I ask every Australian to think about what the constitutional

When Adam Goodes declared, “I ask every Australian to think about what the constitutional exclusion says to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians, to see our vast and inspiring history in this land not mentioned in the official picture like that,” he spoke not only as a man of sport, but as a voice of conscience, a guardian of memory, and a messenger of truth. In his words lies the deep ache of a people unseen, and the noble yearning of a nation still learning to behold its whole reflection. His plea was not one of anger, but of awakening — a call for the heart of Australia to recognize its first peoples, whose stories, languages, and spirit are older than time itself.

The constitutional exclusion to which Goodes refers is not a small omission, but a wound in the soul of a nation. It is the silence of the founding document — the Constitution — which, for generations, failed to name or honor those who walked this continent long before the ink of colonial law ever touched parchment. In that silence lies a message, whether intended or not: that the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, the first custodians of the land, were somehow beyond the frame of the “official picture.” And so Goodes, with the courage of one who has carried both glory and burden, asks the nation to see what has too long been unseen — to understand that recognition is not charity, but justice.

To see is to awaken. For more than sixty thousand years, the First Nations peoples of Australia have lived upon this land — not as conquerors, but as caretakers, bound to earth and sky through story, song, and spirit. Their Dreaming tells of creation and connection, of rivers that are ancestors and stars that are kin. Yet when modern Australia was born, their names were not spoken in the nation’s founding text. Their histories were treated as myth, their wisdom as primitive, their existence as peripheral. The exclusion became not only legal, but spiritual — a blindness that could not be healed by time alone.

Goodes himself, once celebrated as a hero on the football field, came to bear witness to this deeper struggle — the struggle for dignity and belonging. His story reminds us that racism and erasure are not ghosts of the past; they live wherever we refuse to see each other fully. When he stood before the nation, urging reflection and reconciliation, he was not demanding vengeance, but truth — the courage to write all Australians, old and new, into the same story. His words were a mirror, turned toward the heart of a people who must decide whether to remain divided by denial, or united by honesty.

In history, we see this pattern repeated. The United States once wrote liberty into its founding documents while denying humanity to millions enslaved. South Africa spoke of civilization while enforcing apartheid. And yet, in every nation, healing began only when the truth was named — when the people looked unflinchingly upon their contradictions and chose to reconcile vision with reality. So too, Goodes calls upon Australia to write not merely new words into its Constitution, but new truth into its heart — to say, at last, that this land’s first peoples are not relics of the past, but living authors of its future.

The meaning of his quote is not confined to politics; it is a meditation on recognition itself. To exclude a people from the written story of a nation is to dim the light of that nation’s soul. To include them is to restore balance, to let truth breathe where silence has long prevailed. The “official picture” that Goodes speaks of — the flag, the anthem, the Constitution — must expand to hold all its colors, all its voices. Only then can the Australian story be whole, and the nation walk upright in the light of its own truth.

And so, O children of this sunburnt land, take this wisdom into your hearts: to acknowledge is to heal, and to include is to strengthen. Let not the fear of discomfort keep you from truth, for truth, though it may burn, also purifies. Speak with respect, listen with humility, and act with courage. Seek out the stories of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, and let their wisdom shape your understanding of this country’s spirit. For as Goodes teaches, a nation that cannot see all its people cannot fully see itself.

When the day comes — and it will — that the Constitution of Australia names its first peoples with honor, it will not be an act of pity, but of completion. It will be the fulfillment of the grand design of human conscience: that all who belong to the land are bound in mutual respect. Then, and only then, will the silence be broken, and the vast and inspiring history of this continent sing in harmony with the present — a song of truth, unity, and belonging echoing through time.