A new documentary featuring Stan Grant aims to ‘challenge the false narrative of Captain Cook’ prior to his n landing in 1770.
Titled Before 1770 and produced by the Islamic Abu Hanifa Institute in Berala, Sydney’s west, the film seeks to celebrate the historical relationships between Muslims and Indigenous ns before colonisation.
In the documentary’s first trailer, released on Friday, Grant, a journalist and activist, described the traditional narrative of Cook’s story as a lie.
‘When a nation is founded on a lie, then how do we find a sense of belonging and connection?’ he narrates over the trailer.
Grant, a Wiradjuri-Kamilaroi-Dharrawal man, is one of the many people interviewed by director Sheik Wesam Charkawi for the documentary.
The film recounts the history of sea cucumber fishermen, known as Macassan trepangers, who travelled from the Indonesian island of Sulawesi to northern .
The film was ‘designed to encapsulate the history of Muslims in before the First Fleet’.
‘Certainly, we want to challenge the false narrative of Captain Cook,’ Mr Charkawi said.
‘ was not discovered. Aboriginal people are the world’s oldest continuing culture.’
Archaeologists agree that Indigenous ns have been on the continent but have debated whether they got here 50,000 or 65,000 years ago.
Captain James Cook made landfall in Botany Bay in 1770 before Captain Arthur Phillip delivered the First Fleet to its shores in 1788.
Captain Arthurs arrival marks the official state date of ‘s colonial period.
Outspoken Indigenous businessman Warren Mundine accepted the Macassans are related to Indigenous , but rejected Before 1770’s revisionist perspective.
‘Macassans were trading with Aboriginal people from northern and for me that’s something for us as modern ns that we should be celebrating,’ Mr Mundine said.
‘But to then jump to modern and say that the institutions and everything we have here is a lie I think is a big stretch.’
n National University professor Campbell Macknight was also interviewed for Before 1770 and he said the purpose of the film was to ‘reassure young Muslims’.
‘The political purpose of the film is to reassure young Muslims in western Sydney that they really have a place in modern ,’ said Professor Macknight told the Courier Mail.
‘And that there were Muslims in before Captain Cook.’
Oxford theologian Nigel Biggar also acknowledged ‘s history predating English settlement but reiterated that settlement had created the modern nation.
‘By all means tell the story of different groups but don’t pretend that it created because it didn’t,’ he said.
Appearing in the documentary will be the latest in a string of controversial moves from Grant which began when he stood down as host of Q&A in 2023.
Grant said he left because of racist abuse he suffered after discussing the ongoing impacts of colonialism ahead of the coronation of Charles III during an episode.
He has also published a book, The Queen is Dead, arguing for the end of the monarchy in that same year.
Daily Mail has approached Stan Grant for comment.