Time for a Treaty

by Peter Symon
General Secretary, Communist Party of Australia

The occupation and ownership of Australia's territory by Aboriginal and 
Torres Strait Islanders for at least 50,000 years is an indisputable 
scientific and historical fact. It is estimated that the population of the 
indigenous people was about 300,000 persons at the time of the first white 
settlement. By the end of the 19th Century this number had been reduced to 
perhaps 75,000. The Aboriginal population was not counted at that time.

The indigenous people had a hunter-gatherer society in which there was a 
division of labour between men and women. They were semi-nomadic within 
clearly defined territories.

With a relatively low level of productive forces, an extensive knowledge of 
land and nature and a sophisticated structure of reciprocal relationships, 
the Aboriginal traditional economy was an efficient means of supplying the 
society's material needs.

The absence of animals that could be domesticated, such as cattle and 
horses, meant that the basis for more settled communities did not exist as 
was the case in other parts of the world. There was also an absence of 
plants that could be cultivated. This meant that agriculture remained 
rudimentary or did not exist at all. 

The culture and system of ideas of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait 
Islander people was developed in close association with the land, its 
plants and animals.

Their society was savagely up-rooted by the invasion of 1788. Although 
Governor Phillip was given instructions to "take possession of the 
continent with the consent of the Natives", consent was never asked nor was 
it ever given. 

The new settlers imposed everywhere their economic system, their authority 
and power, their culture and beliefs, often using the Christian church as 
the means to impose their ideas. The languages and culture of the nomadic 
people were steadily but never completely destroyed. The land occupied by 
the indigenous people was seized without any compensation or recognition. 
The theory of "terra nullius" (empty land) was established to justify this 
open theft by the conquerors. 

Some have used words like "savages, "barbarians" and "uncivilised" to 
describe the original inhabitants of the Australian continent.

A more objective view would draw the conclusion that the newcomers were 
"superior" in only one respect — that the weapons used for killing others 
were more potent and effective than the boomerangs and spears of the 
indigenous people.

Ferocity

The ferocity of the invaders was unrestrained. The massacre of the 
inhabitants of the Myall River region 150 years ago when white stockmen 
rounded up the local indigenous people and shot them in cold blood is but 
one example.

This thread of genocide continued through policies condoned by successive 
governments. Not only did the settler's guns do their deadly work, but 
poisoning water and flour was also used. Diseases imported by the white 
invaders, and sometimes spread deliberately, were also a potent killer of 
the indigenous people whose resistance was low because of their isolation 
from other regions of the world over many millennia.

Die out

In the 18th and first half of the 19th Centuries, it was believed that the 
indigenous people would simply die out. The white settlers were little 
concerned to understand the co-operative and nomadic nature of the 
indigenous people, their communal economy or the beliefs that had 
successfully held their societies together for thousands of years. Their 
culture and beliefs were ridiculed or completely ignored, to be replaced by 
the preachings of the "Christian" missionaries who also played their part 
to "smooth the pillow" of the supposedly dying indigenous people.

This process was to be helped by herding them onto reserves and through the 
policies of integration and assimilation. The reserves became pools of 
cheap or unpaid labour for farmers, graziers and pastoralists while the 
destruction of Aboriginal families by way of abducting their children (the 
stolen generations) was introduced. The identity of these children was 
denied. They were to be educated into white society in the name of 
assimilation.

Paul Hasluck, a one-time Governor-General of Australia, said of 
assimilation: [It] "means that, after many generations, the Aboriginal 
people will disappear as a separate racial group."

In the early 1960s, Mr Pearson, Minister of Works in a conservative SA 
Government, was even more to the point. He said:

"It is for us to remember that it is they who are called upon to make the 
changes, to learn our language, ways, food, laws, customs and 
sophistications. The problem of assimilation is one that we have inflicted 
on them."

However, changes were taking place in white capitalist society that also 
impacted on the remaining indigenous people. Graziers needed stockmen and 
the Aboriginal people proved to be capable stockmen who could be employed 
on very low wages or without the payment of any wages. Women were required 
as domestic servants in white homesteads.

Where they were needed as workers, the people survived the genocide and in 
many areas in Australia's north remained on their traditional lands. This 
allowed the survival of their culture and beliefs and their profound 
relationship with the land.

Joined armed forces

During World War II some Aborigines joined the armed forces and it was 
during this period that many white soldiers became acquainted with the 
Aboriginal people for the first time and saw for themselves the shocking 
treatment that was meted out to them in outback areas. 

Some Aborigines moved off the reserves and obtained the lowest paid and 
most menial jobs in cities and towns. In this way some became workers in 
the wider Australian community.

Even those living on reserves came in contact with the cash economy and 
capitalist forms of trade.

White society also became increasingly conscious and many could no longer 
tolerate the brutal discrimination and oppression of the indigenous people 
without protest.

These changes meant that by 1988, the 200th anniversary of white 
settlement, the Aboriginal people, who held their own gatherings to mark 
the invasion as an occasion for mourning, declared: "We have survived".

This was not a funeral dirge but a declaration, a call to resistance and 
struggle. Tens of thousands of white supporters of Aboriginal rights joined 
the marches across Australia.

Changes

Slowly but steadily the vision of the Aboriginal people grew from a tribal 
outlook to an Australia-wide consciousness.

In 1958, the first Australia-wide Aboriginal organisation was formed — the 
Federal Council for the Advancement of Aborigines and Torres Strait 
Islanders (FCAATSI).

It was a multi-racial organisation and included such outstanding Aborigines 
as Joe McGinness, (a Cairns waterside worker and communist), Faith Bandler, 
Kath Walker, Pastor Doug Nichols, Gladys Elphick, Ray Peckham (also a 
communist), and others. 

The indigenous people from Cairns to Albany, from Derby to Ballarat, from 
the Coorong to Darwin, began to realise that they were a people with a 
common history and ancestry and that all were being savagely oppressed, 
deprived, exploited and wronged. 

In 1954 the Communist Review, in an unsigned article, recognised for 
the first time that a process of national consolidation was underway 
although not yet drawing the conclusion that the Aboriginal and Torres 
Strait Islander people were national minorities. 

National consolidation

The article wrote: "Under these new and appalling conditions of life, a new 
process of national consolidation is taking place. Conditions vary 
immensely but it is clear that at certain points where fairly large 
concentrations of population exist, the Aborigines are beginning to look on 
themselves as people who belong to a particular settlement and the old 
tribal identity is being replaced by new ties arising from common 
residence, common awareness of themselves as racially and culturally 
distinct and, above all, from consciousness of subjection to a common 
oppression."

The article went on: "There has been a tendency to regard the Aboriginal 
question as merely a class question, to consider the Aborigine as merely a 
severely exploited worker. This attitude completely ignores the national 
characteristics of the Aboriginal people..." (Communist Review, 
September 1954 p 283).

But it was not for another nine years that the conclusion flowing from the 
process of "national consolidation" was drawn.

In 1963 a policy statement of the Communist Party said: "The Aborigines of 
Australia are an oppressed national minority, scattered throughout the con- 
tinent..."

In the February 1963 issue of the Communist Review, an article by 
A.L. entitled "The Aboriginal National Minority", dealt at length with this 
conclusion.

The Aboriginal people were already rejecting assimilation. The article 
quotes two statements by Aborigines. The first is from Davis Daniels: "When 
we accept citizenship, we will take a step to isolate ourselves from our 
own people and we advance only individually."

The second is from Beetaloo Bill: "I would accept citizenship as long as I 
could live as an Aboriginal. If they want to take my corroborees from me 
and prevent me living with my people, I am not interested."

The recognition of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people as 
national minorities was a giant step forward but even then, the idea of a 
treaty was not put forward. However, ideas of autonomy were advanced.

A.L. wrote: "Elsewhere [in other countries], national minorities are 
usually restricted to well defined regions of a country. In these 
circumstances, self- government or even autonomy from a majority population 
is a simple concept. In Australia the national minority, although linked by 
family and other ties, is scattered in groups throughout the length and 
breadth of Australia. This does not alter their circumstances as a national 
minority, but it does introduce the practical necessity of some 
modification in the usual demands and requirements of a national minority. 
The Aboriginal people must decide this question themselves... wherever 
possible greater self-government in local government affairs would be quite 
practicable and in some regions, regional political control by the 
inhabitants of the regions is quite possible."

Renaissance

Once the seed of national consciousness was planted it grew and blossomed. 
A renaissance of Aboriginal culture and a new pride arose in the 1960s, 
using new forms and with a new content. It has continued to flourish and 
become stronger. An increasing number of the white community gave support 
to these developments.

Some Aborigines broke through to high school and universities, even though 
the majority were still relegated to the fringes of country towns and in 
other faraway places and lived in appalling conditions of poverty, 
deprivation and unemployment.

On January 4, 1965, The Australian carried a headline "A Black Ghetto in a 
Red Desert. Aboriginals condemned to squalor." One might well ask, "What 
has changed in these last 35 years?"

A significant part of Aboriginal advancement was the steadily growing 
struggle for land rights and for decent wages and conditions for the 
stockmen working for pastoralists in the north.

The first of these was a strike struggle that began on 1 May, 1946 in the 
Pilbara region of Western Australia. One of the outcomes of this strike 
struggle was the formation of an Aboriginal mining co-operative at Pindan, 
the first of its kind in Australia.

In organising themselves into a mining co-operative, the Pindan group used 
traditional forms of social organisation but modified them to suit their 
circumstances.

The Pilbara strike was followed in 1966/7 by the strike of stockmen at 
Newcastle Waters, Wave Hill and other properties of the British-owned 
Vestey pastoral company in the Northern Territory.

The Arbitration Commission had ruled that Aboriginal stockmen should 
receive equal pay and conditions but implementation was delayed. The 
Gurindji people went on strike for immediate equal pay and conditions, a 
strike that went on for many months. The strike grew into a successful 
struggle for land rights when the Gurindji people occupied their 
traditional land at Dagu Ragu (Wattie Creek).

In this period the demands of the Aboriginal people and their supporters in 
the white community revolved around Aboriginal ownership of the reserve 
lands, the ending of discriminatory laws and the extension of full civic 
rights to Aborigines, the rapid raising of living standards, education, 
housing and health care, the demand for freedom of movement, the right to 
child endow- ment and many similar issues. At that time the demand for a 
treaty does not appear to have been raised.

Referendum

The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people were not counted in an 
Australian census and this became a burning issue. Up to this time, 
legislation on questions relating to the indigenous people resided in State 
parliaments.

This outrageous situation resulted in a referendum in 1967 which called for 
Aborigines to be counted in a census and that power be given to the Federal 
Government to legislate on matters relating to the Aboriginal people. The 
referendum was adopted by a 90 per cent vote that was also a vote for a 
changed attitude on the part of governments to the Aboriginal and Torres 
Strait Islander people.

Mabo

A high-water mark was reached in the land rights struggle when in 1992 the 
High Court gave a decision in the famous Mabo case. For the first time a 
Court recognised the fact that the Aboriginal people had occupied land 
(Murray Island) for millennia, thereby overturning the lie of "terra 
nullius" — that the Australian continent was empty of people at the time 
of Governor Phillip's invasion in 1788.

But white conservatives fought and are still fighting a stubborn rearguard 
action to deny the reality of the 1788 invasion, to deny the policies of 
genocide, to refuse to recognise the monstrous crime inflicted on the 
stolen generations and, above all, to limit, delay and, if possible, 
scuttle the land claims of many indigenous people.

For the ruling class of capitalist Australia it is private property that is 
sacred, not any concepts of justice or what is right and truthful.

But realities cannot be denied forever. 

Treaty

Labor Prime Minister Hawke responded to calls for a treaty in 1987. He 
dropped national land rights and undertook to commence negotiations on what 
was then called a "Makarrata".

Hawke then called for a "compact of understanding" but this was rejected by 
Aboriginal leaders because it was more limited than a treaty.

Aboriginal leader Dr Charles Perkins said: "We want a treaty written into 
the Constitution for all time. A compact is not good enough." A treaty, he 
said, should cover issues of the prior ownership of land, Aboriginal 
sovereignty, compensation for land lost and recognition of the customs, 
laws, languages and sacred sites.

Keating replaced Hawke as the next Labor Prime Minister and instead of 
proceeding with negotiations for a treaty, he appointed a Reconciliation 
Council in 1990. The appointment of the Council was, in fact, a diversion 
which sidetracked the treaty concept.

The Reconciliation Council finalised its work this year and issued a 
"Statement of Reconciliation" which, among other things, said:

"We recognise this land and its waters were settled as colonies without 
treaty or consent [and we] respect that Aboriginal and Torres Strait 
Islander peoples have the right to self-determination within the life of 
the nation."

Is it legitimate for a treaty to be concluded between the Aboriginal and 
Torres Strait Islander national minorities and the Australian state? 

That the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders do not constitute "nations" 
in the sense that they do not occupy a cohesive economic area is fairly 
obvious.

But it is equally obvious that the policies of protection, integration and 
assimilation have completely failed while the assertion of the Aboriginal 
and Torres Strait Islander people as distinct peoples with their own 
history, ancestry, culture and traditions is irrefutable.

That they are the original inhabitants of this continent is also 
irrefutable.

Furthermore, the tendency to national consolidation is becoming stronger. 
What the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders lack is economic cohesion, 
an essential characteristic if any group of people is to be regarded as an 
independent nation. But this does not dispose of the matter.

At its 3rd Congress in 1978 the Socialist Party (now Communist Party) 
declared:

"The Aboriginal people are an oppressed national minority with-in the 
Australian state and it is a particular responsibility of the working class 
to join in struggle for the emancipation of the Aboriginal people and to 
win full national minority rights and in particular the right to the 
inalienable, communal ownership of remaining tribal lands now set aside as 
government or mission settlements and reserves, or better land where they 
are unsuitable, and to mineral rights where these exist on these lands."

Autonomous areas

"Another fundamental demand is for the creation of autonomous 
administrations on lands made over to inalienable, communal ownership."

This was expanded in the Party's 1992 Program which called for:

* Legislation for communal, inalienable land rights for Aborigines on the 
basis of traditional ownership, religious association, long occupancy 
and/or need; title to include full rights to minerals and other natural 
resources.

* Establishment of autonomous areas for communities on the basis of their 
communally owned land where they can develop their own economic, social and 
cultural life.

* Where natural resources can be used by a local community, they should be 
communal property, and profits from co-operatives set up to exploit them 
should be controlled and used by the local community.

* Where the development of natural resources on Aboriginal communal land 
requires more finance and/or skills than the local community has, they 
should become Aboriginal national property; in such cases, voluntary 
leasing agreements should be reached with the government.

* Representative Land Councils to be set up in all States with the 
necessary legislation to allow them to research and determine land claims 
and, where desired by local communities, to administer Aboriginal land.

In connection with the Torres Strait Islanders, the Program suggested the 
establishment of an autonomous region covering the 15 islands to be 
administered by an elected council.

Recognition

It is time to dispense with the concepts of "protection", "integration" and 
"assimilation". Even the concept of "reconciliation" is not enough. The 
word required is recognition — recognition of the Aborigines and Torres 
Strait Islanders as distinct peoples, as the original occupiers and owners, 
as national minorities within the Australian State.

The many years of struggle by the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander 
people and the achievements and progress made is the basis upon which to 
implement the recognition for which they call in the form of a treaty 
between the Australian state and the two national minorities which reside 
within it.

A treaty will require long negotiations. It would need to be ratified and 
incorporated in law with amendments to the Australian Constitution. In the 
process the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander national minorities must 
be treated as equals.

The summary rejection of a treaty by Prime Minister Howard is yet more 
proof that his conservatism does not allow him to proceed beyond the 
confines of the policies of all previous Australian governments, which 
stubbornly refused to extend national minority status to the Aboriginal and 
Torres Strait Islander people.

Howard hypocritically claims that the demand for a treaty is "divisive" as 
though divisions do not already exist. His charge is yet another ploy to 
frighten people, to justify the continuance of present policies, and to 
protect the interests of the mining companies and pastoralists.

However, governments and the Australian people will, in the future, have to 
face up to the question of a treaty and accept that it is a valid demand.

In 1840, the Maori people of New Zealand entered into the Treaty of 
Waitangi which, in exchange for Maori recognition of British sovereignty, 
recognised the Maori right to possession of their tribal lands and equal 
rights with Europeans.

Only recently, the government of Canada concluded a treaty between itself 
and the indigenous Inuit people.

As long ago as 1594 (just 100 years after Columbus discovered the Americas) 
the Spanish "Laws of the Indies" said:

"We command that the farms and lands which may be granted to Spaniards be 
so granted without prejudice to the Indians; and that such as may have been 
granted to their prejudice and injury be restored to whoever they of right 
shall belong."

This "law" was ignored by the Spanish settlers in the Americas just as the 
command to Governor Phillip when he sailed into Botany Bay has been ignored 
and violated.

Two hundred and twenty years later is time enough to put the wrong to 
right. A treaty is the way this has to be done.

A treaty is not an alternative to the continuing struggle for land rights. 
Land rights claims and the campaign for a treaty are two elements of the 
same struggle.

More successes in the land rights struggle will help the process of 
national consolidation and provide a firm economic, social and political 
basis for the recognition of the Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders as 
national minorities. The occupation of land provides the basis for the 
establishment of autonomous areas.

In The Age (June 30, 1962), John Hetherington quoted artist James 
Wigley:

"Living among the people (in NW Australia) you could never despair of 
mankind. They have an integrity you don't find in any white society. If 
only their unspoilt qualities can be preserved and built upon, I believe we 
have there the nucleus of a great new civilisation."

A step towards this "new civilisation" is the conclusion of a treaty 
between the Aboriginal national minorities and the Australian state and the 
restoration of land rights.