History repeats itself as Australia’s dark past is given a whitewash

“Everything has a history, and it matters,” wrote the American writer James Baldwin in 1965. We are all shaped by our history, no matter what we do. We carry it within us through generations, and we use it as a frame of reference for our identities.

So why are we so reluctant to see the past with clear eyes, to acknowledge and accept it for what it is? Why do we find it difficult to talk honestly about the dark times in our history? Why do we whitewash it and pretend to see it with rose-coloured glasses?

Stan Grant, the presenter of the ABC show Q+A and a Wiradjuri, Gurrawin and Dharawal man, had been hounded and bullied by racists after his comments on the monarchy during a coronation broadcast, contributing to his decision to step down as host. This incident has shown us once again that a large section of society is still reluctant to face up to our imperial past: the legacies of colonialism and the way it has impacted our lives, no matter our identities. 

In the UK, this has been an ongoing conversation. Colonial history has not been taught here in schools, and most British people are unaware of the way their nation’s settler past affected countries and people around the world.

I was born in India and grew up reading the history of colonialism: the Amritsar massacre in 1919 where hundreds of unarmed innocent women, men and children were trapped and killed; the 1943 famine in Bengal during the British rule when more than 3 million Indians died of starvation and malnutrition and millions were driven into crushing poverty; the way “dogs and Indians” were banned from public spaces; the 1947 partition — one of the bloodiest in history — that displaced almost 15 million people, killing more than 2 million, and causing the abduction and rape of more than 75,000 women.

The trauma lives on in people’s bones, passed on from one generation to the next. When this is not taught in UK schools, students with Indian-South Asian heritage are confused about their place in modern Britain, while those who are white find it easy to assume that “everyone is equal” and that racism and discrimination are modern developments — imaginary concepts manufactured by the “woke” left. 

I was on Q+A from a Melbourne studio in March during a book tour in Australia when I met Grant. I admired his commitment to Aboriginal rights and his love for Australia. These two things can — and should — stand side by side, because shaping modern Australia requires a commitment to seeing and acknowledging history as it happened, that colonialism is written in the DNA of the nation much like here in the UK.

There is one major difference in Australia, however. The violence happened on Australian land, on the land that First Nation communities had lived and thrived on for many tens of thousands of years before colonists arrived and tried to erase them from their own history. These peoples suffered extreme violence and displacement from their homes and ways of life, made to believe that their cultures, languages and rituals were “primitive” and inferior to those of Western society. 

This sort of violence does not end with one generation; it lives on as intergenerational trauma. It lives on in stories we tell our children and those we were not allowed to tell. When people like Grant are silenced, and not allowed to talk about the impact the colonial past had on his people, and millions like him, this violence is repeated, the history of Indigenous peoples erased. It then becomes easier to assume that First Nations peoples do not still face barriers and discrimination in modern society.

As Grant said in his very touching parting speech last night, an acknowledgment of history — the honest version of Australia’s past — is the only way to acknowledge Indigenous peoples’ place in the country, on the land that always has belonged to them. 

History has shaped the hierarchies and power structures in our society, the way norms and rules have been set out, the way expectations and roles are established. When we whitewash our history and refuse the talk about the violence perpetuated in the name of the Crown and British monarchy, we can also assume that structural and systemic racism does not exist, that these legacies of oppression and imperialism do not continue to pose a barrier and marginalise those who exist at the bottom of the hierarchies.

Unless we do so, we cannot start tackling racism and prejudice in an honest and open way. Unless we look at our past and confront it, no matter how intense the discomfort, we can never move forward to an equitable egalitarian society. 

Do you agree it’s time Australians faced the truth about the nation’s colonial history? Let us know by writing to letters@crikey.com.au. Please include your full name to be considered for publication. We reserve the right to edit for length and clarity.