ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on modes of settler witnessing inaugurated by Bringing them Home; whereas the report, and the witnessing it elicited, should be read as a part of a longer process of testimonial proliferation. It examines the emergence of the figure of the settler witness in Australian public culture. While engaging with the sizeable literature about Bringing them Home, the chapter extends existing analyses by drawing on the concept of witnessing to explore the responses of settler Australians to Indigenous testimony. It argues that the end of the twentieth century was marked by the confluence of discourses on witnessing, nation, and settler belonging. As such, witnessing to Indigenous testimony was figured as a performance of civic virtue in which national shame paved the way for a reconciled future. While there were many vocal critics of Bringing them Home and the process of reconciliation, more broadly, witnessing was a prominent way of working through the affects of the past.
