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No one should fear a treaty

By PATRICK DODSON

16 August 2001- At the time of Federation, Aboriginal peoples were excluded from the exercise of nation-building. Today, we are denied any real say in our destiny.

At every major opportunity for us as a nation to turn the corner together, we have failed to rearrange the fundamentals of our relationship.

Instead, we have maintained the pattern that has been in place since colonisation - a pattern of sublimating the rights, needs and interests of Aboriginal peoples to reinforce and buttress the rights, needs and interests of the dominant society.

Anything uniquely indigenous has been viewed as an obstacle to the Western enjoyment of superiority.

When Aboriginal people raise issues that are about substantive equality requiring special measure for indigenous advancement and nation completeness, the predictable reaction by various influential groups is that either these are requests that smack of apartheid, or they will undermine the democracy of the country, or they are not in the spirit of the "fair go" for all.

Politicians have played their games around one or the other of these polarities, with the net effect being, at best, incremental change and improvement, and at worse, capitulation to the prejudices against Aboriginal people, with the result of more measures of assimilation being programmed.

When Aborigines talk about their rights, they are not meant to be rights beyond the rights that other Australians enjoy. There's nothing to be scared of here.

What we are talking about are fundamentally two things. Firstly, those rights that support our need to be Aboriginal people within our tradition and culture within the complexity of the modern Australian democracy.

And secondly, the capacity to enjoy the fullness of citizenship in Australia in all aspects. And what this means is plain - that our children will not have to face 20 years less life than another Australian child born on the same day.

Therefore, the need for structural change for our relationships is obvious to any fair-minded Australian.

The stop-start programs and policy options of governments over the past 200 years or so, and especially since Federation, have kept us as the playthings of governments. At the moment we are a bit like toys that have been discarded but not yet thrown in the bin.

It is because of these uncertainties, and the insecurities of our lives and our future under government control, that we have reawakened the call for a treaty between the government and us.

As a nation, we've got to find the courage to face that prospect and I wouldn't have thought it so daunting. When I deal with lawyers, business people, Aboriginal and other groups in society, there are contracts often involved.

Again, the notion of a treaty is not something Australian people should fear, because a treaty is about agreement, not division.

A treaty is necessary to:

• Establish and support the recognition of the unique identity of Aboriginal people on their terms.
• Recognise Aboriginal people as people with rights to the same standard of service expected by others, but also our rights to be indigenous and to manage our own societies on our own lands at our own pace and in our own way.
• Provide a framework where international human rights are guaranteed, where national citizenship rights are supported and where specific indigenous cultural rights are protected.

No one pretends that achieving an Australian treaty will be easy. But ultimately, a treaty would represent real "practical reconciliation" rather than more government programs decided within policy frameworks that we have little say over.

It will come when we realise that the only alternatives are fear, racism, ignorance and continuing social dislocation.

When we look back at the 1967 referendum, we are appalled to think that, until then, Aboriginal people had not been regarded as citizens in this country. We would be ashamed if the '67 referendum had not occurred.

Similarly, we do not want to find ourselves in a position 20 years from now looking back at these times and realising that we had missed significant opportunities to sign off on an agreement - an agreement that is as important to our nation today as the referendum was in 1967.

Patrick Dodson is a former chairman of the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation. This is an edited extract of his speech to the National Press Club in Canberra yesterday.

Clip from the The Age

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