As a normative feature of Australian public discourse, nationalist sentiment (that is, a commitment to settler-colonial futurity that ranges from weakly held affective ties through to virulent racism) remains a blockage impairing widespread engagement with truth-telling endeavours. Behind this lurks the widespread suspicion that countenancing a history in which the seizure of Indigenous lands features heavily would bring into question the foundational assumptions of Australian nationalism. As such, the indifference and even hostility shown by many Australians towards historical truth-telling might be viewed as a form of strategic deafness. This strategic deafness, I argue, is a product of a commitment to the nation that sees no alternative to a pre-emptive rejection of truth-telling’s recasting of the past and of the claim that new truths might somehow be reconciled with a viable nationalism. Via a brief discussion of how nationalism and historical truth-telling have operated in European historiography and public life, and what this might tell us about the prospects for truth-telling in Australia, this chapter seeks to offer an alternative to strategic deafness, one that rests on historical agonism and an embrace of the fecundity of historical complexity and contradictions.