The following is the concluding portion of a paper prepared by the Committee to Defend Black Rights and presented by the CDBR's chairperson, Helen Corbett, to the United Nations Working Group on Indigenous Populations. Earlier parts of the paper were printed in the two previous issues of 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳.
This is our two hundred and fourth year of invasion. Our customary law was overthrown by the colonialists in 1788 and replaced by a legal system based on a lie, terra nullius, meaning empty land. This false legal framework still exists today. It allowed the implementation of racist assimilationist policies which gave the state the power to steal from our families.
Today our death rate is four times higher than for non-Aboriginal Australians, life expectancy is up to 22 years shorter, infant mortality rates are up to three times higher and hospitalisation rates three to five times greater. We have the highest levels of unemployment for any group in Australia. In fact, every indicator of social and economic status shows that our people continue to suffer a colonised existence in poverty.
Our situation continues to deteriorate. We fear the long term effects of "white law and order" on our children, the next generations and our culture. Aboriginal people live in a society which offers them no legal care and protection, a basic human right as well as a right of citizenship.
The families of the victims fought this campaign for basic human rights. We have done it the hard way, without vast government support, through voluntary work. The families are treated with disrespect and continue to have their rights ignored. At our national families conference in 1990, before the final National Report of the royal commission, many family members openly despaired at the callous way their relatives were being ridiculed and slandered in the commission. Many did not even receive the report on their relative's death before it hit the newspapers.
We are angry that CDBR has set itself up to assist the families of those who died in custody and yet the government does not assist us to give them support.
Over five months ago we submitted to the Government's Aboriginal administrative department, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission, for funds to hold a national families conference to allow the families to get together and have their say about the royal commission's recommendations. In particular, they want to begin by deciding what counselling services are needed to assist them through the grieving process.
One of my close friends, the mother of a 19-year-old boy found hung in an Adelaide jail, recently took her own life in despair at the injustices she still fought. She was a national member of the CDBR.
Many families are still angry and confused that after all the pain of retelling the death of their relative, there is still no action, no-one has been charged and others continue to die in the same way. The families involved are showing signs of suffering the same fates as their lost children, parents, sisters and brothers.
We demand that the Australian government take whatever steps are necessary to fund the CDBR to hold a national families conference.
CDBR believes the time has come for the Australian government to recognise that its colonialist policies are not working for Aboriginal people.
We have the right to live. Saying that there will be millions of dollars handed out is not good enough.
We have the right to enjoy the wealth of our stolen lands. Give us the national land rights promised to us by this government eight years ago. We cannot afford to wait another 10 years for the government's reconciliation process to, maybe, offer us some undefined "instrument of reconciliation". We need our lands returned to us now, with compensation, to begin rebuilding our communities.
CDBR has a National Strategy for Action which attempts to build the independent, community-based alternatives to the government's paternalistic treatment. We are seeking the support of this forum for our people's efforts to re-establish our control over our lives.
Solutions do exist, yet they have to come from the Aboriginal community. Aboriginal men and women need to be involved in the process of redefining and articulating customary law; that is, mechanisms of social organisation and social control which allowed Aboriginal society to function before the invasion. We can run and police our own lives in our own communities on our own lands using our resources and with compensation for the invasion of our nations.
We demand that our innocent people are released from jails and police cells.
We demand that the racist police and murderers are locked up.
If in five years' time our demands have not been met, and our voices are still being institutionally silenced, the angry cries from our communities will reach levels that no number of police or tactical response teams will be able to silence.