The currency of King Charles hinges on a great reckoning with the past

The coronation of a septuagenarian presiding over a lacklustre economy and haemorrhaging Commonwealth is a remarkably different thing to the enthroning of a young woman at a time of post-war victory and prosperity. A little quieter, a lot less razzle. The first coronation most of us will have ever seen seems a bit disconnected here, and remote. Even in Britain, preparations have been muted.

Almost half of the British public think King Charles III is out of touch, according to recent polling conducted by YouGov/BBC Panorama. The majority of Brits – 54 per cent – think the royal family is good value for money, but simultaneously a very solid 58 per cent claimed to not be interested in them. Only a slight majority want the country to remain a monarchy.

Illustration: Simon LetchCredit:

But there was one poll result that made me sit up: 46 per cent think the monarchy does not have a problem with race and diversity. Only 32 per cent do. Given the royal family is – with the exception of a certain biracial former actor who fled the country citing racism – collectively as white as a polar bear, this was surprising.

Because after the spectacle of the coronation – once the trumpets have quietened, the crowns and flags packed away, the bills paid, and the streets swept clean – Charles has an enormous task ahead of him. Not just an anodyne, incremental and tepid “modernising” of the monarchy, but a great reckoning. When it comes to this country, and others in the Commonwealth, there can be no more urgent work than true recognition of the enduring impact of the violence of colonisation on this country’s original inhabitants. It remains to be seen if Charles, an earnest and prescient environmentalist, will have the stomach or courage for this, or if any of it will even matter given the fact that beyond any personal attributes, he symbolises an institution that devastated entire populations; the countries invaded for Empire staining world maps red.

Because to date, aside from the odd friendly personal encounter, monarchs have only, historically, disappointed First Nations Australians.

An illustration of either Warrulan (who worked in Birmingham, England and died 1855), or Pangkerin. From the article “Aborigines of South Australia” on page 108 of the Feb 14. 1846 edition of The Illustrated London News. Credit:

As far back as 1846, according to a long-forgotten report in The Illustrated London News, when William Gladstone, then secretary of the colonies, brought two young Aboriginal boys to see Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, they were taken aback by the ordinariness of the queen. The boys, Warrulan and Pangkerin, were disappointed, reportedly, because she was just a “very young person” – just 26, and under five-foot tall (152 centimetres) – “dressed like any other lady, but with few attendants”.

This account was drenched with the narrow, obvious racism of the time – with the boys’ physicality described in great detail, and their skulls examined by phrenologists (as Victoria later arranged for her eldest son) – though the visit was ostensibly intended as a corrective to prejudice. The article concluded: “It is to be hoped that the presence of these youths in England, and the honourable notice her Majesty has been pleased to take of them, will ... by creating an interest on behalf of people little known and greatly misunderstood, perhaps tend ... towards inducing better-directed, and more effectual, attempts to mitigate the evils which our occupation and possession of their country necessarily inflict upon them.”

This did not happen.

In 1963, when Queen Elizabeth II travelled to Broome, a man called Paddy Djiagween – Patrick Dodson’s grandfather – was among a group of Aboriginal dancers who performed. Afterwards, Djiagween asked the Queen: given he had danced for her, why was he forbidden from drinking alongside white Australians in a local pub?

The Queen spoke to her equerry, who ensured Djiagween could drink. As Professor Mark McKenna wrote in his fascinating study of the relationship between Indigenous Australians and the Crown, Djiagween “won his case”. But this story underlines a core paradox: many have hoped the Queen could be appealed to personally, as a kind and sympathetic leader. But at the same time she represented an institution that had brutally colonised foreign lands.

In 1999, just before the republic referendum, Dodson led a delegation of Indigenous elders to Buckingham Palace to meet the Queen, whom he described as sympathetic and respectful. When she came to Australia the following year, she spoke more pointedly than usual about the disadvantage faced by Aboriginal people, but the impact was minimal.

At the last coronation, in 1953, Robert Menzies did not include First Nations Australians in the official delegation despite numerous petitions from groups including the RSL begging him to do so. Today, those attending include Wiradjuri British artist Jasmine Coe, and Tayla Green-Aldridge, a Wiradjuri and Djiringanj woman, a Prince’s Trust Get Into Maritime graduate.

In 1988, when then prince Charles came here and spoke of the injustice against Aboriginal people, he said: “The true celebration of this nation is in its Constitution ... [wherein] every family in this remarkable country has its rights protected and cherished.” All families except Indigenous ones, who had been excluded, not protected. Thirty years later, Yolngu elders in Arnhem Land gave him a message stick informing him that sovereignty had not been ceded.

McKenna writes: “Without knowledge of the country that was deeply embedded in place, visiting royals could do little else but make generally encouraging (and often patronising) remarks, hovering in icy altitudes above their realm, and occasionally making benign visitations.”

I’ve long been fascinated by what happened to characters like Queen Victoria – and to some extent, Elizabeth II – who found themselves lurched into positions of power they never sought, and then relished the control they had at a time few women possessed any authority. Charles has a different challenge, crowned in a world where what ABC broadcaster Stan Grant calls “whiteness as an organising principle” is being daily challenged, along with patriarchy and privilege, and reparations for land taken and crimes committed sought in several former colonies. White people have benefited from colonisation, and now, must challenge it.

King Charles III has some good qualities. He is, reportedly, quite charming in person, loves the company of comics and cares deeply about the health of the Earth. But in many senses, his personal attributes don’t matter. The polls don’t really matter, either, and are inconsistent.

What’s important, for us, is who we are as a country, and what we all need to do to march firmly into a future where the truth and burden of our past is recognised. First Nations people are at the centre of our political and cultural life, and we, as a nation, take pride in our ancient history, our ancient culture, our ancient land. All the stories that will be told as the King’s carriage wheels along the Mall, of old wars and thrones and stones and bones, will be a drop in time compared to the millennia of history lived by the original inhabitants of this continent. This should be the greatest source of our pride.

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