Letter
A duty of care to Torres Strait Islanders
As Robert Graves put it, “Truth loving Persians do not dwell upon a trivial skirmish fought near Marathon. School children in France are not taught about the battle of Agincourt.”
The Black Hole of Calcutta is taught one way in the UK and another in India. When Margaret Mitchell wrote Gone With the Wind, she was unaware that the South had been defeated. John Howard complained about the black armband of history that attempts to set the record straight about the modern history of Indigenous Australia. Popular history has become little more than a national hagiography. How far the popular history of the US departs from reality is placed under the microscope in Greg Grandin’s book America, America (Penguin 2025).
But when you read that, reflect that the history that most people have of their nation is really no different to that reflected in Grandin’s book.
— John Tons from Flinders University