The campaign for indigenous change is far from over

Seven years ago in Arnhem Land, Aboriginal clan leaders laid down a challenge: a plea for recognition and rights.

BAYLES 3RD JULY 2015 PHOTO: GLENN HUNT NEWS: Tiga Bayles, talking to the Australian Newspaper about constitutional recognition and the strong debate that is being had in the indigenous community over recognition.

Seven years ago, on the same patch of Arnhem Land soil where their fathers and grandfathers had once handed over the historic Yirrkala land rights bark petitions, Aboriginal clan leaders laid down a challenge.

It was a plea for recognition, again written in bark, and for much more. It demanded rights — to economy, property and way of life — and control over destiny.

“This is the beginning of the future for these little ones,” said Gumatj elder Galarrwuy Yunupingu in July 2008 as Yirrkala’s children, ceremonially painted and dressed in orange, danced for the then prime minister Kevin Rudd.

Now those little ones have grown big and, unless they rise above the bleak statistics that are stacked against them, they face disadvantages that for some will be overwhelming.

Yet despite acres of reports­, endless hearings, recognition relays and millions spent, still the political climate has barely shifted on constitutional recognition.

Consensus is demanded of the Aboriginal community but many are asking: if symbolism is all that’s on offer, what is the point? And what is the point if black Australia is no longer at the heart and soul of the recognition push?

“It’s a white man thing,” says indigenous broadcaster Tiga Bayles­ of the recognition campaign. “I believe it’s to appease the conscience of White Australia. It’s purely symbolism.”

It’s a view long held by sovereignty activists, like those who plan today to march across the Sydney Harbour Bridge in protest at recognition in a political reversal of scenes 15 years ago, when a quarter of a million people marched for reconciliation.

But it would be a mistake for Tony Abbott to reject such a view as belonging to fringe activists who set flags on fire and burn effig­ies in the streets.

Noel Pearson, the man the Prime Minister once regarded as his revered indigenous brains trust, warned in this newspaper at the weekend that the “persisting disjunct” over recognition — between those who favour symbolism and those who seek prac­tical historical redress — risked dooming the referendum in a rerun­ of the 1999 preamble vote. As conservative forces seek to contain the breadth of recognition, Pearson, long derided by the Left as being too close to conservative prime ministers, is emerging as the captain of the fight for indigenous autonomy, reaching out to his ideological foes who have shown their openness to his plan for a constitutionally mandated indigenous advisory body as the only plan on the table that offers a shot at some kind of self-determination.

Bayles, on his National Indig­enous Radio Service, is broadcast around the country and has a wide indigenous audience. Last week, in an interview that signif­ied an important bridge across the ideological divide of indigenous politics, Pearson sat down at length with Bayles in his Brisbane studio and spoke directly to his people.

At issue during the interview were differing poll results that have been published — several by the government-funded Recognise organisation charged with building support for a successful referendum, and the results of a poll by the IndigenousX organisation, which showed far lower ­levels of support.

Recognise has defended the rigour of its methods, but Pearson pointed out the obvious: that “people can’t be said to have a view without a model”. “It’s misleading to say there’s a certain level of support when people haven’t been asked in relation to a specific question,” Pearson said.

Constant demands for a timeline of recognition in the absence of a formulated question have blighted the movement.

Recognise has been seeking to drum up awareness and support around the nation for a concept with no meat on the bones of a proposal. And although it is a non-government organisation independent of government, its feel-good campaign has sat incongruously beside headlines of threatened community closures and the mass protests in response, and while indigenous organisations are gutted of funds.

“Recognise is purely a propaganda machine,” says Bayles. “How can they expect First Nations­ people to treat this proposal with respect and give it the time that it deserves when governments are threatening the removal of WA communities, and with the rates of incarceration and suicide and all of these things?

“ We’re needing change to deal with this stuff, not symbolism.” Arrernte woman and former deputy secretary of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabin­et Patricia Turner insists the focus should be on political leadership.

“Recognise is certainly not a government propaganda mach­ine,” Turner says.

“Its job is to raise awareness across the board and it has performed its role beyond criticism.

“It’s important that political leadership gives a clear way forward so that public engagement is more meaningful and people see the light at the end of the tunnel — rather than having to persuade people of the benefits without substantive proposals for further consideration of what the final model would look like.”

Tasmanian-based veteran sovereignty campaigner Michael Mansell says the nation appears to be catapulting toward a referendum “for the sake of it”, and contrasts the slick “top down” Recognise campaign, co-chaired by Torres Strait Islander leader Tanya Hosch and former Labor Party national campaign director Tim Gartrell, with the grassroots activism of the 1967 referendum.

“It probably hasn’t been the 1967 referendum approach, it’s quite the opposite,” Mansell says.

But Hosch says Recognise has looked carefully at the 1967 campaign and how that generation of campaigners built their success, beginning its ambitious national recognition relay “precisely because we looked at 67 and other referendum campaigns and we knew that large-scale grassroots ownership and momentum is crucia­l.”

“That’s why we’ve built a base of 270,000 supporters, by signing people up outside footy games and at community meetings and by speaking at people’s workplaces and churches and community services,” Hosch says.

As today’s summit kicks off, the mood among indigenous leaders is far from buoyant. At a reception last night at Kirribilli House, the Prime Minister sought to temper expectations and warned that the challenge was “not necessarily to do the best that each one of us thinks should be done, but to do the best that each one of us thinks can be done”.

For many Aboriginal people, it is a disappointing signal of a ­potential lost opportunity for truth, justice and real reconciliation. And Yunupingu, the man who kicked off a vision seven years ago, sits at home today in Arnhem Land, his health steadily failing; age descending too soon. “This task of constitutional recognition is the great unfinished business in the life of the Australian nation,’’ he said in 2008.

Seven years on, the project is anywhere but complete.