BY ALISON DELLIT
January 1 marked the formal end of the 10-year process of "reconciliation" between black and white Australians set up in 1991 by the Hawke Labor government. This process, Labor argued, would address the past injustices inflicted on Australia's indigenous population, and enable black and white Australians to live together in "racial harmony".
A decade after the reconciliation process began Aborigines still have the highest rates of imprisonment, and an average life expectancy 20 years less than white Australians.
Over the last 10 years three significant pieces of "Native Title" legislation were introduced, all limiting the common law rights of Aborigines. Mandatory sentencing legislation has been introduced in the Northern Territory and Western Australia, which already jail their indigenous populations at a disportionately higher rate than other states. The findings of the Aboriginal deaths in custody commission have been almost completely ignored.
The only federally funded representative indigenous body, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC), has had its funding slashed.
All this has been accompanied by a resurgence of racist propaganda — from the far right (One Nation et al) to the "moderate" conservatives of the Howard's Coalition government.
In this context, the final set of recommendations from the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation are extremely limited. Aside from a proposal to strengthen existing intellectual property laws, all of the recommendations are either calls to implement existing policy, proposals to "monitor" the status of Aboriginal people, or proposals to make Australia more "culturally sensitive" (Constitutional recognition that Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders were the original inhabitants, changing the date of Australia Day, better educational programs).
The most substantive proposal from the council is that the government begin a process to enact an agreement or treaty, through which "unresolved issues of reconciliation can be resolved". This call has been enthusiastically taken up by ATSIC and many Aboriginal land councils, and recent polls indicate that 53% of Australians support a treaty.
Reconciliation has clearly left many "unresolved" issues for indigenous people, who remain second class citizens subject to horrendous racist discrimination. But if a treaty is going to "resolve" these issues, it will need to be fundamentally different from the reconciliation process itself.
The aims of reconciliation
The reconciliation process was originally launched as a piece of "blackwashing" for the ALP government which set it up. It was given its biggest funding boost in 1993, when Lbaor Prime Minister Paul Keating was scrambling for legitimacy following his roll back of the High Court's landmark Native Title decision. The purpose was to tie the Aboriginal peak bodies into a process of negotiation with the government which appeared to be achieving a lot, but in reality did nothing.
It provided credibility for a government actively attacking the gains made by the previous two decades of struggles by Aboriginal rights activists, while simultaneously channelling any black resistance to these attacks into negotiations and away from an open fight.
These negotiations have focused increasingly on symbolic acknowledgement of the historic injustices inflicted on Aboriginal people, and less on material changes in their present-day lives.
The reconciliation council's main aims were always symbolic. By promoting reconciliation forums, and story telling sessions, the process focused on "fostering understanding of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander culture and achievements".
This has contributed to an increased sense of respect among liberal-minded whites for traditional Aboriginal culture, although much of this "respect" is reminiscent of 18th century Europeans romantic and patronising attitudes toward pre-civilised peoples — the idealisation of the "noble savage".
The huge turn outs for the reconciliation "walks" in 2000 demonstrated that the process has also strengthened a sentiment of "sympathy" among many whitesfor black Australians' plight. But this sentiment has not developed into active political solidarity with the black struggle for land rights and for positive discrimination to eradicate the effects of more than 200 years of racist oppression.
The biggest flaw in the reconciliation process was the assumption by the Aboriginal representatives who participated in it that more progress could be made through negotiation than through organising a grassroots struggle to demand that the federal government implement measures to achieve real social justice for Aborigines.
One of the biggest mistakes of the reconciliation council was to assume that racism is simply an individual prejudice stemming from a lack of understanding of different cultures, rather than a rationalisation of the racist social practices through which the white ruling elite accumulated their private fortunes — beginning with their forcible seizure of Aboriginal land for pastoral and mining activities.
Given that reconciliation has failed to roll back the "practical racism" of the white ruling elite and its governments, it is not surprising that calls for a treaty have re-emerged from ATSIC. But will the treaty process be any different from another reconciliation process?
Content of a treaty
The initial statements of ATSIC contain no hint that it will. ATSIC chairperson Geoff Clark has not made public statements on the content of a treaty, but has described it as a process of negotiation between ATSIC and the federal government. Clark has not explained how such a process would be different in outcome from any other negotiations with previous governments.
In the December 19 Australian, Mick Dodson and Susan Pritchard argued that a treaty would primarily "provide a framework of agreed standards to inform the development of treaties and agreements between Indigenous communities and relevant local, regional, state and territory participants". In other words, they propose a negotiating process to develop more such processes.
Although Dodson and Pritchard claimed that these "treaties and agreements" would help to redress social disadvantages, they failed to explain how.
And while they listed a number of substantive issues for consideration — including "land claims settlement processes" and "self-government" — they stressed that these issues should not be discussed until a lengthy process of negotiation over the methods of negotiation has occurred, because, they claimed, "processes are as important as substantive outcomes".
Peter Yu, executive director of the Kimberley Land Council, put a more action-oriented view in December 21 Australian. Yu is one of the 10 members of ATSIC's new National Treaty Support Group, and has been arguing for a treaty for some time.
He is openly scornful of the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation, as a diversion from a "negotiated settlement". He believes a treaty is necessary as a permanent safeguard of Aboriginal rights against "the political whim of the day" — citing the stripping back of native title as an example of this.
Yu's idea of a treaty comes much closer to a bill of rights than to the Dodson and Pritchard formula for local agreements. He argues that the treaty should take up political representation, recognition of self government and also a guaranteed formula of federal funding to Aboriginal communities, as well as a guarantee of indigenous rights.
Yu also identifies that the key challenge in the treaty process is to make it a process that results in a real change in the status of Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders.
However Yu, like Dodson and Pritchard, regards a treaty as resulting simply from a process of negotiation between the government and Aboriginal communities, overseen by a committee of "eminent and credible Australians". He fails to address the crucial issue of how the racist "political whim" of the government can be overturned.
Yu represents a more radical view on the ATSIC treaty committee. The inclusion of more radical black leaders, however, will not guarantee a more radical outcome. Instead, it may tie radical leaders into a conservatising process of individual negotiation where the dice is stacked against them.
Political parties
The government is opposed to any treaty process. Instead, Prime Minister John Howard speaks of "practical reconciliation" through welfare reform. Having already managed to secure some black support for its new round of attacks on Aboriginal communities, the Coalition government has little to gain from a treaty process.
While the Australian Democrats have been the most consistent parliamentary champions of a treaty, they are clearly not the main target for ATSIC. Rather, as Michelle Grattan pointed out in the December 8 Sydney Morning Herald, "It will take a Labor government for [a treaty] to be considered".
The ALP has already made noises in support of a treaty, with Kim Beazley saying "We must look into each others eyes and find a way". No doubt Beazley intends this bonding experience to take place over a long series of negotiations between individual black "leaders" and ALP government ministers and Department of Aboriginal Affairs bureaucrats.
A different view is being put forward in the lead-up to the February 10 Western Australian state election by the Democratic Socialist Party. The DSP's candidate for the seat of Perth and the party's Perth-Fremantle district secretary, Roberto Jorquera, explains, "The treaty that we need should be a bill of rights for Aboriginal people. It must enshrine at least land rights, self government and indigenous control over funding for Aboriginal communities".
Jorquera argues that this won't be won through negotiation alone. "Like every real treaty in history, Aborigines and their non-indigenous allies will have to fight to win anything. A treaty must be negotiated from a position of strength, achieved as a result of winning broad public support for indigenous rights through street marches, large public meetings, student forums and workplace actions. We need to convince as many people as possible not just to have sympathy with indigenous people, but to join the struggle for social justice.
"This can only be done through a political movement — we have to explain the real causes of Aboriginal disadvantage and expose lies pushed by the racists. That is how we can beat back the racist backlash."
"If we don't take this approach to the treaty", Jorquera warns, "it will become yet another useless talkshop used by capitalist politicians to occupy black 'leaders' while the material conditions for Aboriginal people just get worse."