Forgotten war.

This is a new book by Henry Reynolds.
On reading it I have been struck that I belong to only a few generations, three at the most, who have been a part of the wilful forgetting of what our great grandparents were widely aware. That is the violence of the frontier of Australia. Henry Reynolds makes the case that the terrible knowledge was every white Australians birthright along with the occupation of land up until the turn of the century and even later. Somehow this is still a shock as growing up one tends to be blind to what came before us. This knowledge is re emerging finally and Reynolds says
'The central story in the new century will increasingly be seen to have been the linked histories of imperialism and decolonisation, which were preparing the way for the great shifts in power and wealth currently underway. And in that story the relationship between European settlers and Indigenous Australians will become increasingly important. This is the subject that will be of most interest to the many people in the world who have no reason to be particularly impressed by all those ventures where we marched in step to the tunes played in London and Washington' p7
I am thinking of all those fabulous Aboriginal artists who have so uncompromisingly presented these facts to us broader community over the last 30 years, Les Griggs being one of those pioneers along with Gayle Maddigan, Lin Onus and many others who opened the eyes of all who saw their work.
They are now followed by amazing contemporary artists such as, Maree Clarke, Brook Andrew, Christian Thompson, Michael Cook, Vernon Ah Kee, Clinton Nain, and too many others to mention. They are my key influences as an artist these days. I honour and respect them all.
I stand in their wake and hope to make work that helps other non-Indigenous people face that terrible truth of our past as a way to build a proud nation.