Paul Daley
Paul writes about Indigenous history, Australian culture and national identity for Guardian Australia. He has won a number of journalism prizes including two Walkley awards, the Paul Lyneham award for political journalism and two Kennedy awards. He is a novelist and playwright whose books have been shortlisted in major literary prizes and is the author of the political novel Challenge
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‘Didgeridoo is his voice’: how Djalu Gurruwiwi embodies the sound of a continentThe Indigenous elder revered by some as ‘Australia’s Dalai Lama’ is the spiritual keeper of the didgeridoo. A new exhibition honours his legacy and the immense significance of the Yolngu instrument that is helping to heal a divided country
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Closing the gap isn't just a dramatic policy failure, it's a moral failure tooEnough of Closing the Gap. It only shows how governments of all persuasion can get away with fatal incompetence when it comes to the First Australians
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How the Indigenous art recognised by Unesco draws us into Australia's real history
Postcolonial blog How the Indigenous art recognised by Unesco draws us into Australia's real history
The inclusion of the Warlpiri drawings in a Unesco collection links thousands of years of pre-colonial Australia to the modern desert Indigenous art movements
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Invasion Day will come to rival Anzac Day in years to comeTwo things are certain about Australia Day: the debate around it will continue, and it will eventually mark as a commemoration for military resistance
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Australia Day is 'dickhead day': year-long visceral backlash over chalkboard messageFor Matt Chun, the national ritual is fraudulent and indefensible and he wants visitors to his cafe in the coastal town of Bermagui to know it
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A love letter to Canberra, I could have had no better museAfter more than 20 years living, loving and writing in Canberra, I spent my final night as I did my first
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The Armenians and the Warlpiri: two genocides that sparked a pilgrimage to the outbackDescendants of two disparate massacres on opposite sides of the world find common ground deep in the heart of Warlpiri country
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Can Indigenous culture ever coexist with urban planning?A new book examines what actually happens when urban planning meets the claims and struggles of Indigenous people in Australian and Canadian cities
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Thank you, Liz Jackson, for your candour and courage in facing a bastard of a diseaseMy father had Parkinson’s disease but never said the words. Liz Jackson’s decision to talk about it is heartbreaking, but remarkable for its humanity
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'Lying in wait for your next chapter': the Sydney real estate nightmareThere’s a special place in real estate heaven (hell to the rest of us) reserved for people who write advertising copy to sell residential property
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Abbott wants to be Indigenous affairs minister? Well, he ain’t qualified for the jobAs the so-called, self-appointed ‘prime minister for Indigenous affairs’, Tony Abbott was hopeless and offensive. He shouldn’t be appointed minister
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Beersheba: we must keep an eye on how the story is told and interpretedAs the centenary of the last ‘great’ successful cavalry charge approaches, the battle is set to be wrongly evoked as testimony to the ‘special’ Israel/Australia relationship
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Why Australia Day and Anzac Day helped create a national 'cult of forgetfulness'It’s beyond time Australia cast off these sturdy cultural crutches that both, somehow, define national birth
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Kevin Rudd's Indigenous museum was a good idea. But let's not leave it to politiciansThere’s a pressing need to create a national keeping place for the cultural property of Indigenous people – a kind of reverse museum to repatriate rather than appropriate
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Cause to celebrate: Australia's Indigenous population is on the riseAfter a dramatic decline post-1788 invasion, Tuesday’s census will mark a significant resurgence in the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander population
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From the Darling Downs to Don Dale: a litany of monstrous acts against Indigenous childrenWhat we witnessed this week is part of a continuum that began with invasion and manifests today in profound disadvantage
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Catholic extremism fears in 1970s Australia made Croats 'the Muslims of their time'Amid the overheated political rhetoric about national security, Australia’s intelligence agencies would be wise to heed the lessons from the Croatian Six miscarriage of justice
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Australians didn’t sacrifice themselves at Fromelles. The British sacrificed themThe 100th anniversary of the darkest day in Australia’s military history gives us pause to ponder the utter pointlessness of what happened, as well as what, if anything, we’ve learned from it
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Indigenous songlines: a beautiful way to think about the confluence of story and timeThe theme of Naidoc week is songlines. For the uninitiated – and that is most non-Indigenous Australians – songlines challenge the way we think about history
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Only 58% of Indigenous Australians are registered to vote. We should be asking whyThe passage to Indigenous enfranchisement has been fraught and hard-won in incremental steps but the status quo in 2016 should give us all pause for thought
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Which is the world's most indigenous city?Most cities are indigenous, insofar as they are built on the lands of dispossessed first peoples. Paul Daley, Guardian Australia’s leading voice on Indigenous history, explores whether a city’s ‘indigeneity’ is just a matter of population – or if culture and equality count just as much
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Jacqui Lambie on home turf: 'I reckon I can do 20 more years'The blunt Tasmanian, running for the Senate again, tells of her ‘chaotic’ days in Clive Palmer’s party, her relief that the Pauline Hanson comparisons have stopped – and why she prefers Clinton to Trump for the White House
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All eyes on Eden-Monaro, the bellwether seat that always picks the winning sideHealth services, job losses and infrastructure are among hot-button issues in the diverse electorate that swings with changes in government
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There are lots of ways to say sorry, but Indigenous Australians need a treaty nowSorry Day is an important if not yet sufficient moment of symbolism. Australia has a lot more to do to. And that means a treaty first, recognition second
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The holy trinity of cultural crises continues under Malcolm TurnbullHow does Australia want to be seen and to see itself? The attacks on our national institutions, the arts and science limit our ability to answer that
Postcolonial blog Narcha’s remains have been repatriated. But colonialism’s malevolence lingers