Reconciliation and Social Justice Library
Reconciliation and Social Justice Library
If the Commonwealth is to achieve its objective of social justice for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, it must acknowledge that Indigenous social justice does not end at the seashore around Australia. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples belong to the international community of Indigenous peoples. This means that we are entitled to enjoy the rights of Indigenous peoples now being articulated in international forums. 1
The benchmarks set by the international community in the form of international human rights instruments, together with policy reforms in countries which provide better recognition for Indigenous rights form the world's formal and informal standards for policy in relation to Indigenous peoples. Observing these benchmarks and practices is not simply a matter of ensuring that we fufil our international obligations and avoid international criticism, it is also an effective means of improving our own policy approaches and making Australian policy `best practice'.
International Indigenous work, in the form of standard-setting and networking has been going on for several years. Yet until recently Australia has not been as active in this scene as other `first world' countries. Undoubtedly, it is Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples ourselves who have been the main losers from this relative isolation, but governments too have lost the opportunity to gain valuable insights and examine other policy approaches. In saying this I acknowledge that Indigenous Australians have ourselves not always been sufficiently active in changing the situation. Indigenous individuals, communities, and organisations must also take the initiative to bring international experience and international standards home.
Just one pertinent example concerns the protection of intellectual and cultural property rights. As Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples struggle to find appropriate mechanisms to protect our knowledge about native plants in the face of pharmaceutical developments and the patenting of products, our Indigenous brothers and sisters confront the very same issue in South America, Africa Asia and elsewhere. The United Nations Working group on Indigenous Populations has commissioned a "Study on the Protection of the Intellectual and Cultural Property of Indigenous Peoples" which provides several examples of ways which Indigenous peoples have found to protect such rights, and to negotiate with non-Indigenous governments and companies to retain some control over the development of products based on their traditional knowledge, and share in profits derived from such development.
Indigenous peoples throughout the world have contemporary grievances and all have suffered dispossession of territory, denigration of culture, marginalisation, assimilation, and social ills. In many countries today the lives of Indigenous people are at risk from brutal governments and brutal colonisers. If we were to dwell only on the many problems remaining, we would be immobilised by despair. What we must do instead is build on positive measures which have begun to emerge in some countries. Nobody would suggest that any country has solved Indigenous problems, but at least there are examples now appearing of general policies, specific initiatives, or unforeseen outcomes which return self-worth and decision-making to peoples previously marginalised.