The historical record shows that the argument of the Uluru Statement from the Heart is stronger than many people imagine and the centuries-long legal position about British claims to the land far less imposing than it appears.
What if the sovereignty of the First Nations was recognised by European international law in the 18th and 19th centuries? What if the audacious British annexation of a whole continent was not seen as acceptable at the time and the colonial office in Britain understood that 'peaceful settlement' was a fiction? If the 1901 parliament did not have control of the whole continent, particularly the North, by what right could the new nation claim it?
In Truth-Telling, acclaimed Tasmanian historian Henry Reynolds pulls the rug from under legal and historical assumptions in a book that's as much about the present as the past.
Softcover
Published 2021
274-pages, indexed |
