查看文章

If the past is never dead, as Faulkner asserts, then its fragments must pervade the present. The shards of the past insinuate themselves into what we see, and don't see, value, and don't value, subtly informing every gaze, every movement, every decision. The privileges we enjoy, or don't enjoy, the inequities we fail to notice, or rail against, are the individual legacies of our shared pasts. Thus, a proper acknowledgment of history is basic to an understanding of the present circumstances of our societies. If we are to create a better future, the past has to be embraced, in both its accomplishments and its failures. Humphrey McQueen addresses this issue in terms of Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians:

For white Australians to cut ourselves off from the destruction of Aboriginal society is also to sever the ties that bind those born this century to the pioneers or the Anzacs, since none of us nurtured grain at Parramatta …