I prefer Shady URL myself:

http://www.5z8.info/foreign-brides_v0e2tp_how-to-build-a-bomb

Hi Paul,

Thank you for teasing out some of the issues arising from the Uluru Statement. I'm trying to move away from the notion of a Treaty as some sort of Magic Thing, which will do wonders just by being, and towards a document with actual 'things' in it which are significant and practical - AND can muster the support of the great majority of all Australians.

Clearly, anything which hints at some sort of sovereignty of a section of Australians will be out. There has never remotely been any sort of over-arching 'Aboriginal sovereignty' in Australia: if the term refers to land-holding and territory-controlling groups, then it would have to mean clans, extended families, groups of individuals primarily descended from known common ancestors.

Even in the group that I'm most familiar with, many land-holding clans grouped together culturally as dialect groups - i.e. clans speaking more or less the same language in the same way - and eight or nine dialect groups, at one step further removed from 'sovereignty', formed the rather notional 'tribe', with at least some dialect groups at intermittent war with others. Characteristically (as I'm sure anthropologists would agree), the very name of the 'tribe' was that used by other 'tribes', and probably derogatory.

So even within a 'tribe', the notion of 'one people' was more likely to resemble the notion of, say, 'European' than of any specific nationality or ethnic group within Europe. You would be familiar with similar processes within and between iwi, hapu and whanau.

It's difficult to imagine what might be in a Treaty which would satisfy the demands of the Uluru Statement and which doesn't, like it or not, verge towards demanding not just different rights for Indigenous people within Australia, but also towards more and more separateness, perhaps a Treaty now, separate State within Australia a bit later, and a completely separate country a bit later still.

Such demands may not gain the support of the majority of Australians in the majority of States. To put it mildly.

Greg Sheridan has an absolutely brilliant article in today's Australian, p. 12.

Australia has never entered into negotiations with Indigenous people about the taking of their lands or their place in the new nation. And yet, the idea of a treaty in Australia goes back many years. In 1832 the Governor of Van Diemen’s Land remarked that it was “a fatal error...that a treaty was not entered into” with the Tasmanian Aboriginal people. In recent times, Prime Minister Bob Hawke promised to deliver a treaty by 1990. However, the controversial term raised alarm and was changed to a ‘document of reconciliation’, Makarrata* or compact. These discussions were eventually replaced by the push for Constitutional recognition.

What few people seem to be aware of is that all this talk of recognition of aboriginal people as a Separate and unique identity is going to cause massive divisions within families.
Look at my situation, and Joe's. A treaty would separate our place in this country from our children's and grandchildrens. My family would be classed differently to me.
With over 70% of today's indigenous people having a non indigenous partner, does anyone honestly feel that is not going to cause problems within families?

Hi Doog,

It was implicit from the earliest days of the Invasion/Settlement that Indigenous people would have continued use of the land in customary ways, although pretty obviously that principle was breached countless times. Here in SA, it was written into the Pastoral Act 1851, and expressly into every pastoral lease, that Aboriginal people had the right to be on pastoral land, to hunt, fish and gather, carry out ceremonies, camp, etc. 'as if this Lease had not been made' -so clearly on Crown Land as well. It's still the law.

One time, in 1876, the SA Protector was told of a new pastoralist at Cowarie on the Warburton, who intended to drive Aboriginal people off his lease. The Protector immediately wrote to him, advising that he would be in breach of his lease if he did so. He complied: Cowarie was still a ration depot in the 1910s.

Whether or not land usage over thousands of years constitutes land 'ownership' is not explored in textbooks on Land Law, but is obviously the cornerstone of the Mabo Decision: if clans traditionally controlled entry into the lands they were customarily using, then perhaps that constitutes one of the parameters of 'land ownership', i.e. the power to exclude non-clan members. If so, and if people can trace their ancestry back to an Indigenous person, then they have some claim on land somewhere, simply by the recognised common law relating to inheritance: there is nothing 'special' or 'different' about Native Title in that case.

Once difficulties with Native Title are cleared up, then there would be no need to mention it in any 'Treaty', it's already Australian law. So what SHOULD be in a Treaty ? It's driving me even more nuts than usual that people wave it around but put nothing in it. Surely a Treaty is important solely because of what is in it ? That it's not just a flash bit of blank paper ?

Joe

Professor George Williams, Dean of the Law Faculty at
the University of New South Wales writes:

"It should come as no surprise that the settlers who
came to this continent never entered into one or more
treaties with Aboriginal people. The question today
is how to end this pattern of exclusion and discrimination.
Constitutional change is certainly part of the answer but
so is a treaty. These are separate debates but they are
two things that need to be done."

"...the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation identified a
treaty as an aspect of unfinished business of the
reconciliation process. It recommended -

That the Commonwealth Parliament enact legislation
to put in place a process which will unite a ALL
Australians by way of an agreement, or treaty, through which
unresolved issues of reconciliation can be resolved."

"By a treaty, I mean an agreement between governments and
Aboriginal peoples. Such an agreement could involve 3 things:

1) A starting point of acknowledgement.

2) A process of negotiation.

3) Outcomes in the form of rights, obligations and
opportunities.

A treaty about such matters could recognise the history and
prior occupation of Aboriginal peoples in this continent,
as well as their long standing grievances. It could also
be a means of negotiating redress for those grievances and
of helping to establish a path forward based upon mutual
goals rather than ones imposed upon Aboriginal people."

"At the heart of the idea is the notion that a place in the
Australian nation cannot be forced upon Aboriginal people.
It needs to be discussed and negotiated through a process based
upon mutual respect that recognises the sovereignty of
Aboriginal peoples."

"By contrast what we tend to see today at best is only
consultation with Aboriginal people. This is worthwhile
but it is not enough."

"Change must be built on the genuine partnership between
Indigenous peoples and governments that can arise through
the making of a treaty."

cont'd ...