Respect vital, as is balance

LORD Mayor Ron Christie needs to reconsider his plan to forthwith refer to Hobart as nipaluna.

Hobart Mayor Ron Christie. PICTURE: MATT THOMPSON

IN the space of less than a week, the people of Hobart have been told, one, that their busiest street will be dug up three times so a man can be buried alive under it — by choice — for three days, and two, that their Lord Mayor will from now on be referring to the city by its indigenous name, nipaluna.

That reaction has been mixed to both these rather astonishing pieces of news shows what a mature city we have become. A few years ago, both proposals would have been simply overwhelmingly laughed at — and quickly rejected out of hand. The willingness that Hobartians now have to being open to different or new ways of thinking is actually now one of our most strongest community assets, and probably one that deserves to be acknowledged by all of us more often.

MORE: MAYOR VOWS TO USE ABORIGINAL NAME FOR HOBART

MORE: PERFORMANCE TAKES DARK MOFO TO NEW DEPTHS

Perhaps this is all the happy result of Mona founder David Walsh’s determination to shock us, and in the process to make us stop and think differently.

Along the way he has done a lot more than just that. The international success of his gallery — and its associated festivals — has also given us as Hobartians (and Tasmanians) the permission to finally remove that chip from our shoulder and emerge confident about who we are and what we stand for.

As part of this collective journey, the Government’s acceptance of the Mona-led vision for a Truth and Reconciliation Park at Macquarie Point has also led to a much more open acknowledgment of the dark post-European history of the First Tasmanians. And that in turn has opened the door to a more mainstream acceptance of what would, just a few years ago, have been considered quite bizarre actions — such as acknowledgements of country before most public events, the flying of the Aboriginal flag over our capital city’s Town Hall, and the official adding of the indigenous names to landmarks — such as has been so successfully achieved in relation to kunanyi/Mt Wellington. All of these have been very welcome developments; appropriate ways to pay our respect to our shared history.

It is also important that we are now able to have more thoughtful conversations than in the past about additional ways to pay respect to the First Tasmanians.

The fact is that we should share collective guilt about what happened on this island in the not too distant past. We must all continue to be aware of the need to give overdue recognition to the appalling treatment of the First Tasmanians, and apologise that as a community for most of the years since we were far too willing to sweep the truth under the carpet.

However, that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t question how best to acknowledge this history. We shouldn’t create a situation where any of us are afraid of breaking from the pack and saying that — with all due respect — it’s my opinion that this is the wrong approach, that we’ve gone too far this time, or that what you have proposed just doesn’t feel right to me. To put it another way, we have to ensure that as individuals we retain the courage to maybe stop cheering every now and then and instead yell out: “The emperor has no clothes!”

When it comes to Lord Mayor Ron Christie’s plan to forthwith refer to Hobart as nipaluna, the Mercury suggests that perhaps that time has come.