Stand: That every Australian be invited and encouraged to support the most proactive movement ever undertaken to reconcile with indigenous Australians. The first step to be the signing of the following Reconciliation Declaration:

SIGN THIS PETITION: https://secure.avaaz.org/en/petition/THE_RECONCILIATION_DECLARATION/

As an Australian citizen I acknowledge that before Europeans ever set foot upon this land, many great nations already prospered here. I acknowledge that this land I now call home was colonised without the consent of those original inhabitants and this has resulted in great hardship and suffering. For this I am sincerely sorry. It is my desire to reconcile past wrongs and a build a future where indigenous Australians live in complete equality with non indigenous Australians. All rights afforded, all opportunities open. I therefore support renewed efforts toward reconciliation with Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islander’s as a process of recognition, respect, healing, justice and unity.
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Background: The vision of reconciliation is a complex and sensitive matter and one of this countries most important national responsibilities. It is my belief that true reconciliation requires the recognition of an aboriginal nation.
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I see the indigenous nation as being a nation within a nation. Sovereign to a point with independent values, beliefs and governance but not to the extent of independent laws, currency or geography. I see the aboriginal nation as being as much symbolic as sovereign, co-existing independently as well as interdependently with modern Australia and living within the existing rule-of-law. In the sense that we acknowledge aboriginal people as the traditional owners of this land I see the same circumstances applicable to the formal recognition of an indigenous nation.

I see the indigenous nation becoming once again one of the greatest nations on earth. We will know it as a nation of peace existing side by side yet inexorably intertwined with the its sister nation Australia living in harmony and mutual respect, the way it should have been from the very start.

So..you'd be moving up to high school next year right?
Isn't it funny how stupid White people will support any form of Nationalism as long as it's not their own?
The most hilarious part is where you list all the ways Aboriginals are not a sovereign people and set out a series of caveats and rules for how this supposed "nation" would operate.

Drivel. One can only wonder at the motivation to actually spend time on such half-baked nonsense.

It even manages to prick the balloon of its own pretentious fol-de-rol, with this statement:

>>I see the aboriginal nation as being as much symbolic as sovereign<<

There are a few definitions of "nation" floating around, none of which encompasses the idea that one can be simultaneously symbolic and sovereign. For example:

"Nation: a large body of people, associated with a particular territory, that is sufficiently conscious of its unity to seek or to possess a government peculiarly its own".

Given the highly distributed nature of Aboriginal settlements, the variety of unique languages across the Aboriginal people of Australia, and the fact that they have never shown a concerted desire for a single "government peculiarly its own", I see this whole exercise as a piece of mindless self-promotion by its author/s.

We clearly need to find more effective ways to bring education, training and jobs to our Aboriginal communities, but that has little or nothing to do with "sovereignty". And if they are ever able to position themselves as a viable, separate nation, with common goals for their people, there will be only one remaining impediment: geography.

Eventually, likely within the next 300 or so years, there's no doubt whatsoever that part of Australia will be annexed. This land will become the aboriginal nation, with all the independence, laws and self government of any free independent nation.

It WILL happen. It should happen. No if, buts or maybes.

Well said Pericles.

If there is something to make me shudder, it is nationalistic rhetoric.

As for an 'Aboriginal Nation', how would that even be possible?

Jay 123,
Annexed? How do you annex your own land?
Aboriginals hold the title to something like 20% of the continent already, they could all move to those lands if they wanted to but as Marcia Langton has noted, young Aboriginals can see the road to the nearest big city and not much to the sides.

Yvonne.
The idea of "First Nations" itself is patronising because a nation is a European concept imposed upon non Europeans, ditto the concept of "sovereignty".
The idea of "sovereign peoples" depends on sovereign individuals, individual sovereignty is commonly called Anarchy, the rule of the self.
It's just stupidity to suggest that people need permission or instruction on that point and for most Aboriginals the die is cast at birth anyway, they don't have any other option but self rule.