home | news l

In memory of reconciliation

75th anniversary sydney bridge - walking for reconciliation

By Phillip Adams

31 March 2007 - Not so very long ago Yothu Yindi's Treaty seemed the biggest Australian hit since Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport. Perhaps you dimly remember a time when "reconciliation" was in the political vocabulary and when Cathy Freeman did her lap of honour with the Aboriginal flag? It was a time of some optimism for Australia's future, based on an acknowledgment of the past.

Perhaps most people singing Mandawuy's song hadn't really thought about the lyrics. At East Kew Primary our loud renditions of Onward, Christian Soldiers in Religious Instruction class did not signify missionary zeal; it was just fun to sing. But Treaty was an anthem for a noble cause – already half-forgotten when the song was written.

A reader, Tom Spencer, sent me a copy of an open letter on the treaty issue which appeared in the national media in 1979. I'd all but forgotten it. It seemed as remote in history as a Dead Sea Scroll. But as Tom pointed out, it made fascinating reading – as did the list of signatories.

Headed "We call for a treaty within Australia, between Australians", it began: "We the undersigned Australians, of European descent, believe that the experience since 1788 has demonstrated the need for the status and rights of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders to be established in a Treaty, Covenant or Convention." It pointed out that Australia was the only former British colony not to recognise native title, citing the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi in New Zealand and the Papuan agreement of 1884 as precedents.

The idea of a treaty had been unanimously supported at the second National Aboriginal Conference that year. The open letter asked for negotiations on the issue to cover protection of Aboriginal identity, language, law and culture, as well as land – and a degree of influence over natural resources on Aboriginal land.

Decades later some of these issues have been addressed, most notably by the High Court decision on Mabo, but the treaty, like the rhetorical idea of "reconciliation", has been dumped. Having moved forward steadily after the referendum in the 1960s, relationships between black and white are now deteriorating again – and a backlash generated by right-wing revisionists associated with Quadrant magazine has given a renewed licence for bigotry.

Which makes the list of signatories to the treaty proposal both fascinating and, in some cases, amazing.
The treaty committee was headed by my old friend Dr H.C. "Nugget" Coombs, with a committee including Dymphna Clark and the great poet Judith Wright. Now all dead. Those signing the document could be dismissed by 21st-century conservatives as the "usual suspects". Given alphabetical order, I'm first cab off the rank, with Fred Williams, David Williamson and Patrick White rounding things off.

Yes, the usual suspects are there. Professors, painters and pastoralists. Bishops, biologists and ballet dancers. Generals and diplomats, authors and economists – including Lance Barnard, Charles Birch, Kim Bonython, Arthur Boyd, John Burton, Fred Hollows, Fred Gruen, Alan Marshall, Manning Clark, Russell Drysdale, Mary Durack, Geoffrey Fairbairn, Frank Fenner, Len French, Stephen FitzGerald, Xavier Herbert, Ken Inglis, Tom Keneally, John Meillon, Mark Oliphant, Peggy van Praagh, Edward St John, Peter Sculthorpe, Douglas Stewart, Anne Summers and Christina Stead. All in all, 96 sponsors.

Including the surprises. At number two in the alphabetical listing, Richard Alston. Destined to become the nemesis of the ABC, he was then identified as national president of the United Nations Association. Ah, what a long journey it's been for him! From liberal to Liberal Wet to one of the hard men of the Howard Government. The Government that refused to say sorry. The Government that not only put reconciliation on the backburner but took the stove to the tip.

And in the Bs? Between R.M. Berndt and Arthur Boyd, a certain Professor Geoffrey Blainey. At that time Geoff was famous for Triumph of the Nomads, his scholarly salute to ancient Aboriginal history. But he was destined to become Howard's favourite historian, the antidote to Manning Clark, until ousted from the position by Keith Windschuttle, the fiercest critic of the "black armband" view.

And in 1979 Blainey signed the same document as Clark! The same appeal to the national conscience and the federal Government (hardly the same thing) for a treaty with the indigenous peoples. Mind you, 30 years ago Windschuttle was a leftie and would probably have been a co-sponsor, too. If asked.

"There was no recognition of Aboriginal land ownership," says the preamble, "no compensation for dispossession ... despite the resistance of the Aboriginal tribes to their conquerors." These days the Right would reject those sentiments, those facts, with contempt and derision.

Source:The Australian

Further information: reconciliation issues page - includes news index and external links

|| click to go to the top of this page