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Aborigines to see Queen at Palace

By Robert Hardman

11 October 1999 - A GROUP of Australian Aboriginal leaders will have a historic meeting with the Queen at Buckingham Palace this week to air their hopes for constitutional reform and to discuss "unfinished business" with Britain.

The private meeting on Wednesday with the five-strong delegation, the first of its sort, will last 40 minutes. Although the Queen has met many Aboriginal people during her visits to Australia, no such delegation has visited the Palace before and the meeting comes at a particularly sensitive time. In less than a month, Australians will vote on their links with the Crown.

Patrick Dodson, a delegation member, said yesterday: "On the eve of the centenary of federation, and as Australia considers its constitutional ties with the Crown and reconciliation with indigenous people, it is timely to explore the unfinished business of the historical relationship between Britain and Australia's first peoples."

The delegation has no official status and is being funded by two Australian charitable foundations and the British charity, Pilotlight. However, the Australian government will be monitoring the visit closely. Mr Dodson, chairman of the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation, will present the Queen with a photograph of her encounter with his grandfather during her 1963 tour of Australia.

On that occasion, his grandfather complained to the Queen that he was not a citizen of his own country. Australia did not grant citizenship to Aboriginal people until 1967.

Today's Aboriginal communities are campaigning to be recognised constitutionally as Australia's indigenous people and want state protection of their culture and the return of traditional lands where possible.

This article is from The Daily Telegraph

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