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Tourists descending the capital mall in Canberra, Australia will confront a rather tawdry collection of shanties, car-vans and tents near the front of the Old Parliament building that proudly bear the name “Aboriginal Embassy.” These structures are occupied by a small group of Aboriginal activists and supporters to call attention to the plight of their people in contemporary Australia.
The embassy first opened in 1972 and remains largely intact today on a small piece of landed ceded to them by a more sympathetic government ion the past.. The national and local governments now in power have called the site an eyesore and have charged that aboriginals who live at and / or man are self-anointed folk who do not speak for their whole community. When a mysterious fire broke out in one the buildings in mid 2002, the resulting destruction prompted the government to cut off electricity and to remove portable toilets in an effort to get the inhabitants to move. The resident aboriginals, however, secured use of toilets in a nearby restaurant and are determined to stay, no matter what.
The visitor is met by a large sign that hangs over the main Embassy building:
“Australia: The Issues are Black and White!
Whites Blacks
Life Expectancy-Males 76 57
Life Expectancy-Females 82 64
Infant Mortality 5 per 1000 18 per 1000
And only 6 in 100 live beyond 54 years. IS THIS EQUALITY?”
Aboriginal protesters at the Embassy have called on the Federal Government to officially recognize Australia’s indigenous people as the sovereign owners of Australia, a message encapsulated in another sign, “Sovereignty Never Ceded.”
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| The Aboriginal Embassy, Canberra |
Many native Australians refuse to assimilate into European (white Australian) society and want to preserve their cultures and languages within the confines of an aboriginal nation(s). The federal and several state governments in recent years have in fact ceded large tracts of land to various Aboriginal groups, but hardly enough to even begin satisfying their demands. The current Liberal led by conservative John Howard has paid little heed to the Aboriginal question. One middle-aged native Australian woman at the “Embassy” told me with a warm smile: “What we want is some genuine respect and some land where we can live and work quietly on our own.”
“Aboriginal Politics” is one of the most controversial and newsworthy issues confronting Australian society today. The basis of the current Aboriginal rights movement is the demand for justice, an apology for past discrimination, and a recognition of such fundamental indigenous rights as land and a degree of “sovereignty.” Since the 1960s most Australians have accepted the stipulation that Aborigines should enjoy the rights of other Australian citizens and that they should be fully assimilated into an increasingly cosmopolitan Australian society. Aboriginal activists, on the other hand, protest that native Australians are entitled to special Aboriginal rights in accordance with their status as the original peoples. They reject the idea that they should have to assimilate themselves into white Australian society.
The present conflict stems from two very different perceptions of Australian society. The British/ white Australian view has never accepted Aboriginal peoples as being legitimate actors in the national environment. When the first British arrived in the late 1700s, they declared Australia to be terra nullius, a land without people. This meant that according to British law the new continent was without a recognizable government, system of land ownership, or commerce of any kind. Although indigenous peoples inhabited the land, the British felt that, under the terms of terra nullius, they were fully entitled to occupy the continent as if they were the first to lay claim to it. A treaty with the local population was unnecessary because there was no recognizable government to negotiate with. Trade agreements could not be entered into since there were no commodities to receive in exchange and land could not be purchased, confiscated or even conquered since there were no sellers to sell or defend it.
I visited the Embassy on many occasions in 2000, 2002 and 2003 while working as a Visiting Fellow at The Australian National University in a nearby section of Canberra. One of the most interesting aspects of a visit here is the opportunity to talk with a goodly number of Native Australian activists to gain their perspective on Australian politics. Sitting around a large campfire on a cold winter afternoon in August 2002, the chief spokesman for the Embassy gave me his version of Australian history and his dreams for his people:
“This Embassy is here to remind White Australians and other visitors that we are a group of native peoples with roots dating back over 60,000 years. This land is ours and we have nurtured and cared for it for hundreds of generations, but 214 years ago the British invaded and almost immediately began shooting at us. We were at first able to stave off this invasion because their numbers were few, but within 30 years, despite heroic resistance on our part, they broke through the Blue Mountains behind Sydney and began an extermination campaign that by 1900 brought down our population from 300,000 or more to 25,000. They have stolen and ruined our land, confiscated our sacred sites, and relegate us to lives of poverty, malnutrition, and shame. Today White Australians outlive Black Australians by 20 years and only 6/100 Blacks live beyond the age 54. We have the highest infant mortality rate in the developed world.
“We know that the Europeans will not get back into their ships and sail away. But we are treated like a demented colonial people with few rights and little respect. We want White Australian government, which claims sovereignty on our land, to respect our sovereignty as well. Our goal is co-sovereignty where both races share and work the land together. We have no intention of claiming already settled land, but we want access and shared income from all Crown and leased farm land including proceeds from mining, fishing, logging and the like.”
“There are many many groupings of indigenous Australians. We would form our own national government through a large Council of Elders which is our way of governance, It is high time that Whites come to respect the fact that the British idea of Australia being terra nullius was completely false. They invaded us as an outside power and we want our country back. The government champions human rights abroad, but ignores the plight of indigenous peoples and refugees at home.”
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Copyright © 2004 Daniel Metraux
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