Indigenous Australia Homework Help

Indigenous Australia
“Self Determination” and its significance in the advancement of Aboriginal Rights since the 1970s.

Self determination can be defined as the process by which significant powers to make decisions are transferred to indigenous people from government. This therefore implies that the government would then undertake to put programs and measures in place and devote resources and necessary support to ensure that the indigenous people are empowered to reconstruct their own capabilities for decision making. It is important to underline the fact that self determination is usually something to be taken and not to be given by government. In the context of the Aboriginal, self determination thus implied ‘self management’ or the ‘freedom to live well’. The need for self determination was in response to the oppression and marginalization by the white Australians, (Allen & Unwin). This paper puts the concept of self determination in context and analyzes its significance in the advancement of Aboriginal rights since the 1970s.

The process of colonization of indigenous Australians by the British comprised of frontier violence as well as governmental policy. Alongside being converted into British subjects, indigenous Australians were robbed of their autonomy. In fact, colonization left almost all the life aspects of indigenous Australians changed. The indigenous people’s families, their faith, and mode of work were significantly affected. As it has been rightly described by some historical analysts, the Australian Aboriginal-European relationship at least for the first 150 years would be described as a period of dispossession, in which the Aboriginal were subjected to social, economic, and cultural abuse, physical maltreatment and codified discrimination. The most devastating practice was the separation of Aboriginal children from their parents which was essentially aimed at reducing indigenous population by controlling indigenous reproduction, (Green, 2009).

Self determination was thus a product of the injustices to which the indigenous people were subjected in the process of this humiliating inhuman dispossession. The dispossession of indigenous Australians was a ‘racialsation’ process which left Aborigines immensely disadvantaged. The Aboriginal movement was a social movement that was aimed at getting rid of the ‘white problem’ that was a heavy yolk on the shoulders of the indigenous Australians. It was required to achieve both equality and independence of the Aborigines through self help measures. It was a movement against numerous difficulties because as expected, the whites would not willingly grant the needed equality and independence. Having waited for at least two centuries for white Australians to amend damage caused to them to no avail, the Aborigines declared that their destiny was in their own hands, (McHugh, 2004).

It is because of the abuses of the rights of the indigenous Australians that prompted the regrouping of Aboriginal activists to marshal support and agitate for their human rights including citizenship and land rights as well. Although the Aboriginal movement is identified with the 1972 tend embassy explosion, it is important to note that the Aboriginal people had for a long time been expressing discontent with the manner in which government had oppress them and remove them from their lands. It is also important to underline fact that prior to 1788, (before European settlers came to Australia) there were clearly defined land rights and rules of occupancy that guided land use by Aboriginal Australians. It is therefore the interference with and destruction of this original system by the European settlers that was termed ‘dispossession’, (Yunupingu, 1997).

As mentioned in the foregoing section, the Aboriginal movement had started way before 1972. The social movement was an uphill task considering fact that the non-indigenous people were the ones expected to grant freedom to the indigenous people. Among other issues, the movement was intended to deliver autonomy and self identity to the Aboriginal people. Although the primary objective was to fight for equal rights, it became apparent in the 1960s that Aboriginal Australians were against assimilation policies and desired to keep their identities. They wanted to identify and keep themselves as a people. Between 1922 and 1967, the Aboriginal movement manifested in different civil rights formations; (Bern, & Dodds, 2000).

The first was the Australian Aboriginal Progressive Association (AAPA) that was formed in 1922 in New South Wales. This association was a movement to demand for citizenship rights of the Aborigines. After its forceful disbandment by police in 1927, it was followed by the Aborigines’ Progressive Association (APA) that became quite popular in1930s having published the ‘Abo call’ that meant ‘voice of the Aborigines. This was followed by the 1932 William Cooper’s Australian Aborigines League (AAL) that was tasked with agitating for Aboriginal peoples’ human rights. These were among the many other similar formations across the country. Their motivation was the same. They expressed their opposition toward governments’ protectionist policies that were founded upon racial and discriminatory inclinations. They advocated for uniform policy and Commonwealth as opposed to state control, (Allen & Unwin, 2003).

One historical day for the Aboriginal movement was on the 26th January 1938 when a protest dubbed ‘a day of mourning’ was staged by both AAL and APA to ‘celebrate 150 years of theft and genocide’. The backbone of the congress was to agitate for their citizenship rights. An attempt by Pastor Doug Nichols in1949 to request for one seat reservation for Aboriginal in the House of Representatives was termed unconstitutional. In the 1950s, the Aboriginal people faced another challenge to do with unequal pay. The period thus witnessed a lot of activity related to demand for equal wages taking center stage in trade Union discussions. It was not until 1968 that Aborigines eventually managed to secure equal pay for equal work (Tanner, 2001).

Before the 27th May 1967 constitutional referendum, the Aborigines lived under the state government controls. This was a deliberate creation of the Constitution under sections 51 and 127 whose provisions allowed the Commonwealth Parliament to make Laws for any Australian but not for the Aboriginal and also not to include the Aboriginal people in the Commonwealth’s population computations. The 1967 referendum was thus meant to amend the Constitution so that the Aborigines would also be included in the Census and Federal government be mandated to legislate on behalf of the Aborigines. A conference on Autonomy and Self-government was held in Sydney by the Federal Council for the Advancement of Aborigines and Tones Strait Islanders (FCAATSI) which had been formed back in 1964, (Slattery, 2007).

Having outlined an overview of the events that surrounded the Aboriginal-European relationship before 1970s, this essay now considers the events relating to self determination and the fight for the rights of the Aboriginal people from the 1970s. The Aboriginal experience with the white settlers in during this period was characterized with tales of oppression and discrimination by the white settlers technically coiled around the rule of law. It was a history of injustice. A much debated instance is one in which Prime Minister Howard is said to have refused to acknowledge and apologize for ‘stolen generation’. The mid-1970s therefore saw growth in self determination momentum with Aborigines demanding full recognition and acknowledgment of their presence and grievances in the legal structure. However, the whole issue of the right to self determination only managed to attract rhetorical as opposed to actual acknowledgment, (Maddison, 1969).

The 1970s was a period when most legal systems were amended to depict willingness to accept and improve Aboriginal status but this took quite a vague and uneven approach. The Aborigines were fully opposed to the assimilation and legal termination policies. They advocated for equal citizenship rights among other fundamental rights. Such equality was expected to be reflected in land rights too, (Chartrand, 1993). However, the manner in which self determination principle was treated was largely disguising. What the reformed legal systems did was to reduce the Aboriginal people to appear as pitted against government. As time passed by, and with more agitation for their rights, successive legislation redefined the Aboriginal issue to move away from recognition toward integration and management of the Aboriginal rights within the legal framework. Essentially, the legal system created some conditions and a measure for the extent to which accommodation of the Aboriginal rights would be allowed, (Davis, 2007).

Other than the restrictions surrounding the Aboriginal self-governance, the 1990s also exhibited conflict of interest regarding resource control. There were competing interests between the Aboriginal and the state departments. Right from the 1970s, the Aboriginal movement had strived to achieve autonomy in its activity. At the same time, their strategy was shaped in a way to benefit from sympathy of the whites. Indeed this was largely successful because the more than 1200 Aboriginal organizations which were in place by 1992 were mostly under Aborigines or Islanders, (Allen & Unwin, 2003).

The debate on principle of self determination cannot be complete without mention of the land aspect. Aboriginal people had always condemned the famous Captain Cook’s declaration of Australian land as ‘terra nullius’ which meant ‘unoccupied land. In 1979, there had been a proposal for a treaty between the Commonwealth and the Aboriginal people. This treaty that was proposed by a national Aboriginal conference was meant to allow for the recognition of Aboriginal peoples’ prior ownership of land. This was later rejected in 1981at a meeting held by Federation of Aboriginal Land Councils on argument that the issue needed adequate consultation with Aborigines. Subsequent negotiations were aimed at making an internationally recognized as opposed to Australian Law based treaty. This therefore led to the Canberra based Treaty 88which strongly asserted the intention of Aboriginal people to reclaim what was rightfully their own land and sovereignty, (Banner, 2005).

Aboriginal people started resistance to dispossession way back in 1788. This long struggle for land rights witnessed momentum in the 1870s when the Aborigines moved to reoccupy what was their traditional land through squatting on it, planting some crops, or even constructing shelters. Instead of resettling them back, the government responded by turning those land into reserves. What was originally an Aboriginal initiative worked to the advantage of the whites. Aboriginal people were then separated from the whites using these reserved lands and were accorded no land rights. This period was characterized by harsh treatment of the Aboriginal people when they attempted to resist being dispersed from the reserve land in later years, (Green, 2009).

In the 1960s, the fight was both for land rights and civil rights. During this period, the Yirrkala and Gurindji people strongly came out to fight for both mining and pastoral interests of the Aboriginal people. The Gurindji land rights struggle lasted for up to nine years and gained support from various trade unions of the time including the Waterside Workers Federation and the North Australian Workers Union among others. On the other hand, the Yirrkala people were in the same period protesting against Nabalco Company for intruding into the Gove reserve which belonged to the Yirrkala. Having protested since 1963 and going to court in 1968, the case for Yirrkala was only determined in 1971and verdict given against them. The judgment delivered maintained that the doctrine of communal native title was recognized by common law and that the people had failed to acknowledge this provision, (Allen & Unwin, 2003).

This did not kill the struggle for land rights. In fact, an intensified campaign followed advocating for change of laws with an aim to secure the land rights. This started soon after the infamous 1971 ruling with the Yirrkala Council directly petitioning Prime Minister McMahon to support change of legislation. However, these attempts were met with more cruelty in political battlefields as opposed to the legal fields because the Aboriginal people now demanded for statutory amendments. In response to the 1972 emerging interests of mainstream political parties (both the coalition and the labor party) in the Aboriginal land, a tent was erected by the Aboriginal people in Canberra right outside the Parliament House and named the ‘Aboriginal Embassy’, (Garden, 1999).

The labor Party took advantage of the situation at the time and campaigned on the platform that if elected into power, they would grant the land rights sought by the Aboriginal land rights movement. The labor Party under leadership of Gough Whitlam sailed through and was elected. However, the Whitlam administration was dismissed even before passing of the numerous recommendations made under the tenure of the Labor Party and incorporated into the 1975 land rights Bill, (McHugh, 2004).

The most remembered event in the fight for land rights cycle was witnessed in the Mabo case judgment of 1992. The case had been filed in Court in 1982 to claim land owned by Eddie Mabo and others. This land was on Murray Islands between Australia and Papua Guinea. Initially, the Queensland administration had through legislation declared that the 1879 Queensland’s assumption of Sovereignty had quenched any traditional rights in Torres Strait. However, the High Court invalidated the Queensland legislation in a 1988 ruling that left the details of the exact legal rights for the litigants yet to be decided. The 1992 Court ruling maintained that the British Sovereignty over Australia did not extinguish the pre-existing land rights. In other words, the Court ruled in favor of Mabo and other Murray Islanders; holding that the traditional land rights remained valid. Unfortunately Mabo did not live to hear this ruling that was made on 3rd June 1992, (Allen & Unwin, 2003).

In as much as the Mabo judgment seemed to have achieved some significant result, it failed to provide significant benefit for indigenous Australians regarding native titles. Native title would only remain valid if traditional owners did not leave the land. Notwithstanding its weaknesses, the Mabo judgment was seen to have wiped out the ‘terra nullius’ issue for Australia. What followed from 1993 to 1998 was a continued array of battles in the legal and political realms concerning Native Title Act legislation, (Yunupingu G, 1997).

Self determination later entered another stretch that has been dubbed ‘Reconciliation, the stolen generations and the sorry debate’. This reconciliation movement emerged following the 1991 report regarding inquiry into 99 cases of Aboriginal Deaths in prison by the Royal Commission. Having analyzed the underlying socio-economic conditions of the 99 offenders, the report provided a clear view of the way the indigenous people had been mistreated. Therefore the Royal Commission recommended establishment of a reconciliation process to aid in National healing. This process has not however been smooth. For instance, the Howard government proved very hostile to the reconciliation process. This led to intensified grass root mobilization to agitate for support of the reconciliation process, (Garden, 1999).

In May 1997, these concerted efforts seemed to yield fruit when Howard admitted and exhibited His sorrow for injustices of the past. This was in a speech during the National Reconciliation Convention. But Howard diluted his apology when he added that the current Australian generation did not have to bare blame of past injustices over which they had no control. Howard went ahead to defend his government policies hence did not actually apologize for the stolen generations as was expected. This is an indication of the great challenges with which the reconciliation movement has to grapple with the ultimate goal to achieve socio-economic equality by indigenous people, (Allen & Unwin, 2003).

In conclusion, self determination movement by indigenous people played quite a significant role in the fight for the rights of the Aboriginal people both in North America and Australia. It was due to this movement that substantial change of legislation was started in most Jurisdictions during the mid 1970s. The effect of these legal changes was to acknowledge the cultural identity and rights of the indigenous people. Self determination can be summarized to have been a long and frustrating struggle but one which was worth pursuing. With citizenship rights, human rights and land rights at stake, Self determination efforts have achieved a lot having come all the way to the reconciliation era (McHugh, 2004). Without equality in society, there can be no meaningful socio-economic growth. There can be no peace in a Country divided along racism with acute discrimination of some of its population.

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