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"RECONCILIATION: A CULTURE OF PEACE-MAKING" SPEECH BY EVELYN SCOTT CHAIRPERSON AT CULTURES OF PEACE HOSTED BY THE AUSTRALIAN ACADEMY OF THE HUMANITIES 31ST ANNUAL SYMPOSIUM CURTIN UNIVERSITY, PERTH
3 NOVEMBER 2000 Thank you. Fellow presenter, Will Christensen, ladies and gentlemen. I would like to acknowledge that we are holding this meeting on the land of the Nyoongar people, the traditional owners of this land. I recognise the living culture of the Nyoongar people and the unique contribution they make to the life of the Perth region. I am honoured to make a contribution to this symposium, and I am pleased that the Academy has recognised reconciliation as a process of peace. Reconciliation is indeed working towards a culture of peace in Australia. And when we think about it in that light, it is fair to say that it is all Australians who must be the peace-makers. Today I want to talk about why we need to make peace between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and the wider Australian community. In so doing, I will explain how reconciliation will take us forward as a nation into that peace and how the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation sees its reconciliation documents serving that end. Reconciliation is the work of the whole nation. From our homes and schools to our universities and professional organisations, our workplaces to our governments, there is not one area that cannot benefit from understanding Australia’s true history and recognising the unique rights of the first Australians. When federal Parliament established the Council in 1991, it recognised the wrongs of our shared history over the last 200 years. The Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation Act 1991 states: "Australia was occupied by Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders who had settled for thousands of years, before British settlement at Sydney Cove on 26 January 1788; and many Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders suffered dispossession and dispersal from their traditional lands by the British Crown; and to date, there has been no formal process of reconciliation between Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders and other Australians." The Act was an acknowledgment that this country was not at peace. Reconciliation was the process towards making peace. Council was asked to foster wider community appreciation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures ad achievements and of their unique position as indigenous Australians. Council was also to gain an ongoing national commitment to address Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander disadvantage. One of the main functions of the Council was to consult the Indigenous and wider community on whether reconciliation would be advanced by a formal document or documents of reconciliation. After much consultation, we concluded that reconciliation documents could truly uplift and unify the nation, and at the same time lay down an agenda for what still needs to be done to complete the journey to lasting reconciliation. We spent several years talking to the Australian people about what might be in such a document, and many months of careful thought went into its form and its wording. We worked very hard to engage Australians from all walks of life in our consultation process about the documents. We wanted people to feel ownership of the documents because we know that once the Council’s life ends on December 31 this year, it will be the people who make reconciliation a reality. The greatest achievement of my Council has been to draft and release these documents at our landmark event, Corroboree 2000 in Sydney in May. The Council’s first document, Corroboree 2000: Towards Reconciliation, includes the "Australian Declaration Towards Reconciliation". This document is the symbolic part of reconciliation. It is an overarching statement of what we believe reconciliation to be. As with the creation of any significant public document, the Declaration took months of re-drafts before the Council could agree to it. Indeed, it took painstaking negotiation at hundreds of public meetings organised by the Council and communities to commit to these words, some 11 sentences in all. People had vastly different views on the necessity of an apology and issues of self-determination. It is meant to be a document of peace, and I suppose all such documents require thoughtful and broad consultation. For those of you who may not be familiar with our Declaration – let me read you a few parts from it that will, I think, demonstrate its nature. "Our nation must have the courage to own the truth, to heal the wounds of its past so that we can move on together at peace with ourselves. "As we walk the journey of healing, one part of the nation apologises and expresses its sorrow and sincere regret for the injustices of the past, so the other part accepts the apologies and forgives. We desire a future where all Australian enjoy their rights, accept their responsibilities, and have the opportunity to achieve their full potential." I hope you will agree that these words are indeed about creating a culture of peace in our nation where this kind of sentiment has not been so formally and broadly initiated before. The second part to our documents is a Roadmap for Reconciliation that sets out four strategies to advance reconciliation. These are the strategy to sustain reconciliation, to promote Indigenous rights, to address Indigenous disadvantage and to encourage Indigenous economic independence. The Roadmap was written because we at the Council acknowledge that there have been many words and papers that failed to make a difference to the lives of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. These strategies set out the most important actions for individuals, communities, organisations and governments. Together, these two documents are a call to action. Key elements of the documents include:
The Roadmap demonstrates clearly that reconciliation depends on us, as a nation, addressing the important outstanding issues. Such issues include the need for substantial improvements in our people’s health, education and employment statistics. We need a reduction in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander deaths in custody, recognition of the place of customary law, the recognition of Indigenous rights, and the offer of a national apology to the Stolen Generations. To give you a clearer picture of what our Strategies contain I will briefly outline some details of the National Strategy to Address Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Disadvantage. Just last month we released a full version this strategy. The Council has identified five critical areas where actions are necessary to address Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander disadvantage. These are :
Let me share with you one of the examples in this strategy. A large Indigenous community lives in the region surrounding a small country town. The town has a community centre which provides a number of services and facilities to the community, including vocational courses, computer facilities and business support, a meeting venue, and child care. However, the local Indigenous community feels that their needs are not met by the community centre. Hence, they do not use the services provided by the centre. The first step in resolving this problem is undertaking an audit to identify what can be done to meet the needs of the local Indigenous community. This would involve the funding agencies and managers of the community centre coming together with the local Indigenous community and discussing the options and constraints, such as building a new centre for the Indigenous community, and making better use of the existing centre and available resources. Better use of the existing centre could involve:
The National Strategy to Overcome Disadvantage, and all the other strategies, will be successful only if the agreed outcome targets are achieved. Where the performance has been less than desired, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, service providers and governments should sit down together, review what they have done and ask why they have not achieved the desired result. These discussions should lead to an agreement on new or improved actions to address disadvantage. I hope I have explained to you the path that the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation has laid down for the future of reconciliation between the Indigenous and wider community. There is no fast-track way to achieving reconciliation. It is a process that requires us to work together and to take responsibility in our own private and professional lives to address the current status of Indigenous health, employment and education. It is about engendering a culture of reconciliation, and as with all peace processes, reconciliation must live in the hearts and minds of all people. No peak body or government can achieve it alone. There remain serious disadvantages yet to be overcome. However, the nation has made progress in the last decade and I am confident that we can achieve reconciliation – a culture of peace – in Australia. Thank you.
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