Charles Perkins
Charles Perkins is Chairman of the Aboriginal Development Commission and Secretary to the Department of Aboriginal Affairs. This is the Australia Day Address delivered in January 1984, to the Rotary Club of Melbourne. Charles Perkins argues that critics of land rights are over-reacting and that enacting the five principles adopted by the Federal Government is an essential step in rectifying injustices done to the Aboriginal people.
Tomorrow we celebrate Australia Day, but what does Australia Day mean to Australians?
To some it is an excuse for a holiday. To many others it is another meaningful move towards nationhood and, possibly, a republic.
It becomes a time to reflect on our traditions, history and national consciousness.
The message for all is national pride and achievement.
There is no doubt much has been achieved in Australia, but for whom? Australia is a healthy, prosperous country with a stable political system, a low inflation rate and a huge Gross National Product.
There is no doubt Australia has made it. Australians can be justifiably proud.
However, this is only one side of the coin.
The other side is the dark side.
This is the turbulent, unhappy and embarrassing side of the Australian national scene.
THE FACE OF INJUSTICE
This is the side which reveals the 200-year history of white/black relations in this country. It began with Captain Cook's arrival and it continues today.
I am a descendant of a once proud tribe from Central Australia -- the Arunta people.
Today we number very few and own nothing.
We live on the fringes of Alice Springs and on the outer limits of the white person's consciousness.
Aboriginal lifestyle in Australia is in the main one of dependency
We depend on governments. We depend on missions. We depend on the goodwill of the white people in authority.
We cringe (like dogs) at the prospects of the "white backlash".
We pray eternally that the white authority structure will not turn on us and impede what little progress we have made.
We ask for Land Rights with tongue in cheek knowing full well in our hearts that the country belonged to us in the first instance.
We stress through the media and other avenues the need for good health for ourselves and our children and are grateful for the crumbs of programs which do not even touch the periphery of the problem.
We stagger and stumble into each other in confusion when our identity as urban Aborigines or Aborigines per se is contested and thus allow ourselves to be psychologically moulded by others.
We then accept the debasement of the living stereotype.
We huddle on degrading missions and reserves to satisfy the greedy desires of governments and mining companies.
The urban ghetto becomes another mission in another age.
The story is still the same: we are running on the spot and going nowhere quickly.
Aboriginal affairs in this country is a national and international disgrace.
Everyone with any intelligence in this country knows this to be true and yet what is the climate of opinion?
In a recent opinion poll more than 60 per cent of Australians stated that governments are doing enough or even too much for Aboriginal people.
But what is the true story. Let me give you the Aboriginal perspective.
We have 2000 black lepers. We have triple or more the white infant mortality rate and mortality rate, ten times the prison incarceration rate and 60 per cent of our housing is slum, shanty or car body dwellings.
We have, in some areas, 98 per cent of our workforce unskilled or unemployable.
Our land, our pride and our future has been taken from us and our people buried in unmarked graves.
We wander through Australian society as beggars.
We live off the crumbs of the white Australian table and are told to be grateful.
This is what Australia Day means to Aboriginal Australians.
We celebrate with you, but there is much sadness in our joy. It is like dancing on your Mother's grave.
We know we cannot live in the past but the past lives with us.
Every day most Aborigines reflect on their position vis a vis White Australians. The present and future have no meaning if the past is not recognised for what it was.
So what can we do about it?
We are all Australians, black and white. We must live with each other so let us try in this decade to bury or to learn from the past forever.
Let us try to understand and co-operate with each other.
This decade gives some basis upon which we can consider the future of Aboriginal people.
The time for paternalism and ignorance of the facts is over.
Aborigines ask no more for sympathy and prayers.
We will play our role if given a real chance.
We are not your enemy.
We do not intend, despite the stupidity of sections of the media, like "The Australian" of recent times, to steal national parks, buildings, ovals or your homes.
REPARATIONS
We demand our rightful place in Australian society and central to all of this is Land Rights.
Land Rights is really the key.
This year and this decade, hopefully, will be one of the most significant years and decades in Aboriginal history.
This is a year which promises to see the passage of Federal Legislation which will at long last provide the legal grounds for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island people to achieve social and economic justice.
The Federal Government, through the Minister for Aboriginal Affairs, Mr Clyde Holding, has made clear its intentions to introduce Uniform Land Rights and Sacred Sites Legislation into the Federal Parliament in the Budget Session and to have it enacted.
With the granting of Land Rights, much of the massive social and economic disadvantages suffered by Aboriginal people can be overcome.
Land provides not just a base for the economic development of Aboriginal communities and individuals. It provides a base for the restoration of Aboriginal society.
Aboriginal society was, and can be again, a spiritually, culturally and politically rich society. Given the opportunity, Aboriginal people will make a positive contribution to Australia.
People often underestimate Aboriginal people's contribution to the Australian social and cultural lifestyle.
Our contributions in sport are well known. Also, we produce what is internationally and nationally fast becoming recognised as the finest abstract and symbolic art in the world.
We have preserved with great care the world's oldest cave paintings.
Recent research, at Lake Mungo in western New South Wales, shows that Aboriginal culture is the oldest in the world, the very oldest by far.
Aboriginal religion is older by about 16,000 years than Egyptian religion and culture -- previously regarded as the oldest known organised religion.
In our long history we were, above all, responsible for the preservation of the Australian environment. We are not latter day Harry Butlers, thank God.
The land and its flora and fauna were -- and still are by a great many of our people -- regarded with reverence.
The destruction of the environment was unknown. Soil erosion, floods caused by man-made developments and disease and pest plagues were unknown.
All these damaging phenomena were introduced by European settlers.
Those settlers came to a country with vast tracts of rich lands and many of them, through sheer greed, wrecked huge areas of it.
The Aboriginal people, whose great respect for the land resulted in wealth for many settlers, received nothing and lost much.
Much of Aboriginal culture, religion, social cohesion and lifestyle was destroyed.
It should not be forgotten that the present Federal Government's proposed Land Rights and Sacred Sites Legislation action stems from the 1967 referendum in which 97% of Australians gave the Commonwealth over-riding powers in Aboriginal affairs. Australia should not now renege on its commitment.
Mr Holding set the scene for this legislation by introducing into the Parliament last month a resolution which defined the basic principles of any government's actions in Aboriginal affairs.
The resolution acknowledges that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people owned Australia for many thousands of years before British settlement -- 40,000 years in fact, according to carbon dating and other archeological evidence.
It acknowledges that no agreement was ever made between white settlers and Aboriginal people about ownership of the land, that basic human rights were disregarded, that Aboriginal people were dispossessed of their property and that our society was shattered to the extent that our people are today the single most disadvantaged socio-economic group in Australia.
The resolution recognises that this inequality exists and persists despite the efforts in recent years of Federal, State and Territory Governments.
It then sets out five basic principles that will guide the Government on land rights, thereby allowing Aboriginal people to attain control of their own lives.
The five principles are: --
- Aboriginal land to be held under inalienable freehold title;
- protection of Aboriginal sacred sites and sites of significance;
- Aboriginal control of mining on Aboriginal land;
- Aboriginal access to mining royalty equivalents; and
- compensation for lost land to be negotiated.
These principles are only one part of a series of measures designed to allow Aboriginal people to regain equality.
The other measures embrace the concepts of consultation, of health, education, housing, employment, welfare, of cultural identity, of family unity, customary law and community relations.
The resolution concludes by expressing the view that, and I quote, "The Australian people will be truly free and united only when the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people of this nation are free of the distress, the poverty and the alienation that has been their lot."
It sets 1988 -- the Bicentennial Year -- as the focus for all Australians to think seriously about our national beginnings.
The resolution is one of the most vital resolutions ever to be laid before the Federal Parliament.
It is vital because it acknowledges history and provides the basis for a secure and productive, lifestyle for Aboriginal people, and thus for Australia.
The greater majority of Aboriginal people do not have at present the same right to life as non-Aboriginal Australians. Some people would contest this assertion, but ample evidence supports it.
INEQUALITY
As I have said previously, in comparison with the general population, we have a higher mortality rate, a lower education rate, a higher unemployment rate, far less housing, far lower incomes and a far higher rate of imprisonment.
We are not, despite media and mining industry comments, uranium sheiks.
Let me give a few figures.
The national infant mortality rate in 1981 was less than 10 per 1,000 live births. For Aboriginals, it was just under 20 in South Australia, about 30 in the Northern Territory and almost 35 in Western Australia.
Educationally, only about 0.5% of the Aboriginal population is engaged in tertiary studies compared with 2.2% of the general population.
In housing, more than 6,000 Aboriginal families are on the Aboriginal Development Commission's waiting list alone for assistance in acquiring homes.
The imprisonment rates for Aboriginals are staggering.
In Western Australia the rate is more than 1,400 per 100,000 people compared with less than 100 for the non-Aboriginal population.
In South Australia, the rates are about 1150 and 50 per 100,000. They are about 820 for Aboriginal people and 30 for non-Aboriginals here in Victoria; about 690 and 75, respectively, in Queensland; about 510 and 240, respectively, in the Northern Territory; about 480 and 60, in New South Wales; and about 300 and 75 in Tasmania.
No Australian, Aboriginal or non-Aboriginal, can be proud of these figures.
These are painful statistics which show two things: --
- The assistance being provided by governments to help Aboriginal people achieve self-management so we are not a so-called drain on State welfare has not yet achieved its objective; and
- That despite the overwhelming influence of western culture in Australia that Aboriginal culture has not been destroyed, is very much part of Australia's partly multi-cultural society, and that it must be given recognition when decisions are taken which affect it.
Let me deal with the first point:
The financial assistance being given to help Aboriginal self-development is not great in comparison with assistance in other areas. My point is that funds are insufficient to overcome the difficulties Aboriginals encounter. Let me make this point clear.
The Department of Aboriginal Affairs has been allocated $204 million for Aboriginal affairs in 1983/84.
That amount is to come from a total budget outlay of $56,703 million.
It represents about 0.6% of the total outlay.
Yet Aboriginal people comprise about 1.1% of the population.
To put the figure in a clearer perspective, $1,104 million has been allocated for industry assistance, $5,280 million for defence and $833 million allocated for overseas aid.
A comparison may also be made with the amount of assistance provided by the Federal Government for war veterans.
In 1983/84, the Department of Veterans Affairs has been allocated $2,818 billion and it has about 11,600 people administering its activities. None of us has any great misgivings about government assistance to those people who have fought to defend Australia.
Those people have often lost the opportunity to develop educationally and professionally, so it is only just that they receive compensation.
Such programs of special assistance are clearly endorsed by the Australian people and yet Aboriginal people have suffered similar disadvantages for almost 200 years.
So criticisms about the amount of assistance given to us carry no weight. The only valid criticism which can be made about programs of special assistance to Aboriginals, when compared with similar programs, is that nowhere near enough assistance is given to those who desperately require it.
All this provides some idea of why the Federal Government is proposing to act in the way I outlined earlier.
It does not, however, provide the philosophical understanding necessary if the general population is to accept the need for land rights and sacred sites legislation.
This brings me to the second point which I mentioned a few moments ago.
THE SPIRITUAL SIGNIFICANCE OF LAND
Aboriginal people are of a vastly different culture to non-Aboriginal culture. Traditional Aboriginal culture is governed by a deep, spiritual affinity with the land.
Land to Aboriginal people is part of their being. It is not, as it is to non-Aboriginal people, a saleable commodity.
Aboriginal clans come to arrangements regarding mining on sacred sites usually in the face of a fait accompli.
The spirit of Aboriginal people is derived from the land or, more specifically, from the sacred sites of the dreamtime.
There is little difference between this belief and some Christian beliefs about the soul.
If Aboriginal people are dispossessed of their land, they are dispossessed of their spirit, that is, of their reason for being.
And if land is destroyed, the spirit is also destroyed, people are destroyed.
So, when land is taken from Aboriginal people, or even when it is desecrated as in mining or pastoral activities, then the spirit of the people is finished. The socio-cultural system providing the basis for Aboriginal society disintegrates when this happens and the chain is broken.
I realise that many non-Aboriginal people are generally unable to accept or understand such values.
Western culture views land largely in economic terms.
However I do know some who do have some affinity beyond pure economics.
Malcolm Fraser retained "Nareen" and Tony Street has kept his property despite their heavy involvement in politics.
Doug Anthony kept his farm and, even though Doug is an affable bloke who has done much for Australia and its overseas trade and development, his assistance to Aboriginal affairs makes us delighted that he is returning to farming. I wish others from the National Party, like Joh Bjelke-Petersen, would follow his fine example.
To Aboriginal people the granting of land rights and the protection of sacred sites is so important. It is really beyond debate.
How can you debate the return to someone or groups of people something that belonged to them in the first place?
If non-Aboriginal Australians cannot accept these principles, and I urge them to, then there will be two main consequences:
Firstly, Australia will remain an immature nation -- because maturity carries with it the acceptance of other people for what and who they are.
Secondly, Australia must eventually take the degenerate step of smashing every other culture that is not the culture of the dominant group in Australian society.
The important cultural elements of these other groups will go.
There will be no synagogues, and no mosques. There will be no ethnic organisations -- no Italian, Greek, German or Spanish clubs.
In short, the destruction of Aboriginal culture or the destruction of any other of the various cultures in Australia, would mean a weakening of the rich social fabric that makes Australia a nation with the potential of becoming the world's first truly multi-cultural society.
BASELESS FEARS
I know that many non-Aboriginal Australians may fear the introduction of uniform land rights and sacred sites legislation.
The most common fears are that once we get these rights enacted as laws of the nation that we will block economic development and take over many areas of land which are economically and culturally significant to the nation in general.
Such fears have been deliberately cultivated by newspapers like "The Australian" and other sections of the media, the National Party and vested mining interests, for example, Mr Hugh Morgan, the Executive Director of Western Mining Corporation, whose recent speech to Australian businessmen in London has not gone unnoticed, by us.
Pastoralists and various members of the lunatic right who occasionally speak to R.S.L. gatherings are other offenders.
Let me allay those fears.
Land rights for Aboriginal people were first introduced in Australia in the Northern Territory in 1976.
The legislation was based almost entirely on a report by Mr Justice Woodward who said land rights should be granted to Aboriginal people, and I quote, "as a matter of simple justice".
Incidentally, Mr Justice Woodward is a former head of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation.
His report is lasting proof that, contrary to one view now being widely bandied about, the progress towards land rights is not part of a Communist plot to destroy Australian democracy.
I do not imagine that Mr Justice Woodward or the people who put such faith in him to head A.S.I.O. would do anything but laugh at remarks which link him with Communist plots. We really should have broken that link a long time ago.
Since the introduction of land rights in the Northern Territory there has been -- despite the fears of many people -- substantial economic development on land which has been returned to its traditional Aboriginal owners. It should be noted that Aboriginal people have never stopped mining developments in the Northern Territory and that may surprise some people.
In Central Australia alone the three major developments which have begun since 1976 have all been on Aboriginal land.
Those developments are Mereenie and Palm Valley, which are operative, and North Flinders, where work is at a very preliminary stage.
The agreements clearing the way for these vast projects were reached in consultations between the developers and the Aboriginal owners.
Consultation is an integral part of Aboriginal culture.
Decisions are often only made after exhaustive discussion among those people who have the authority to make them.
Developers, particularly mining developers, have come to recognise, albeit begrudgingly in some instances, that when they accept Aboriginal owners' cultural need to consult, so that traditions and sacred sites may be preserved, that the barriers to development are minor.
In other words, what has happened in the Northern Territory is that Aboriginal people and non-Aboriginal people have come to a mutual acceptance of each other's interests.
It is only the Country Liberal Party Government which fans the flames of racism for political purposes, keeping people apart, and the Territorian white people are silly enough to accept this form of convenient stereotype racism as we saw in the recent N.T. election.
However, with provisions in national land rights legislation which recognise the interests of all parties, I am sure that Aboriginal culture will be preserved alongside economic development.
Another fear is that any time development is planned that the Aboriginal people suddenly find a sacred site and use its existence to stop progress. That fear can be allayed also.
Virtually all sacred sites are, by definition, secret sites.
Their presence is often known only to a few members of a tribe or clan.
Because they are secret sites, Aboriginal people do not openly discuss their locations.
Only when sites are threatened is their existence revealed. Simply in a natural effort to protect them.
The route for the proposed Alice Springs-Darwin railway line has been planned in consultation with Aboriginal people with the result that not one sacred site will be disturbed.
That fact alone should indicate that sacred sites are no barrier to development.
NEED FOR NATIONAL LEGISLATION
Uniform land rights will mean, of course, that all State Governments will have to co-operate with the Commonwealth to ensure that justice is done. Few State Governments have yet acted in any determined way.
The Victorian Government has introduced land rights legislation but has deferred it while consultations are held with community groups, particularly on compensation.
It is not entirely the Government's fault that there has been a delay in the introduction of suitable legislation.
The New South Wales Government has passed legislation that fails to provide the principle and substance which are fundamental to the land rights issue.
In South Australia, the State Government has in its Pitjatjantjara Land Rights Act a basis for justice and rehabilitation of the Aboriginal people.
The Liberal Opposition, however, is thwarting legislation designed to restore homelands to the Maralinga people, despite the fact that the Act was first proposed by Sir Thomas Playford.
In Western Australia, an inquiry is now in progress but the opposition to our just claim is mounting to a point where racism and greed seem to be the dominant elements.
Tasmania has done nothing and Premier Gray intends to keep it that way. One could not accuse him of being intelligent on Aboriginal issues -- particularly land rights.
In Queensland, the 18th century colonial mentality of Joh Bjelke-Petersen's Government reigns on.
Surprisingly, however, the new Queensland Minister for Aboriginal and Islander Affairs, Mr Bob Katter, has introduced amending legislation which could provide some land rights justice to Queensland's black people.
At present, land held by Queensland Aboriginal people can be and has been taken away with the stroke of a pen.
The new legislation provides for Parliament to decide the fate of Aboriginal land.
There is some hope in that -- but it has yet to be tested against the Bjelke-Petersen machine and Queensland's particular brand of parliamentary democracy.
The fear that the granting of uniform land rights will result in Aboriginal people claiming and taking over land which has significance to non-Aboriginal Australians may be allayed also.
I give an assurance here and now that Aboriginal people are not interested in the destruction of non-Aboriginal sacred and culturally significant land and objects. Nor, despite rumours, in the return of the whole of Australia. We do not want it back. It has been ruined anyway.
To seek the ownership of any of Australia's cathedrals, such as St Paul's, or of sacred places such as the Shrine of Remembrance, or of culturally significant sites, such as the M.C.G., is not our intention.
There may be a few Aboriginal people who make such wild claims but I assure you that these do not have widespread support.
So I give you a firm assurance that Aboriginal people are not planning to take over the M.C.G. It costs too much to maintain anyhow.
Similarly, Aboriginal people are not interested in claiming cathedrals.
And many of our Aboriginal people have fought in wars for Australia -- and that should be remembered -- so places like the Shrine of Remembrance have considerable significance to us.
What we ask, as a right, is that non-Aboriginal Australians have the same respect for places and objects of significance to us.
That respect is not being given.
For example, there was a loud outcry recently when the Federal Government announced that title to Ayers Rock, or Uluru as we call it, was to be handed over to its traditional Aboriginal owners.
The N.T. Government deliberately misled the N.T. people and Australians generally, mainly through the "Australian" newspaper, with its claims of so-called black alienation of a National Park.
Uluru has been a place of sacred significance to Aboriginal people of Central Australia for 40,000 years. That is quite a deal of time. It is longer than 200 years.
Yet non-Aboriginal people too often have shown little and even no respect for those parts of Uluru that are sacred.
They have disregarded the interests and rights of the traditional owners.
And yet they cannot understand that Aboriginal people have a responsibility to their race to protect these rights.
Nevertheless, ever since the traditional Aboriginal owners have formally laid claim to Uluru they have made it quite clear that Uluru will remain available to all people. They will lease it back to the Commonwealth in perpetuity as happened at Kakadu, in Arnhem Land.
The only exceptions will be a few pacts of Uluru which are sacred to the traditional owners to the extent that even some Aboriginal people who are not initiated do not have access to them and these have for some years been protected under a law instituted by Paul Everingham's Government. So there is a contradiction.
Let me assure you that Uluru is open to the nation and its people.
Let me assure you also that despite what anyone thinks, we will not be moving Ayers Rock --anywhere! It will stay where it is.
Our powers are somewhat limited!
Much of what I have been saying today relates to Aboriginal people living in traditional circumstances, but most Aboriginal people live in urban areas or on the fringes of country towns.
Non-Aboriginal people often say that these people have no right to land or sacred sites because they have no significance to them any longer. It should be remembered that this category of Aboriginal people who live mainly in southern Australia and on the eastern seaboard are true descendants of the tribal people who lived before them in areas now occupied by white people.
As Mr Justice Woodward and many politicians of all political persuasions have pointed out, a just case for compensation to be granted, can be made.
The case for compensation can be argued on the grounds of the previous Federal Government's policy that the dispossession and dispersal of Aboriginal people, that is the destruction of much of their society, makes compensatory measures just.
Urban Aboriginal people provide the greatest single difficulty for white Australian society to contend with in terms of land rights, housing, health, employment and such -- in other words the compensatory factor.
White Australians will not accept that programs and projects in Aboriginal affairs are there specifically to overcome disadvantages faced by a group and not, as claimed by some sections of the media and others (for example, Bruce Ruxton of the R.S.L.) to give one group an advantage over another.
This is what a just and democratic society is all about after all. The aged, infirm and veterans are assisted for this very reason. So should it be with Aboriginal people. The facts are there.
However, as I have said before, and according to the Borrie Report, there is no doubt that Aboriginal people today, whether they live in traditional, urban or fringe-dweller locations, are the single most disadvantaged group in Australian society.
Aboriginal socio-economic circumstances are a disgrace in such an affluent country as Australia.
Our plight cannot be ignored.
We do not want to continue to depend on the State for our existence.
The granting of land rights will help provide a base for the restoration of our society, economically and socially.
It will give us a psychological boost, restoring our pride.
It is the first rung on a very long ladder.
From this should follow the re-establishment of a healthy, well-housed, self-managing race of people able and willing to contribute to the harmonious progress of Australia as Australians.
Mr Chairman, with tomorrow being Australia Day 1984, I think it is appropriate for Rotarians to give serious thought to what they can do to assist the restoration of Aboriginal society so that it can make the positive contribution to Australia that we know it can.
We need to ensure that all Australians understand the significance of land and sacred sites to Aboriginal people.
I therefore ask you to spread the message which I have given you today, to help people become aware that Aboriginal people can contribute positively to Australian society, and that we are not opposed to development.
In particular, I ask you to publish, through your organisation, the Bicentennial Report which has been distributed to you today, plus the speech by Minister Clyde Holding.
The Report -- outlining Aboriginal objectives for the Bicentennial -- shows the hopes, desires and needs of our people. They are hopes, desires and needs which, when met, will enable us to be equal members of Australian society at least by 1988.
If this Report is enacted, and it is not beyond our means to do so, we will then be able to say to the world that Australia is at long last a real nation that is free of racial injustice and conflict, a nation in which all people receive a fair go and hence, a nation in which we all live in security and in harmony.
Let us be proud to be Australians and recognise that we live in a unique society that has at last recognised history and has done something about it in positive terms without embarrassment.
Let us leave a legacy of hope for our children.
We belong to each other and we cannot let the past haunt our present and future. We must create together the kind of society where differences of culture are accepted, where disadvantage for any section is not acceptable be it women, the aged, ethnic groups or Aborigines.
The future is ours to create. Let us not live through the trauma of America and England.
Let history teach us something.
No comments:
Post a Comment