‘From the Honest History vault for NAIDOC Week: Tjanara Goreng Goreng’s review of Billy Griffiths’ Deep Time Dreaming‘, Honest History, 7 July 2021
Here’s a paragraph from the review:
The book finishes with a reflection of what it means for Australia to have an ancient Aboriginal heritage and to reconcile itself with its history. In the words of a man I once worked for, Charlie Perkins, are found the difficulty, the desire for sharing and acceptance, and the reasons why we are always ‘other’ in Australia. Perkins said of his ‘expectation of a good Australia’, it ‘is when White people would be proud to speak an Aboriginal language, when they realise that Aboriginal culture and all that goes with it … is all part of their heritage … [A]ll they have to do is reach out and ask for it.’ (p. 293)
Well said, sir.
The book, Deep Time Dreaming: Uncovering Ancient Australia, is by a whitefella, Billy Griffiths. The reviewer, Tjanara Goreng Goreng, is a Wakka Wakka Wulli Wulli woman, Canberra academic, and Greens candidate for the Senate. For Honest History, she has also reviewed Rebe Taylor’s Into the Heart of Tasmania: A Search for Human Antiquity and Remembering the Myall Creek Massacre, edited by Jane Lydon and Lyndall Ryan.
Charles Perkins (fourth from left), Freedom Ride, Bowraville NSW, February 1965 (Australian Geographic/The Tribune Archive)