Reckoning, Not Reconciliation

With the campaign for a First Nations Voice to Parliament in full swing, leading First Nations thinkers Stan Grant and Teela Reid ask whether we are entering a new era for Australian democracy. Are we ready to speak and hear the truth about history as we move into the future? Two storytellers with different experiences and perspectives, they talk about what it means to be a First Nations person in a country that is yet to reconcile historical wrongs.

A Sydney Writers’ Festival Live & Local Livestream event.

ABOUT STAN GRANT

Stan Grant is a Wiradjuri and Kamilaroi man. One of Australia’s most respected and awarded journalists, he has worked for the ABC, SBS, the Seven Network, Sky News Australia and from 2001 to 2012 he worked for CNN as an anchor and senior correspondent in Asia and the Middle East. Over the course of his career he has received a string of prestigious international and Australian awards. In 2015, he published his Walkley Award–winning, bestselling book Talking to My Country, and also won a Walkley Award for his coverage of Indigenous affairs. He had since published another two books, Australia Day (2019) and With the Falling of the Dusk (2021), both also national bestsellers. In 2016 he was appointed to the Referendum Council on Indigenous recognition. Stan is the ABC’s International Affairs Analyst and host of Q&A, and Professor of Indigenous Belonging at Charles Sturt University. Stan’s next book The Queen is Dead is out in May 2023.

ABOUT TEELA REID

Teela Reid is a Wiradjuri & Wailwan woman, lawyer and storyteller. She is the co-founder of @blackfulla_bookclub, a platform that honours First Nations Ancestors as the original Storytellers. She is the inaugural First Nations Lawyer in Residence at Sydney Law School and an advocate for the Uluru Statement from the Heart.