Documents from the project
Melbourne Conversations - Treaty:
the big idea whose time is overdue
Urban History Tour - History should have no
divide
Treaty: the big idea whose time is overdue
Treaty: the big idea whose time is overdue: Everyone would benefit
from a treaty between old and new Australians.
By Sean Brennan
The Age
May 26, 2005
Australians can be suspicious of big ideas but interested in practical
solutions. In 2000 the big idea was put forward that Australia should
advance reconciliation by a treaty between government and indigenous
people. The idea received a mixed reception, as it had before. It
deserves fresh attention for the way it could deal with practical
and symbolic issues at the same time.
By a treaty we mean an agreement negotiated between indigenous
people and Australian government that would set out a range of mutual
rights, obligations and opportunities. It could establish a framework
for this relationship with interlocking agreements at the national
and regional level.
Recent debate has focused on social problems within indigenous
communities and developing economic self-reliance. A treaty can
sharpen that focus and make a practical difference in people's lives.
Rather than distracting from practical issues of health, education
and employment, a treaty relationship can help to move things forward.
This is the evidence in New Zealand where Maori-government relations
are worked through the Treaty of Waitangi. In Canada, agreement-
making and modern treaties are linked to economic and social development.
In the United States, self-determination has been described by Harvard
researchers as the only anti-poverty approach that has ever worked
in Native American communities.
If government wants people to be responsible, rather than dependent,
it cannot always tell them what to do. It must allow them the authority
to make decisions and support them in developing the governing institutions
to make that jurisdiction work. This is not simple and mistakes
may be made along the way, but they will be mistakes that communities
themselves can learn from, not government errors they simply have
to wear.
A treaty could also make a significant difference to the law. Discrimination
once existed in forms that are difficult to believe today. The right
to vote in federal elections was granted to Aboriginal people only
in 1962. Gradually discriminatory laws disappeared. Since then other
laws have promoted indigenous interests, such as land rights and
heritage protection.
Overall, though, the law remains patchy and lacks a commitment
to community empowerment. It can also shift with the changing political
winds. A treaty backed by our constitution could offer a more solid
legal foundation for an enduring relationship. For the moment, our
constitution is silent on even the existence of the peoples who
were here for 2000 generations before Europeans arrived.
As a change to the law, a treaty could contribute to solving practical
problems. By expressing the important values of our society, such
as respect and responsibility, it could affect people's health and
wellbeing. The World Health Organisation has found that social exclusion
is a contributor to poor health, and that law reform can enhance
inclusion. In Australia, Aboriginal health is a national crisis,
with life expectancy 20 years lower than in the non-Aboriginal population.
Given this, is it a coincidence that life expectancy is better
in Canada, where treaty-making occurs and the constitution protects
aboriginal rights? Or New Zealand, where the Treaty of Waitangi
influences public policy? Or the United States, where the political
independence of Native American nations has long been recognised?
All these nations have treaty experience, good and bad, from which
Australia could learn. We have the Mabo decision of our High Court
in 1992 that changed the debate by exposing as a legal fiction the
idea that there were no owners for this land before the British
came, and no systems of law in place. The recognition of native
title has set up a brighter future for some, but it is a mixed legacy.
As Prime Minister John Howard has acknowledged, Australia was settled
without treaty or consent. That created an injustice that has been
compounded over time. Modern treaty-making is one way to make a
fresh start. It need not threaten the integrity of the Australian
nation-state; overseas experience proves that. In fact, it may offer
a path to greater unity by providing indigenous people with a place
in the nation they have not enjoyed to date. A treaty can also help
in tackling urgent social and economic problems.
A treaty may be a big idea but it offers a practical as well as
symbolic option for moving forward in the relationship between indigenous
peoples and Australian government.
Sean Brennan, with Larissa Behrendt, Lisa Strelein and George Williams,
is an author of Treaty (The Federation Press) which will be launched
[on 27 May] at the Sydney Writers' Festival.
Sean Brennan will speak on Treaty at Talk
Blak (Melbourne Converations) on 15 June 2005.
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History should have no divide
History should have no divide: Melbourne's history pre-dates the
arrival of John Batman
The Age
By Carolyn Webb
June 3, 2005
Historian Meyer Eidelson at the Batman monument at
Queen Victoria Market.
Photo: Estelle Grunberg
A monument to John Batman at Queen Victoria Market states that in
1835,
he founded the settlement of what is now Melbourne, "then
unoccupied".
Melbourne, of course, had been inhabited by Aborigines for tens
of thousands of years. Attitudes to indigenous people have changed
since the statue was erected in 1881, but few know the indigenous
stories beneath the city's 2005 landscape.
Historian Meyer Eidelson will mark the 170th anniversary of Batman's
Treaty with Aboriginal elders by leading a three-hour bus
tour of inner Melbourne on Sunday. The tour, initiated by Australians
for Native Title and Reconciliation, will visit sites of early interaction
between Aborigines and white settlers. These include Queen Street
Bridge, where the settlers first came ashore, and Dights Falls in
Abbotsford, which was an important site for Aboriginal trading and
ceremonies, and was a post-colonial Aboriginal mission and native
police base.
Another stop on the tour, Old Melbourne Gaol, sits on Gallows Hill,
the first execution site in Melbourne. The first people hanged there,
in 1842, were two Aborigines who had killed two whalers at Cape
Patterson.
Eidelson hopes to take the tour group to the Merri Creek banks in
Clifton Hill, which is arguably where the Batman Treaty was signed
on June 6, 1835.
Eidelson says Batman "bought" 200,000 hectares of land,
on behalf of a Tasmanian property syndicate, off Aboriginal elders
in exchange for ££100 worth of blankets, beads, axes
and mirrors.
Eidelson says the Aborigines may have believed the treaty signified
that whites could camp on their lands, but they had no concept of
real estate and didn't understand the writing, in English. The British
government later voided the treaty, saying that the government alone
had the right to own and sell the land.
Eidelson says the treaty was "a self-interested, speculative
and crooked venture" by Batman and his friends, but may have
been fairer than the zero compensation deal the British government
offered. "The (Batman) syndicate promised to pay an annual
rent, in material goods. You can imagine what a modern court would
regard as a fair rent - for 170 years of the pastoral industry,
all the gold that's been taken out of Victoria and the property
development."
Eidelson conducts about 50 heritage and environment tours of Melbourne
each year. He says there's immense interest in the city's indigenous
history.
"I'm not an Aboriginal, and some Aborigines probably regard
it as absolutely none of my business, but I, as an Australian, believe
that I have an Aboriginal history. I don't believe that my history
stops in 1835, nor, just because my parents came here in 1948 as
Holocaust survivors, I don't believe my history starts in 1949.
"I believe it's a very good thing to explore that Aboriginal
history. I don't regard it as their history, I regard it as my history,
too."
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