When Coming First is Not Winning
Australia has an uncomfortable past. It is simple to acknowledge but difficult to repair.
I did not hear nor recognise blatant racism until 16 years of age. I was left feeling shocked and my father demanded to know who had made the offensive comment. He understood the impact of intolerance, not racism.
In viewing the harrowing footage that led to the rise of the Black Lives Matter protests, and the unacceptable looting and rioting, it is unsurprising that the issues have also found a home in our country.
And while I do not hold the answers nor wish to prosecute arguments that have dominated public discourse, I do acknowledge and hold hope that we will reconcile with the traditional owners of the land on which we live.
Last week I went searching for an exercise book. Not just any exercise book, my Grade 5 social science exercise book from 1986. For readers of my vintage you know the type - 64 pages of 8mm lined perfection painstakingly covered with contact.
After watching the ABC institution Behind The News, we were tasked with compiling a recount that included a hand drawn picture on the right-hand side of a double page spread.
The report was one of my favourite tasks of the week, but feelings of engagement with learning were tempered by the requirement to pencil a supporting diagrammatic representation.
Fortunately, the more you wrote the less room there was for the pictorial splendour that I often produced with tracing paper.
Drawing remains my nightmare. Mrs W says everyone can draw. No, they can't. I'm proof writ large. My search was in vain, which was a surprise considering my father's commitment to collecting mementos from our school careers.
The BTN report I remembered recounted the upcoming bicentenary and the preparations taking place. My drawing was of Captain James Cook interacting with a confrontational Aborigine.
My perspective due to curriculum delivery of the time was underpinned by a British point of view.
A lesson soon followed on the inappropriately described "last full-blooded" Tasmanian Aborigine, Truganini, which reinforced the fallacy of extinction.
And in a theme-based approach, we sketched her famous portrait taken by Charles Woolley on a glass plate negative, highlighting her intricate shell necklace.
The photograph, Trukanini, 1866 now hangs in the National Portrait Museum after a generous donation by well-known Tasmanians, Allanah Dopson and Nicholas Heyward in 2009.
Parts of Truganini's skeleton resided in the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery until 1947 with other remains on display in Melbourne until 1969.
Two years after my written recount and loosely termed drawing, during January 1988, my family enthusiastically headed to the Hobart Docks with our closest friends to watch the tall ships. The tall ships raced back to Sydney like a reverse leg of the Sydney-Hobart yacht race to commemorate the bicentenary of the First Fleet.
Later that same year Grade 8 classmates headed to World Expo 88 in Brisbane during the school holidays. By all reports, it was a "mammoth celebration" costing $625 million to host a fair in recognition of Captain Arthur Phillip and the First Fleet moving from Botany Bay to Sydney Harbour in January 1788.
Four years on in 1992 the High Court's majority Mabo decision ended the doctrine of terra nullius (land belonging to no-one), recognising that the original inhabitants of Australia were present long before the British arrived.
Six months later Prime Minister Paul Keating delivered his poignant Redfern speech stating: "We committed the murders. We took the children from their mothers. We practiced discrimination and exclusion. It was our ignorance and our prejudice".
By 2000 Cathy Freeman would light the Olympic Cauldron at the Sydney Summer Olympics, and Midnight Oil performed Beds are Burning at the Closing Ceremony while courageously wearing black clothes adorned with "sorry".
In 2007 Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said sorry on behalf of all Australians to the stolen generations. Then in 2019 Ken Wyatt became the first federal Aboriginal Indigenous Affairs Minister.
Yet for all the steps forward, I could attribute several columns to where we have got it completely wrong and set the course of reconciliation back another term of Parliament.
To make a long-lasting difference we must start with our children and the delivery of the Australian curriculum. The curriculum has evolved and now incorporates a more honest and inclusive approach. However, it could be argued that it does not go far enough.
Culturally diverse student populations are now the norm in most Tasmanian schools and that must be supported by cultural diversity across the teaching population.
And while authentic curriculum delivery is essential, teachers often unfairly feel apprehensive about making mistakes, doing the wrong thing, or causing offence.
Therefore, just as I firmly believe that every primary school student should learn from at least one exemplary male teacher, we must also recognise the importance of cultural diversity in the workforce in a similar way to major companies setting aspirational goals across Australia.
The more we listen the more we learn the more we understand.