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RECONCILIATION AND PARTICIPATORY RESEARCH IN AUSTRALIA
BY
MARJORIE THORPE COUNCIL FOR ABORIGINAL RECONCILIATION
AT
THE 5th WORLD CONGRESS ON ACTION LEARNING, ACTION RESEARCH AND PARTICIPATORY-ACTION RESEARCH
UNIVERSITY OF BALLARAT 11 SEPTEMBER 2000
Ladies and Gentlemen, distinguished guests. Before I begin, I would like to acknowledge that we’re here on the country of the - people, the traditional owners of this land. I acknowledge the living culture of the - people, and the unique contribution they make to the life of the Ballarat region. Today I would like to share with you some stories about Australia’s reconciliation process. As I understand you are gathered here from across the world to discuss and share information about participatory research and education. As a member for the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation, I would like to tell you about the research that we conducted to create our national Document of Reconciliation. As you would recognise, reconciliation goes to very heart of our nation’s identity. Its success or failure determines whether we can be a mature nation, at peace with ourselves and reconciled to our true history. It is very much a process that requires people’s faith, energies and most of all, participation. All these aspects came into play with the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation’s creation of the Declaration and Roadmaps for Reconciliation, launched earlier this year at Corroboree 2000. But before I go into that, let me begin by explaining how we got there and the start of reconciliation in this country. I believe reconciliation may be seen as a progression from ignorance to knowledge and understanding. There are three main things to think about when you approach the issue of reconciliation from that perspective. The first is a set of historical facts that shows us that the need for reconciliation has arisen. The second is a more recent set of facts that shows us that the Australian people have recognised that the need exists. And the third is to look at how our society has responded to that need, what are we doing about it? You can trace the need for the process right back to 1788, when the British began the long process of colonising the continent we now call Australia. On the 26th of January 1788, the British claimed sovereignty over the whole of mainland Australia. By doing that, they installed, or purported to install, their own Common Law above the traditional laws and customs of all the Aboriginal peoples who occupied the land when they arrived. As the most important part of that claim, they denied the existence of any form of Aboriginal ownership of land, the so-called doctrine of Terra Nullius. That was the original and most basic cause of the need for reconciliation. The need grew stronger, although few Europeans knew it, as the dispossession and disruption of Indigenous communities spread over the continent in the following 150 years or more. The people were taken from their traditional lands, their children were taken from their mothers, and they were punished for using their own laws, cultures and languages. New diseases brought in with the settlers and convicts from another part of the world devastated their physical health. First pastoralists, and later miners, foresters and fishermen, went about their commercial business with no regard for Indigenous sacred places and ordinary land usage. This roughshod approach, by the way, meant that virtually everyone in those industries was incapable of learning valuable land management lessons from the traditional custodians of the land. In time, the need for reconciliation took on another dimension. As the European way of doing things began to dominate, it became possible to see just how badly off Indigenous people were, as measured by the Europeans’ own yardsticks. The effects of settlement on Indigenous health were, of course, apparent from early times. But we’ve known for decades now that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are easily the most disadvantaged group in our society in terms of housing, education and employment as well. And along with all that, we have the indefensible situation where Indigenous people – kids in particular – make contact with the criminal justice system at a level that’s quite simply inexcusable. These injustices, these compounding inequities, made up a real need for something to be done to repair relations between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and the wider society. There were some milestones on Australia’s realisation for the need for reconciliation, such as the 1967 referendum. In that referendum, more than 90 per cent of Australian voters agreed that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people should finally be counted as part of the population. The federal Racial Discrimination Act of 1975 offered a range of protection to people of all races within Australia, including Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. Australians were beginning to see the enormous disadvantage suffered by Indigenous peoples, and eventually, in 1991, federal Parliament unanimously voted to create the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation. The Council was set up as a statutory body, with 25 members from the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander and wider communities. It was set up after a Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody recommended, among many other things, that Australia needed a formal reconciliation process. The preamble to the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation Act 1991 recognised that Australia was occupied by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples for thousands of years before British settlement at Sydney Cove. It recognised that many Indigenous people suffered dispossession and dispersal from their traditional lands by the British Crown and that there had been no formal reconciliation process between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and other Australians. Set up for a period of 10 years, the Council was asked to consult Australians on whether they thought a document or documents of reconciliation would advance the process and if so, to recommend the form and content of these documents to Parliament. The idea was to try and achieve reconciliation by the centenary of Federation. The Council has never believed this to be possible, as reconciliation does not work to a strict timetable – it works slowly in the hearts and minds of people. From its inception, the Council recognised that reconciliation was the work of the whole nation. It could not be imposed, but had to be a people’s movement. The Council began an enormous educational and consultative campaign. It set itself three strategic goals. The first goal was for Documents of Reconciliation. Council wanted to achieve recognition and respect for the unique position of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the Indigenous peoples of Australia through a national document of reconciliation. The second goal was Partnerships in reconciliation. Council aimed to gain commitments from government, business, peak organisations and community groups to form partnerships to achieve social and economic equality for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. Finally, the Council wanted to encourage and support a People’s movement for reconciliation that would achieve justice and equity for all Australians, embrace the unique place of Indigenous peoples in the life of the nation and to ensure that the work of reconciliation continues beyond the life of the Council. Our history of participatory research began with the establishment of the Council. Council members consulted thousands of Australians at public meetings across the country about whether a document of reconciliation would benefit the reconciliation process. The majority of Australians believed it would, so in June last year, the Council released its Draft Document for Reconciliation for public comment. We then embarked on the most ambitious round of public consultation ever seen in Australia. Between June and December 1999, the Council held 276 public meetings, received 2 769 personal response forms and 200 public submissions about the Draft Document. There were about 70 meetings organised by the Council, and about 150 or more organised by local community groups, businesses and other sectors. Many indigenous communities, local reconciliation groups and local government authorities provided valuable assistance in organising meetings, though State Reconciliation Committees and State-based reconciliation coordinators did the bulk of the work. Council provided a comprehensive meeting kit to help people arrange and conduct meetings themselves, and this helped give the community a chance to take ownership of the consultation process. The meetings received significant coverage in regional media: The local meeting about the Draft Document for Reconciliation became a story about the local community’s thoughts on race relations and ways forward for their part of Australia. The consultation process was interesting and challenging from our perspective. Thousands of people, usually committed one way or another about the reconciliation process, came together to discuss what they wanted from their national document of reconciliation. As with any consultation process, expectations were raised about the final document. Would the Council really listen to the people? How could it satisfy all the differing and sometimes opposing preferences? The Council received hundreds of letters calling for the document to be stronger, or to be watered down. There was much speculation in the media about what line the Council would take on the matter of an apology to the Stolen Generations. In the Draft Document, Council had included a fairly strong apology, carefully worded to try and embrace the spectrum of opinions on the matter. The Draft Document’s apology read: "And so we take this step: as one part of the nation expresses its sorrow and profoundly regrets the injustices of the past, so the other part accepts the apology and forgives." The final version read: "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." This was just one aspect of the documents that people from the Indigenous and wider communities were very passionate about. To help us finalise our reconciliation documents, the Council commissioned qualitative and quantitative social research on the matter of a document of reconciliation and broader issues relating to it. Once again, we surveyed the Indigenous and wider communities before deciding on the final documents. As anyone who has written anything by committee would know, the consultation process is arduous and can complicate rather than assist the drafting process. However, without that broad consultation we would have had a meaningless bunch of words that had no resonance in the hearts and minds of Australian people. We certainly would have no chance of implementing the recommendations in the document. When we finally launched the documents (The Australian Declaration Towards Reconciliation and the Roadmap for Reconciliation) on May 27 this year, it was to the greatest assembly of Australia’s Indigenous and wider community leaders. The next day, more than 200,000 Australians walked across the Sydney Harbour Bridge in support of reconciliation. That weekend, Corroboree 2000, was the greatest indication we have had to date that Australians have embraced reconciliation. I hope I have given you some insight into the importance of participatory research in terms of the Council’s task of writing documents of reconciliation. With the Council ceasing to exist as of December 31 this year, reconciliation will truly be the work of the people. We will leave behind an independent Foundation Reconciliation Australia to carry on the "unfinished business" of reconciliation, but no peak body or government can achieve reconciliation alone. I believe the Council’s greatest achievement has been to foster an active and committed people’s movement for reconciliation. It is those people who will reach our goal of: A united Australia which respects this land of ours; values the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander heritage; and provides justice and equity for all. Thank you.
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