"Proportionally, we are the most incarcerated people on the planet. We are not an innately criminal people.
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"Our children are aliened from their families at unprecedented rates. This cannot be because we have no love for them. And our youth languish in detention in obscene numbers. They should be our hope for the future.
"These dimensions of our crisis tell plainly the structural nature of our problem. This is the torment of our powerlessness."
In case you missed these harrowing words, they form part of the Uluru Statement from the Heart, which should be on every reading list in Australia. Instead, like so much of any campaign for equality, the Turnbull government has ignored and rejected it.
Which may be one of the reasons we're all here, arguing about Australia Day. Could we agree that a day when a genocide began is not a day to celebrate? Those who deny that genocide took place should be ignored. There is no longer any debate about the mass killings of Indigenous Australians.
I must confess, as a child of refugees, that I once celebrated Australia Day as a form of gratitude. I'm still grateful but January 26 is not the day to express that gratitude. As so many people have suggested, let's make that the day Australia becomes a republic – and also acknowledge our convict past. The establishment of a republic could motivate a few politicians to accelerate what now must be inevitable.
I also note that, as usual, the ACT has led the way by establishing Australia's first Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander-focused public holiday, to be held for the first time on May 28 this year. Reconciliation Day will be held each year on the first Monday on or after the 1967 referendum anniversary date of May 27, which marks the start of National Reconciliation Week. (There are no extra public holidays, it's replacing Family and Community Day.)
January 26 is a day we could still observe, but differently. We could leave behind the drunkenness to make amends; a cross-cultural day of observance; a hybrid of Good Friday (most of you will know about that) and Yom Kippur (I'm a lapsed Jew but acknowledging that day never disappears from your consciousness).
This is where we could make atonement: a Yom Kippur from white Australians to Indigenous Australians. Yom Kippur is the most important day of the Jewish calendar because it's the time to recognise our flaws and make up for them. It has the observant qualities of Good Friday but in some ways is less overtly religious, and more corporeal. Fasting. Reflecting.
And, my goodness, we have so much to reflect on when it comes to Indigenous Australians.
I asked the people at the National Aboriginal Community-Controlled Health Organisation about the state of Indigenous health in Australia. Diabetes occurs in that population at about three times the rate it does in non-Indigenous Australians. Heart disease is at a rate of 13 per cent, which is 1.2 times higher than in other Australians. Kidney disease is at nearly four times the rate it is in non-Indigenous Australians.
The national eye health survey reports that blindness rates halved, from six times more common for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people than the non-Indigenous population in 2008 to being three times more common in 2016. Three times too many.
A brief glance at infant mortality rates must shake even the most hardened heart. Indigenous babies die at twice the rate of non-Indigenous Australian babies, with the highest rate in the Northern Territory. Do you think that hurts Indigenous people less than it hurts anyone else?
And the babies who live? They lose their parents and grandparents much earlier, too. While the median age at death for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians rose to nearly 59 years in 2014 to 2016, up from 54.4 years in 2004 to 2006, the non-Indigenous median age at death was 82. That's 23 extra years to love, teach and guide.
Liz Allen, a postdoctoral demographer at the Australian National University and co-author of The Aboriginal Population of NSW in 2015: Policy options and challenges, is plain-spoken about the huge difference in outcomes between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians.
"It's important to remind ourselves that the significant gaps, with substantial impacts, are not the result of individual failures but rather a historical and ongoing legacy of discrimination," she says.
Allen is also sceptical about the close the gap targets, which she says are seen as part of "deficit discourse, used to suppress". "But the gaps aren't the failings of Indigenous Australians. The system is broken."
Last year's Close the Gap: progress and priorities report made it clear: there have many reports but not enough government action and no proper follow-through.
"These reports, and numerous other coroner and social justice reports, have made over 400 recommendations, most of which have either been partially implemented for short-term periods or ignored altogether," it said.
If most Indigenous Australians want us to change the date of Australia Day, why shouldn't we do it? As the Uluru statement concludes: "We invite you to walk with us in a movement of the Australian people for a better future."
Why wouldn't we walk with them instead of working against them?
Jenna Price is a Fairfax columnist and an academic at the University of Technology Sydney.
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Twitter: @jennaprice
