Henry Reynolds was led into the lives of remarkable and largely forgotten white humanitarians who followed their consciences and challenged the prevailing attitudes to Indigenous people… His now-classic 1998 book The Whispering in Our Hearts constructed an alternative history of Australia through the eyes of those who felt disquiet and disgust at the brutality of dispossession.

The need for a Voice has its roots in what anthropologist WEH Stanner in the late 1960s called the ‘Great Australian Silence’, whereby the history and culture of Indigenous Australians have been largely ignored by the wider society. This ‘forgetting’ has not been incidental but rather an intentional, initially colonial policy of erasement. So have times now changed? Is the tragedy of that national silence—a refusal to acknowledge Indigenous agency and cultural achievements—finally coming to an end?

A startling reassessment of the Aborigines in early Australia. Rather than being prisoners in a hostile continent, the Aborigines were a successful race - triumphant in their discovery of the land, triumphant in their adaptation to it, and in their mastery of its contrasting climates, seasons and resources.

True Tracks is a groundbreaking work that paves the way for respectful and ethical engagement with Indigenous cultures. Using real-world cases and personal stories, award-winning Meriam/Wuthathi lawyer Dr Terri Janke draws on twenty years of professional experience to inform and inspire people working across many industries – from art and architecture, to film and publishing, dance, science and tourism. What Indigenous materials and knowledge are you using? How will your project affect and involve Indigenous communities? Are you sharing your profits with those communities? True Tracks helps answer these questions and many more, and provides invaluable guidelines that enable Indigenous peoples to actively practise, manage and strengthen their cultural life.

Henry Reynolds pulls the rug from under legal and historical assumptions in a book that’s about the present as much as the past. Truth-Telling shows exactly why our national war memorial must acknowledge the frontier wars, why we must change the date of our national day, and why treaties are important. Most of all, it makes urgently clear that the Uluru Statement is no rhetorical flourish but carries the weight of history and law and gives us a map for the future.

Links to many books from UQP, fiction and non-fiction, on First Nations topics and by First Nations authors