Reconciliation Australia’s Community Truth-Telling Pathways program has launched an important resources hub to support communities to undertake truth-telling using culturally appropriate and supportive practices.  

The online hub offers a growing range of factsheets, guides and research reports designed to support the whole community in their truth-telling journey.  

This includes a guide to truth-telling – Truth-telling: Ways for Everyone to Participate – which describes how non-Indigenous people can respectfully participate in truth-telling, truth-listening and truth-acting. The guide also contains links to useful documents to help readers learn about the pre and post colonisation history of Australia. 

The resources hub also features a range of case studies which highlight strong examples of community truth-telling and its impacts. In Western Australia, Mosman Park Primary school went on a truth-telling journey that revealed the real story behind a colonial name and celebrated the Noongar people.  

The release of these resources coincided with the latest results from the Australian Reconciliation Barometer (ARB), a national research study undertaken by Reconciliation Australia every two years to measure attitudes towards reconciliation. The 2024 ARB Truth-telling and Historical Acceptance Snapshot revealed a large gap between support for truth-telling and participation in local truth-telling. 

The survey found that 81% of non-Indigenous Australians believe that truth-telling is important but only 9% had participated in local truth-telling in the past 12 months. Many non-Indigenous people have reported a lack of confidence to effectively participate or initiate truth-telling processes in their local community. 

Truth‑telling covers a diverse range of activities that engage with a fuller account of Australia’s history and its ongoing impact on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. While truth‑telling deals with colonial conflict, massacres and dispossession, it also promotes the strength, contributions and resilience of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and cultures. 

Through the Narragunnawali program, we understand truth-telling as a process of 'Learning, unlearning and relearning' - of challenging assumptions and recognising that what has been learnt or understood in the past about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, histories and cultures may be inaccurate or incomplete. 

Historically, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander perspectives have been left out of classrooms, the curriculum and textbooks. 

Teachers and educators have a unique opportunity to rectify this historic omission and educate themselves and their students about the First Nations peoples of Australia and their histories and cultures, which is a unique, exciting and sometimes overwhelming experience. 

These community truth-telling resources can help teachers develop a respectful pathway to achieve this and help shape the next generation of truth-tellers, truth-listeners and truth-actors. 

Truth-telling has always been at the heart of reconciliation and will continue to be a keystone of our work to create a more just and equitable Australia. With the aid of these resources your school or early learning service can play a more confident and effective role in this process.