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Watson, Sam --- "Treaty or Ghost Dance - One Time" [2002] IndigLawB 73; (2002) 5(21) Indigenous Law Bulletin 15

Treaty or Ghost Dance – One Time

by Sam Watson

The treaty process that is now gathering momentum is Australia’s last great chance to prevent a racial holocaust. If the politicians, both black and white, fail to deliver a real and lasting outcome to the Indigenous communities, the ghost dance will begin and an armed struggle will engulf this entire land. Squadrons of younger blacks will drive the hated migloo[1] back into the sea. The debts of 1788 will be repaid in full, and generations of heroic black patriots who gave their lives in the struggle for land and survival, will be honoured by the payback.

The armed invaders of the first fleet had massive technical advantages and that was why the black resistance was eventually overwhelmed. The migloo were united in a single purpose, they had the guns and the violent intent to slaughter, subdue and enslave the tribal homelands, and they had a terrible history of mass murder of Indigenous populations.

On the other hand the tribal nations of that period were a sprawling network of 500 totally separate and independent socio-political entities. Not one nation or leader had ever made preparations for the vast invasion that engulfed them all post 1788, and they had never entered into any form of mutual defence treaty to support each other in times of hostilities. Our mob had no standing army to fight against an invading force from across the waters, and we had no navy or air force.

We had to fight with weapons of wood and stone. Most of our warriors fought and died on their own sacred soils rather than trespass on the land of the neighbouring people. The massacres wiped out three generations of leaders, advocates and defenders, and delivered up the sacred tribal lands to the migloo for untrammeled exploitation.

The frontier massacres don’t happen on the same scale anymore. These days the migloo police shoot our people on the streets or hang us in their stinking jail cells. We end up dead in the ground and the migloo walk away unpunished.

The black political leadership first began to call for a treaty in the 1970s. Both the Black Panthers in Brisbane and the Aboriginal Tent Embassy in Canberra began to agitate for a formal treaty between the Parliament of Australia and the tribal nations. Even though the treaty process is only one demand on the vast page of grievances, it is the most fundamental and its import is all embracing.

It is macabre that the entire treaty process is taking place within the same legal system that first sanctioned the armed invasion of our sovereign lands. It is also macabre that our leadership is so wedded to that system that is drenched in the blood and suffering of our people.

We needed a treaty in 1788 and we need a treaty now! Without that document there is no point at which we can engage with the invaders and retain our rights as sovereign tribal nations. This is also the final opportunity for the migloo to right the wrongs, and it really is the last chance before this place descends into a time of terrible darkness, from which there will be no return.

Sam Watson is an activist, writer and co-founder of the Brisbane Chapter of the Australian Black Panther Party. Sam’s book, Kadaitcha Sung, is presently being made into a major film.

[1] The term ‘migloo’ is an Aboriginal word used to refer to white Australians.

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