A Northern Note by Peter Jull
(The Northern Review #14 (Summer 1995):197-206)
In 1994 and 1995, major new policy and political developments have emerged in North Australia, including critical scrutiny of Northern Canada’s experience with comprehensive claims, self-government, and constitutional reform. A focus was provided by the Prime Minister’s agreement with indigenous leaders in 1993 during negotiation of national “native title” legislation to follow government action on land issues with a “social justice” package to benefit the many indigenous people untouched by legally recognised native title. The process to develop such a package gradually became clear. As one of the resulting reports stated,The call for indigenous social justice initiatives is nothing less than the challenge to articulate and, where necessary, re-write national policy. That means an examination of the underlying assumptions, operating principles and direction of policies and programmes designed for or significantly affecting indigenous peoples. (HREOC 1995b, 5)
A clear policy and political agenda has now emerged, first broached in a public consultation document and given form in three reports resulting from extensive community and organisational consultation —and from lengthy and sometimes heated debate among and within indigenous political élites (CAR-ATSIC-OATSISJC 1994; CAR 1995; ATSIC 1995; and HREOC 1995b). The three organisations responsible —the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation (CAR), Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC, Australia’s national indigenous peoples “department”), and the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner (a national ombudsman for indigenous peoples in the national human rights watch-dog commission, Mick Dodson)—are all hybrid bodies that combine in themselves the funds, support, and access of government instrumentalities with the responsiveness of authentic indigenous spokespersons. The key element in the four documents is the emphasis on five subjects that specifically foresee processed of study, discussion, and negotiation:
A fifth item, similar in character and appearing in all reports, is the regional future of Torres Strait, home of the “other” Australian indigenous people, the Torres Strait Islanders, a Melanesian people occupying the islands between Papua New Guinea and the northern eastern tip of Australia.
The emphasis on process in all these items and on the development of new relationships between indigenous peoples and governments represents a most important shift from the usual spending items and concrete demands. It is likely to prove the long awaited circuit breaker needed in indigenous affairs.
Constitutional review is already on the Australian agenda, and no less definite will be its litmus test in indigenous rights and recognition. That is, after t he maimed rites of Australia’s 1988 bi-centenary of white settlement, any constitutional moves must have an indigenous component to seem authentic or acceptable to many Australians. The CAR and ATSIC reports devote key sections to recommending steps to begin work, while ombudsman Dodson’s whole report is a constitutional virtual journey containing a specific chapter, “Constitutional Reform,” which attempts to explain and explore a subject that Australians, like Canadians, seem doomed to get to know well. The preparation of the three reports drew on some new materials (Brennan 1994; Jull 1994), while they were followed into print by Brennan’s excellent new book (1995), all of these using Canada’s post-1978 experience as an important element in their analysis and proposals.
Whereas the Canadian national constitutional work emerged as part of an already well-worn federal-provincial review format, with the indigenous element a sort of learn-as-you-go experiment on the side, the Australian work to date has benefitted from all that and has a good fix on the general imperatives of process and reconciliation (the Australian word generally used, in preference to, e.g., Canadian accommodation) between indigenous and non-indigenous peoples. However, Australians do not yet have the jurisprudence or colonial and post-colonial indigenous politico-administrative tradition that gave Canadian indigenous constitutional work some plausible antecedents. Indigenous rights seemed to leap fully formed from the heads of the High Court in the mid-1992 Mabo decision—albeit leaving the usual rednecks more startled than angry, fortunately.
Self-government has not yet emerged as the clear doctrine and universal goal it is in Canada. Rather, it has developed under several other headings. Funding reform for community services under more indigenous control, and with less room for state and territory governments skimming off the federal transfers for their preferred political priorities, is the major overall issue, and the one that aroused the most universal anger and horror stories in the hearings around the country in preparation of the reports. Aborigines were more angry at being victims of discriminatory official abuse than at simple hardship. The leading authority and researcher-writer on funding reform, Greg Crough, acting director of the North Australia Research Unit in Darwin, contributed to the preparation of the reports and is visiting Canada and the USA at the time of writing (September 1995) to look the parallels there. (For this subject, see HREOC 1995b, 32-40; also HREOC, Vol. 3, 12-122.)
Self-government is also implicit in regional agreements (see below). For the rest, a host of particular indigenous-run agencies, often under-funded shoe-string operations, try to meet the pressing needs of urban and country indigenous people. Australians have been alarmed in the past year at statistices that show that while indigenous health and life expectancy overseas, including Canada, are mending well, in Australia they have remained stubbornly bad. Australian indigenous policy and programming have clearly reached a crisis, although the talk of many or most non-indigenous politicians remains simplistic and dated. They just don't get it.
The ATSIC structure involves regional councils elected around the country to participate in policy direction and choosing of priorities. Their task is vast, and their means, in both funds and executive power, slender. Nor do they govern territory in the way North American or Greenlandic indigenous peoples do on tribal reserve lands or traditional “country.” Rather, they help direct certain services that are made available to indigenous persons in their region, although indigenous persons may live a full life and never come in contact with, say, anAboriginal legal or preventative health or social unity. One could argue that the funds for F-18s and vast military exercises that regularly take place over North Australia would buy more national defence and effective occupation if directed to indigenous needs. Meanwhile, boat people from China and elsewhere sail merrily to the Northern coasts and cheerfully present themselves to startled cattle ranchers or local constables in any case—electronic, air, and marine surveillance notwithstanding.
Regional Agreements are what Canadians have called “comprehensive claim settlements” or, in British Columbia, “treaties,” and are a major new item on the agenda for North Australia (Richardson, Craig and Boer 1994, 1995; Harris 1995; Jull 1995; HREOC 1995b, Vol. 1: 19-31; and HREOC 1995b, Vol. 2). The concept, derived in large part from a critical review of Canadian experience in the Yukon, Nunavut, Northern Quebec, and the western Northwest Territories —probing the strengths, weaknesses, negotiating horrors, implementation problems, litigation vs. negotiation, etc.—has obvious attractions for the spacious indigenous lands of the North where one may design with whole cloth. The northernmost region of Western Australia has been in the forefront of this push, but also faces perhaps the most difficult situation (Cough 1995; Sullivan 1995). Canadians must realise that North Australia has no lack of Lubicon Lakes and Da vis Inlets (eg., Coombs et al. 1989; Leveridge and Lea 1993).
At present there is a curious courting dance in progress. On the indigenous side, vigorous leaders backed by expert staff and research see the value of an integrated system of territory management, service delivery, and self-government—and now see a means to realise it. On the official side there is bashfulness and frequent retreat, with many in government wishing tight, limited, and pre-packaged “solutions”—and not without frequent dashes from the scene for a little more research. However, there is momentum developing and a spate of conferences are bringing the subject into focus (e.g., Harris 1995; ATSIC forthcoming). The bad old mining giant CRA is under bold new management and may be providing the needed break-through with its approach to the Century Zinc project in North Queensland, making an initial offer of a $60 million package to the ca. 3,700 Aborigines in the area (CZL 1995; Crough and Cronin 1995). Meanwhile, the National Native Title Tribunal, set up to implement the principles of the Native Title Act, is trying to make negotiated outcomes among indigenous land interests the preferred path of resolution.
It is too early to say whether settling mining issues, practising environmental protection of land or sea, or achieving regional self-government will provide the model for Australia's regional agreements, or whether they will all be sui generis. Experience in Canada and elsewhere has shown that whatever the entry point for a people to such types of “self-determination”—a term used fearlessly if not always meaningfully in Australia to describe national indigenous pol icy—there is a clutch of issues that cannot be disentangled, forming a whole regional reality and requiring revision of all parts. The aspirations of Australia's indigenous peoples are clear and firm, and as elsewhere in the “first world,” will not be denied.
Sea rights received least attention of the five “new agenda” items. This was unfortunate because soon after the reports were published the long-awaited federal coastal policy was released (DEST 1995). This proved a disappointing response to the clear directions of the national Coastal Zone Inquiry (RAC 1993), indigenous “interests” being vaguely acknowledged and “participation” in processes promised, although some funding for work was offered. It is clear that indigenous peoples have all their hard work before them. Torres Strait Islanders have developed a general approach (Mullrennan and Hanssen 1994) backed by passionate convictionin their sea rights, but now firm strategies and actual processes are needed. Some fresh thinking within the Northern Territory Government and an important sea claim now underway on the Arnhem Land coast provide some hope (“Ocean rights win for Aborigines” 1995). A specific proposal in the “social justice” report of ombudsman Dodson has also stirred interest and some international correspondence:A workshop on Indigenous marine policy issues and needs bringing Torres Strait Islander and Aboriginal representatives together with such overseas peoples as Coastal Sami, and Indian First Nations of Canada's Pacific coast, and South Pacific peoples, should be held. The workshop would also consider the usefulness and feasibility of an ongoing inter national indigenous marine network of peoples and organisations. (HREOC 1995b, 48)
Torres Strait is a regional community of tropical islands with two recent mainland communities of eco-refugees on adjacent Cape York, and some 6500 Islanders living there (many more have moved away to mainland schooling, living standards, and jobs in recent decades). Strait living remains wholly centred on the sea and its maze of reefs. The “contact” period centred on a migrant population of Pacific Islanders in maritime trades in the latter part of the 19th century, a situation newly recounted by Mullins (1994) and reminiscent of the Métis in the fur trade era of Western Canada. The aspirations of Islanders for a better deal are clear enough and often stated (TSRA 1994), and greater regional autonomy has been publicly supported by government and opposition party spokespersons. The three “social justice” reports all firmly recommend a negotiation process for Torres Strait self-government. During a stopover in Torres Strait in September 1995, the Prime Minister appeared to signal a go-slow approach to regional autonomy (although profuse media reporting of his remarks was anything but clear) while strongly endorsing the Islanders' already vehement sense of their historical and cultural rights. One must assume that progress towards regional self-government and a workable sea rights régime will continue. As usual in such cases, a development or pollution issue, of which several lurk, may rush events.
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Australia, as Prime Minister Keating has noted is trying to condense indigenous policy renewal into a very few years, work that, in countries like Canada, took much longer. The paradoxes of such a situation are evident in the world of advisers, officials, and academics, for instance. The old colonial-style parol officer mentality, with its emphasis on regulation and control of feckless natives, sits oddly beside some of the world's truly avant-garde designers and practitioners of new approaches. Even among academics there are many used to the old quiet life when they, not some indigenous country delegations struggling with their formal English, were the people consulted by government on policy. Strong, too, is an official preference for bureaucratic incorporation as opposed to political devolution demanded by indigenous peoples, with ATSIC reformers, like Canada's Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development, by no means always the winning policy force in the national capital. In the late 1960s a final generation of official incorporators went into oblivion in Canada, their world vanished forever within a year or two. And, as I wrote recently of the visit and stirring call to the work of “self-determination” by Greenland Inuit premier Lars Emil Johansen. His words were the more timely in light of the 1995 conference [on regional agreements]. . . . There a number of non-indigenous government representatives outlinedneat pre-packaged forms of indigenous evolution which would be so painless that indigenous people would play almost no part in designing them. These were their answer to the talk of indigenous people negotiating their own constitutional and regional agreements. It is worth remembering that Mr. Johansen and the Greenland home rule movement were themselves launched as a result of Denmark trying precisely such a benign, kindly and comprehensive approach to running Inuit lives. (Jull 1995a, 17)
As is Canada, academic researchers continue to play a vital role in deepening Australian awareness of indigenous social and policy issues. Apart from S. Mullins (1994) and F. Brennan (1995) already noted, the most important new book for Canadian readers may be historian Henry Reynold's (1995) fine exploration of the defeat, marginalisation, and supposed extinction of the Tasmanian Aborigines. It is not only parallel to histories of extinct cultures like the Beothuks of Newfoundland and other peoples in Canadian areas of close settlement, but as an important study in social process and policy muddle. One may hope that some of the Canadian Northern Studies community may make their way to Australia on the now overgrown trail made by Connie Hunt, Jackie Wolfe, Ken Coates, and Terry Fenge.
The major item missing from much of the new agenda thinking is international contact and cooperation. There is simply no equivalent yet in Australia to the sort of networking exemplified by the Circumpolar movement in Canada, or indigenous Russian's determined out-reach. In his second annual report published during the weeks in March 1995, when the three “social justice” reports were appearing, and again in his own “social justice” report some weeks later, Ombudsman Dodson outlined a philosophy and a program for Australian cooperation with the peoples of other countries in two discrete chapters, “International Perspectives” and “International Connections” (HREOC 1995a, 1995b). Australia's surging nationalism and touchi ness about foreign comparisons that disadvantage it—a form of imported British insularity itself, surely—make one of his cautions especially apt:Indigenous peoples throughout the world have contemporary grievances and all have suffered dispossession of territory, denigration of culture, marginalisation, assimilation, and social ills. In many countries today the lives of indigenous people are at risk from brutal governments and brutal colonisers. If we were to dwell only on the many problems remaining, we would be immobilised by despair. What we must do instead is build on positive measures which have begun to emerge in some countries. Nobody would suggest that any country has solved indigenous problems, but at least there are examples now appearing of general policies, specific initiatives, or unforeseen outcomes which return self-worth and decision-making to peoples previously marginalised. (HREOC 1995b, 42)
Some non-governmental organisations and officials in New Zealand, Canada and Australia have been pressing for discussion at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in November 1995 in New Zealand of a joint program of comparative studies on indigenous issues. Ombudsman Dodson has already urged that his own office, with ATSIC and the Reconciliation Council,should consult with indigenous organisations to develop a priority list of urgently required international comparative studies on issues identified in this report and elsewhere including macro- and micro-constitutional reform; regional agreements; inter-governmental relations internal to nation-states in respect of indigenous policy and pro grammes; self-government; land and sea rights; and indigenous management of territory and resources. (HREOC 1995b, 48)
An obvious area for sharing ideas is the Yukon, Nunavut, Northwest Territories and Northern Territory experience with indigenous rights, constitutional development (including local, regional, and territorial self-government), and indigenisation of public services.
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Looking ahead, much would seem to hang on the Australian federal election required at the latest before many months of 1996 have passed. The Hawke-Keating government, in power since 1983, has seen a whole modern era and agenda of indigenous rights and indigenous-government relations develop. The Trudeau and Clark governments in Canada had a similar shaping role from 1968 to 1984, interrupted in the 1987-90 period but later resumed by Prime Minister Mulroney, and by the more attuned Jean Chrétien thereafter. There is less political consensus in Australia, however, and despite a brave remnant of indigenous-friendly moderates in the Liberal-National Coalition, many Coalition adherents really believe that a few words about com passion, persons in need, and the upholding of “equal rights for all” are all that a modern indigenous policy require.
My personal fear is that in an eager show of classical liberal development bona fides in their first days of office, a Coalition government in power would attack national native title rights and Northern Territory land and political rights before thinking through the likely results. Such results would include national and international outrage and permanent damage to the Coalition's assiduously crafted image as a contemporary and multicultural movement devoid of Australia's bad old “whites only” outlook. The truth is that while the Coalition understands white-collar openness to all the talents in globally networked high-rise offices, a majority of its politicians seem uncomfortably with indigenous poverty and disadvantage in their back yards. The issue brought down the last Opposition leader, a cruel irony because his “sin” was to respond sensitively and with humanity in direct contacts with Aboriginal settlements in Central Australia, this after earlier mouthing the Western Australia party hard-line on native title.
As noted already, the government indigenous policy scene is hard to read, not least because the federal government is travelling unknown policy territory. There are many positive elements, of which the most positive may be the Prime Minister's personal commitment to and leadership of indigenous policy. If Labor can turn around the public opinion polls—and Australia's low inflation and high job creation economic growth surely give it a basis for doing so—one may hope for continued positive evolution.
If Labor loses power, the challenge for indigenous peoples will be to hold firm to the coherent and practical political and policy agenda contained in the three “social justice” reports. This may not be easy when some desperately under-funded indigenous agencies are rushing to make peace at virtually any price with a new government. Nonetheless, that agenda is both defensible at home and proven world-wide; it is virtually the only practical alternative to further marginalisation, fragmentation, and welfare dependency. Whereas indigenous people overseas have recognised that theirs is, to a large extent, a permanent conflict with government, although not necessarily an ill-tempered one (e.g., some parts of Canada and USA), Australia has had a politics of incorporation mixed of equal parts naive idealism and simple political management in indigenous affairs.
In the last several years ATSIC, the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation, and the Aboriginal-Islander ombudsman commission in the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission have overcome some public and indigenous scepticism, and with their “social justice” reports have truly come of age. The Government, with substantial Opposition support, created these bodies that have not only pointed the way forward but have also exceeded earlier expectations of their value as consensus-shapers. If national politicians and officials are unwise enough to ignore such advice now, or deny the processes and opening these bodies have prepared, they will not only undermine the indigenous leaders on whom they must rely for any positive indigenous policy outcome, but will also leave themselves with all the old problems among an indigenous community even more contemptuous of the white man's talk of “a fair go” and a united Australia.
References
ATSIC. 1995. Recognition, Rights and Reform: A Report to Government on Native Title Social Justice Measures. Canberra: Native Title Social Justice Advisory Committee, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission.
ATSIC. Forthcoming. Report on the ATSIC Regional Agreements Conference. Proceedings from Cairns Conference 29-31 May 1995. Canberra: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission.
Brennan, F. 1994. Securing a Bountiful Place for Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders in a Modern, Free and Tolerant Australia. Melbourne: Constitutional Centenary Foundation.
Brennan, F. 1995. One land, One Nation: Mabo—Towards 2001. Brisbane: University of Queensland Press.
CAR. 1994. Walking Together: The First Steps. Report of the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation to Federal Parliament, 1991-94. Canberra: Australian Government Publishing Services.
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Jull, P. 1995b. book review.
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Richardson. B. J., D. Craig and B. Boer. 1995. regional Agreements for Indigenous Lands and Cultures in Canada. A Discussion Paper. Darwin: Australian National University North Australia Research Unit.
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