Recognition of Indigenous Peoples

[Steel Tiger]

Yesterday, our Prime Minister, John Howard, made a significant reversal of policy with regard to the Australian Aborigines. Formerly he had refused to make any symbolic gesture of restitution or recognition claiming that it was of no value. Now he is going to call a referendum to find out if the people of Australia want the indigenous people recognised in our constution, saying that a symbolic gesture does have some value.

It will not have any legal standing apparently, but we have other statutes and precedents to deal with the legal.

It is likely to produce a rare thing in Australian politics a 'Yes' majority on a referendum. The Australian public are notorious for voting 'No' in referenda.


What do you think about the idea of this sort of symbolic recognition? Does it hurt or harm the position of indigenous peoples?

 

[exile]

Yesterday, our Prime Minister, John Howard, made a significant reversal of policy with regard to the Australian Aborigines. Formerly he had refused to make any symbolic gesture of restitution or recognition claiming that it was of no value. Now he is going to call a referendum to find out if the people of Australia want the indigenous people recognised in our constution, saying that a symbolic gesture does have some value.

It will not have any legal standing apparently, but we have other statutes and precedents to deal with the legal.

It is likely to produce a rare thing in Australian politics a 'Yes' majority on a referendum. The Australian public are notorious for voting 'No' in referenda.


What do you think about the idea of this sort of symbolic recognition? Does it hurt or harm the position of indigenous peoples?

Well, let's put it like this. The indigenous peoples of Australia, like their counterparts in North America, had their land forcibly expropriated, their languages deliberately supressed, and their populations more than decimated by the expansion of European populations into their aboriginal territories, with social convulsions that are still being felt. And much of official Australian history, just as much of official NAmerican history, has in effect denied these facts, just as the Japanese continue, in their history textbooks, to deny the brutality and at times outright atrocities of their colonial regimes in Okinawa, China and Korea. Would modern, contemporary Australians, of any ethnic stripe, view these past horrors with indifference? Would they be willing to see them reenacted? I'd like to believe that the answer is no, that we've all come too far for that, and the same for North America. But if the facts aren't confronted, how are you guys—and us guys over here—to avoid being, in effect, collaborators in the evils of past generations—evils that our chunk of the population are direct beneficiaries of?

So it seems to me that it would be a healthy thing, for all concerned, to start by acknowledging that there were terrible injustices done—things that we and our descendents would complain bitterly about, and justly so, if they were done to us. That these things did happen and that they were wrong. It would be a way of marking the moral distance we've come from the days when killing a member of an aboriginal group, for whatever reason, wasn't, in many if not most cases, considered to be quite murder, because the victims weren't quite human.

My .02 $ (US)....

 

[Steel Tiger]

I too can see the similarities between Australia and the United States with regard to the plight of indigenous peoples and I wonder how we have been able to go so long without trying in some way to redress the abominable mistakes of the past.

I think you have hit on the reasons this sort of thing needs to be done. It is something I think our government has been misunderstanding for a long time. The reason the PM has decided to do this may be the looming election but it is a step in the right direction and will have significant effects for the general public now and in the future.

 

[exile]

I too can see the similarities between Australia and the United States with regard to the plight of indigenous peoples and I wonder how we have been able to go so long without trying in some way to redress the abominable mistakes of the past.

I think you have hit on the reasons this sort of thing needs to be done. It is something I think our government has been misunderstanding for a long time. The reason the PM has decided to do this may be the looming election but it is a step in the right direction and will have significant effects for the general public now and in the future.

I hope it works out that way, S_T. I've never believed in wallowing in guilt for its own sake; that generally does no one any good. But I do think there's more than a grain of truth to Santayana's aphorism about those who ignore the past being doomed to repeat it, so facing it is a way of ensuring that something I think we all feel should not have happened doesn't happen again. But I also think there's a more important reason for doing this, and it's not easy to articulate. I don't think the current generation of Australians is responsible for the persecution of the aboriginal peoples of the continent any more than the current generation of North Americans is responsible for the persecution, and in some cases mass murder, of Native American people during the western expansion of the European immigrant population which landed here in the 15th c. and onwards. But it's not enough—for our own sakes!—to say this, and feel comfortable because we didn't do it; we need to exercise our own power to make it clear to all of the members of our societies, whether from indigenous groups (who, in the case of Australia, were living on the land for 40,000 years before the first European settlements were established) or not, that we actively seek out a more equitable set of social relationships, that we aren't bound by the ethnic and class tribal loyalties of the past, that we can, by an act of political will, attempt to redefine social and political relationships amongst the peoples living in our respective countries in a way that conforms better to our own view of equity and justice. The kind of thing Howard is talking about, for his own reasons, is also a chance for the nation to explicitly define itself as a different kind of place, a fairer place, than it was for much of its history. I think something like that would be good for American and Canadian society as well, myself—again, not to wallow in neurotic guilt, but on the contrary, to show our own ethical mettle.

 

[Big Don]

While there is nothing really wrong with a pointless gesture, there isn't much right with it either.
Government really has better things to spend time on, then again, while they were debating this, they weren't raising taxes...

 

[Steel Tiger]

While there is nothing really wrong with a pointless gesture, there isn't much right with it either.
Government really has better things to spend time on, then again, while they were debating this, they weren't raising taxes...

This is an issue that has festered in Australia for a long time. The Aborigines were not recognised as full members of society until the early 1970s (they were wards of the state before this with no voting rights). The problem for our current government, is that in saying the nation is sorry for the treatment of the indigenous people it would appear that he was saying he was personally sorry and thus responsible.

By adding a statement to the preamble to the constitution the government would be recognising that the aborigines were the first inhabitants of the continent. What it will do is extinguish the Terra Nullius (implying it was uninhabited) description that the British used in the 18th century to justify the colonisation of the land without regard to the indigenous people.

 

[Bigshadow]

Being an apologist is a new fad these days. I guess it gives everyone doing it a warm fuzzy, but really does nothing for the people in question.

 

[Makalakumu]

What do you think about the idea of this sort of symbolic recognition? Does it hurt or harm the position of indigenous peoples?

For the Australians, I think it would be a good move. The Aussies, just like the Yanks, have got a lot to atone for when it comes to their native people. And with the Aussies, a lot of that stuff is embaressingly recent...ie shooting aborigines down from planes and basically stealing and entire generation of children and forcing them to go to state schools as late as 1964.

ST, I'm not saying what Oz did is any worse then what the US did, in fact, I would say the US probably takes the cake when it comes to the genocide of its native people, however, there are going to be a lot of people in your country who have direct memories and were directly affected by your countries recent government policies.

How does that strong emotional peice affect this? Could it be that white australia feels a lot of guilt and the no vote is an attempt to turn away from it?

 

[meth18au]

Being an apologist is a new fad these days. I guess it gives everyone doing it a warm fuzzy, but really does nothing for the people in question.

I'll have to 2nd Big Shadow on this. What is an apology going to accomplish? It is done, it is symbolic only. Unfortunately, it is later generations that must fix the mistakes of earlier generations. However I don't see an apology as being over useful.


In my case, any harm done to Aboriginal people was done before I was born, and before my decedents were even in Australia. They were still in Italy, or traveling all over Europe avoiding the catastrophes of WW2. Don't get me wrong though, I think our country has a long way to go in helping our indigenous population integrate into society, and overcome many problems they are experiencing. I just don't agree the apology should be harped upon as being anything more than a political maneuver from our government!!!


Peace

 

[Steel Tiger]

In my case, any harm done to Aboriginal people was done before I was born, and before my decedents were even in Australia. They were still in Italy, or traveling all over Europe avoiding the catastrophes of WW2. Don't get me wrong though, I think our country has a long way to go in helping our indigenous population integrate into society, and overcome many problems they are experiencing. I just don't agree the apology should be harped upon as being anything more than a political maneuver from our government!!!


Peace

This is where a big problem appears between the indigenous and introduced cultures. My family has been in Australia since 1793 (Second Fleet) and has not been involved in the suppression of the Aborigines in a direct way (except maybe for one guy, but its not clear at the moment). Indirectly, we have occupied land and forced the Aborigines to change their way of doing things just by being here. But I did not do these things myself, they are the sins of my fathers. The Aboringinal viewpoint on this, however, is that the actions of a family are the actions of that family regardless of the generations that may have passed between the action and the present.

Conflicting cultural perspectives!

One thing I sure of in all this is that it will quiet a lot of critics of the government's indigenous policies for a while.

 

[Makalakumu]

...they are the sins of my fathers...

Back in my earlier post, I referred to the embaressingly recent atrocities committed upon aborigines by aussies, thus it literally is a sin that could have been committed by your actual father. As opposed to this country where you have to go generations back in order to come to grips with the actual people in your family who did this.

I have to wonder if the recent nature of all this and the sweeping way that public opinion has changed is making most people in white austrailia wish that this had never happened. For the simple fact that so many can remember being a part of it.

Two generations ago aborigines were being shot down by airplane...

 

[Steel Tiger]

Back in my earlier post, I referred to the embaressingly recent atrocities committed upon aborigines by aussies, thus it literally is a sin that could have been committed by your actual father. As opposed to this country where you have to go generations back in order to come to grips with the actual people in your family who did this.

I have to wonder if the recent nature of all this and the sweeping way that public opinion has changed is making most people in white austrailia wish that this had never happened. For the simple fact that so many can remember being a part of it.

Two generations ago aborigines were being shot down by airplane...

I'm pretty sure that most people in Australia are wishing this had never happened and the sooner something can be done to assuage the national conscience the better. It wont make it go away, but it will help people deal with this aspect of our history.