5 Quotes by Bruce Pascoe

Some say the idea that the world's trajectory is driven by conquest followed by innovation and intensification is satisfying to the Western mind because of our psychological dependence on our imperialist history. But if we give consideration to the idea that change can be generated by the spirit, and through that by political action, the stability of Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures might be more readily explained.

If we are to attempt to understand Indigenous philosophy it has to begin with the profound obligation to land.

I began to question everything, especially those things Australians claimed to know about Australia. We had just walked through a field of harvest, but a field where the harvesters had been discouraged from their labour 170 years ago. Discouraged by murder.

Sometimes a decade arrives when nations have the chance to turn away from bigotry and selfishness and turn to their countrymen and women and embrace them as loved members of the human family. But do we have the ticker for it?

Those preferring to rest an argument on relative morality should examine the religion and morality of Indigenous Australians and then compare it to those who murdered them in the 1800s and those who try to excuse or deny it today.