Without imagination, the past is drained of color and the histories of Aboriginal children at the Retta Dixon home in Darwin.
Several points deserve attention.
First, I want to suggest that history has less to do with facts in themselves than with the things we say, think and ultimately do with those facts. Setting aside the matter of what one might do, we must ask questions, whatever happens. And questions should be asked with openness and a sense of wonder. Because history requires open-minded, sceptical inquiry that leads to a knowledge of things not recorded or distorted by time and prejudice. Second, it is not only the facts we think we know, but the ones that are not acknowledged, the facts, the secret facts of the heart that are so easily ignored, which are part of the study of history.