Megan Davis avoids the obvious choice, as a child of the 1980s, to find meaning in John Farnham’s hit “You’re the Voice,” instead opting for “Age of Reason” – as someone with her impressive scholastic and legal background would, of course. But there is another Farnham song that could also describe the position we’re in when it comes to the Voice: “Two Strong Hearts” – “reaching out forever like a river to the sea.” The Uluṟu Statement from the Heart is another iteration of the offerings First Nations have made to the colonial state over the last two centuries – reaching out. Without the selfless advocacy of so many, Uluṟu would not have gained the traction it has. The country needed to change before it could be embraced.

The road to a referendum on a Voice has been long and arduous. In Voice of Reason, Davis flags the stations along that road. Initiatives and attitudes, some well-intentioned, some designed to destroy us. Despite the motives, good or bad, both have invariably failed to change the way of things for First Nations people under the shackles of the colonial experiment.

Colonialism engulfed us all. The survivors and fighters – from first contact to the earliest days of Federation and beyond – soon understood that the best way to resist and then change the new order was from within, no matter how painstaking or traumatic that was. Seeking an active role in the white democratic life of a country founded on the bodies of its original inhabitants was, and is, no easy task. To see it, as some critics do, as conformity is not only a gross insult to so many of our forebears, but also displays a rudimentary understanding of history and empathy. It also isn’t a cessation of sovereignty; that was never ceded. Our land was stolen and our free movement across what was ours was restricted to the point of forbiddance.

It stands to reason, then, that to loosen its grip, to change the way modern colonialism influences the lives of First Nations communities, it will be necessary to change the founding document of this country and tend to the machinations of its parliament on issues pertinent to us in real time. 

How much time have we lost along the way? Davis reminds us that for much of the 1990s and the early twentieth century the notion of reconciliation was essentially privatised. The Howard government washed its hands of reconciliation in its truest sense, finding greater comfort in stoking the tedious history wars and promulgating a Python-esque view of the benefits of colonialism for First Nations people.

It fed into that government’s emphasis on “practical reconciliation,” a political inertia after Mabo and Wik which gave birth to the Reconciliation Action Plan – a dubious velvet-covered instrument that only reckons with activities designed to highlight progress through the number of boxes ticked. As Davis writes, “[the RAP] focuses on private action or corporate civic action, and not on truth and justice.” It’s perhaps why corporate Australia, including the not-for-profit sector, so fervently adopted RAPs – as an easy way to cleanse collective guilt by doing the bare minimum, without addressing truth and justice, without doing the heavy lifting of reconciliation. It reminds us that true reconciliation is looking forward and looking back, realising the tense of all things coexisting and shaping all of us in any given moment. The long view through mature eyes, just as our old people tried to instil in us.

The ultimate disconnect is not the rationale for a Voice, especially if one considers all that has come before. No, the real stumbling block for people considering whether to support it or not is whether they can muster enough faith in the political system and its operatives at a time when faith in public institutions and those who run them has never been more tenuous. Anyone who is even a part-time student of the blak struggle in all its guises knows that the advocates, the leaders, the voices from communities around Australia will throw themselves earnestly and honestly into the task of speaking truth to power.

What is far less certain is the will of political leaders of all persuasions to hear the truth and act upon it. All it takes is one John Howard or one of his political spawn to arrest the legitimacy of truth-telling. It’s why enshrinement of the Voice in the constitution and not merely through legislation is important.

In her concluding paragraph, Davis challenges us: “We Aboriginal people must suspend our belief that the system cannot change. We must suspend our belief that the nation cannot change.” I think it requires more than that – it’s going to take a leap of faith. Even once First Nations people avail themselves of all the arguments around the Voice, as many have, that final act of faith is hard to approach, let alone make. It’s why so many are still undecided in my community: their reasons are valid, their hesitancy understandable. I pondered this final step for a long time myself before taking it.

As I write this, the Melbourne Remand Centre, with a capacity of close to 600, currently houses 143 Aboriginal male prisoners. Almost every Victorian Aboriginal person with ongoing connections to this part of the colony would know, or know of, First Nations people in prison. You can’t help but understand why there is a resistance among many of us to dealing with the state, let alone entering into dialogue with it. Yet this is again what is on offer; one side has shown heart, demonstrated vulnerability through strength. Will the broader community reveal its own heart? Because that’s what it’s going to take if we’re to break the status quo.

Daniel James is a Yorta Yorta man based in Melbourne. He won the 2018 Horne Prize for his essay Ten More Days. He also hosts The Mission on 3RRR FM. His debut novel will be published by Affirm Press.