Bringing-Them-Home-Report-Web

Murri academic Henrietta Fourmile makes a cogent argument for the return ofrecords founded upon the cultural and individual consequences of the history documentedin those records. The history is one of disinheritance, disempowerment and ultimatelyattempted destruction. True restitution and cultural and social reconstruction require therestitution of control over the historical documents. While that control should be sharedwith those who share the history (in this case with record agencies), Indigenous controlmust be real and not token. At present Indigenous peoples are almost entirely dependenton non-Indigenous institutions to interpret and disseminate their history. Indigenouspeoples need resources and facilities and culturally appropriate avenues to disseminatetheir history, in particular to their own communities. Indigenous communities must havethe information on which to base their retelling of their history.This lack of our collections of books, documents, and records constitutes a severe impediment inour quest to make and pass on our own history …Much of Aboriginal people’s own sense of powerlessness stems from ignorance because of thislack of access to information about matters which control our lives. An informed Aboriginalpopulation will have a much greater feeling of power over its own destiny …The nett effect of the lack of our own cultural and historical resources and the difficulties ofaccess to those that exist elsewhere is to foster our dependence on non-Aboriginal specialists inlaw, history, anthropology, education and in Aboriginal affairs generally. They effectivelybecome our brokers in transactions between Aboriginal communities and the various institutionsand the public at large which have an interest in our affairs, and thereby usurp our role as historytellers… in the context of Aboriginal sovereignty it is completely untenable that one ‘nation’ (ieEuropean Australia) should have a monopoly and control of such a substantial body ofinformation concerning another, the Aboriginal ‘nation’ …At the core of the problem concerning the documentation and recording of our culture and historyis the fact that much of it is a shared enterprise undertaken between members of two quitedifferent cultural backgrounds. The documentation itself is a record of the interactions whichmake up our history. Simple justice would acknowledge the rights of both parties not only toshare the physical records of that history but also to share responsibility for their custody andmanagement so that the rights of one party are not prejudiced in order to benefit the other(Fourmile 1989 pages 2-5).The Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody similarly recognised theneed for ‘a process of reclamation by Aboriginal people of their own immediate history’(National Report Volume 2 page 77). Fourmile argues for ‘a cultural policy formulatedbetween Aborigines and governments which gives Aboriginal people ownership andcontrol over important historical and cultural resources which might be housed inAboriginal cultural facilities comparable to those available to non-AboriginalAustralians’ (1989 page 5).