Australia’s foundation story is like a cross between a metaphorical snowball of lies, and an onion.

There was a foundational lie at some stage, which just kept accumulating more and more lies, like the snowball getting bigger while rolling down a snowy hill.

But in the case of Australia’s foundational story, the snowball has a structure like an onion. There are distinct layers. When something needs to be hidden – they simply add a new layer on the outside.

There are at least three layers in the onion. There may be more, but I will write here about the layers I have found:

The inside layer is that the Dutch discovered New Holland, which later changed hands to the British in a complex legal settlement. Aboriginal people were the natives of New Holland – who according to the British interpretation of the legal settlement made with the Dutch became trespassers circa year 1836, and were therefore legally cleared off the land.

The middle layer is the one that lasted the longest amount of time. James Cook discovered the entirety of “Australia” for the British. The British then moved themselves in, treating the land as if it were a terra nullius.

The outer layer is the newest layer. It started growing in about the 1980’s, and hasn’t finished growing yet. The implementation of the Uluru Statement will finish off this layer and will also hide all the layers underneath. This outer layer is that Aboriginal people are the “First Australians”. They settled “Australia” 60,000 years ago, they were subsequently joined by a latter wave of British settlers, and then by people of other ethnicities. As Aboriginal people only had a spiritual interest in the land, they had no concept of materialism. Therefore, their land could not be stolen as they had no concept of ownership.

Personal anecdote

I just wanted to share a related personal anecdote. I went through about 10 years worth of Australian school curriculum history. I learnt the “middle layer” exclusively – the terra nullius curriculum. I was in grade 6 when terra nullius was overturned. The school curriculum must have taken a few years to catch up with the High Court – because up until grade 9 (when I stopped history as a subject) school was still embedded with the terra nullius doctrine. As an Aboriginal student, this was very awkward and embarrassing to sit through some lessons. It made me feel like society places a value less than zero to being Aboriginal. Our existence was not even worth acknowledging.

In retrospect, I am grateful for the experience. It taught me that “facts” are open to interpretation, and it taught me to take everything with a grain of salt. It bred a natural skepticism, and helped nurture an ability for seeing things from perspectives other than my own. It’s an ability that has served me well in life.

When I got to grade 12, my school was about to have it’s annual awards night. I didn’t study very hard, because I only needed to get pass grades to get into my chosen university course. So as my grades were good but not great, I didn’t expect to have to go to the awards night. But I, along with another student named Mitchell Johnson got special invitations to the awards. I expected that Mitchell would get the sports student of the year as he was very good at tennis and cricket (he went on to become a famous cricket player). But I didn’t know why I was invited to the awards night.

At the awards night, right at the end of the night when there was only a handful of awards left including dux – I was announced as the school’s inaugural “Aboriginal Student of the year”. I was shocked, confused, conflicted and angry when I heard my name announced. My own people’s identity had been denied by the school curriculum through most of my education, and now I’m getting an award for being Aboriginal?! WTF?? But as I was walking up to the podium get my award, I got a message from my ancestors. I won’t say here what the exact message was. But it immediately calmed me. Nobody would ever know how furious I was when I heard my name announced that night.

What happened that night was that I experienced a “glitch in the Matrix”. I never really understood until now – that I was caught in-between the layers of the onion.

The making of the outer layer

Many people welcome the recent acknowledgment of past atrocities such as the Stolen Generations and the massacres.

But a word of caution…. False narratives are always made from a mixture of both truth and fiction.

The cheating husband will not lie more than he has to. He will construct a story that is mostly true, otherwise it becomes too hard to keep up with all the lies. The more elements of the story that are blatantly false – the higher the chance of being caught-out.

The same goes for the outer layer of the onion. It has elements of truth – yes, there were stolen generations and massacres. And these truthful elements are not in the terra nullius onion layer, so it may appear that the outer layer is more truthful. But a small spoonful of truth helps the swallowing of the lies. Overall the “First Australians” narrative is a lie – simply there to obscure what is underneath, and to create a nice, clean foundation story for Australia.

Real truth-telling is dissecting the onion and peeling back the layers. It is not covering up everything with more lies.