ACPACS is in the process of developing a project on 'Transcending Cycles of Violence,' which aims to:
- Promote research on the effects of both historical and current violence on Indigenous Australians, bringing together archival, oral history and academic work.
- Generate collaborative dialogue between Indigenous and non-Indigenous scholars and community leaders working to redress violence against Indigenous Australians.
- Facilitate the acknowledgement and integration of Indigenous histories into the public record: “The chance to tell one’s story and be heard without interruption or scepticism is crucial to so many people, and nowhere more vital than for survivors of trauma. So, too, is the commitment to produce a coherent, if complex, narrative about the entire nation’s trauma, and the multiple sources and expressions of its violence” (Martha Minow).
- Promote grieving for colonial violence and contemporary healing through public rituals, apologies, monuments and ceremonies.
- Explore truth and justice in relation to colonial violence, based on the twin pillars of:
- Finding the truth and
- Dealing with it.
- Employ moral imagination, This idea has been developed by John Paul Lederach in a book of the same name. He sees this idea as:
- The capacity to imagine ourselves in a web of relationships that includes our enemies.
- The ability to sustain a paradoxical curiosity that embraces complexity.
- The fundamental belief in and pursuit of the creative act.
- The acceptance of the inherent risk of stepping into the mystery of the unknown that lies beyond the far too familiar landscape of violence.