Reconciliation and Social Justice Library
Reconciliation and Social Justice Library
Near where the Murray River joins the sea in South Australia, there is a small pocket of land where the bush has not been cleared to make way for treeless paddocks. At this time of year, after a dry spell, the land is an oasis of green on dusty plains. The Ngarrindjeri people have always treasured this place as home. They tell visitors that the place where the fresh water joins the salt is a place of special significance and fertility.
At Camp Coorong, the Ngarrindjeri people have established a Community Development Employment Program, where people work for the social security entitlements. With program assistance they have built a keeping place and meeting house where they conduct cultural education programs for students of all kinds, It was here, in March, that a most unusual meeting took place.
At the invitation of the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation, leaders from the mining industry and leaders of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community came together for the first time. Organised by the Mining Committee of the Council, convened by Mr Robert Champion de Crespigny of Normandy Poseidon, it brought leaders from both sides together to talk through their differences and to move towards finding common ground.
Senior executives from Australia's leading resource industry companies came, including BHP, Comalco, CRA, MIM, North Broken Hill Peko, and Pasminco. Sitting beside them at the meeting were the Chairmen of the Central, Northern, Kimberley and Cape York Land Councils, as well as senior community representatives and the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission. All busy people, they saw the issue as so important that they set aside two days in their diaries to travel to Camp Coorong and get to know each other as people. Issues that divided them publicly and politically were set to one side in order to listen to each other talk of their understandings, views, hopes and concerns. That they had never met before was remarkable. That they were meeting now was historic. After the meeting, a bushwalk and a community barbecue, they were committed to meeting again.
The participants agreed that they would meet again in the middle of this year to formally establish the Joint Council on Aboriginal Land and Mining (J-CALM), first envisaged by the Council's Mining Committee in its report, Exploring for Common Ground, presented to the Prime minister in July 1993 and welcomed by all political parties. They agreed that the Camp Coorong meeting was a successful start to a lengthy process of reaching common ground. The commitment to change and improvement in relations was clearly evident on both sides.
At the meeting, there were stark differences but strong parallels. On the mining side of the table, the companies there earned some $30 billion per annum of net annual revenue in 1991-1992, nearly half of Australia's manafactured exports. On the indigenous side, there was no comparable material wealth, but it was nopt a case of rich man meets pauper. This was a relationship of people meeting as equals, with the indigenous participants being wealthy in the strengths of their culture, customs and traditions.
Discussing the value of this cultural wealth was a major theme of the day and the company representatives came away impressed by the integrity and depth of the commitment of the indigenous peoples to Australia's living national cultural heritage. Also important was the sharing of understanding about the ways and workings of Australia's resource industry, of how decisions on exploration funding are taken on a global scale, and of how indigenous values and concerns over land access and use fit within that framework.
Other issues, such as possible codes of conduct or guidelines to shape community and company interaction and strategies for improving local and regional communicationm, were discussed. These issues, along with others such as media communication and a draft character, will be discussed again at the next meeting, with the hope of moving closer to some form of agreement.
The story of an historic meeting can be told in many ways. Mr Wenten Rubuntja, from the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation, told his story in a traditional 'dot painting'that he prepared while the meeting was underway. Alongside symbols representing everyone at the table, he painted representations of two sacred boards, depicting male and female traditional culture and knowledge. Concentric circles in each corner showed where people had come from. Another concentric circle in the centre showed that they were at a central meeting place. This painting was presented to the Ngarrindjeri people to commemorate the meeting.
Mr George Trevorrow, in accepting the painting on behalf of the Ngarrindjeri community, told his story of the meeting in his own cultural terms:
'This place is where the salt water meets the fresh; where the river meets the ocean; a place where different things come together. This is a place of fertility, of growth. The ocean will always be the ocean and the river will always be the river, but they must meet. Miners and Aboriginal people have been separate, but now they have come together. Out of that, only good will come.'
The participants in the meeting were all committed to meeting again to work towards reconciliation.