The following opinion pieces have been published by the President and Commissioners. Reproduction of the opinion pieces must include reference to where the opinion piece was originally published.

Solidarity is key to a reconciled Australia

Author: Mick Gooda
Publisher: Fairfax
Publication: Sun Herald, Page 26 (Sun 3 Jun 2012)

On the 20th anniversary of the High Court's recognition of native title, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner, Mick Gooda, argues that changing our narrative on indigenous Australia begins with respect.

I was at the United Nations in New York when the recent tent embassy events unfolded in Brisbane's Musgrave Park.

As a Ganguluman from central Queensland, I was worried about what was happening back home and kept a watching brief from afar. I had a sense of anxiety lest the event blew up as these things have done so many times in the past. But most of all I hoped that our progress towards reconciliation would remain on track.

As Australia's Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner, I'm often asked how far I think Australia has moved towards reconciliation since the national apology in February 2008.

That February day was like a lightning rod to the reconciliation cause in Australia.

Long overdue and life-altering for many, the apology put the relationship between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and non-indigenous Australians on the national and international radar.

Schools abandoned classes to watch history in action. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples all over Australia cried, held each other and dreamt of better times ahead. Some non-indigenous Australians grasped the reality of the stolen generations for the first time.

The optimism and hope soon spread. Indeed, two years later, Reconciliation Australia's Reconciliation Barometer found that most Australians who responded to a national survey thought that the relationship between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and other Australians was important. They were optimistic about the future.

And that's what I've also been hearing in my role as Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner. It's the sense that I get too as I travel around the country and meet with people from areas as remote as Mutijulu through to inner city suburbs of major cities like Brisbane on our inch-by-inch journey towards a referendum on constitutional recognition of indigenous Australians.

In 2012, the lives of Australia's first peoples continue to be reported with a zeal and consistency not common to the lives of other Australians.

But disturbingly, when Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people take a stand, make a noise or voice strong opinions like those who recently occupied and were then evicted from Musgrave Park in Brisbane, a chorus of voices predictably sings that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have no right to occupy a city park; that white people would be arrested if they did the same.

In fact, more than 30 people were arrested and the incident sparked a protest march on state Parliament.

The narrative, often played out around the country against a backdrop of television news footage showing indigenous people invariably standing firm on land from which authorities are trying to remove them, is that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are causing problems again.
It is a narrative that reveals a fundamental lack of understanding about the importance of land and country to our very soul. And it's a message that demonises those standing firm rather than acknowledging their need to do so.

As the late Justice Murphy was moved to say in 1982 in Neal v the Queen, "[M]any of the great religious and political figures of history have been agitators, and human progress owes much to the efforts of these and the many who are unknown."

Indigenous people all over the world have lost their sovereign lands to colonial powers.
And while this knowledge sits at the edge of most people's understanding of the relations between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and non-indigenous Australians, I believe most Australians fail to recognise just how seriously it has shaped modern Australia.

I believe it is this lack of understanding which underpins hostile reactions to visible Aboriginal agitation such as the occupation and subsequent eviction at Musgrave Park.

Again the 2010 Reconciliation Barometer provides some insight. It found that just over 70 per cent of those surveyed acknowledged that the level of prejudice Australians hold towards indigenous people is "very high" or "fairly high" and that indigenous people themselves are prejudiced towards other Australians.

Reconciliation Australia also canvassed where the general community was getting the information from on which it formed its opinions and found that 38 per cent nominated the media as their main source.

Only 16 per cent of the community, however, agreed that the media presented a balanced view of indigenous Australia.

I believe it is this lack of a balanced view of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people that feeds an ill-informed understanding of Aboriginal Australia, which compels others to continue to want to "do things to and for us" rather than "with us".

It also seems to justify a view among the broader population that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people should be grateful for what they have; that signs of agitation, unrest or discontent can be readily dismissed as the rumblings of an ungrateful mob.

But all the government funding, all the political posturing and all the paternalistic programming that is directed to Aboriginal Australia will come to naught if Aboriginal people aren't listened to when it comes to what we need and what is important to us, especially in relation to our connection to land and sense of self.

We should all stop today, on the 20th anniversary of the historic Mabo decision, to reflect on how we understand our first peoples - one of the oldest continuing living cultures on earth.

My hope is that we all realise the role we can play in changing the narrative and that mutual respect must underline the story.