Dr Sarah Maddison
Dr Sarah Maddison is currently Senior Associate Dean in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at the University of New South Wales. She began her working life as a youth worker and drug and alcohol worker in the Sydney suburbs of Redfern and Waterloo, and has also worked in policy for the NSW government. Since completing her PhD in 2003 Sarah has published widely in in the areas of young women and feminist activism, social movements, non-government organisations and democracy. She is currently writing a book on contemporary Indigenous politics to be published by Allen and Unwin in 2008. Her previous books are Activist Wisdom (2006, with Sean Scalmer) and Silencing Dissent (2007, co-edited with Clive Hamilton). Sarah sits on the Board of Directors of the Australia Institute, an independent think tank, and provides media commentary for the Women’s Electoral Lobby and more broadly on issues in Australian politics.
What a reconciled Australia looks like to me.
Some people say that you cannot undo history. But, to me, a reconciled Australia requires the undoing of our history since colonisation in some important ways. It seems ridiculous to think that reconciliation can only be about going forward, dealing with the future, when what lies behind us remains unfinished business. It is this unfinished business of history that bedevils Indigenous communities all over Australia. There are different effects depending on location and diverse experiences of this history, but it is our history that is the problem nonetheless.
Among the many things that need to be done, there are three key aspects of our history that we need to address if we are to finish the business of reconciliation. The first is what our Prime Minister might dismiss as 'merely' symbolic. What this dismissal ignores is that the problems faced by Indigenous individuals, families and communities today are borne out of the deep pain caused by the invasion of their country and their dispossession and dispersal. Can anyone truly believe that what afflicts individuals and communities caught in a cycle of violence, poverty and substance abuse is poor governance? Or a lack of resources? Or a lack of individual responsibility or accountability? These may be contributing factors, but what lies beneath it all are the deep psychic wounds that have been passed down from generation to generation, eroding self-respect and the capacity to respect others. A reconciled Australia would make the effort to truly understand this pain and apologise in many ways for the causes.
Second, our history must be undone to allow the first nations of Australia to govern themselves. A reconciled Australia would restore respect to Indigenous Australia by recognising that Indigenous sovereignty has never been ceded; by ensuring that Indigenous people are properly and appropriately represented in all our parliaments and in the regional and national governance structures of their own choosing; by providing a legal and constitutional basis for the relationship between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australia; and by enshrining as fundamental the principle that Indigenous Australians must have real capacity for making decisions and determining their own ways of life. Control over Indigenous affairs must be returned to Indigenous people in the manner of their own choosing.
Third, a reconciled Australia would provide Indigenous Australians with the material resources - an economy - to create and govern their own futures. Every single non-Indigenous Australian profits from Indigenous land every day. Our houses are built on Indigenous land, we go to work on Indigenous land, we shop, play, educate our children - all on Indigenous land. Why have Indigenous Australians not been properly compensated for their loss of land? Why is a percentage of our GDP or our tax revenue not paid in rent for our ongoing use of this land? If we addressed these issues Indigenous Australia would no longer be poverty stricken but would have the economic capacity to develop their resources, invest in their children, protect their culture and their languages, not beholden to a white government - with pride.
To do these things will not only take time and commitment, but also a profound reconceptualisation of the relationship between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australia. But what are our options?? To keep imagining that reconciling Australia is merely a matter of getting the policy settings right is a nonsense. Right now, we are fiddling as Rome (or Wadeye or Muitjulu or Dubbo or Redfern or Cherbourg or Palm Island or Hopevale...) burns.
Sarah Maddison
