| | Ladies and Gentlemen,
We non-Aboriginal Australians should perhaps remind ourselves that
Australia once reached out for us.
Didn't Australia provide opportunity
and care for the dispossessed Irish? The poor of Britain? The refugees
from war and famine and persecution in the countries of Europe and
Asia? Isn't it reasonable to say that if we can build a prosperous and
remarkably harmonious multicultural society in Australia, surely we can
find just solutions to the problems which beset the first Australians -
the people to whom the most injustice has been done.And, as I say, the starting point might be to recognise that the problem starts with us non-Aboriginal Australians.It
begins, I think, with the act of recognition. Recognition that it was
we who did the dispossessing. We took the traditional lands and smashed
the traditional way of life. We brought the disasters. The alcohol. We
committed the murders. We took the children from their mothers. We
practised discrimination and exclusion.It was our ignorance and
our prejudice. And our failure to imagine these things being done to
us. With some noble exceptions, we failed to make the most basic human
response and enter into their hearts and minds. We failed to ask - how
would I feel if this were done to me?As a consequence, we failed to see that what we were doing degraded all of us.If
we needed a reminder of this, we received it this year. The Report of
the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody showed with
devastating clarity that the past lives on in inequality, racism and
injustice in the prejudice and ignorance of non-Aboriginal Australians,
and in the demoralisation and desperation, the fractured identity, of
so many Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders.For all this, I
do not believe that the Report should fill us with guilt. Down the
years, there has been no shortage of guilt, but it has not produced the
responses we need. Guilt is not a very constructive emotion.
I think what we need to do is open our hearts a bit.
All of us.
Perhaps when we recognise what we have in common we will see the things which must be done - the practical things.There
is something of this in the creation of the Council for Aboriginal
Reconciliation. The council's mission is to forge a new partnership
built on justice and equity and an appreciation of the heritage of
Australia's indigenous people. In the abstract those terms are
meaningles. We have to give meaning to 'justice' and 'equity' - and, as
I have said several times this year, we will only give them meaning
when we commit ourselves to achieving concrete results.If we
improve the living conditions in one town, they will improve in
another. And another. If we raise the standard of health by 20 per cent
one year, it will be raised more the next. if we open one door others
will follow.When we see improvement, when we see more dignity,
more confidence, more happiness - we will know we are going to win. We
need these practical building blocks of change.
The Mabo
judgment should be seen as one of these. By doing away with the bizarre
conceit that this continent had no owners prior to the settlement of
Europeans, Mabo establishes a fundamental truth and lays the basis for
justice. It will be much easier to work from that basis than has ever
been the case in the past.For this reason alone we should
ignore the isolated outbreaks of hysteria and hostility of the past few
months. Mabo is an historic decision - we can make it an historic
turning point, the basis of a new relationship between indigenous and
non-Aboriginal Australians.The message should be that there is
nothing to fear or to lose in the recognition of historical truth, or
the extension of social justice, or the deepening of Australian social
democracy to include indigenous Australians.
There is everything to gain.
Even
the unhappy past speaks for this. Where Aboriginal Australians have
been included in the life of Australia they have made remarkable
contributions. Economic contributions, particularly in the pastoral and
agricultural industry. They are there in the frontier and exploration
history of Australia. They are there in the ways. In sport ot an
extraordinary degree. In literature and art and music.In all
these things they have shaped our knowledge of this continent and of
ourselves. They have shaped our identity. They are there in the
Australian legend. We should never forget - they helped build this
nation. And if we have a sense of justice, as well as common sense, we
will forge a new partnership.As I said, it might help us if we
non-Aboriginal Australians imaigined ourselves dispossessed of land we
have lived on for 50 000 years - and then imagined ouselves told that
it had never been ours.Imagine if ours was the oldest culture
in tehworld and we were told that it was worthless. Imagine if we had
resisted this settlement, suffered and died in the defence of our land,
and then were told in history books that we had given up without a
fight. Imagine if non-Aboriginal Australians had served their country
in peace and war and were then ignored in history books. Imagine if our
feats on sporting fields had inspired admiration and patriotism and yet
did nothing to diminish prejudice. Imagine if our spiritual life was
denied and ridiculed.Imagine if we had suffed the injustice and then were blamed for it. It seems to me that if we can imagine the injustice then we can imagine its opposite. And we can have justice.I
say that for two reasons: I say it because I believe that the great
things about Australian social democracy reflect a fundamental belief
in justice. And I say it because in so many other areas we have proved
our capacity over the years to go on extending the realism of
participating, oppotunity and care.Just as Australian living in
the relatively narrow and insular Australia of the 1960s imagined a
culturally diverse, worldly and open Australia, and in a generation
turned the idea into reality, so we can turn the goals of
reconciliation into reality.All over Australia, Aboriginal and Torres
Strait Islander communities are taking charge of their own lives. And
assistance with the problems which chronically beset them is at last
being made available in ways developed by the communities themselves.
If these things offer hope, so does the fact that this generation of
Australians is better informed about Aboriginal culture and ahievement,
and about the injustice that has been done, than any generation before.We
are beginning to more generally appreciate the depth and the diversity
of Aboriginal and Torrest Strait Islander cultures. From their music
and art and dance we are beginning to recognise how much richer our
national life and identity will be for the participation of Aboriginals
and Torres Strait Islanders. We are beginning to learn what the
indigenous people have known for many thousands of years - how to live
with our physical environment.Ever so gradually we are learning
how to see Australia through Aboriginal eyes, beginning to recognise
the wisdom contained in their epic story.I think we are beginning to see how much we owe the indigenous Australians and how much we have lost by living so apart. I said we non-indigenous Australians should try to imagine the Aboriginal view. It can't be too hard. Someone imagined this event today, and it is now a marvellous reality and a great reason for hope.There
is one thing today we cannot imagine. We cannot imagine that the
descendants of people whose genius and resilience maintained a culture
here through 50 000 years or more, through cataclysmic changes to the
climate and environment, and who then survived two centuries of
dispossession and abuse, will be denied their place in the modern
Australian nation. We cannot imagine that.
We cannot imagine that we will fail.
And with the spirit that is here today I am confident that we won't.
I am confident that we will succeed in this decade.
Thank you.
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| | Posted 2/13/2008 11:29 AM - 74 Views - 6 eProps - 3 comments
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