Angela Pratt
Angela currently works as health policy advisor to the Federal Parliamentary Labor Party. Before this, she worked as a researcher on Indigenous affairs and health policy, and completed a PhD in sociology and politics at the University of Wollongong.
What a reconciled Australia looks like to me.
I have to confess to at times having been a reconciliation sceptic. Not because I've doubted the importance or the need for reconciliation to take place, but I've sometimes worried that the concept lets non-Indigenous people off too lightly. What should Indigenous people need to reconcile, and with whom?
Reconciliation to me means a country where Indigenous and non-Indigenous people are equal but not the same.
Indigenous and non-Indigenous people ought to have the same life chances - the same health status, the same access to education and employment and decent living conditions. Indigenous babies shouldn't die from rheumatic fever and Indigenous children shouldn't get trachoma. And of course, Indigenous people shouldn't die 17 years younger than the rest of us.
But having the same life chances does not mean being the same. Reconciliation means learning to respect one another's differences, and working on issues which mean we don't or can't respect each other at the moment (e.g. racism, lack of non-Indigenous understanding of Indigenous trauma and suffering). And non-Indigenous respect for Indigenous people has to mean more than just buying dot paintings - it has to be about genuinely engaging with Indigenous people, and on their terms (not just ours).
Angela Pratt
