You can tell any story you want about Australia’s colonial past. That doesn’t make it history

A plaque unveiled in 2003 commemorates the 75th anniversary of the Coniston massacre at Brooks Soak in the Northern Territory. Photograph: Karen Michelmore/AAP

The 254 years between today and the first violent east coast continental contact between Aboriginal people and European invaders is barely a moment in the aeons of Indigenous occupation of this land.

But it has undeniably been a moment of apocalyptic upheaval for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who’ve survived an attempted colonial genocide by the unholy coalition of gun, government and God.