The Guardian 4 June, 2008
Time for a treaty
Peter Symon
As already mentioned in my previous article on the 2020 summit (The Guardian, May 7), the 100 mostly Indigenous people dealing with "Options for the future of Indigenous Australia" came out strongly in support of a treaty. The Koori Mail newspaper headed its "wish list" with a treaty. It was followed by the call for the re-establishment of a commission of elected Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander representatives.
While the official summary of the discussion on Indigenous issues at the 2020 forum noted that the "increased formal recognition of Australia’s Indigenous peoples was a strong theme" the call for a treaty was played down and mixed up with some words "in the Constitution or Treaty or settlement".
So why is a treaty preferred and what is a treaty anyway?
A treaty would be an extended document agreed between the Australian state and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders as two national minorities living within the Australian state and who were the original owners and occupiers of the Australian continent. They had lived on the continent for 60,000 years before white settlement — invasion — commenced in 1788 when the first fleet from Britain arrived with an army contingent and convicts who began the white occupation of the whole continent.
Spirit of equality
A treaty would have to be agreed by the Australian state on the one hand and the Indigenous people on the other. It should be negotiated in a spirit of equality without undertones of patronage, conquest or superiority.
It would be an extended document and include clauses which set out the right of Indigenous people to land and the wealth both above and below ground level, the unfettered right of the Indigenous people to develop the resources of the land as they see fit and according to their interests and the protection and development of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander culture.
Another essential element of a treaty would set out the political status and rights of each side and, in particular, the recognition of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders living on the Australian continent and living within the borders of the Australian state. It would recognise the Indigenous people as the original owners and occupiers of the land.
The creation of national Aboriginal organisations, beginning in the 1950s with the Aboriginal Advancement League — followed by the formation of other national Aboriginal organisations — reflected a growing national consciousness by Indigenous Australians. This was driven also by the development of the means of communication and the emergence of rail, road and air transport throughout the nation.
Reality must be recognised
It is this reality that must now be accepted and formally recognised by the Australian state and government. It was a similar reality that was long ago recognised in New Zealand in the Treaty of Waitangi, in the treaty between the state of the USA with its Native American population and similarly in Canada.
The first policy of the British colonialists towards the Indigenous people was that of genocide by shootings, poisoning and the widespread decimation of the Indigenous people by infectious diseases, as well as the consequences when the Indigenous people’s lands were brutally torn from them.
But things were changing in the wider world. Slavery had been abolished and science was having a liberating effect. Many revolted against the inhumanity of the savage killing of Indigenous people in Africa, Latin America and in some Asian colonial countries.
In any case the Indigenous people of Australia, despite the wanton killing that took place here, did not succumb to genocide.
Assimilation
The policy of genocide was replaced with integration or assimilation which actually had the same objective but without the overt inhumanity. The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders were to be absorbed into the wider community. The objective was that Indigenous people would eventually disappear having lost their languages, their dreaming, their intimate knowledge of the land that was their mother and their system of beliefs.
Part of this process was the break-up of families, with children stolen from their families and sent to mission schools, often hundreds of kilometres from the land of their parents. These were the Stolen Generations who were to be brought up in the ways and with the beliefs of the white culture. But this too failed. The film novel and film Rabbit Proof Fence graphically tells of the bonds of family and the determination of those among the stolen generations who escaped the institutions and suffered great hardship to be reunited with their families.
But assimilation failed to do the dirty job of those in power, although it remains the policy of Australia’s ruling class and successive federal and state governments whether Liberal or Labor.
Reconciliation
Some who recognised the futility of assimilation hit upon the soft option of reconciliation without asking the question of who was to be reconciled with whom and on what terms. Without some definition of what reconciliation actually means in connection with rights to land, the right to independent political structures and the relationship between the Australian state and the Indigenous people, reconciliation remains a rather vague if well meant option.
This is the stage that has now been reached, and hence, the demand for recognition in the form of a treaty which cuts across and, in effect, finally defeats genocide, integration and assimilation and gives meaning to reconciliation.
The fact that the demand for a treaty now heads the list shows that the long struggle of the Indigenous people, firstly for survival and now for recognition, has reached a new watershed of political consciousness.
Education campaign
How can it be achieved? First by a substantial education campaign to promote the need for a treaty, why it is has become a necessity in terms of development and the further progress of the Indigenous people and what its content should be if it is to enshrine the rights and needs of the Indigenous movement.
At present the Australian government does not support the idea of a treaty and continues blindly to try and implement assimilation.
The non-Indigenous community and its progressive organisations need to extend solidarity to a campaign for a treaty and the re-establishment of an elected representative council of the Indigenous people. The overwhelming support for the 1967 referendum, for the recognition of Indigenous people as Australian citizens with the right to vote, the massive support for the Reconciliation March, support given by many organisations to the struggle for land rights, etc, shows that there is tremendous support and goodwill in the non-Indigenous community. .
The tricks of various Australian governments should not be underestimated. A far-reaching attempt to humiliate and divide the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities can be seen in the policies behind the police and government intervention in the Northern Territory.
The aims behind the federal intervention are gradually being extended to other states while Aboriginal land won in many long court battles is scheduled to be taken over by government administrators — a step towards its opening up to private enterprise and the mining companies in particular.
Many have seen behind and beyond these policies initiated by the Howard government and which is essentially being followed by the Rudd government as well.
Long hard struggle
A long hard struggle lies ahead but the fact that all previous hardships and dirty government manoeuvres have been defeated gives confidence that the current blandishments dangling the merits of individualism and private enterprise as against collective ownership, will also be exposed and will eventually fail.
Unity behind the real aspirations expressed at the 2020 forum and the solidarity support of all progressives in the non-indigenous community can win through eventually.
The vast changes taking place in the world will also help achieve this decisive and definitive cause. Recognition in the form of a treaty is part of this next major step forward.