CANBERRA, Oct 20 (NNN-AGENCIES) – An Australian academic, called for the government to build a monument to indigenous Australians.
In a speech last night, Mark Kenny, a journalist and senior fellow at the Australian Studies Institute, at Australian National University (ANU), said, a monument on the banks of Lake Burley Griffin, the artificial lake in the centre of Canberra, would recognise the contributions of indigenous peoples to modern Australia.
He said that the monument should acknowledge the disadvantage faced by indigenous Australians since the country was colonised.
“I propose, in full consultation and genuine partnership with (Aboriginal) Tent Embassy residents, community elders and First Nations peoples, that the institutional axle point of modern Australia’s great story, be marked with a truly monumental structure, dedicated to and run by Australia’s First Peoples,” Kenny said.
“I’d envisage a vast and largely lateral structure, rising from beneath the shoreline of Lake Burley Griffin,” he said. “Aboriginal Australia has waited long enough for this material recognition.”
According to Kenny, Australia’s failure to recognise indigenous peoples in culture, law and history has left the country unable to come to terms with the genocide of the aboriginal people, carried out by colonisers.
He suggested that the proposed monument sit between Parliament House and the Australian War Memorial, and called for the establishment of a museum of indigenous Australian history at the site.
“This museum would proclaim a new era of partnership, via a grand symbolic gesture, in the form of a permanent water’s edge museum of Indigenous history, language, art, and political struggle,” Kenny said.– NNN-AGENCIES
