The newly elected President of the Australian Medical Association, Dr Tony Bartone, has stated that the AMA will push for Aboriginal recognition in the Constitution, after the AMA endorsed the Uluru Statement. This might mean that materials supporting Aboriginal recognition in the Constitution might appear in doctors’ surgeries. Why is the AMA doing this? According to the ABC, Dr Bartone said that ‘we can’t really seek to close the gap when it comes to health outcomes until we address the fundamental building blocks… [The Uluru plan could improve] the conditions in which people are born, grow, live, work and age.’
With all respect to the new President, this is to draw a long bow indeed. The AMA could move to intervene in the Peter Ridd case, on comparable grounds: the restoration of Professor Ridd could improve the mental health of very many academics, and their families as well. Or it could appear in the current banking Royal Commission, on the ground that what happens to people hardly done by through the decisions of bank staff affects the health of families everywhere.
The news item pushed me to read the Uluru Statement again. Short and moving, it is a year old, and made quite a noise when it appeared. But, rather in the fashion of Dr Bartone’s belief that a treaty, and all that goes with it, is a necessary stage in the improvement of health, the Statement itself invites the belief that Constitutional change will bring about all sorts of marvellous things: ‘When we have power over our destiny our children will flourish’. It is not clear to me what ‘power over our destiny’ means or could mean, or why children would flourish in consequence. The significant requests in the statement seem to be some kind of Treaty, the establishment of a ‘Makarrata Commission’ that will both supervise the process resulting in a Treaty and lead to ‘truth-telling about Aboriginal history’, and ‘a First Nations voice in the Constitution’. These goals are Constitutional in nature, and don’t obviously lead to an improvement in the quality of life of Aboriginal people, though they might make some Aboriginal people feel better.
Maybe they could lead to a significant improvement in quality of life in the very long run, for the future is unwritten. But what has happened in South Africa, which had its own version of ‘truth-telling’, and where the formerly oppressed native peoples have political power, does not suggest that the Uluru Statement’ goals are likely to be effective even in the long run. I would not be at all surprised to learn that a substantial proportion of non-Aboriginal Australians would have sympathy with the aims and the tone of the Statement. I have some sympathy myself. It would be relatively easy for such sympathisers to vote Yes at a referendum. Some would.
But I do not think this is the way to go. I don’t think it will deal with the problems of domestic violence and child abuse in Aboriginal rural settlements, about which we know a good deal. These are real problems, right now. While I am not sure that it is in fact the case that Aboriginal people ‘are the most incarcerated people on the planet’, it is true that young Aboriginal men are in prison in disproportionate numbers. That is another real problem, right now.
Yes, there is some rejection of Aboriginal people in the big cities, where 70 per cent of them actually live. But there is also a good deal of acceptance, and of course most of them have jobs like everyone else, and co-exist in their workplaces like everybody else. Aboriginal faces appear in advertisements in television. Young men with nothing to do are a problem in any society at any time. The cities provide opportunities for sport, creativity and work, which are central aspects of living in any city in any Western nation. Bringing those central aspects of life to remote settlements strikes me as an endeavour that is worth trying. It would have more immediate effects for good, I think, than the proposed Makarrata Commission. Ending the provision of ‘sit-down money’, in the context of new opportunities to work, develop one’s creative skills and play sport, seems another linked possibility.
The early parts of the Statement arouse in me a protest about language, in particular the appropriation of words that carry the kind of emotional loading one wants to bring to a debate. One is the conscious use of ‘First Nations’. I think this is a borrowing from Canada, as is the use of ‘tribes’. All my reading of Australian prehistory tells me that there were no ‘nations’ present on the continent when the English arrived. What Europeans encountered were small extended family groups that moved around what they saw as their territory. They negotiated with other like groups for trade, wives, salt, precious things. Some of their elders would have had a good grasp of some neighbouring languages and dialects. They had no strong sense of private ownership equating to ‘freehold’ in our culture. They could not sell their land, and saw themselves as stewards, if we need to find a familiar term in English culture.
They were not tribes, as the term is generally used. A tribe is much larger than an extended family. If the tribe is large enough, and covers enough land, you can see in it an emergent nation. It will have a single language and rules and responsibilities that apply to all members. North America had hundreds of tribes, and you can see a map of them here. And they were able to bring together impressive numbers of warriors as well. One website refers to 14 major battles between US forces and native Indians. The Maoris in New Zealand also had large tribes, and they too were able to wage war, often successfully. At the peak of these hostilities 18,000 British troops were used against about 4,000 Maori warriors.
There simply is no comparison with the Australian experience. What Australia had was a great collection of small extended family groups, with more than 250 distinct languages, established trade routes and traditional meeting areas. Common estimates for the number of Aboriginal people living in Australia in 1788 range from about 300,000 to a million, about as many as there now. They were never able to provide a strong force of warriors, and had no way of enlisting large numbers of other Aboriginal people to their cause, wherever they were.
So a bit of home-based ‘truth-telling’ in the Uluru Statement would have made it more acceptable. Some of the Statement revolves, predictably enough, around the notion that Aboriginal people were here first and therefore have some status, and perhaps rights, thereby. Alas, any knowledge of 19th century history points at once to the overwhelming probability that European powers would have taken over the continent by 1900. The Portuguese might have acquired Australia in the 16th or 17th centuries. The British, French and Dutch all landed here at different times, and the Germans were a bit late on the scene, but managed to acquire a slice of Papua New Guinea. For what it’s worth, my guess is that the British were probably the best bet for the Aboriginal people, given what might have happened. Something was going to happen, and no European power was going to take any notice of the claim that ‘we were here first’. That the claim can be voiced now simply shows that Aboriginal people actually have some real status in this nation of some 25 million people. They can make such a claim, and people will listen, and many will nod sympathetically.
But Constitutional changes as set out in the Statement need approval through the referendum process, not just sympathy. I think the Statement proposals have no chance at all. It will be hard to develop sensible questions to put to the voters, and no less easy to show what all the effects of such changes would be. In the meantime, to repeat, there are real and serious problems involving a small proportion of the Aboriginal people, those who live in remote settlements. Fixing them will be difficult and time-consuming, and governments of both major parties have given up and put them in the too-hard basket. It’s time, well past time, that they were brought out again.
Yes, that will require some bravery. No, there is not a lot of political bravery about. But Treaties aren’t worth much — and without a real ‘nation’ there is no one to have a treaty with anyway.
Alas poor Don, just another deluded old white man victimised by the imperialist western education that our beloved progressive academics are doing there best to correct. Personally, I think ha the treaty idea is good as far as it goes but it needs to go much further. We also need a treaty with the LGTIQBX nation as well with all the Sharia Law folk and other ethnic minorities.
In the meantime, under the banner of “better a figurehead than a dickhead”, we need to show ethnic flexibility and rotate our royal head of state succession amongst the various descendants of the other royal families of both Europe, China and Japan.
There is work o be done!!
Right on brother!
A treaty will be wonderful for increased aboriginal welfare.
If you thought $33 billion was expensive, a treaty will make that look like chicken feed.
The aboriginal medical industry will expand enormously and our AMA get that very well. Already they take fully staffed mobile clinics to remote areas without any prior arrangement and just wait there twiddling their thumbs in case an aboriginal happens to turn up for some treatment. I have spoken to doctors who have not had a patient all day but had a lovely day in the country doing nothing.
Very relaxing.
I can’t see them improving on native fishing and hunting rights unless they are given better weapons and bigger boats, though.
And having to hit egg-laying turtles with besser blocks can surely be improved upon, too.
Or then again we could suggest aboriginals remain equal with the rest of us and give the 21st century a fling for a change.
Because the rest of us may not be around for ever.
Not in such a generous mood anyway.
If we had a treaty we could change all the european names to aboriginal names in memory of their original electorates, roads, bridges, cities etc.
I wonder which of the 500-odd languages we should use?
I see where the confusion has already arisen with botanical names and they solve it by using the latin names and spelling them to look like aboriginal words.
Very clever and so appropriate. Especially in rainforests where the aboriginals rarely went because of skin parasites but tried so hard to remove by burning.
“I see where the confusion has already arisen with botanical names and they solve it by using the latin names and spelling them to look like aboriginal words”
I’m not being snarky SD, but curious, do you have some examples?
dlb, I was in a newly signed rainforest the other day and there were many trees with the common, latin and aboriginal names on many of the trees. This is the procedure these days with new signage. I was struck by how many of the aboriginal names sounded like the latin names only spelt as they have done with, for instance, many places that were once called Cameron this and Cameron that, which are now spelt e.g. Kamarun this and that as though that was the original name.
But people are suitably impressed and now pronounce it KaMARun.
In the past, trees like Tulip Oak were also called Black Booyong [aboriginal] as a common name but these were new names I had never heard before. Hard to imagine that aboriginals who haven’t been involved with those rainforest trees for at least a century would suddenly remember those old names.
I would have to go back and photograph the signs and get back to you.
The AMA has long gone the way and become yet another stronghold of progressive left fundamentalism including the New (anti-white) Racism. As though racism can be cured by more racism.
whoops…long gone the way of the ABC…
“young Aboriginal men are in prison in disproportionate numbers“, but so are young Muslims. Since the former cannot, by definition, be excused by their ‘aboriginality’, and the latter belong to a ‘religion of peace’, how is this to be explained?
Perhaps they are just young louts (an under-used word in present-day Australian society).
Bryan, I can find stats for young Aboriginal inmates of Australian prisons, but not (at least yet) for young Muslims. Do you have a link?
https://www.creativespirits.info/aboriginalculture/law/aboriginal-prison-rates#toc1
I see that Noel Pearson has, in order to unite us, at first divided us into three parts – Aboriginal, British and Multicultural. He points to human occupation of Australia 65,000 years ago but does not actually show that those people were the ancestors of modern Aborigines. The fact is that all humans on the planet originated in Africa some 200,000 years ago and all who left Africa about 80,000 years ago bear a DNA signature to this effect. These folk spread out all over the world with some indeed arriving in Australia via the littoral route by India to Indonesia. this was an admirable achievement but if we are to sign up to any document it must get the history right. It would be wrong in principle to differentiate Australians by the order of their arrival on this continent. Nor can blame be attached to those living today for crimes committed by people long dead. Let us solve today’s problems today without raking up the past. People earn respect by their behaviour and in my lifetime there are many Aboriginal folk who have deserved great respect.
https://tinyurl.com/yakpego6, section 4.3
Extensive documentation in UK
“lead to ‘truth-telling about Aboriginal history’,”
I doubt that this would include discussion of sexual abuse of children or violence against women that seem to be frequent in indigenous communities.
There is much that leads me to believe that the truth about the complexity of the aboriginal situation in Australia is being hidden. I think it comes from the belief that we should be nice rather than help people. We have a friend an Indian lady who transferred from Canberra to work in Alice Springs. The reason was her husband a federal public servant a Sikh was transferred in his job there. They live there in a gated community and drive to work a five minute trip. Why would you do that? The street there are too dangerous because of roaming aboriginals who may and do attack people. The law there is overwhelmed and because of the politics of our time really can’t do much about it. For instance the ABC rather than do an investigative report on this huge problem for a dispossessed people chose rather to concentrate on the rights of an individual.
Yes there is a large number of aboriginals you have a very poor life. Rather though than discussing the problem openly any discussion is immediately branded racist which in our day and age means shut up and go away. Many practices of aboriginal culture are barbaric and cannot ever be accepted we should not pretend they could be.
I have always been curious who validly represents aboriginals such that white colonising power can sign a treaty with them? I doubt such an entity existed in 1788 and has not ever existed. I certainly would vote firmly no to a referendum question because this is all to separate we need to come together.
Interesting point BB! It is akin to non-denominational prayer. Exactly to whom does one address such prayer?
Isn’t this just another example of virtue signalling. As is the response to the lady raped and murdered at a Melbourne soccer and a consequence of social media.