Lot's Wife Edition 4 2016

SOCIETY
Too late now to say sorry:
it’s past time for a treaty
By Dan Carter
Illustration by Grace Fraraccio
It’s been 228 years since Europeans arrived in our country
without signing a treaty. The three forms of legal occupation
at the time of European arrival were an empty land,
negotiated land and invaded land. The British settlers (and politicians
today) say an empty land was settled, the High Court
says ‘Terra Nullius’ was invalid, the wise sages of talk-back radio
say it’s in the past, and Indigenous people say Australia remains
a crime scene – so who’s right and who’s wrong? Can we just
patch this one up with another apology, without any legal ramifications
in the true spirit of reconciliation?
This year the Daniel Andrews government continued its social
justice rampage from refugees and safe schools, to genuine
engagement with Indigenous people, but is all this too good to
be true? Or are they just sick of losing seats to the Greens? At
this rate, he’ll be pouring the sand through the traditional owner’s
hands whilst Bob Hawke packs his beer bong for finishing
the legacy he was ousted for.
It started February 3rd when State Indigenous Affairs
Minister Natalie Hutchins called an open meeting with the
Indigenous community to discuss self-determination and
constitutional recognition. A meeting of this kind hadn’t
occurred in over 20 years; 200 hundred people attended and
200 others streamed online. In brief, the Indigenous community
made it very clear they unanimously rejected the notion of
Constitutional Recognition, seeing it as a government distraction
and wished to establish the framework to engage in treaty
conversations.
Over the next month, this momentous occasion received
only a blip of mainstream media attention and a Dandrews
tweet telling us it was on the table. The State government waited
a month for the press release, playing down any Recognise
rejection as “unconvinced”, but most importantly following up
on the Treaty debate, announcing state wide forums to shape
the conversation starting in May, 2016.
Treaty is an incredibly touchy subject for any government
to chase. If you can remember the 1980s land rights scare campaigns,
they claimed a small percentage of ‘Aborigines’ would
be given ownership of the majority of this prosperous country.
Middle class Aussies were coerced into believing some kind of
Indigenous 1% would conspire to unfairly distribute Australia’s
wealth. The iron ore irony, that these campaigns were funded
by the mining industry, is not lost on Indigenous people today.
In the state of Victoria there aren’t big business party donors
looking to derail talks, so we may just see further discussion.
It’s hard to look past treaty as some kind of costly reparation
power move from a right wing perspective, but the symbolic
side of this negotiation for Indigenous people to set the agenda
is the crux of self-determination. I say symbolic because almost
every existing treaty around the world has been broken in some
form. The real goal here is bringing Indigenous people to the
table in genuinely shaping our country. This isn’t a new concept
either: politicians love the inside/outside tent metaphor almost
as much as they love paying the black representative (that they
invite inside the tent) a government salary.
Problematic to all of this is that a treaty is not simply
government vs. ‘Aborigines’, but a sovereign leader and 300+
nations negotiating. As prominent activist Robbie Thorpe
said, “Take me to your leader” – who is the sovereign signatory?
Dandrews will be taking a bold step looking to bridge
this unknown. How do you unify 300+ nations so they are
they all on the same page? The alternative solution is a federal
government offering recognition that Indigenous people are in
fact … Indigenous people. This is a poor consolation prize for
the rights that many have fought so hard for. I personally have
followed the campaign for many years and agree with the intent
and scope of what it hopes to achieve, but it cannot come
before or detract from what is required.
20 years from now we could celebrate the day a treaty
was signed as the foundation of this country. The generic
word ‘Aborigine’ would barely be used because people would
understand the names of the lands, nations, and people whose
history they were now a part of. Indigenous people would be
empowered to engage in a society that was shaped by their culture.
Nobody would turn up to your Sunday BBQ in blackface,
because people would understand the invasion, discrimination,
massacre and genocide of history. If the federal government
still had a spare $150 million for a referendum to recognise
after all that was achieved, we could change the constitution’s
wording to state our country didn’t just have an Indigenous
history, but that it was written into our future too.
Lot’s Wife | 19