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On Identity by Stan Grant & Australia Day by Stan Grant

by
August 2019, no. 413

On Identity by Stan Grant

Melbourne University Press, $14.99 pb, 95 pp, 9780522875522

Book 2 Cover Small (400 x 600)

Australia Day by Stan Grant

HarperCollins, $34.99 pb, 263 pp, 9781460753187

On Identity by Stan Grant & Australia Day by Stan Grant

by
August 2019, no. 413

It was a great moment in Australian history when William Cooper walked to the Australian parliament to object to the treatment of Jews in Germany during World War II. At the time, the British and Australian parliaments were ambivalent about the atrocities occurring across Europe, and yet an Aboriginal man could not bear to see the government of his country sit on its hands.

Cooper knew a thing or two about oppression, racism, and the way societies allow injustice to cut a swath through an undesired element simply by looking above the heads of brutes enlisted to perpetrate evil until the civilised commercial interests can lower their gaze from their heavens and say, oh, what a shame, they have all disappeared. Every population can find brutes to do the killing, and every population has a vast number who calmly accept the largesse created by such abominable work.

Bruce Pascoe reviews 'On Identity' and 'Australia Day' by Stan Grant

On Identity

by Stan Grant

Melbourne University Press, $14.99 pb, 95 pp, 9780522875522

Book 2 Cover Small (400 x 600)

Australia Day

by Stan Grant

HarperCollins, $34.99 pb, 263 pp, 9781460753187

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Comment (1)

  • I white Australian) have just emailed our Minister for education about his reported comments on a suggestion by an (Indigenous) academic to change the name of English as a school subject. I am so thankful for people like Stan Grant and Bruce Pascoe who have the intelligence and courage to use the language of their colonisers to expose our horrific ongoing racism.
    Posted by Robin Gillespie
    14 August 2021

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