Time to put house in order

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.