BY CHRIS SLEE
MELBOURNE — Addressing the 500 people present for the launch of his new book, Why Weren't We Told?, historian Henry Reynolds described the march for reconciliation across the Sydney Harbour Bridge as "thrilling" and as opening the way for more forthright demands for Aboriginal justice.
Reynolds described himself as initially skeptical of "reconciliation", as it seemed to imply that Aboriginal people had to reconcile themselves to the status quo, but became a convert after he spoke at meetings all over Australia and saw that a popular movement was evolving under the name of reconciliation.
Attendance at these meetings was very large even in small country towns, he said, and those present were deeply engaged, wanting to make a difference.
Reynolds described how many people had changed their attitudes as a result of those meetings, many rejecting Prime Minister John Howard's argument that the current generation should not apologise for the crimes of previous generations. Governments often take responsibility for what previous governments have done, Reynolds said, repaying their debts and enforcing their laws and treaties.
Australia has been an overtly racist society for most of its history, Reynolds argued, and needed an honest accounting for the past. The policy of stealing Aboriginal children from their parents was one example, a eugenic "solution" to the so-called "half-caste problem".
Deliberate violence against Aborigines was another: 20,000 were killed as a direct result of war, Reynolds estimated. In 1928 more than 30 Aborigines were killed in a single massacre, he said, carried out by police in response to the death of one white man.
Reynolds pointed out the contradictory role of the official reconciliation movement. While it had helped to promote a huge popular movement, because it was always trying to remain within the limits of what it hoped would be acceptable to the government it had refrained from raising demands that might be seen as too radical.
The end of the formal reconciliation process frees the movement to pursue more "radical" demands, he said, such as a treaty. The call for a treaty was a major theme of the Sydney march.
Reynolds noted that racists today use the rhetoric of "equality", thereby not only ignoring the inequality suffered by indigenous people but also ignoring international law, which provides for rights which belong specifically to indigenous people. These include the right to survive as a people or a nation and the right to cultural survival.
Monica Morgan, coordinator of the Yorta Yorta native title application, said that a treaty should be an agreement between two equal peoples but that today there is no equality. Instead, she noted, Australia remains a racist society, even though the racism may be more subtle.
She said that indigenous people are attempting to exercise "self-governance", taking responsibility for their own communities, even though governments make this difficult. She explained the problems the Yorta Yorta have encountered in their native title claim, including the legal system's refusal to acknowledge Yorta Yorta oral history, accepting the writings of a white settler instead.