August 1.
Artwork by Glenn Loughrey
Dispossession and devastation
“...dispossession and devastation were all related”
Many non-Indigenous Australians are conscious of the wrongs done to Indigenous Australians both in the past and in the present, and are active in their determination to discover ways to right those wrongs. In August 1996 the Governor General, Sir William Deane, gave the inaugural Lingiari Lecture * at the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation *** in Canberra. He said:
True reconciliation between the Australian nation and its Indigenous peoples is not achievable in the absence of acknowledgement by the nation of the wrongfulness of the past dispossession, oppression and degradation of the Aboriginal peoples. That is not to say that individual Australians who had no part in what was done in the past should feel or acknowledge personal guilt. It is simply to assert our identity as a nation and the basic fact that national shame, as well as national pride, can and should exist in relation to past acts and omissions, at least when done or made in the name of the community or with the authority of government.
Sir William made it clear that the present low self-esteem and poor quality of life of many of our indigenous people flow from the events of the past. 'The dispossession, the destruction of hunting fields and the devastation of lives were all related. The new diseases, the alcohol and the new pressures of living were all introduced.' The devastation of lives is the subject at the centre of the Report Bringing Them Home. It is a sad footnote to the Governor-General's speech that in 1997 he was moved to say, as the gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people appeared to widen: 'I weep for our country'.
Bringing Them Home is part of the examination of our past, its terms of reference being set down by the then Attorney-General, Michael Lavarch, in August 1995 when he asked the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission to consult widely among the Australian people, in particular among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders. The Attorney-General asked the Commission to trace past laws, practices and policies that resulted in the separation of Indigenous children from their families by 'compulsion, duress or undue influence'. He asked that it examine the present laws and practices available to Indigenous people affected by separation, including those laws relating to access to family records. **
Acknowledgment: Carmel Bird, the stolen children – their stories, Random House, Milsons Point, 1998, pp. 2-4.
* Vincent Lingiari (1919?-1988), Aboriginal stockman and land rights leader, was born in 1919, according to government records, at Victoria River Gorge, Northern Territory, son of Gurindji parents. Both his mother and his father, also Vincent Lingiari, were employed on the 3500-sq. mile (9065 km²) Vestey-owned cattle station, Wave Hill, established in 1883 by Nathaniel Buchanan...On 23 August 1966, tired of the Aborigines being ‘treated like dogs’ in their own country, Lingiari led two hundred of his people, employees of Wave Hill station, with their families, in a 'walk-off'. - by Ted Egan - entry from the Australian Dictionary of Biography
Accessed from Indigenous Australia Website - ia.anu.edu.au
** The Bringing Them Home – The Stolen Children Report was tabled in Federal Parliament on 26 May, 1997, while John Howard was Prime Minister. But over ten years elapsed before his successor as Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd,.on 13 February, 2008, publicly offered a public apology to the Indigenous and Torres Strait Islander people.
*** Further on Reconciliation, note Andrew Gunstone, “Reflections on implementing a re conciliation action plan”, Journal of Australian Indigenous Issues, Vol. 23, No. 1-2, June 2020: 63-74.