Successive Governments have failed our First Nations People. In 1992, Paul Keating in his Redfern speech called on us to, in essence, participate in the truth-telling:
… the starting point might be to recognise that the problem starts with us non-Aboriginal Australians. It begins, I think, with that act of recognition. Recognition that it was we who did the dispossessing. We took the traditional lands and smashed the traditional way of life. We brought the diseases. The alcohol. We committed the murders. We took the children from their mothers. We practised discrimination and exclusion. It was our ignorance and our prejudice…… we failed to see that what we were doing degraded all of us
Some thirty years on, while there has been some progress at a state level, we have not progressed the truth-telling process at a federal level. We have a failed referendum and therefore do not have Constitutional recognition, nor do we have an established Voice to Parliament at a federal level, and the Closing the Gap measures are largely not on track (and in some cases worsening). It’s just not good enough and while we wait for a government with the fortitude to really progress reconciliation and close the gap, our first nations people continue to suffer.
The issues
We need to close the gap in health, education and life expectancy of First Nations people.
Lack of progress around facilitating First Nations Voices, and truth-telling to begin the healing process is prolonging the agony and hurting us as a nation.
Systemic racism, casual and directed continues to result in poor outcomes, including over-representation of First Nations children in out of home/foster care, over-representation of First Nations people in juvenile detention/custody, and inability for our First Nations people to heal.
We have a dominance of conservative press that is primed for negative click bait, and lack of truth in advertising that means that ‘good news’ is under-reported and that money buys you the narrative you want – as seen in the recent ‘No’ campaign material in the referendum.
Our plan
- Commitment to the Uluru Statement From the Heart: Voice, Treaty, Truth – supporting state-level solutions on voice, treaty and truth-telling, and looking for opportunities to connect this to deep listening at a federal level
- Self-determination at a community level, in line with the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, and as recommended by the Productivity Commission’s review of the Closing the Gap
- Economic independence, addressing inequities in wealth distribution
- Evidence-informed, culturally safe solutions to address the inequality faced by First Nations People across Australia
- Greater civics education, in line with a truth-telling process, supporting our many histories and telling the stories of who we are as a nation in order for us to move forward together
- Safeguarding sacred sites responsibly and consultatively
The evidence
- Closing the Gap Annual Report and Implementation Plan
- History Professor, Clare Wright of Latrobe University in The Conversation, Masters of the future or heirs of the past? Mining, history and Indigenous ownership
- Research Fellow (Indigenous Diplomacy), Australian National University, James Blackwell, in The Conversation, Forgiveness requires more than just an apology. It requires action
- Wiyi Yani U Thangani (Women’s Voices): Securing Our Rights, Securing Our Future Report.
- Productivity Commission review of the National Agreement on Closing the Gap Report.
- United Nation’s Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.