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The Aborigines are still waiting for equality

By GREG ANSLEY

Eddie Mabo

8 May 2002 - Umuwa is a tiny speck in the vast South Australian Outback, nestling at the foot of the Musgrave Ranges, south of Alice Springs on the border with the Northern Territory.

A short distance to the west is the equally vast and barren interior of Western Australia; to the east, the southern reaches of the Simpson Desert.

Were it not for a tragedy unfolding in Umuwa, most of Australia would have no idea of the existence of the town, which acts as administrative centre for the lands of the Anangu Pitjantjitjara people - a 103,000sq km expanse covering one-tenth of the state given back to its traditional owners two decades ago.

Coroner Wayne Chivell is inquiring into the deaths of three people from petrol sniffing. All were in their 20s, one the mother of two children, aged 1 and 3.

The deaths have rekindled alarm and dismay at a widespread plague of petrol sniffing in Aboriginal communities, first recognised in a Northern Territory inquest three years ago that led to the establishment of an interstate committee to study indigenous substance abuse.

It has so far met only twice.

But there is an added melancholy to the inquest into the deaths of Kunmanara Hunt, 25, Kunmanara Ken, 27, and Kunmanara Thompson: as Chivell continued his hearings the nation marked the 10th anniversary of the High Court's Mabo land rights decision, which dismissed the fiction of terra nullius - that colonisation was justified because Australia was empty - and laid the basis for land to be returned to its traditional owners.

It could not be said that Australia celebrated the anniversary. Outside the indigenous community the first decade of a decision considered by many to be of greater significance than the legal recognition of Aborigines and their right to vote passed almost unnoticed.

Much of the promise of Mabo remains unfulfilled, both in the return of land and its failure to accelerate economic and social advancement for the Aborigines and to meet the expectations of reconciliation between black and white.

To date there have been 30 determinations that native title continues to exist - 24 reached by negotiation rather than litigation - about 3000 agreements on land use and the granting of native title to 17 Torres Strait Islands, as well as the Mer Island claim that led to the historic High Court decision on June 3, 1992.

But 580 claims have yet to be dealt with, not all of them likely to succeed.

As the Mabo anniversary neared, the High Court was again sitting on what is likely to be a test case on the workings of the Mabo Native Title Act, hearing the Yorta Yorta people's appeal against two earlier court findings that their right to 2000sq km of Victoria and New South Wales was lost when colonists pushed them from it in the 19th century.

The High Court's Mabo decision ruled that native title could exist only if the traditional owners of the land could prove continuous occupation and customary use since colonisation: the Yorta Yorta had been moved from their land to a mission reserve.

Nor have the expected economic and social improvements emerged. Aborigines remain a desperately Third-World society in one of the world's richest countries, racked by poverty, high unemployment, alcohol and drug abuse, and appalling health standards.

Among Australia's 528,000 Aborigines, death rates are 2 1/2 times as high as those for the rest of the population; life expectancy for males is just 51, and females 62, about 20 years less than the national average; their babies are three times as likely to die as infants; and three times as many indigenous mothers die giving birth.

Aborigines are eight times as likely to die of diabetes, more than three times as likely to die from respiratory disease, more than twice as likely to die from heart disease or injuries inflicted by accident, assault or self-harm, and 1 1/2 times more likely to die of cancer.

Crime and the symptoms of despair are endemic, and more than a decade after the landmark royal commission into Aboriginal deaths in custody more indigenous prisoners are in the nation's jails and more than ever are dying.

The number of indigenous prisoners has increased at an average rate of 8 per cent a year - compared with 3 per cent for the rest of the population - and the rate of Aboriginal imprisonment is now almost 15 times higher than for other Australians.

"This hardly raises a murmur of discontent, let alone outrage, among the broader community," says Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander social justice commissioner William Jonas in his latest annual report. "These facts either go unnoticed, or perhaps even worse in an age of reconciliation, are simply accepted and not challenged."

The cycle of despair remains unbroken.

Aboriginal researcher Kado Muir, of Curtin University's centre for the management of arid environments, began an address to a native title forum with the story of his 15-year-old nephew's arson rampage in the West Australian wheatbelt town of Leonora that destroyed three cars and a fish and chip shop.

"This young fella is a brilliant hunter," Muir said. "He can kill a goanna with a shot to the head by a shanghai from 20 or more paces, yet he cannot read or write. All the children in his age group cannot read or write, and struggle to tell the time on a non-digital clock.

"The tragedy to me is that none of these kids will finish school and none will be able to get a job. They have a career path that includes the dole and police lockups."

For Muir, and many other Aborigines, the Mabo native title law promised to help to break that cycle by returning more to indigenous Australia much more than merely the land of their ancestors.

"Native title is not about land access, it is not about process. Native title is about people, the indigenous people of Australia. It is about our right to be a people, to have an identity, to practise our beliefs and to create our future.

"What good is a native title determination, a land access agreement or a framework agreement if it doesn't make a difference in the lives of people?"

This was the promise of Mabo.

A decade on from the High Court's decision, National Native Title Tribunal president Graeme Neate acknowledges that significant issues remain unresolved and that many Aborigines remain unhappy.

But he says there has been great progress. "To those who argue that native title has delivered little if anything to indigenous Australians I offer this challenge - ask those people whose native title has been recognised, or who have negotiated agreements in relation to projects, what their experience has been.

"Ask the Kuareg people of the Torres Strait, the Wik peoples of western Cape York, the Arakwal people of Byron Bay, the Spinifex people of Western Australia or the Indjilandji people of Queensland."

Neate says Mabo has forced Australians to acknowledge a past they had missed or ignored and enabled them to look ahead to opportunities to create a fairer community, while previously invisible or marginalised Aborigines are now seen and given a place at the table.

Yvonne Stewart, of the Byron Bay, northern NSW Arakwal people, told the tribunal: "Our mob is walking around much prouder with their heads up. People smile much more now. There's worth put back into our people. There was never any respect before."

But others remain disappointed, even angry.

"After 10 years there's a hell of a lot of disappointment," says Central Land Council, Alice Springs, director David Ross. "Maybe we need more than 10 years, after 200 years of getting done over."

North Queensland Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island Commissioner Jenny Pryor adds: "Many groups of our people around Australia remain landless, many are unable to use the land they inherited from their ancestors, many are also confused about the complicated process for native title.

Social Justice Commissioner, William Jonas

"It is not surprising, therefore, that many conflicts have emerged among indigenous people over native title. It is also not surprising that many indigenous people and their leaders feel that native title has not improved their lives."

Social Justice Commissioner William Jonas is equally frustrated.

He believes the acknowledgement in native title of the inherent rights of indigenous people should have produced social gains by recognising the equal value of the laws and traditions of Aboriginal culture, economic gains through control of valuable assets, and political advancement.

"Australia has had a decade to establish a fair and just system to allow the benefits of inherent rights to be enjoyed by indigenous people," he wrote in his report to the federal Parliament. "This has not eventuated."

Despite international condemnation of human rights failings under the present native title system, the fatal gaps left in the treatment of Aboriginals by police and courts, despite improvements since the Deaths in Custody royal commission, and the mass marches across Australia in support of reconciliation, indigenous Australia is still trapped in its cycle.

Nothing has changed in the legal structure of native title, Jonas says, nor has the federal Government endorsed the acclaimed declaration toward reconciliation published by the now-defunct Reconciliation Council.

A decade after Mabo, much remains to be done.

Source: New Zealand Herald

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