Indigenous Studies

It’s Our Country edited by Megan Davis and Marcia Langton & The Forgotten People edited by Damien Freeman and Shireen Morris

Item: It’s Our Country
Author: Kevin Bell

November 2016, no. 386

It’s Our Country: Indigenous arguments for meaningful constitutional recognition and reform edited by Megan Davis and Marcia Langton

Melbourne University Press, $29.99 pb, 206 pp, 9780522869934

The Forgotten People: Liberal and conservative approaches to recognising Indigenous peoples edited by Damien Freeman and Shireen Morris

Melbourne University Press, $29.99 pb, 200 pp, 9780522869637

Indigenous Studies

It’s Our Country edited by Megan Davis and Marcia Langton & The Forgotten People edited by Damien Freeman and Shireen Morris

by Kevin Bell •

November 2016, no. 386

Are you part of the non-Indigenous majority? Have you had too little contact with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people? Do you feel that you do not fully comprehend their worldview, but wish you could? Is entrenched Aboriginal disadvantage eating away at your sense of Australia as a fair and united country? Do you still possess the recollection of your first encounter with an Aboriginal person, and wonder why it remains so enduring? Are you troubled by the time being taken to achieve constitutional recognition and frustrated that an apparently simple issue has become so vexed? If these questions resonate in your mind, you have much in common with many Australians and may benefit from reading these books.

Kevin Bell

Professor the Honourable Kevin Bell AM QC is the Director of the Castan Centre for Human Rights Law in the Faculty of Law at Monash University. He is a member of the First Peoples-led Yoo-rrook Justice Commission, a Royal Commission established by the First Peoples Assembly of Victoria and the Victorian government to examine the impact of colonisation upon the First Peoples of Victoria, to undertake a process of truth-telling and to make recommendations for informing treaty-making.