Among the highlights is Leonard M. Collard’s opening essay on Nyungar bird stories, a terrific piece, though it also demonstrates that oral history is sometimes stilted on the page. Blaze Kwaymullina presents colonisation as a ‘great con’ by reflecting on his great-grandmother’s life, especially the gulf between the real person and the woman depicted in a 300-page government file. Bronwyn Bancroft accompanies three of her beautifully intricate but unsettling paintings with a forceful essay in which the personal and the political merge: ‘I do not want to create quirky, kitsch moments about my Aboriginal life. I just want to create art and share it.’ Kim Scott’s short story ‘A Refreshing Sleep’ is a complex, intelligent riff on memories, life on the land, God and race relations, while Ambelin Kwaymullina’s ‘The Butterfly Birthday’ reflects on a marriage breakup from a teenager’s perspective in a funny and wistful – if also rather well-worn – way.

While the issue has no overt or defined themes, and while the tone shifts from gentle to angry, many of the pieces explore tangible and enduring connections between the past and the present, and, in so doing, challenge our national tendency to draw comfort from the unrigorous process of reconciliation. As Jake Milroy puts it, ‘For us, Australian history is a family history, it’s always emotional and it’s always personal, and it’s a story that sadly often speaks of people being moved away from family and country.’