THE AGE Howard's sinister strategy By PAT DODSON Saturday 13 May 2000 THE Federal Government wishes to drive a wedge between the concepts of rights and welfare for the Aboriginal people, but also between those who advocate a rights agenda and those seeking relief from appalling poverty. This is an attempt at a new spin on a very old wicket of divide and rule. If it were a matter of rice-bowl politics it might not be so bad, but it is far more sinister than that. It is about removing the centrality of community as the life centre, and instead models on the individual as the essential unit of society. This is not our way. With all our social problems, the answer is not to attack the foundations of our community by putting the individual before the community. Aborigines have never wanted to be the same as the white man. What we have sought is to have substantial equality so that as human beings there might be a quality of life that we can enjoy in keeping with our own values and ways of society. Lives for our peoples, similar to that of the majority in Australia but lives uniquely ours - not ones that the governments' wished to impose upon us. Lives where we meet our obligations as citizens but where we are accommodated also as Aborigines. Lives where our human and cultural rights are respected by the governments that have told the world they would respect them. We have been an affront to the foundational thinking and perceptions that underpin the British mould of Australian institutional principles of society. The confidence of the nation to celebrate with some pride its achievement is always tempered with the concern that the issues of unfinished business between us would surface and detract from the moment. This inevitably sends the message to those who observe us, as a nation divided in the one country. It further highlights the inability of a modern democracy to come to grips fairly and respectfully with its indigenous peoples. >From a cultural position, the only way that the mourning period can be ended is when the proper protocols and practical arrangements have been carried out. When the people who have had a wrong or an injustice done to them have been accommodated by the action of those responsible. Then we can come together as friends and mates. Let there be no misunderstanding: the anger and disappointment that many indigenous Australians have with the way the content of the "Towards a Document of Reconciliation" proposal is being handled is not with the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation. We are angry and disappointed at the cynical manipulation of the process that has been employed by the Federal Government, and in particular the leader of that government - a manipulation that is an affront to the millions of Australians of goodwill that have sought a genuine reconciliation between our peoples. In common with all other Australians, we must have the right to maintain our unique cultural identity without having our entitlements as Australian citizens held hostage to the social imperatives of governments and their leaders unable to comprehend the value of the contribution that we bring to this country as first Australians. It may well be beyond the imagination of this government to grasp the consequences of what the continual denial of the rights of the first Australians will be - to grasp the importance in the same way that so many Australians who have come to terms with the truth of our past and are seeking to provide a shared future of justice for all our children. But unless we have the courage to persevere and confront the denial and prejudices placed before us, a just future for our children will not be secured. I am proposing today that with the completion of the work of Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation only seven months away, they place before the Parliament the following proposal: First, before the council's May 27 and 28 event, the Prime Minister needs to make it clear that he will accept what the council has put forward and that he will commit to a process with the Aboriginal peoples of finding practical, legal and political ways of advancing the council's recommendations. Second, , the government should endorse the recommendation that 40 distinguished Australians - 20 from each side - be commissioned to draft a treaty between the Australian Government and Aboriginal peoples, based on the matters raised by the council's recommendations and those other matters relayed to it as the continuing causes for discord and division between us. The government should nominate half the dignitaries, and the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission should nominate the Aboriginal dignitaries. Third, that the Aboriginal people and the government nominate their respective representatives to negotiate the draft treaty. This process of negotiations should be overseen by all past prime ministers, High Court judges and former heads of state, and an equivalent number of senior Aboriginal representatives. An independent treaty commission should be established, independent of the government and the bureaucracy, and it should be resourced appropriately. If there is no agreement reached between the government and Aboriginal negotiators, the government should put the question of a treaty with Aboriginal people to a referendum. If there is a positive result from the negotiations or the referendum, the government should adopt the treaty as part of our modus operandi and legislate it into existence. Just the other day I received a lovely letter from a 73-year-old non-Aboriginal Tasmanian woman, full of kindness but also with a vision. Her kindness was in seeking advice on changing her will to fund a scholarship for future Aboriginal legal students. Her vision was one of reconciliation. She lives next to a conservation zone. She said in a postscript to her letter: "Hope the pelicans helped to eased your heart. I witnessed a riotous event one day. A pelican paddled in with a seagull on its back. The seagull hopped off at one stage and the pelican continued on its way. Realising he was alone, the pelican turned and paddled back to the gull. I could almost hear him saying, `Hey, are you coming or not?' The gull hopped back on and the twosome continued on their navigation of the area." In my home country, an event witnessed in the natural world such as this is can be read as a vision of spirit, or rai. The pelican gliding across the water is like the spirit of reconciliation, black and white together moving forwards. The seagull is in some ways like the governments of the day, forever changing, coming on and off the process, flying off to scream loudly before one day returning and joining the voyage, navigating towards a new future. This future is our future. Pat Dodson was the first chairman of the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation. 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