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| AUSTRALIAN RECONCILIATION These articles are by author Ribnga Green, who comes from Halls Creek in Western Australia and is a member of the nation of Jaru peoples, whose traditional land is in the southeast part of the Kimberley region. He is in the process of completing a Masters degree in law at Flinders University, South Australia, where he also teaches in Law School. His thesis covers the laws and customs of Indigenous Australians in the context of the native title debate. These articles, and others, are published on aboriginalaustralia.com ( � 1998 - 2000 Aboriginal Australia Pty Ltd ) and reproduced here by the kind permission of the author. Apology before reconciliation? The "stolen generations" were taken away by force from their families and their country. The agony and the pain carried across generations of Aboriginal families as they still come to terms with the trauma of forced separation is well documented in the report by the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission. While it is true that non-Indigenous children were also forcibly separated from their families and face traumas that are no less debilitating, no other groups in Australia suffered forced separation in the systematic and systemic way that Aboriginal people did. Aboriginal people suffered under these laws and policies for a sustained period and the damage struck at the very heart of our culture, threatening our very existence. To say that Australians of today had nothing to do with the policies of bygone decades confuses the issue in relation to where responsibility should fall for making decisions that resulted in generations of Aboriginal kids being stolen. I suspect that what we are seeing is an attempt by those who were responsible, by virtue of the office held and the power to make decisions, to seek refuge behind voting Australians. The question needs to be asked about how informed voters were on the policies and laws that underpinned the separation of Aboriginal kids from their mothers. Many had no idea these terrible things were taking place.The focus needs to turn to senior government administrators, religious leaders and those who made laws to enable these distressing events to take place. So who's reconciling to whom about what? I say that an apology has to be made and it must be an apology from the Prime Minister in his capacity as Prime Minister, not merely a personal apology. Numerous people in this country, especially Indigenous leaders, have made this call. The legislation creating the Council for Reconciliation sets a limit to the life of the Council, the year 2001, which is also the centenary year of federation in this country. The Prime Minister may choose to maintain his stance and not apologize as the Prime Minister of Australia. This will jeopardize any success expected in the reconciliation process, perhaps even doom it to failure. With two years to go, time is not on the Prime Minister's side. When amendments were made earlier this year to the Native Title Act, Indigenous leaders, especially the peak body the National Indigenous Working Group, were excluded from any participation in those changes. Senator Harradine (who had the casting vote in the Senate) and Prime Minster Howard met and cut a deal. If this is not disempowerment then I don't know what is. I wonder if they will meet again and cut another deal on reconciliation. Reconciliation is a process that belongs to everyone for it to work, it must not be left to politicians. People, all people need to be informed; they must be allowed to participate. Australia B.C (Before cook) The New South Wales Parents and Citizen's Federation has sparked a debate (August, 1999) in the printed media after it decided to use the word "invasion" in its school syllabus as opposed to "settlement" to describe Captain Cook's landing on the shores of this country. In Spokesman for the Federation, Mr Rod Molesworth said that children should not be taught lies. What happened was an invasion and that's what it should be called. The state teachers' union supports the view of the Federation. In contrast, a conservative politician in NSW said, labelling Cook as an invader was offensive. Captain Cook hailed from the North Yorkshire town of Whitby and so another party coming to the defence of Cook is the Whitby Cook Museum. (See The Advertiser p42, Saturday 21 August 1999 and The Age p23, Saturday 21 August 1999.) This initiative by the NSW Parents and Citizen's Federation is to be given the highest praise; and I am heartened by the Union support for the bold move by the Federation. I cannot for one moment accept that Cook did not see that he was the forerunner of a massive invasion force to this continent, England being the power it was at that period in history. He may not have seen the way the forces of invasion were to unfold and the raw brutality that was to go with it. The arrival of the First Fleet was no small event the lives of Aboriginal people were to be changed forever. Cook's part was inextricably bound with these events and they could not have taken place without Cook's reconnoitring exercise and subsequent reports back to authorities in England. I want to make some observations concerning the historical treatment of Aboriginal people. These observations have no small bearing on the discussion but they rarely get mentioned: The first point is the act of colonial authorities declaring all Aboriginal people citizens of the British crown. This had the effect of making all acts of resistance to a foreign incursion, mere acts of criminality and not a defence of sovereign rights against invading forces. The truth is that Aboriginal people were never even counted as part of the Australian population until 1971, the first national census after the 1967 referendum. That referendum made certain amendments to the Federal constitution to enable Aboriginal people to be counted in the national census. Next, the legal system for many many years refused to accept evidence from Aboriginal people. They were regarded as heathen and therefore incapable of giving credible evidence in a court of law. And finally, compelling evidence in favour of the invasion perspective comes in the form of a body count of the Aboriginal fallen. The following map gives a picture of the wide spread location of killing places. A map of inter-racial massacres � 1999, Healing the Land "Healing the land Volume 1" By Judith Monticone is now available. For more information please vist Healing the Land * These are difficult things to talk about for the relatives of the dead. You scuff the earth and hope that time will heal. Let me say further that nearly every Aboriginal person can probably go back 3 or 4 generations to make a direct connection with a massacre somewhere in Australia. They used to call massacres "dispersals" which is a clinical term not unlike modern day terms like "collateral damage" they somehow make the killing of other human beings somehow more acceptable. Trouble is that if it was your own forebears who were the victims, memories take a long long time to fade away. If it's a terrible thing to sully the reputation of Captain Cook then I ask what about all those people who were killed, died because someone else wanted their land. Many have left descendants who are now living in abject circumstances. Blacks were nothing more than a feral nuisance. It would also be worth asking for the period 1788 to 1967, how many convictions were made in criminal charges where the victim was Aboriginal? The tarnished reputation of Captain Cook pales into insignificance. If Captain Cook was so good, how come so many Aboriginal people died in the wake of his coming? Perhaps his gruesome death on that Pacific Island was expiation for the sins of whomever. I do not have any particular abhorrence towards the person James Cook. There are historical materials that suggest that his personal disposition towards Aboriginal people had nothing of the brutal negativity of social Darwinism that was to come not too long after his departure. If there is a problem I have with Captain Cook it's the fact that he was the forerunner to a whole mob of people whose landing here was to have a devastating effect upon Aboriginal Australia. The social and governmental structures of Aboriginal peoples were never geared towards war. Here was a whole continent of people who never saw the need to establish standing armies for war against unfriendly neighbours. Yet our systems of government were to be gutted and we were treated no better than animals worse in some cases. People still carry the psychological scars of war, a war that was never officially declared. The incidence of mental illness through non-treatment, indeed non-recognition is frightening. The authorities carried on the same way with Vietnam veterans and it didn't work did it?So, when people like Rod Molesworth take the bold steps they take, I say within myself that here Australian people are being honest and are calling the events as they see it, without sanitising it with officially acceptable terms like "settlement". Such an approach is critical in this country's growth and maturity in coming to terms with history and "owning" its history in its entirety, warts and all. She's Gone (Pauline Hanson) She's gone, but she's not forgotten. In fact she should never be forgotten. If the leaders in this country were serious about doing something to stop further influences from the Hanson camp, they must move to entrench principles of social justice and substantive equality in the constitution of the new Republic. The current constitution, prior to the 1967 referendum contained a provision that specifically excluded Aboriginal people from being counted as part of the Australian population. The principle of law, terra nullius (land belonging to no-one), existed as part of Australian law up to 1992, when the Australian High Court's Mabo decision was handed down. This decision enabled the legal system to recognize for the very first time the existence of native title, in accordance with the laws and customs of Indigenous peoples. That was 1992, not 1892, it's almost like yesterday that this concession was made. I would like to think that Pauline Hanson's One Nation party was the final stumble of an institutional monster whose origins are lost in a shroud of history, my instinct for survival tell me this is not so. No person on the receiving end of unjust and unfair treatment on the basis of race, particularly Aboriginal and Islander people, can afford to relax his or her defenses just yet.Protection of Aboriginal Cultural Heritage Traditional Aboriginal artwork is like a human map. It tells you a story of people and their country. That story may be simple and for no other purpose but entertainment, or it can be profound in its commentary on cultural values. More so than Western art, traditional Aboriginal art weaves a story of life around people and country. In fact it is becoming common to see art being asserted to confirm the right to a native title claim. One early example of art being asserted to make a point to emphasize the authority of culture took place with the Yolngu people in eastern Arnhem Land in 1963. There, Yolngu people challenged the right of mining companies to mine on their traditional lands. The petition they put to the federal government was in the form of a typed sheet of paper with their message, on a stringy-bark painting. This painting asserted their rights to the land and called upon government to compensate them for the protection of sacred sites. But back to more general statements - the stories depicted on paintings are in every sense a legitimate basis for asserting cultural rights in modern times. These stories can also be told in song, dance and stories. Unfortunately the laws (especially intellectual property rights) in Australia do not give adequate recognition and protection. In my opinion, many of these problems arise from the fact that the Indigenous culture is the oldest in the world and modern Australia is a young nation, a young nation which has made a few fundamental blunders in dealing fairly with an ancient culture. (A) the work of art must exist in material form, (B) there must be an identifiable author, and (C) the protective measures subsist for a limited period only (50 years plus the life of the author). Unless an informed consent is granted by the appropriate Aboriginal person or community, the taking of art, objects or knowledge is unethical and amounts to cultural piracy. With traditional Aboriginal art ownership does not always vest in an individual (author), more often than not it vests in a community of people. Aboriginal notions of communal ownership cut right across the centrality of the individual in the English common law system, which is the inherited legal system in Australia. Here, there has been some recent development at the Federal Court level in recognizing that ownership may vest in a community of people. Legislation at the federal level needs to catch up with this development because waiting for appropriate cases to come before the court system will take far too long and cost much in the loss of Aboriginal cultural heritage. The limited period of protection covers the life of the author plus 50 years. For a culture that spans 50,000 years this period of protection is simply unacceptable. In fairness to government, there is legislation in existence at the federal and state levels to address the issues of cultural heritage protection. For people active in protecting Aboriginal cultural heritage in this country there is much agony over the effectiveness of the relevant laws at both levels. There have been reviews upon reviews and frustration at the level of resourcing to ensure adequate protection of cultural heritage.Songs and story telling are not things that exist in material form but still they are a vital part of our cultural asset and have been so for many thousands of years. Why can't legislation be drawn to protect aspects of our culture where the test of "materiality" is not present? Although parties can enter into contracts, for instance where filming is being done, to protect their intellectual property rights there still must be concerted legislative action in this area. Not every Aboriginal party is in the position of retaining legal advice to protect their rights in contractual agreements - therefore overriding protective legislation is needed to compel fair dealing where Aboriginal culture is the subject matter of the agreement. And I say that Universities and Museums, among other institutions, must assist in this process because historically, they were among the main offenders in not respecting the cultural heritage rights of Aboriginal people. This not the place to analyze the fine points of the law, but in terms of a policy perspective, I say that there has to be a more creative way to accommodate Aboriginal cultural values. In response to each of the three points above, consider the following: For example, if you take a key federal legislation, the Commonwealth Copyright Act, the basic criterion for protecting intellectual property rights is that. Many of course would not share the concerns I am expressing here in favour of "protection". I acknowledge that these comments may not have much relevance in some contexts involving Aboriginal people, for instance "urban" or "contemporary" art. Such works are as vitally Aboriginal as artwork from anywhere else. The Prime Minister of Australia has to demonstrate that he is concerned with these and a broad range of other issues if Reconciliation is to work. Ribnga Green *Over 1,300 massacre sites are listed that detail an Australia wide picture of what actually did occur in the last 211 years. Comments: If you would like to make comments, you can mail it to: [email protected] |
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