THE timing is incidental, but for many of the activists behind the weekend's Black Lives Matter protests in Australia, today's Queen's Birthday Honours List is an obvious emblem of the institutional oppression they believe is at the heart of a racist nation.
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That is not to say that everyone who marched in Newcastle or anywhere else on Saturday believes that the country itself is, by definition, racist.
And it would be surprising indeed if there were not a number of Australian Honours recipients among the tens of thousands of people who took to the streets - legally, but in obvious defiance of COVID-19 social distancing rules - to support the Indigenous cause.
But underlying the marches, and the distribution of Honours for good works, is a political and social history that most now accept has been disastrous for Australia's original inhabitants.
The question is, how does the broader nation go about challenging this unsatisfactory status quo, when accepting that Aboriginal people have been downtrodden and victimised does not necessarily mean agreeing to take personal responsibility for 200 years of mistreatment.
Or does it?
Lynda-June Coe, the lead organiser of Saturday's Newcastle rally, comes from a family of prominent Aboriginal activists.
Working towards a PhD on Indigenous sovereignty, Ms Coe says racism has been embedded into Australian institutions since colonial times.
The majority might say that progress has been made - and is being made - even if the results are meagre, and the improvements slow.
As many have said in recent days, a Royal Commission into Aboriginal deaths in custody was greeted as a watershed when it reported in 1991.
Yet 432 more such deaths have occurred since then: and, Ms Coe adds, with "no convictions" for any of them.
For all its fixity, the "establishment" is as much the people who embody it as the rules that govern it, and the awarding of an Order of Australia to Newcastle's Vera Deacon - a woman of proudly life-long radical politics - shows that values can and do change.
The Honours system has been criticised for years for its "white, male" bias, but it is changing, if slowly.
Like the feminists, the Black Lives Matter campaigners have equality as a fundamental truth.
Time will tell whether momentum will build to a true national conversation, or whether the old silence will replace the chanting.
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IN THE NEWS:
Ian Kirkwood
Reporting journalist at the Newcastle Herald since 1987. Editorial writer, general reporter, industrial relations, industry and coal.
Reporting journalist at the Newcastle Herald since 1987. Editorial writer, general reporter, industrial relations, industry and coal.
