Eureka Street

Keywords: Commemoration

AUSTRALIA

Reshaping Remembrance
- Stephen Alomes
- 11 November 2024
2 Comments
On Remembrance Day, we’re called to confront war’s real toll — not just on soldiers but on civilians, families, and especially children. From WWII’s devastated cities to today’s ravaged Gaza, can we reframe our commemorations to reflect the universal, harrowing cost of war beyond national myths?
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AUSTRALIA

Colonisation studies expand horizons
- Bruce Pennay
- 25 September 2024
1 Comment
From 2027, NSW students will undertake a mandatory study of First Nations Peoples’ experiences of colonisation. This is welcome in the wake of the failed national referendum and the increasing insistence on reconciliation at the local level.
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AUSTRALIA

Normalising war is the road to hell
- Warwick McFadyen
- 25 April 2024
2 Comments
How about truth as an antidote to war? Who would have stomach for it, though we see war as part of existence? The trouble with its normalisation, such as in games, both in backyards and in cyberspace, is that becomes uncoupled from reality.
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AUSTRALIA

By the world forgot
- Gillian Bouras
- 10 April 2024
3 Comments
For the men in these conflicts, there was an expectation they would resume the lives they had left behind as if nothing had happened, as if they had been on an extended business trip. It calls to mind a phrase that has become common in recent years: unexamined trauma.
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AUSTRALIA

After the truths are told
- Dean Ashenden
- 03 May 2022
6 Comments
The danger is that unless commissions and inquiries are accompanied by other ways of telling other truths they will inadvertently help to shrink that national story into the story of victims who in fact have never been only victims, and of unmentioned perpetrators who in fact have never been only perpetrators. They risk preaching to a more-or-less converted majority and to an implacably unconverted minority.
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ARTS AND CULTURE

Stop bombarding us with military metaphors
- Andrew Hamilton
- 26 February 2020
22 Comments
One of the most popular, and largely counterproductive, metaphors in public conversation is the military one. It suggests that the project commended is a war in which there is an enemy, a campaign to be begun, forces to be mobilised, a public whose support is to be won, and weapons to be used. They commit us to do whatever it takes to win the war.
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ARTS AND CULTURE

Restoring Australia's cultural ambition
- Esther Anatolitis
- 20 August 2019
1 Comment
At stake here is who takes responsibility for sector development in the arts as both a cultural and an economic good. Because right now, there is no national organisation or government agency whose role it is to take a responsible, long-term, national view, making sure there are programs in place to address key priorities.
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INTERNATIONAL

The politics of police shootings
- Binoy Kampmark
- 02 May 2019
8 Comments
Found guilty for the slaying of Justine Damond Ruszczyk, Mohamed Noor became the first police officer to be convicted of murder in Minnesota in 'recent memory'. Minneapolis police spokesman John Elder insisted race had no part to play. A closer reading of the entire process presents a more complex, and troubling picture.
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INTERNATIONAL

China's cultural memory can't be contained
- Jeremy Clarke
- 18 April 2019
2 Comments
One hundred years on, the power of symbol lurks uncomfortably. To honour these students — these young protestors in Tiananmen — rallying for their nation in 1919 cannot but bring to mind other students marching through Beijing decades later. And yet, given the historical weight of 4 May, the government must commemorate it all the same.
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INTERNATIONAL

Anzac discomfort after Christchurch
- Daniel Kleinsman
- 18 April 2019
27 Comments
As I wait to be reunited with my fiancée from Afghanistan, my discomfort is heightened by New Zealand's involvement in her country, and by an awareness of her sense of persecution, as a Muslim, after the Christchurch massacres. I do not feel able to partake in any traditional ANZAC service, as if nothing has changed.
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ARTS AND CULTURE

In dialogue with China's avant-garde
- Jeremy Clarke
- 06 February 2019
2 Comments
The exhibition stands as a celebration of the work of Xiao Lu and her contemporaries, who continue to clothe their lived experiences in images, acts and utterances, and in so doing communicate with others about the state of their lives as women and artists, their society and their nation.
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AUSTRALIA

White defensiveness in Morrison's Cook gaffe
- Rachel Woodlock
- 24 January 2019
13 Comments
What do Indigenous and Muslim Australians have in common? They are the foil against which normative White Australian identity is contrasted. The latest group to join them are African migrants, subject of a new campaign of fear. Because the stories we tell ourselves can change, one day there might be one that honours all of us.
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Keywords: Commemoration