CANBERRA, Oct. 20 (Xinhua) -- An Australian academic has called for the federal government to build a permanent monument to indigenous Australians.
In a speech on Monday night, Mark Kenny, a journalist and senior fellow at the Australian Studies Institute at Australian National University (ANU), said that a monument on the banks of Lake Burley Griffin, the artificial lake in the center of Canberra, would recognize the contributions of indigenous peoples to modern Australia.
He said that the monument should acknowledge the disadvantage faced by indigenous Australians since the country was colonized.
"I propose, in full consultation and genuine partnership with (Aboriginal) Tent Embassy residents, community elders and First Nations peoples, that the institutional axle point of modern Australia's great story, be marked with a truly monumental structure dedicated to and run by Australia's First Peoples," Kenny said.
"I'd envisage a vast and largely lateral structure, rising from beneath the shoreline of Lake Burley Griffin," he said. "Aboriginal Australia has waited long enough for this material recognition."
According to Kenny, Australia's failure to recognize indigenous peoples in culture, law and history has left the country unable to come to terms with the genocide of the aboriginal people carried out by colonizers.
He suggested that the proposed monument sit between Parliament House and the Australian War Memorial, and called for the establishment of a museum of indigenous Australian history at the site.
"This museum would proclaim a new era of partnership via a grand symbolic gesture in the form of a permanent water's edge museum of Indigenous history, language, art, and political struggle," Kenny said. Enditem
