Why Indigenous leaders like Pat Anderson are not letting go of the Uluru Statement from the Heart

Uluru Dialogue co-chair Pat Anderson. Picture NewsWire / Aaron Francis

There is no ego in Pat Anderson’s devotion to the Uluru Statement from the Heart. The historic call for voice, treaty and truth wasn’t even her idea, and that’s the point.

The document that emerged from the 2017 Constitutional Convention at Uluru is not only rare it is unprecedented.

It is as close to a consensus as Indigenous Australia has ever come. In meetings around Australia, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people told how they wanted to be recognised and how they wanted to move forward with other Australians from our difficult past.

The process to distil this into a one-page document was thorough and lengthy. So that’s why Ms Anderson and so many other Indigenous people cannot let it go. That’s why this 80-year-old grandmother confronted the Prime Minister on Sunday night, asking him if he was “rolling back on the Labor election commitment to the Makarrata Commission”. That’s the body Uluru asks for to supervise agreement making (treaties) and truth telling. It’s the body that Labor put $5.8m towards in the 2022 budget.

As Indigenous leaders including Ms Anderson see it, Uluru is a responsibility. It is their job to try to pursue what’s left of the Uluru Statement after the defeat of the voice last October because that document is literally the will of the Indigenous people.

“We understand that a constitutional voice didn’t get up, but the Australian people didn’t vote on truth or treaty,” Ms Anderson said as the PM retreated from Makarrata at the weekend. Behind the scenes there have been months of discussions about the impact of the referendum and what is now possible. This will likely play out over years.

Ms Anderson spent her life working in Indigenous health and serving others. She raised her grandson while doing work of national importance including the Little Children are Sacred report into child sex abuse in the NT and helping to establish the Lowitja Institute. It is a great sadness for those who know and admire Ms Anderson that on October 14 last year, as the No votes rolled in, she accepted that she would not live to see constitutional recognition of Indigenous Australians.

The next hope is with young Indigenous Australians such as Allira Davis and Bridget Cama, who lead Uluru Youth.

Last month, Uluru Youth members from across Australia met on the Gold Coast for their first post-referendum discussions. They analysed and reviewed the referendum, the data and the factors that contributed to the result.

But Ms Cama and Ms Davis also led talks about the future.

They remain firm on the path to meaningful constitutional recognition.

They see that path as now longer, but no less urgent.