I recently had the privilege of delivering a conference keynote on the concept and practice of truth-listening — a political, cultural and deeply relational act that I believe is critical to any genuine pathway towards justice for First Nations people in Australia.
I should perhaps start with a warning… this blog is longer than most. I realise few people have the time (or patience) for long form writing these days. But to try and compress a one-hour keynote into a punchy five-minute read, would’ve gutted my words of the depth, emotion and weight that this topic demands.
Still, I have done my best to pare it down without losing the heart of what I shared. I am hoping I have retained the substance that led many in the room on the day, and in the days following, to reach out and let me know how much what I said had moved them in some way. The very raw, positive and emotional feedback that I received from several people gave me the sense that I had hit the mark — at least in part, at least for some.
I began by introducing myself…
“My name is Blake Alan Cansdale. I am a proud Anaiwan man. I was born in Kogarah on Dharawal Country, and raised predominantly on Darkinyung Country, on the Central Coast of NSW. Today, I am honoured to say that I serve as the National Director of ANTAR—formerly Australians for Native Title and Reconciliation…
“But more than titles—what I carry with me today is something of far greater substance. I carry the spirit of my ancestors and the love of my family, of my mother, my sister, my wife and my children. And relevantly, I carry a hole in my spirit, left by the stories of my culture that were not told to me when I was my children’s age, and I carry the weight of learning as an adolescent, about the truth of my people’s struggles against the colonial machine. Finally, I carry the weight of cultural responsibility to ensure, as best I can, that my children grow up strong in their identity, and that they are equipped to navigate a nation, that as yet, is not ready to face the truth of its shared history.”
I then go on to highlight that, for decades, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples have been speaking truth to power — in Royal Commissions, parliamentary inquiries, national advocacy campaigns and community yarns. From the Yirrkala Bark Petitions to the Uluru Statement from the Heart, the truth of our shared history has been spoken time and again. And yet, we are still met with the same refrain from many Australians… “Why didn’t we know?” The answer to this question is rather plain in my view:
…people did not know, simply because they were not listening.
Truth-listening is not about polite nodding or passive listening. It is political. It is disruptive. It is transformative.
Truth listening demands that we dwell in discomfort, that we resist the desire to look away, and that we allow the truth to move us. Furthermore, without truth-listening, truth-telling risks becoming little more than theatre. It is important to acknowledge the cathartic nature of true telling, yet absent a ready, willing and receptive audience, bold and courageous acts of truth telling risk becoming largely extractive, performative, or worse — harmful. Whilst many may find it healing to share their truth, for others, truth telling simply draws the pain of the past into the present.
My keynote explored truth-listening as a practice rooted in four essential conditions: refusal, attunement, yielding, and dwelling in discomfort; a framework informed by the work of Poppy de Souza and Tanja Dreher, in their seminal paper “”Dwelling in Discomfort: On the conditions of listening in settler colonial Australia” (2021).
The following is a summary of what I said in respect of each condition:
1. Refusal: The Power to define boundaries
Truth-listening begins with recognising and honouring First Nations peoples’ right to refuse. To refuse unjust terms, to reject dispossessory legal fiction, and to fight against colonial oppression and genocide, naming Australia for what it is, a nation shaped by violence.
Refusal is not withdrawal — refusal is power.
Several years ago, when a First Nations mother seized the microphone from a Minister at a public child protection forum to share her truth — a moment that helped spark the Grandmothers Against Removal movement in NSW— she was not being disrespectful or grandstanding. She was refusing to accept the silence, the invisibility, and the otherwise overwhelming torment of her own powerlessness. That is not disorder or chaos, that is self-determination in action.
In respect of where refusal and truth-listening meet, there is an acknowledgement that each of us must be both the storyteller and the listener throughout our lives, we must accept that we will not always have the microphone, and that when we don’t, it is not our place to decide what gets said, or when, or how.
2. Attunement: Listening from Where You Stand
Attunement is about relational adjustment. In many ways, it begins with recognising that none of us enters any space with a clean slate… not at birth, nor anytime thereafter. Into every moment, we bring our history, our identity, our privilege, our choices, our ancestry, our inherited wealth, our inherited trauma, our hardwired instincts and our environmentally moulded mannerisms.
At the intersection of attunement and truth-listening, we are asked to become deeply aware of these things — and to listen with them in mind, so that we might be moved by the truth, and ultimately recalibrate our relationships to self, to place and to others.
Years ago, I taught the Diploma of National Indigenous Legal Advocacy at Tranby National Indigenous Adult Education and Training in Glebe, NSW. When I arrived at Tranby, I remember thinking I was this flash young lawyer, well educated (at least in a Western sense), fresh from practice as a criminal solicitor with Legal Aid NSW, and ready to share my deadly with the world. Thankfully I was quickly humbled.
Faced with the stories of many incredible First Nations students from across the country, each at a different stage of their life, and many with direct, lived experience of the very systems we were due to study — I realised that the real richness in that classroom would come from the students, not from me.
I let go of my preconceived ideas of the unidirectional teacher-student relationship, along with my own inflated sense of self-importance. From this relational shift, not only did the students experience a deeper, more meaningful learning journey, I did too. I grew, personally and professionally, not only by creating space for the students to tell their stories, but also by ensuring that I was tuning into the depth and significance of their stories.
3. Yielding: Relinquishing Control of the Narrative
To be blunt, yielding means giving something up. It means stepping back from control. It means allowing First Nations peoples to define the truth, not just the content, but the framing.
This might be the hardest part of truth-listening for many well-meaning allies. Because yielding means power does not remain where it has always been… it is the act of unsettling the status quo. For non-Indigenous Australians and western institutions, it means giving up the urge to moderate, mediate, or manage the narrative.
The Uluru Statement from the Heart was a generous invitation — not to politicians, but to the Australian people. Yet, from the moment it was delivered, too many ignored it, sought to reframe it, water it down or decide what was ‘realistic’ or ‘acceptable’. This was a failure of Australians to yield. And the price of that failure was a lost opportunity for transformational change and a better future for our nation.
4. Dwelling in Discomfort: Staying With the Pain
Truth-listening is not a single act. It is a durational commitment to discomfort. It is the willingness to stay with the truth even after the event, the keynote, the training, the policy review or the parliamentary inquiry. It means choosing not to look away when things get hard. It means resisting the instinct to move too quickly to hope or harmony.
Because sometimes the most respectful thing we can do is to stay in the pain, to bear witness without needing to fix or sanitise the truth that is being offered.
Following the release of the Bringing Them Home report, rather than dwell in the discomfort of the devastating truths as exposed, many Australians turned away. Governments debated terminology. Talkback hosts questioned whether it “really happened.” It took the government 11 years to formally apologise to the Stolen Generations. And despite being released almost 30 years ago, only 5 of 83 Bringing them Home Report recommendations have been clearly implemented by governments to this day.
Truth-listening, then, is a kind of radical receptivity. It is not just about creating space. It is about holding that space with integrity, and letting what’s said in that space change you. It is, at its core, about the transformation of relationships — between First Nations peoples and non-Indigenous people, between individuals and institutions, between this country and its sense of identity. And that transformation — if it is to be genuine — begins not with action, but with listening to prepare oneself for action.
Truth-listening doesn’t happen in a vacuum.
Just as truth-telling requires courage and cultural labour, truth-listening requires preparation. It is not instinctive. Nor is it guaranteed by good intentions. It is something we must ready ourselves for.
Importantly, truth-telling absent truth-readiness, is a recipe for misunderstanding, misrepresentation, and even further harm. We saw this fact play out on 14 October 2023, and in the 18 months since.
Whilst it is appealing to proffer the ‘everyday Australian’s’ lack of awareness of First Nations people’s history, culture and aspirations, as the primary cause for the failure of the Referendum, I can’t say I agree. As I mentioned earlier, the truth has been on the record for decades. We are almost 250 years into the colonial project—how much longer must our people suffer the torment of our powerlessness in this, our own Country; before Australia is ready for truth!?
I cannot believe that Australia’s limited progress on the unfinished business of reconciliation, is for a lack of access to information about our shared history, nor is it for lack of time to grapple with this information. Instead, I believe that our problem lies largely in Australia’s resistance to truth telling generally, and the fact that as individuals and as a nation, we have been unwilling to do the work necessary to ready ourselves for the truth.
Truth-readiness then, is the groundwork that must be done before the real heavy lifting of reconciliation can begin.
The initial work of truth-readiness is what allows someone to receive truth-telling in all of its complexity, and to respond in ways that honour the storyteller, and the story. It looks something like the following:
If you haven’t done any of this work, the work of truth-readiness, you will be incapable of fully receiving truth when and how it is brought to you. If we do not start cultivating this truth readiness at scale— in homes, schools, workplaces, boardrooms, parliaments — then the business of reconciliation will continue to fall horribly short. And importantly — the many individuals whom are out their speaking their truths, often with great vulnerability and at great personal cost, risk doing so largely in vain. Those brave enough to speak,
alongside those still finding their voice, and those too traumatised or marginalised to speak at all, will continue to carry the immense human cost of a nation unwilling to listen.
The current moment in history calls for more than allyship as sentiment. It calls for accomplices in action. People willing to disrupt colonial systems from within, to call out racism in their workplaces, to share power and make space when and where it matters most. People willing to show up when there will be no applause. Because in a society like ours — built on the denial of First Nations sovereignty — allyship cannot be neutral, it cannot be passive, and it cannot be comfortable.
I closed out my keynote by returning to where I began, to the hole in my spirit, the one left by the stories I never heard when I was a child — various holes of which I still carry today. But I also carry something else now. I carry the weight of responsibility to ensure that my children grow up with a different story; a story that isn’t shaped by silence, a story that isn’t stolen before it’s spoken, a story grounded in culture, sovereignty, and truth — even when that truth is heavy.
First Nations peoples are not asking for allies who will be there when it’s convenient. We are asking for allies who will dwell in the discomfort, who will resist the pull to centre themselves, who will choose humility over ego, responsibility over guilt, truth over mis and disinformation. Because real change — lasting change — isn’t measured by how loudly we speak, but by how deeply we listen, and by how much we let the words that we hear move us to action.
The Uluru Statement from the Heart ends with an invitation. An invitation to walk with First Nations peoples in a movement for a better future. It doesn’t say “follow us”, it does not say “lead us”, it says “walk with us”. Not in front, not behind, but alongside.
And so I ask you, from wherever you are reading this right now: What would it take for you to walk with us? Not just today, not just for Reconciliation week or NAIDOC week, not just when it’s trending. But consistently, with honesty and the courage of one’s conviction.
What would it take for YOU to become truth-ready?
What would it take for YOU to step out of relative comfort and into solidarity?
What would it take for YOU to walk — not in ignorance, nor guilt, nor shame — but in truth?
Whilst there is much difficult work to be done, together, WE can and we will shape a better future for ourselves, and for the many that will follow us.
Of this I am certain — because our future demands nothing less.
