My response to Adam Kirsch’s essay “The False Narrative of Settler Colonialism” in The Atlantic is framed by the writings of Patrick Wolfe, my own research and my Aboriginality. Kirsch would call this Indigeneity, which is a term I don’t often use — it’s too simple.

Constitutional change is dead in the water. The Referendum has exposed the divides within our society, and the result demonstrates to the world Australia’s unconsciousness of its human rights failures. Sixty per cent of Australian voters have, consciously or unconsciously, determined that ‘bipartisanship’ lies somewhere between erasure and assimilation.

Geoffrey Blainey’s recent article in The Weekend Australian (1–2 July) urged Australians to get the “facts in order” before voting on The Voice portrays the “Yes” campaign as historically unfounded and a misrepresention of Australian history before and after 1788.

This landscape is not a manifestation of a triumphal struggle over droughts, floods, hardships and Blacks. Rather, it is a refraction of swirling patterns of memory, memorialisation; suppression, repression and revelation; constantly ravelling and unravelling, endlessly struggling to erase or incorporate the Other and soothe the settler pillow.

Dismantling the structures that bedevil the lives of Aboriginal people does not mean that Aboriginal anger will cool, or that anything will be forgiven—it is far too late for that—but for the beneficiaries of settlement it might be the first step in a necessary process of self-recognition. For us Aboriginal people, it might signal the beginnings of the end of invasion. Never forget that consensual decision-making was, and remains, a moral foundation of Aboriginal culture. Perhaps its extension into mainstream Australian culture could be the beginning of something more truthful.

Jane Eyre remains for many reasons a very English novel. While the force of its critique of patriarchal structures estranges and unsettles the axioms of its context, its political imagination cannot help but remain bordered by Whiteness.

The dedication of Farmers or Hunter-? to ‘Enkidu and Gilgamesh’, is something of a sleeper. In his interview with Stuart Rintoul, Sutton said that he sees ‘the birth of reconcilement’ in the Epic of Gilgamesh which is one of the earliest literary creations to emerge from the Fertile Crescent of Mesopotamia. It was there that farming began, along with all its infrastructure of metalworking, urbanisation, writing, patriarchal theocracies, monarchies, armies, and colonisation.

Australia Day is for the Gubs. Not just some Gubs, but all Gubs. It is inclusive in that, whether it is loved or hated, it can’t be ignored. For those who are into great streaks of zinc cream across their faces, it is a great day for beaches, bbqs and a bit of burqa bashing if that is their bent. For the Balmain bolshies, it is a great day to reminisce about the Bridge walk and lament the fate of their blak brothers and sisters.

The iconic status of Gone with the Wind in the United States demonstrates the near impossibility of settler societies recognising how dangerous they are, and how much damage they have caused.

Given the history and the structure behind it, there’s nothing surprising about Morrison’s ignorance. The question is whether we allow this indifference to continue the structure of invasion by further colonising the past or choose to accept the responsibility for its redress.