In late August, Tony Abbott launched a National Museum of Australia initiative to identify the defining moments in this country’s history.

Predictably perhaps, and controversially, the Anglophile Abbott nominated the arrival of the first fleet on 26 January, 1788, as the defining moment in this continent’s history.

Abbott chose Arthur Phillip’s landing in Botany Bay from 100 moments that had been collated by museum staff in consultation with a group of distinguished Australian historians. Instructively, given that the nominated events span 52,000-plus years, Abbott’s national moment of choice was, metaphorically speaking, just yesterday in terms of continental history.

Abbott’s timing coincided with his government’s faltering resolve to prosecute the case this parliamentary term to incorporate Indigenous Australians into the Constitution, and with a national curriculum review that would restore weight to the legacy of western civilization. His timing, I’d say, was as determined as his decision to nominate white settlement – invasion to this continent’s first people – as the rather than a defining moment. He said:

It was the moment this continent became part of the modern world. It determined our language, our law and our fundamental values. Yes, it did dispossess and for a long time marginalise Indigenous people. As Noel Pearson frequently reminds us, modern Australia has an important Indigenous and multicultural character. Still it’s British settlement that has most profoundly shaped the country that we are. It has provided the foundation for Australia to become one of the freest, fairest and most prosperous societies on the face of the earth. So Arthur Phillip is as significant to modern Australia as George Washington is to the modern United States . . . His instructions from the British government were to build amity with the local inhabitants and Phillip tried hard and faithfully to carry these out. Most notably, he declined to order punishment after himself being speared.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest ‘Of the 100 moments nominated by the institution, many carry specific Indigenous significance’. Photograph: Guardian

Phillip’s successors – not least Lachlan Macquarie – quickly ditched the principle of amity building. That’s why I’ll nominate 17 April 1817 as another defining moment in Australian history. For that is when imperial troops, acting directly on Macquarie’s orders, conducted a punitive raid on the Dharawal near Appin, south of Sydney. Some, including children, fell to their deaths from cliffs after the troops set upon them. Others were shot. Consistent with Macquarie’s orders, some of the slain were hung from trees “to Strike the Survivors with the greater terror” before several – including warrior chiefs Kanabygal and Durell – were beheaded.

This was an early act of Australian terrorism preceding countless dozens or hundreds more that left crimson stains upon the colonial and postcolonial landscape until well into the 20th century. Important academic research continues to shed new light on the numbers of Indigenous frontier conflict deaths; even the most progressive historians seems to have dramatically underestimated the number of deaths at 20,000 when the number could be, conservatively, at least three times that.

Where to begin with Abbott’s general assertion that the first people of the continent were “for a long time” dispossessed and marginalised, made in a speech where he also insisted white settlement had transformed this country into one of the freest, fairest and most prosperous societies on the face of the earth?

Well, I’m happy to concede that the freedom, fairness and prosperity of (mostly white) Australians continues while Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders remain dispossessed and marginalised. Who will deny that too many Indigenous Australians continue to dramatically overpopulate our prisons or exist, shamefully for a nation of such wealth, in third world conditions, with shocking life expectancy and infant mortality?

Which brings me back to the national museum’s Defining Moments in Australian History Project.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest 20,000 years ago: the boomerang was born. Photograph: Gandee Vasan/Getty Images

Of the 100 moments nominated by the institution, many carry specific Indigenous significance beginning with the archaeological evidence of first peoples’ continental presence 52,000 years ago; the earliest rock art and evidence of the boomerang (28,000 and 20,000 years ago respectively). The list goes on to include, among others, the “black line” in Tasmania (1830), the Myall Creek Massacre (1838), powers granted to the New South Wales Government to remove Indigenous children (1915) and Vincent Lingiari’s Wave Hill walk off (1966), the Aboriginal embassy (1972), Mabo (1992) and the Stolen Generations Apology (2008).

Of more general national significance are the listings of the Gallipoli landings (1915), the Bodyline Ashes tour (1932-33), the Japanese bombing of Darwin (1942), the election of the Menzies Government (1949) and the Sydney Opera House opening (1973), Cyclone Tracy (1974), the Port Arthur Massacre (1996), the Bali bombing (2002) and the apology to the Stolen Generation.

Perhaps the apology is that one in the 100 that symbolically glues the moments of special Indigenous national significance with the more general. Regardless, the list is considered and broad.

But not broad enough – as acknowledged by the museum which exposed the list to public comment and submission. New defining moments have been pouring in. Many – Nova Peris’s Olympic gold medal in 1996, Helen Minroy becoming the first Indigenous medical practitioner (improbably in just 1983), the black moratorium marches (1972) and Nicky Winmar lifting his St Kilda guernsey to declare “I’m black and I’m proud to be black” (1993) – have a distinctly Indigenous tone.

Other publicly volunteered moments include Dutch navigator Dirk Hartog landing on an island off Western Australia (1616), Australia 11’s America’s Cup win (1982), Medicare (1984), the Cronulla race riots (2005) and the swearing in of Australia’s first female prime minister by the first female governor general Quentin Bryce (2010).

The museum noted: “Many conversations about the project have revolved around support for (and against!) moments on the Museum’s initial list. The strongest support has been voiced for the first moment on the list – that which recognises archaeological evidence of the first people on the Australian continent 52,000 years ago.”

This speaks of an eagerness to define Australian identity broadly, generously and beyond the top-down historical orthodoxies that have long driven and confined such national dialogue.

The museum’s initiative here is a welcome conversation-starter in a country whose leaders persistently view nationhood through the narrow, largely masculine moments of European settlement and that other invasion – Gallipoli.

It’s precisely what our national institutions should be doing. More please.