Policy and Politics in the
Indigenous Sphere: An
Introduction for Bureaucrats
Melissa Lucashenko
Research Paper No. 1 June 1996
Centre for Australian Public Sector Management
The Centre for Australian Public Sector Management is affiliated to Griffith University's Faculty of Commerce and
Management, and its objectives are to undertake and promote research into the effectiveness and efficiency of the public
sector in Australia, and to analyse the role of the public sector in the Australian community.
Research Project on Aboriginal Politics and Public Sector Management
The Centre's Research Project on Aboriginal Politics and Public Sector Management was established in 1995 under the
direction of Professor Ciaran O'Faircheallaigh. Supported by a grant from the Australian Research Council, the Project's
general aim is to help develop an approach to management of public policies and programs which is tailored to the
specific needs, aspirations and circumstances of Aboriginal people in Australia.
The role of the Project's Research Paper Series is to provide earlier and wider access to research findings which will, in
many cases, eventually appear in scholarly journals and books; and to stimulate exchange of information and debate on
issues relating to Aboriginal politics and public sector management.
Copies of this and other Project publications and more information on the Project can be obtained from:
Professor Ciaran O'Faircheallaigh
Faculty of Commerce and Management Griffith University
NATHAN Q. 4111
Phone: (07) 3875 7209 Fax: (07) 3875 7737
E-mail: [email protected]
Policy and Politics in the Indigenous Sphere: An Introduction for Bureaucrats
Melissa Lucashenko
Centre for Australian Public Sector Management
Griffith University
Aboriginal Politics and Public Sector Management Research Paper No. 1
June 1996
The Author
Melissa Lucashenko is a Bundjalung woman currently undertaking her PhD at Griffith University on the experience of
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women at work. She has previously been employed as a policy officer in the
Queensland Department of Health and in the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC), and has been
active in the community sector in Brisbane.
Acknowledgements
Thanks are due to Ciaran O'Faircheallaigh, Peter Loveday, Elaine McCoy, Liz Van Acker, Bill Pennington, Miles Goodwin
and Dany Celermajer for comments on earlier drafts. Much of the content concerning diversity and racism developed in
conversation with Kerry Tim, to whom thanks are also due. All opinions expressed are those of the author.
Cover design:
Ralph Reilly
Introduction
In late 1994 a senior South Australian parliamentarian attracted fleeting national comment by referring to a
(non-Aboriginal) Parliamentary opponent as a 'nigger in the woodpile'. In the same month Northern Territory
Chief Minister Marshall Perron – not noted for his liberal stance on indigenous issues – spoke positively on
the ABC's Four Corners about the partial accommodation of 'tribal' Aboriginal law in the Top End, praising
the harsh corporal punishment embodied in some traditional practices. The Aboriginal and Torres Strait
Islander flags flew as usual from Bonner House in Canberra, the national seat of indigenous politics in
Australia. Prominent moderate head of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC), Lois
O'Donohue, pleaded with independent Green senators from Western Australia to allow the federal
government's Land Fund Bill through the senate, rather than refuse its passage on the grounds that it gave
too little to Aboriginal people. A new upmarket indigenous art gallery was launched in Sydney. Aboriginal
unemployment officially remained around 30 per cent nationally, and star Murri athlete Cathy Freeman was
featured on the cover of the Independent Monthly magazine, which described her carrying of the Aboriginal
flag at the 1994 Commonwealth Games as 'bringing the image of Aboriginal Australians to a new plane'.
Contemporary Aboriginal politics in Australia is a neat label covering a multitude of indigenous and nonindigenous people wishing to direct effective policy toward the confusing morass known as' Aboriginal affairs'
in some ways face an unenviable task. When many Aboriginal people live in poverty, but a handful in luxury,
when vast numbers of Aboriginal people do not matriculate but some hold higher degrees and doctorates,
when some speak as many as eight Aboriginal languages, and others none, when indigenous people are
geographically dispersed from Port Arthur to Port Headland and all points between, how might we make
meaningful generalisations about the nature of their lives and political positions? How is it possible for
indigenous people to make the Bicentennial Year claims of 'One Land, One Mob, One Voice'? Even trickier,
how are bureaucrats to respond to the needs of this conglomerate known as Aboriginal Australia?
Successful policy development, analysis and/or intervention in this field requires, at a bare minimum, that
non-indigenous bureaucrats learn and remain aware of indigenous difference and indigenous diversity. It
also requires a realistic (and to white Australians, often unpalatable) acknowledgment of racism – past and
present – as an integral part of life for indigenous Australians, and as a vital factor which can never be
assumed to be absent in the policy process. The immediate impact of racism upon non-Aboriginal people
working in the field is the constant imperative to prove themselves different – different to the white
bureaucrats and overseers of past generations, and just as importantly, different to the mass of 'soft racists'
Aboriginal people encounter every day of their lives. Once indigenous people are convinced of these
preconditions, the task of moulding policy to fit the indigenous sphere can begin in earnest.
This paper suggests that non-indigenous people who are attempting to understand or develop indigenous
policies face unique difficulties. As in other largely 'welfare oriented' policy sectors, the people to whom
indigenous policy is addressed are often (justifiably) suspicious and cynical about the motivations of
government agencies and activities. These attitudes are also increasingly present in indigenous interactions
with non-indigenous researchers who are not explicitly connected with the Australian state. Indigenous and
non-indigenous groups often, though not always, can be seen to be talking past one another, addressing
fictitious opponents and vainly attempting to win the unresolved battles of the last two hundred years. The
native title debate of 1993 demonstrated to the nation, however, that difficult as their resolution may be,
indigenous issues are central to Australian political and economic processes. When an issue of Aboriginal
rights can become the major national debate over a whole year, it is perhaps time more non-Aboriginal
Australians began to examine their preconceptions and assumptions about who Aboriginal people really are,
how they view and react to the state, and what they are demanding of it. The beginnings of this change,
though small and inadequate, were apparent in the Keating administration.
Gough Whitlam is often hailed as the father of Australian land rights, and as the first white politician to act in
a statesmanlike fashion in indigenous politics. The staged image of Whitlam pouring earth into the hands of a
Curindji tribal elder still remains vivid for Aboriginal people, and for their supporters. But as radicals argued at
the time of the Gurindji handback, and Mabo subsequently showed, it was not Whitlam's land to return.
Symbolically, it was a great act and an appropriate one, but history will recall that it was Paul Keating who
went to Redfem in 1993, and became the first Australian prime minister to publicly admit and disown the
racism which has informed indigenous affairs since 1788. Where Whitlam bestowed customary largesse, and
Fraser – far ahead of his time in the conservative side of Australian politics – implemented the
recommendations of the Woodward Commission on Aboriginal Land Rights in the Northern Territory, Keating
took it upon himself to go to the urban heart of Aboriginal Australia and take responsibility for the genocidal
policies of the past. It is surely no coincidence that Keating is also the first Australian prime minister who has
matured politically in an era where Aboriginal voices have secured a genuine, albeit limited, credence in the
Australian polity.
1
Indigenous Difference
The differences in indigenous lifestyles and philosophies which make living in close contact with mainstream
Australia difficult for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island people are often invisible to the invading society.
These differences are both real and manifold, and stem from a colonial history; different attitudes to the place
of land in the social landscape; the quest to rediscover or maintain an indigenous identity in the face of
pressure to assimilate; the primary place of Aboriginal Law in the lives of some Aboriginal people; and a
longheld distrust of non-indigenous social and political institutions arising from massive institutionalisation of
the indigenous population. Some of the differences between 'mainstream' and indigenous politics can also
be found in other marginalised groups; many of the differences, however, have their roots solely in the
Fourth World status of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. An appreciation of what land rights and
'living on country' imply for indigenous people is fundamental to grasping the differences which lie at the
heart of indigenous politics. Similarly, it is important for non-indigenous people to consider what it means that
indigenous Australians are the only Australians to have been colonised, and to remain colonised, in this
country.
The Colonial Legacy: From Appeasement to Self-determination
Australians, especially those of British origin, are enmeshed from birth in a mythology which tells them that
Australia – the eighteenth century's great 'unknown southern land' – was discovered by Captain James Cook
to be a vast and virtually unoccupied continent. This fortuitous discovery was claimed in the name of the
King, conquered with little resistance from the bands of 'savages' the 'settlers' encountered, and proceeded
to become a giant prison for the criminal classes of the British Empire. Few Australian schoolchildren have
ever been told that the Dutch were in fact the first European to land on the Australian coast, long before
Cook, and fewer still that Macassans were trading and intermarrying with the indigenous people of Northern
Australia for three hundred years before the Endeavour hove into view in the South. The Aboriginal
resistance to the British invasion is only now being rediscovered by historians. It is hardly surprising then,
that the indigenous voice of the nation forms such a void in the Australian consciousness.
Those contemporary Australians who are determined that the attempted genocide upon Aboriginal people
was a 'natural' and 'inevitable' result of conflict with an aggressive invader have never been told that the First
Fleet sailed with instructions from King George III that the natives were to be parleyed with, nor that relations
between whites arid the people of the Eora and other tribes of Sydney were initially peaceable. For the first
few years of the European invasion, a policy of appeasement was in force; few lives were lost. As the frontier
moved outward from Sydney, however, the brief control exercised by the central authorities diminished;
'settlers' clashed with the Aboriginal owners of the land they were invading, native food supplies dwindled
and attacks on the stock of Europeans became more frequent. As the phase of aggressive settlement
became more and more a reality, Aboriginal people in the South East of the continent began to realise that
these newly arrived ghosts of their ancestors might in fact be no more than men, men with a peculiar attitude
which didn't recognise that the land and the food upon it was a common resource bound by sacred Law.
From this point onwards, the Aboriginal history of the white invasion becomes increasingly diverse, for as the
frontier moved north and west, indigenous groups encountered white aggression in different forms, for
different reasons, and at different times.
The Black Wars of Tasmania in the 1820s attempted to first conquer, and then exterminate, the indigenous
Tasmanians; their like was not to be seen in the remote North West of Australia for another hundred years.
The last officially organised massacre of Aboriginal people by whites was close to the Queensland/Northern
Territory border in 1932, though there is colloquial evidence of massacres much later than this in the
Kimberley. While southern Australia had shifted well into the era of 'protection' and even 'assimilation' by the
time of the Centenary, other Aboriginal groups were still fighting physically for their land, and their lives.
Reynolds has written:
In the 1960s, old Dyirbal people in North Queensland still had 'a solid hope that one day the
white man would be driven out, and the tribe would once more be able to resume peaceful
occupation of its traditional lands.' The Europeans had been in the district ninety years (1982:
65).
It is therefore not possible to talk of a 'linear' history of invasion; the differing experiences of invasion held by
Aboriginal groups in different parts of the country are today reflected in their different ways of 'being black'.
The five hundred-odd Aboriginal nations of Australia, distinguished by their own languages and legal
2
systems, were diverse before Cook's arrival, and those which survive have if anything become more so. In
general, though, the phases of colonisation first saw aggression against black landowners, 'dispersals' (the
colonial euphemism for shooting, poisoning and starving blacks to death) going hand-in-hand with
dispossession. This was followed in most of Australia by official 'protection' of Aborigines, implemented by
either Government or religious agencies – protection, that is, from the worst excesses of the invading white
nation. In the words of an Aboriginal man from Derby in Western Australia, speaking of the colonists:
They shot off people's feet to stop them running. Without missionaries we would have been
cleaned out (quoted in RintouI 1993).
This era of 'protection' is today seen by some Aboriginal people as simply a sop to white consciences which
were being pricked by stories of atrocities filtering back to Britain. An alternative view has it that, imprisoned
in what were virtual concentration camps, Aborigines had no real hope of reclaiming lost lands – the Church
was operating intentionally or otherwise through its missions to complement the actions of the state in the
dispossession process. Whatever their rationale, the missions which were at first refuges from colonial
violence quickly became hated institutions themselves, characterised by rampant physical, sexual and
emotional abuse of children. Conditions at Moore River Mission in Western Australia in 1947 caused
comment from the Acting Commissioner of Native Affairs:
Last Sunday I noticed that the toddlers at the kindergarten are placed in boxes for want of
proper playgrounds. Not only does this method of control restrict the child very severely, but the
practice creates a very bad impression on visitors...(quoted in Maushart 1993: 68).
Control of the Aboriginal inmates did not cease with toddlers:
It was like a prison, but we thought that was the norm. You grew up like that. You know – to see
a window without steel mesh on it, you thought something was wrong with it (Conway quoted in
Maushart 1993: 125).
The missionaries might have considered the Aboriginal soul to be of value, but they had no use for
indigenous spirituality, culture or language.
As the missionaries of Hermannsburg, in central Australia sang them Bach cantatas, they
prayed for God to change the heart of the Australian Aborigine (Rintoul1993: 5)
Missions are inseparable in the minds of Aboriginal people today from the 'removals' – the policy of taking
children with white blood away from their families, to be raised in white environments and for the economic
and often sexual uses of white employers. Aboriginal author Barbara Cummings has written of her
experience of being taken away from her mother (who had also been removed as a child) to the Retta Dixon
children's home in Darwin:
I tried extremely hard to find something positive to say about both the institutions and the
officials who presided over them but the archival material revealed nothing...(1990: Preface).
The historical presence or absence of missionary influence now provides another element distinguishing
between contemporary Aboriginal communities. While both were institutional experiences, being raised as an
Aboriginal child under the rubric of the Church was significantly different to that of being a Ward of State in a
government settlement, and differences of socialisation and religion still permeate former mission
communities.
The 'protection' phase used a public policy of paternalism informed by social Darwinism to shield Aboriginal
groups from the privately genocidal policies of the new Australians. It was followed, as early as 1888 in
southern Australia, and as late as the 1970s in parts of the north, by calls for 'assimilation' and 'integration' –
the first allowing blacks to become as one with the mainstream of Australian society, and the second to do so
while retaining some facets of their own cultural identity. The watershed of the assimilationist era was
undoubtably the 1967 referendum, which allotted responsibility for Aboriginal affairs to the Commonwealth,
gave citizenship to Aboriginal people, and was a symbolic gesture of inclusion into the Australian nation.
Limited white acceptance of the idea that Aboriginal peoples could once again be self-determining of their
lives arose in the early 1970s, and became official policy under the first Whitlam government, which
developed the federal funding of community-based Aboriginal health and welfare services, the pursuit of
limited land rights in remote areas of Australia, and the establishment for the first time of a Commonwealth
Aboriginal Affairs Department. While the language of 'Jacky Jacky' and 'Mary' lingered on in company
3
boardrooms and in the public imagination, the paternalistic norms of the protection era were becoming less
acceptable as public policy, at least at the national level. (The governments of Queensland, the Northern
Territory and Western Australia, however, remained and often still remain impervious as ever to liberal trends
emanating from 'down South'.)
'Self-determination' under Whitlam turned to 'self-management' under his Liberal successors in the late
Seventies, while 'self-sufficiency' was popular, if ambiguous, terminology in some State jurisdictions. It has
never been made precisely clear by the diverse Aboriginal constituency what self-determination might
involve; anything from a sovereign Aboriginal state to increased community control of government funding
has been claimed for the concept. Self-determination remained official policy under the Hawke and Keating
governments, although one prominent white critic and observer remained unconvinced:
A conflict exists between the assimilationist objectives of white Australian policies and the
deeply ingrained attitudes and patterns of behaviour of Aboriginals: a conflict so fundamental
that, internalised in the minds of Aboriginals as it is, has induced a state of severe mental
confusion and emotional stress (Coombs 1991a – emphasis added).
Indigenous People and Land in the Transition to Capitalism
At the various points of first European contact, Aboriginal groups were non- industrial, low-technology
cultures with inextricable links to particular geographic regions. For the eighty-to-two-hundred years since
white contact was made, indigenous people have been forced to accommodate a transition to a
technological capitalist economy in which land plays almost no part other than as a commodity. Although the
Green movement is growing in popularity, and is urging a consideration of the natural environment in terms
which challenge the conventional economic wisdom, the overwhelming paradigm of Australian culture
remains one of the economic exploitation of natural resources; the defining characteristic of land in a
capitalist economy must be as a factor of production. This attitude to the natural environment is very much at
odds with traditionally-oriented indigenous lifestyles, where land is a resource providing food and shelter, but
is also endowed with enormous spiritual and psychological significance going far beyond what Western
civilisations have traditionally termed 'practical' material uses.
An attachment to land (or in the case of Torres Strait Islanders and some Aboriginal people, sea) which is
spiritual and emotional, as well as economic and political, forms the basis of indigenous identity.
It confers on those who share it the right to live there, to use its resources, and to be part of the
related social life and support systems...No description of the technicalities of Aboriginal land
ownership can capture the accompanying depth of feeling (Coombs et al. 1989: 38).
It is largely this attachment which constantly brings Aboriginal people into such direct and clear conflict with
the dominant society and economy. Europeans in Australia initially failed to recognise the different ways in
which the indigenous people viewed the land, and their initial failure to negotiate a treaty has meant that
indigenous people have only recently had the opportunity to make these differences explicit in legal forums.
This chasm of misunderstanding is easily seen by the sceptical attitudes of most non-Aboriginal people to
land claims – claims which are disputed in white monetary terms, by attributing commercial motives to the
claimants, as if Aboriginal people could have no possible motives other than avarice and materialism.
Naturally, the Northern Land Council slogan 'Our land is our life' has little meaning to non-Aboriginal people
educated in the context of land as a transferable asset, valued for its convenience to (or distance from) urban
centres, ability to support livestock, and so on.
The argument here is not that all contemporary indigenous groups eschew the developmentalist position –
they manifestly do not. But where indigenous groups participate in the mining and other' development' of
their lands, they usually attempt to do so in a way consistent with indigenous as well as industrial norms.
When Noel Pearson, Director of the Cape York Land Council, addressed the Queensland Mining Industry
Council in 1994, speaking positively on the topic of mining, subsequent press reports implied that Pearson
was a hypocrite who had preached the language of sacred sites and abandoned this rhetoric as soon as
development dollars were in sight. This argument fundamentally misinterprets the diversity and complexity of
the Aboriginal cultural paradigm. To see 'development' and an Aboriginal approach to the land as simply and
necessarily opposed fails to appreciate the possibility of development which is respectful of indigenous Law,
and which accommodates both mining and the retention of sacred areas.
For indigenous people, especially those least touched by Western influence, even the concept of living away
from their tribal land is painful. To be permanently denied the custodianship of it by what Coombs describes
as 'the skilful use of humbug by our new corporate colonisers' (1991b: 9) is, in many cases,
4
incomprehensible. Aboriginal people raised in the Law need to perform Ceremony on their lands regularly
throughout the year, and will become distressed if this is not possible.
In some instances the strength of obligations dictated by Aboriginal custom, for example
attendance at ceremonies, are in principle absolute, in, many powerful, and in almost all at least
persuasive (Coombs et al. 1989: 86).
Some commentators have suggested that this need to perform Ceremony is why indigenous people
historically adjusted very easily to work in the pastoral industry – working for pastoralists on their traditional
land gave them limited opportunities to carry out Ceremony Business, opportunities subsequently denied
when 'taken in' to the towns and missions. The attachment to land remains today. Urban and other
dispossessed blacks often use the loss of land as a symbol of their ruptured cultural identities as well as a
potent symbol of the whiteman's injustice:
We bin born and raised here. When we lose that country we'll be nothing. When we got a
country back we'll be right (Coombs et al. 1989: 40).
In itself the forced transition to a land-hungry capitalist economy would have been traumatic for Aboriginal
people; in reality, it was of course accompanied by deliberate attempts to exterminate Aboriginal peoples and
culture. The fact that-some Aboriginal people have been able to 'succeed' in the terms of European Australia
does not negate the fact of dispossession of lands and concurrent economic disempowerment for the
majority. This is the result of invasion, but it is also a reflection of 'culture shock' – the removal of
understandable paradigms of human existence, and their replacement by the norms of Western capitalism.
The Outstation Movement
While ownership or dispossession from lands is central to the lives of all indigenous people, for those groups
who have retained or who have prospects of regaining their traditional land, the emotional links with it remain
especially strong. Some Aboriginal people have always lived on tribal land; other groups have had almost
continuous association with their traditional lands, forced off for only one or two generations before returning
via the outstation or homeland movement. Outstations are the method chosen by many such Aboriginal
people to physically reclaim their land, and to take active steps in consolidating their indigenous cultures
away from the influence of the wider society. Outstations are typically small settlements, usually the home of
one or two extended families. Their facilities range from those limited to shelter, a water supply, and a
generator, to more elaborate set-ups involving multiple buildings, one-teacher schools, and graded roads (eg
Coombs et al. 1989: 30-1). Outstation living allows traditional landholders relatively easy access to sacred
sites for Ceremony Business since these sites, and not (as was the case with mission settlements) the
arbitrary convenience of white administrators, determine the location of the Outstation. As well as facilitating
a return to traditional practices, the outstation normally provides access to bush foods and helps promote
healthier communities than mission or urban life.
The homeland movement holds many attractions for Aboriginal people, and especially for those who are
'traditionally-oriented' by upbringing. Living on country allows an escape from unwanted contact with
mainstream Australia, and facilitates the teaching of languages and indigenous culture to children.
Significantly,
Aborigines living on outstations come into contact with the legal system to a much lesser extent
than do other Aborigines. These developments, however, do not solve the problems of isolation
and socio-economic disadvantage (Law Reform Commission 1986: 29).
The opportunity to avoid police harassment and the white criminal justice system is one of the most
important advantages of remote-area living, especially for indigenous individuals whose traditional authority
is undermined by the white law. The problem is to gain access to the appropriate land – mostly an
impossibility for urban blacks. Though those who choose to 'return to country' are deemed unemployed by
the Department of Social Security – allowing them access to unemployment benefit – money is normally
tight, and living conditions rough. The compensation for Aboriginal people is that the homeland movement
completes a psychological link in the minds of landholders, allowing them to care for their land and sites, to
live traditionally-oriented lifestyles, and to largely escape the racism, degradation and violence of the cities
and missions.
Forced to negotiate the cultural minefield of ATSIC regulations, some remote area groups in the North and
West are still trying to buy back areas of cattle stations and pastoral leases under an official structure of
economic development which aspires to equity in Aboriginal employment. Social justice in these official
5
terms means 'statistical equality', that is, that no more Aboriginal than non-Aboriginal people would be
classed as unemployed in a particular area or industry. But, worthy though that objective might be in some
circumstances, it is altogether a secondary consideration for the Aboriginal people in question. In the
Aboriginal paradigm, the land needs its Aboriginal owners, its custodians, and their true 'employment' lies in
looking after it. 'Whitefella jobs' – working for cash – is a minor and trivial consideration for those versed in
the Law.
Them old fellas, up in the Kimberley, you know, they're putting in to get their land back now.
They put in for it as an economic thing, so they can have a cattle station or whatever, jobs, you
know. They don't want a cattle station! They don't give a shit about the cattle – that land, its got
their sites on it. That's why they need it back. They just want to get it back, then bugger the
bloody cattle station! Then they can get back to ceremony again (Senior ATSIC officer,
interview, 1995).
The homeland movement which began in the 1970s in the Northern Territory and Western Cape York holds
much promise for some groups of Aboriginal people, but the conflict between mainstream views of the
practise and the Aboriginal imperatives for it, mean that bureaucratic definitions of 'employment', and more
general arguments about Aboriginal living standards, will need to be refined ifits success to date is to
continue.
The Mabo Case
In June 1992, the Australian High Court brought down a decision which was to splash indigenous affairs over
the nation's media for the next two years. The court had recognised in its judgement of the case Mabo v
Queensland, that the Torres Strait island of Mer had been owned prior to white contact by the Meriam
people. This tiny, apparently insignificant island which lies as close to Papua New Guinea as to Australia
became a precedent in Australian law that would shake the economic and political foundations of the nation.
The finding overturned what Prime Minister Keating has called the 'bizarre conceit' of 'Terra Nullius' which
had held for two centuries that the Aboriginal peoples who encountered the British in 1788 had the status in
law of flora or fauna. Original indigenous ownership of the entire continent was implied, though the court also
found that 'continuous association' with traditional lands was a precondition of native title – a precondition
which (arguably) few Aboriginal groups would be able to meet. Where the processes of colonisation and
assimilation had destroyed indigenous people's links to their country, native. title had probably been
'extinguished'. In addition, valid grants of freehold title to non-Aboriginal people (ie most of South East
Australia) would also extinguish native title – only unalienated Crown lands were open to claim by
indigenous groups.
During 1993 national discussions occurred between indigenous groups (especially the Land Councils, which
assumed a key negotiating role), mining and other industries, and the federal government, on the question of
a Native Title Bill which would translate the High Court decision into legislation. The national debate between
these groups forced Australia to confront the fact of its indigenous history, and made transparent the way in
which the wealth of modern Australia has been built upon the dispossession of Aboriginal people. The rural
sector in particular felt threatened by the prospect of increased black land ownership. Scare campaigns in
the media sought to obscure the fact that only a small proportion of Crown land was likely to be claimable
under the High Court decision, and emotions ran high. Though there was support from some sectors of the
non-indigenous community for the Court's ruling, Aboriginal communities nationwide reported an increase in
violent activities against them by racial extremists. Print and electronic media ethnocentrically debated the
merits of Aboriginal culture, as if Western technology and lifestyles were the only criteria for legitimate land
ownership. In Mt Isa, homeless Aboriginal people were forced to lock themselves into a large galvanised
shed at night for protection, only to emerge in the mornings to find fresh Ku Klux Klan graffiti on the ground
outside threatening their lives. If Torres Strait man Eddie Koiki Mabo – who did not live to see the decision of
the High Court concerning his island – had challenged and rewritten Australian law, he had also in the
process dragged the frontier back into parts of mainland Australia.
The emotive negotiation process which took place throughout 1993 split indigenous groups – those with
good prospects of claiming native title often found themselves opposed by the dispossessed Aborigines of
the South East. One of the most prominent Aboriginal spokespeople, Noel Pearson of the Cape York Land
Council, lauded in the white press for his articulate, intelligent approach to the issues, was (perhaps
inevitably) attacked by other blacks, who considered the deal he was spearheading with Prime Minister
Keating gave little or nothing to them. This deep divide created by the judgement and the government
response to it was eventually sidestepped by the twin proposals of a Land Fund Bill which would enable
dispossessed groups to buy back land, and a 'Social Justice Package' providing improvements in other
social services such as education and health. The government introduced the Land Fund Bill into the House
6
of Representatives in late 1994. The response of the federal Opposition was to assert its intention, in
government, to repeal the Bill. Passed through the lower House, the Bill stalled in the Senate due to its
blocking by two independent Green candidates who were sympathetic to the demands of some Aborigines in
South-Eastern and Western Australia that the Bill be strengthened. The Bill was eventually forced through
Federal Parliament by a technical strategy on the part of the Labor government; at the time of writing, the
Social Justice Package, representing perhaps the most comprehensive package of social reforms ever
attempted in Australian indigenous affairs, remains to be implemented.
Indigenous people have been conducting their political business through the mechanisms of Aboriginal Law
for millennia. Over the twenty odd years since the Whitlam Labor Government came to power, Aboriginal and
Islander people have slowly redeveloped their political institutions and mechanisms into ones designed to
wrest power over their affairs out of the hands of the white majority nation. These institutions have included
community-based health, legal, and welfare services, Land Councils, and the various peak bodies claiming
at different times to speak for a wider Aboriginal constituency. Not until the Mabo judgement, however, was
the legal right of Aboriginal people to claim land ever recognised by wider Australia. The political power
Aboriginal people had been insisting on and fighting for ever since the invasion, was finally augmented by
the decision of the High Court in 1992. Native title has given a tangible legal basis to indigenous demands for
justice, and it is this force which has caused such uproar in conservative Australia.
Indigenous Diversity – Contemporary Indigenous Lives
Effective bureaucratic work in indigenous policy fields requires a recognition of the false simplicities of the
past, and an understanding that indigenous politics are – and always have been – as complex as any other
in Australia. Aboriginal politics is not simply the Tent Embassy (now on the National Heritage Register), nor
the crude anger of the protest march, nor is it the sight of central desert elders shyly welcoming white
politicians to their world. Despite the persistence of the Australian media in dashing to the cultural cliche
basket every time an Aboriginal story arises, Aboriginal politics is a multifaceted entity, comprised of at least
three conflicting cultural paradigms – the 'traditionally oriented' indigenous communities of remote Australia;
the black enclaves of urban indigenous communities; and the interface of the indigenous world with
mainstream Australia – with numerous actors and even more numerous dilemmas for white politicians and
onlookers. It is near impossible to generalise effectively in this field, but as Vidal says, life is short. Tentative
generalisations must be made if our understanding of Aboriginal politics is to be advanced at all from the
widespread residual misinformation of the assimilationist era – misinformation which currently forms the
basis for most non-indigenous people's understanding of the area.
The Role of Non-indigenous Australians
One of the most difficult attitudes of indigenous people for mainstream Australia to understand is their
widespread wish for limited and controlled contact with non-Aboriginal people. In indigenous eyes, a short
glance at the history of white/indigenous contact should suffice for explanation, and the virtual insistence of
some white people upon their right to 'help' indigenous 'people is no more than another for of ethnocentric
intrusion. White people have been 'helping' Aborigines for two centuries – helping them to' civilise', helping
them to 'assimilate', helping them to 'integrate'. Aboriginal people are becoming chary of such help.
The conventional wisdom of Australian Aboriginal affairs has it that the problems of Aboriginal people have
traditionally attracted the 3Ms – missionaries, Marxists and madmen. Given the historical validity of this
statement, it is little wonder that Aboriginal people (especially those whose lives are geographically isolated
from mainstream Australia) can have such an abiding disdain for their fellow citizens. If other Australians saw
only those Aboriginal people who were driven to interact with them from ideology or avarice, how
representative a picture would that paint? White Australians, in fact, unless they have personal experience of
Aboriginal communities, are unlikely to see beyond media stereotypes and misinformation – those blacks
who are destined to remain drunken, illiterate, criminal and angry as long as it provides good copy. Similarly,
Aboriginal Australians in many parts of Australia are exposed mainly to whites with religion, goods or political
agendas to sell to them – thus all whites become the fundamentalist Christian, the exploitative remote
storekeeper, the fly-in fly-out bureaucrats (known as 'longsocks'). Such partial stereotypes continue to do
much damage in Aboriginal politics, and are not as uncommon as the educated Australian middle-class
might like to think. Both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people are susceptible to the easy blanket
generalisation when it comes to the politics of being indigenous in modem Australia.
Non-indigenous Australians have a substantial amount of resources – material, intellectual and political –
which they can bring to bear in assisting Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. Their roles in
7
indigenous areas though, must be delineated in open consultations with indigenous people. In many
instances, it will be most appropriate for non-indigenous people to take positive action in their own, rather
than in the black, community. Without detailed local knowledge of indigenous communities, outsiders have
almost no chance of accurately assessing what those communities want and need. If white bureaucrats are
sincere in their attempts to improve policies and programs, they will recognise and respect the imperative for
full consultation with appropriate indigenous peak organisations both before and during the development of
policy initiatives.
Aboriginality
In dealing with indigenous cultures across the globe, invading societies have without exception used the
politics of identity to divide indigenous communities and assert their own authority structures. Rooted in the
pseudoscience of social Darwinism, the division of indigenous peoples into full-blood, half-caste, quartercaste, octoroons and so on led to very precise, though arbitrary, gradations in the treatment of Aborigines in
Australia, with the removal in the assimilationist era of 'part-Aboriginal' children in order that their white blood
should 'triumph'. Children of as little as 1/32 parts Aboriginal 'blood' were (regardless of their socialisation)
removed up until the 1970s in parts of Australia, so strong was the taint, while those of full descent were
assumed to form the' dying race' for whom little could be done; the might of European civilisation had
sounded their death-knell. The Australian genocide was thus gently explained away to the world through the
mythology of white supremacy, and this ideology still lies at the root of many public attitudes to Aborigines in
Australia today. One has only to listen to Tim Fischer on the invention of the wheel to be reminded how
crudely, and unsuccessfully, conservative white Australia attempts to expurgate its colonial guilt – blacks
who were wheelless prior to white contact were obviously 'destined' to be conquered and exterminated by
the higher races. This same attitude over the past two centuries determined that those Aboriginal people
blessed with white blood could perhaps be salvaged for menial employment, hence the 'removals', and the
subsequent stolen generations of Aboriginal children.
The matriarchal nature of much contemporary Aboriginal society, combined with the very recent history of
attempted cultural genocide via assimilation, has meant that children of mixed race have often been raised
within or brought back into Aboriginal society and are regarded as wholly Aboriginal, particularly in urbanised
Australia. Where white fathers (few white women historically have sought out Aboriginal partners) are absent
in the lives of their Aboriginal children, their genetic legacy means little or nothing.
Despite the continual references in Australian public life to' degrees' of Aboriginality (where geographicalremoteness and skin colour together fatuously determine the authenticity of one's claim to Aboriginal identity)
the Australian government has in fact adopted a relatively progressive stance on the question of who is to be
considered indigenous. Unlike the governments of New Zealand, Canada and the United States, Australia
now leaves the defining of Aboriginality to indigenous people themselves – a rare example of selfdetermination in action. To the bewilderment of white people accustomed to the mental image of the
Aborigine as a black-skinned Top End artisan or crumpled urban 'half-caste' drunk, Aborigines, as defined by
Aboriginal communities across the nation, come in the widest possible variety of sizes, skin colours and body
shapes. The official guidelines state that an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander person shall be defined as:
A person of Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander descent, who is recognised as such by the
community within which they live, and who – identifies as an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander.
Aboriginality is, in short, less a genetic concept than a cultural one, and relies crucially upon the recognition
of the local Aboriginal or Islander community network. When working in Aboriginal environments, it is easiest
for outsiders to assume that everyone they meet, regardless of appearances, is an indigenous person, until it
is demonstrated otherwise.
Paternalism
Aboriginal and Islander people remain aware of a history and current reality of paternalism on the part of
white churches, government bodies and powerful individuals. It is almost impossible to overstate the effect of
this experience upon contemporary indigenous people. Operating out of paradigms of social Darwinism,
whites have traditionally viewed Aboriginal people as 'childlike' primitives, incapable of higher thought or
complex tasks. In 1901, the Australian Parliament debated the issue of whether Aboriginals could be
considered human. Aboriginal people living 'under the Act' in Queensland were, until as late as the 1970s,
denied access to their own bank accounts and wages. This money, it was argued, was beyond their
capabilities to handle, and the government through its Protectors, administered it on their behalf. (Much of
8
this money in government hands has subsequently gone missing – the irony is not lost on the 'incapable'
Aboriginal wage-earners involved.) Views promoting the 'childishness' and 'primitiveness' of Aboriginal
people, which are still very much a part of the public debate, have provided excellent justification for removal
of indigenous rights to land, citizenship, and, of course, life. Paternalistic notions have in a bizarre twist
become almost self-enforcing as dispossessed people exhibited survival behaviours such as law breaking (in
white terms), alcoholism, and apathy.
Paternalism is a huge part of their life experience for most Aboriginal people in Australia today, and accounts
for a good degree of the resentment and fear of government policies. Non-indigenous people who have not
been exposed to Aboriginal society, even those with good intentions, will almost inevitably come to the field
equipped with the detritus of paternalistic prejudice. Aboriginal people are very familiar with such attitudes,
and will quickly dismiss any person who is patronising of their abilities to make decisions and form
judgements. Yet – perhaps a reflection that Aboriginal people are viewed less as a threat than as a sordid
underclass – it is still more common for Aboriginal people to be patronised than vilified in mainstream
Australian society.
Compound Discrimination
Ethnic migrants to Anglo-Saxon Australia have traditionally faced the obstacles of overt racism, and of
'passive' cultural barriers to participation in mainstream life, such as those involving language and dress.
Other groups of non – Aboriginal Australians, notably prisoners and gay people, have had to contend with
legally enforced discrimination because of their legal or social status. Aboriginal people are probably unique
in having been faced with both discrimination on the basis of race and colour, and with legalised institutional
racism stemming from their indigenous status – usually measures designed to ensure the property rights of
non-Aboriginal Australians. This can be seen, for example, by contrasting the treatment in colonial Australia
of non-white immigrants and Aboriginal people. Whereas the very large Chinese population of North
Australia in the 1800s was forced to endure the racism of white Australians due to their different cultures and
physical appearance, Chinese people were nevertheless able to own property and conduct business, living
parallel to, if not within, mainstream society. The traditional Aboriginal landholders, however, were granted
barely a semblance of human rights, and those who survived the invasion were quickly herded onto missions
and government reserves where their claims to traditional land could not be heard. Aboriginal people were
not institutionalised simply for their black skins, since many of the stolen generations were eventually as fair
as the whites who removed them. It was as indigenous people – for their cultural and legal status, and not
only their race – that Aborigines were deliberately taken away from family and lands. A similar distinction
operated in education in New South Wales:
A former Minister for Education in 1943, explaining in the House his decision that '...where
aboriginal (sic) children occur in any marked number it would be desirable in their own interest
that they should be excluded from the ordinary public school', could argue that the measure was
not a 'racial' one because the school did not exclude 'races of colour other than white, whose
mental and physical attributes, though different' were 'nowise inferior to those of the white race'.
It was 'the nomadic nature of the aboriginal' which made him and his children different (Rowley
1973: 80).
This distinction between ethnic and indigenous racism has become particularly evident since the late 1960s,
as activism on the part of ethnic minorities has generally meant that racial discrimination has become less
acceptable in mainstream society. As author Paul Theroux noted in travelling Australia in 1991, a common
attitude of white Australians remains 'I'm not racist, I just hate Abos' (1993:67). Prejudice against indigenous
people is not confined to white Australians, of course. The policy of multiculturalism which has allowed
migrant groups a greater degree of acceptance within mainstream society has at times meant for Aborigines
a practice of multiracism, where white racist attitudes have become entrenched in succeeding generations of
immigrants. Aborigines are often openly despised by immigrants of all cultural backgrounds, whose
vilification is a small but practical means of ingratiating themselves with Anglo-Saxon society, and
distinguishing themselves from the Australian untouchables.
These different forms of discrimination interact in complex ways. Aborigines who fulfil white Australia's
physical stereotype of 'the Aboriginal' face overt discrimination at the nightclub door, the real estate agent,
and especially in interactions with the criminal justice system. Those who 'pass' for white usually do not
encounter these exact forms of discrimination, but are equally subject to the burden of racist attitudes which
permeate Australian culture. Ironically, in seeking to avoid the one, Aboriginal people may attract the other Henry Reynolds wrote in 1991 of a senior Queensland government official who referred disparagingly to
Aborigines who 'live like whites, dress like whites' (1991:28).
9
A further complicating factor has been the desire of some Aboriginal people to opt out of mainstream life in
favour of more traditionally-oriented lifestyles on outstations. Therefore, there are or have been three
discrete factors – racial discrimination; discrimination on the grounds of indigenous status; and the possibility
of voluntary separatism through the homeland movement – operating to keep Aboriginal people isolated from
the resources of mainstream life. Aboriginal people, mindful of a history of exclusion, often have little interest
in those who are now attempting to reconcile them into Australian nationhood.
It is difficult but nevertheless important for non-indigenous bureaucrats to understand the impact of
discrimination upon Australia's black communities – mainstream Australia is a dangerous and alienating
place for many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.
Forced Changes in Authority Structures
Unlike migrant groups to Australia (who, with the prominent exception of refugees, are usually in a position to
exercise some degree of choice over their immigration) Aboriginal people have had no choice about the
revolutionary changes in authority structures they have been exposed to since white contact. Aboriginal
groups with coherent and sophisticated bodies of Law, as well as efficiently functioning economies, have
been subject to attempts to force them to live almost completely within non-indigenous legal, economic and
social systems. At best, there has been a piecemeal, de facto acceptance by the dominant society that
indigenous Law still plays a significant part in the lives of 'traditionally oriented' Aborigines in the more
remote areas (eg Law Reform Commission 1986: 364). Local and partial examples of accommodation are
unsatisfactory to Aboriginal people in many ways, not least in that, operating as they do in conjunction with
the mainstream criminal justice system, they are inadequate recognition that Aboriginal Law is not merely a
set of 'rules' or social guidelines for a just society. Aboriginal Law is an intricate web invoking not only social
order, but also concerned with the Business of spirituality, family relationships, the proper authority of men
and women, management of land, and the settling of disputes in accordance with ancient knowledge. For
those indigenous people raised 'in the Law', this experience permeates every aspect of their lives; it should
not be viewed by outsiders simply as an alternative to mainstream legal process.
The Australian Law Reform Commission undertook an extensive inquiry in the early 1980s into the issue of
recognition of customary Law. The Inquiry found that Aboriginal Law still operated to significant degrees in
many parts of geographically remote Australia. There was a concomitant difficulty with the white Law:
Australian law is seen as arrogant, ignorant and inept in its approach to Port Keats Aborigines:
arrogant in that it does not recognise the binding nature of customary law and asserts itself as
the sole law applicable to the Port Keats region; ignorant in that it does not take into account
Aboriginal realities, Aboriginal offences, Aboriginal approaches to things legal; inept in that
Australian law operates in a social vacuum – stipulations, rules and principles are operative at
one level while tribal behaviour proceeds at another regardless of the contents of that law. The
universalist pretensions of Australian law are a little absurd in the context of the Port Keats
region (Australian Law Reform Commission 1986: 80).
Where traditional indigenous culture dictates a community-based method of social control based on
compromise and consensus, the white legal system depends upon hierarchy and adversarial process. Such
a system is alienating and discriminatory towards many Aboriginal people, whose cultural norms often dictate
that open disagreement with others is to avoided at all costs, rendering them incapable of adequately
defending themselves against legal charges. The cultural inappropriateness of white legal forums is further
compounded by the institutionalised background of many Aboriginal communities.
The recent history of Aboriginal people is one of hostile dealings with non-Aboriginals and with
policies of governments which have had an extraordinary impact on the Aboriginal people's
consciousness...reinforced by a common resentment by Aborigines of past treatment and
control by non-Aborigines and by a lack of trust of authorities including the courts, the police,
and the 'welfare' (Australian Law Reform Commission 1986: 26).
Individuals accustomed to speaking in Aboriginal English or in Aboriginal languages, raised to regard direct
disagreement in many instances as rudeness, and taught by long experience to fear those in authority, be
they Church, government or police, are often seen by the mainstream courts as inarticulate, evasive or
simply guilty.
In many remote areas European law has failed to either become the natural reference point for indigenous
people, or to effectively address the introduced problems of random violence and substance abuse. The Law
Reform Commission Inquiry found that there were good grounds for the recognition of customary Law within
10
the mainstream legal system, including the 'relevance and validity of Aboriginal Law for many Aborigines,
their right to live in accordance with their customs and traditions, and the injustice inherent in non-recognition
of customary law' (Australian Law Reform Commission 1986: 94). While the Royal Commission into
Aboriginal Deaths in Custody also made recommendations regarding customary law and the part it has to
play in reducing the death toll Aboriginal people face under European law, there has as yet been no
substantial adoption of such law anywhere in Australia by the mainstream legal system. In the meantime,
Aboriginal people are expected to abide by laws which are discriminatory, culturally alien, and which
Aboriginal people, disenfranchised until 1967, have had little part in shaping.
Marginalisation
For up to two centuries, Aboriginal people have been marginalised by white society, both figuratively and
literally. Poverty, in comparison to other Australians, is now a norm in Aboriginal society. Mean Aboriginal
incomes are two-thirds those of non-Aborigines (ABS data: 1991 Census) and life expectancies are up to
twenty years lower for Aboriginal women than their non-Aboriginal counterparts. Economic poverty is often,
though not always, accompanied by a 'social' poverty where indigenous people have low educational
attainment, little prospect of finding work, substandard housing, and few lifeskills for survival in either an
Aboriginal or mainstream environment. Violence is endemic in Aboriginal settings, with a homicide rate in the
remote communities ten times that of mainstream Australia, and is particularly conspicuous where people
from many different clans and areas have been forced together in the pressure cooker of what was formerly
institutional life (eg see Wilson 1982). One third of indigenous people of working age are unemployed; many
who are working are doing so under the Community Development Employment Program (CDEP), sometimes
known as 'work for the dole'. This government employment scheme, while supported by many communities,
has also been criticised as 'make work' and is seen by some Aboriginal people as little more than a means of
improving the black unemployment statistics. Allegations of corrupt practice and nepotism also dog the
implementation of the scheme in many areas.
If marginalisation of the Aboriginal population is to be addressed in a culturally appropriate way, nonAboriginal people must become more aware of the impact of poverty upon indigenous people, and
particularly must be cognisant of the de facto segregation which occurs in many Aboriginal communities.
There are thousands of indigenous people in Australia today, including urban Aborigines, who have never
been inside a white person's home, and whose ideas of white Australia are formed solely by the experiences
of isolation, racism and fear. Transferring mainstream policy processes to such groups is impractical, and
misguided: the marginalisation of the Aboriginal population has long-reaching ramifications for policy
development and implementation. Some of these factors have been recognised through programs such as
the Department of Social Security's Aboriginal Liaison Officer mechanism. In other policy areas, though,
recognition of indigenous differences is paid only lip-service, and the cycle of being marginalised through
poverty is destined to continue.
Politics and Policy in Indigenous Australia
Peak representation within the rubric of mainstream politics – from FCAATSI to ATSIC
Since at least the Centenary of White Australia, and even earlier in localised cases, Aboriginal people have
been organising politically to pressure Australian governments for recognition of their special rights and
status as the first Australians. This task of organising is still fraught with difficulties, not least since the
Aboriginal population is so diverse, and their political focus is usually on the community or even extended
family level (for a fuller discussion see Rowse 1991: 6). Indigenous society in Australia was (and in some
areas still is) historically small-scale, with most clans consisting of less than one hundred individuals, and
temporary groupings of a few thousand the largest seen. There were few' strangers' in the world of a precontact Aboriginal person. Social and economic power was (and in very many places still is) divided along
age, gender, and kinship lines, strongly influenced by heredity, but in general more materially egalitarian than
comparable Western inheritance systems. Responsibilities for, and ties to, land and. Dreaming sites were
determined through genealogy, as was spiritual/ magical knowledge. Concepts of 'leadership' and of
participation are accordingly often very different today to those held in mainstream Australia. For example, a
young 'traditionally oriented' Aboriginal man, bent upon political success at the interface with white Australia,
might be required to pursue higher education in the cities, yet the process of doing so could possibly come to
be seen by his extended family as neglect of both his Aboriginal identity and his traditional responsibilities to
his land, thus divorcing him from potential 'leadership' in their eyes.
11
Peak Aboriginal representation began with the Federation Council for the Advancement of Aboriginals and
Torres Strait Islanders (FCAATSI) in the late 1950s, a training ground for an emerging Aboriginal political
elite which lobbied the then federal Liberal administration with little success. It was followed after the election
of the Whitlam Labor government in 1972 with the National Aboriginal Consultative Committee (NACC)
which was hardly more successful. Relations between the NACC and the Department of Aboriginal Affairs which had a heavy contingent of former Papua New Guinea and Australian Patrol Officers in its ranks and a
subsequent aura of paternalism – were poor.
The National Aboriginal Congress (NAC) took over where the NACC left off in 1977, following the election of
the Fraser Liberal government. It also faced enormous obstacles in gaining an effective voice. Frustrated by
its status as a mere advisory body to the conservative government (and one whose recommendations were
consistently ignored), the NAC looked to the United Nations for a new avenue to pursue its goals for
indigenous people. Aboriginal representatives began speaking of social justice in international forums for the
first time, and the political sophistication of the Aboriginal elite began to increase, both as a result of this
international experience, and from being forced to do battle with federal governments on the home front.
Unfortunately, dissension about the legitimacy of the NAC's leadership was also on the rise. When the
Hawke government came to power in late 1983 the NAC was a vocal but effectively powerless force in the
federal arena. Its credibility was weak among many indigenous groups, since, notwithstanding broad shared
goals such as land rights and increased spending on health and welfare issues, it could not hope to be
representative of the myriad of local communities which constitute indigenous Australia. In a situation where
even the Aboriginal flag is seen by some central Australian Aboriginal communities as an alien symbol
reflecting simply the (Northern Territory's) Northern Land Council's agenda, and where the politics of division
have been successful in making remote area people dismiss the claims of mixed-race Aborigines to an
Aboriginal identity, it is hardly surprising that the urban-based NAC should have met considerable opposition
from black as well as white Australia. Comments by Dr H.C. Coombs and others to the new Labor
government suggested that the NAC was not a feasible national representative body; the long march
towards ATSIC then began.
An Indigenous Commission
Consultations to establish an effective institution began in 1987 under Aboriginal Affairs Minister Gerry Hand,
a sympathetic left-winger who had asked for the difficult and low-status portfolio. Hand was subsequently
and probably inevitably accused by indigenous groups of rushing the process in a manner antagonistic to
indigenous culture. The Bicentennial of white settlement loomed on the Hawke government's horizon, and
the prospect of the world focussing on an Aboriginal population with poor housing, health, employment, and
no political mechanism for addressing these problems was not appealing. Hand had the difficult task of
matching Aboriginal demands for genuine political self-determination with the constraints and structures of
Westminster parliamentary democracy. The result, in 1990, was ATSIC – a revised Department of Aboriginal
Affairs, split into an administrative and an elected representative function, drawn from sixty regions across
Australia. ATSIC was legislated for in 1989, and the first national elections held in late 1990; participation
varied nationally, with the concept proving most popular in remote areas of the North, the Centre, and
Western Australia, perhaps since the Land Council model had provided a precedent for local representation
in these areas.
Opinions about ATSIC vary amongst groups and individuals. It has, unlike its predecessors, given
indigenous people the chance to elect people from their own geographic region to a national body. Problems,
though, are still endemic. The ATSIC regions in no way represent language or tribal boundaries, and remain
the result of imposing Western democratic processes on cultures which traditionally depended on
negotiation, conciliation and consensus for 'decision making. ATSIC cannot, for example, easily
accommodate the separate demands of Men's and Women's Business. Power is centralised in Regional
Councils, rather than resting in the 'natural' political groupings of language groups and clans. These Regional
Councils must then negotiate the details of program funding through ATSIC's administrative arm, a process
which one interviewee suggested was far beyond the scope of many commissioners, who usually have
almost no formal, let alone financial education, and who are often too embarrassed to admit to a lack of
comprehension of the accounting documents they are presented with by non-Aboriginal bureaucrats.
Claims of nepotism, corruption and incompetence are commonplace amongst Aboriginal and Islander
communities, and ATSIC has not escaped these accusations. There is also the potential problem alluded to
by Rowse (1991), who suggests that the Land Councils and ATSIC have different political agendas,
constituencies and political persuasions. Rowse goes on to paint a scenario of two entrenched yet opposed
indigenous institutions striving for political influence. While it can as easily be argued that a diversifying of
power amongst Aboriginal groups is a good thing, the potential for conflicts between the two institutions to be
12
fed and stage-managed by conservative mainstream politicians is certainly present. Some would argue that
the Northern Territory conservative coalition has raised the art of promoting internal conflict in Aboriginal
groups to an art form; in contrast, the experience in North Queensland to date has been one of relatively
constructive co-operation between the Cape York Land Council and ATSIC. It may prove to be the case that
indigenous people, rather than being disadvantaged by two leading institutions, can benefit from co-operative
action, yet once again, links of language groups, extended families and shared histories will be crucial in the
outcomes of contemporary indigenous politics. Unity in indigenous affairs beyond these limits has so far
proved elusive.
It was the hostile attitude of many indigenous people to government, and specifically to the old DAA, a
Department notorious for paternalistic and assimilationist views, which prompted the formation of ATSIC.
ATSIC was an innovative approach by the Hawke government, combining representation and administration
in one body, and modifying the Westminster style of parliamentary democracy to give indigenous people
their own elected representatives. The initiative of Gerry Hand in producing ATSIC was a finely judged and
balanced exercise in allowing indigenous people as much responsibility as the government wished to
dispose of in this difficult area, while maintaining important controls over finances.
ATSIC's ambiguity – that it gives a certain degree of representation and no more, and that Aborigines and
Torres Strait Islanders have some authority over policies and programs but are also restricted by the
exercise of Ministerial power – will probably be the institution's saving grace from the standpoint of white
governments. Some indigenous people are optimistic that ATSIC can be a valid instrument of reform, and
have entered into its electoral and bureaucratic structures with enthusiasm. Others regard it simply as
another white bureaucratic institution along the lines of the DAA, but are willing to negotiate with it for
program monies and other resources. Others again hold it in deep contempt, and point to community-based '
grassroots' organisations as the only valid form of Aboriginal political grouping. (This group are especially
fond of the reinterpretation of the acronym as Aboriginals Talking Shit In Canberra). The complexity of the
question is further increased by the tendency of some within the ATSIC structure to decry its role and
maintain the rhetoric of separatism and an Aboriginal nation. Similarly, community-based organisations often
look upon ATSIC employees as 'coconuts' (black outside; white inside) but continue to operate on ATSIC
funding themselves. Finally, some ATSIC Commissioners have found it expedient to blame the
administrative arm of the organisation for their failures to push initiatives through, while the reverse also
applies – public servants can point in cases of bureaucratic ineffectiveness to the Commissioners as those
responsible for ensuring the implementation of indigenous programs. Perhaps the only certainty as far as
ATSIC goes is that the people involved, especially the Commissioners, are still on a steep political learning
curve.
The existence of these conflicting views about indigenous representation within government means that
opposition to ATSIC, though widespread, is diffused, and unlikely to overturn the current model. Though
indigenous attitudes to the Australian state are highly ambiguous, those who feel it to be illegitimate remain
faced with the difficult task of convincing those Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders who are now
stakeholders in its indigenous arm.
Heads You Win, Tails We Lose?
Indigenous politics in Australia is haunted by the spectre of history in a way which does not apply to any
other policy area. Policies of colonisation and assimilation have as their legacies an Aboriginal population
which is, at least initially, cynical and resentful of any initiatives by non-Aboriginal people, and usually fearful
of governments of any political shade. Aborigines are generally speaking, as poorly educated and illinformed about their political rights and responsibilities as other Australians are of indigenous affairs. Policy
makers cannot reasonably continue to make the same assumptions regarding indigenous people as they can
regarding mainstream Australians, and yet they often continue to do so. As well as the usual procedural
obstacles of limited time, resources, skills and knowledge, those who attempt to analyse or develop
indigenous policy have somehow to transcend the bitterness of colonial history. Unless they come
forewarned and armed with the appropriate cultural tools, they are liable to be seen by their indigenous
people not as sympathetic individuals with an interest in indigenous issues, nor even as neutral
representatives of a department or government, but as merely one more in a long succession of deeply
hypocritical non-Aboriginal exploiters. Many, perhaps most, Aboriginal people believe that individual white
bureaucrats are in a position to 'fix' their problems of poverty but choose not to do so, either because of overt
racism, or in order that they do not' do themselves out of a job.' In the same way that most Aboriginal people
have this limited understanding of how pluralistic politics impedes simple solutions to their problems,
policymakers fail largely because they do not understand the facts of indigenous life nor the terms of
indigenous disadvantage.
13
In a situation where indigenous people are both intimidated by and resentful of white authority, it is hardly
surprising that calls for more political independence are heard. Self determination for many appears to be a
recipe not just for political autonomy, but also for avoiding unwanted interaction with white society. The
radical Aboriginal Provisional Government (APG) is heard from time to time in the national media protesting
the need for Aborigines to break completely with the Australian nation. If it wishes to be seen as legitimate in
indigenous eyes, the task of government is to convince the Aboriginal people of Australia that such a need
does not exist, and that the Australian state can be a positive rather than a negative factor in their lives. To
date, it has largely failed to do so – attitudes of indigenous people towards Australian governments range
from ignorance and indifference, through resentment, to rage and hostility, often futilely and tragically
directed at police. While the Western political literature has explored the concepts of 'overgovernment' and
'illegitimacy' from other perspectives, it has not grasped the idea that for indigenous peoples it may not be
the degree or form but the very fact of imposed government which may be seen as illegitimate. This
obviously poses difficulties for the political system, since imposing legislation upon those Aboriginal people
who do riot recognise one's authority is akin to political coercion.
All Aboriginal people who form part of an Aboriginal community are acutely aware of their dispossession from
lands, and the removal of their political sovereignty. The politicisation of Aboriginal groups which gained
momentum in the 1960s has resulted in overtly high levels of resentment and anger directed, not necessarily
against white individuals, but against white authority figures and systems. People who are otherwise
politically ignorant can expound at length on their tribal histories, and do so with a marked sense of
grievance against the Australian state. As a result, and in combination with a perhaps somewhat idealised
view of pre-contact life, Aboriginal people who have not been successful in reclaiming land see their relations
with the Australian state as a 'win-lose' situation, where non-Aboriginal Australia has profited enormously at
their expense. As the former holders of the entire continent, Aboriginal people feel they will inevitably lose in
any dealings with the invading state, since political sovereignty is in dispute, and much of the land (though
also subject to dispute) has been lost. Many Aboriginal people feel that there is nothing which white
Australians can offer Aboriginal people which will substitute for the political, cultural and economic autonomy
of the pre-contact Aboriginal situation. The best they can hope for is financial compensation which will
restore some lost economic status, and Aboriginal people are fully aware that even that will be disputed and
in many cases begrudged by hostile non-Aboriginal Australians.
Future Directions
Two questions are in the forefront of debate about indigenous politics – what degree of independence from
mainstream Australia is sought by, and deemed appropriate for, indigenous people, and in what way are
indigenous interests to be represented within the apparatus of State? Both issues are concerned with selfdetermination; both issues raise questions about implementing a policy of limited political autonomy for
indigenous people under the umbrella of what is still routinely seen by indigenous people as an invading
state.
'Celebration of a Nation?'
It is easy for non-Aboriginal people to scoff at radical claims for Aboriginal nationhood. Where, they cry, is
the geographic entity to be situated, where is the cultural homogeneity to be found for such a nation, where
are the financial resources which can sustain it? While these questions point to valid and quite possibly
crucial difficulties impeding the development of an Aboriginal nation, such responses by non-indigenous
people are usually defensive and lack critical insight into why the claims are issued. Impoverishment is not
necessarily an obstacle to nationhood, as the examples of tiny, poverty-stricken countries throughout the
developing world illustrate, and the geographic argument is countered by the technical precedent of the
Catholic Church. Yet given the option of separate development, it is uncertain how many Aboriginal people
would welcome the prospect of a diffused and penniless independence combined with the problems of
reconciling traditional versus modern, remote area versus urban, lifestyles. Living at close hand with the
example of Papua New Guinea, Torres Strait Islanders have used the bargaining chip of defection from the
Australian nation to draw media and government attention to their grievances, yet even this most culturally
and geographically distinct indigenous group has as yet chosen to remain part of Australia. There are in fact
more Torres Strait Islanders living on the Australian mainland than in the islands of the Strait (a constant
bone of contention between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people), a demonstration if one were
needed of the current attractions of Australian living standards and employment prospects.
For those indigenous people who are already living in poverty compared to the remainder of the population,
and whose lives within white Australia are saturated with racism, the rhetoric of nationhood is understandably
14
attractive. For dispossessed blacks, the concept of the Aboriginal nation is bound up with ideas of a return to
culture, and a self-respect which history has denied them. But leadership within Aboriginal Australia has not
often demonstrated an ability to unite even around temporary issues of political importance. As the peak
groups of the Sixties and Seventies found, geography and family (or less charitably, parochialism and
nepotism) are stumbling blocks for the most well-intentioned Aboriginal political activism. In the case of
remote area outstation people whose lives are diametrically opposed to that of mainstream Australia – semisubsistence hunter-gathering groups operating largely under Aboriginal Law – it is more accurate to speak
of a multitude of nations than of a single unified indigenous nation. This was the pre-contact reality – the
Eora nation, the Aranda nation, the Kamilaroi nation. Differences between language groups precluded an
Aboriginal nation even then; how much more difficult would be the task after two hundred years of colonial
rule?
Self-determination and the ongoing recognition of indigenous land rights must continue as Australian
government policies if Aboriginal people are to be spared another social disaster along the lines of the
assimilationist years. However Aboriginal people who express often genuine hopes for complete separation
from white Australia are people who imagine that their political problems are entirely the making of nonAboriginal people, and who have not yet engaged in sufficient constructive criticism of Aboriginal politicians
and politics. Aboriginal nationhood, in the unlikely event of it being wrested from the Australian state, could
even exponentially compound, rather than solve, the existing internal problems in Aboriginal politics.
Representation
Choices about indigenous representation within the state are essentially three – to retain ATSIC; to return to
a Departmental structure which does not have a representative function, leaving representation at an
advisory or Parliamentary level; and to deliver services through a Department, while concurrently empower
local-level organisations such as Land Councils with representative functions.
To take the last option first, using Land Councils or other grassroots organisations as a basis for
representation would give more natural constituencies than those ATSIC is drawn from. Following the New
Zealand Ewi tribal model, the Land Council model could have the effect of lessening government control over
indigenous affairs, but it should be remembered that this is balanced in New Zealand by a corresponding
lack of government funding. (Where Aboriginal groups have funding but limited autonomy, Maori groups
have more, and more unified, political autonomy but less access to government monies). Again, it would
become a question of rhetoric over reality – would Aboriginal people be prepared to sacrifice ATSIC' s limited
autonomy for the sake of independent tribal representation? There is, of course, the possibility of
establishing the Land Councils as an alternative representative structure and then handing over the
equivalent of the ATSIC budget to such groups, but given the numbers of Land Councils and other
community bodies currently under investigation by ATSIC for accounting irregularities, financial
accountability may be even more tenuous than at present under such a system.
The second option, to return to a Department of Indigenous Affairs with indigenous political representation
occurring through advisory bodies and/ or the Parliament, is essentially a revival of the structures of the
seventies and early eighties. The 1993 federal election saw the Opposition policy on indigenous affairs
carrying regressive reform even further, proposing to abolish ATSIC and return indigenous programs to line
Departments such as DEET, despite the conspicuous lack of success of most mainstream Departments in
the Aboriginal policy area. It is essential to maintain a distinctly indigenous bureaucracy, and to be most
effective that bureaucracy must be unified in one body rather than spread across other Departments. The
administrative expertise which indigenous people are currently gaining through ATSIC would be well placed
in an ordinary Department, and could help ensure that the experience of the DAA was not repeated. Having
a conventional Department rather than ATSIC would perhaps clarify the lines of responsibility for funding (or
refusing to fund) initiatives.
The problem with this option is yet again with representation. Advisory committees are problematic both in
that they are exactly that having only the power to advise, and in that they can include only limited numbers
of people. The experiences of the NAC and NAAC showed that indigenous representation must be national,
diffused and diverse – neither Parliament nor advisory bodies are adequate forums for this degree of input
from indigenous people. Significant Parliamentary representation would require Constitutional change – not
something the Australian population has proved receptive to – and would almost certainly provoke the
perennial charges of 'special treatment' for indigenous people.
ATSIC, in its present form, suggests something like Winston Churchill's definition of democracy – 'the worst
form of government there is – until you look at the others'. Its advantages are that it draws on the necessary
wide geographic basis for its Commissioners, provides some genuine political decisionmaking power for
15
indigenous people, and has a significant budget providing a multitude of programs and initiatives. Its
disadvantages are that it consists of a complex and confusing array of administrative and political arms, that
political and bureaucratic expertise are not yet highly developed in the organisation, and that since nearly all
Commissioners are indigenous men, ATSIC provides in practical terms no representation for indigenous
women other than through the (administrative) Office of Indigenous Women. But given that indigenous
separatism as a constitutional reality is an unlikely and almost unworkable dream with the possible exception
of those Torres Strait Islanders who reside in the Strait, the ATSIC model or something very like it is probably
the most effective way at present of ensuring indigenous people have a voice in their own affairs. As the
Australian polity evolves into the Twenty-first century, possibly as a republic, the opportunities for indigenous
representation through the Parliament may increase to levels which go beyond tokenism. In the meantime,
the bureaucrats and politicians of ATSIC will remain faced with the problems of the indigenous minority, and
with the challenge of improving upon an unimpressive history of administration in indigenous affairs.
Conclusion
Disadvantage always has a subjective dimension and its attribution is thus open to dispute. In the
quantifiable terms of low life expectancy, imprisonment, income, education and other socioeconomic
measures, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are easily the sickest, poorest and most imprisoned
people in Australia. But indigenous disadvantage does not stop with the hospital bed and prison gate; 'the
experience of being indigenous in a country where indigenous rights remain unrecognised and where the
very existence of indigenous groups is seen as debatable ('But they're not real Aboriginals') saturates the
lives of Aboriginal people. As the Bicentennial slogan had it, White Australia does have a black history, and
in the words of the Royal Commission Into Aboriginal Deaths In Custody, Aboriginal people remember this
history and it is burned into their consciousness.' Governments must attempt to repair the damage their
predecessors have done to Aboriginal communities, to restore land, and jobs and health status, and the
other physical benefits enjoyed by people in the mainstream, but while they are vitally important, reforms in
housing and employment and health will not by themselves address the roots of Aboriginal despair.
Indigenous people die young and live badly because of their race, but on top of, these facts, Aboriginality
itself is a disadvantage in contemporary Australia. To be Aboriginal is to cringe whenever an indigenous
story makes the news, in the knowledge that the racists will come out of their woodpiles and resume their
litanies of hate against you. To be Aboriginal is to have your identity nullified by most individuals and
institutions in Australia. To be Aboriginal is to be born, and remain, a dangerous stereotype which has little or
nothing real to say to your experience. As former senior bureaucrat Charlie Perkins puts it:
I think it is very hard to be an Aboriginal in Australia...You have to contend with abuse, tension,
conflict, poor relationships with people where you otherwise would have been friends, things
you have to say...which you know are embarrassing and uncomfortable but they've got to be
said, otherwise who is going to say them and how will change come about?
It is sobering to reflect that Perkins, the first Aboriginal man to graduate from university, a former
Commissioner of the Aboriginal Development Corporation, a current ATSIC Commissioner for Central
Australia, and an Aboriginal man who has been through his tribal Law, could go on:
...I'll be glad when I'm dead because Australia is just one helluva big sorrowful place for
Aboriginal people (quoted in Rintoul1993).
Despite the gains made by some indigenous organisations in the past decades, Aboriginal people as
individuals generally continue to have very little economic or political power. The fact that Aboriginal singer
and educator Mandawuy Yunipingu could be refused entry to an exclusive Melbourne nightspot in the same
year as he received the award for Australian of the Year highlights the immense gap between the public and
private lives of black Australians, and the public and private faces of the debate on indigenous issues in this
country.
It is easy for onlookers to point in the abstract at the money governments have invested in Aboriginal
communities, and see the emerging voice of a politically literate Aboriginal population as signs that the power
imbalance is waning. Indeed, it is comforting for sympathetic non-Aboriginal people to cling to any such
signs. But the reality of life for almost all Aboriginal people, particularly those whose Aboriginality is visually
apparent and/ or whose links with white society are scantiest, is that of social and financial poverty, immense
levels of both white-on-black and black-on-black violence, and institutional racism of a level unimaginable by
outsiders. The Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody took thousands of submissions and
16
interviewed hundreds of people to produce a body of comprehensive knowledge in 1990 about Aboriginal
interaction with the justice system; over fifty Aboriginal people have died in custody since the Commission
brought down its report. If black deaths were matched by white in the criminal justice system, six thousand
white Australian families would be asking why their sons and daughters had died in the care of the state
since 1980. 'Settlement' may be a fact of Australian history; the Black Wars might have ended; but the
Aboriginal parents whose children live poorly and die young continue to be obtuse, and ask what has
changed since the Queensland government issued licenses to police to shoot Aboriginal people in the
1920s.
In a recent seminar at the Australian National University academics Will Sanders and Richard Mulgan
suggested that the time for indigenous people to put their cases for rights, especially land rights, to
governments is limited, and as the post-colonial era comes to an end internationally, non-Aboriginal
Australians will be less and less inclined to listen to indigenous causes.
...as the colonial era and international decolonisation recede into history, the claims of
indigenous minorities within settler majority societies to being still colonised, internally, will
slowly become less potent. Those claims are now, in all likelihood, in their heyday, even though
internal decolonisation itself still has a considerable course to run.' (Mulgan and Sanders 1994:
33).
On the one hand, in the sense that it is now the United Nations Decade of Indigenous Peoples, and that
Western populations have notoriously short attention-spans for minority issues of social justice, the idea that
indigenous issues may soon be subject to' compassion burn-out' is a reasonable one. On the other,
Aboriginal people have been struggling militarily, politically and psychologically against the apathy, ignorance
and outright hostility of white governments for two hundred and eight years. The terms of the mainstream
debate might still be set largely by non-indigenous officials, media and politicians, but the idea that the
process of internal decolonisation will be determined by the presence or otherwise of white tolerance could
be viewed as patronising. Aboriginal people have never sat and waited for the invading society to grant them
land, or benevolently bestow upon them the right to exist. The process of regaining lands, and identity, and
community and a political voice has always been one of resistance – if white Australia chooses in the
aftermath of the Mabo decision to decide unilaterally that Aborigines and Islanders have been given 'enough'
and that the debate is now closed, it will merely be repeating the mistake made by the first Europeans, who
regarded negotiation with the savages as an irrelevance in their building of a new outpost of empire.
Those non-indigenous people involved in indigenous affairs have choices to make. It is possible and even
understandable that some will despair of the complexity and negativism the policy area presents. Others,
though, will understand that they too have a role to play in ensuring that the potential irony of white people
truly listening to the indigenous population only when their rights are deemed to have been irrevocably
curtailed, does not become the future of indigenous politics in Australia.
17
References
Australian Law Reform Commission (1986), The Recognition of Aboriginal Customary Laws, Report No. 3L
Volumes 1 and 2 (Canberra: AGPS)
Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody (1990), National Report: Overview and
Recommendations (Canberra: AGPS)
Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation (1993), Addressing the Key Issues for Reconciliation (Canberra: AGPS)
Altman, J.C and A.E. Hawke (1993), 'Indigenous Australians and the Labour Market: issues for the union
movement in the 1990s' (Canberra: Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research, ANU)
Coombs, H.E. (1991a), 'Submission to the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody'
Coombs, H.C. (1991), Aborigines Made Visible: From Humbug to Politics', Kenneth Myer Lecture II
(Canberra: Friends of the National Library)
Coombs, H.C., H. McCann, H. Ross and N.M. Williams (eds) (1989), Land of Promises (Canberra: Australian
Institute of Aboriginal Studies)
Cummings, B. (1990), Take This Child: From Kahlin Compound to the Retta Dixon Children's Home
(Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press)
Godrej, D. (1994), 'Race: Unlocking Prejudice', The New Internationalist, October Hasluck, P. (1953), Native
Welfare in Australia (Perth: Paterson Brokensha) Jamrozik, W. (1994), 'Flagging a New Australia', The
Independent Monthly, December
Langton, M. (1981), 'Urbanising Aborigines; the Social Scientist's Great Deception', Social Alternatives:
Black Alternatives in Australia 2(2)
Maushart, S. (1993), Sort of a Place Like Home: Remembering The Moore River Native Settlement (South
Fremantle: Fremantle Arts Centre Press)
Mulgan, R. and W. Sanders (1994), 'Transforming Indigenous Affairs Policy: Contributing to Internal
Decolonisation', Draft Paper presented at Seminar, Australian National University, Department of
Anthropology, November
Pettman, J. (1988), 'Whose Country is it Anyway? Cultural Politics, Racism and the Construction of Being
Australian', Working Paper No.39 (Canberra: Peace Research Centre, Research School of Pacific Studies,
ANU)
Reyolds, H. (1982), The Other Side of the Frontier: Aboriginal Resistance to the European Invasion of
Australia (Ringwood: Penguin Books)
Reyolds, H. (1991), 'A Tale of Two Taxi Drivers', Australian Society, November Rintoul, S. (1993), 'The
Wailing: A National Black Oral History (Melbourne: William Heinemann)
Rowley, C.D. (1973), Outcasts in White Australia (Melbourne: Penguin Books) Rowse, T. (1991), 'ATSIC's
Heritage: The problems of leadership and unity in Aboriginal political culture', Current Affairs Bulletin,
January
Sanders, W. (1993), 'Rethinking the fundamentals of social policy towards indigenous Australians: block
grants, mainstreaming and the multiplicity of agencies and programs' Discussion Paper No.46 (Canberra:
Centre for Aboriginal Economic Research)
Theroux, P. (1992), The Happy Isles of Oceania: Paddling The Pacific (London: Penguin Books )
Wilson, P. (1982), Black Death, White Hands (Sydney: Allen and Unwin)
Interviews
Mr S. Unmeopa, Chairperson, South-East Queensland ATSIC Regional Council, March 1995,
18
Ms K. Tim, Senior Policy Advisor, Office of Indigenous Affairs, Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet,
June 1995
Ms A. Dell, Acting Manager, Family Policy, ATSIC Central Office, June 1995 Mr R. Monaghan, Policy Officer,
Brisbane ATSIC Regional Office, June 1995
19