If the draft Declaration for Reconciliation is accepted in its present form, Australia will be a diminished nation. Quite literally. For the document released for public consultation last week is completely lopsided, celebrating only one of the broad traditions that have contributed to contemporary Australia.
The draft Declaration makes no acknowledgement that there might be anything worthwhile in the mainstream culture which derives from the nation's British and Irish founders, and which developed its own distinctive characteristics as later immigrants and common historical experiences made their mark. The institutions, the values, the knowledge and the arts that have made Australia one of the world's more successful and enviable nations are simply passed over.
But most of the members of the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation have been appointed because of their accomplishments in activities that are overwhelmingly dependent on this mainstream culture -- science, education, business, parliamentary politics. This applies to the indigenous members of the Council almost to the same extent as it does to the non-indigenous members.
Do they really regard their own fields of endeavour as being of such little account? Their approval of the draft Declaration certainly suggests that they have insufficient respect for the culture that has played an essential part in sustaining their own achievements.
When I criticised this glaring omission during a talk back program on Radio National earlier this week, Jackie Huggins, one of the authors of the reconciliation document, responded that the mainstream non-indigenous culture had been acknowledged "implicitly". She said the draft Declaration's statements that we should recognise "the gift of one another's presence" and "learn our shared history, walk together and grow together to enrich our understanding" showed an awareness of the social and cultural benefits that had come from non-Aboriginal migrants to Australia.
But even if we were to go along with this less-than-obvious interpretation, it merely raises another question. Why does the draft Declaration only give "implicit" recognition to the cultural traditions of the Australian mainstream, while urging us to "taste" the "spirituality" and "rejoice" in the "grandeur" of indigenous "customary laws, beliefs and traditions"?
(I must add that "taste" is not the word I would have chosen in this context. It conveys the unfortunate implications that indigenous spirituality is either something people can dabble in, or that it is rather akin to Chardonnay and café latte.)
I suspect that the people who have prepared and approved the draft Declaration are more preoccupied with hammering home notions of white guilt than with offering a document that would engage the nation as a whole and allow nearly everyone to embrace reconciliation. This makes it impossible for them to praise the culture of those that they blame for Aboriginal dispossession and misery.
But there is nothing wrong with the cultural values and moral principles that underpin Australia's nationhood. Rather, in the past these principles were not consistently applied to indigenous people, a point that was clearly understood by the early leaders of Aboriginal protest movements. And there were always whites who treated Aborigines with humanity, who realised the injustices that had been inflicted on them, and who worked for a more equal and inclusive Australia by invoking mainstream cultural ideals against the actual practices of governments and others.
Of course, some of these whites are now being accused of "genocide", but that is because a number of the people who presently dominate the agenda on Aboriginal issues are suffering from a deep moral confusion. That it is these people who are most insistent on a national apology to the "stolen generations" is good enough reason to view these demands with grave suspicion, and to resist attempts to include such an apology in any reconciliation document.
The process of reconciliation itself, together with the other moves to redress past wrongs such as the recognition of native title and Aboriginal sites of significance, were not forced on Australia by the political or military strength of indigenous people. These attempts to make amends came about because large sections of the Australian public became increasingly troubled by the inconsistency between our cultural values of fairness and tolerance and the lot of many Aborigines.
We do not have to look far in today's world to realise that it could easily have been otherwise, for in many other cultural traditions the idea that people of different race or ethnicity deserve to be treated with decency and justice is not firmly held. So any reconciliation document should explicitly acknowledge and praise the mainstream Australian culture that has largely given rise to the reconciliation process in the first place.
It is also likely that success in overcoming the economic, social and health problems experienced by many Aborigines will depend more on practices and values deriving from mainstream culture than from traditional cultures, although it is difficult to make this point without being condemned as an "assimilationist". The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander heritage is certainly worthy of admiration, but we should also accept the possibility that aspects of this heritage may compromise our ability to create "a united Australia", providing "justice and equity for all" -- the ultimate supposed goals of the reconciliation process.
The Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation likes to portray itself as having initiated a "people's movement", pointing to the million-odd people who have signed "sorry books" and the existence of over 300 local reconciliation groups around Australia. While these people may not actually represent majority views, they are likely to have the greatest input during the coming nation-wide consultations over the final form of the reconciliation document.
I fear that too many other people have been turned off by the excesses and intellectual dishonesty of the Aboriginal movement and its supporters in recent years. But unless mainstream Australians start taking an interest in the reconciliation process, future generations of schoolchildren will be required to recite a corrosive and totally inadequate Declaration of Reconciliation.
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