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Talk is good, action is better.

If there was one theme to emerge from our public discussions this week about race and politics in Australia and the United States, it was the idea that conversation must be a prelude to activity, not an end unto itself.

What might that action look like?

Let me tell you about Mark Nannup.

After our event Sunday at the National Gallery of Victoria, he introduced himself to me and Nikole Hannah-Jones, the investigative reporter (and MacArthur Genius Grant winner) from The New York Times Magazine who flew from Brooklyn for our discussion.

Mark told us he was one of only a few Aboriginal Australians studying at the Victorian College of the Arts and as a result, he was often asked about the darker shades of Australian history: the massacres that defined early settlement, the segregation and discriminatory policies that followed, and the challenges tied to that history that still shape his people today.