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RUBY:

Hey there, I’m Ruby Jones, welcome to 7am’s Summer Series: an exploration of big ideas with some of our favourite contributors and thinkers.

Archival tape -- Anthony Albanese:

“I begin by acknowledging the traditional owners of the land on which we meet, I pay my respect to their elders, past present and emerging and on behalf of the Australian Labor Party I commit to the Uluru Statement from the Heart in full”

RUBY:

When Anthony Albanese declared victory in this year’s election, one of the first commitments that he made was to implement the Uluru Statement from the Heart in full.

While the Uluru Statement from the Heart includes truth telling and a treaty, a constitutionally enshrined voice to parliament is the first step that’s being pushed by the government. If it goes ahead it will be the first referendum since the republic vote, just over 20 years ago.

Today historian and veteran Aboriginal rights activist Gary Foley on the lessons we should take from history, self determination, and where his hope for genuine change lies.

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RUBY:

Gary, it seems like in the next couple of years we will see a referendum on constitutional recognition. And I want to talk to you about that and hear what your thoughts are. But first, I thought we could go back to what's come before and how it is that we got here. And I know that you've been involved for a very long time in fighting for the rights of Indigenous Australia. You've been part of, of countless land rights, self-determination movements, the establishment of the tent embassy back in 72. So I thought to start with maybe we could go back to 72 to the tent embassy and maybe you could remind us about what the goals were, what, what it set out to achieve.

Gary:

Well, if we're talking about the context of a referendum and a supposed voice to parliament, we can go back, if you like, to the second half of the 20th Century.

Archival tape -- Ningla A-Na Trailer:

“The fact that a black person in Bourke, if he sets one foot in a bloody pub there, he will get his head kicked in. That is extremely offensive to me. I find very offensive the highest infant mortality rate in the world.”

Gary:

Aboriginal Advisory Group to the Prime Minister, which was the Council for Aboriginal Affairs set up in 1967 by Harold Holt, then Whitlam. In the aftermath of the Aboriginal Embassy.

Archival tape -- ABC news:

“The Tent Embassy had been on the lawns outside Federal Parliament for six months. It was there on Commonwealth land as a symbolic protest against the Federal Government's refusal to grant Aboriginal land rights. It didn't persuade the Government to change its mind on that, but it did persuade them to pass an ordinance to stop the squatters. It was gazetted this morning and the ACT police moved in shortly afterwards.”

Archival tape -- Ningla A-Na Trailer:

“The police are only doing their duty, but it's a pretty dirty duty…”

Gary:

When he came to power at the end of 72’, he created a National Aboriginal Consultative Committee, the NACC and all of the representative bodies that have existed, the NACC was probably the most representative because the Whitlam government created a special Aboriginal roll because most Aboriginal people were not on the Australian electoral roll at that time. So he created a special Aboriginal roll and consequently had as representative a body nationally as you were likely to get.

Archival tape -- Gough Whitlam:

“We will Legislate to give Aborigines land rights. Not just because their case is beyond argument, but because all of us as Australians are diminished while the Aborigines are denied their rightful place in this nation.”

Gary:

But then along came Fraser and he abolished the NACC and set up his own version, the National Aboriginal Congress. Then along came Hawke and he abolished that and created his own version, which was ATSIC the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission, better known to Aboriginal people as Aborigines talking shit in Canberra. And then that was knocked off.

Archival tape -- Bob Hawke:

There shall be a treaty negotiated between, between the Aboriginal people and the Government on behalf of all the people of Australia. And secondly, that the next step is that you the Aboriginal people should decide what it is that you want to see in that treaty. It's been too long. Far too long.

Gary:

You know, there's been a succession of attempts to enable Aboriginal people to have some sort of voice to Parliament, but the essential problem remains through them all, and that is a lack of recognition of Aboriginal sovereignty and a lack of genuine self-determination in the sense of political and economic independence.

RUBY:

Can you tell me a bit more about that? About why you think these bodies that were set up in the past - bodies like the NACC and ATSIC, why you think they didn't survive?

Gary:

Because governments of all political persuasions have always only allowed Aboriginal people a voice when the Aboriginal people were saying what governments wanted to hear, when Aboriginal people started asserting a little degree of independence of thought and asserting notions that weren't palatable to governments of all persuasions, they knocked em off. Simple, you know. And that's the advantage of having Mickey Mouse pseudo advisory bodies. Advisory only, you know. They'll accept your advice until they don't like that advice and then they'll get rid of you. It's a long, historical sort of sequence.

RUBY:

And so watching that happen - seeing these advisory bodies consistently set up, and then abolished and then reinvented over this time, how has that shaped your views on politics?

Gary:

I'm very cynical about the whole Australian political process because Aboriginal people have not only been sold out by conservative governments in many ways, some of the biggest damage done to the interests of Aboriginal people in the last 50 years or so has come as a result of what Labor governments have done.

RUBY:

What kind of movement do you think would genuinely progress the rights of Indigenous people in Australia?

Gary:

Well, the only period in which Aboriginal people made substantial political gains in a very short period of time was in the late sixties and early seventies with the advent of the Black Power Movement that brought about significant change. The Aboriginal Embassy had a dramatic effect on Australian history and politics and there are many ways in which the embassy was significant.

But that brief period of change came about because of what we created as a pan Aboriginal movement where Aboriginal people thought of themselves as part of a national political movement and as a consequence gained enormous power from that.

Now, with the advent of Native Title, which everybody seems to think was such a great thing for Aboriginal people, I mean one of the primary effects of Native Title was that it dispersed the pan Aboriginal movement. People suddenly thought it was more important for that, for them to think even in terms of their own first and foremost, and thus fracturing what had been a really strong national movement of resistance.

RUBY:

We’ll be back after this.

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Archival tape -- ABC:

“For the first time Australia has recognised the legal existence of Aborigines prior to white settlement. The case is a moral victory as well as having great significance for land rights.”

“But the court stipulates the ruling only covers the people of the Murray Islands and anything else will be looked at on a case by case basis. While welcoming the ruling, the Federal Government says the practical implications may not be far reaching.”

“That any alarmist speculation about adverse consequences of the decision ought to be rejected. But nevertheless it is of great symbolic importance to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.”

RUBY:

Gary, you said just before that native title has actually undermined the fight for Indigenous Rights in Australia. Can you tell me what you mean by that?

Gary:

The Native Title Act was a response by government at the time, a Labor government, to the Mabo decision of the High Court and the Labor Government decided that first and foremost what was most urgently needed was some sort of legislation that protected the interests of white landholders you know. And so the Native Title Act as a consequence gives Aboriginal people Native Title, the most inferior form of land tenure under British law, and it largely protects any privately owned land in mainstream Australia from any sort of native title claims, you know. And it certainly doesn't give land ownership, which is what the land rights movement was all about.

We weren't talking about some imaginary sort of part sort of interest in land, we were talking about ownership of land, you know, meaningful ownership to enable us to do what we felt needed to be done on our own land and independent of white Australian government control or interference.

You know, that's what self-determination really is. You know, Australian governments, you know, mouthed the term to us and others. But when it comes to the reality, there's no way that any Australian Government has genuinely recognised meaningful Aboriginal self-determination.

RUBY:

And so, is there any way in your opinion that what the government is proposing, constitutional recognition or a voice to Parliament could coexist with the kind of self-determination that you're saying is needed? Is there any compatibility here?

Gary:

There's no comparison between genuine political and economic independence and anything else. It's either all or nothing. And I'd quote a fellow Aboriginal activist from about 40 years ago when she said, If Australia can't face up to this reality and change, then it would mean the end of the longest surviving culture on the planet Earth.

The chance of getting a yes vote in a national referendum today on an issue related to Aboriginal people is Buckley's and none. You know, this is not 1967 anymore. This is very much post Pauline Hanson and One Nationism. This is very much post the history and culture wars that in many ways continue. You know, Aboriginal people have somehow for some reason become a divisive topic in Australian society, courtesy of certain sort of political commentators in this country.

People would do well to learn the lessons of the past. And the lessons of the past are clear. All governments are duplicitous in their dealings with Indigenous people, you know, and they are not to be trusted and we should not believe that they are the ones who can solve our problems. We long ago established that we're capable of solving our own problems. Give us the resources to do so. Give us the economic and political independence to enable us to do that. Don't give us anything else. All the rest is just tokenism and empty promises, just as they've been in the past.

RUBY:

And so, Gary, where does your hope lie for genuine change today?

Gary:

The only hope on the horizon are the grandkids to my generation, young people like the warriors of the Aboriginal Resistance in Melbourne, they're pulling 100,000 people onto the streets on Invasion Day. That's better than what we did in our heyday in the old Black Power Movement.

I've got a lot of faith in them, and most of them have immaculate political lineages. You know, their mothers and grandmothers were at the forefront of the battle and in their day. And these young, these young women in the Warriors of the Resistance are following in their mothers and grandmothers and great grandmother's footsteps. It's a great thing to see.

RUBY:

Gary, thank you so much for your time.

Gary:

No worries.

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