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The Guardian - AU
The Guardian - AU
Comment
Paul Daley

One exclusive Australian institution is facing up to its deeply racist past while another backs away from it

Indigeneous rock art in the Northern Territory
‘A 'lot of deeply conservative cultural and educational institutions pay lip service to the rhetoric of decolonisation while clutching hard and fast to their collections.’ Photograph: Ian Paterson/Alamy

This is the tale of two colonial Australian institutions, both with deeply racist histories and instilled from inception with notions of white supremacy that led them to abuse and treat Aboriginal people as collection specimens.

The way each has responded to their individual pasts are, without doubt, examples to other colonial institutions the world over that have their roots in violence against – and dispossession of – First Nations peoples.

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