Reconciliation and Social Justice Library
Reconciliation and Social Justice Library
The time has come for a fundamental shift in public policy in respect of Australia's Indigenous peoples. The call for Indigenous social justice initiatives is nothing less than the challenge to articulate and, where necessary, re-write national policy. That means an examination of the underlying assumptions, operating principles and direction of policies and programmes designed for or significantly affecting Indigenous peoples.
A fixation on the nuts and bolts of implementation and manipulation of existing approaches and administrative structures has prevented policy makers stepping back sufficiently to take a look at the entire approach. In a policy area like Indigenous affairs, matters of philosophy are central. For example, policies flowing from the basic assumption that Indigenous persons simply need to be allowed to compete equally as individuals in a predominantly European-derived society will differ markedly to those that flow from an approach that values different cultures with their different traditions and practices.
After 207 years of failure of official non-Indigenous policies and programmes to win Indigenous hearts, accommodate Indigenous aspirations, or solve Indigenous needs, it should be obvious that the fault lies in our assumptions and it is here that change must occur.
At the basis of this shift must be the transition, too little understood, from the administration of Indigenous welfare to the recognition of Indigenous rights. Although the rhetoric of the rights of Indigenous peoples may now be mouthed by government officials, the rights based approach has all too easily been assimilated into the practices in which they are already well versed. Even `self-determination' has come to mean little more than informing Indigenous people of a programme or policy before it is launched. This is a mockery of a term which has a clear meaning in the field where it originates, international law. Policy makers must accept that Indigenous people are not a special category of disadvantaged souls who require attention or even caring and gentleness. We are peoples with rights and imperatives of our own. And our principal right is the one to make the decisions which direct our present and future. To date in Australia this right has received little more than nudges and winks.
A national policy is more than an opportunity; it is an urgent need. The deepest significance of the High Court's decision on native title lies not in its implications for property law, but in the moral and social challenge which it has thrown up. After more than two centuries of non-Indigenous presence, the Australian community has been told by its highest legal authority that old assumptions of non-Indigenous superiority and a right of dominance are misplaced. The officially sanctioned methods in which the modern Australian nation established itself on our territories was simply wrong. That is an historic repudiation of major elements of national history and tradition, and would be a jolt for any nation-state. More than any centenary of the federal Constitution or threshold of a new millennium, Mabo demanded that Australia redefine and renew itself as a society and a political culture.
However, my concern in this report is not to reiterate past injustices. It is to address social justice in our time, and the future. This is the moment to build a sense of shared community among the peoples and regions of this continent.
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander social justice is not simply the concern of Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders ourselves, and those specific offices designated to deal with us. It is a fundamental problem of the relationship between different cultures and peoples involving the whole of Australian society.
Social justice for Indigenous Australians is about renewing Australia. It is about allowing us the benefits, opportunities, and living standards that this country's natural resources have created. It means making us welcome in the contemporary Australia built by the White Man (sometimes with black labour and always on black land). It means bringing the non-indigenous peoples -- who have too often in the past simply policed it or mined it or grazed it while dreaming of a cultural home far away -- to care for this land and feel at home with its ancient inhabitants. Those people may be 19th century British and Irish families, or mid-20th century and newer arrivals from Greece and Lebanon, Chile and Vietnam. Nevertheless, they all share obligations for our housekeeping. The national task of indigenous social justice means nothing less than constructing together or cultivating a new sense of nationhood which provides not just shelter but a home for all our peoples.
Failure here has many outcomes. In relation to Aboriginal health, for instance, researchers have recently been stressing that even by the depressing measure of statistics for disadvantage among Indigenous peoples in countries like New Zealand, Canada, and USA with similar histories to our own, Australia has failed as a country. For instance, we see many Australian business people and professionals adopting a suitably international sophistication in treating immigrant non-Europeans as equals at work and leisure but continuing to maintain a disdain for Indigenous Australians. It is pointless to trumpet insistence on `a fair go' or a united continental nation while we maintain such divisions by race.
We must establish a framework for community which includes Indigenous no less than non-Indigenous Australians. While non-Indigenous Australians debate aspects of the Constitution -- argue about whether to replace or strengthen the federal system, dispute the size, shape and powers of local and regional government, and consider new economic and political relationships with Asian countries -- it should be no surprise that Indigenous Australians also have questions of their own about the reform of political and legal arrangements.
The cornerstone of Indigenous policy and politics in Australia is identity and the maintenance of that identity by individuals in company with others who share it. We are not simply isolated individuals, but peoples, with a homeland and a traditional culture. In this we are not unique, but unlike other cultural minorities in Australia, our cultural homeland is right here in Australia. Its maintenance is not the responsibility of peoples in distant lands but rather rests entirely in the hands of Australians.
If the identity of Australians as a whole means anything, it must include the uniqueness which our Indigenous cultures provide. All Australians have responsibility for the well-being of Indigenous cultures. In fact Australia has agreed to observe this obligation under international law. 1
Maintaining Indigenous identity and culture, however, is not simply an end in itself. Unless and until our identity is recognised we cannot and will not participate as full Australian citizens. It is one of the paradoxes of Indigenous policy in nation-states that only through recognition of distinct communities and rights pertaining to such communities are Indigenous people willing -- and, for the most part, able -- to accept the majority society as other than a threat and an alien world.
In the chapters of this submission I will look at the more detailed implications of a framework for community in Australia. From the outset, however, it is important to understand the prime Federal Government role in this matter. Although Australia only enshrined a national government role in Indigenous affairs through a 1967 constitutional referendum, it was common practice in Britain's colonies that central government--first London and then national capitals--held powers to safeguard Indigenous peoples from local and regional land and resource development. The American and Canadian constitutions follows this pattern, and Britain had similar intentions in respect of Australia at various times. 2
Indian and Inuit peoples in both America and Canada today regard this federal guarantor role, despite the many instances of neglect or maladministration over the years, as their irreducible constitutional protection. There may well be arguments for state and territory roles in Indigenous affairs. Perhaps this or that state has a fine policy in some matter, or has a premier and cabinet for the moment sensitive to Indigenous issues. With greater Indigenous self-government there will no doubt be many pragmatic and mutually beneficial arrangements made between Indigenous communities and state and territory governments.
Nevertheless, the fact remains that those who argue for states rights in Indigenous affairs almost always do so because they do not wish to accept the relatively higher standards for Indigenous-government relations set by national governments. And this is true not only in Australia but in all other countries. National governments are, in principle, essential overseers, guarantors and facilitators in relations between a nation's Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples. A concrete expression of the Australian Government's responsibility is urged in the chapter Funding Reform.
The processes by which Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people negotiate the new framework for community with our fellow Australians may be no less important than the actual outcome. 3 By joining in the enterprise of Australian nation-building as equals and by having genuine opportunities to design our future within Australia, Indigenous peoples can begin to solve endemic socio-economic problems as well as commit ourselves to a shared Australian community.
Finally, those who fear that full recognition of our unique place in modern Australia will be divisive, or that it violates Australian principles of social equality, are dead wrong. Australia is divided already.
There is a black, oppressed, imprisoned Australia dispossessed from its home but increasingly unwilling to tolerate this injustice. And there is another Australia which believes that it was the first and only Australia, and insists that our ancient cultures are, if anything, decorative curiosities.
It is an Australia denying part of itself.
Wholeness and equality are fine national values. But they will only be attained when our Indigenous reality is honestly recognised and embraced.