RE-MEMBERING REMEMBRANCE - Contextualising commemorative practice
Remembering who we have been as a people, while honouring those who fell, serving the nation we are still becoming. Illustration by Luis Crista Designs, commissioned by the author This structure is intended as a place to connect with a story , not merely to lay flowers three or four times a year; and not merely to connect, but to engage in a life or death struggle for the soul of the nation. Here’s that story in just 33 words: A little more than a hundred years ago we went to war in support of an empire to preserve White Australia, yet today we are a multicultural society that supports self-determination where ever that is possible in the world. Those 33 words should set us dancing, rejoicing, even boasting! As a nation we have every reason to proud. And yet the race riot on Cronulla Beach in 2005 ( 1 ) sent a shudder down the spines of anyone who saw what was really happening and realised what was coming. Nationalism as an issue of race is not a thing of the past. T...