Why a Treaty?

Galarrwuy Yunupingu

Galarrwuy Yunupingu, AM, is Chairman of the Northern Lands Council.

It was Galarrwuy Yunupingu who presented Prime Minister Hawke with the Barunga Statement of Aboriginal claims in June 1988.  He is Northern Australia's most prominent Aborigine and will almost certainly be one of the main architects of the treaty promised by the Federal Government.

ABORIGINAL people are estimated by non-Aboriginal scientists to have lived in this country for up to 50,000 years.  That makes us now the oldest living culture in the world, and without question, the original owners and occupiers of Australia.

It also gives us title to land, which by our definition means responsibilities which confer rights over our country.  Those responsibilities, and those rights, have never been legally extinguished.

Many of our people have been dispossessed, to be sure.  But that alienation of land has never had any legal basis.  It is outright theft, whichever way you look at it.

The supposed basis of non-Aboriginal occupation of our lands is the doctrine of terra nullius, which holds that the whole of Australia was, in 1788, vacant land.  Since it had already been occupied for hundreds of generations by people like my ancestors -- and there is archaeological proof of that, if it is needed -- the argument that it was ''vacant'' is plainly nonsense.

According to world legal opinion, terra nullius, too, is nonsense.  That means that the non-Aboriginal occupation of Australia remains illegal.  And that is something we need to set right, as Australians together, which is what a treaty is partly about.  But to do that, any treaty must also recognise that Aboriginal and Islander people, as the prior owners and occupiers of this country, have rights.  These rights are supported by international covenants and conventions, to which Australia is both a contributor and a signatory.  Yet nowhere in Australia's Constitution do we rate a mention.  Nowhere in the body of Australian law is there any appropriate recognition of us and our long association with the land.

ALIENATION

As a former British colony, Australia is in a unique position.  It is the only former colony which has neither made a treaty with the sovereign owners of the country nor granted them independence.  It is as if legally we did not exist.  The occupation of our lands and our alienation from it has caused great suffering.  Many of our people have been cut off from their land and their responsibilities.  Languages and cultures have been wiped out as the fences went up around land and our people were killed or herded into resettlement camps and communities.  Across Australia today, Aboriginal people are suffering the consequences of this alienation.

And there has been no real attempt at redress for what they have lost, for what we collectively have lost.  There has only been limited recognition of our relationship with the land.

RESPONSIBILITY

While I would in no way suggest that today's Australians are responsible for the sins of the past, I would state strongly that they have a responsibility to do something about today's injustices.  Australia's non-Aboriginal citizens have inherited the benefits of genocide, of alienation and appropriation of land.

There has been a total failure to recognise that we are unlike the other peoples who have come to live in Australia as willing or unwilling migrants bringing their own cultures and ways.  Our culture and our ways have always been here, in this land, our mother.  Australia can no longer afford to ignore this reality and pretend it is otherwise.

The problems that have arisen are largely due to the fact that we have not been involved in making decisions about where we fit in this new Australia.  We have no status;  other people have always felt free to make decisions about our present and our future without consulting us.  We feel there is no respect for who we are and a conscious evasion of what has happened to us over the past 200 years and is still happening to some of us today.

This has created tensions and division.  We don't like that any more than anyone else does.  We believe that if justice is done, we can all remove this tension and division.

This places a heavy responsibility on us, to be sure.  We have to talk within our communities and organisations to make sure that what goes into any treaty is what everyone, every Aboriginal person, can agree with.  That means we all have to be thinking about it and talking about it.

But, after all, consultation and consensus decision-making is a process we invented, so it's not as if this is going to be a new process for us.  Every issue we face is discussed exhaustively until we come to a consensus about our position.

But it places responsibilities on non-Aboriginal Australia, too.  If Australia is ready to talk about a treaty or an agreement, it has to be also ready to talk on our terms and to understand that we need to talk about it in our own way.  None of us can afford a repeat of the sorry history of the past 200 years.

If people can accept this, we will already be well on the way to achieving the kind of good-will any treaty or agreement should be about.

What we want from a treaty is the creation of a just and mature society which black and white Australians can enjoy together.  A treaty which recognises our rights and our status will provide the basis for building a society in which people live in mutual respect.  To those people who say they support the concept of one Australia, I can only say that I agree -- there should be one Australia and we should be part of it.  But our part should be on our terms.

I don't believe the creation of a united society means that everyone should be the same.  A mature, just and united society is one which recognises and celebrates cultural diversity, rather than one which forces uniformity.

A treaty will wipe out injustice and redress the wrongs of today, which can be traced to the wrongs of the past.  It will put us on the right track for the future.  It will create an Australia we can all share in pride.  It will mean, in 2088 and 2188 and all the other '88s, ALL Australians celebrating their achievement.