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We have a dream: an Australia Day we can all celebrate

Richard Frankland and Peter Lewis

21 January 2009 - MARTIN Luther King jnr's famous "I Have a Dream" speech pivots on the images of the sons of former slaves and former slave owners sitting together at the table of brotherhood and little black girls and boys joining hands with little white girls and boys as brothers and sisters.

It is these images of racial harmony and social unity, which at the time seemed so utopian and so impossible, that give the speech its eternal power.

Racial harmony should not be hard to achieve, as our personal experience shows.

Each year in summer the Lewis and Frankland families spend important time together. The Lewises, who are not of indigenous background, travel four hours west of Melbourne to Gunditjmara country to visit the Frankland family. Our families spend time together and our children play together on Richard's traditional land not out of some guided reconciliation process but just because we have fun together.

It's just a natural thing for us to do.

But as we contemplate Australia/Invasion/Survival Day we cannot but note how sadly unusual our situation is.

After 16 years of varying courageous attempts at reconciliation, buffeted and worn out by the harsh years of the Howard government, we are yet to hear an equivalent speech to King's in this country.

The apology last year was a move towards it, as was its more direct and eloquent predecessor, the Redfern Speech, but the sons and daughters of the dispossessed do not commonly hold hands with the sons and daughters of the dispossessors.

The dark fog of colonisation still clouds our relationships and the non-indigenous terra nullius blindness still pervades their vision of this land and its First Peoples.

And this cloud is always most obvious on Australia /Invasion /Survival Day a day whose naming, according to which side you are on, is so filled with mixed emotions and contradictions. It will always be so as long as it happens on stolen land. There is much unfinished business between our peoples. Amid the disparity and misunderstandings between us there are shards of hope that might prick us into action but the fog holds us back.

But we too have a dream.

It is a dream that all traditional owners have their land back and may welcome others onto it.

A dream that every Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander person will see their many and varied cultures celebrated by all Australians.

A dream that every non-indigenous Australian can say "hello" in the language of the local First People.

A dream that every school flies all the flags of this nation and teaches the many cultures First and other of this land.

A dream that every Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander child grows up strong in culture and sees their culture honoured and celebrated by every non-indigenous child.

A dream of a nation with many treaties and a constitution that acknowledges and protects Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander sovereignties and cultures.

A dream of one nation made up of many nations.

Then we may see the health gap closed and the identity confusion of Australia/Invasion/Survival Day resolved. Perhaps we will call it Achievement Day or Treaty Day.

But whatever we call it, hopefully it will be a day we will all own, a day on which we can all be proud and a day we can all willingly celebrate.

Richard Frankland is an Aboriginal activist, singer/songwriter, author and film director. Peter Lewis is the chairman of Australians for Native Title and Reconciliation in Victoria.

Source: The Age

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