Antinuclear

Genuine reconciliation also requires blending “two very different cultures” to create a composite Australian identity that both black and white communities can identify with, Mr Keating will say in a speech prepared for the opening of the Tarnanthi Festival of Contemporary Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art at the Art Gallery of South Australia on Thursday. We had seized the land so violently and dispossessed its inhabitants so shamelessly – that our only way back – back to being at one and at pe ace with ourselves, was to identify more with Aboriginal Australia, while atoning for our opportunist and brutal behaviour,” Mr Keating says.

Mr Keating says addressing land rights is crucial to the process of creating a new Australian identity.

“The Native Title Act, on which I spent a large proportion of my period as prime minister – enshrines in the law of the land – the notion of Aboriginality, not only in its ownership but in lifting the relevance of culture and the virtue of customary tradition,” he says.

In his speech, Mr Keating says Aboriginal art and the land are inseparable: “This has produced the greatest and longest collective memory of any continuous culture and is still largely uncompromised.”

He also says native title will eventually extend over more than half of Australia’s land mass.

“[As] people here know, over time, the Native Title Act will return well over half the continent to its rightful owners,” he says. “Aboriginal art and its expression will be important in this. It is already important.

“Contemporary Aboriginal art still carries sacred messages through its symbols and materials – still managing to hold its secrets while speaking to a broader audience.”……

Mr Keating will conclude his speech by arguing Aboriginal art has influenced how non-Aboriginal Australians view themselves.

Aboriginal art has, since the 1970s, been a conduit, a medium, first of curiosity, then of a greater understanding of the Aboriginal people,” he says.

“It has been a method of translating an entire culture and of understanding an entire continent and has been a major influence in obliging Australians to come to terms with the question of who and what we are. Contemporary Aboriginal art moves us further along that road – both describing while revealing the journey.” http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/art-and-design/paul-keating-calls-for-blending-of-black-and-white-australia-to-create-new-national-identity-20151008-gk4j80.html#ixzz3oTrAAGnq