Reconciliation Place

Reconciliation Place is an urban landscape design in the Parliamentary Triangle Canberra, Australia, established in 2001 as a monument to reconciliation between Australia’s Indigenous people and settler population.

Reconciliation Place was designed by architect Simon Kringas. Sharon Payne was Indigenous Cultural Advisor. The design is dominated by a convex mound in the landscape centred on Walter Burley Griffin's land and water axes. Reconciliation Place's mound now blocks the view down the land axis.quote|Construction of Commonwealth Place’s ramp to the original design would have enabled one to see down its length to the lake from Old Parliament House, visually reassembling and linking the Land and Water axes. Instead, this view is now blocked by Reconciliation Place’s turf dome. A fragment of this water view, however, is recaptured (if not appropriated) from atop the midden. This vantage point is a nexus from which both axes can be simultaneously – and almost ethereally – experienced. Most disappointingly, however, the view up the Commonwealth Place ramp from the lake’s edge is foreshortened and terminated by the midden, its arcing profile outlined by the iconic flagpole of Aldo Giurgola’s magisterial Parliament House.|Christopher Vernon [cite web | title = Christopher Vernon: Axial Occupation
publisher = Architecture Australia
url = http://www.architectureaustralia.com/aa/aaissue.php?issueid=200209&article=16&typeon=2
accessdate = 2007-06-27]

Linking the Australian High Court and the National Library of Australia is a public promenade with artworks called "Slivers" displaying images and text on various themes of reconciliation including:

*A welcome to Ngunnawal country - an acknowledgment of the traditional owners of the land on which Reconciliation Place is being built
*The 1967 referendum that amended the Australian constitution to allow the Commonwealth Government to legislate on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander issues
*The recognition of native title rights which found that native title to land was part of Australia's common law
*The contribution Indigenous people have made, and continue to make, to Australia in sport and in the defence of our nation
*Indigenous leadership, depicting two great leaders — Neville Bonner and Vincent Lingiari and
*The past practice of separating Indigenous children from their families. Reconciliation Place is intended evolve over time with the addition of new artworks. [cite web | title = Australian reconciliation
publisher = Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (Australia)
url = http://www.dfat.gov.au/facts/reconciliation.html
accessdate = 2006-11-04]

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