To mark the 206th anniversary of the beginning of the European invasion of Australian, we asked a range of people from the Aboriginal community to comment on what was or wasn't accomplished in the International Year of Indigenous People, and on the likely course of events in 1994.
Ted Wilkes
Director, WA Aboriginal Medical Service
Overall, Aboriginal people didn't achieve much in 1993. There were lots of promises made in the past, so 1993 could have been the culmination of some good things, particularly in relation to Mabo and reconciliation.
Whilst the Mabo issue has highlighted the land needs and aspirations of Aboriginal people, it really didn't get governments to the stage where Aboriginal people will get some positive action on social justice issues. That's the concern Aboriginal activists in the metropolitan areas and the south of the country have, because here the land has been exhausted by white men.
I convened the Year for Indigenous Peoples Committee in WA. There was a very difficult struggle to get funding and resources. In the end we abandoned the committee because we didn't have enough support from government.
There wasn't enough positive images of Aboriginal people coming through the media in 1993 to highlight that Aboriginal people are a genuine, vibrant and necessary part of our community.
Aboriginal people in WA have major concerns because the government has not implemented some of the recommendations that came out of the commission [into Aboriginal deaths in custody]. It's an ongoing battle to pressure the government of this state to find a better way of penalising or looking after Aboriginal people when they've done something to break the law. It needs to be recognised that culturally and socially, we live in a different way.
The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission now enters its second era after recent elections. There's some new faces and some old faces. We're hoping it can now start to move forward. I was a regional councillor, and it was very difficult to work in, with bureaucrats and government systems that are very rigid.
White people are still dealing out the funding, white people are still able to manipulate the system. Aboriginal people want to be in control of our own destiny; we use the word self-determination. But this patronising attitude comes through, which says to me Aboriginal people are still not considered ready to take on full control.
Brenda Croft
Coordinator, Boomalli Aboriginal Artist Cooperative
The Year of the Indigenous People gave a high profile to contemporary Aboriginal artists, particularly from the urban areas. The NSW Ministry of the Arts launched five Aboriginal fellowships for NSW, there were lots of arts awards launched like the Heritage Award which is a national one in Canberra, and the Botany Arts Award.
But there was this feeling that they were trying to cram it all into the one year because they thought, "Well that's it for indigenous people". I was interviewed by JJJ in 1992 and I said then that I hoped that this wasn't what was going to happen, where once the year was over people switch off to the issue.
A lot of it was band-aid and stopgap measures. Look for instance at the amount of money that the state government made available: approximately $200,000. Compare that with the amount of money being made available to bring Prince Charles here in the next couple of weeks and do his image make-over.
I think we are aware that for any kind of changes, we have to create them ourselves. We can't think that they will throw a few dollars our way and set up a few projects and that's it. That is not to slap in the face what was actually good, but a lot did feel like that.
They said on the international level, it was the most unsuccessful year the UN's had; it had the least amount of funding ever raised. So that's not just in Australia, but it reflects people's attitudes around the world.
Now the year is over, we have to switch to the year of the family, and with no mention of Aboriginal issues. But what sort of family are they concentrating on? The nuclear family. It's not meant to encompass other types of families like the extended family or other types like communities.
A lot of people put a lot of time into the build-up to the year, especially in trying to change people's attitudes, and it isn't going to stop now that the year is over.
For 1994, in the arts world we are going to keep doing what we are doing here. It's not going to change just because the year is over. The artists are still there and we are looking for new artists. In February particularly we have a Koori Gay and Lesbian Artist exhibition to coincide with the Mardi Gras.
Jim Everett
Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre
1993 was probably a year of enlightenment for Aboriginal people. With native title being addressed by the Commonwealth government, it became quite clear that the majority of Australian people (non-Aboriginal) were more interested in maintaining the status quo.
Aboriginal people had no rights when white people first got here, and now that the High Court had found that Aboriginal people had certain rights under common law, the cry was that the law should be changed. This should have been an enlightenment that the future for Aboriginal people is going to be much harder, not easier.
On the native title legislation: Given the efforts of the Aboriginal Provisional Government and Michael Mansell in particular, having achieved almost at the midnight hour no back-down by the Greens [senators] and having them maintain their stand all the way through so that those amendments were accepted in the parliament, the bill shaped up more to our liking than not.
1993 showed that we can achieve things if we don't compromise principles. But it also showed that many Aboriginal people around this country were prepared to compromise those principles. The Land Council folded, the Northern Land Council and the New South Wales Land Council. The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission usurped a position of political representation on behalf of Aboriginal communities when they are merely a statutory authority of the Commonwealth government.
The best interest of Aboriginal communities is to maintain a very strong position against the government, blacks who work in the government for the government and those Aboriginal structures that are prepared to compromise the principles of Aboriginal responsibilities as custodians of this land.
One of the main reasons why IYWIP failed in relation to Australia was the obsession of Australian people to have an assimilation of Aboriginal people. My view is that if Aboriginal people accept that they're Australians, then they must accept that they will have no other rights than as Australians. They will have no land rights, no rights to maintain a cultural entity.
Native title, to me, opens the way for us to achieve realistic development for Aboriginal people in this country, alongside, on an equal basis with and equal status, to Australian people, a better future for everybody.
At the same time there is going to need to be a big change in Aboriginal communities and their interest about where they are going in the future. Are they really going to go into the future as Australian people, or are they going to go into the future as Aboriginal people maintaining that separate entity and a desire to be a sovereign people in their own country?
Cathy Smith and Barbara Silva
Consultants in Aboriginal Early Childhood, Murawina Child-care Centre, Redfern
There wasn't a great deal done during the year. There was no real education about the indigenous people and their history. Last year was the first year at the National Mental Health Conference that they asked for a paper on mental health care for Aboriginal children in early childhood.
Because we deal with children, Mabo is not an issue here. Maybe it is something they will have to deal with when they get older. What we try to do here is build up children's self-esteem, give them skills. This came out of the recommendations of the Royal Commission into Black Deaths in Custody, that an Aboriginal child needs to build up skills to be equal to a non-Aboriginal child by the time they go to school. It is hard because often the children's environment is not healthy, and this affects their schooling.
Mabo didn't really have an impact on Aboriginal people. It did give recognition to the Aboriginal people as the first inhabitants of Australia, but it caused a lot of friction as well. We can't go back to our communities, we haven't lived there for so long. But it was good in one respect, that it showed people that we were the indigenous people of the land, and in the other respect people didn't understand it and there was a lot of conflict there and it brought out a lot more racism.
In areas like law and order, health and education, a lot of that should be rights given to people, but a lot of times you have to fight for those rights for your kids. If you look at the Royal Commission on Deaths in Custody, for example, and the money that was allocated to effect some changes, the money is only slowly trickling down and most of it will go on administration, in keeping public servants in a job, and most of those people are non-Aboriginal. It should be the Aboriginal community who decides where the money goes, but it's the bureaucrats who decide.
1994 — it is interesting that for the first time that Aboriginal cultural activities have been included in the Sydney Festival. It is good that some of these things are happening, but Aboriginal issues are still distorted.
Paul Collis
Young activist from Newcastle
1993 was, supposedly, an opportunity for governments and industry to focus on the specific and unique problems and talents of indigenous people. The year didn't focus specifically to target capitalism or even racism. However, there was much expectation by the majority of Koori people that these conditions would or could be addressed in a serious and conscious fashion. Yet these conditions have not changed.
If anything, Aboriginal communities suffer more in terms of racist abuse and racism in general because of the highlight on Koori people. Now, there's this attitude of "How come you Black people get this, or that?". The opportunities have not flooded forth for Aboriginal people.
The major issues for 1994 are the same as they always have been since white people first came here — oppression. Aboriginal people still don't have equal rights. It is not any single issue of land rights or racism or education; it's all of them, including the indifference that white people have towards us.
Aboriginal culture has survived, yet there isn't a focus on perpetuating our culture in the traditional sense or respecting it. Lots of people are out selling Koori T-shirts and headbands, but the mass-produced stuff is commercialised. Who gives them the right to do that? Who owns our culture?
It comes back to education but on our terms, what we feel is important. When white people came here they named it terra nullius, and when they found black people they said we were terra nullius here [gesturing to his head]. Nowhere have they ever accepted traditional knowledge. So our kids continue to just think of our role models as hopeless drunks because that's what they've been told by society.
In most communities we have almost 100% unemployment. It's generational and we don't see that changing. It's more than a single issue of creating jobs for 2% of the Aboriginal community. The biggest problem is in the way people view the problem. White people see it as throwing
money at us, so they can say they've created so many more apprenticeships, but that's a really small minority and gives the false impression things are OK. The government ads on TV assume everything is great. You watch Blackout or programs on the ABC, you'd think the communities are thriving. The reality is most of them are struggling for survival.
Millie Ingram
Senior Director, NSW Ministry of Aboriginal Affairs
The Aboriginal community got a lot out of the year. We were part of coordinating activities that were going on throughout the state, and while there was only a minute bit of funding allocated to the activities, the interest by Aboriginal communities in putting on functions was tremendous.
The funding we had was specifically for putting on activities for the Year of the Indigenous people. The theme was a new partnership, and it was to show to the broader community that Aboriginal people had real positive views and ideas, a positive outlook on life, and that was real good.
Government agencies had to sit up and look at what they were doing in line with the recognition of Indigenous people. The Education Department was responsive throughout the year. I went to a few functions where they had over 100 kids performing, doing Aboriginal cultural things, and these weren't just Koori kids but were all kids mixed into together. When you get kids that age and show them the positive side of culture, it can only be good.
On the down side, a lot of the positive stuff was undone by the hysteria of the racism that came out over the fear and misunderstanding of Mabo, mainly through the media, in particular the radio. A number of announcers on radio have a lot to answer for with inciting racial hatred. A lot of people do not know the real issues; they still feel threatened, and this has generated a lot of racial hostility. It's going to take us another 10 years to remove that; hopefully, as we move more into the process of reconciliation and working together towards the Olympics, we will somehow counter some of the outrageous racism that still exists.
For 1994, all the good will generated by the International Year of the Indigenous people doesn't stop just because the year ended. A lot of good ideas that came up during the year, should continue, maybe become annual events, like the artist awards and scholarships by the Education Department so that people can continue their work.
Sam Watson
Brisbane Aboriginal Legal Service
1993 was a year to allow the international community to rejoice in Indigenous cultures and the wealth and variety of cultures that are being maintained and expressed.
In Australia, you have a colonial situation that is yet to be addressed by the colonial masters of the land, the white Australians. Black Australians, as the indigenous people, the indigenous owners of this land, do not have any reason to the celebrate 1993.
We used 1993 to highlight the degree and depth of oppression that our people have been subjected to since day one of white settlement. We also used 1993 to further the principle of the Mabo decision, which is forming the basis of a range of legal actions right across Australia, where indigenous people are agitating through the Australian legal system for recognition of native title.
We used 1993 as a platform to highlight the situation of Aboriginal deaths in custody, because, since the royal commission handed down its findings in 1991, there have been 110 further Aboriginal deaths in custody in situations where police clearly acted outside their power and outside the parameters of what is correctly expected of them by the community.
The Mabo decision is one legal avenue that is open to Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders. There are a number of tribal groups who are proceeding directly to the International Court at The Hague, because a number of Aboriginal people have the perception that it would be foolhardy and futile to launch an action against the Australian government within an Australian court.
In Brisbane we are in recess from an inquiry into the most recent death in custody, that of Daniel Yock, an Aboriginal tribal dancer and songman of the Wakka Wakka people, who was taken into police custody at approximately 5.55 p.m. on the night of November 7, 1993. A very short time later young Daniel was found to be comatose on the floor of the police van and was removed from police custody to the Royal Brisbane Hospital, where he was found dead shortly after arrival. The Aboriginal community and Daniel's family and a great number of people who have viewed the evidence believe the police have acted terribly wrongly and that even criminal charges can be supported against particular police.