ABSTRACT
This chapter analyzes the way that refusal disrupts the circuit between testimony, truth, and justice. It examines the ramifications of the refusal to witness through a focus on three key events in the public circulation of Indigenous Australian testimony. The three key points are: the controversy surrounding whether or not Indigenous leader Lowitja O'Donoghue was a "stolen" child and the legal failure of the so called stolen generations' "test case" Cubillo v Commonwealth. It also include: the long-running clash over the construction of the Hindmarsh Island Bridge that centered on a dispute over "secret" Indigenous knowledge. Popular commentary about the truthfulness of Indigenous testimony produced a climate of doubt in which the words of Aboriginal people were continually under suspicion. From the mid-1990s a broad discourse on reconciliation developed in Australian public culture that saw many non-Indigenous Australians act as witnesses to the testimony of the stolen generations.
