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Australia - a land with myths for all

by Simon Longstaff

There has been considerable debate about the possibility of amending the preamble to the Australian Constitution.

Participants at the Constitutional Convention had hoped to use the referendum as an opportunity to further the cause of reconciliation between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Australians. However, it seems that idealism may have been trumped by the political strategists' pragmatism and that the issue has been reduced to one of tactics within the republican and monarchist camps.

That this should be happening is a cause for considerable regret. It's not just that a symbolic moment might have been lost. More importantly, we might have used the opportunity to re-imagine our response to a challenge faced by all civilisations; namely, how do we fashion our myths of national identity?

Indeed, communities and nations can hardly form, let alone survive and flourish, without the foundations provided by a core set of common myths. We Australians are no different.

The vast majority of us are immigrants come from a bewildering number of distant lands. In the time since European settlement, we have set about the task of constructing our myths of national identity. We have embraced the archetype of the 'battler of the bush', made famous in tales such as The Man from Snowy River. We have fashioned ourselves as freedom-loving, sun-tanned beach dwellers; or the friendly, decent suburbanites of Neighbours.

And, in increasing numbers, we join together on Anzac Day to celebrate a famous defeat in which we learned that courage in the face of overwhelming odds, loyalty to our 'mates' and honour in attempting the impossible are more important than winning.

Unfortunately, our dominant myths suffer from the problem of being relatively new and therefore too close to a reality that calls them into question. There are just too many people who can challenge the truth of what we say about ourselves: battlers from the bush point to the rising incidence of youth suicide; the socially excluded look for a mate in vain; the old and frail believe that the tide of crime is lapping at their doors.

Anzac Day is just far enough in the past to survive the test of reality – but only just.

Apart from having shallow roots in time, our dominant myths lack a deep connection to the land in which we live. Its vastness, its silence, its mystery all combine in ways that we scarcely understand to shape our national character. Yet we can say nothing about how it (and we) came to be. We are the poorer for it.

There is, of course, no need for this awkward silence. Australia has a rich store of potent myths that are as old and venerable as any. These myths are of this land (and no other); held in trust for countless generations. All Australians, whatever their origins, could be the beneficiaries of this legacy. However, for this to happen there will need to be a fundamental reappraisal of the role of Aboriginal people in our society.

It is just that that I wish to propose. I want to suggest that Aboriginal people should be formally recognised, in the preamble to our Constitution, as the keepers of national myths, old and new.

Rather than being a marginalised community, a constant source of regret and an embarrassment to a society that is more decent than most, the first Australians would, at last, be able to claim a special status and dignity within our national life. And they could do so without having to compromise the core of their identity. In turn, I would ask the Aboriginal people to incorporate the rest of us and our history into the fabric of their myths.

I have spoken of this with a number of Aboriginal people, especially the older folk, and they do not wish to exclude anybody. Their myths are of this place – this country – and as such, we are already part of the story. So, I imagine a time in which the Aboriginal people have become special story-keepers and storytellers, performing a function for which history makes them uniquely qualified. Only this kind of approach can offer the basis for true and lasting reconciliation. We must acknowledge and own the past – all of us must do so. Yet, we are bound to fail in our efforts to make a new beginning if we do so on the basis of anger and guilt.

Let us, instead, strive to build on the good things that we can find to share in common.

I imagine a time when an Aboriginal elder recites to my children's children a dreamtime story, The Man From Snowy River and an account of Gallipoli all in the space of a sitting. Then, their stories would be our stories and their songs would be our songs and their paintings would be our paintings – a shared account of our land and its people.

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