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Barns, Greg --- "A Treaty - The Future Will Deliver" [2002] IndigLawB 71; (2002) 5(21) Indigenous Law Bulletin 13

A Treaty - The Future Will Deliver

by Greg Barns

The great nations of the New World, and even the Old, reconcile the conquerors with the Indigenous peoples. Canada, South Africa, the English in relation to the treatment of Catholics in Ireland, and the forays into this rite by some South American countries represents a momentum around our globe that is unstoppable. It is unstoppable because it signifies the progress of humankind - a progress that began in the eighteenth century European Enlightenment.

Australia cannot be immune from this progress. Those who argue to the contrary are lying to themselves and to their fellow Australians. Our current Prime Minister, Mr Howard, is merely an accident of history on this, and indeed, many other questions of public morality. Those leaders, including one notable Indigenous person, who believe that the notion of a treaty or any other non-material gesture of reconciliation is simply the politics of the upper middle classes seeking to salve their collective conscience, will also be adjudged to be on the wrong side of history.

For what is reconciliation without the spiritual and symbolic element? It is meaningless - a notion that Lyndon Johnson, for example, well understood. The former US President knew that his 'War on Poverty' and Great Society social programs - designed to lift the material wellbeing of black and poor white Americans - counted for little if he did not pass the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act to give black Americans equal rights and a sense of dignity.

And what are the arguments against a treaty with our Indigenous peoples? That it will create two nations? That it is not a unifying symbol for Australia? That it does not get to the heart of the issue - the appalling health and educational facilities and standards of Indigenous people?

All of these arguments miss the point - a point that is historic and contemporary - that the Indigenous people were dispossessed of their land and their concept of nationhood over 200 years ago by European conquerors. Just as Australia has the British monarch as Head of State by virtue of history, so do Indigenous Australians live in a land over which they once had exclusive jurisdiction and which they were forced to share, without their consent, with the Europeans.

To redress the historical wrong, in the name of which many other deeds and abuses have been meted out by the European masters of the land, requires a solemn and binding act. To bind is to unify - not to divide.

And what of the conservatives' notion of 'practical reconciliation'? It assumes that one cannot have both spiritual and symbolic reconciliation alongside more sustained and innovative efforts to lift the lives of Indigenous Australians. As I noted earlier, Johnson knew this was nonsense. So have Canadian governments since the 1970s. It is simply a ruse to keep the nation ill at ease with itself and to allow cynical politicians like the current Prime Minister and some in the Labor Party, to pander to prejudice and fear.

The leaders who one day meet and craft a treaty that recognises the European conquering of this land, the consequent enfeeblement of the Indigenous peoples as a result, apologise for it, and then set out the principles of Indigenous self-determination, these will be the leaders to whom we owe a debt of gratitude. The view on the horizon today is bleak - the political stage is crowded with men and women of small vision, and with no sense of what it means to progress the nation in a substantive way. But it will not always be this way.

Greg Barns was the National Chair of the Australian Republican Movement from 2000 to 2002. He is a member of the Australian Democrats and is based in Hobart.


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