Reynolds punctures the 'great Australian silence'

John Rainford argues that Reynolds punctures the 'great Australian silence'.

Reynolds is one of a pioneering group of historians, anthropologists and others who have transformed our understandings of traditional Aboriginal society and the relationship between Indigenous and settler Australians.

In his latest book, he provides evidence that supports his contention that it was the war of conquest fought against Aboriginal people that made the nation, not the 1915 ill-fated invasion of Turkey.

Conflict came within weeks of the foundation of Sydney and was apparent on every frontier for the next 140 years.

Yet while the large-scale killing of Warlpiri people by police at Coniston in Central Australia in 1928 can be used as a convenient date to mark the end of officially endorsed killing, the brutality has never ended.

This is the brutal reality of a settler society such as Australia, USA, or Israel. The indigenous population is subjected through genocide and their land is expropriated by the settler elite. Yet all settlers bears the guilt of this atrocity because we have benefited from the crime.

It is at an unconscious level that most white Australians condone this ongoing violence against Aborigines. They do not have to do themselves, just merely accept the system that does it for their benefit.

We cannot be truly free of the guilt of the past until we overthrow this racist system and reform ourselves so that we become human beings rather than black-fellow and white-fellow.