Reconciliation and Social Justice Library
Reconciliation and Social Justice Library
There is now in this country a large and highly complex system of departments, commissions, units, agencies, organisations, councils and individuals involved in Indigenous affairs. They have mainly been established to address the problems of Indigenous peoples. The result of their collective work must be clear evidence of improvements in peoples' life experience.
The collective and specific mandate of the bodies delegated with the responsibility to implement the recommendations of the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, including my Office, was to co-operate to rectify the situation which the Royal Commission exposed.
I do not presume to have the authority to set out the work which this `Indigenous affairs' network needs to do to achieve its broad objective. However, my Office forms one relatively small link in this network, and it is a link with finite resources and powers. I see it as crucial to the efficiency and effectiveness of my work that I have a sense of the roles and responsibilities of all participants in the field. Without a grasp of the big picture, it is impossible to delineate the specific role that my Office is best placed to play.
I would therefore like to propose a `working model' for Indigenous affairs in this country. It is certainly not intended to be comprehensive, definitive or `correct'. I offer it, rather, as a framework which I hope will be taken up, assessed and modified by other participants with the shared objective of clarifying our roles and facilitating our co-operation.
I take as my starting point the question: ` What is required to move from the current situation where Indigenous peoples do not enjoy our rights to one in which we do?'
For purposes of classification, three major interlocking categories can be described: what Indigenous peoples require for ourselves; what the general Australian population requires; and, what governments require. In the following, I outline some of the major needs within each, and suggest the types of bodies which might be most appropriately placed to address them.