Articles

So many Australian place names honour murderous white men and their violent acts

Long before the Dutch or British came, the land resounded with stories that charted the sky, the beasts and all the humans

From Bennelong’s place at Kissing Point I take the ferry back downriver and into the wind towards the point, now adorned with the opera house, that bears his name. It’s where the first governor, Arthur Phillip, built Bennelong a small hut in which he lived, periodically, before opting in later years for a more traditional life.

Pressure builds for a national keeping place for Indigenous remains | Paul Daley

Recognition of a Melbourne site where Indigenous elders are buried is a moment of profound symbolic note

The commonwealth’s National Heritage List has finally recognised a symbolic part of central Melbourne where the bones of many Indigenous elders lay buried.

Revealed: how Australian spies filmed Indigenous activists during the cold war

Asio Makes a Movie shows footage gathered by undercover agents of suspected enemies of the state, including Faith Bandler

In the early 1950s, as acute cold war paranoia about possible communist infiltration began dominating Australian politics, the next generation of Indigenous activists took their equality fight to Europe.

On Closing the Gap day, politicians should stop talking and listen for once | Paul Daley

It’s time for that perennial spotlight on national negligence in Indigenous affairs

Here we go again.

It’s time for that perennial spotlight on national negligence in Indigenous affairs, the excruciating parliamentary groundhog day that highlights federal parliament’s failure to govern for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

The flags we fly and holidays we celebrate signal who we are as a nation | Paul Daley

Fixing Indigenous disadvantage is more important than a flag. But these things are not mutually exclusive

There’s apparently been some minor unrest over the proposal to permanently fly the Aboriginal flag on the Sydney Harbour Bridge.

Beating the khaki drum: how Australian identity was militarised | Paul Daley

Becoming a top arms exporter fits neatly into a national narrative that has become hostage to ‘Anzac birthers’

A nation’s capital should be an outward looking place, a city that faces the world to convey the type of country it represents. What, then, might be the first thoughts about Australia of those who fly into Canberra as they traverse the arrivals hall and concourse at our national capital’s airport?

Australia Day's barbecue stopper is the same every year | Paul Daley

By the time of the first formal protest in 1938, 26 January had already long been an Indigenous day of mourning

Irrespective of whether the politicians shift Australia’s annual orgy of self-congratulation from 26 January, it will always thrive for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, and those who support betterment of their rights, as a national day of mourning.

I’ve had dogs for much of my life, but Nari found another league in my heart | Paul Daley

Towards the end I pondered the mystery of man-dog emotional alchemy. When the moment came, I patted her silky ear and said ‘good girl’ for the last time

The other dog walkers who’d been asking me how she was doing are visibly upset when I explain that, after suddenly going blind and losing use of her hind legs, we had to put her down.

Magpies: how I learnt to grudgingly admire – and then love – the bird of the year | Paul Daley

They’re feared for their fierce protection of sovereignty and dive-bombing trespassers, but all is forgiven listening to a pair of magpies warbling in a gumtree

Anodyne eastern suburbs Melbourne seemed less dangerous than any other place in the world when I was a primary school kid.

There was the creek with its tadpoles, turtles and occasional foxes. There was, inevitably, a local haunted house. And there was the path.

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