In Quarterly Essay 64, Stan Grant takes a deep and passionate look at Indigenous futures, in particular the fraught question of remote communities. In a landmark essay, Stan Grant writes Indigenous people back into the economic and multicultural history of Australia. This is the fascinating story of how fringe dwellers fought not just to survive, but to prosper. Their legacy is the extraordinary flowering of Indigenous success - cultural, sporting, intellectual and social - that we see today. Yet this flourishing coexists with the boys of Don Dale and the many others like them who live in the shadows of the nation. Grant examines how such Australians have been denied the possibilities of life, and argues eloquently that history is not destiny; that culture is not static. In doing so, he makes the case for a more capacious Australian Dream. "The idea that I am Australian hits me with a thud. It is a blinding self-realisation that collides with the comfortable notion of who I am. To be honest, for an Indigenous person, it can feel like a betrayal somehow - at the very least, a capitulation. We are so used to telling ourselves that Australia is a white country: am I now white? The reality is more ambiguous ... To borrow from Franz Kafka, identity is a cage in search of a bird." —Stan Grant, The Australian Dream  This issue also contains correspondence discussing Quarterly Essay 63, Enemy Within, from Patrick Lawrence, Nicole Hemmer, Bruce Wolpe, Dennis Altman, David Goodman, Patrick McCaughey, Gary Werskey, and Don Watson.

Australia is experiencing a significant demographic shift – the proportion of the population that is aged 65 years and older is increasing substantially and will continue to do so. With this shift comes particular housing challenges for older people. The Australian Dream examines the impacts of housing tenure on older Australians who are solely or primarily dependent on the age pension for their income. Drawing on 125 in-depth interviews, it compares the life circumstances of older social housing tenants, private renters and homeowners – their capacity to pay for their accommodation, how this cost impacts on their ability to lead a decent life, maintain social ties and pursue leisure activities, and how their housing situation affects their health and wellbeing. The book considers some key questions: Are older homeowners who are solely dependent on the single age pension managing financially? Are they able to maintain their homes and engage in social activity? How are older private renters who have to pay market rents faring in comparison with older homeowners and social housing tenants? What are the implications of subsidised rents and legally guaranteed security of tenure for older social housing tenants? Based on a study conducted in Sydney and regional New South Wales, this pioneering research starkly and powerfully reveals the fundamental role that affordable, adequate and secure housing plays in creating a foundation for a decent life for older Australians.

The acclaimed national bestseller - moving, passionate, deeply felt and powerful. In July 2015, as the debate over Adam Goodes being booed at AFL games raged and got ever more heated and ugly, Stan Grant wrote a short but powerful piece for The Guardian that went viral, not only in Australia but right around the world, shared over 100,000 times on social media. His was a personal, passionate and powerful response to racism in Australia and the sorrow, shame, anger and hardship of being an indigenous man. ''We are the detritus of the brutality of the Australian frontier'', he wrote, ''We remained a reminder of what was lost, what was taken, what was destroyed to scaffold the building of this nation''s prosperity.'' Stan Grant was lucky enough to find an escape route, making his way through education to become one of our leading journalists. He also spent many years outside Australia, working in Asia, the Middle East, Europe and Africa, a time that liberated him and gave him a unique perspective on Australia. This is his very personal meditation on what it means to be Australian, what it means to be indigenous, and what racism really means in this country. Talking to My Country is that rare and special book that talks to every Australian about their country - what it is, and what it could be. It is not just about race, or about indigenous people but all of us, our shared identity. Direct, honest and forthright, Stan is talking to us all. He might not have all the answers but he wants us to keep on asking the question: how can we be better? Winner of the 2016 Walkley Book Award and the 2016 National Trust Heritage Award, and shortlisted for the 2016 NIB Waverley Library Award and the 2016 Queensland Literary Award. ''Grant will be an important voice in shaping this nation'' The Saturday paper ''It is a story so essential and salutary to this place that it should be given out free at the ballot box'' Sydney Morning Herald ''Grant is a natural storyteller - at his best when recounting his experiences and observations of Indigenous Australian life with devastating simplicity and acuity. This highly readable book ... has the potential to spark empathy and generate important discussion, and deserves to be read widely.'' Bookseller + Publisher ''...an urgent and flowing narrative in a book that should be on the required reading list in every school'' The Australian

People would have known about Australia before they saw it. Smoke billowing above the sea spoke of a land that lay beyond the horizon. A dense cloud of migrating birds may have pointed the way. But the first Australians were voyaging into the unknown. Soon after Billy Griffiths joins his first archaeological dig as camp manager and cook, he is hooked. Equipped with a historian’s inquiring mind, he embarks on a journey through time, seeking to understand the extraordinary deep history of the Australian continent. Deep Time Dreaming is the passionate product of that journey. It investigates a twin revolution: the reassertion of Aboriginal identity in the second half of the twentieth century, and the uncovering of the traces of ancient Australia. It explores what it means to live in a place of great antiquity, with its complex questions of ownership and belonging. It is about a slow shift in national consciousness: the deep time dreaming that has changed the way many of us relate to this continent and its enduring, dynamic human history. John Mulvaney Book Award: Winner Ernest Scott Prize: Winner NSW Premier's Literary Awards: Winner - Book of the Year NSW Premier's Literary Awards: Winner - Douglas Stewart Prize for Non-fiction Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards: Highly Commended Queensland Literary Awards: Shortlisted Prime Minister's Literary Awards: Shortlisted Educational Publishing Awards: Shortlisted Australian Book Industry Awards: Longlisted CHASS Book Prize: Longlisted ‘What a revelatory work! If you wish to hear the voice of our continent's history before the written word, Deep Time Dreaming is a must read. The freshest, most important book about our past in years.’ —Tim Flannery ‘Once every generation a book comes along that marks the emergence of a powerful new literary voice and shifts our understanding of the nation’s past. Billy Griffiths’ Deep Time Dreaming is one such book. Deeply researched, creatively conceived and beautifully written, it charts the expansion of archaeological knowledge in Australia for the first time. No other book has managed to convey the mystery and intricacy of Indigenous antiquity in quite the same way. Read it: it will change the way you see Australian history.’ —Mark McKenna, historian ‘Billy Griffiths’ Deep Time Dreaming: Uncovering Ancient Australia is a remarkable book, and one destined, I believe, to become a modern classic of Australian history writing. Written in vivid, evocative prose, this book will grip both the expert and the general reader alike.’ —Iain McCalman, author of The Reef: A Passionate History: The Great Barrier Reef from Captain Cook to Climate Change

In a landmark essay, Stan Grant writes Indigenous people back into the economic and multicultural history of Australia. This is the fascinating story of how fringe dwellers fought not just to survive, but to prosper. Their legacy is the extraordinary flowering of Indigenous success - cultural, sporting, intellectual and social - that we see today. Yet this flourishing co-exists with the boys of Don Dale, and the many others like them who live in the shadows of the nation. Grant examines how such Australians have been denied the possibilities of life, and argues eloquently that history is not destiny; that culture is not static. In doing so, he makes the case for a more capacious Australian Dream. 'The idea that I am Australian hits me with a thud. It is a blinding self-realisation that collides with the comfortable notion of who I am. To be honest, for an Indigenous person, it can feel like a betrayal somehow - at the very least, a capitulation. We are so used to telling ourselves that Australia is a white country: am I now white? The reality is more ambiguous ... To borrow from Franz Kafka, identity is a cage in search of a bird.' --Stan Grant, The Australian Dream

'As uncomfortable as it is, we need to reckon with our history. On January 26, no Australian can really look away.' Since publishing his critically acclaimed, Walkley Award-winning, bestselling memoir Talking to My Country in early 2016, Stan Grant has been crossing the country, talking to huge crowds everywhere about how racism is at the heart of our history and the Australian dream. But Stan knows this is not where the story ends. In this book, Australia Day, his long-awaited follow up to Talking to My Country, Stan talks about our country, about who we are as a nation, about the indigenous struggle for belonging and identity in Australia, and what it means to be Australian. A sad, wise, beautiful, reflective and troubled book, Australia Day asks the questions that have to be asked, that no else seems to be asking. Who are we? What is our country? How do we move forward from here? Praise for Talking to My Country: 'A story so essential and salutary to this place that it should be given out free at the ballot box' The Australian 'Deeply disturbing, profoundly moving' Hobart Mercury 'Grant will be an important voice in shaping this nation' The Saturday Paper Talking to My Country won the 2016 Walkley Book Award and the Special Award at the 2016 Heritage Awards, and was shortlisted in the 2016 Queensland Literary Awards, the Nib Waverley Library Awards and the 2017 ABIA Awards.