fundamental to reporting on a story  about the rising rates of out-of-home care.?  
It is not activist journalism. It is reporting. We  meet the ethical and editorial standards that are  
required of us as journalists, just as every other  reporter in the newsrooms where we work do. In  
fact, I would say that our role is even more  challenging because we are accountable to our  
communities in all the ways that non-Indigenous  journalists are not, and if we get it wrong or   misrepresent the issue, our people are often  the toughest critics, and so they should be.  
In the Australian context, I think of  Truth-Telling as doing the work necessary   to build a truer picture of history.  This country was taken by violence and  
killing. Thousands of First Nations people  were killed in the name of colonisation,  
and I want to issue an apology for talking about  such traumatic things today and I apologise if  
it causes you distress. Those crimes have never  been fully accounted for and, in many instances,  
the accounts of the killings have been hidden. The  code of silence has lasted far too long and it's  
time to break that silence. I genuinely believe  that non-Indigenous Australians need to do this  
work, more than we do, because we broadly know our  history. We know what happened to our people. Our  
Elders told us that story because we didn't  get it at school. They tell us what happened  
where - the bend of the creek, the top of the  mountain, the places not to go after dark. We were  
never afforded the luxury of ignorance about this  history, and I think it's time for non-Indigenous  
Australians to catch up because we've been waiting  for them down the track to come up and meet us.  
I think our shared history will be enriched by  it when they do this work. We may yet come to an  
agreed truth, a version of our past that values  all the stories of what took place, so that we  
can make room for, as Robynne mentioned, new  heroes, the people who fought back, the people   who resisted, the people who refused to be silent.  They're all there in our history books and we  
haven't given them enough time and attention,  and part of that process should happen now.  
My current work for UTS is in researching  how we might imagine Truth-Telling,   exploring questions like truth seeking: What  is it Who does it What are we looking for when  
we talk about truth seeking Where do we look  for it Truth-Telling: What are we doing it for  
Who are we doing it for Who does the telling  And, most importantly, and I think the hardest   part is truth listening: who are we talking  to and are they prepared to really listen,  
because it will make you very uncomfortable and  will probably change what you do. One of the  
big projects I worked on at The Guardian was The  Killing Times, which was a collaboration with the   University of Newcastle to bring their massacre  map to a mainstream audience through journalism,  
and I think the whole point of that was to say  to people: "Well, now you know, this is how your  
country was settled. Now you know, you have to do  something with that information. You can't just  
pretend it didn't happen any longer". What is the most meaningful way to do  
Truth-Telling Are big investigations important  Big performative inquiries Or is it more of  
an interpersonal thing, because I think having  witnessed quite a bit of that in recent years,   the interpersonal stuff, the coming together of  descendants, is so powerful and, in many, so much  
more meaningful, but whatever way it happens,  it has to be led by First Nations people.  
There are challenges obviously - the ones who  are resistant to the truth, the ones who are in   denial, the ones who don't want the stories told,  the ones who might destroy the family records  
rather than hand them over to a library. There are  many families out there grappling with this stuff.  
Generations - one generation wanting to tell the  truth; the older generations wanting to stay in  
that comfortable place of denial. But I think  we need to overcome all that fear of approbation  
to tell the fuller picture of the nation. We  shouldn't leave that work to our children and   grandchildren. I think they'll have enough to be  getting on with. I genuinely believe that the one  
thing we all have in common is this land we walk  upon, that we live on, and the Country holds all  
these stories. The Country doesn't lie and we need  to let Country speak, and listen without judgment  
to what it has to say. Thank you. (Applause).? PROF. ROBYNNE QUIGGIN AO: Thank you, Lorena. I  
think The Killing Times - that collaboration  between journalism, media and university,  
the research that was done around massacres - is  incredibly powerful and, if you haven't seen it,  
it's a really amazing work to look back on, to see  the historically based mapping and storytelling of  
massacres, which is one of the real stories  that we don't tell easily in this country.  
We are very grateful to have you to bring this  skill of journalism into the university and to be  
able to do more of that structured storytelling. And thinking about storytelling, there is possibly  
nothing more classically storytelling  than the art of the book, the novel,  
the published work. So we are really grateful to  also be joined by Kate Grenville. Kate is one of  
Australia's most celebrated writers and her most  recent work is 'Unsettled: A Journey Through Time  
and Place'. In that book, she grapples with what  it means to be a descendant of colonisation in  
Australia. So over to you, Kate. Thank you.? KATE GRENVILLE: Thank you, Robynne. Thank you,   Lorena. That really pierced my heart, actually -  that knowledge that we non-Aboriginal Australians  
have such a duty there. I'd like to begin by  just acknowledging the fact that I live and work  
and have written my last few books on the land of  the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation, back in  
Naarm, which might also be called Melbourne. I pay  tribute to and honour all those Elders present,  
past and emerging. I'm honoured to be here on this  platform today. I'm really honoured to be part of  
this conversation and I thank you all very much. When I was growing up, which was the 's, the  
dark ages, Aboriginal people were not mentioned  very much, but my mother was unusual in many ways,  
and one of the ways is that she was conscious  of them even then. So every time our family went  
on a camping trip or a picnic to some beautiful  spot, at some point she would look around - she  
made sure I was listening - and she would say,  "This must have been paradise for the Aboriginal  
people before we came along". Now, I was only  young, but it set up a kind of ripple of unease,  
which I realise now, at the end of my life,  has been rippling through my life all those  
years and, in a way, it was a great gift.? My family has been in this country for five  
generations, which for non-Aboriginal people is  quite a while. For all the others on this panel,  
it is the blink of an eye. They were convicts,  they were publicans, they were selectors. One of  
them, unfortunately, was a squatter. But what they  all had in common was that they all took land from  
Aboriginal people. Now, Mum, as well as reminding  me that we were on Aboriginal land, also gave me  
the great gift of a family story about each of  those five generations, and in a way, when I look  
back at all the books I've written, they have  all been circling that uneasiness that I felt  
then - the theme of how we should think about our  forebears, how to address that unsettledness and,  
above all, how the tell the truth about it. So the project that I have just completed,  
I suppose - although actually it feels like the  beginning of a project, but anyway, this bit of   it is finished - the book, called 'Unsettled'.  Having written several books that were circling  
this subject of how to be a non-Indigenous  Australian basically, was this time to do it  
through a very personal journey. I decided to take  a road trip through all the places that my family  
stories had happened on, all in New South Wales,  starting at Wisemans Ferry, just up the road, and  
ending at Guyra, up in the so-called 'New England  Tablelands'. Gosh, the names we give places.?  
So what I wanted to do was to stand on the exact  spot that my ancestors had taken, to name it to  
myself as taken, as stolen; simply to sit with  that truth and basically see where that might lead  
me. It was a kind of do-it-yourself Truth-Telling.  I started the writing of it after the Referendum,  
and there was a kind of white hot rage in me  that some incredible act of generosity had  
been rebuffed. Given our leaders were turning  their back on Truth-Telling, this was my way of  
doing it. A very personal, individual thing. It was, of course, challenging. Lorena used the  
word 'confronting', and that's the least of  it. When you look at our past, it is a vast,  
violent crime really, done by people like  my ancestors, although I never have found  
out whether they were actually part of the  violence, but whether or not they were,   they were complicit. At the very best, they turned  a blind eye. That violent past shapes the present,  
and that's partly why it's so important we  have to get it right. So that's really hard  
to own as a heritage. It means that you have to  confront feelings of shame, deep sorrow, mourning,  
confusion. They're all really difficult feelings  to allow in, and we're all quite good, as I think  
Freud told us, at pushing them away, pushing them  down underneath, back into the unconscious.  
So what I found was that standing on the land  was the way to meet that challenge. My instinct  
about that was correct. Without being too magical  about it, the land really does hold the stories.  
You look around and you are conscious of  the realities of the past and the stories,  
and in many ways, it bears witness. Once you  have done some learning, you can see on the  
landscape the marks of what was there before,  so it bears witness in a very concrete way.?  
I felt that the land was my companion, as I went  through this very difficult journey. It gave me a  
quiet space - I was on my own - where I could  simply muse and reflect on what has happened,  
the sorrow and the shame, and to think  about what might be in the future.?  
I nearly gave up several times. It just all  seemed too hard and sometimes it seemed pointless.  
Sometimes it seemed kind of self-indulgent. But  how glad I am that I finished the journey and  
then did a little what you might call side  trip to the Myall Creek Massacre Memorial,  
which was a truly life-changing moment. In fact,  the whole experience was life changing of doing  
this journey - not to push away the shame and  the sorrow of the past that we're part of but  
to accept it as actually part of who I am. Like my  impossible hair, it is just part of me and I have  
to not just accept it actually but sit with it.  This is part of who I am; deal with it. Because  
once you've done that, instead of pushing  it away, that then opens the door to going  
forward into an Australia where perhaps at last  we can find justice and an honourable way to move  
forward together. Thanks very much. (Applause).? PROF. ROBYNNE QUIGGIN AO: Thank you, Kate. Thank  
you. I'll next invite Professor Lindon Coombes, a  descendant of the Yuallaraay people of north-west  
New South Wales, and Director of Jumbunna  Institute for Indigenous education at UTS,  
who has enormous experience in his work here at  UTS and enormous experience in this proceeding.  
So over to you, Lindon. Thank you. PROF. LINDON COOMBES: Thanks,   Robynne. I would like to start by  acknowledging the Gadigal people  
and honour them for their defence and  custodianship of this place. I'd also like to  
acknowledge Aunty Glendra here in the front row.  It's her birthday today. Happy Birthday, Glendra.  
(Applause). And I'd also acknowledge Aunty Glendra  because it's totally changed what I was going to  
talk about today. Aunty Glendra and I were on  a panel yesterday for New South Wales Treasury,  
talking about stolen wages and all the issues that  went with that, and being a busy Reconciliation  
Week, I thought I'd double up on that instead of  doing other preparation. But that panel was really  
heavy yesterday. It raised so many things,  for me personally about my Mum's experience  
with stolen wages, being indentured out at  years old to a homestead in outback New South  
Wales. So I don't have the energy for that today,  and so I'm sitting up here with no notes, looking  
at all these faces and feeling very nervous. One of the things that I kind of revert to is,  
I guess, we were talking about what's a project  you did where Truth-Telling was really important.  
I'll probably go back to the Collingwood Report.  So it's about five years on from that, and for  
those who don't know, we were commissioned by the  Collingwood Board to look into their history of  
racist incidents, and one in particular. So there  was a former player called Heritier Lumumba who  
made the claim that he was called 'chimp',  and this was disputed by the club. And so  
the Board came to us. He was very vocal, very  persistent, and the Board wanted us to have a  
look at that and settle it, resolve the issue  once and for all. We said, "That sounds like  
a workplace investigation. We're not that  type of institution, but we will have a look  
over your history and how you've approached  dealing with racism". And that turned into  
the Collingwood Report. It was such a big thing.  It was about Truth-Telling. So it started with  
this allegation of being called 'chimp' but  we went back through Collingwood's history  
of racism and what we found was that there was a  lack of Truth-Telling. There was all this defence  
prevarication, backpedalling. Collingwood is the  largest sporting club in the country. It's big;  
it's influential. Eddie McGuire was the President,  who held power both within the game and outside.  
So once we were in, I thought: this is gonna be  bad for me! (Laughter). I don't know how this  
will end! And it turned out to be good for  us. It was a really interesting job. I got  
to speak to former and current players, former  coaches, staff. What we found - because I had a  
perception where I had to deal with my own biases  as well - so I had a perception of Collingwood  
as this elite but racist club, so I had to put  that aside. And speaking with the people there,  
they were lovely. They were really good people.  They were ashamed of that history and they wanted  
to deal with that and they wanted to be better. So working over that period of time with those  
people, it was really interesting that we never  quite got to the nub of that 'chimp' allegation,  
but it was subsequently proven. It was  actually in a player guide from the times,  
and players after that report came out and said,  "Yes, that was his nickname; we called him that".  
So being involved in that kind of process, and  then part of our recommendation was for them  
to go and do a Truth-Telling process of their  own, a bit like your experience, but for them  
to go back through all those incidents - you know,  Nicky Winmar, pointing out at his skin, that was  
Collingwood. So I guess doing that process and  Indigenous people offering their truths to that  
was really interesting. I know that the club  has taken that on board. They've been working  
really hard at it. But those issues persist.  So I guess that was one of the Truth-Telling  
projects that had a big impact on me.? PROF. ROBYNNE QUIGGIN AO: Thank you,   Lindon. (Applause). It's one of the reasons I have  been so enormously proud to work here at UTS and  
with Jumbunna, because if you ever wondered how  the institutional change occurred that you saw  
from the outside from in that club, this is the  heartland: the engagement of a research team, a  
structured approach, collaboration, and openness,  as Lindon has talked about, and then a place that  
that institution could no longer sustain. So  I just love this story that I've heard Lindon  
tell before, and I'm enormously proud to be here  in this institution that was part - in a kind,  
respectful way - of driving change in one of the  institutions that is really formative. I'm no  
football fan. Like, I am a total failed Aboriginal  person that I don't back any team. I'm really  
terrible at football. But football is such a big  thing in our community, and to have driven change  
and shown the way, I feel enormously proud of that  story, of Lindon and the others who worked on that  
team and of that outcome. So thank you for that. Mariko is heading to the lectern but I just want  
to introduce her as she does. Mariko Smith is a  Yuin and Japanese interdisciplinary practitioner  
and the Head of First Nations Collections and  Research at the Australian Museum, and more about  
what institutions can do, bringing the personal  and the institution altogether. Thank you.?  
DR MARIKO SMITH: Thank you. Yes, the mic works.  Thank you. I too would like to acknowledge   the Gadigal people and pay my respects to their  Elders past and present and also to Aunty Glendra  
here today and wish to acknowledge our fellow  Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples   here in the room, including on the panel today. So about me. So wallawani. I have worked across a  
number of institutions in Sydney, so Australian  Museum now as Head of First Nations Research and  
Collections. I also spent some time at Australian  Maritime Museum, working with their Indigenous  
collections, as well as Historical Houses Trust  of New South Wales?- I still call it by the old   name from when I worked over there - across fields  like repatriation, curatorial and collections.  
Today I will share how museums can engage in  Truth-Telling through a project that challenged  
how we understand Australian history and the  national story through the Australian Museum's  
transformation of a s plaster sculpture  from an anonymous artefact to a recognised  
person with family, culture and identity.? So looking at museums as colonial institutions  
and what Truth-Telling means in that context,  museums have historically operated as colonial  
institutions that collected and displayed First  Nations cultural materials and even human remains  
as scientific specimens and artefacts, rather  than as the cultural heritage of living people.  
I've spoken and written about how museums have  been complicit in facilitating the collection of  
people and cultural belongings for empirical  evidence used to define and categorise human  
beings into a hierarchy of superiority and  to justify discrimination based on race.  
Recent community sentiment research  conducted by the AM and is to be released   from next Wednesday - very exciting - shows  how museums are considered as trusted sources  
of knowledge about First Nations histories,  and this is ranked second only to the media,  
which is also quite an eye-opener. That creates  both responsibility as well as opportunity.  
Truth-Telling in museums means confronting  this colonial legacy while creating space for  
First Nations people to reclaim authority over  their own stories. Real Truth-Telling requires  
transforming institutional power structures, so  not just adding First Nations content to existing  
colonial frameworks and structures, so that  distinction is really important. It's between   enacting real societal change as opposed to mere  window-dressing or, at worse, black cladding.  
So as an example of applied Truth-Telling,  the 'Her Name is Nanny Nellie' project at the   Australian Museum involved telling the story about  in the mid-s, the Australian Museum displayed  
life-sized plaster sculptures of an Aboriginal  woman, an Aboriginal man and an Aboriginal boy,  
and these became anonymous objects representing  a supposedly dying race, as that myth had been  
perpetuated particularly around that time. One  sculpture being of an Aboriginal woman displayed  
without identity, effectively stripping her  of her humanity and her family connections.  
And through collaboration with her descendants  and AM staff participating in the family-led  
documentary 'Her Name is Nanny Nellie', which  was directed and produced by Nanny Nellie's  
own great-great-grandson Daniel King, we learnt  that her name is actually Nellie Bungil Walker,  
known affectionately by her family as Nanny  Nellie, who was born in in Bombala,  
Ngarigo Country. This documentary and  the journey explored her life story.  
The project helped transform how she was  represented, so from an anonymous object  
to a named individual; from a scientific curiosity  to being recognised as a beloved family ancestor;  
from perpetuating a dying race narrative to  celebrating continuing cultural connections;  
and moving from museum control to Aboriginal  family-led, community-led storytelling. This  
isn't just about changing a label, a museum label.  It was about returning agency to descendants  
to tell their ancestor's story their way. The  transformation culminated in a exhibition  
display in the Museum's First Nations Gallery,  as well as the release of the documentary on  
SBS at NITV in early This demonstrated how  complex historical objects in places like museums,  
which have that very problematic, loaded  history, how these objects can become  
vehicles for healing and reconciliation. A few observations of what I felt strongest  
about during that process: the power of  agency. So when someone goes from being   anonymous to being named and acknowledged,  recognised for who they were as a person,  
from being an objectified thing to being seen as  a person, and having direct involvement from those  
closely connected to that person, that challenges  everything about how we understand First Nations  
people in Australian history. They're not just  this footnote, an aside or curiosity show; they're   actually front and centre of their own stories. Also, what I felt really quite moved by was the  
generosity of Nanny Nellie's family in sharing her  story and their story too, despite the Museum's  
historical treatment of their ancestor. It would  have been all too easy for all of us to go, "Look,  
that happened in the past. Let's just keep those  statues, sculptures covered up and kept buried in  
the storage" but no. It was really important,  as led by the family, to bring out her story,  
and witnessing how this act of Truth-Telling can  transform institutions. It happens obviously from  
that public level of seeing Nanny Nellie back on  display, even if it's for such a short period,  
but the fact that us staff members also, we refer  to Nanny Nellie, Uncle Jimmy and Uncle Harold as  
extensions of the people that they represent,  so we refer to them as Aunties and Uncles,   recognising their humanity. We also make  sure we house them together in off-site  
collection storage, so there's  still that respectful practice.   In terms of overcoming the challenges involved in  this Truth-Telling process, facing up to things  
like the possibility of institutional resistance,  addressing that by centring Indigenous rights  
as set out by frameworks like the UN Declaration  of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, Indigenous  
cultural and intellectual property protocols  where it's all about informed consent and  
input and self-determining practice being  non-negotiable foundations of all work.  
There's also the issue of time and  resource constraints, recognising   that community consultation cannot be rushed.  Authentic relationships need to play out in  
their own time. They require sustained commitment  beyond the project timelines, and also technical  
limitations as well. So looking at implementing  best practice in First Nations collections  
management approaches that respect cultural  protocols around knowledge sharing and access.  
Also, a really big one is around the stereotypes  and public misconceptions; how to address those,  
particularly in our post-Referendum environment  where people are now seeing the No result as sort  
of like a carte blanche now to just say whatever  they're thinking that I guess normally social  
norms would probably keep under check. So the  Museum uses evidence-based approaches, presenting  
multiple historical sources alongside Indigenous  perspectives to build understanding rather than  
defensiveness. This is something that is really  clear in our previous Unsettled exhibition too.   So just to conclude, stories shape nations. This  prompts thought and action on how we tell stories  
in museums, how they shape the ways Australians  understand themselves and their history,  
and Truth-Telling in museums that requires  them to move beyond token acknowledgments to  
fundamental transformation by returning authority  over Indigenous stories to Indigenous peoples.  
When we transform how one person is represented,  we begin to transform how our nation understands  
its relationship with First Nations peoples.  And, finally, this is the power of applied  
Truth-Telling, changing not just what we know  but how we know it and who has the authority  
to tell the story. Thank you. (Applause).? PROF. ROBYNNE QUIGGIN AO: Thank you so much,  
everyone. So great to give  everybody the opportunity  
to speak to their particular work and practice. We'll move now to some panel questions. I'm going  
to begin with a question for Lorena, Lindon and  Mariko. You've all reflected on this in some way,  
but the question is: if Truth-Telling is  this opportunity to share experiences,  
particularly the strengths and deep  knowledge of First Peoples of this country,   how does this impact on the individuals and  communities during the Truth-Telling process.  
Any reflections on what happens for people and  communities through this process And over to any  
of you that might like to jump in on that. PROF. LINDON COOMBES: I'll have a go. This is  
something we've talked about. One of our projects  at the moment is as a research partner with the  
New South Wales Treaty Commissioners. So they've  been given the remit to go out over months  
and speak exclusively to Aboriginal people in New  South Wales about Treaty. That's all it is. It's  
a conversation: Do you want it Do you know what  it is It's a conversation. Then after months,  
there'll be a report and there's no guarantee  that anything will really come of that.  
We've spoken a lot about not being extractive  in these processes so that you leave these  
engagements better than when you went there.  And the other thing on the Commissioners'  
minds and all of our minds was: here we go; we're  asking Aboriginal people to dust themselves off,  
show up again, tell their story that they've  told before, and what are they going to get in  
return So that's a big obligation that they've got  when going out there. So we've talked a lot about  
social-emotional wellbeing, and I'm  really glad that's becoming more of a  
priority in all of our work, particularly  for our staff and the work that they do.  
So, yes, that Truth-Telling - like we experienced  yesterday, Aunty - comes with a cost. I'm probably  
old enough now to be vulnerable enough to say  that this stuff takes a toll. Yesterday really  
had an impact. So that has an impact for all  of our people out there, whether it's Treaty,  
whether it's housing, health, education  of our kids. All these stories come with  
a bit of a price. I might leave it there. PROF. ROBYNNE QUIGGIN AO: Thank you. I really  
identify with that. There is great value in the  opportunity to tell our stories but they always  
come with the emotions. We are not detached  from the emotions that come with that, and  
I think that's a great strength of ours, and it  also does come with a cost. Lorena or Mariko ?  
LORENA ALLAM: In response to that, I really  underscore what Lindon just said because when  
people think about Truth-Telling, they think it's  us doing the telling, and I think it's time for  
non-Indigenous Australians to do a bit of work  before they come to us and ask us what the time  
frame should be and ask us to expend our labour  because there's been so much truth-telling in  
Australian history even in recent years that has  fallen on deaf ears - well, not so much deaf ears,  
but we work hard; we create these really  important reports that sit on a shelf. So  
we're in Reconciliation Week. We had Sorry Day on  May th. Aunty Glendra knows we were involved in  
the Bringing Them Home report, all the public  hearings, all the evidence-gathering, all the  
heartache and trauma that we saw our people go  through literally day after day for that phase,  
all those people who took the courage to speak  up, and we think about them and what happens when  
they went home afterwards The support networks  that have to be set up for our mob to tell these  
truths, and those support networks need to be run  by Indigenous people, Indigenous psychologists and  
psychiatrists. There needs to be support. I know  we have the hotline, but if we're going to do this  
work, we need to protect our people, particularly  our elderly people who lived through these times  
and who might really want to tell their story but  we've got to make sure that we listen and collect  
that information in a respectful, caring way.  And it might take a really long time before we  
are able to do that, but I think the work needs  to be done by non-Indigenous Australians the way  
that Kate has done, and it's really difficult  work. But doing a bit of that work before  
you come talk to us would be helpful too.? DR MARIKO SMITH: Truth-Telling with sensitivity,  
and particularly when you're engaged  with contested histories, it's about  
recognising for both the communities who are  directly impacted and involved in that history but  
as well as the people who are learning a lesson  and taking it in, everyone to an extent needs to  
be prepared for sitting with discomfort. Not all  stories will be comfortable for all audiences,  
but it's really critical about providing the  appropriate context and support. So support  
for people telling that story but also for those  who are listening as well and having that sort of  
space, physical as well as more of an intellectual  space as well, to reflect. So that's something we  
did in the Unsettled exhibition at the Australian  Museum, where it was a really tough-going  
with all the Truth-Telling about Australian social  history, and it was really important that while  
people were learning and taking it all in from  the community, as well as from the general public,  
that they weren't just pushed out into the main  area of the Museum and out into the streets  
with no way to really digest what they've just  seen and heard and learnt about. So it was really  
important to create a physical space where people  can just sit quietly, and we created this space  
called Winhangadurinya, which is a Wiradyuri  word which means deep listening, meditation,  
and just being able to listen and learn quietly.  There was a space that Milan Dhiiyaan, which is a  
Wiradyuri group that does a lot of cultural  learning and sharing, had some recorded  
cultural lessons they would play in the space  and there was a circle where people can sit down.  
So that is really important because we're not  about sanitising difficult histories for visitor  
comfort but, at the same time, we're taking that  responsibility seriously for community members  
but also the public, and that was a real highlight  for many visitors with Unsettled, and I think it  
really does help us redefine museum exhibition  design and curation. But we need to create  
these spaces to help with Truth-Telling in that  sort of spatial sense as well as the content.  
PROF. ROBYNNE QUIGGIN AO: Thank you. Thank you.  Kate, you described your own process of going  
and reflecting - quite an experiential process.  Not everybody is willing or wants to do that.  
From the perspective as a non-Indigenous person  who has undertaken that work, do you have any  
suggestions: what kinds of questions can  people ask themselves or what kind of  
research or reflections can people do to start  interrogating their own histories in connection  
to First Peoples land and First Peoples ? KATE GRENVILLE: Yes, it's a good question  
because it's not easy. We've hidden it for so  long and it's tempting to go on just saying, "Oh,  
it was so long ago; we have to just move on". But,  look, I think the first thing is to get informed.  
I think, Lorena, you talked about kind of doing  your homework before anything else, and there's  
such a wealth of fantastic - I mean, you can  start with books, which is a very unconfronting  
way of starting. They're at a distance; you can  always close them. There are many, many terrific  
Indigenous-written stories about our past and  also the kind of mainstream historians like  
Henry Reynolds and Bill Gammage. So to do the  homework, first of all, is the thing, and then  
to listen to First Nations people obviously, in  person, when and how that's possible, but not  
perhaps to - when I wrote 'Unsettled', I was very  conscious that I could have gone everywhere and  
contacted the local Aboriginal people and said,  "Let's talk about this". And I thought: no,  
this is a job that we have to do. It's kind  of our problem. We created this problem by  
colonising this country. It's not fair that we  should ask that of Indigenous people and it is  
asking them basically to revisit the trauma  that we have visited on them. So I think we  
have to go very carefully and I just think  that there's an awful lot of work we have to   do first in kind of sitting with not - rushing  to an answer. I think that's perhaps the other  
thing. Sitting with it, reflecting on it.  Just allowing a quiet space of meditation  
before we try to rush into any answers. PROF. ROBYNNE QUIGGIN AO: Thank you. Thank you,  
Kate. I want to come back, Lindon, to I know you  have a deep commitment to Treaty and the potential  
for that for our country, our states, federally  and State. I'm wondering through your experience  
and your observations with the Yoorrook Commission  and also your experience in New South Wales,  
what your reflections might be on the role of  Truth-Telling for any Treaty process that we  
might keep moving with here in New South Wales ? PROF. LINDON COOMBES: Thanks. It just seems to be  
intertwined. So going back to the New South  Wales work and talking to the Commissioners,  
we kind of kept getting caught up because Treaty's  so big, and once you start thinking about it,  
it opens up so many ways of going about it. One of  those issues was where does Truth-Telling come in  
because it's kind of the why; why are we doing  a Treaty Then we started talking about that,  
the ways that it could happen. I had probably  a very late awakening on part of Truth-Telling,  
doing some of this work and different work  because I often heard more older Aboriginal people  
that had got to a stage in their life where  they wanted to tell things that happened,  
and that reflects the policies  and history of the country,  
and that they had always wanted to tell that  story because if everyone knew what happened,  
then everyone would get it; everyone would  understand why we have poor health, why we're  
impoverished, why we want a Treaty, why we're  different. And I wasn't always convinced of that.  
But in some of the Truth-Telling, my late  awakening was that it's not for everyone else;  
it's for us. In doing that and particularly  the work around Treaty, it was: that's for us  
to talk to each other about, to tell our truths  to each other, and then maybe we'll tell everyone  
else. It was a real moment for me that this is a  fundamental part of our healing over this journey,  
and that's why it's interesting, the way, Mariko,  you managed that. That's an ongoing thing for  
us. So much of our work is how we look after our  people. People deride safe spaces as being woke,  
but it's fundamental. It's very big for our mob.  Like I was saying, that conversation around social  
and emotional wellbeing, I'm really proud that  we recognise our humanity in that way and pretend  
that that doesn't bother me - I spent a lot of my  career pretending I had a thicker skin than I did  
as a means of protection. But the way  that we talk about that now shows a  
way for the country more broadly. PROF. ROBYNNE QUIGGIN AO: Can I ask   you another follow-up question from Slido.  I think it's a really good question. Whether  
the Collingwood model could have wider  application or whether there are elements   out of the work there that you think could  really contribute to a wider piece of --?  
PROF. LINDON COOMBES: Yes. So I was talking before  about - it was a shit storm when that eventually  
broke because, unfortunately, we delivered that  in December and they sat on it until January,  
until someone leaked it. Not us. Someone leaked  it. And all hell broke loose after that. But  
one of the things in the wake of all of that  was I got an email from the President of a  
junior AFL club that said that they had taken the  recommendations and adapted it for their local  
club, and that was incredible. That was the best  part of that project for me, and that had had an  
impact on other codes; but just knowing that that  filtered down to those junior clubs, because it's  
not a Collingwood problem. This starts way, way  back upstream in those junior clubs. So that was  
one of the more pleasing parts of that project. PROF. ROBYNNE QUIGGIN AO: Thank you. Mariko,  
reflecting on the things that Lindon  was just calling out in your remarks,  
how have First Nations communities engaged  in the process of creating the Unsettled   exhibit and how did you establish trust  that the Australian Museum would be a  
good caretaker of their stories and knowledge ? DR MARIKO SMITH: That's a great question, Robynne,  
one that I probably can't cover in a short answer.  But I'm really proud to say that the First Nations  
team at the Museum, that was at the forefront  of our practice and why we're at the Museum,  
what we do there. So us First Nations staff,  we see ourselves as community members first and  
foremost and then Museum professionals  a close second. And to ensure that the  
community were on the journey, leading the  way, from the very beginning was to conduct  
front-end evaluation community consultation.  So that is a little bit unusual to how  
museums have usually developed exhibitions  and programs where they would trust their  
staff of experts to come up with concepts. Then  there's a bit of a consultation by notification,  
where a bit of the ideas have already been  germinated and explored, and then it's kind of  
presented to communities as a bit of a package. But what we wanted to do was to ask communities  
from the get-go, "What do you want to see and  not see in an exhibition", and with Unsettled,  
it was a First Nations-led response to the  th anniversary of Cook's east coast voyage  
in So we had that anniversary back  in There were some mob who were like,  
"Oh, what are you going to cover ", and it was  like, "You tell us what you would like covered".  
We did a short survey for that, asking them  what they thought about the Museum as well,   so we thought this is an opportunity not just  to inform this specific exhibition development  
but also to help evaluate the Australian Museum,  the first public museum in Australia, the place  
now known as Australia since . So we are  approaching our th anniversary in two years.  
So there's that process of listening, respectful  listening, and acting upon the feedback as well.  
So that was really important for us, and also  applying ICIP, Indigenous cultural intellectual  
property, protocols. So Dr Terri Janke's work in  particular has been quite influential in guiding.  
Every object, story, that was included  in Unsettled had the permission and the  
approval and the involvement in some way or form  from the source community, community member,  
and that was really important to us to make  sure that people were properly recognised   and also compensated for works that they've  contributed and stories that they've shared.  
PROF. ROBYNNE QUIGGIN AO: Thank you. I think  it's really clear, listening to the speakers  
today, that there are multiple layers to how we  do this work - the social and emotional wellbeing,  
the historical, the actual telling. I want to just  focus for a moment on language and specifically  
words, and go to Kate and Mariko for a really  interesting story. As Mariko was just saying,  
the Australian Museum's Unsettled exhibition  opened in and Kate has recently titled  
her book 'Unsettled'. Can you tell us about  how you both came to address the use of the  
word in such different contexts How did you both  decide to make this important and how did you go  
about addressing the questions raised ? DR MARIKO SMITH: I think it was a mutual  
friend who got in touch with both Kate and  I. Fellow historians. There's a nice little  
historian network which is quite close-knit  and I think everyone seems to know each other.  
They knew about the Unsettled exhibition and  was having a chat with Kate and heard about  
the title and suggested that we have a bit of a  yarn, which was fantastic because we knew very  
well that 'Unsettled' is such a powerful word,  as not just a historical descriptor but also  
a contemporary provocation as well. You can  see it as the diagnosis and the prescription,  
so being able to describe what happened with  colonisation but also prescribing a course of  
action in terms of what can we do going forward to  help address what's been unsettled and unsettling.  
And it's just a word that has so much meaning. So we, of course, were very mindful that we had  
no proprietary rights over the word 'Unsettled',  and to us it makes sense that it's a word that  
resonated. I mean, we weren't the first, of  course, to use 'Unsettled'. So there was another   exhibition at the National Museum of Australia  back in called 'Unsettled: Stories Within',  
which was a First Nations art exhibition featuring  works by Julie Gough and Jonathan Jones and  
others, and played on that wording as well, as  well as Indigenous X, the independent Indigenous  
media company - they actually worked with us a  lot on our media comms strategy for Unsettled   and they actually helped us to think about using  'Unsettled' as the title. They actually have used  
'Unsettled' on their merchandise from Red  Bubble, a t-shirt of the map of Australia   saying "Unsettled since ", so a way of really  responding to the point that Australia was never  
peacefully settled. So there's so many different  ways you can play around with the word. Australia   wasn't peacefully settled. There was a disruption,  a disturbance. Australia had people. It was never  
actually - also, it never actually settled  but we still have that state of mind where   people are feeling the history was unsettled, the  environment was unsettled. Even audience members  
were like "I feel like I'm going to be unsettled  by telling this Truth-Telling". But I'll throw  
it over to Kate now. But about the conversations,  it was really fantastic to touch case with Kate,  
who I've admired her work for some time. KATE GRENVILLE: When the historian Stephen   Gapps mentioned - he had read a draft of my book  'Unsettled' and he happened to mention there had  
been this exhibition. I mean, it's an incredibly  interesting word, isn't it, and how often  
language, when you deconstruct, it tells you so  much. When I thought about the title, I thought:  
what will I call this book Well, where did it  come from It came from a feeling of unsettledness,  
so that seemed very right in that way.  It also brings up that word "settlers",  
which is one of the many words in our language  that actually kind of camouflages or smears over  
the reality of what happened. It is such a cosy  word, isn't it, to talk about settlers. The actual  
thing was not cosy in the slightest. It was a  crime basically. So there were those things.  
Then I was also conscious that, of course, the  settlement of my lot meant the unsettlement of  
First Nations people. So it seemed a fabulously  rich word. But when Stephen told me about the use  
of it in the Australian Museum, I wanted to get in  touch with Mariko, and Stephen facilitated that,  
because it felt important and respectful  basically to just talk it through, and  
I'm very grateful that we were able to have  such a good conversation. It's one of those   words that can slide across boundaries, in and out  of meaning, in and out of obliviousness. In fact,  
I have just received a book by a New Zealand  writer, which is called 'The Unsettled', a Pukahu  
New Zealander, which is a collection of stories  by unsettled white New Zealanders. So it's a word  
that's very useful. We'll all go on using it. PROF. ROBYNNE QUIGGIN AO: I just want to ask if  
either of you had any comment as well that in  the book you actually refer to the exhibition,  
I think, Kate, there is a note. KATE GRENVILLE: Yes, I have a note   at the very end of the book advising people to  go - the exhibition is over but there's still  
on the Museum's website what I describe as a  terrific introduction to what the settlement of  
non-Indigenous people meant for the unsettlement  of First Nations people, so I'm hoping a lot of  
people will go to that website and learn a bit. PROF. ROBYNNE QUIGGIN AO: The thing that I really   loved about hearing this story was it's a personal  story of two people having the courage and the  
graciousness to go: "We've got a thing here; we're  both using this word. How do we come to a positive  
understanding about that ". And I really love  that there is, in fact, a material ending to that,  
which is the mention of the exhibition in  the book. So there's that courage and that  
personal exchange and then also the landing  of it into something concrete. Thank you.?   LORENA ALLAM: That was something that Laura  McBride, as the lead curator for Unsettled - for  
us it was fantastic to have the impact of the word  but also the collective efforts across the society  
and the community as well. So books like Kate's  and also other works and other efforts, it's just  
great. Many hands make light work. So it's been  fantastic to make that connection in person too.  
PROF. ROBYNNE QUIGGIN AO: Thank you. Lorena,  a little rest over there, but not now! You  
really interrogate how language and narratives are  ultimately contributing to our understanding. What  
are your reflections on the use of language and  framing used in today's storytelling journalism  
and other media Are we doing any better, do you  think Has there been a shift It mightn't be for  
the better, but any shift that you've noticed ? LORENA ALLAM: Yes, it's tricky, isn't it If you  
look at the way the Western liberal media are  reporting the situation in Gaza, you can see how  
they hide behind language and won't use the right  language, language that actually describes what's  
going on there. That's certainly been the case in  Australian history and the history of Australian   journalism. When Lindall Ryan and I started  talking about adapting that for The Guardian,  
what it entailed is I had to read every  single entry on that map, to sub it in a  
way that could be imported into The Guardian's  system. So I got a sense of the horrors that she  
and her team had been dealing with. But it was also a really instructive  
exposure to the way that the language was used to  eradicate our people and to take away our agency  
and to remove our connection to Country. So there  were words like "Major (so and so) took up the  
land". You know, just "took it up"; it was just  there. Reading journals of colonial frontiers,  
people who "dispersed the natives". We were  "dispersed". It was "land clearing". There are  
all sorts of unpleasant euphemisms they used,  even then knowing what they were doing was a  
crime. To paper over the atrocity using language  and the power that language has to do that.  
And so part of Truth-Telling today is to  reinterpret those journals and to take away  
the fig leaf of respectability from what is  truly a horrific admission of mass murder.  
I think journalism is still guilty  of not using the right terminology,  
and I would encourage you to follow the way  that the mainstream media reports the death   of that young man in Alice Springs because we've  already seen in the last few days the way that  
the police have described what happened versus  the way his family have described what happened,   and the way that they each - well, the police,  in particular, have used language to imply that  
that young man was wrongdoing. We don't know  any of the circumstances of why he was there,  
but it seems like an incredible reach to describe  and to ascribe meaning to his behaviour. He will  
be silenced in that process. We'll never hear  his side of the story. This gets repeated over  
and over in coronial inquests, where our mob die  in custody, and I'm mindful of the other young man  
from Yuendumu who died. His voice is silent  as well, though his family have fought very  
hard to have their voices heard. So language is a  powerful way to remove us from the picture, and so  
we should speak the true words wherever we can. PROF. ROBYNNE QUIGGIN AO: Thank you. And following  
on from that, to all of you, what's the role of  universities and education institutions in that I  
think some of the Slido questions - and thank you  for the great questions; I wish I could ask all  
of them - but some of the questions are about the  role of education, not just tertiary but primary  
and other kinds of education. Any reflections on  that in the importance of that for Truth-Telling  
or ways that can be done well Anyone? PROF. LINDON COOMBES: Yes. I think it requires  
some courage and I often speak highly of UTS  in this regard. The work that we do at Jumbunna  
ruffles feathers. It's not popular with certain  media and parts of the country. Doing the work to  
assist families going through coronial inquests,  child protection, child removal, advocating for  
those families to get their kids back - really  tough stuff. And so we operate very adjacent to  
a lot of controversy, and both the current boss  and the previous boss said to us, "As long as you  
back it up, we'll back you in". And that's been  the way that we've run with it. We give you and  
the boss a heads-up when something a bit dicey  is coming out that some people might not like.  
But I have to say that that's not uniform  in the tertiary sector. In fact, there's  
hundreds of horror stories of Indigenous voices  being suppressed, those controversial issues,  
universities backing away from them, and  it's particularly in times like these where   universities are really under the pump,  both funding-wise and the type of work  
that is coming out of the universities, that we're  often the first thing discarded many times, and  
that courage can sometimes be lost in difficult  times at universities. But in my seven years here,  
that's always sort of been the rule. We can say  those difficult-to-hear things for some and,  
as long as we do the work to back  that up and the evidence is there,   the university supports that. PROF. ROBYNNE QUIGGIN AO: Thank  
you. Any other reflections Kate ? KATE GRENVILLE: Just a tiny one. Speaking of  
institutions - I'm not part of any institution so  I can't really speak on that - but in Melbourne,  
I live next door to a Shire or Council area called  Brunswick, and a part of it used to be called  
the Moreland City Council. Now, about a couple  of years ago, it transpired that Moreland had  
made his money out of slavery. He had something to  do with the slave trade. And there was a movement  
to change the name of that area, and that has  now been done. It is now called Merri-bek,  
not Moreland. The symbolism of that is fantastic,  but what happened beforehand in the lead-up was  
probably almost more valuable. The institution  opened debate, and there was vigorous debate about  
it, including a lot of pushback, but suddenly  there was awareness: we have to think about   these things and we have to act on them. So names,  street names, creek names, council names - that's  
perhaps another way where institutions can enter. PROF. ROBYNNE QUIGGIN AO: Thank you.?   DR MARIKO SMITH: Reflecting on both what  Lindon and also Kate is saying as well,  
there's probably two or three points I could make.  Definitely in regards to those local opportunities  
for Truth-Telling - so I was involved with the  Aboriginal Advisory Committee of my local council,  
and being able to see this is where Truth-Telling  can occur; it doesn't have to be those sort of big  
moments where there's a lot of publicity and all  this sort of stuff. It can just happen in these   sorts of organic ways, so, yes, about like  naming of streets or challenging why we have  
a plaque that commemorates Captain Cook with no  acknowledgment of the local people who were here,  
always have been here. And so being able to  do a bit of dialogical memorialisation where  
we were able to add an additional plaque  that had the local Aboriginal languages,   talking about how those people had always been  there before Captain Cook sighted their land.  
But also about Lindon's point as well, just  wanting to say having worked in a university  
as well as now firmly placed, enmeshed, in the  museum sector, but there needs to be that sense of  
fearlessness. You always feel like academic work  has always been advocated as fearless practice,  
but it is hard sometimes - how is that done and do  you get the support to be able to do that fearless  
work. That obviously informs the Truth-Telling  work that we do at the Museum as well. So there's  
a few different ways to think about it. I'm losing my train of thought. But there's  
a lot of great things being said about  - oh, yes, education. So in the Museum,  
we're not a school in the sense that it's high  school or primary school, like traditional sense   of looking at an educational institution,  but obviously we facilitate and host school  
groups coming in. We actually hire qualified,  fantastic educators, so we do have a First  
Nations education team and they're all trained  teachers and they're trying to incorporate all  
that stuff around curriculum and everything into  that museum setting, being able to teach kids.  
What I noticed when we were analysing  the community sentiment survey that   will be released next Wednesday that is  going help us inform our new permanent  
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander gallery  that will open in our anniversary year of  
is that I really was interested in cultures, CALD,  so cultures - linguistically different cultures,  
whatever the acronym is; it just slipped my  mind - but migrant backgrounds - I mean, myself,  
as I'm having an Aboriginal father but also a  Japanese mother, reflecting on how people from  
non-Australian backgrounds, non-English-speaking  backgrounds, how do they engage with First Nations  
peoples, their cultures and their histories  And, unfortunately, it seems like there's a lot  
of misinformation. There's a lot of stereotypes  and tropes that, unfortunately, people fall into,  
thinking about Aboriginal and Torres Strait  Islander people. I see places like museums and,   of course, schools and media as well, those  sectors have a lot of responsibility in  
being able to provide accurate and appropriate  information. That's something museums can do,  
where we're seen as an authoritative influential  platform and an institution in society where we  
can help those segments of the community who would  like to know more or feel a bit apprehensive,  
because the problem is there's a lot of zero-sum  game stuff that ends up happening, where  
hearing from the experience of people from migrant  backgrounds and tourists as well, they feel like,  
"Oh, well, I'm not feeling as Australian", or  particularly for migrant background people,  
"I don't feel as Australian because I'm being  told that I should be ashamed of being here"   and all this sort of stuff. And it's like, no,  it's about learning the more complete story,  
so being able to fold in Aboriginal and Torres  Strait Islander peoples. Welcoming that into your   lives and into your conversations is not a bad  thing. So museums can help provide information  
and also those activation point opportunities.  So we had Ngalu Warrawi Marri last night where  
people can come in and enjoy performances and  looking at the galleries, and having tailored  
opportunities would be really good as part  of those formal education settings as well.  
PROF. ROBYNNE QUIGGIN AO: Thank you. I'm  going to ask a very quick last question.Well,   we haven't got much time so I'm going to ask  a question and perhaps just a last reflection.  
Some of the questions that have come in from  the audience are calling out the post-referendum  
context and also I think we need to think  about the way in which truth is contested and  
characterised internationally at the moment. So  just any reflections on Truth-Telling in - I mean,  
for me, listening to the conversation, I feel  really positive about where we are and there's   lots of really great activity. Those of you in  the audience have called out the post-referendum  
environment and that Truth-Telling can be  regarded as woke. So I'm just wondering   if anybody has any closing thoughts on how to  continue doing this work, this important work,  
in this environment where there has been a sort  of resurgence in a particular way of resistance  
to these conversations Lorena Over to you. LORENA ALLAM: I must look keen to answer that,  
do I There's been - Mariko mentioned it before,  punching down on Blackfellas since the Referendum.  
People have felt entitled to say whatever they  like. I was reading a story the other day about  
a councillor, who was defeated, but who wanted  to get rid of Welcomes to Country at the local   council. There was a lot of that. There has been  a lot of that. It was a huge part of the election  
campaign that last week. I think Peter Dutton got  an answer to whether Australians were interested  
in having culture wars about this at the ballot  box. I think the Liberals are now - we shouldn't  
spend too much time talking about that stuff -  but, politically, I'm glad they weren't rewarded  
for the hateful way they conducted themselves  during the Referendum, for the lies and   misinformation that they perpetrated. (Applause). So it's now up to us I think to take stock of  
where we are. We've come through a really ugly  time. Potentially, the culture wars are on pause  
for now. Maybe there's no appetite for arguing  the toss about this stuff. But what I think is  
really important is that the Referendum vote  showed us that people need to know more about  
Aboriginal and Islander people and our history  and who we are in this country, and so is the why,  
as Lindon talks about, is really important.  Truth-Telling is the why - the why we need   structural reform, why we need - like Closing  the Gap is not ever going to happen until we  
do this work. So I'll just leave it at that. PROF. ROBYNNE QUIGGIN AO: Thank you. Unless   anyone had a burning desire to make a  further remark, I think that's probably  
a really good place to finish up. Thank you. We have some housekeeping and some things to  
make you aware of.Please have a look at the Call  It Out register and also there's an opportunity to  
learn more about the Unsettled exhibition, and  we will be screening Distinguished Professor  
Larissa Behrendt's fantastic documentary 'The  First Inventors' in the foyer in Building  
so please find a time to go and have a look at  that. Jumbunna and the Centre for Social Justice  
and Inclusion are also presenting an event next  month called Weaving Pacific Futures, celebrating  
Pacific scholarship, and there's an opportunity  to purchase Kate's book outside. So that was a  
quick round-up of the additional things. But I want to thank you as an audience and  
I want to just pause for a moment.I didn't  see you, Aunty Glendra, when I was opening.  
Thank you. I wanted to just acknowledge Aunty  Glendra's role as Elder-in-Residence here at UTS,  
but also pay respect to her life's work  as a truth-teller. In my experience,  
Aunty Glendra has been on the front line, telling  the truth, hard truths, in multiple fora, and,  
as Lindon was saying, that is not without its  cost and I just want to really pay respects to  
you, Aunty Glendra, for your role as an amazing  truth teller in our community. (Applause).  
Don't pack away your clapping. Please thank  our panel for a really great conversation  
today. (Applause). Thanks, everyone.  Thank you. See you next time. Thanks.