Time to put house in order

By Rob Goodfellow and M. Dwi Marianto

YOGYAKARTA (JP): In a recent article, the Australian historian Gary Hughes examined a document which described in gruesome detail the unprovoked slaughter of old men, women and children by police.

His article, based on unreleased papers from the Victorian State archives, detailed a massacre of "natives" in southern Melbourne nearly 150 years ago.

A survey party consisting of colonial police butchered an entire tribe in cold blood. Elders, women and children were rounded up and put to the bayonet, their bodies left to rot in the sun.

The whole "incident" was officially covered up under the orders of Governor La Trobe.

Despite the passage of time more than this particular incident has remained hidden. Indeed, even with all the ill-founded controversy surrounding the Australian High Court's "Mabo Decision" on native title and the recent "Wik Judgment" on aboriginal land rights and pastoral leases, public debate remains in the most part characterized by a curious "conspiracy of silence".

For many Australians, it seems as if white society conspires to promote a fairytale version of history, one dominated by the heroic exploits of pioneers and settlers, to the complete exclusion of another story, one of ethnic cleansing and genocide.

While some white historians such as Butlin and Reynolds have diligently analyzed the tragic history of aboriginal Australia under colonialism, European Australians continue to display an embarrassed reluctance to discuss the infamy of their forefathers.

And when someone does speak up they are accused of "guilt mongering", of "living in the past", or of presenting a one-sided "black arm band version of history".

Nothing, however, could be further from the truth. White Australians simply do not honestly debate "the aboriginal question" at all. In fact most people don't even acknowledge that there is a problem, and because of this a dark chapter in our history remains outside the national consciousness, and outside genuine reconciliation.

Perhaps one reason why Australians are so quick to criticize the human rights abuses of other countries, is that as a people Australians lack a degree of self-criticism which would otherwise give our high moral position credibility.

Many Australians relegate the crimes of the colonial period to history, while continuing to live comfortably with the present day consequences of nearly 200 years of flagrant human rights abuses. Indeed even in the 1990s, the aboriginal people of Australia have the lowest life expectancy and the highest infant mortality rates in the developed world.

At the root of this national tragedy lies the hitherto subordinate legal status of the aboriginal people. At the time of the European "discovery" of Australia in 1770, the continent was declared to be "Terra Nullius", Latin for uninhabited.

Both the early colonists and the policy makers in England maintained that because Aborigines had not enclosed or cultivated land, it followed that they had no right to sovereignty, which under the English Common Law had to be based on individual ownership, or in short, private property.

In the frenzied scramble for pastoral land in the period between 1788 and 1850, the colonial office in London was faced with the decision of having to moderate what they couldn't control.

"Squatters", or quasi-aristocratic land owners, staked illegal claims on great tracks of aboriginal land, often on the "other side of the frontier", beyond the law and beyond control. To deal with the situation, administrators felt they had little choice but to grant pastoral leases in the hope that the problem of what to do about the natives would go away.

But in reality legislators probably hoped that pastoralists would solve the "aboriginal question" with the saber and the musket. In many cases they did, as Hughes's paper demonstrates. The problem was, however, that the land was not uninhabited at all. And the problem is that the aboriginal people somehow survived.

The old adage, "those who do not learn the lessons of history are destined to repeat its mistakes" now haunts this generation of Australians. In 1997 the aboriginal people have reemerged from that place beyond history to call to account the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of those responsible for what would now be termed "ethnic cleansing", or "crimes against humanity".

On June 3, 1992 the highest court in the nation handed down what was perhaps the most important legal decision in the history of the European settlement of Australia.

The High Court recognized in law that the aboriginal people did in fact hold a form of "native title", and that in certain circumstances this had survived British colonization.

More than 200 years after Europeans began to dispose the native people, an Aborigine, Eddie Mabo, an Elder of the Meriam Tribe of the Murry Islands, Cape York (North Queensland) filed a suit on behalf of his people to have the High Court recognize that Australia was not "Terra Nullius," but rather "Terra Aboriginal".

The High Court decided that because the Meriam People could demonstrate continuous occupancy of their land they were entitled to be recognized as having "title".

In a legal sense there was nothing particularly radical about this. The "Mabo Decision" simply recognized that in those remaining parts of Australia where native people still occupied their traditional lands that these same people may be recognized as the owners of the land by the High Court.

However, in a social sense "Mabo" promised a dramatic departure from the past for all Australians, black and white -- a turning point, the basis for a new relationship between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians.

"Mabo" was thus more than a victory for Aborigines. It was an opportunity for all those who believe in a fair, democratic and socially progressive Australia. But was it?

The Australian sociologist Stuart Macintyre draws our attention to an advertisement he saw posted on the notice board of a Daly River (Western Australia) Pub: "4 Sale: Gas Ovens, German-made. Will accommodate at least 30 coons (Aborigines)."

Macintyre suggests that this type of comment continues to represent middle-Australia's comfortable stereotype of white racism: crude, semiliterate and exotic.

And while liberal-minded "decent" Australians conveniently claim to reject this form of racism, they collectively ensure that even the "Mabo Decision" has little impact on the status quo.

Indeed the great advantage of "Mabo" has been that it has "soothed" white guilt at little or no expense. By restricting claims to vacant Crown Land and by insisting that under "Mabo" claimants must demonstrate a traditional and continuous attachment to the land, legislators have essentially restricted negotiations to areas which nobody wants anyway.

Significantly, since the "Mabo Decision" was announced in 1992, only 12 hectares of mainland Australia has been successfully claimed under the Native Title Act -- the culmination of a six year battle by the Dhungutti People of Crescent Head, New South Wales. The High Court's 1996 "Wik Judgment," however, is very different.

The "Wik Judgment," named after the Wik People of Northern Queensland, settled the issue of whether the native title granted under "Mabo" could co-exist with pastoral leases, the same leases granted so hastily by the British Foreign Office in the 1880s.

And further, whether pastoral leases granted under the now abandoned legal view of Australia as being uninhabited land, extinguishes aboriginal land rights.

"Wik" then is history with a bite. It is the turning of a process begun nearly 200 years ago. It is the consequence of wrong policy. It is racist white Australia's worst nightmare, which is why it has caused such "concern" amongst members of Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party who in their hearts deeply resent having to negotiate with Aborigines in the first instance.

"Wik" is confronting. It has provoked outrage on the part of present day pastoralists, particularly the largest and most wealthy landowners, because it cuts to the core of the issue -- the illegal disposition of aboriginal lands.

With the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games only two years away, Australia is bursting to represent its best face to the World, to showcase Australian European civilization as a model of human rights, progress and moderation.

But will white Australians seize the opportunity to address the wrongs of past and the present? For pastoralists, unfortunately, the answer to "Wik" is to legislate away aboriginal people's basic human rights, that is as a means of protecting "private property" and ensuring the "efficient and productive use of land."

For the aboriginal people, "Wik" is a historical opportunity to exercise a great Australian virtue -- "a fair go for everyone."

How can Australia dare to raise human rights concerns with other nations if it is not prepared to put its own house in order?

The world is watching for Australia's response.

Rob Goodfellow is a researcher based in Wollongong Australia. Dr. M. Dwi Marianto has a PhD from Wollongong University.