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Quarterly Essay 64: The Australian Dream

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Quarterly Essay 64: The Australian Dream

By: Stan Grant
Narrated by: Stan Grant
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About this listen

In a landmark essay, Stan Grant writes indigenous people back into the economic and multicultural history of Australia. This is the fascinating story of how fringe dwellers fought not just to survive but to prosper. Their legacy is the extraordinary flowering of indigenous success - cultural, sporting, intellectual and social - that we see today.

Yet this flourishing coexists with the boys of Don Dale and the many others like them who live in the shadows of the nation. Grant examines how such Australians have been denied the possibilities of life and argues eloquently that history is not destiny, that culture is not static. In doing so he makes the case for a more capacious Australian dream.

'The idea that I am Australian hits me with a thud. It is a blinding self-realisation that collides with the comfortable notion of who I am. To be honest, for an indigenous person it can feel like a betrayal somehow - at the very least a capitulation. We are so used to telling ourselves that Australia is a white country: am I now white? The reality is more ambiguous.... To borrow from Franz Kafka, identity is a cage in search of a bird.' (Stan Grant, The Australian Dream)

Stan Grant is Indigenous Affairs editor for the ABC and chair of Indigenous Affairs at Charles Sturt University. He won the 2015 Walkley Award for coverage of indigenous affairs and is the author of The Tears of Strangers and Talking to My Country.

©2016 Stan Grant (P)2016 Audible, Ltd
Australia, New Zealand & Oceania Indigenous Studies Oceania Racism & Discrimination Dream

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Important

More people need to hear this story and others like it. Poignant, powerful and moving albeit a little lengthy for most attention spans. Still, it was worth the trouble. Stan Grant deserves the accolades. Bravo

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Stan for President of Australia

I'm not aboriginal. I'm not even Australian, yet this book had depth to it that I could feel all the way back to my Irish parents and theirs and beyond. If this could only be read by every person here in this great land, we might finally make progress to be one people.

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Stan Grant rocks!

I really enjoyed this. Moving, heartbreaking and thought provoking. Stan Grant is very modest considering his great influence.

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An Informative Book.

I enjoyed this book. It draws one's attention to the plight of the Aboriginal people from the time the British invaded their land to their struggles & successes through the years. Stan Grant is certainly a success story!

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Everyone should listen to this

Thanks Stan.
All Australians could benefit from listening to this, I have. A very balanced narrative, I’m my opinion.

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A well balanced, optimistic & realistic tale

I really enjoyed this essay

A window on our past, an observation on our current state and an optimistic view of the future

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In the spirit of reconciliation, Audible acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of country throughout Australia and their connections to land, sea and community. We pay our respect to their elders past and present and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples today.