A Higher Authority: Indigenous Transnationalism and Australia

recovers the long tradition of indigenous transnationalism – contact with external actors, institutions and ideas – throughout Australia’s history from before white settlement to the present. Indigenous history in Australia is rarely considered in a global context; Ravi de Costa’s insight and careful research allow us to see the global history of

for the fi rst time.

UNSW PRESS

MICK DODSON ‘Refusing the conventional view that Aborigines were brought into contact with the rest of the world by British colonisation, de Costa argues that Indigenous Australians have always been ‘transnational’. When the colonists usurped their sovereignty they renewed this tradition by looking outwards to other colonised and enslaved peoples. As liberal ideologies became globally influential in the twentieth century – yielding new institutions and conventions – Indigenous Australians found the forums in which to globalise their grievances. By honouring Indigenous Australians as political people, de Costa’s brisk narrative throws into relief the timid and inward-turning “Australia” with which they have to deal.’

Ravi de Costa

indigenous Australia

‘I was sitting in a room, 12 000 miles away from home, but if I’d closed my eyes I could just about have been in Maningrida or Doomadgee or Flinders Island. The people wore different clothes, spoke in different languages or with different accents, and their homes had different names. But the stories and the sufferings were the same. We were all part of a community of Indigenous peoples spanning the planet: experiencing the same problems and struggling against the same alienation, marginalisation and sense of powerlessness. We had gathered there united by our shared frustration with the dominant systems in our own countries and their consistent failure to deliver justice. We were all looking for, and demanding, justice from a higher authority.’

A HIGHER AUTHORITY

This important book

A HIGHER AUTHORITY Indigenous transnationalism and Australia

TIM ROWSE

UNSW

PRESS

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A HIGHER AUTHORITY RAVI DE COSTA has lived in Ireland, Russia, Papua New Guinea, Australia and Canada. He completed undergraduate and graduate degrees in Sydney and Melbourne before taking up a Postdoctoral Fellowship at McMaster University in Ontario. For three years, he co-ordinated an interdisciplinary and collaborative research project on globalisation, autonomy and indigenous peoples, involving scholars from all over the world, before taking up a position at Trent University.

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A HIGHER AUTHORITY Indigenous transnationalism and Australia Ravi de Costa

UNSW PRESS

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A UNSW Press book Published by University of New South Wales Press Ltd University of New South Wales Sydney NSW 2052 AUSTRALIA www.unswpress.com.au © Ravi de Costa 2006 First published 2006 This book is copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced by any process without written permission. Inquiries should be addressed to the publisher. National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry Costa, Ravi de. A higher authority: indigenous transnationalism and Australia. Includes index. ISBN 0 86840 954 5. 1. Transnationalism. 2. Human rights. 3. Aboriginal Australians Civil rights. I. Title. 323.119915 Design Ruth Pidd Cover artwork Di Quick Print Griffin Press

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Indeed, has there ever been a time when human populations have existed in independence of larger encompassing relationships, unaffected by larger fields of force? ERIC WOLF, EUROPE

AND THE

PEOPLE

WITHOUT

HISTORY

I was sitting in a room, 12,000 miles away from home, but if I’d closed my eyes I could just about have been in Maningrida or Doomadgee or Flinders Island. The people wore different clothes, spoke in different languages or with different accents, and their homes had different names. But the stories and the sufferings were the same. We were all part of a community of Indigenous peoples spanning the planet: experiencing the same problems and struggling against the same alienation, marginalisation and sense of powerlessness. We had gathered there united by our shared frustration with the dominant systems in our own countries and their consistent failure to deliver justice. We were all looking for, and demanding, justice from a higher authority. MICK DODSON, ‘LINKING INTERNATIONAL STANDARDS WITH CONTEMPORARY CONCERNS OF ABORIGINAL AND TORRES STRAIT ISLANDER PEOPLES’

Dare to voyage across times, cultures and self. Especially self. Especially self on the beaches of times and cultures. Set your global positioning system to edginess, in-between. GREG DENING, BEACH CROSSINGS

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CONTENTS

Foreword and acknowledgments Abbreviations

Introduction What is indigenous transnationalism? Nationalism and transnationalism Indigenous and non-indigenous actors Indigenous issues in a global era An outline of the book ONE

TWO

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1 2 6 8 11 14

Transnationalism before the nation-state

17

Cosmological foundations The ethics of mobility and nomadic life Networks of exchange The Macassans and the Yolngu Conclusion

17 21 27 31 37

Civilising the colonials

39

Humanitarian values in the age of Empire Missions, reserves and political activism ‘Thank Christ for the commos!’ Dominion feminism Conclusion

40 44 50 57 59

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THREE

FOUR

FIVE

Human rights for indigenous Australians

62

From the civilising mission to human rights Utopian liberalism A second attempt An Australian idiom of human rights Organising and assimilating Using international instruments in Australia Co-operative transnationalism and the achievement of civil rights

62 65 68 71 77 83

Radical transnationalism

92

After the referendum Mobility, communication and radicalism Aboriginal Power Transnational Aboriginality

92 97 106 112

Indigenous peoples and international institutions Indigenous solidarity Institutional reform in the UN Indigenous Australians at the UN Reforming international law The Draft Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Self-definition and self-determination New engagements with international institutions

SIX

vii

88

121 122 126 129 132 135 138 143

Domesticating indigenous politics in the era of globalisation

147

Reconstructing the nation Transnational protest events Using and reforming international law The Draft Declaration and the Howard era Caging transnationalism

148 154 157 162 165

Epilogue Notes References Index

174 180 214 230

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FOREWORD

AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

In Australia in the last decade, discussions about indigenous issues have become dominated by a kind of ‘realism’. The fact that some indigenous communities suffer tremendous privation and social problems has come to stand for indigenous reality as a whole. Discussions about the injustices done to indigenous people since colonisation, or those about the ongoing rights of indigenous Australians, are now often portrayed as indulgences when seen against the chronic dysfunction of many remote indigenous communities. In parts of the national conversation, particularly in mainstream political discourse as it is represented in the national media, such discussions are even presented as the causes of the problems: so to talk about a national apology is to neglect indigenous peoples’ real interests. In large part, this narrowed understanding of indigenous–settler relations is due to the simultaneous capture of the federal government by Conservative parties committed to an ideology of liberalism (at least in the area of indigenous affairs) and the rising anger of some indigenous leaders who have not only seen their communities going backward but who blame the ‘progressive’ thinking of the past for that decline. The prevailing wisdom is that the problems of indigenous peoples are those of individuals who do not enjoy enough choices or control over their lives. Certainly, many indigenous individuals do not have the choices enjoyed by their non-indigenous compatriots; a torrent of research in health, education, employment and other areas regularly reminds us of the profound inequality of opportunity in contemporary Australia. But not all the outstanding issues can be reduced to matters of individual

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choice. For example, for those who feel the colonisation of Australia was based in an unjust appropriation of indigenous land, resolution must be a national matter. Similarly, the ongoing claims of indigenous peoples for collective entitlements, such as those to land or to culture, definitively escape a calculus of individual choice. The ascendant ideology excuses Australians from addressing these questions. Not surprisingly, indigenous peoples or their advocates who seek to enlist the support of people and organisations outside the country in order to further such claims are portrayed as doubly irrelevant. Criticism of indigenous people working at the United Nations, for example, combines both the liberal insistence on focusing on individual opportunities and responsibility with a nationalism that resents the idea that anyone else could hold Australians to account. This is unfortunate and ironic, given that much international work is devoted to ensuring that Australia lives up to its existing responsibilities to individuals under human rights conventions, to broadening the choices available to indigenous individuals and communities. Yet, obscured by such criticism is the long history of ‘transnational’ indigenous activism and organising. This book shows that the urge of Aborigines and Islanders to go beyond the nation-state and its institutions in pursuit of their claims is no recent invention. More than this, it argues that transnationalism is a fundamental part of the story of indigenous–settler relations in Australia and if we are to reconcile at some future point, we will need to understand this. The idea for this project arose while I was conducting field work for a graduate degree in Canada in 1999. In an archive in Vancouver, I came across a file full of material about the formation of the World Council of Indigenous Peoples in the early 1970s. It revealed that the struggle of Aboriginal peoples in Canada had connected in creative ways with indigenous struggles elsewhere. Returning to Australia, I eventually realised that Aborigines and Islanders had been involved in the same currents and networks of struggle. Initially, my interest in this was motivated by the more bizarre examples of indigenous Australians ‘going international’: why, for example, did Aboriginal activist Michael Mansell break political bread with Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi in 1987 and 1988? Yet, as I did more research – forward to the human rights lobbying at the United Nations, and backward to the Aboriginal Tent Embassy, the Second World War and colonial reserves policy – deeper patterns began to emerge. First, I saw a political phenomenon that seemed to be a paradox. Why had people with traditionally local identities and political practices ended up in global activism? How did that activism inform and

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enable particular claims? As I reached tentative conclusions to these questions, I saw a set of responses made by colonial and national authorities that were strangely uniform. Other than those who were part of the phenomenon – indigenous activists – or those who did not know or care at all about it, the consensus has been that indigenous transnationalism is not productive; it is at best symbolic and therefore indulgent, and at worst a confection, a waste of time, money and effort. The lack of any sustained and thoughtful public discussion about the phenomenon was hard to understand. In doing this work, I have come to realise that what I had thought of as a paradox existed largely in my own mind. It was a construction automatically produced by my own assumptions about what has happened to indigenous peoples, what they are capable of and what they can do. In fact, what I have come to call ‘indigenous transnationalism’ is a perfectly sensible response to the human condition. It is better understood as the desire to live well, conscious of the unpredictable nature of human life and aware of transformation and impermanence. Indigenous peoples’ search for and insistence on ‘a higher authority’ was a way to find humanity in the face of uncertainty: the uncertainty of a difficult environment; the fear sown by invasion, dispossession and disorientation; and a sense of immediate or impending crisis. That seemed an appealing way to live in an age when the circumstances and fate of human beings are both deeply tied to places and yet simultaneously flung into globalised space and time. The materials that I have used to document the transnational history of indigenous Australians are various and include the writings of anthropologists, archaeologists, linguists, historians, geographers, political theorists and philosophers, sociologists, activists, lawyers, community workers, journalists, politicians and others, indigenous and not. I have also conducted research in archives, observed meetings and interviewed observers and participants. It has been a rewarding experience to do this research and I hope that the reading is the better for it. The project began while I was a graduate student in the Institute for Social Research at Swinburne University of Technology. I am grateful to David Hayward and Sue Kelman and the university’s Faculty Development Scheme for supporting the initial stages of the research. Much of the work has been done over the last three years since I came to Canada. As a Research Fellow in the Institute on Globalization and the Human Condition, I have been privileged to work with an extraordinary group of scholars from across the social sciences and humanities, whose work has greatly influenced my own. I thank Will Coleman for his invitation to join the Institute and for his encouragement and support since I arrived.

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I have relied on the assistance of the staff in several research libraries to complete this project: the Mitchell Library in Sydney, La Trobe Library in Melbourne, the British Library in London and the Centre de Documentation, de Recherche et d’Information des Peuples Autochtones (doCip) in Geneva. Living in Canada, I have also relied on the daily stream of news clippings from Australian and international media sources on indigenous issues that is put together by Trudy Bray for the subscribers of the RecOzNet Newsclips list. A number of people read parts of this book and provided me with comments. Many thanks to Dick Preston, Alastair Davidson, Anna Clark, Claire Hooker, Mario Blaser and Tom Clark. In particular, I am grateful to Tim Rowse, John Chesterman and Francesca Merlan for extensive comments and discussions. At UNSW Press, Phillipa McGuinness has been enthusiastic and encouraging throughout the process of writing and Stephen Roche helped greatly to prepare the manuscript for publication. Finally, thanks to KJW for her love and patience.

Ravi de Costa H AMILTON , O NTARIO

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A B B R E V I AT I O N S

AAF AAL AAPA APA ACTU AIATSIS AIF AIM ALP ALS AMS APG APS ATC ATSIC BCL BPA CAA CAR CERD CIMRA CLC

Australian Aboriginal Fellowship Australian Aborigines’ League Australian Aboriginal Progressive Association Aborigines Progressive Association Australian Council of Trade Unions Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies Australian Imperial Force American Indian Movement Australian Labor Party Aboriginal Legal Service Aboriginal Medical Service Aboriginal Provisional Government (British and Foreign Anti-Slavery and) Aborigines Protection Society Aboriginal Treaty Committee Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission British Commonwealth League Black Panther Party of Australia Council for Aboriginal Affairs Council for Aboriginal Rights Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination Colonialism and Indigenous Minorities Research Action Central Land Council

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Abbreviations

COAG CPA DAA ECOSOC FAIRA

xiii

Council of Australian Governments Communist Party of Australia Department of Aboriginal Affairs United Nations Economic and Social Council Foundation for Aboriginal and Islander Research Action FAO Food and Agriculture Organization FCAA/FCAATSI Federal Council for the Advancement of Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders HREOC Human Rights and Equal Opportunities Commission ICCPR International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights ICESCR International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights IITC International Indian Treaty Council ILC Indigenous Land Corporation ILO International Labour Organization ILRC Indian Law Resource Center IWG Inter-sessional Working Group on a Draft Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples IWGIA International Work Group on Indigenous Affairs KLC Kimberley Land Council NAC National Aboriginal Conference NAIHO National Aboriginal and Islander Health Organisation NAILSS National Aboriginal and Islander Legal Services Secretariat NCAO National Council of Aboriginal Organisations NFLC National Federation of Land Councils NLC Northern Land Council NTC National Tribal Council OHCHR UN Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights OPAL One People of Australia League RDA Racial Discrimination Act 1975 RSL Returned Services League SAFA Student Action for Aborigines UDHR Universal Declaration of Human Rights UN United Nations UNESCO United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization WCIP World Council of Indigenous Peoples WGIP Working Group on Indigenous Populations WHO World Health Organization

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INTRODUCTION

Aborigines have invaded England on two occasions. In January 1978, Aboriginal activists Paul Coe and Cecil Patten, together with white lawyer Bruce Miles, set out from the English shore in a small rowboat. Their plan was to row several kilometres out and then return to the shore to take possession of the island by planting the Aboriginal flag, as the British had done at Farm Cove in 1788. This they managed, although in poor weather the boat capsized, nearly drowning Miles, and there were very few people to record the symbolism of the sodden event; it is mostly forgotten in the annals of the Aboriginal movement. Ten years later, on the 200th anniversary of the arrival of the British, Aboriginal activist and storyteller Burnum Burnum (Harry Penrith) repeated the act with much greater public relations success: widely reported in Britain and Australia, Burnum’s actions were in sharp contrast to the celebrations taking place in Sydney Harbour.1 These protesters were a long way from home, but wanted to draw attention to the origins of the colonial relationship between European settlers and the original inhabitants of Australia. Their actions showed how arbitrary the British act of possession was, while confirming the unwillingness of Australians to respond to indigenous claims for recognition and justice. These acts form part of a long history in which Aboriginal and Islander peoples, or their advocates, have gone outside or beyond the Australian nation-state, physically and ideologically, in order to pursue civil and indigenous rights and improve the lives of indigenous communities. I call this history indigenous transnationalism and it is the subject of this book.

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What is indigenous transnationalism? Transnationalism is an old phenomenon but a relatively new type of enquiry. Even before nation-states existed, communal boundaries had been traversed by both material and ideas. Mobility, trade and communication are the conduits of transnationalism, enabling flows of people, goods, skills, diseases, lifestyles and beliefs, as well as fostering common interests among people in different locations. Human communities, including modern nation-states, exist because of the physical boundaries of geography, ecology and biology, as well as the intangible boundaries of culture and national history. However, none of these boundaries are permanently fixed. The bounded political cultures of nation-states are not simply produced by asserting and defending territorial boundaries but require openness to certain transnational phenomena (in the case of Australia’s origins, Anglo-Celtic migration and British finance, for example) and closure to others (treaty-making and non-white migration). In contemporary discussions, the term ‘globalisation’ is often applied to explain anything that exceeds national boundaries.2 However, the subtleties of human experience are lost in this definition, because it implies that all cross-border activity can be seen with a global lens, and understood as some combination of ‘planetary integration, globally recurrent stratification, and/or worldwide isomorphism’.3 The insistence on a global scale to account for transboundary flows and connections forecloses on other understandings that focus on the history and character of the connections themselves. For urban sociologist Michael Smith, transnational approaches are distinct from the type of globalisation research that assumes the nation-state is in decline. By contrast, he sees: … transnational social relations as ‘anchored in’ while transcending one or more nation-states … the transnationalist discourse insists on the continuing significance of borders, state policies, and national identities even as these are often transgressed by transnational communication circuits and social practices.4 Transnational analysis demonstrates that nation-states do not completely account for the reality of human experience, yet retain great power and importance in peoples’ lives. Groups of people engaged in transnational activism do so for several reasons. First, the problems being tackled (such as pollution or underdevelopment) do not necessarily originate in the territories where

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their effects are faced. Secondly, processes of collective action rely heavily on the exchange of information and comparison between groups in many territories. Finally, the goal of this activism is often to create universal standards to which local practices should conform.5 This book argues that history of indigenous Australians’ activism in defence of their rights can be better understood if we attend to its transnational dimensions. The Australian nation-state, I suggest, is a space criss-crossed by ideas, values and norms that have arisen elsewhere and have influenced indigenous activism. The ‘Aboriginal predicament’ thus cannot be understood if thought of as a strictly national matter. How it is not, and why that matters, are questions the book addresses. The method of the book is basically historical. It is possible to see the transnational links in a chronology of some of the main events in indigenous Australian history. The book reconstructs these episodes with an eye to the links being made at each moment. Some of what is presented here deals with events already examined by Australian historians, such as the London-based humanitarianism of the mid-19th century and its influence on colonial policies regarding Aborigines and land. The book reconsiders and reclassifies these histories using a transnational approach that treats the flows of ideas and people and their effects as the central issue. Other episodes, such as the extensive travelling of radical indigenous activists from the late 1960s on, have never been properly studied and so the book also contains new research conducted from a transnational perspective.6 But simply observing the movement of ideologies and activists across borders, and the connections and solidarity between them, is an insufficient account of indigenous transnationalism. We need to understand the motivations of those making the connections. I use the figure of a ‘higher authority’ in order to account for the way indigenous peoples have appealed to external powers in order to restrain colonial and national authorities and to have their claims heard. Part of the term’s appeal is its refusal of what has been the dominant approach in international relations – realism – in which the sovereignty of states is restrained by no higher authority. Higher authorities are both ideological and institutional manifestations of universal moral order. This makes sense because indigenous Australians (and others who identify as indigenous) are numerical minorities amid large settler populations. Indigenous peoples’ use of violence was always met with a punitive colonial reaction. As colonial power was consolidated, indigenous peoples found other ways of expressing their sense of injustice and organising to that end. For indigenous

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peoples, this has involved presenting their claims within much broader moral and legal contexts than the colony or nation provides for. One approach is to distinguish between two kinds of ‘higher authority’, either a set of broad norms or universal values (such as Christian morality or human rights), or, alternatively, a powerful body to enforce such norms. Both are transnational in the sense used above: a set of norms that are known to be widely shared through the links between different bounded communities; or the power of an external body to exert its influence across particular communal boundaries. Yet, we can also think of a productive relationship between the two, where appeals to particular norms and values help create and legitimise an enforcing body and where using international organisations and institutions helps spread awareness of and support for the values on which they are founded. The book argues that indigenous transnationalism involves appeals to higher authorities in this productive double sense. Moreover, it reveals a desire to make sense of and ameliorate the difficulties of life in doing so. Classical indigenous economies and societies were integrated closely with the natural world. People made sense of their vulnerability to the fluctuations of the environment by acknowledging a cosmological order in which all things were related through common creation. Post-contact transnationalism has sought to place the suffering of indigenous peoples in a moral world in which Europeans also exist. Israeli writer Avishai Margalit has observed of such beliefs, ‘that in another place or another time there exists, or will exist, a moral community that will listen to their testimony’; these are acts of faith.7 Indeed, we need to include a spiritual dimension to our analysis if we are to understand how indigenous peoples have come to terms with their circumstances in ways that enabled political actions of various forms. The necessity of the world as it is, as it is oppressive and marginalising, the ‘reality’ of progress, development and the imperatives of nation-building, have all been met with calls to higher authorities of various types. Consequently, the book will argue that indigenous transnationalism is not an opportunistic political movement, but indicates many indigenous peoples’ commitment to a universal order of experience and justice; one in which indigenous and other peoples can co-exist. Higher authorities also reinforce the contingency of the bounded social units we call nation-states. Sociologist Sanjeev Khagram has suggested that transnationalism is ‘the rule not the exception … the underlying, albeit fluid and variable, reality rather than a derivative by-product’.8 Our ‘countries’ are always under construction; there is no

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mythical past when this was not true. Yet, the book retains the centrality of the Australian nation-state to the concerns and aspirations of indigenous peoples living in its territory. Although it is critical of the way Australia has historically responded to indigenous claims, it is not in any sense a call to abandon the nation-state as a context for political action. The argument is not intended to supersede solely domestic accounts of the problems faced by indigenous peoples or the responses they and others have made to those problems. It is rather an addition to the current debate within Australia that is too narrowly construed. It is an argument that purely domestic accounts of the Aboriginal predicament are not adequate, especially as the processes of nation-state transformation continue to accelerate. At its simplest then, transnationalism is the crossing of the boundaries of social units. The centrality of nation-states in contemporary politics suggests that the bulk of any analysis will be on the crossing of national boundaries. However, this book argues that the motivations underlying indigenous transnationalism both precede and exceed colonialisation and can be found in the way that indigenous peoples lived before 1788. Prior to the settlement of Europeans in the south-western Pacific, indigenous peoples were engaged in patterns of encounter across and along boundaries. These are visible in indigenous norms about access to resources, diplomacy and mobility across others’ territories, in trade and the sharing of culture. Moreover, these practices of negotiation brought some indigenous Australians into contact with people from South-East Asia. We can recover this history and reflect on the principles of classical transnational relations. The bulk of the book deals with indigenous interactions with universal ideologies of justice after European settlement, and particularly those ideologies with and against which indigenous peoples forged new identities and relations with the colonies and nation-state. A series of introduced ideologies – humanitarianism, evangelical Christianity, communism – connected indigenous individuals and communities with much larger processes and ideas of morality. While the imported universal doctrines often supported colonial and state intentions, at times they ran counter to the basic logic of colonisation and gave indigenous peoples a sense that the colonists could be exposed to their own moral and philosophical commitments. In so doing, this encouraged new forms of indigenous politicisation. Little of this, however, restrained or influenced the colonies or the nation until the creation of an international regime of human rights and the simultaneous consolidation of the global economy. This liberal ideology

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and its institutions brought new intrusions but created a global normative order in which the practices of nation-states could be scrutinised effectively. Moreover, the human rights movement had its adherents inside Australia, who participated in the global dialogue on human rights and brought about the formal achievement of civil rights for indigenous peoples. Those achievements did not address (and partly obscured) indigenous claims to land and collective cultural experiences. The existing understanding of human rights could not satisfy such claims for difference. The most recent phase of the indigenous struggle – what is here called indigeneity – has had some success, but is very far from completing its goals. Much of this work takes place in the institutions of the United Nations (UN) and the book addresses this work in detail. In fact, the book explores the links between indigenous transnationalism and indigeneity (the assertion and pursuit of indigenous difference and rights). The idea that particular rights are held by indigenous peoples and no others (because of their priority) is not a popular view among nonindigenous Australians. Few are willing to see that the Australian state, nation and identity were constructed in ways that excluded many indigenous interests. A transnational approach encourages us to return to the fundamental question of indigenous rights: if indigenous peoples have inherent rights but live within the boundaries of existing nation-states, who should determine how these rights are to be expressed and enjoyed? This is an opportunity to understand a political aspiration that has existed since the earliest moments of colonisation in Australia: the expectation of Aborigines and Islanders that their presence and their ongoing needs would be treated impartially and with respect.

Nationalism and transnationalism Indigenous people number very few in Australia. Though this is a rapidly growing population, Aborigines and Islanders represent only 2–3 per cent of the total population. They are outnumbered not only by those of Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Celtic ancestry but also by Chinese, German and Italian migrants and their descendants.9 Rarely on surveys of electoral concerns do Australians register the needs of indigenous people among their highest priorities. Nevertheless, their political movement punches well above its weight in numbers, gaining media and political attention far greater than any group other than ‘the Australian people’ as a whole. Moreover, Australians who have travelled widely, especially to North America and Europe, often encounter people who speak unprompted about the situation of Aborigines. International readers of newspapers and audiences

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of television news and current affairs often receive reports about indigenous peoples as the only news coming from Australia. There are several reasons for this, not least the history of dispossession and the contemporary sense of unease that accompanies it. The special challenge of land claims and the particular legal status of many indigenous peoples as native title-holders since Mabo ensure an additional focus. Perhaps for most, it is that so many indigenous people live in terribly poor conditions relative to other Australians, a fundamental failure in a self-designated egalitarian country. Each of these legacies demonstrates how indigenous peoples are ‘outside’ the Australian mainstream, conceived of historically, legally, socially and economically. Indigenous transnationalism condenses these legacies into a stark and discomforting whole. Not surprisingly, it has rarely been welcomed. The pith of indigenous transnationalism – to locate and appeal to a higher authority – is always an implicit and usually an explicit criticism of those national institutions which are designed to address the concerns of indigenous persons as subjects, citizens and lately as indigenous peoples. Whether conducted by indigenous or non-indigenous people, transnationalism highlights the incidental and structural injustice of European imperialism and settler nation-building. This is not just the negligence of colonial or national authorities, but also their various ‘best practice’ interventions. Criticism frequently goes further than describing neglect to portray an active and determined racism. Of course, such criticism has not gone unanswered. Triangulating indigenous transnationalism are two themes that have developed through Australian history and that are present in contemporary political culture. It is in the differences and interaction between these positions that we see deeply held ideas about indigenous peoples and about Australian culture and society as a whole. They are, in fact, different types of nationalism and each creates different views about the legitimacy of the Australian nation-state and different expectations about the exercise of Australian sovereignty. The first theme actually pre-dates the colonisation of Australia and has its origins in the British experience in North America. It continues a discussion about the purposes of settlement and the relations that should be sought between empire, colonist and indigene. In one widely held position, it took the form that the reputation of the Empire and its colonists was dependent upon their attitudes and behaviour towards indigenes. In colonial Australia and thereafter, taking this position implied a world view in which European settlement came with a special role to civilise, Christianise and enlighten; indeed, was justified by it. Later versions declare that the

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Australian achievement has not been extended to its original inhabitants and, in some formulations, has been realised at their expense. There have been many significant Australians, such as former Prime Minister Gough Whitlam, who have expressed their concern for indigenous peoples precisely as an obligation to the values and hopes of a universal or global political community.10 In this context, I refer to such views as progressive nationalism: with reform, the claims of indigenous peoples can be addressed fairly by Australians and their institutions. I consider this response, in which the shape and content of indigenous politics was heavily influenced by non-indigenous peoples, particularly in the middle chapters of this book. The second type of response is that indigenous transnationalism is uninformed, irrelevant and can only undermine the achievements of Australia. One aspect of this view is the assertion of the democratic will of the Australian people in the face of the criticism of ‘outsiders’. Here, national identity and popular sovereignty are mutually reinforced, making progressive nationalism both undemocratic and un-Australian by default. Prime Minister John Howard is currently the most effective spokesperson for this position. I call this view defensive nationalism and its renaissance since the 1980s coincides with the opening of Australia to the global economy and a heightened interest of international bodies in Australian affairs. The provocation that is implicit in indigenous transnationalism should not be underestimated. The power inherent in ideas like patriotism and treason is testament to the ways so many human beings live in thrall to nations, the extent to which they are part of the natural order of things; they are unmarked. For indigenous people, drawing attention to the discrimination that they face within the nation-state confirms values that are located outside it.

Indigenous and non-indigenous actors Progressive nationalism and indigenous transnationalism are, at certain moments, much the same thing. This is because the colonial period saw non-indigenous people describing conditions in Australia to authorities outside the colony and nation, sometimes in order to frame and promote their own agendas. This history leaves us with two complicated legacies. In one view, critics argue that indigenous claims were originated by non-indigenous agitators and therefore inauthentic. In a second view, the attempt to reflect on and draw from histories of contact and engagement demeans the political achievements of indigenous people themselves.

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This book acknowledges that the unfolding of indigenous transnationalism has often involved non-indigenous peoples in central roles and includes several episodes in which indigenous peoples themselves played no part. The reason for taking this approach is because the category ‘indigenous’ as it is used in Australia is something that has emerged from the contacts of indigenous and non-indigenous peoples in myriad social, cultural and institutional settings. In taking this position, I draw on the argument of historian Bain Attwood, first made in his work The Making of the Aborigines. There, Attwood describes Aboriginality as the site of an exchange between the indigenous inhabitants and newcomers: Out of the exchange or dialectic between the dominant or dominated there came a transformed consciousness for the indigenes, one shaped both by European culture and by their own – and so their part in becoming Aborigines was both determined and determining.11 Transnationalism is a dynamic phenomenon that reflects the particular histories of indigenous peoples’ engagements with ideas and strategies of those working to influence, limit or undermine the colonial and national project, including most recently, other indigenous peoples. But this raises the problem of the relationship between those in the transnational movement and the indigenous ‘grassroots’: to what extent is transnationalism a representative and accountable form of politics? In a defensive national discourse that treats transnational work as either irrelevant or wasteful, those who spend time and money in such places as Geneva and New York are by definition unrepresentative of genuine grassroots indigenous concerns. Indigenous people know that there is abstraction inherent in the institutions of the international system; these are necessarily remote from the real and lived concerns of individuals and communities, even though they may generate funds or support for those concerns, or force the state to address them. For many, transnationalism is difficult not just because it involves the embrace of a remote realm of authority but also because the requirement of representation forces many highly complex social entities into a state of (temporary) coherence; it puts a great burden on the existing modes of identification, which in ‘domestic’ instants may be unproblematic. By appealing to a higher authority and implicitly opening the possibility of judgment at that level, these internal differences may become more troublesome. I certainly do not argue that attendance of indigenous people at UN forums is a definitive or morally superior form of politics. It is simply

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one of the least well understood. In any diverse population, the choices made by individuals about how to pursue their political interests and those of their communities are likely to vary greatly. And as will become clear, indigenous transnationalism takes place in many more places than Geneva and New York. A second problem is the status of non-indigenous actors. As Henry Reynolds has shown, 19th-century critics of Australia’s colonisation were nearly always presented as ‘self-righteous, disturbing, dangerous, obsessive or mad’.12 At best, they were thought of as incomprehensible or irrelevant, the ‘static’ between channels of reason, modernisation and development.13 Yet, at some important moments, non-indigenous people helped realise radical and innovative forms of indigenous autonomy. For example, revered Aboriginal welfare worker Shirley Smith (‘Mum Shirl’), reflecting on the campaign by the Aboriginal community of Redfern to establish the Aboriginal Medical Service (AMS) in the early 1970s, recalled that it: … should’ve been started years ago. They shouldn’t have had to wait for a doctor like Professor Hollows, who’s not an Australian. They shouldn’t have had to wait for Dr Grunseit, who’s not Australian either.14 Reynolds suggested that it would be important to think about ‘psychological factors’. Bain Attwood agreed that the allies of the Aborigines were ‘of necessity rather singular men and women’, yet went on to note that ‘international contacts and perspectives performed a vital role in providing campaigners with another way of seeing’.15 This book deals centrally with these other ways of seeing and considers varying indigenous experiences of them, invasive and destructive, patronising and helpful. Consequently, non-indigenous peoples matter in the story of indigenous transnationalism because the discourse of indigenous affairs began long before indigenous peoples gained political autonomy of any sort. More recently, sociologists Joe Bandy and Jackie Smith have written of the ‘brokers, travellers, bridgers and diffusers’ that are crucial to global advocacy networks, by opening institutions, connecting actors and introducing new idioms and types of organising.16 Indigenous transnationalism, then, takes place between, across and along boundaries. This is not simply the interaction of sovereign peoples but the experience of self and community, where received categories of human association – whether nations, states, cultures or peoples – cannot be taken for granted, where they are breaking down or being formed. Through the history of colonisation, with its disloca-

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tions as well as its recoveries, new identifications, including that of the globally current ‘indigenous’, have emerged and have been adopted by indigenous peoples themselves. In this sense, I borrow Aboriginal academic Marcia Langton’s phrase, ‘the Aboriginal predicament’, which takes much of its power from its sense of implication for non-indigenous people: it suspends judgment, if momentarily, to invite consideration of the ways in which different peoples are actually engaged. But both representations – of white manipulators and divided blacks – constrain the politics of transnationalism. Unquestionably, it is a risky affair. It relies on moral communities that may be remote from indigenous worlds, and whose interests in indigenous peoples often serve their own agendas. Such activism seeks collective entitlements that are both material and ideal, such as those to land and to culture. It attempts to relocate policy and decision-making away from legislatures, or at least to restrain them according to principles developed in the international arena. And all this is sought by the most socially and economically marginal group of people in Australia.

Indigenous issues in a global era Most nations accept that the major problems they face have no regard for national borders. Problems such as climate change, disease pandemics and terrorism are now approached with international remedies, whether pursued multilaterally or unilaterally. Notwithstanding the considerable academic interest in the varied problems of ‘globalisation’, however, the global dimensions of indigenous issues have largely been ignored by Australian scholars of history, politics and international affairs. The literature on indigenous struggles for rights rarely engages the international dimension directly, taking a basically domestic interest.17 Reynolds’s work on the colonial period is a notable exception, including most recently a transnational study of the effect of international racial science discourses on indigenous Australians.18 Australian historians of feminism19 and left-wing politics20 have also reflected in passing on indigenous transnationalism. Legal scholars have become interested in the work of indigenous peoples in the UN human rights system.21 The bulk of this history, however, is contained in indigenous periodicals, in the memoirs of individuals,22 in histories of organisations23 and in the political writing of indigenous peoples.24 There has been no dedicated study of the transnational character of the indigenous movement in Australia, its emergence and rationale, or its methods and achievements.

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A further reason to study indigenous transnationalism is that it may help us understand the formation of new global identities and relationships. The remarkable growth of a network of indigenous peoples who are increasingly able to identify collectively is poorly understood. The struggle of indigenous Australians adds greatly to our understanding of the role of shared histories in identity-formation and transnational processes of solidarity, the spread of global ideas such as decolonisation, self-determination and human rights, and the impact of new transport and communications technology. One scholar who has given this considerable thought is Ronald Niezen. He has described a category of an international underclass or ‘underethnicity’ in terms that evoke Attwood’s definition of Aboriginality as arising in an economy of exchange. The collective global identity of indigenous is, ‘a category of human society first invented through human rights reforms, then adapted, internalized, personalized, and collectively transformed by “indigenous peoples” themselves, with conviction and occasionally strident passion’. Successive phases of indigenous transnationalism reveal a steadily increasing confidence. Niezen suggested that this movement has gone through a clear historical process: It seems to begin with a sense of regional solidarity with those who share similar ways of life and histories of colonial and state domination that then grows into the realization that others around the world share the same experience.25 This growing regionalism met up with increasing indigenous traffic along the sinews of the former empires: the movement and exchange of Australian Aborigines to other English-speaking Commonwealth nations, especially Britain, the United States and Canada, is a major feature of this history and is broadly analogous to the indigenous transnationalism of Latin America.26 A significant factor in the growth of regional and transnational solidarities was the massive rise in mobility and communication of the last five decades. Aboriginal peoples not only benefited from general developments in publishing, mass media and transport, they soon created their own networks of travel and communication along which ideas quickly flowed. New contacts helped transform the political consciousness of indigenous Australians from the 1960s onward. The speeches and publications of leaders of decolonising states and of the civil rights movement, as well as news of their struggles and the response of colo-

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nial nation-states, became readily available to indigenous peoples in forms that reflected their own interests and allowed subtle processes of comparison. Yet, as they have always been, indigenous people are now conscripted into the global concerns of non-indigenous peoples. For the latter, global indigenous networks do more than merely distribute useful information about effective policy approaches or work in global institutions to set standards that guide and restrain nation-states; indigenous transnationalism, what Niezen calls ‘indigenism’, promotes a deeper set of possibilities. As a movement, it: … derives much of its energy from a wide audience, a nonindigenous public, and is therefore also an expression of popular misgivings about the impacts of life and the pace of life, and the corresponding eclectic search for spiritual expression in modern society.27 Numerous observers have described the movement as an exemplar and teacher for a world struggling to deal with the diverse challenges of modernity. The extraordinary worldwide interest in the Zapatistas (the radical and innovative movement of indigenous and other people in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas), for example, demonstrates the role that indigenous peoples have as markers in much larger movements for global alternatives and resistance, such as those against neoliberal globalisation. Scholars endorse the pedagogical power of the international indigenous movement and the universal philosophy of indigenous knowledge that is said to underlie it.28 Reproducing tensions within national indigenous histories, there are frequent occasions when this exposure seems to threaten both the transnational movement and the integrity of domestic movements participating in it. By situating themselves (or allowing themselves to be situated) within global discourses, indigenous peoples take the risk that their politics will be co-opted and perhaps made too nebulous to influence domestic policy or life at the grassroots. Here also lies the danger that transnationalism will revive the ‘noble savage’. This presents great difficulty for those who wish to see in indigeneity a complete and coherent set of practices and values – lifeways – that might be universal. Whether indigenous activists can navigate the surging floods of global politics remains to be seen. In the last two decades, though indigenous peoples have made advances in the reform of international institutions, these remain circumscribed by state power. However, the history of indigenous transnationalism already offers us ways to think about the possibilities of this movement and its

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capacity to give the international order a sense of the limits of its achievements in bringing about justice. For indigenous peoples, transnationalism may broaden discussions about rights to include those that reflect a better appreciation of the role of culture as the basis of collective entitlements and social order.

An outline of the book The book begins with a discussion of what is known about classical diplomacy among indigenous peoples in Australia. There are many useful sources for this, including ethnographic literature, as well as accounts of early Europeans, including the first diarists like Watkin Tench and explorers like Charles Sturt. The forms of human association that pre-dated colonisation were complex, and the interactions between indigenous groups were shaped by a common cosmological commitment to the relatedness of all things. An extensively networked social order highly sensitive to cosmological authority informed indigenous attitudes to the sharing of resources, mobility, diplomacy and trade. A further way to consider this is to review the bold transnationalism between Aborigines of the northern coasts of Australia and the islands immediately offshore and further afield. This certainly includes Australia’s ‘first modern industry’,29 the Macassan trepang fishery. Though indigenous peoples had rich traditions of engaging with others, European colonisation totally ignored them. In the urgent pursuit of pacifying the land and making it productive, colonists destroyed much of the indigenous world. As a consequence, indigenous peoples had few ways to counter the imperatives of colonisation. Chapter 2 examines the role of non-indigenous actors in creating discourses of responsibility for indigenous peoples. Europeans had long appealed to higher powers in defence of particular kinds of social organisation or forms of worship and such people were increasingly exercised by the imperial ‘problems’ of slavery and colonisation. By the mid-19th century, humanitarian organisations and explicitly religious groups sought not only to involve themselves in colonial policy but actively organised missionary endeavours to implant their principles. Later European interventions also sought to recruit both individual indigenous peoples as well as the ‘Aboriginal question’ into moral and political movements toward ultimate values such as the dignity of Empire, the liberation of women and the defeat of capitalism. In recent years, historians have done considerable work on the involvement of these groups in politicising indigenous issues. The chapter draws on

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that historical material to ask three questions: What was the view of universal moral order held by these groups? How much did they alter the Australian debate? And how, if at all, did these interventions and the ideas that underlay them influence the politicisation of indigenous peoples? In the early 20th century, human rights began to absorb the transnational preoccupations of the colonial era and, as chapter 3 explains, first emerged in the doctrine of the ‘good empire’. The first attempt to systematise this idea was in the Covenant of the League of Nations, but it was in the aftermath of the Second World War that human rights was given a global institutional form, which soon began to expand into Australian political culture and institutions. This articulation of the human rights system was closely related to the emergence of a national indigenous political organisation and domestic momentum for change. The chapter focuses on human rights and its applications to the situation of indigenous Australians until the 1967 referendum. Chapter 4 considers the growth of an indigenous identity and movement for rights of self-determination. It shows that the coherence of those aspirations was greatly aided by the political education of indigenous Australians about the global movements of decolonisation, as well as the movement for civil rights and radical African American political ideologies. However, it was not long before Aborigines and Islanders realised the limits of imported political forms, adapting what they wanted and constructing their own unique forms of political identity and association. Not only did indigenous Australians receive international ideas and visitors but they also were active in the formation of a global indigenous movement. Chapter 5 examines the range of connections that developed between indigenous peoples and what these led to. By the late 1970s there was considerable momentum behind initiatives for permanent institutions within the UN system that could deal fairly and competently with indigenous claims. In the 1980s, indigenous peoples from around the world began to reform institutions, creating spaces for discussion in the UN charter system and calling for dedicated instruments of indigenous rights protection. Reforms to bodies like the International Labour Organization (ILO) and the World Bank were also achieved, though these began to demonstrate the limited institutional power of indigenous transnationalism. In chapter 6, the narrative returns to Australia to consider the role that indigenous transnationalism played in domestic debates about indigenous–settler relations. A central theme is the series of failed government attempts to reconstruct the Australian nation-state. Treaties,

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the makarrata, national land rights, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC) and reconciliation were all attempts to rebind Australia in the face of an emboldened indigenous constituency for which a transnational agenda was important. However, the domination of federal politics for over a decade by defensive nationalists has meant the systematic narrowing of Australia’s conversations about indigenous peoples, their needs and aspirations, and much more critical attitudes towards international human rights processes, institutions and norms.

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Chapter one

T R A N S N AT I O N A L I S M B E F O R E T H E N AT I O N - S TAT E

Encounters and relations across social boundaries are an inescapable feature of human existence. Before the colonisation of Australia by the British, indigenous communities engaged in transboundary interaction on a range of issues: the defence of territory; protocols for engaging with others and travelling across country; practices and networks of exchange; and in the management of resources. This chapter focuses on three things: how indigenous Australians shared a cosmology in which all things were connected through common creation, and how this shaped and gave meaning to relations with other peoples; how the mobility of indigenous life patterned social interaction and protocols of acknowledgment; and how indigenous exchange and trade took place. It is possible to see the shared history of the Yolngu peoples of the coast of Arnhem Land in northern Australia and the trepang fishermen known as Macassans from present-day Sulawesi as a transnational encounter.

Cosmological foundations Is there a supervening cosmology or religious authority throughout indigenous Australia, one that might help to discern the politics of interaction against that background? Are there deep patterns to the cosmologies of indigenous Australians? Anthropologist Les Hiatt gave this serious thought in an essay about ‘high gods’. Numerous different tribes of south-eastern Australia, for example, had initiation cults that revered the same figures: ‘The unusually high status enjoyed by gods such as Baiame is a consequence of internationalism and religious confederation’, he argued. In Arnhem Land the Rainbow Serpent, known as Yurlunggur, was ‘an “international” God of Initiation’.1

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Hiatt wrote of: … a genre, a suite of fleeting forms connected with the rainbow through which the philosophers of Aboriginal Australia have sought to express the idea of an underlying reality … in the higher reaches of serious reflection, we find a persistent intuition of a presence or power whose Oneness is felt to account for the plurality and impermanence of the sensible world and those who live in it … Cosmologically, the unknown worlds nearest at hand and most accessible to the imagination lie in the regions above and below the earth’s surface – the sky and the underworld. Rainbows appear in the former, and snakes emerge from the latter. Their unification in the concept of the Rainbow Snake constitutes not merely an imaginative connection between the two domains of mystery impinging on the everyday world but a theory of an external source of the latter’s Being. According to Luke Taylor, an authority on Aboriginal visual cultures, the use of the rainbow imagery by the Kunwinyku of western Arnhem Land conveyed a ‘generalized message that the diversity of life masks an ultimate relatedness’.2 Indeed, it may be more fruitful to concentrate on the importance in indigenous cosmologies of relatedness through shared origins. For the peoples of the Kimberley region of Western Australia (Ngarinyin, Wunambal and Worrora), the creator-being had dreamt the ancestors (wanjina) into existence during the creation era (lalan) and these beings had taken various forms as they travelled across the country, particularly clouds. The wanjina shaped landscapes, literally moulding the physical space in which their peoples would live and find food and water. Ngarinyin believe that the powers of wanjina persist but need renewal through ceremony, mimesis and the retouching of the rock art and other representations of the ancestors.3 The mobility of cosmic agents of the Dreaming, as they created and named features of the landscape, provided near neighbours with shared narratives of creation. The Pintupi people’s Dreaming ancestors travelled during the creation era, their paths creating stories that linked places hundreds of miles apart: The continuity of stories classifies named places into larger systems, and individuals who have a place or part of the story have a claim to be considered for other parts. For

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some purposes, all those places on a Dreaming path are considered to be ‘one country’, and those who own different segments may be considered ‘one countrymen.’ Such systems of stories undergo a continual process of being reworked, providing an ever-changing charter of who and what can be identified as ‘one country.’ ‘Countryman’ relations define potential productive ties.4 Shared narratives and songs do not imply equivalent ownership or identification but in fact characterise a range of higher and lower order identifications: groups may have strong secondary connections to adjacent ‘countries’ because Dreaming tracks travel from one to another. In such situations, though songs and stories of the track may be shared, one group takes up the authoritative reading of it, giving rise to particular identifications of different groups through their shared relations to the story.5 Such connections gave indigenous peoples a context for engagement as well as reason to be mobile, to maintain their connections across different countries. Hiatt wondered how a state of ‘ordered anarchy’could have emerged: … how do people know what to do? Who punishes wrongdoers? How are the weak protected from the strong? Who organizes the community’s defence against its enemies? Who takes responsibility for the society’s religious life? He noted that it was anthropologist Mervyn Meggitt who resolved this by theorising a supernatural higher authority: … religious precedent as conceptualized and articulated within the framework of the Dreamtime provided a moral master plan for behaviour that largely obviated the need for chiefs or headmen … Undoubtedly, Aboriginal conceptions of correct behaviour have a basis in those cosmological and metaphysical speculations that have come to be known collectively as the Dreaming; furthermore, sanctions are certainly believed to issue from the transcendental here and now. Supernatural authority existed ‘side by side’ with secular authority (just as abstract liberal principles of universal morality are enacted and protected by empirical nation-states).6 In their major study of Aboriginal Australia before contact, anthropologists Catherine and Ronald Berndt confirmed this, pointing out that:

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… when there is consciousness of a shared tradition, of ritual and sacred mythology held in common, this has helped to widen the horizon, drawing more people into the safe, known world of human beings. Quarrels and fights are not lacking, but in such cases they take place within the range of known behaviour, where the rules of killing or making peace are understood and accepted … Through the sanction of religion, a moral rightness is ascribed to the premises on which that society rests.7 Another anthropologist, Ian Keen, wrote of the: … genius of ancestral law … that people of a wide region could agree to a body of legitimate law without there being legislators, and in spite of the autonomy of individuals and kin groups.8 In the Kimberley, social relations within and between communities were shaped by the dual character of the concept of wunan (wurnan): first, that different social groups were distributed over the landscape in a ‘constellation’ formed in the Dreaming; and second, that those groups then maintain relations through practices of exchange.9 In his ethnography, anthropologist Fred Myers also stressed the enabling features of Pintupi tradition: It is not accidental that the sources of what Westerners would think of as autonomy and authority are considered by the Pintupi to exist ‘outside’ the self, projected outward into The Dreaming and onto the landscape where they are available as social artefacts. This projection of a domain ‘outside’ society answers two constraints that impede certain kinds of coordinated social action: (1) the web of mutual obligation and relatedness between people in this society of former hunter-gatherers, based on their need for help from each other, and (2) the value placed on equality or personal autonomy, such that no one is prepared to be told by others what to do.10 Among the Arrernte and many other peoples, ceremonial activities such as the practice of imitating the life-cycle of totem animals, were not only ‘increase’ ceremonies aimed at increasing the species’ population by boosting the number of its spirits, but by reinforcing a prohibition on each clan eating its own totem, ceremony was a means of environmental management. 11 Consequently, indigenous cultures

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avoided what theorists of international relations have called the ‘paradox’ of environmental co-operation, or more generally, the ‘free rider’ problem.12 However, it is misleading to think of creation myths simply as functional models of social order. Since the work of Levi-Strauss, anthropologists of indigenous Australia have emphasised the ways that mythic accounts – whether of the physical origins of landscape, of biological events like birth and death, or of the rightness of particular social orders – emphasise both the ever-present potential of transformation and the essential relatedness of all things: … [myths] lift ideas of exchange at the moiety and clan levels into a field of meaning where, by integration into narratives that also use the imagery of eating, of transformation by cooking, of warfare and the transformation of man into animal, each of these particular images helps to give meaning to those others with which it is associated.13 By helping people to understand how they are already related, indigenous cosmology contextualises an external authority from which people draw ethical norms that they use to shape their encounters with others.

The ethics of mobility and nomadic life Though indigenous peoples have understood their social organisation and way of life as narrated by cosmological imperatives, anthropologists often emphasise the difficulties of the environment in which classical life took place. In ecologically adverse conditions, mobility and openness were crucial.14 However, even in territories where there were abundant resources, such as in parts of coastal northern Australia, people remained mobile, still moving several times per year. This ‘mobility ethos’ kept people in touch with relations and gave them a wider knowledge of resource and environmental conditions. It also reinforced the central dynamic of hunter-gatherer society, which relied on movement to gather resources. Mobility encouraged conservation, akin to pastoral patterns of crop or field rotation.15 It also ensured that people maintained their links with foundational stories as they travelled along Dreaming paths. Anthropologists differ slightly in their accounts of how mobility and its corollary of openness was manifest in social life. Nicolas Peterson, for example, suggested that indigenous communities or bands were not in permanent relation, but ‘the interrelationships of ideas and practice receive their expression in the band’. That is to say,

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classical Aboriginal life was characterised by openness to connection with others, regardless of the actual connections existing at given moments. However, Peterson argued that in times of ecological adversity, bands activated their ‘divergent networks’ of kinship and marriage in order to secure access to resources on a household basis.16 Harry Lourandos suggested that in regions of abundance, ‘alliance systems may have shielded people against greater levels of competition between groups, brought about by overall denser concentrations of population’.17 Myers’s account of the Pintupi emphasised ‘the positive qualities of exchange’, which extend social ties while maximising the efficient use of resources.18 Linguist and anthropologist Peter Sutton’s description of ‘vicinage’ is also important: though certain products of a country may be available to members of different communities in a broad tribal grouping rather than exclusively held, political rights may be held only by those born in the community’s country, while cultural and socio-economic rights are held by migrants who come to live there through marriage or otherwise.19 Distinctions in origin also informed the spatial distribution of bands while camped together for ceremonial gatherings: the position of each group indicated the direction they had come from and ‘the plan of the whole camp was a microcosom [sic] of the regional distribution of bands’.20 Some scholars have described the construction of boundaries in this type of society as ‘social boundary defence’. In areas of low density of resources, inhabitants hold membership in resource-ownership groups, which allow access to custodial areas in order that hardship can be averted.21 This contrasts with ‘perimeter defence’, which involves the maintenance of a physical boundary around resource-laden territories. These ecological explanations of territoriality imply that the ‘costs’ of defending territory decline as the territory’s resources increase; areas dense in resources are more likely to be physically defended.22 Social boundary defence reflected principles on which such patterned reciprocity might occur, including the value of good knowledge about resources, a concern that lack of coordination about resource use leads to inefficiency and overcrowding, an ethics arising from the realisation that today’s abundance may be tomorrow’s lack.23 Sutton argued that such principles shaped the ideal of indigenous encounters, noting that ‘reciprocity and balance, rather than an asymmetry between privileged permission-giver and importuning permission-requester, [were] the preferred tone of interactions on the subject of intervisitation’. Peterson confirmed the plausibility of the social boundary defence theory in the Australian context, pointing out that nowhere in Australia was access to resources limited by the physical defence of ter-

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ritorial boundaries. Rather, it was membership of particular social groups that carried with it the rights to use a territory’s resources. Sometimes, in the case of resources that were localised but very abundant, groups from considerable distances away would be able to access the resources, even being invited to do so by messengers from the resource-owning group.24 Explorer John King’s survival narrative is instructive. After the death of his companions Robert O’Hara Burke and William Wills, King survived through the kindness of a Yandruwandha community who fed and sheltered him. For some time, they assumed his stay with them was temporary, but soon King convinced them that he was dependent on them: Every four or five days the tribe would surround me and ask whether I intended going up or down the creek; at last I made them understand that if they went up I should go up the creek, and if they went down I should also go down; and from this time they seemed to look upon me as one of themselves, and supplied me with fish and nardoo regularly. Here we see two types of generosity: that to a passing visitor in need; and a second form of openness to new social members whose association might be much longer. King could not communicate his expectation that the search party would arrive, or when, and his experience gives us insight into the Yandruwandha’s attitudes.25 But such access did not imply that the door to indigenous country was open to whoever might arrive. On the contrary, crossing territorial boundaries required formal protocols of recognition. Peterson has described the ‘rites of entry’ for admittance of visitors, whether as individuals or small groups, or larger groups arriving for major cultural events and economic activity. In the case of individuals such as messengers, often a symbolic object was carried or decoration worn on the body, and those entering foreign territories frequently lit small fires to indicate their presence. Fire symbolised ‘domesticity, the friendship of family life’. Early accounts of rites of entry also showed that visitors would refrain from immediately joining the central body of the community, waiting some distance away and indicating their presence with a small fire, until an elder came to formally invite the visitor into the community.26 Watkin Tench’s journals record him witnessing his indigenous companion Colbee engage another indigenous group near Sydney in 1791. The account may be the earliest example of European knowledge of indigenous protocol:

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Colbee no longer hesitated, but gave them the signal of invitation, in a long hollow cry. After some whooping, and shouting, on both sides a man, with a lighted stick in his hand, advanced near enough to converse with us.27 Explorers Hamilton Hume and Charles Sturt were able to rely on such protocols as they journeyed through New South Wales in March 1829: Mr Hume and I, therefore, went to meet them. They were at this time about 150 yards from the tent, but seeing us advance, they stopped and forming two deep, they marched to and fro, to a war song I suppose, crouching with their spears. We had not, however, any difficulty in communicating with them, and I shall detail the manner in which this was brought about, in hopes that it may help us to guide others. When the natives saw us advance, they stopped, and we did the same. Mr Hume then walked to a tree, and broke off a short branch. It is singular that this should, even with these rude people, be a token of peace. As soon as they saw the branch the natives laid aside their spears and two of them advanced about twenty paces in front of the rest, who sat down. Mr Hume then went forward and sat down, when the two natives again advanced and seated themselves close to him.28 Eminent pre-historian John Mulvaney noted that in these rituals of diplomacy, ‘speed was never a priority’. In the welcome given by a group of Arrernte men near Alice Springs in 1901, anthropologists Baldwin Spencer and Frank Gillen noted the centrality of a brief period of waiting: … a deputation of eight of the elder men, who had decorated themselves with bands of white pipe-clay, came into our camp to welcome us formally. It was a solemn ceremony. First of all they squatted on the ground in silence. Then, after a short pause, the head man of the Alice Springs group told us they were very glad to see us again … and that we were welcome to their country. We acknowledged their welcome with a present of tobacco.29 It was possible, moreover, that indigenous peoples adapted their protocols in ways that borrowed from Europeans. Passing through the same country nine years later, explorer Edward Eyre encountered groups who were familiar with Hume’s sign of peace, and Eyre assumed it to be a universal indigenous custom:

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… they generally made their appearance again when we encamped, coming up in a body, old and young, waving green boughs in their hands in token of amity – an interesting and pleasing custom which seems to prevail among the aborigines of Australia generally.30 Indigenous protocols made Aborigines indispensable members of explorers’ parties, often without the realisation of the expedition leaders. As Tim Flannery noted in his anthology of explorers’ journals: Aborigines were the real, albeit unacknowledged, explorers of much of Australia. They generally carried the guns that fed and defended the expedition, they found the water, and they made the peace.31 The heroic figures from the annals of Australian exploration would otherwise have ‘wandered aimlessly through countryside which displayed the invisible weathercocks and compasses of the aboriginals’.32 Within that genre of colonial literature, a set of indigenous characters emerges, the ‘loyal and faithful servant’ or the ‘black boy’ – Alexander Forrest’s Windich, Edward Eyre’s Wylie, Thomas Mitchell’s Yuranigh, Edmund Kennedy’s Jackey Jackey – men whose competence became evident as parties moved through thick bush, who read the landscape for presence of other humans, creatures or sources of water. Reynolds notes the commonness of these ‘black-boys’ among all manner of travelling parties through the Australian bush in the early years of settlement. He cites the experience of Burke and Wills as instructive: though their expedition was very well provisioned, the lack of Aboriginal assistance brought about their tragedy.33 Aborigines also: … provided information about the customs and languages of contiguous tribes, and acted as diplomats and couriers arranging in advance for the safe passage of European parties. Mitchell realised that while accompanied by local Aborigines his party was ‘perfectly safe from the danger of sudden collision’ with neighbouring clans.34 William Clark, who was shipwrecked in early 1797 with 16 others at Point Hicks in the east of Victoria, managed to survive the walk to Sydney along the coast with only two companions. His party was repeatedly assisted by the same group of Aborigines, on three occasions helping them to cross rivers, twice in their canoes:

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Whether this meeting was the effect of chance or one of their fishing excursions, or that perceiving we should find it difficult they had come to our assistance, we could not determine; but had it not been for their aid we must have been detained here for some time.35 During his second trip into South Australia, rarely without Aboriginal accompaniment though they travelled chiefly by boat along the Murray River, Sturt developed a much greater understanding of the territorial diplomacy of indigenous Australia. The events of 22–23 January 1830 are particularly revealing: The natives, in attempting to answer my interrogatories, only perplexed me more and more. They evidently wished to explain something, by placing a number of sticks across each other as a kind of diagram of the country. It was, however, impossible to arrive at their meaning. They undoubtedly pointed to the westward, or rather to the south of that point, as the future course of the river; but there was something more that they were anxious to explain, which I could not comprehend … We had proceeded nine miles, when we were surprised by the appearance in view, at the termination of a reach, of a long line of magnificent trees of green and dense foliage. As we sailed further down the reach, we observed a vast concourse of natives under them … an attempt to land would only be attended by loss of life. The natives seemed determined to resist it … It was with considerable apprehension that I observed the river to be shoaling fast, more especially as a huge sandbank, a little below us and on the same side on which the natives had gathered, projected nearly a thirdway across the channel … With every pacific disposition, and an extreme reluctance to take away life, I foresaw that it would be impossible any longer to avoid an engagement … I took up my gun, therefore, and cocking it, had already brought it down to a level. A few seconds more would have closed the life of the nearest of the savages … But at the very moment when my hand was on the trigger, and my eye was along the barrel, my purpose was checked by M’Leay … Turning around I saw four men at the top of their speed. The foremost of them, as soon as he got ahead of the boat, threw himself from a considerable height into the water. He struggled across the channel to the sandbank,

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and in an incredibly short space of time stood in front of the savage against whom my aim had been directed. Seizing him by the throat, he pushed him backwards, and forcing all who were in the water upon the bank, he trod the margin with a vehemence and agitation that was impressive … Thus, in less than a quarter of an hour from the moment when it appeared that all human intervention was at an end, and we were on the point of commencing a bloody fray which independently of its own disastrous consequences, would have blasted the success of the expedition, we were peacefully surrounded by the hundreds who had so lately threatened us with destruction.36 Later, Sturt reflected on this and acknowledged the diplomacy that had underpinned his progress: They sent ambassadors forward regularly from one tribe to another, in order to prepare for our approach, a custom that not only saved us an infinity of time, but also great personal risk. Indeed, I doubt very much whether we should even have pushed so far down the river, had we not been assisted by the natives themselves.37 Of course, there was unlikely to be perfect comprehension across languages, cultures and the gulf of intentions. Major Mitchell’s expedition into Queensland took him into territories far beyond the linguistic skills of his Wiradjuri guide, Yuranigh, where they met one ‘frustrated elder [who] burst into tears, finding himself incapable either in words or deeds for a meeting so uncommon’. Mulvaney lamented the consequences of misunderstanding indigenous protocols. Rituals such as those of the Arrernte of central Australia, which included an initial massed approach of gesturing and armed men, were rebuffed by Europeans as the behaviour of ‘intruders or assailants’. What these rituals of power really signified was a demand to be acknowledged and respected, and for that to frame the future relationship.38

Networks of exchange We get an excellent sense of the productiveness of classical transnational relations by considering the manner and extent of trade between indigenous peoples. Numerous writers since Adam Smith have pointed out that trade is a fundamental human activity. In An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Smith claimed that trade and

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exchange were universal human characteristics, likely to be the consequence of either instinct or the attributes of reason and speech.39 More recently, Matt Ridley, in his book The Origins of Virtue, concluded that: … there is nothing modern about commerce … trade, specialization, the division of labour and sophisticated systems of barter exchange were already a part of a hunter-gathering life. Indeed, they had probably been so for many hundreds of thousands of years.40 Although he saw a ‘general shape of exchange’ among indigenous communities, Ian Keen noted that the term ‘trade’ collapses three distinct modes by which materials circulated among indigenous peoples: … the diffusion of durable goods across long distances through hand-to-hand transfers within the normal course of day-to-day interaction, exchanges between exchange partners, and the exchange of goods between people of different regions who came together for that purpose, perhaps bartering goods.41 In the late 1930s, FD McCarthy’s major comparative study of Aboriginal trading networks also observed three aspects while offering a slightly different interpretation. First, regional networks connected peoples in heavy trading relationships, including that in south-eastern Australia, from western Queensland to northern Australia, in the Lake Eyre basin, and in Arnhem Land. Second, well-defined ‘trunk routes’ connected these regions. And third, some goods were particularly heavily traded between and within the regional networks, including boomerangs, ochre, the narcotic pituri and pearl-shells, as well as aspects of culture, such as the knowledge of particular corroborees.42 Regional trade networks were important not merely because they allowed exchange, but because they activated existing social networks. McCarthy recognised that the density and familiarity of regional exchanges meant that many had become ritualised, especially across kin groups in contiguous areas, and should be seen as a: … necessary adjunct to betrothal, marriage and initiation, and especially to the settling of grievances and quarrels … At gatherings for barter in Australia the opportunity is taken to settle grievances and social obligations forming part of kinship and other relationships, to cement friendships, and to extend personal and group relationships.43

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Certain material objects and cultural items had special ceremonial and sacred value, thereby creating demand and facilitating exchange: ‘The granting of access to ancestral knowledge was a valuable service for which those in control could demand other valued items in return’. In some indigenous exchanges, although items actually changed hands, these were understood as ‘inalienable possessions’, by which the giver created an enduring bond with the recipient.44 Trade networks in the Kimberleys, for example, were highly complex, with sacred items moving clockwise through territories, among related kin groups and ‘defined partners’, and non-sacred materials moving in an anticlockwise direction.45 This was formalised in the wurnan: … a system of ‘paths’ of exchange homologous with marriage relations, linking individuals and patri-groups and connecting adjacent regions. The goods exchanged included foods such as meat and honey, ochres, stone spear-points wrapped in paperbark, bamboo spears, songs and sacred objects.46 In some areas, such as Ooldea in central Australia, exchanges could involve the temporary use of skilled labour from neighbouring communities, especially the services of healers or experts in ceremonial activities.47 John Mulvaney argued that ‘ceremonial exchange networks were universal across Australia by 1788’. There were even ‘markets’ held at designated sites, such as the ‘exchange fairs’ known as manja boming among peoples of the south-west of Western Australia. In the Lake Eyre basin, markets regularly convened, primarily to exchange the prized medicinal narcotic commodity pituri, which contains nicotine: These markets, lying at the intersections of communication routes, were crucial in the ebb and flow of exchange transactions that transmitted knowledge, materials, and artefacts between local and regional communities otherwise isolated by vast distances.48 The major trading paths, or trunk routes, are especially interesting. McCarthy noted that routes were well-defined in areas of plentiful resources, while in arid conditions were more like ‘wide strips of country’. He described seven major routes, understood as ‘the avenues along which important culture elements – material, social, and religious – have diffused’. For example, the east coast route: … functioned from the north to the south of this coast, which consists of a narrow strip of fertile land closed off

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from the interior by the Great Dividing Range. Traits that have diffused along this trunk route are the fish-hook technique, multi-pronged and bone-barbed spears, bark canoes and containers and increase rites. From the Kimberley region to south-western Australia, another trade route distributed pearl-shell and cockatoo feathers.49 In a period of about 25 years, ‘the Mudlunga ceremonial dance [spread] … from northwest Queensland to Alice Springs, through the Lake Eyre Basin to reach the South Australian coast’.50 McCarthy also noted the diffusion of clear traits and goods from Melanesia and South-East Asia, and suggested that trunk routes connected the north coast of the Australian mainland through the islands of Torres Strait across New Guinea to its northern coast, as well as from Arnhem Land and the Kimberleys through the Celebes and other island groups of South-East Asia, as far as the Malay peninsula. Trade also: … facilitated the peopling of Australia by making it possible for adventurers settling in new country to obtain from their homeland essential articles, and also others which they may otherwise have to abandon, while ascertaining the resources of the new territory.51 Goods traded over very great distances put trunk routes in greater relief. Prized commodities such as pituri travelled great distances along trade routes.52 Aborigines quarried a range of different types of stone, with some quarries providing stone for a large network of exchange, others serving only ‘local markets’.53 Archaeologists RA Binns and Isabel McBryde used petrological techniques to establish a distribution network of hundreds of kilometres in multiple directions for the axestone originating from the Moore Creek quarry in northern New South Wales.54 Pearl-shell sourced off the coast of the Kimberleys travelled even further and was exchanged along networks of thousands of kilometres, ending up in South Australia.55 One of the primary motivations for trade is the occurrence or production of valued items in specific places. In Australia, Moore Creek stone and pituri demonstrate this point well. But the supernatural world also stimulated trade across great distances: … the localities where various objects are made are those where the spiritual ancestors introduced them or their method of manufacture … Such a specimen is imbued with the magical potency of the mythical world, the core of spir-

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itual power. The red ochre from Parachilna, South Australia, was also sought after for this reason and members of tribes travelled great distances to get it, despite the fact that red ochre occurred much nearer their homeland … the quest for magical power from afar lies behind the barter of many material media used in magic and ceremonies.56 Distance conveyed additional importance on objects such as pearl and white baler shells: As these objects travelled, their ritual importance increased, their functions changing from utilitarian, everyday use as pubic covers or decorative purposes to secret purposes. In this manner, products from the Indian and Pacific oceans moved gradually across central Australia, their paths intermingling along distances up to 2000 kilometres.57 Expeditioners would often set out for ochre from the best sources, and those proposing to visit key ochre production sites, like the mines at Pukardu or Parachilna in the Flinders Ranges of South Australia, held ceremonies with the owners of countries they traversed. Travellers were expected to alert the custodians of the mine with message sticks that invited the exchange of ochre for other goods, including other pigments and foodstuffs.58 Such foreshadowing of intentions to trade was common: ‘Message-sticks form proof of the nature of the business of a trademessenger’, thought McCarthy, ‘but the message is always a verbal one’.59 However, after living for over three decades with Aborigines near Port Phillip, escaped convict William Buckley recalled an encounter with one messenger who had come to trade vegetables for freshwater eels – stripes on his arms signifying either the timing of the trade, or the number of days’ it would take to reach the place where the trade would occur.60

The Macassans and the Yolngu I would like to extend a warm welcome to our Indonesian friends. It’s not their first time being in Arnhem Land. They represent their ancestors who have been coming to visit my ancestors a long time before any white faces arrived in this continent. We are celebrating this Garma, the topic is ‘Livelihood’. While our Indonesian friends and north-east Arnhem Landers have met for so many centuries, so many years, to trade and carry on this particular thing that we talk about here, at this Garma. The ‘livelihood’.61

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The varied practices of classical transnationalism discussed so far can be seen very clearly in the shared history of the coastal Aborigines of northern Australia and the very different peoples living in regions to the north. Arguments about the non-indigenous ‘discoverers’ of Australia have prompted a variety of theories. Suggestions that Ming dynasty Chinese fleets visited Australia, under Ch’eng Ho in 1405–33, have not so far proved convincing. Mulvaney found little more than the possibility that Portuguese and French ships visited Australia in the 1520s.62 Much more evidence has been found to support the hypothesis of two ‘waves’ of original migrants corresponding to the most favourable geological and sea-level situations (before 45 000 years ago and between 4000 and 3500 years ago). In addition, the diversity of indigenous populations has inclined many to think about the possibility of sporadic arrivals of small groups of people from the islands of South-East Asia throughout the entire time.63 Indeed, Philip Clarke, a curator and anthropologist at the South Australian Museum, dismisses the idea that a ‘clear cultural line separates Melanesia from Australia’, noting the intricate diffusion of traditions from both mainland Australia and New Guinea that is visible among Torres Strait peoples.64 The proposition corresponds with the favourable currents and winds between Australia and island South-East Asia, whereby rafts and other flotsam arrive regularly on the north coasts of Australia. Nineteenth-century historian Ernest Favenc was convinced that it was among the ancestors of the Malays: … that we must look for the first discoverers of our island continent, and failing all written record or existing monument of their doings, search amongst the natives themselves for confirmation of the fact.65 By the early 1960s, Ronald Berndt argued that ‘speculative and hypothetical’ arguments, imputing connections between northern Australia and island South-East Asia through comparisons of supposed cultural and racial similarities, were giving way to a growing body of empirical research in anthropology and archaeology. Scholars were increasingly focused on ‘tangible and visible material’ left in the sites of particular visitors; the ‘indirect evidence in Aboriginal art’; and the documented evidence of contacts gathered by Europeans and others.66 Chief among these was historian and archaeologist CC Macknight, who showed in detail how Macassans encountered Aborigines in Australia’s ‘first modern industry’: the collection of the ‘edible holothurian’ trepang (or beche-de-mer) from the shallow coastal waters of Arnhem Land for the markets of South-East Asia and the tables of China.67

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The exact beginnings of the industry remain under some debate. For example, Chinese culinary interest in trepang – the only real source of demand – did not appear to have preceded the 16th century, when first mention of it is made in Chinese recipes, along with other Late Ming delicacies like Sharks’ Fin and Birds’ Nest soups. Pottery shards, found in many of the sites where Macassans camped while preparing the trepang, have not been dated prior to 1700 AD with any confidence. Others thought an earlier beginning was plausible – possibly the early 16th century – a date reached by extrapolating from the complexity of Macassan influences on Yolngu culture.68 What is undeniable is that the trepang industry connected the Yolngu people of eastern Arnhem Land with the economic transformations taking place in the hinterlands and entrepôts of south-east and east Asia, a confluence of what one historian has called ‘archaic’ and ‘modern’ forms of globalisation. The evidence Macknight draws on include traders’ manifests located in Dutch maritime archives, which indicate the scale of the industry. At the height of the trepang industry in the 18th and 19th centuries, trepangers would have collected at least 300 tons per season from the north Australian coast. Up to 1000 Macassan men would come each season in ocean-going praus of about 25 tonnes. Their routine was so regular that, in the late 19th century, South Australian authorities were able to collect duties by finding the trepangers at favoured spots such as Karruwa (Little Vanderlin) Island.69 Macassans came for trepang until the Australian Government banned their visits in 1907. Until then, Macassans left the Celebes each November with the north-west monsoon, arriving on the coast of Arnhem Land in December and staying until the beginning of the dry season the following April. Several praus would drop anchor and camp together on suitable beaches. Smaller canoes took divers out to collect trepang while others prepared the catch for the return journey – an elaborate process of sun-drying and smoking the trepang in specially constructed ovens. The fishermen arrived well-provisioned with rice and other foodstuffs from their home and, though conflicts occasionally occurred, the Macassans’ industry largely took place independently of the Yolngu. However, the length of the visits plus their seasonal routine, established over several hundred years, gave rise to abiding impacts on the cultural life of the Yolngu. Historian Geoffrey Blainey suggested that the cultural contact of the Macassans with Aborigines in the first decade of contact was likely to have been greater than that with the First Fleet in its first decade.70 In terms of the autonomy of the cultural

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exchanges that took place, however, the contact between Yolngu and Macassans was not matched by indigenous–European exchanges for a considerably longer period than that. Macassans’ culture may also have facilitated their reception: though they were Muslims, Macassans practised certain forms of animism, leaving offerings at particular rock formations along the coast, which the Aborigines clearly recognised and respected: Before commencing at a fresh camp they lowered to the bottom of the sea a new plate containing portions of the best food they had on board. When leaving camp some ceremony was gone through for the purposes of making wind.71 Yolngu mortuary ceremonies demonstrate that Aborigines observed the Macassans and drew their own significance from the Macassans’ activities. Yirritja ancestors are held to include Macassans and death for these Yolngu meant a return to those lands.72 The highly distinctive burial poles reflect the raising of the masts of the Macassan praus in readiness for departure, and therefore loss for the Yolngu. Macassan designs adorn these grave markers; flags attached to the top of the poles evoke the flags atop Macassan masts that fluttered as they sailed away. Yolngu song cycles tell of the exhilaration of travelling in a prau with its flapping sails and the ‘singing from the mast’.73 The Yolngu adopted Macassan material culture, including buffalo horn, tobacco and alcohol, and the Macassans’ dug-out canoe technology spread around the coast at the rate of 80–100 kilometres per generation. The Yolngu carved wooden representations of trepang, took Macassan place and personal names, and even made large representations of Macassan camps, which they sculpted into the environment with stones. For their part, Macassans took tortoise-shell, pearl-shell and even pearls, which were likely to have been procured by Aborigines and bartered in an informal trade that probably included the casual labour of Yolngu.74 Aborigines valued highly the material they received. It was anthropologist Donald Thomson who first noticed the Yolngu ‘ceremonial exchange cycles’ between coastal and inland groups, arguing that it was the presence and contact of the Macassans that had shaped this cultural patterning of material and conceptual exchange. A pidgin exists in indigenous communities of the north coast that probably originated as a means of discourse with Macassans and then became ‘a lingua franca among Aboriginal groups who did not share the same language or dialect’. Linguists John Urry and Michael Walsh have argued that the

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Macassar language may have been the ‘catalyst in the establishment of the exchange system’.75 Such contacts and exchanges also meant that when the praus returned in the dry season, it became ‘almost normal for Aborigines to visit Macassar’. Djaladjari’s voyage with the Macassans occurred in about 1895, when he was still a boy; he travelled extensively around the north coast collecting trepang before voyaging to Macassar on the prau Kandu’ulang. When he arrived in Macassar, he met Jamaduda, Gadari and Birindjauwi, men he knew from Arnhem Land, as well as other Aborigines who had come on earlier voyages and stayed, often marrying Macassar women. Djaladjari travelled on around the islands of the region, going so far as to see the Malay peninsula and the Banda Islands.76 Naval navigator and explorer Matthew Flinders’s account of his meeting with the Macassan captain Pobassoo, in 1803, suggested that some Macassans saw Aborigines as aggressive savages who endangered the constructive activities of civilised people.77 However, this was not a universal view and, as Macknight showed, ‘some Macassans were capable of another response to the unfamiliar, that of observation’. One man, Timbo, travelled inland and encountered the Aborigines of the interior,78 while in Daeng Sarro’s oral history of working on the trepang fleet from the 1880s until the end of the century, he mentions Tenga, a Malay man who had lived permanently in the Bowen Strait region of Arnhem Land. Sarro’s own father was buried at Mangrove (Bartalumba) Bay.79 The history that the Yolngu shared with the Macassans had deep and lasting effects. Early European visitors found themselves addressed in the same pidgin that had emerged as the means of discourse with Macassans. Berndt wrote of how in the mid-20th century the memories of contact with Macassans were ‘a living and coherent tradition shared by the people as a whole’. Macassans became integrated into Yolngu narratives of creation, which told of the Bayini or Dreaming Macassans as mythological beings contemporaneous with the Yolngu creator-ancestors, Lany’tjun and Djang’kawu. In the sacred songs associated with the Bayini ancestor, Birrinydji, the Yolngu ‘drew names from words such as manunu (ship’s anchor), mattjuwi (mast), or lati (sword)’.80 Berndt felt that the history of the trepang industry had created the conditions of possibility for an ‘adjustment movement’ that saw radically new cultural expressions take place from the 1950s onward. It was a way for the Yolngu to deal with the massive change Europeans brought after the Second World War. Similarly, anthropologist Ian McIntosh has argued recently that these culturally embedded memories

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of visitors helped frame the response of some Yolngu to the incursions of the mining industry in particular. Consequently, Yirritja moiety people, as custodians of the Bayini stories, drew on this tradition to underpin a different response to mining than the prevailing opposition, one that saw mining as potentially offering greater autonomy and agency for indigenous people: ‘Birrinydji’s vision included Yolngu membership in his new world blessed with many riches’.81 In 1999 in Darwin, Yolngu people staged a play that honoured the connections between the north Australian coast and South-East Asia. Trepang required extensive negotiation with the owners of the cultural materials involved, including the songs and stories telling the history of the contacts between peoples. In the performance, the Yolngu insisted that the performers themselves have the kinship connections that were forged between the peoples during the trepang years. The play’s narrative asserted that the Yolngu were ‘business people’, in active economic and cultural relations with peoples prior to the arrival of Europeans.82 Encounters between Yolngu and Macassans did involve conflicts, but are remembered much more for the benign and productive relations that emerged. This was ‘a golden age, contrasting deeply with European–Aboriginal relations’. In the last quarter of the 19th century, there was talk in the colony of South Australia that the trepang industry should be regulated. Customs duties were collected from 1882, but nationalist incentives to not recognise this longstanding trade preoccupied both Australian governments and Dutch administrators of what was to become Indonesia. The ongoing practice of detaining Indonesian fishermen caught in Australia’s ‘territorial waters’ indicates how far this history is from informing current practice.83 Macknight suggests that the positive light in which Yolngu see their relations with the Macassans was because ‘the fundamental bases of society were not affected’. Macassans and Yolngu were not in direct competition for resources, and the visitors collected an item that was not part of the indigenous economy. Nor did the Macassans expect the Yolngu to labour for them, and were often very independent in their collection of trepang. There is no evidence to suggest Macassans tried to convert Aborigines to Islam. Though many indigenous peoples did travel with Macassans, indigenous peoples faced great difficulties in adopting Macassan culture, if that was desired: ‘Only a small part of Macassarese culture was evident on the praus, and there was no way, except for the limited opportunity of returning on a prau, to reach Macassar’.84

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Conclusion On the hot coast of northern Australia, many Aborigines had celebrated the approach of the matting sails of the Macassarmen, for they were merely summer birds of passage. But on the east coast, the white sails of the English ships were a symbol of the gale that in the following hundred years would slowly cross the continent, blowing out the flames of countless camp-fires, covering with drift sand the grinding stones and fishing nets, silencing the sounds of hundreds of languages, and stripping the ancient Aboriginal names from nearly every valley and headland.85 The elegiac conclusion to Triumph of the Nomads is laden with inevitability, the arrival of Europeans as natural force. However, returning to think about classical indigenous life need not be an anachronism. As John Mulvaney has suggested, we can at least appreciate the cultural openness, exchange and innovation that is visible in many situations when indigenous societies came into contact with others.86 Indigenous peoples were not the static, parochial isolates of our public discourse, but lived a life intimately aware of the connections with others that had been made by the agents of creation. These were structured into the social networks they formed along the blended edges of their countries and were visible in the paths that people took as they travelled. Some territories were open to people in need when rituals of acknowledgment had been performed. Economic life involved indigenous peoples in a trade conducted across vast distances by pedestrians who invested great significance in the goods they carried. All of this is abundantly clear in the way the Yolngu engaged with and remember the Macassans. The ‘welcome to country’ rituals now standard at academic conferences and the opening of parliaments are the merest of residues of the richness of classical indigenous transnationalism. This matters because indigenous experience resonates with contemporary difficulties. One of the core assumptions of the discipline of international relations (especially its dominant strand, realism) is that humans live in stable and coherent bounded entities. Sovereignty has shaped dominant understandings of what is in and what is out. Examining classical indigenous traditions, we see indigenous peoples also had concerns about boundaries and membership, but resolved them in ways that acknowledge the fundamental connectedness of life. Returning to this history cannot provide us with a template for the

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global societies we now inhabit, but rather can reacquaint us with the antiquity of the challenges that comprise international relations and that were visible in less institutionally rigid and sedentary ages. In so doing, we have the opportunity to rethink transnationalism in more recent and familiar historical periods. Here I have sought only to explore various acts of hospitality, pride, wisdom and openness that indigenous Australians displayed in encounters with those beyond the boundaries of their communities. It may be sparse at points in the telling, but much has been lost: as Tim Flannery ironised of the great era of exploration, ‘by its end, the sum of human knowledge about Australia had been diminished’.87

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Chapter two

CIVILISING THE COLONIALS

The idea that indigenous values could inform the landscape of encounter never occurred to Australian colonists. Successive waves of violence, dispersal, epidemic disease and environmental transformation then steadily destroyed the world in which those values were meaningful. Legislative regimes literally denied movement while constraining inter-Aboriginal social relations; traditional economies were obliterated, creating dependency and further vulnerability. Unlike British imperialism elsewhere, there was no legal forbearance on the part of colonists. Indeed, the prevailing assumption was that Australia was a blank ground for transportation and settlement. Of course, an indigenous social and political order had few points of connection with the imperatives of colonisation, especially on the frontier. Yet, we know that the colonial logic was not universally admired by Europeans and settlers. Henry Reynolds’s study of dissent begins by pointing out that ‘major moral questions’ preoccupied some Europeans even in the decades before the First Fleet sailed. There was always a ‘whispering’ that some men and women of conscience heard in their hearts when confronted by the injustice done to Aborigines in the colonisation of Australia.1 Often these were people who knew something of events elsewhere in the empire, or who did not think that imperial justice needed only to take into account the ambition of the colonist, but who saw colonisation as part of a larger moral undertaking, that was global and universal. Comparisons with other colonial settings might even be inferred from the instructions to the First Fleet – ‘to treat the natives with amity and kindness’ – issued by imperial authorities who had recently relied on

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formal military alliances with the Iroquois in the American War of Independence. Thoughts of a standard imperial practice appear to have filtered through the mind of Governor George Arthur in Tasmania, though his final decisions proved more expedient.2 There are numerous instances of comparisons with other experiences of colonialism through the 19th century. Such references frequently overstated the success or failure of these approaches. By the 20th century, however, such comparisons began to look less like fealty to an imperial standard and more like the taking of national responsibility: … when a native is shot or flogged to death in the lonely interior of this continent, the mass of mankind – if the record of the deed ever leaps to light – will debit it to Australia. No geographical lines or constitutional limitations will be taken into account.3 But by itself, gesturing toward more benign practices lacked the weight needed to confront the steadily growing assertions of colonial autonomy and later of nationalism. What obligation or realm of principle stood against that positive doctrine? Conversely, what could encourage indigenous peoples to believe their claims might be heard or considered fairly? This chapter examines the conditions under which comparison and, more generally, transnational appeals to higher authority, were taken more seriously in discussions about indigenous Australians.

Humanitarian values in the age of Empire The first alternative to the dominant rationale of colonisation came from those who attempted to infuse imperialism itself with a moral mission. Through the 19th century, the spread of the British Empire over the Australian colonies coincided with a global renewal of the Protestant faith. Historians have offered several explanations for this, including the need to catch up to the proselytising achievements of Catholicism and the desire to redefine faith in the face of scientific explanation.4 But crucial to the rise of evangelical humanitarianism in the 19th century was a passion to end the abhorrence of slavery and to realise an ‘empire of good’. In the evangelical vision, ‘a reformed and revitalized Christian Britain could offer leadership to the globe’. Writing about Baptist missionaries in colonial Jamaica, Catherine Hall observed that there was a strong rationale for alliance between evangelicals and their sympathisers in colonial administration: ‘The success of the colonizers

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depended on the creation of new subjects, colonized men and women who internalised particular relations of power’.5 Missionaries sought access and support, while secular officials pursued order and profit: ‘Savages [were] dangerous neighbours and unprofitable customers’.6 Widespread support for humanitarian ideas was promoted through a growing network of printed publications such as The Church Missionary Recorder, The Missionary Register and The Baptist Recorder. They stoked a prurient fascination in the ‘barbarism’ of other peoples, with tales of cannibalism, depraved sexuality and general savagery. A key feature of the global expansion of missionary practice became its effort to expand, ‘into areas of social and family life which had previously been policed by tribal elders and custom, rather than fixed religious codes’.7 This meant the extensive regulation of indigenous life; not only did imperialists wish to dominate more territory, but also more parts of the human experience. Humanitarians promoted a universal framework of principle in which slavery was unacceptable. But emancipation was understood as the liberation of God’s children and was, ‘linked in the missionary mind with conversion’. Their doctrine assumed a universal human brotherhood in Christ, the species united in belief. For both, the logic of emancipation made it, ‘no less incumbent on them to befriend other victims of colonising enterprise who, though not actually slaves, were exposed to treatment as bad as the state of slavery involved’. At the same time, a series of congresses centralised the various Protestant sects, creating ‘worldwide churches with similar organization and doctrine for the first time’.8 The centre of these cultural and intellectual initiatives was, of course, London. It was there that the momentum of humanitarianism for political change converged in the establishment of the (British and Foreign Anti-Slavery and) Aborigines Protection Society (APS), which, ‘by a true apostolical succession, is the inheritor of the spirit of Wilberforce’.9 It is a melancholy fact first that the intercourse of Europeans with the uncivilized Aboriginal Tribes has, in almost all cases, been characterised by injustice on the one side, and suffering on the other. By fraud and violence, Europeans have usurped immense tracts of native territory, paying no regard to the rights of the inhabitants … It is, however, satisfactory that the desire to improve the religious, moral and political condition of mankind, keeps pace with the increasing intellectual freedom of our native country. We, as a nation, have not only sought to loosen the mental bondage

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of our own countrymen, by the establishment of schools and the removal of many barriers to religious and intellectual improvement, but we have struggled to establish the liberties of men in our colonial possessions.10 The humanitarians set themselves three tasks: mounting a publicity campaign; engaging with political institutions; and gathering information, through an ‘extensive correspondence at home and abroad’. Knowledge was crucial: existing information about indigenous peoples was limited to: … the imperfect notices of travellers, who, with numerous admirable exceptions, have devoted so little attention to the subject, or have been so much biassed by prejudice, as to forbid full dependence on their opinions.11 The esteem and influence of its founding members meant that the society could cultivate and draw on a network of interlocutors in the colonies. As Reynolds found, the network in Australia included significant figures in the military like Governor Arthur Phillip’s first lieutenant, William Dawes, members of the establishment like the South Australian booster EG Wakefield, as well as expected links with missionaries like Lancelot Threlkeld and James Backhouse.12 Abolitionists had pioneered the use of new media to disseminate their arguments and to cultivate a broader sense of ‘the public’. Evangelists thus knew that the control and distribution of good information and ‘authentic’ facts was essential to extend humanitarian thinking into the colonies. Moreover, cultivating a ‘missionary public’ provided a social base for funding a rapid expansion of missionary activity.13 The APS were prolific pamphleteers and the organisation’s regular journal offered a broad survey of colonial conditions. From its inception, the society was engaged in formal politics. Its driving force was TH Buxton, a major parliamentary figure behind the Great Reform Bill of 1832, the Emancipation Act of 1833 and subsequent prohibitions on indentured labour. Buxton and his colleagues agitated for government action and in 1835 a select committee of the House of Commons was instructed: … to consider what measures ought to be adopted with regard to the native inhabitants of countries where British settlements are made, and to the neighbouring tribes, in order to secure to them the due observance of justice and the protection of their rights, to promote the spread of civilisation among them, and to lead to the peaceful and voluntary reception of the Christian religion.

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In June 1837, the select committee reported, setting out a principled approach to settlement in which the civil rights and title of indigenous peoples were acknowledged and respected. After the report, the APS was formally established and quickly mobilised to promote the recommendations. They soon adopted a view of themselves as a kind of adjunct foreign service, ‘which every Colonial Minister who is seriously bent on discharging the duties of his office is glad to call to his aid; on whose intelligence he relies, and on whose co-operation he trusts’.14 Through the 1840s, the APS drafted colonial policy on indigenous questions. In its Outline of a system of legislation …, the society set out general principles and specific entitlements: indefeasible rights of indigenous peoples should be recognised, including their absolute rights of sovereignty; land transactions must be regulated and consensual; indigenous rights to personal liberty, to property and to life must all be protected; a system of reserves should be created; minor offences were to be dealt with by customary law; natives would be trained as police; there would be restrictions on native labour and apprenticeship; mixed juries were required in cases involving deaths of Aborigines; Aborigines must have a right of appeal to the Privy Council; and moral and intellectual schooling and physical education should be made available. Later, the society contemplated a land fund of 15 per cent of the ‘yearly produce of sales’ of land to be apportioned to Aborigines.15 Clearly, the APS had a keen sense of its own importance at the intersection of imperial and colonial politics. It was prepared to act as a kind of proto-fiduciary and felt it could counter colonial domination of indigenous peoples through a superior understanding of metropolitan political culture and practices. The society’s motivations were moral in ways that it assumed were consonant with the fundamental goals of imperialism. As we will see, the imperial dimension of humanitarianism had some success in setting the parameters of colonial affairs, at least in the middle of the 19th century. Not surprisingly, interference from London into the political affairs of colonies was unwelcome. Policies that would restrain colonists’ capacity to control lands were deeply resented. That this was also done on behalf of those considered beneath humanity must also have been very confusing to people who had journeyed or been transported precisely to rehabilitate and extend the moral and territorial dominance of the British. The industrial logic of pastoralism was for maximal expansion, with disdain for Aboriginal concerns and the costs they might impose. The humanitarian impulse was moral, but included rational arguments about whether physical force could produce an appreciation of British principles of law and justice in the minds of indigenous peoples.

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However, because they saw colonisation as inevitable, humanitarianism appeared to be a contradiction. A frequent rejoinder to humanitarian-inclined colonists was that they should up and leave back to Britain in order to keep true to their principles: for one correspondent it was, ‘just as arbitrary and high handed’ to create reserves as to shoot all Aborigines dead.16 However, critics of colonial practices were able to persuade imperial authorities to limit devolution to colonial authorities in the case of Queensland’s desired annexation of New Guinea in the 1880s and the initial framing of the Western Australian Constitution in the 1890s. However, their strongest period was in the mid-19th century. In the 1830s, abolitionists and their allies in parliament took over the administration of British colonies. Reformers, including Sir George Grey and Lord Glenelg, began instructing officials in the colonies to proceed on a new basis. This was clearly visible in the directions given by Glenelg to Robert Torrens, the Chairman of the South Australian Commission, to institute a system of protection of Aborigines and payment for their lands.17 Though these new dispensations were often ignored at the colonial level, there was briefly a political will for change. A second select committee considered the actual practices of settlement that had taken place in South Australia. In 1841, it recommended the creation of a system of reserves across south-eastern Australia in what Henry Reynolds has described as ‘a clear recognition of native title’.18

Missions, reserves and political activism For humanitarians, reserves meant that the moral imperative was always close at hand and enabled total intervention in its service. Historian Bain Attwood studied the initial response of Aboriginal survivors to the first wave of European settlement in the south-east of Australia and suggested that, after the periods of sustained frontier violence and the spread of epidemics, Aborigines regrouped on small reserves run by missionaries because they were interested in accessing the knowledge and resources of the newcomers, not least so their children could be educated, ‘one of the principal sources of agency and power in the white man’s society’.19 However, in the evangelical formulation, social benefits were a function of moral and spiritual improvement. For many, if not most, Aboriginal people, missions were invasive and destructive, where classical indigenous life was banished in the attempt to normalise tribal people, ‘bringing Truth to those living in darkness’. Missions in Australia were part of a globally networked moral imperialism, through which ideas circulated about how best to bring heathens to

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God and savages to civilisation. Attwood’s close observation of one Moravian mission in Victoria, called Ramahyuck, revealed the concerted and all-encompassing effort by missionaries, ‘to change the indigenes in spatial and temporal terms’. The physical design and management of missions in the mid to late 19th century reflected models that circulated along the religious and intellectual networks of the imperial world, building upon rational and utilitarian conventions of the period. Boundaries and building design attempted to enforce European notions of individuality, gender and family through constant oversight; rigid routines of schooling and labour sought to instil regularity and responsibility.20 Yet, mission doctrine did imply a different account of power to that which dominated settlement: By placing the central emphasis upon the relationship of the individual and God, mediated through Christ’s atoning act, evangelicals relocated power away from visible hierarchies to the inner realm, in which the all-important question involved not status, rank or obligation to one’s superiors but the responsibility of the individual for cultivating the moral character and freedom of the conscience and will.21 Attwood saw three spurs to politicisation: first, Christianity relied on an inclusive concept of the universal brotherhood of Christ. Secondly, it posited Christ as a higher authority, under whom colonists and indigenous people were equals. Finally, it offered a millenarian deliverance from the injustice of the present. Writing about New Zealand, scholar Lyndsay Head suggested that indigenous understandings of British law were facilitated by Christianity: ‘How were Maori to trust? The answer was, through belief in the law. Understood as the arbiter of a universal civilisation, God was its author, the Bible its template’.22 Certainly, indigenous individuals took solace from their knowledge of scripture. Mona Burton, a self-described ‘full blood’, gently encouraged white people to read: … the second book of Corinthians, the tenth chapter and the seventh verse which says: ‘Do ye look on things after the outward appearance? If any man trust in himself that he is Christ’s let him of himself think this again, that, as he is Christ’s even so are we Christ’s’.23 In later years, the activism of a great number of indigenous leaders was influenced by their Christianity: Doug Nicholls, Don Brady and Pat Dodson are among the better known.

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A further long-term effect of the reserves policy was to create a firm conviction among indigenous peoples across south-eastern Australia that they had entered into a direct relationship with the Crown. Anthropologist Diane Barwick showed how this belief originated among the Kulin nation in Victoria, at least from the time they began occupying their reserve. At a meeting with the Governor of Victoria in 1863, several Kulin men: … presented the Governor with an address to the Queen in both Kulin and English, pledged to become her loyal subjects, and presented gifts for her and her children – a large possum rug, a crocheted collar and a ‘number of spears, a wommera, shield and waddy’.24 Several months later, the Governor gazetted the Kulin land, creating a temporary reserve, and the Queen’s secretary sent word of her ‘satisfaction’ about the Kulin’s statements of loyalty.25 The sense of honour and reciprocity the Kulin felt persisted, and was soon shared by many Aboriginal communities. Belief in a connection to the monarch was even promoted by some whites, such as Moravian missionary Friedrich Hagenauer, who urged young Aboriginal couples to marry by suggesting that Queen Victoria had requested the union.26 We can see the durability and importance that indigenous peoples placed on this ‘imperial relationship’ by examining the long history of petitions to the Crown.27 On 17 February 1846, the inhabitants of Flinders Island, off the coast of Tasmania, sent a letter to Queen Victoria. Flinders Island was not the traditional home of these people, but a reserve granted to those who had survived decades of concerted violence and dispossession on Van Diemen’s Land. The sanctuary, called Wybalenna, was created as a compromise and an inducement for those remaining Aborigines to abandon the mainland. Once they agreed to be removed from the colonists’ preferred lands, they found themselves living in a desperate and oppressive environment. The petitioners stressed their relationship with the Crown: ‘we Your Majesty’s Petitioners are your free Children that we were not taken prisoners but freely gave up our country’. They went on to detail their circumstances, describing in particular the violence and impoverishment. They also requested to be liberated from the supervision of one Dr Jeanneret: ‘we humbly pray Your Majesty the Queen will hear our prayer & not let Dr Jeanneret any more come to Flinders Island’.28 From the mainland, petitions were sent by the Moira and Ulupna people to the Governor of New South Wales in 1881, which resulted in the estab-

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lishment of the Cumeragunja reserve, followed in 1887 by the ‘Maloga petition’, a more specific request for land by the Yorta Yorta, who requested that the Governor act in accordance with the ‘wishes of Her Most Gracious Majesty Queen Victoria’.29 The assumption of an imperial relationship continued to be important into the 20th century. In the early 1920s, the Australian Aboriginal Progressive Association (AAPA) petitioned George V. In June 1926, an Aboriginal woman named Jane Duren sent a letter to the King, registering her concern over the imminent alienation of lands reserved for Aborigines.30 Another Aboriginal leader, King Burraga, also petitioned the King in 1933, seeking the ‘restoration of all our rights which had been given to us in the [18]90s during the reign of our Good old Queen Her Majesty Victoria’.31 When a group of activists visited Aboriginal reserves in 1937 to encourage support for a coordinated campaign on land, they found a strong expectation that the proposed campaign would look for the documents pertaining to Queen Victoria’s grants of land given to their grandparents nearly 70 years before. This was again confirmed when another group of activists travelled to reserves in the early 1970s to find out whether ‘grassroots’ communities supported the aims of the Aboriginal Tent Embassy. Oral historian Peter Read found similar evidence, but that crucial documents ‘went astray’ before they could be used to prove the imperial undertaking.32 Several historians have considered William Cooper’s petition to the King, the text of which was first published in the Melbourne Herald in 1933. Cooper, the 70-year-old secretary of the Australian Aborigines’ League (AAL), had first taken a petitionary approach in 1887, when he participated in the appeal to the Governor of New South Wales for land justice for Aborigines at Cumeragunja reserve in southern New South Wales. Like all the Aboriginal petitioners before him, Cooper felt strongly that the Crown had a special role in the case of Aborigines and that this responsibility was manifest in repeated earlier instructions from the metropole regarding new land acquisitions in the colony. Cooper also knew of the numerous petitions of Maori during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, including that they had travelled to London to make their appeal in the presence of Queen Victoria.33 His text emphasised a direct relationship with the monarch: PETITION of the Aboriginal Inhabitants of Australia to His Majesty, King George VI, by the Grace of God, of Great Britain, Ireland, and British Dominions beyond the seas, King; Defender of the Faith, Emperor of India … TO THE KING’S MOST EXCELLENT MAJESTY, IN COUNCIL, THE

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HUMBLE PETITION of the undersigned Aboriginal inhabitants of the Continent of Australia … YOUR PETITIONERS humbly pray that Your Majesty will intervene on our behalf, and, through the instrument of Your Majesty’s Governments in the Commonwealth of Australia – will prevent the extinction of the Aboriginal race and give better conditions for all …34 During a delegation to visit the Commonwealth Minister of the Interior in 1935 seeking support for the petition, Cooper set out his views of Imperial responsibilities to Aborigines more thoroughly: Believing the Empire to stand for justice, order, freedom and good Government we pledge ourselves as citizens of the British Commonwealth of Australia to maintain the heritage handed down to us by the Creator which we believe to be true, and we, therefore, with confidence, desire moderation and forbearance to be exercised by all classes in their intercourse with native inhabitants, and that they will omit no opportunity of assisting to fulfil His Majesty’s most gracious and benevolent intention to them by promoting advancement in civilization under the blessing of Divine Providence.35 On 26 October 1937, Cooper sent the petition to Prime Minister Joseph Lyons and urged him to forward it to the King. Cooper covered the petition with a letter in which he attempted to pre-empt the expected line of rejection – that the federal government had no jurisdiction on Aboriginal affairs – noting that: His Majesty is King of Australia, and on this account, the State [government] control of aborigines should not prevent consideration being given on a national basis … since our petition is to the King of Australia, it should not be possible for divided control hurting us in this instance.36 However, Canberra was as far as Cooper’s petition was to get. The federal Cabinet meeting of 7 February 1938 discussed the petition but refused to forward it on the grounds that the Commonwealth had no constitutional power to pass legislation creating special Aboriginal parliamentary representation.37 Plainly, Cooper misunderstood the reality of power as it was distributed between Britain and its former colonies (then Dominions) in the Commonwealth.38 Yet, like the other petitioners from south-east

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Australia in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Cooper’s campaign, in its language and goals as well as the manner in which he proceeded, appealed to imperial morality. The problem he presented was that whites either did not realise that they were not living up to their prior commitments and their espoused principles, or that they cared not to. In these moments, we see indigenous political actors attempting to claim for themselves the status enjoyed by white subjects: a set of universal obligations and responsibilities granted and overseen by an imperial authority. Their claims for specific civil entitlements and social justice (including land) showed that they sought inclusion as full human subjects in an existing normative order with a monarch at its apex. Bain Attwood has offered an overview of the politicising effects of humanitarianism by examining the struggles of William Cooper: It is no coincidence that one of the first Aboriginal political organisations on a colonial or state level was led by a man who had lived on all these missions … solidarity also grew among Aborigines as they closed ranks to fight the Board’s decision to close some of the missions and remove them from their homes … [this] served in one way or another to heighten their consciousness of themselves as Aborigines: for those who were forced away from the missions their sense of difference and oppression were sharpened, while for others the battle to retain their homes and the eventual removal of many … had the effect of creating more of a common experience and shared knowledge among Aborigines, once their loyalties and identification with the different missions had lessened … [this] came to form an important element of Aborigines’ historical consciousness, serving as folklore or myth in that it constituted an understanding and an explanation of their present.39 Conducted by the residents of reserves, indigenous politics became more audible to whites. Historian Heather Goodall argued that indigenous rights claims were a constant feature of the period, yet that these demonstrated an awareness that such rights now existed in a framework of settlement that involved Europeans. Consequently, Aborigines saw reserves not simply as a social and economic base, but as recognition of their prior title.40 In this way, not only did the humanitarians’ reserves policy present a profound challenge to the colonial imperative to subdue land and make it productive, it also provided a mode and rationale for indigenous

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people to contemplate political engagement with colonists. By the end of the century, it was clear that this type of universalism was almost entirely obscured by the ‘cynicism of empire’ and the coagulation of a racial science.41 With the exception of the colonial reserves policy and the other few examples mentioned here, it was perhaps naïve of indigenous peoples to invest so heavily in the idea of a ‘good empire’ looking out for their interests. The rising confidence and desire of settlers to conduct their own affairs without interference pushed the first phase of indigenous transnationalism into irrelevance. However, the arrival of Christianity and its imposition on indigenous peoples had observable impacts on indigenous politics. For some Aborigines, Christianity offered doctrinal resources that consoled them and exposed the hypocrisy of settlers. Missions and reserves were an explicit challenge to colonists, contradicting their unfettered right of expansion. These spaces allowed communities to regroup and develop new and broader identifications, including the strongly held view of a direct relationship to the Crown; and they offered the possibility of more effective participation in the settler polity by expanding indigenous literacy.

‘Thank Christ for the commos!’ 42 The desire of colonists for nationhood and their own sources of morality meant that indigenous peoples became almost invisible, a disinterest and neglect ‘sustained by the assumption that the Aborigines were a dying race’.43 No body of principle stood to offset the logic of colonialism as it morphed into Australian nationalism. Yet, the global rise of an organised Left and its spread to Australia offered a new, universal explanation for social and economic divisions in capitalist society. Marxist thought assumed that racial or ethnic divisions were produced by the historic struggle over the means of production; chauvinism would simply recede as class consciousness was attained. Australian historian Stuart Macintyre wrote of an almost spiritual bond that communism encouraged between workers of all colours, ‘a cult of proletarian virtue … the clear unity of interest of those who lived by the sale of their labour’.44 The persistence of racial or ethnic divisions indicated ongoing state and ruling-class manipulation; racism was simply ‘false consciousness’.45 The Communist Party of Australia (CPA) was established in 1920 and quickly affiliated to the Communist International (Comintern). The aim of the international body was to defeat the racism that was dividing and distracting movements of working peoples. Its organisers promoted regional solidarity and were soon discussing a Pan-Pacific Trade Union. Personal connections formed between Australian commu-

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nists, such as Esmonde Higgins and Norm Jeffrey, and left-wing representatives of colonial independence movements. The regional group was finally set up at a 1927 meeting in China and enjoyed enthusiastic backing from Moscow. At the Second Pan-Pacific Trade Union Conference in 1929, the Australian delegation was encouraged to rally under the slogan, ‘Not race war, but class war’. Such networks provided the space to openly contest the racism and chauvinism of Australia’s history of settlement, this time in more strident terms than humanitarians had used. Communists were the first transnational activists able to see colonialism as a necessarily racist and destructive experience for indigenous people.46 In 1928 the Comintern issued a document called, ‘Theses on the National Question’, which began to theorise a general approach to the issues of colonial peoples. Boughton points out that its provenance was in the activism of African Americans within the American Communist party: ‘The new line recognised Blacks’ interests as a national group, distinct from their interests as part of the working class’. With it, Australian communists were able to translate their critique of imperialism into a local praxis: … the Party must advance the principle of proletarian transnationalism … The attempts to rouse a pogrom spirit against the aboriginals which have become more pronounced and open in the course of the last year must be laid bare.47 The 1931 policy document they produced, ‘Struggle against slavery’, depicted Aborigines as ‘the slaves of slaves’. It was an attempt to show the extremity of indigenous degradation produced by capitalism, compounding the original injustice of dispossession. Macintyre highlighted the two main ideas: the first was ‘emancipatory’, to extend full equality to indigenous people; the second was for ‘Aboriginal autonomy’, enabled by land rights, social services and cultural recognition.48 Part of the CPA platform was also to abolish the Protection Boards, which were ‘capitalism’s slave recruiting agencies and terror organisations’.49 In 1937, together with others in the left, communists within the NSW Trades and Labour Council developed the policy further, calling for full equality, the end of indentured labour and its equivalents, social security access, full indigenous representation on Protection Boards or their abolition, closure of borstals and missions, the setting aside of lands for Aboriginal use and sustenance, non-discrimination in education, and the establishment of separate health services to cater to the specific needs of indigenous peoples. This was a comprehensive

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new position in indigenous affairs, articulating a vision of Aborigines and Islanders as workers and citizens and providing hints of the future recognition of the distinctiveness of indigenous peoples as well. Later thinkers went much further, seeing a convergence between the ideals of communism and the traditional commitments of indigenous peoples. Describing a 1936 strike among indigenous pearling luggers in the Torres Strait, anthropologist Nonie Sharp saw in the recollections of the participants the realisation that, ‘there was a continuity between the Islanders’ conception of “sharing” and the ideals of communism’.50 Cherokee scholar Ward Churchill has doubted the existence of a shared, bucolic indigenous-Communist vision. The central concept of Marxist economic theory, the labour theory of value, represents, ‘the underpinning of a perspective which is about as contrary to the indigenous worldview as it is possible to define’. The theory maintained that only through the application of human labour can economic value be created. In this, Karl Marx concurred with John Locke and those imperial planners, who denied notions of indigenous property. Moreover, the centrality of the struggle over the means of production assumed a linear history that progressed from primitive to industrial forms of economy and social relations. Marx’s universal theory drew only on European history, and in so doing, discounted the lived commitments of indigenous communities as archaic spiritualism. Socialism was as much a product of the Enlightenment as capitalism in its imperialist or colonial modes, by placing human agency at the centre of all that was meaningful.51 Stuart Macintyre’s history of communism in Australia documented this theoretical blindness, arguing that communists ‘seldom [recognised] their divergence’ from actual indigenous claims.52 However, there was much else that communists in the interwar period could and did do. Many undertook their activities in ways that disrupted colonial orthodoxies and created space within white institutions that made new forms of indigenous politicisation visible. The 1920s saw significant indigenous urbanisation, many leaving missions and reserves under the twin pressures of ongoing appropriations of land and the increasingly harsh regimes of ‘protection’. Heather Goodall wrote that the Depression brought about major shifts in value and orientation: In Australia these years marked the bitter acceptance that the simple agrarian myth had failed. The droughts of the 1920s showed how fragile the land of Australia was; overstocked and overploughed, the soil just blew away … it

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became difficult to avoid the conclusion that no small-scale farm could ever succeed in Australia simply by the honest labour of the farmer and his family. While Aboriginal pastoral workers could sometimes stay on the land, urban workers suffered great hardship, ‘the last hired and the first fired’, a situation compounded by bureaucratic discrimination where unemployment relief was refused to Aborigines. That the suffering of urban Aborigines might be recognised by working-class whites suggested the possibility of empathy, but before solidarity could be felt, some basic assumptions had to be challenged.53 There was always racism in the Australian labour movement because of fears that employers would use migrants or Aborigines to drive down wages and conditions. However, historian Andrew Markus has argued that the ‘labour exclusion’ thesis – unionists actively excluding indigenous people from the labour force in order to create jobs for whites and maintain wages – was only accurate for Western Australia and not so for the eastern states.54 Moreover, urban indigenous CPA members were not always identified as Aboriginal. Macintyre has argued that there was no widespread desire to identify as such because Aboriginality was something that by then was thought only to exist away from south-east Australia, ‘in the rural hinterland and the far north of the country’. Goodall and Reynolds have shown that Aboriginal people in urban Australia had good reasons not to identify as Aboriginal or to assert distinctive rights in an era when racial science and bureaucratic supervision were so dominant.55 Communists also expanded the activist repertoire. Government hostility from the 1920s, as well as the CPA’s limited success in bringing large sections of the labour movement into a revolutionary orbit, saw a period where communism in Australia reached out, in its ‘united front’ and ‘popular front’ phases. In 1927, an ‘agitprop’ department was formed to coordinate the party’s activities. The ‘united front’ meant that the whole labour movement should be mobilised behind the broad goals of ‘peace, freedom, emancipation of the oppressed and enrichment of human life’. The term ‘popular front’ extended the struggle to other sections of society, such as farmers and the middle class.56 In practice this meant a proliferation of different and overlapping organisations. Markus described a letter-writing campaign to protest the hanging of Aboriginal men in the Northern Territory in 1934: Of 147 letters received 35 letters were sent by individuals and 112 by organisations. Of the letters from organisations 25 were from church bodies; 13 from organisations

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especially concerned with the welfare of Aborigines, the most prominent being the Association for the Protection of Native Races … 10 from the Australian Labor Party; 9 from trade union branches; 45 from communist front organisations or organisations in which communists were prominent, such as the International Labor Defence, the Council Against War and the Workers’ International Relief, with branches of the Unemployed Workers’ Movement and other unemployed organisations being most prominent. These groups, Markus argued, were ‘setting limits beyond which government agencies could not go’.57 While expanding the sources of pressure on government authorities, the ‘front’ period produced few strong organisational links between the left and Aboriginal activists, who were rising rapidly in number, though there were often ‘close personal connections’ such as those between the CPA and the AAL. Markus argues that from 1928 individual communists exposed discrimination within trade unions and assisted Aborigines facing criminal charges.58 Though Goodall has described the strategy of the CPA, in New South Wales at least, as being to wait for indigenous leaders to seek their assistance, ‘CPA ideas were, however, very important in formulating white motions and demands which endorsed the Aboriginal activists’ campaign in 1937 and 1938’.59 More durable connections were made by the growing tendency of Aboriginal workers to go on strike. Markus argued that indigenous use of ‘the methods of the European unionist’ enabled stronger identifications with white workers. 60 For example, during the Cumeragunja strike of 1939, where residents of the reserve engaged in civil disobedience, white support came chiefly from left-wing unions such as the Australian Railways Union.61 However, the best documented of the early strike actions is that of the Pindan mob, which took place in the Pilbara in the 1940s and built on long traditions of resistance in that region. After the arrest of two Aboriginal leaders, Clancy McKenna and Dooley Bin Bin, along with the white CPA member Don McLeod, for specious offences under the Native Administration Act, a Committee for the Defence of Native Rights formed in Perth, which thought to contact the World Federation of Trade Unions and lodge an appeal with the UN. The parties struck a deal to increase wages and conditions, but many Aborigines refused to co-operate.62 The strikers, together with McLeod, established a new community, successfully diversifying into various mining activities, and by 1951 owning five pastoral properties,

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with one housing a school, hospital and aged-care facility. The project was frequently visited by white leftists and writers, and at one point the staff included 16 whites, all of whom ‘envisaged the scheme in either Socialist or Communist terms’.63 Coalition efforts became more common as unions in rural Australia realised the value of indigenous membership, with the North Australian Workers’ Union (NAWU) allowing membership in 1948 and campaigning for equal wages thereafter. In defence of Aboriginal men who had gone on strike and been arbitrarily incarcerated, the union conducted a campaign that included an appeal to the UN to examine Australia’s observance of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights.64 Aboriginal strikes and walk-offs became more frequent, strengthening the organisational links and solidarity between the left and indigenous people. These actions became a rallying point for a burgeoning sense of Aboriginal rights in the 1960s, especially in urban Australia. The personal experiences of working in a militant industrial environment were also important. One Aboriginal leader who found new ways to politicise his struggle was Fred Maynard. Maynard was a Koori from the Hunter River region, whose life reflected the dispossession and uncertain poverty of many Aborigines in New South Wales at the time. His first formal political activity came as a member and organiser in the Waterside Workers’ Union during the First World War.65 Yet, historian John Maynard (Fred Maynard’s grandson) has recently shown that Fred Maynard knew about the Coloured Progressive Association, a group of seamen, predominantly of African and Caribbean origin. Through these connections, Fred Maynard and other Aboriginal activists ‘fostered a deep knowledge of international events and black issues which they later moulded to their own political directives’. The organisation they founded, the AAPA, was profoundly shaped by Marcus Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), adopting its goal of ‘spiritual, political, industrial and social improvement’ and its motto, ‘One God! One Aim! One Destiny!’ Garvey encouraged black seamen in particular to spread his ideas where they travelled.66 John Maynard argued that, ‘Aboriginal leaders unpacked the political agenda and demands of black Americans and reformulated them to their own experiences, needs and ideals’. The AAPA’s two main goals were to end the practice of child removal (then accelerating rapidly) and to secure for Aboriginal families enough land to enable them to become self-sufficient.67 Though clearly not reducible to communist or even broad left thinking, the brief mobilisation of the AAPA and their undoubted debt to the UNIA, suggests that the waterfront was a place where the ideas

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of various groups were able to circulate freely in the highly politicised milieu of working-class politics. The AAPA was formed by an indigenous leadership who were adept in unionist politics and who returned to that when their organisation dissolved.68 A major figure in the post-war Aboriginal movement was Joe McGinness, who developed his political consciousness inside the labour movement from the late 1940s: Finally, I got a job on the wharf on Thursday Island. Those who worked on the wharf, whether they were members of the union or not, were paid the going rate because they were still protected by the union. This was a salutary lesson as it taught me the virtues of organised labour, especially when I compared my income with the low wages received by the Islanders working under the Department of Native Affairs. The workers associated with a union could take their problems to the union, others outside the union could complain in vain … From this experience I also became more aware and conscious of the deplorable working conditions of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island workers. McGinness soon joined the Waterside Workers’ Federation (formerly Union) and was closely involved in its activities until 1970, initially as a job delegate and eventually as an executive committee member in the Cairns branch. It was among a network of indigenous unionists in the Trades and Labour Council in Cairns that McGinness and others established the Cairns Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders Advancement League in 1958, with a civil rights agenda based on equal wages and social justice.69 His group soon merged with other civil rights groups elsewhere in Australia to form the Federal Council for the Advancement of Aborigines (FCAA, later the Federal Council for the Advancement of Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders, FCAATSI), of which McGinness was to become President. Those on the left used the Aboriginal problem to embarrass whenever possible the Australian Government and the capitalist former colonies of Britain. For some, this was a way to counter criticism of the Soviet Union.70 However, many people in this movement were deeply concerned about the way that the imperatives of colonialism and capitalism hit indigenous peoples particularly hard, reproducing earlier injustices. They went on to develop quite new visions of indigenous life within Australia, framed by principles of equality and with an embryonic understanding of indigenous difference.

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Dominion feminism A third mode of non-indigenous transnationalism was conducted by Australian feminists, whose activism shows the intersection of transnational activism and progressive nationalism. In recent years, Australian historians have examined closely the contributions of a group of articulate and engaged women between the wars. Fiona Paisley has written of ‘dominion nationalism’, in which the former colonies sought to assume greater autonomy within the fixed sphere of influence, assistance and protection offered by the Commonwealth. For first wave feminists, this was an excellent new political space in which to operate. Between 8000 and 10 000 women affiliated to an organisation called the British Commonwealth League (BCL), from 1925 a sub-group of the International Women’s Suffrage Alliance.71 White women felt that the responsibility of feminists within the Commonwealth was to ensure the uplift of indigenous women and families; as Australia emerged into independence, so too would women demonstrate their contribution by enabling indigenous peoples to reach a dignified and civilised status within the modern nation. Feminists were: … deliberately cultivating this civilising responsibility as their own modern womanly burden because it confirmed an emancipated role for them in the imperial nation state. From their point of view empire was an integral and enabling part of the woman question.72 Marilyn Lake noted that this ‘relied on a primitivist discourse that was fundamental in constituting the feminist identity as inherently imperialistic’. Indeed, their language adopted the racist tropes of the era, ‘miscegenation’, ‘half-castes’ and ‘racial fitness’. Existing practices and policies implied the moral degradation of both white and black.73 Much of the task that these feminists set themselves was educational: the BCL saw its role as educating all women in the Commonwealth about the prerogatives of citizenship, a stimulus to comparison and standardsetting. In the context of Australia, this meant the duty of feminists was to explain to the rest of white Australia what was taking place, why it was unjust and what Aborigines really needed. But they also tried to intervene on policy matters. As early as the First World War, feminists advocated a special role for white women in arrangements for the protection of Aboriginal women and children. Paisley called this ‘a practical investment in professional employment’.74 Like the earlier critics of colonialism, however, feminists’ ‘normality’ was questioned; some were depicted as hopeless idealists or as mentally ill.75

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In 1934, several feminists in Western Australia came into direct conflict with the colonial administration. A Royal Commission had been set up to, ‘Investigate, report, and advise upon matters in relation to the condition and treatment of Aborigines’. This was the result of significant adverse attention that WA policy had attracted, especially in the international media. Paisley argued that the Commissioner was forced to accept many of the issues that the feminists put before him, agreeing that conditions in one institution at Moore River were not acceptable, medical care inadequate and the role of police in the policy was inappropriate. He rejected the idea of ‘breeding out’ Aboriginality and recommended the abolition of child removal.76 Yet, actual connections between white feminists and Aboriginal women, their communities or organisations were scant. Heather Goodall noted the role of one white feminist, Mary Bennett, in supporting the 1938 Day of Mourning campaign, but admitted that this was not common. Paisley concluded that Australian feminists were: … increasingly out of step not only with Aboriginal policy, but with an emerging Aboriginal political voice … [there is] no evidence that … Aboriginal organisations [in the 1930s] were interested in the campaigns that pro-indigenous white women had undertaken, apparently on their behalf, over the previous two decades. Moreover, she acknowledged that female Aboriginal activists, such as Pearl Gibbs, would not have appreciated being portrayed as the helpless and wretched stereotype that feminists were attempting to uplift.77 In a sketched ‘history of contact’ between white and indigenous feminists, Aboriginal writer Jackie Huggins does not even mention the interwar period at all, beginning in the 1950s with the establishment of FCAATSI and the One People of Australia League (OPAL).78 Unlike missionaries or socialists, who had an explicit doctrinal interest in converting and organising indigenous people, feminists were firmly middle-class: Each was financially independent, either widowed or supported by a husband, and had no restricting family demands … All were members of a generation and a class of women who frequently travelled within the British Commonwealth, mostly to England, for family, leisure and business, as well as political purposes.

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The transnational space of Empire and Commonwealth gave these activists a ‘vital context’ for their work on indigenous issues, but did not oblige them to engage the subjects of their campaigns.79 Yet, without question, transnational feminists of the 1920s and 1930s saw an indigenous future beyond extinction.80 Recently, historians have debated the contributions of this period of feminism to the movement for Aboriginal rights as a whole. There may be consensus that discursive effects were most significant: Paisley described the period as: … an opportunity to read national history, including national feminist history, from beyond its boundaries, and to see how a group of women activists did so themselves as self-consciously women of Australia, overseas.81 As we will see in chapter 3, the attempt to include questions regarding indigenous people within the aegis of the post-Second World War human rights system involved many who had held these prior political convictions, especially Australian women.

Conclusion These attempts to construct alternative accounts of a universal ideology that included indigenous peoples offer us much to think about. It is unquestionably true that even the most ‘enlightened’ interventions described above were disconnected from classical indigenous cultures and usually destructive of them. Yet, there clearly were controversies among colonists about how to deal with the question of the Aborigines. Such moments invite us to think about the ways that those who colonised Australia were actually able to conceive of indigenous peoples and to construct a place for them in their own designs for a modern nation. Each of these movements in Australian history introduced distinctive features into the broad discussion that Australians now have about indigenous peoples. Though religious humanism, socialism and feminism are manifest very differently in contemporary Australia (and socialism has perhaps vanished entirely), heirs to these movements are certainly involved in campaigns for reconciliation, social justice and indigenous rights. These legacies also help shape the way that non-indigenous Australia conceives and discusses the indigenous predicament, providing some with moral resources to engage with indigenous peoples’ demands, and enabling others to dismiss activism as unrealistic, uninformed or as mad. This chapter has offered a broad reading of a great deal of historical material. There appear to be three ways that these examples of non-

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indigenous transnationalism influenced the discussion about indigenous issues and, to a lesser extent, indigenous politicisation. We can highlight these by comparing them in the case of humanitarians and missionaries, communists, and feminists. First, each of these movements understood the indigenous issue within their own universal ideologies – a higher authority or standard against which the reality of colonial and national practices could be judged. In the case of humanitarians and missionaries, the moral dimension of imperialism informed their campaigns for Aboriginal emancipation and ‘civilisation’. Communism and socialism offered a universal response to the racism of colonisation as a central part of the capitalist expansion. Feminists sought gender equality within the hierarchy of a nascent Commonwealth. To varying degrees, indigenous people were encouraged to adopt these frameworks of European ideology. Second, each movement created spaces, networks and institutions through which their ideas moved: the globalised character of Protestantism in the 19th century meant that humanitarian and missionary activity was networked, empirical and comparative. Some missions and reserves were highly politicised, indigenous peoples reorganising themselves and representing their claims to authority in ways that drew on the normative force of Christianity. The Communist International and the organised left also acted as a global network where critiques of colonialism were translated into action. Moreover, left thought created unions and politicised workplaces in which indigenous people made connections and thought differently about their circumstances. For feminists, the international movement for suffrage, with its organisations such as the BCL, clearly helped white women both develop their politics as well as gain a hearing in the local debate. Finally, transnational movements brought some new skills and political tools to indigenous peoples. The social agenda of the mission was to make indigenous people into ‘competent’ modern human beings. Though this involved very extensive abuse and cultural destruction, it did mean that growing numbers of indigenous people were literate, an essential prerequisite of effective political participation in the colonial and national order.82 Petitioning manifested this politics. Later, indigenous peoples adapted the technique of the strike and the walk-off to their specific concerns. Though we can imagine that many indigenous peoples wished that the colonists would leave, they soon understood this was not a realistic expectation of people whose raison d’être was to stay. Consequently, indigenous peoples needed ways by which they could see themselves as part of a co-existent order. The realisation that whites had frame-

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works of principle through which they could mobilise and assert their claims was a part of that process. However, these early movements all had one thing in common: an assumption that the higher authority that each called on was the correct way to address indigenous interests and incorporate indigenous peoples. The success of indigenous claims was then linked to the appeal of that ideology to the colonial/national community as a whole. Nonindigenous transnationalists appealed to principles that would restrain colonial behaviour, but were only successful when international moral norms were enforceable on the colony or nation-state, or at least were thought to be. A more successful transnational politics would unfold against a background of massive geopolitical change shifting Australian perceptions and aspirations. National policies regarding indigenous peoples, part of the old orders of imperialism and colonialism, would be overturned by movements for human rights and decolonisation.

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Chapter three

HUMAN

RIGHTS FOR I N D I G E N O U S AU S T R A L I A N S

Many of those who campaigned on indigenous issues saw that humanitarian and communist commitments could be blended into the new conceptualisation of universal human rights as it took shape in the interwar years and gained strength in the decades after the Second World War. Here the focus is on the development of the ideology of human rights as a form of enlightened imperialism and its placement within international institutions of the League of Nations and the UN. Subsequently, the chapter examines the transnational processes that introduced the philosophy and obligations of human rights into Australian debates. It addresses several core questions: how did an ideology of rights develop near the centre of global power? What international bodies and instruments were established to protect human rights? How and by whom were international norms and obligations translated into the Australian context? And how did these affect Australian campaigns for reform?

From the civilising mission to human rights The most famous ideologue of the civilising mission was probably Rudyard Kipling. His poem ‘The White Man’s Burden’ was written to celebrate the US annexation of the Philippines in 1899: Take up the White Man’s burden Send forth the best ye breed, Go bind your sons to exile To serve your captives’ need; To wait in heavy harness,

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On fluttered folk and wild Your new-caught, sullen peoples, Half-devil and half-child. However, as English historian Edward Gibbon had observed in his classic study The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, nothing was ‘more adverse to nature and reason than to hold in obedience remote countries and foreign nations in opposition to their inclination and interest’.1 For the great historian of imperialism, JA Hobson, this meant that imperialism had to be a transformative ideology, which allowed the natural ambitions of subject peoples to flourish. Of course, subject peoples’ natural ambitions might still need to be defined for them. In 1901, Hobson wrote: … there can be no inherent natural right in a people to refuse that measure of compulsory education which shall raise it from childhood to manhood in the order of nationalities … this process of development may be so conducted as to yield a gain to world-civilization, instead of some terrible débâcle in which revolted slave races may trample down their parasitic and degenerate white masters should be the supreme aim of far-sighted statecraft.2 Socialists like Rosa Luxemburg stressed that the right of self-determination could not be absolute, but was dependent on a group’s capacity to control its resources and reach a point of economic self-sufficiency. Fabians like George Bernard Shaw also thought in terms of the global order: The value of a State to the world lies in the quality of its civilization … the notion that a nation has a right to do what it pleases with its own territory without reference to the interests of the rest of the world is no more tenable from the International Socialist point of view – that is from the point of view of the 20th century – than the notion that a landlord has a right to do what he likes with his estate without reference to the interests of his neighbours.3 By the end of the 19th century, observers had established a distinction between good and bad forms of imperialism. Some would be much better equipped to undertake the civilising mission than others. The Germans were often singled out for their tendency to subordinate the native ‘to the interests of the German on the spot and of Germany at a distance’.4 Hobson argued that ‘interference’ was best conducted by enlightened states with an eye to:

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… the safety and progress of the civilization of the world and not the special interest of the interfering nation … an improvement and elevation of the character of the people brought under this control … [it] must proceed from some organized representation of civilized humanity.5 It was an ideal first attempted in the 19th century. The 1815 Final Act of the Congress of Vienna reflected the agitation of abolitionists and included a condemnation of the slave trade. In 1885, the ‘scramble for Africa’ was streamlined by formal agreements among the European powers. International ‘trusteeship’ was first described in the 1880s, with the creation of the Congo Free State and the General Act of the Berlin Conference of 1885, which entrenched the dual principles of native welfare and free trade; the ‘antithesis’ of economic imperialism.6 Article 6 of the General Act bound imperial powers ‘to care for the improvement of the conditions of the moral and material well-being of the native tribes’ and obliged imperial powers to suppress the trade in slaves, arms and liquor.7 Yet, the reality was that these trust arrangements were a cover for self-interest. JA Hobson referred to one late 19th-century agreement as an ‘impudent act of self-assertion’ and a ‘business deal’. He was critical of the notion of spheres of interest and protectorates, because these were motivated by existing national and imperial interests, not each power’s ‘special competence for the work of civilization’.8 Only a truly international body could overcome self-interest. Hobson wrote of the need for a single body that could both conceive and protect ‘the welfare of humanity regarded as an organic unity’.9 By late in the First World War, such a thing seemed positively desirable and many had turned their attention to setting out principles of this new enlightened practice of intervention and administration. If successful, as South African Prime Minister Jan Smuts pointed out in his influential pamphlet The League of Nations – Practical Suggestions, new states could simply be expected to ‘conform to the new order of ideas’.10 One particularly influential group of scholars and policymakers outlined their idea for a system of ‘mandates’, in the December 1918 issue of their journal Round Table. The purpose of mandates would be to govern those not yet ready to govern themselves, maintain peace and order, allow free trade, prohibit forced labour and the liquor trade, and prevent recruitment of native troops while preparing colonised peoples for their own government.11 Mandates found fertile ground among decision-makers; they were ‘the best method of bringing some material and spiritual light’.12

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In the immediate aftermath of the First World War, the APS sent a delegation to the Commission on Mandates appointed by the Council of the Principal Associated and Allied Powers: ‘to secure an extension of existing beneficent elements in Colonial administration and definitely to eliminate admitted abuses’. The APS was concerned that the British Prime Minister’s promise – to discover what colonised peoples themselves wanted – had not been kept. The Commission on Mandates requested the APS to draw up a model colonial mandate. Their response set out the core responsibilities of the ‘mandatory power’: revenue was to be kept and used locally; all forms of slavery abolished; arms traffic and alcohol regulated; standing armies prohibited; free trade enforced; freedom of conscience and religion protected; health and disease control standards maintained; further alienation of lands restricted; annual reporting required; and formal consultation of the colonised peoples.13 The Manchester Guardian enthused about the proposal, seeing it as confirmation that ‘we shall in the administration of these lands treat the interests of their peoples as, in all sincerity, a trust’.14

Utopian liberalism The Covenant of the League of Nations translated these ideas into institutions. Article 22 of the Covenant set out the new doctrine of enlightened empire: … those colonies and territories … which are inhabited by peoples not yet able to stand by themselves under the strenuous conditions of the modern world … the well-being and development of such peoples form a sacred trust of civilisation … the tutelage of such peoples should be entrusted to advanced nations who by reason of their resources, their experience or their geographical position can best undertake this responsibility.15 Contemporary observers saw this as a form of affirmative action, preparing the weakest for ‘the strenuous conditions of the modern world’.16 In the institution itself, however, the rhetorical goal of building capacity for self-rule was held in check by the geopolitical imperatives of the victors of the First World War. Three types of mandate were created: ‘A’ designated those mandates which would be largely selfruling; ‘B’ designated mandates that the mandatory power would run; ‘C’ designated mandates that were close to the mandatory power and that would be ruled by it as part of its own territory, with some limitations, such as on the sale of alcohol or use of firearms.

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Indeed, Article 22 was the only article of the Covenant not to be written by the League Committee and was written solely by the Supreme Council (the UK, the USA, Italy and France), foreshadowing the partiality that ensued. Moreover, there was no possibility that an international body would actually administer mandates. Instead, ‘the admirable negative qualities’ of international institutions were stressed, with the prevailing view that ‘international government foments intrigues among the governors and faction and disorder among the governed’.17 In practice, European nation-states were free to do as they wished in the two lower categories of mandates.18 Of course, all of this only applied to the former colonies of states that had been defeated in the war and did not apply to British colonies in south Asia, or French colonial holdings in North Africa, for example. Yet, the system set out in 1919 is in some respects still the model of international human rights institutions. A central feature was annual reporting: In every case of mandate, the Mandatory shall render to the Council an annual report in reference to the territory committed to its charge … A permanent Commission shall be constituted to receive and examine the annual reports of the Mandatories and to advise the Council on all matters relating to the observance of the mandates.19 Annual meetings in Geneva were scheduled to discuss progress in the mandated territories.20 Petitions could be made by anyone, even private individuals, and were heard in session by the Commission. Moreover, the effectiveness of the Permanent Mandates Commission was, like latter-day UN bodies, dependent largely on the influence, skill and prestige of the commissioners. Members were independent and appointed by the Council rather than governments. According to one chronicler, it had a growing reputation for fairness and, perhaps with some irony, ‘a record as satisfactory as that of any of the institutions created by the League’.21 Indeed, the great success in 1933 of Iraq’s ‘historic’ transition from category ‘A’ mandate to full membership was proof the mandates system ‘was not, as some had believed, annexation in disguise’.22 The other human rights dimension of the League of Nations era was the system to protect ‘minorities’. It had modest success, but articulated some valuable principles. Basically, the system sought to resolve the transnational and human rights problems of Europe, while everyone else was dealt with via mandates. The problem for the Great Powers was to minimise further acts of self-determination inside Europe

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without creating a ‘second-class citizenship’.23 The 25 minority treaties agreed between 1919 and 1934, largely in Eastern and Central Europe and the Balkans, provided equal recognition to minorities in the areas of language, education, freedom of association and worship, and provision of social welfare. The International Court of Justice also pursued the concerns of minorities during this period, determining in the Minority Schools in Albania case (1935) the rights of Greeks to live in Albania as a racial, linguistic and religious minority.24 Australia was less than enthusiastic about these initiatives on international human rights. The draft of the Covenant of the League of Nations, presented by US President Woodrow Wilson, had included a clause in the Preamble, proposed by Japan, to guarantee equality for ‘all racial and national minorities’ living in state members of the League. It was defeated by the ‘strenuous opposition’ of Australia, joined by New Zealand and the United States, whose national policies all restricted immigration from east Asia. In Australia, this would remain the case for another 50 years.25 The Australian Prime Minister, Billy Hughes, was stridently opposed to mandates and wanted the Peace Conference to allow for the annexation by Australia of the German territories of New Guinea and islands nearby. Wilson was strongly opposed to annexation, pointing out that it would mean the League of Nations was founded on the same appropriations of territory as had characterised the imperial era. Later, Hughes was to blame Wilson’s failure to annex the German islands in 1919 as the cause of war in the Pacific.26 However, several achievements in this era did prepare the ground for later developments affecting the claims to rights of peoples identifying as tribal and indigenous. Of course, the prevailing assumption held by dominion officials had long been that the ‘lesser peoples’ about whom the international community needed to be concerned were the large populations in Asia and Africa, who lived under colonial rule and where whites would never be a majority, rather than the ‘indigenous races of Canada, Australia and New Zealand, [which] are unfortunately, no longer to be considered as part of this problem’.27 Yet, the 1924–26 campaign led by Deskaheh, a Cayuga chief from the Six Nations of the Iroquois in southern Ontario, hinted at a broader sympathy and certainly foreshadowed later activism. Though he was ultimately unsuccessful, Deskaheh petitioned the League of Nations to have the Iroquois recognised through full membership.28 The 1926 Slavery Convention and the ILO, with its numerous conventions on the rights of indigenous labourers, were also significant developments.29 The latter body became a pool of interest and expertise

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that, as we shall see, enabled it to be the first international agency to respond to post-war indigenous demands. Even more important was the consolidation of the idea of global governance. Eppstein’s collection of essays celebrating the tenth anniversary of the League of Nations noted the growth of a group who were nurturing: … the ideal of the ‘body politic’, a body in the proper sense, having an organic whole but really distinct members. The latter conception (which is that of the Third British Empire) recognises that beneath the man-made network of international laws, treaties and frontiers there is something deeper and wider – ‘jus gentium’ – the Right belonging to all peoples, to conserve and develop their own lives in their own way. Upon it repose … the whole system of the protection of minorities … the whole system of the protection of native populations under the ‘Mandates’; the whole system of using inter-state agreements to defend personal freedom.30

A second attempt Commentators during the Second World War had no difficulty observing the deficiencies and ‘geographic unevenness’ of the rights protection systems set up in 1919. The League’s institutions had ‘operated only in new or territorially reshaped states’, were inefficient and full of delay and lacked publicity for their findings. Unwillingness to create friction among member states and the old assumptions of diplomacy and power still prevailed.31 However, others remained convinced of the necessity of an international authority as far preferable to bilateral negotiations in which nation-states would define minority interests. In the aftermath of the war and the Holocaust, the public in the Allied countries were galvanised on the need for a permanent solution.32 The APS published a series of principles concerning ‘colonial reorganization’ after the war, returning to some of its earlier points: transfers of territory required the consent of the inhabitants, and language and religious rights were to be guaranteed. Social and economic issues were also canvassed, including standards of education, health and welfare. The APS sketched out a model of colonised peoples’ self-government and participation in the international order as sovereigns. An International Colonial Commission would oversee the convention and decide disputes.33 But still important was the idea that the standing powers had a responsibility to create an order that worked by bringing backward

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peoples to a state of readiness for their own governance and participation in the international system. The notion of ‘backwardness’ was also important in Franklin Roosevelt’s conception of human rights. Roosevelt held the same views as Wilson; he was a ‘gradualist’ who supported the principle of ‘independence of colonial peoples only after a period of tutelage’.34 Negotiators drew freely on the existing instruments set up under the League of Nations. By the end of the negotiations, they had agreed on the text of a formal declaration setting out the universal rights of human beings, ‘a new legal, philosophical, and spiritual moment in human affairs’. The protection of collective rights (such as the rights of indigenous peoples) was implicit in instruments relating to ‘human rights in general, minority rights, the protection of existence through the Genocide Convention, and the rule of non-discrimination’.35 The Charter of the United Nations also set out the obligations of trusteeship. Article 73 of Chapter XI describes the self-determination of peoples in non-self-governing territories as part of a ‘sacred trust’ and set out a reporting mechanism for trustees. The core of trusteeship was ‘accountability to an international organization’. The British delegate to the UN conferences, Lord Hailey, advocated trustee status using the US example of ‘domestic dependent nations’.36 Australia’s External Affairs Minister and Attorney-General, HV Evatt, along with the NZ Prime Minister, Peter Fraser, advocated trusteeship for all colonies, not just those that had changed status after the war. Just as it had done in the aftermath of the First World War, Britain opposed any change in status for its colonies.37 However, the trusteeship system entrenched the reporting mechanisms of international human rights protection. It was in this context that Belgium made a series of interventions in the early 1950s – the socalled ‘Belgian thesis’ – that would have offered a formal status to indigenous peoples and others facing ‘internal colonisation’.38 As Belgian ambassador van Langenhove argued: … the benefits of the provisions of Chapter XI should be extended to all the peoples who have not yet attained a full measure of self-government, whatever designation may be given to the territories in which they live. Such peoples might include those native to Hawaii and Alaska, the whole of South America, India and the Philippines.39 Many states, including Australia, had much to lose. The US insisted that it had assimilated its Indians and that they were now ‘an integral part of the nation’.40 The settler-states pushed through a resolution to

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ensure that the ‘saltwater thesis’ prevailed, reserving trusteeship and the eventual right of self-determination only to territory that was ‘geographically separate and distinct ethnically and/or culturally from the country administering it’. Legal scholar Patrick Thornberry outlined the seeming simplicity of the argument: ‘peoples hold the right of selfdetermination; a people is the whole people of a territory; a people exercises its right through the achievement of independence’.41 The central institutions of the UN were to take two decades to return to the claims of peoples drowned by the saltwater thesis. However, the specialised agencies did not take so long. At the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization’s (UNESCO’s) 6th Session in 1951, the organisation resolved to prepare ‘a critical inventory of the methods and techniques employed for facilitating the social integration of groups which do not participate fully in the life of the national community by reason of their ethnical or cultural characteristics’, noting tribal groups in particular.42 By then, the ILO had been interested in the problems of ‘indigenous and tribal populations’ for over two decades, particularly in the area of protections against the forced labour of indigenous workers. It was the lead agency in a major development program, called the Andean Indian Programme, that also involved the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the World Health Organization (WHO), UNICEF and other agencies.43 In short, by the early 1950s, the ILO was the main body with the technical capacity and the experience of dealing with indigenous issues.44 Its 1953 report, Indigenous Peoples: Living and Working Conditions of Aboriginal Populations in Independent Countries, was a development in international thinking on indigenous rights, but maintained a philosophy of uplifting those that did not yet ‘fully share in the national economy and culture’. It implied that the problem was recalcitrance: … geographic isolation, cultural barriers – especially those of linguistic origin – considerable economic backwardness by comparison with the remainder of the population, the mythical concepts underlying their social organization and economic activities, inequality of opportunity and the survival of anachronistic economic and land tenure systems that prevent peoples from fully developing their production and consumption and contribute to perpetuating their inferior social status.45 The ILO report led directly to negotiations for a convention dedicated to the comprehensive situation faced by indigenous groups, ILO Convention 107 (hereafter ILO 107) concerning the Protection and

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Integration of Indigenous and Other Tribal and Semi-Tribal Populations in Independent Countries (1957).46 Historian Tim Rowse has argued that ILO 107 was the culmination of a long history in which Europeans tried to effect a ‘sympathetically managed transformation’ from tradition to modernity.47 In its preamble, the instrument stressed the importance of ‘integration’, referring to: … populations which are not yet integrated into the national community and whose social, economic or cultural situation hinders them from benefiting fully from the rights and advantages enjoyed by other elements of the population. However, in other respects ILO 107 was a bold departure for the discussion of the situation of indigenous populations. Article 2.1 made national governments accountable for ‘developing co-ordinated and systematic action’. Article 3 justified affirmative action to ameliorate disadvantage. Article 5 called for a new political relationship between governments and affected populations. Perhaps most radically, Articles 11–14 discussed the rights of indigenous populations to land, calling for recognition of traditional occupation as ownership, as well as limitations on alienation of currently held lands, and no removal without ‘free consent’. They also sought to recognise indigenous land law insofar as it did not ‘hinder’ their social and economic development. It was the formal beginning of an international law of the human rights of indigenous peoples.

An Australian idiom of human rights While those at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, or in Dumbarton Oaks and San Francisco in 1944–45, gave little thought to the concerns of indigenous Australians in their deliberations about human rights, the new idiom and institutions were readily understood by those working within Australia and quickly became the context and language of their activism. In fact, the humanitarian, socialist and feminist activists discussed in chapter 2 were part of the global currents that shifted the ideology of imperialism described in the previous section. For example, Mary Bennett, who remained influential in Australia until at least the 1960s, frequently invoked the 1926 Slavery Convention to denounce pastoralists’ exploitation of Aboriginal labour.48 Aboriginal activist Pearl Gibbs wrote to the League of Nations in July 1938, hoping that it would intervene in the interests of NT Aborigines, whom she

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incorrectly believed to be administered under one of the League’s Mandates.49 In a letter to Sir John Harris, the Secretary of the APS (16 March 1937), William Cooper claimed ‘the right to advance to full European culture’.50 Cooper and the AAL’s resolution condemning Nazi persecution of Jews, which they tried to present to the German Consulate in 1938, demonstrated the breadth of their understanding of the obligations of human rights.51 In the late 1930s there was a ‘resurgence of … formal politics’ among Aborigines.52 This reflected the formation of institutions directed towards the broader politics of the era: the AAL, Bill Ferguson and Pearl Gibbs’s Aborigines Progressive Association (APA), and the coastal groups’ revival of Fred Maynard’s AAPA all situated their campaigns within broader currents of social inclusion. But formality was also a matter of inclusive politics, in which Aboriginal claims for equality and rights were paramount. The best-documented is the Day of Mourning in 1938, when a coalition between the major organisations existed briefly. Ferguson spoke on citizenship rights and made comparison with the treatment of recent migrants: ‘the Government should teach our people the principles of Agriculture, and help them to settle on the land, just as they teach and help immigrants from overseas’. In a widely circulated pamphlet, Aborigines Claim Citizens’ Rights!, Jack Patten and Bill Ferguson condemned Australia for denying its duty to Aborigines: by ‘cruelty and callousness towards the Aborigines you stand condemned in the eyes of the civilised world’. Their request was simple: ‘We ask for equal education, equal opportunity, equal wages, equal rights to possess property, or to be our own masters – in two words: equal citizenship’.53 For those involved in the administration of Aboriginal affairs in the early 20th century there was greater concern about the ongoing scrutiny of the venerable humanitarian institutions in Britain. Increasingly, such reports were accompanied by criticism in the British press: Members of the Association will have noted in the public press that severe criticism of Australia’s treatment of its native race has appeared in various English papers, notably the ‘Manchester Guardian’ and that important public bodies such as the ‘British Commonwealth League’, the ‘Royal Empire Society’ and the ‘Anti-Slavery and Aborigines Protection Society’ have very freely commentated upon our misdeeds. It has also been variously suggested that appeal in the matter should be made to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, or to the League of

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Nations … The indictment against us is that we have taken a continent from its original inhabitants and have given no compensation in protection of the life and well-being of the people we have dispossessed, that we have not allowed the native any of the benefits of our civilization.54 Andrew Markus has argued that Australian politicians in this era of growing national self-assertion had responsibilities: … in the realm of public relations. It was necessary to assure the public that all was well, or as well as it could be, to deny allegations of mistreatment, and uphold the ‘good name’ of Australia. There were particular papers in Britain that ‘maintained a special interest in the treatment of Aborigines’. In 1937–38, the Times published stories that were critical enough that the High Commissioner in London thought that the Germans might use them as part of their propaganda efforts. Special cables denying mistreatment were dispatched to London for distribution to the press.55 Australian historians of this era have debated the consequences of the national and global transformations on indigenous politics. Andrew Markus observed ‘one common strand in the views of all Aboriginal spokespersons in the south, the desire for incorporation into white society’. Another scholar has argued that during the interwar years there was a ‘muting’ of indigenous difference. This was the high point of racialised science and policy and there were obvious reasons that Aboriginal peoples stressed their essential sameness and fitness for citizenship and its entitlements.56 Heather Goodall has averred that indigenous activists’ emphasis on land justice was ‘the suggestion of an alternative’. Yet, it is no surprise that, from almost the first moment possible, indigenous men enlisted in the armed forces. In excess of 300 Aboriginal men succeeded in joining the First Australian Imperial Force (AIF), even though their enlistment was prohibited under the Defence Act, by obscuring their ethnicity or passing themselves off as Maoris. When later in the war reinforcements were required, a tacit policy of accepting ‘half-castes’ came into effect.57 In her history of Aboriginal servicemen from the Lower Murray district of South Australia, Doreen Kartinyeri notes with sadness the failure of the local Protector of Aborigines to prevent her people from enlisting, when nearly all other social opportunities were proscribed:

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I find it difficult to understand how so many Aboriginal men were allowed to enlist in the Army, as they were not allowed to vote in federal and state elections and they were not counted as human beings.58 Returning servicemen found the double standards of Australian attitudes to race extremely frustrating. Indigenous men were entitled to fight and die in defence of Empire and Nation, but they were not given the respect accorded to ordinary citizens, let alone the entitlements granted to white service personnel.59 Yet, several decades more of denial and discrimination did little to dim the ardour of indigenous people wanting to serve Australia in the Second World War. Vacillation in policy over enlistment, and the fact that neither the army nor the Returned Services League (RSL) ever recorded the ethnicity of service personnel, means it is difficult to establish exact numbers of indigenous people who served, but a close reading of the available sources allowed Robert Hall an educated guess of just less than 4000. Several thousand more Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people worked directly toward the war effort in army-controlled labour camps in the Northern Territory.60 The impacts on many Aboriginal people were profound and various. Joe McGinness, for example, who became one of the great post-war indigenous leaders, served in Morotai and Borneo. His brief contact with the Dayak peoples of Borneo led him first to consider the ‘lot of other Indigenous people throughout the world’.61 The first indigenous person to become an officer in the armed forces, Captain Reg Saunders, found a space in which equality of opportunity flourished, values that he found in short supply after returning to civilian life: ‘Australian soldiers I met in the Army were not colour-conscious towards the aboriginal, and I feel sure that they would never agree to this discrimination’. Historian AW Martin noted that ‘army life brought an equality of pay and working conditions seldom enjoyed before. And in the smaller working group of army life there was little room for racism’.62 The domestic labour corps experienced similar material changes. Aboriginal activist Len Watson later wrote: … the war had a tremendous effect. The people who were employed by the Army were paid good money. More importantly they were treated as people. They found out that as long as they did the work they got their belly-full – the first time that had happened to many of them. A lot received cash for their labour for the first time in their life. It was very different from life on a cattle station.63

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Not all experiences were positive, though: Pastor TW Albrecht recalled the dismal treatment of the Alice Springs Army Platoon, a labour detail of 150 Aboriginal men from Jay Creek and Tennant Creek. However, writer Frank Stevens suggested that the sudden demands for indigenous labour brought by the war provided the ‘format for change’.64 Scholar Charles Rowley endorsed this, observing that, ‘the war may be taken as indicating the end of the process of destruction of Aboriginal society. Questions of economic opportunity and justice were being raised’.65 As the eminent social scientist Charles Tilly observed, the demands of war had long been the basis for the expansion of citizens’ entitlements.66 But the improvements for indigenous peoples seemed slight and a return to peace saw renewed discrimination. As had been the case after the First World War, the petty indignities and hypocrisy continued. Dave Wharton, from the Yumba community near Cunnamulla in south-west Queensland, was the first Murri (an indigenous person from Queensland) to enlist in the Second AIF. When, after he returned home, his close friend, a white man with whom he had served, was killed in a fire, the RSL refused to allow him to become a pall bearer.67 Captain Reg Saunders returned to find he was denied permission to reenlist for Korea. Such treatment jarred with the fact that the destructive war just fought was against racist aggression. The logic of the conflict and the post-war resolve in establishing the UN organisation maintained the spotlight on discrimination and Donald Thomson laid the double standard bare in a series of articles for the Melbourne Herald in 1946: Revelations in the Herald of conditions in the Northern Territory … contrast with the concern for the welfare of subject races [outside Australia] expressed by Mr F.M. Forde at the United Nations conference at San Francisco. Speaking as Deputy Prime Minister of Australia, he stated: ‘The Australian Government urges that the Charter of a World Organisation should recognise that the main purpose of the administration of dependent or undeveloped territories is the welfare and advancement of the people of those territories’ … And how can the state of affairs disclosed in recent revelations be reconciled with the avowed objectives of the proposed ‘South Seas Regional Commission’ about to be created, when representatives of six nations are scheduled to meet in Canberra, their chief concern the welfare of native peoples. Why this curious discrepancy between domestic and external attitudes towards natives?68

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The end of the war brought other changes to Australia that were to affect the interests of indigenous peoples, as new people arrived in Australia and as Australians, including increasingly indigenous people, were able to travel outside more frequently. European migrants were often credited with a different attitude towards indigenous peoples. Some, like Irene McIlraith and Rosine Guiterman, were Jews who had fled Europe and found their way easily into advocacy of indigenous interests.69 Others who had grown up in Australia, like Jean and Jack Horner, had their eyes opened to racism while living and working in London’s multiracial communities, including an awareness of the White Australia Policy.70 Charles Perkins’s life embodied these various transnational forces, which shaped and enabled new indigenous identities. After growing up near Alice Springs, he attended a Catholic school in Adelaide, where he excelled at soccer in the post-war years when Australian cities were starting to fill with European migrants. In contact with the burgeoning ethnic communities because of a mutual passion for soccer, Perkins found a world of acceptance and tolerance that mainstream Australia did not offer, reflecting that: … migrant clubs treated me better than white Australians did. They gave a person a feeling of dignity and self-respect … I learnt to relax as part of this ‘international’ set, proud that I was the only Australian in it.71 In 1957, Perkins joined Everton FC in the English league, and then Wigan, where he was welcomed into working-class culture and life. He travelled to continental Europe, where his biographer wrote that his ‘re-education in alternative world models began’. Perkins refused a professional contract with Manchester United to return to Australia in 1959, playing for several years as captain-coach for a Greek community side in Sydney. He was among the first of many indigenous Australians whose transnational experiences allowed him ‘to see himself not only as an Aborigine but as a human being in an equal relationship to others’.72 Margaret Tucker was among the first indigenous people to write of overseas experience, other than military service. She visited the Great Lakes region for an annual conference of the Moral Rearmament movement and was moved by the speech given by ‘A leading negro woman’, who had insisted that ‘what idea grips the coloured people of the world may well decide the future of our civilization. The real difference is not between black and white, but between good and bad’.73

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In her work on indigenous urbanisation in Adelaide in the early 1960s, urban geographer Fay Gale linked Aboriginal urbanisation with the growth of migrants to Australian cities in the post-war years: When [Aborigines living on reserves] saw migrants, who often could speak little English, becoming economically absorbed into the cities, their felt their own disadvantages even more keenly. One comment heard frequently on Aboriginal reserves during the 1950s, was ‘If new Australians can get jobs and houses in the city, why can’t old Australians?’74 Other minorities, particularly African Americans, also visited Australia more frequently, most famously renowned actor and singer Paul Robeson, who sang a capella to workers building the Sydney Opera House in 1960. Doug Nicholls, who became one of the leading indigenous activists of the post-war period, insisted ‘that it was good for a depressed people to see black success’ and, while preacher at the Gore Street Church in Fitzroy, hosted numerous international visitors, including African American singers Tod Duncan (who played the lead in the original production of Porgy and Bess), Harry Belafonte, William Warfield and Winifred Atwell, an acclaimed jazz pianist from Trinidad.75 Yet, awareness of and contacts with other non-whites were limited to those whose struggles could be seen as part of the US civil rights movement or, slightly later, the independence movements of Africa. Connections between indigenous Australians and other indigenous peoples were much less common until the late 1960s. Cherokee writer and scholar Thomas King spent a year travelling around Australia in 1964, working in Rockhampton, Tennant Creek, Adelaide and Sydney. Yet, he did not meet a single Aboriginal person in that time and found none of what he called the ‘uneasy peace between equals’ that he had seen in New Zealand between Maori and pakeha. Instead he found just ‘a damp, sweltering campaign of discrimination that you could feel on your skin and smell in your hair’.76

Organising and assimilating The post-war environment was a fertile period for the formation of new organisations interested in the welfare and rights of indigenous people. Though these organisations were dominated by whites, indigenous people played an increasing role. Peter Read argued that this first phase

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of post-war activism attracted Aborigines who had had access to the education and esteem available in relatively tolerant spaces such as churches, sporting clubs and unions, people like Doug Nicholls and Joe McGinness.77 Probably the first active group was the Democratic Rights Council, established in Melbourne in 1950. This led to an Australian People’s Assembly for Human Rights that set up commissions on various aspects of human rights, including an Aboriginal Commission. Jack McGinness was a NAWU delegate to the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) in September 1951, ‘sent south’ to speak to the Commission against the Northern Territory’s punitive regime under the Aboriginals Ordinance (1918–54). He told the delegates of the governing authority’s attitude: ‘we are classed as something that is tainted and must be kept apart’. His brother Joe described the speech he gave as the inspiration behind the establishment of the Council for Aboriginal Rights (CAR), ‘the first organisation in Victoria that emerged with the idea of defending Aboriginal rights all over Australia’.78 The CAR was indeed less ‘parochial’ in its outlook on indigenous affairs. Charles Duguid, Shirley Andrews and others quickly sought to highlight the international implications of Australian policies. In 1951, the CAR organised a rally where Duguid detailed Australian infringements of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR).79 After revelations about the abuse of Aborigines from 1947 to 1957 in central Australia at Warburton, Laverton, Maralinga and elsewhere, as part of the Cold War era rocket and nuclear tests, the CAR quickly became ‘the hub of an informal network connecting individuals and organisations’.80 Another organisation set up in the mid-1950s was the Australian Aboriginal Fellowship (AAF). Faith Bandler and Pearl Gibbs had been involved in the CAR but thought that it was ‘dominated by the communists’. Gibbs set up the AAF to provide positive images of Aborigines, and she was ‘absolutely determined that no political organisation was going to dominate it’. One historian has argued that it was ‘led by Aborigines who felt that black leadership was essential to ensure the active support of other Aborigines’. Yet, it also intended to be a ‘fellowship’ of black and white co-operation. Émigré Irene McIlraith was active in the AAF and visited Walgett in September 1957, foreshadowing the Freedom Rides of eight years later, and documenting the everyday racism facing Aboriginal people there.81 At a meeting in the Sydney Town Hall in 1957, the AAF quickly began campaigning to change the Constitution of Australia to give the federal government legislative authority over indigenous peoples. The 1901 document had included several racist provisions that prevented

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oversight by the national government of states’ management of indigenous affairs. Section 51(26) withheld for the states all legislative power concerning the ‘aboriginal races’; and section 127 prevented the counting of indigenous peoples in the national census. As Geoffrey Sawer noted, these measures revealed the ‘negativism’ of the Australian Constitution that conceived the power of the new govering body in terms of limits rather than possibilities.82 The first draft of the petition calling for a constitutional referendum not only saw a more positive role for the national government, it reflected Lady Jessie Street’s appreciation of ‘the values encoded in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights’.83 Jessie Street was among the most important figures in this era, connecting domestic movements with international discourse. Street had spent much of her early public life campaigning for ‘social hygiene’ (a predominantly American movement that clothed 19th-century preoccupations with social and sexual morality in a modern idiom of science and secularism). In the post-war era, she sought to create international political institutions that could do the civilising and capacity-building work she felt so many deserved. In 1945, Street was made a member of the Australian delegation to the inaugural UN conference in San Francisco, going on to become active in the Status of Women Commission, a subcommittee of the new UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC). Her determination to both limit the growing anti-communist line being pushed in UN forums and to expand the activities of UN human rights organs beyond the limited conceptions imposed by the leading democratic nation-states, saw her lose favour with the Australian Government. From the late 1940s on, her participation in international forums was increasingly as a correspondent for the international trade union and peace movements or as a delegate of accredited British-based NGOs such as the Peace Council and the APS.84 In 1955, Street was asked to join the APS as an executive committee member. That organisation, as we saw in chapter 2, had a longstanding interest in indigenous issues in Australia, and their recruitment of a high-profile Australian was an extension of that concern.85 The APS saw the need for a national indigenous organisation that could participate in the international human rights dialogue and identified a lack of good information about the situation facing Aboriginal people. They prepared a questionnaire on the social, political and legal circumstances of Aborigines and sent this to Australian activists and intellectuals, hoping to prepare a report for the UN Commission of Human Rights’ Sub-Committee on the Prevention of Discrimination and the Treatment of Minorities:

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… this Society, having consultative status with the United Nations, is in a position to suggest a subject for its enquiry. It proposes to act only at the request of Australians and on behalf of Australian societies and individuals until some co-ordinating body of Australian opinion has gained consultative status and can act for itself. A letter from the APS to communist and anthropologist Fred Rose in March 1956 pointed out that: … if an Amalgamated Society was formed for the Protection of the Indigenous people of Australia it might claim consultative status with the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations. It would fulfil the two requirements of being international and concerned with social and economic affairs.86 Andrews was impressed with the specificity of the APS’s questionnaire, which sought answers to the questions such as ‘Do Aborigines have the right to vote? Have they the right to own property? Can they make wills or deeds of gift?’ However, the centrality of the APS was only momentary: within the organisation there was a feeling of not wanting to antagonise either the Australian Government or public.87 In any case, there was by now considerable domestic momentum. On 5 February 1957, many of the key figures met in the Assembly Hall in Melbourne. In attendance were Doug Nicholls, Doris Blackburn (President of WILPF), representatives from the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, the Union of Australian Women, and the CAR. Speakers included Nicholls and Charles Duguid and much of the discussion was motivated by recent revelations about the deplorable indigenous circumstances in the Warburton Ranges area, which had been brought to light by the work of Nicholls and others.88 The state-based campaigns and organisations coordinated their work by establishing the FCAA in Adelaide in February 1958. From the beginning, FCAA formally rejected assimilation, because: … it would mean in the long run the disappearance of the aborigines as a separate cultural group and ultimately their physical absorption by the rest of the community. As the Aboriginal people had something to contribute to our way of living it was felt by the Council that the word ‘integration’ implied a much truer definition of their aims and objects.

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FCAA’s founders ‘were connected by a common view. They agreed that the repeal of restrictive laws would allow Aboriginal Australians to join the Australian community as citizens’.89 Yet, the project of assimilation was strengthened by the interpretation of the liberal discourse of human rights in the Australian context. After the war, the meaning of the term shifted, from a biological understanding of assimilation as absorption, to the social idea of extending citizenship. Racial science reached its heyday during the late 1930s and it promoted the view that Aborigines were incapable of reaching civilisation. But there was a shift during the interwar period in some answers to the question, ‘Can Aborigines become civilised?’ Aborigines by the 1930s were loudly saying yes; some whites agreed, but did so hesitantly.90 At a UNESCO meeting called in December 1949 specifically to study the matter of ‘race’, the idea of innate racial differences was debunked: In spite of this unequivocal statement by a committee of expert scientists many people in Australia still have reservations as to whether the Aborigine is biologically equal to the European.91 Historian of Australian politics John Chesterman found a letter from the Queensland Premier’s department in 1952 that rejected the application of human rights to indigenous peoples, arguing that: … they have not within themselves the capacity to develop their culture and traditions in a way which would enable them to take their place as ordinary members of the community.92 However, other state authorities approached assimilation differently. Dawn magazine, an initiative of the NSW Aborigines Protection Board, sought to inculcate the prevailing consumerist culture with patronising instructions to its indigenous readers:93 The provision of so many clean, modern homes on Aboriginal Stations throughout the State, opens up a new world for the aboriginal woman of to-day … She will realise, that as the schools are educating her children to the cleaner and better ways of life, and teaching them various arts and crafts, she must play her part by providing that home environment that is so necessary to the welfare of those children.94 There was also the longstanding concern about indigenous peoples’ capacity to cope with alcohol:

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Dear Fellow Australians, Section 9 of the Aborigines Protection Act has been temporarily suspended for a trial period. Residents of the aboriginal stations have been informed of the suspension and asked by good conduct to justify the total repeal of Section 9. This is a personal appeal addressed to my aboriginal friends to avoid strong drink, which has caused misery, poverty and crime. Show the white people that I have not misjudged you and that you can resist the temptation of strong liquor … Your sincere friend, Clive Evatt.95 AP Elkin, perhaps the central figure in Australian anthropology and a hugely influential figure in policies regarding indigenous people, compared Australia with New Guinea in the 1930s and 1940s to contextualise further the evolving meaning of assimilation: On the basis of the way in which it has hitherto discharged its island responsibilities … Australia hopes, not unreasonably, to play in the future an even larger part in promoting the progress of island peoples … Unfortunately for our own reputation, the world knows much more about our Aboriginal record than about our Papuan and Melanesian accomplishments. And that record is not reassuring … we shall have to prove to the world and to ourselves that we are using every endeavour not only to guard the Aborigines from abuses and neglect, but also to help them persist, increase in numbers and progress towards Australian citizenship … The slogan must be: ‘They Shall Not Pass Away’, or rather ‘Advance and Citizenship in Our Time’.96 The Minister for Territories from 1951 to 1963, Paul Hasluck, definitely saw reserves as ‘places of transition’ and wished to avoid stimulating separate identities.97 Assimilation policy was now best seen as ‘a statement about the nature of Australia in a post-depression, post-war, postcolonial world’. The language of citizenship was central to this, a countervailing and positive retort to doctrines of class struggle or decolonisation. Historian Anna Haebich saw assimilation as a ‘powerful act of national imagining’. From the late 1950s, Hasluck’s Department of Territories prepared a series of pamphlets with titles such as Our Aborigines and One people and these were for a time distributed overseas:

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… to create a positive impression of change for international critics … The cover of One people depicted children from different racial and cultural backgrounds grouped around a globe of the world, suggesting the ‘global nuclear family’ advocated by the United Nations and other international agencies.98 This was a powerfully attractive idea that both shaped ideology and restrained others. As Jack Horner pointed out: We believed in assimilation as a better alternative to the segregation of Aboriginal people on reserves because, as Dr Duguid told us often, on the reserves Aboriginal people were deprived of many civil and civic rights. Most white people thought assimilation policies would offer Aboriginal people better housing and a more comfortable and autonomous existence compared to the paternalistic controls they endured on the reserves. In the context of those times, assimilation seemed far better than segregation, at least to the white people in country towns who observed the conditions under which Aboriginal people were then forced to live; that is, either in poor reserves or rubbish dumps.99

Using international instruments in Australia The passage of ILO 107 in 1957 had a galvanising and coordinating effect on the Aboriginal movement in Australia. Foremost was the issue of accountability. Article 2.1 of ILO 107 implied that national governments would be held responsible for the situation of indigenous peoples, giving substance to the doctrine of progressive nationalism. Calls for the Commonwealth to assume responsibility for indigenous affairs had begun as early as the cession of the Northern Territory from South Australia to the Commonwealth in 1911. In his 1945 intervention, ‘A National Policy’, Elkin pointed out that ‘the world at large holds Australia responsible for all Aboriginal policies and happenings, without any consideration of State boundaries – and correctly so’.100 The FCAA’s first statement of principles, made at its 1958 conference in Adelaide, drew on ILO 107 to ground its vision of liberal citizenship, advocating the principles of non-discrimination; improved housing; equity in wages; improved schooling and training; and better quality food for people dependent on welfare.101 At the 1959 FCAA conference in Melbourne, ILO 107 was the main point of discussion. The

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first resolution called on state and federal governments ‘to implement the provisions of the ILO Convention 107 … [they are] ideally suited as standards for future plans for raising the status of the Australian Aborigines’.102 By 1960, FCAA sought the expertise of the ILO in the area of economic development: Due to the inability of the NT Administration to provide adequate employment for aborigines in the Territory, this Conference calls on the Federal Government to invite an ILO expert in handicrafts and home industries to advise the NT Administration on the development of these crafts to provide a means by which more Aboriginal people could become income earners by their own effort.103 Meanwhile in parliament, Gough Whitlam and other Australian Labor Party (ALP) members regularly raised the issue of ratification of ILO 107.104 The international instrument had not implanted the liberal ideology of rights, but helped local activists to frame their own use of that ideology. Liberal transnationalists did more than hint at Australian technical shortcomings or administrative ignorance that international law could help address; they ushered in a period when the ‘politics of embarrassment’ became standard practice, not least as indigenous peoples and their advocates became more adept at using the media. Of course, this was possible because of the persistence of formal discrimination throughout Australia: … in 1965 there was scarcely a town in the central-west of NSW where a local Aborigine could try on clothes, sit down for a meal, get a haircut, go to secondary school, run for office, join a club, drink in the lounge bar, or work in a shop.105 Further human rights protections were reached during the 1960s. However, the passage of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD, which entered into force in 1969) and the two major International Covenants on Civil and Political Rights, and Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (which came into force in 1976), demonstrated the momentum behind international law on human rights. Though these did not apply solely to indigenous peoples, there was considerable scope for their application and they revealed the fundamentally progressive and encompassing logic at the heart of the concept of rights.

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Some doggedly refused to make connections between these developments and indigenous peoples. During the drafting of Article 27, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) in 1961, the Australian Government argued that indigenous Australians were not minorities at international law because they were ‘too primitive’.106 It was not until the passage of the Racial Discrimination Act (RDA) in 1975 that Australia formalised this legal transnationalism, entrenching CERD’s protections in Australian law. Launching the government agency that would administer the new legislation, Whitlam said: … the new Act writes it firmly into our laws that Australia is in reality a multicultural nation, in which the linguistic and cultural heritage of the Aboriginal people from all parts of the world can find an honoured place.107 Yet, by the start of the 1960s, the idiom of human rights was ingrained in indigenous rhetoric, as captured in the poetry of Kath Walker (later Oodgeroo Noonuccal): ‘Give us welcome, not aversion, Give us choice and not coercion, Status, not discrimination, Human rights, not segregation’. More polemical voices like Charles Perkins drew directly on international events in decolonisation and civil rights. Upon being elected vice-president of the FCAA in 1961, Perkins immediately got involved in the campaign to abolish the South Australian Aborigines Act, telling one journalist that he was ‘trying to kick Little Rock clear out of South Australia’ and that state governments in Australia behaved like the Belgians in the Congo.108 Many of the big issues of the 1950s and 1960s situated Aboriginal concerns in a global context. Britain’s rocket ranges and nuclear testing in the Woomera, Warburton and Maralinga areas of central Australia dragged marginalised indigenous peoples into the atomic age.109 The steady incursion of international mining conglomerates onto the lands of remote communities placed them at the mercy of transnational capitalism. Some thought that Australian practices were becoming exceptional: At Weipa the natives are to be removed in effect from their reservation to make room for international industry. At Nauru, the islanders get a phosphate royalty and help. In the USA, if oil is struck on an Indian reservation, the people receive a royalty. At Weipa, they merely get moved to another mission.110 Shirley Andrews had long felt that ‘the best hope for the advancement of Aboriginal rights lay with international exposure of Australian practices’.111

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Direct appeals to international agencies increased in frequency. A cable sent to the UN in 1963 by Doug Nicholls, on behalf of the Aborigines’ Advancement League of Victoria, expressed concern over the ‘further alienation of aboriginal reserves’ and framed his appeal in ‘accordance with a resolution of the UN Economic and Social Council’.112 Indigenous pastoral workers from central Australia sent an open letter in September 1966 to then Secretary-General of the United Nations, U Thant, in which they described discrimination and denial of their rights.113 John Chesterman has argued persuasively that it was ‘the fear generated by a changing international environment’ that led to major federal and state policy shifts extending formal equality rights in Australia. Bureaucratic and political concern was widespread.114 In 1961, the Department of External (Foreign) Affairs requested its diplomats to: … report on the state of overseas knowledge and opinion about Australian Aborigines’ in the countries where they were stationed. External Affairs realised that although it was the states which had major legislative responsibility for those defined as Aboriginal within their borders, if ‘the Aboriginal question became a matter of international concern … the Commonwealth Government would … have some responsibility for dealing with it’.115 In April, the Foreign Affairs Committee resolved to set up a subcommittee to study ‘the Aboriginal question’ and ‘its possible impact on overseas opinion about Australia’. However, Paul Hasluck vetoed this because it would: … give foreign critics the opportunity to quote the fact that the Foreign Affairs committee had considered the Aborigines as a matter having international implications, and to argue from this that it was a legitimate matter to discuss in international forums.116 As decolonisation unfolded, much of Australian foreign policy became untenable. Representing the APS at the UN General Assembly in 1960, Lady Jessie Street correlated an increase in criticism of Australia with the growing membership of ‘nations with coloured races’.117 The Sharpeville massacre of 1960 brought things to a head and African nations exposed the ‘apartheid is domestic’ stance at the Commonwealth PMs’ conference of 1960. Historian David Goldsworthy has argued that though there was a steadily growing interest in Britain for the divestment of the colonies,

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‘it would be misleading to suggest that the Australians felt anything like the British degree of commitment to accelerated decolonisation’. Prime Minister Robert Menzies was alarmed at the growing membership in the Commonwealth of states that were ‘more spiritually akin to Moscow than to London’. The 1961 meeting saw South Africa quit the Commonwealth under diplomatic pressure for reform from decolonised African states, and Menzies realised the precedent that this set.118 Close observers saw that the tide was going out.119 Historian Sue Taffe cited a Department of External Affairs memo: ‘The predominant view now in the United Nations is that relations between a state and its dependant peoples are out of the sphere of domestic jurisdiction’. In his motion of 13 October 1960 to debate a ‘Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples’, Soviet Premier Nikita Khruschev commented that ‘everyone knows in what way the aboriginal population of Australia was exterminated’. In June 1963, the Soviet delegate to the UN Trusteeship Council ‘confronted the Australian delegate with section 127 of the Constitution as evidence of discrimination against Aborigines’.120 The 1960 declaration spoke of ‘the necessity of bringing to a speedy and unconditional end colonialism in all its forms and manifestations’. Not surprisingly, the major colonial nations gave the ‘diminutive negative’ of abstention; France, Spain, Portugal, Belgium and the United Kingdom, as well as the United States and Australia. Thereafter, Australia moved towards the ‘anti-colonial consensus’, a shift that prevented them from joining the ‘diplomatically hazardous company of South Africa and Portugal’.121 In an insightful piece published in the journal Smoke Signals in 1962, writer David Martin warned that: The world is watching us – very attentively … Books, articles and correspondence in leading English and American publications have all lately posed the question: is Australia falling behind the times in her approach to her dark-skinned sons and daughters? … the discriminatory policy towards Aborigines, particularly in regard to civil rights, tends to become part and parcel of the White Australia policy itself … Just as the newly free Asian nations have no patience with the ‘argument’ that colonial peoples are not ready for freedom – this being an argument which, on analysis, always betrays ulterior motives – so they are rightly contemptuous of the slogan that Australian Aborigines are not yet ready to be free, not ready to be citizens. It is well understood in the Philippines and in Hong Kong, where we try to sell

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Australian beef, that Australia’s vital northern cattle industry has to rely on Aboriginal labor … we may like to imagine that the world is sympathetic to our official protestations. But we are deceiving ourselves. And at our peril … the world we live in has grown extremely sensitive to all ‘national’ questions. Insularity will get us nowhere.122

Co-operative transnationalism and the achievement of civil rights In the era of human rights and campaigns to end formal discrimination, co-operative politics between black and white people could and did take several forms. As Sue Taffe pointed out, ‘the real work of the Federal Council was carried out by people who were philosophically attracted to one of two dominant views of the world: Christianity and Communism’.123 The fundamental commitments of many people to a higher authority had been renewed by the establishment of the UN and a positive law of human rights. Some saw international developments as an opportunity, while for others it was a moral spur. For example, the threat of ILO action on indigenous pastoral labour ‘galvanised’ Australian unionists into support for the indigenous organising that led to the 1966 equal wages ruling. As Stuart Macintyre suggested, many of the achievements of communism in Australia were in its ‘unintended consequences’, particularly in its connections to other domestic and international movements.124 That fed the view that the indigenous movement was really a concoction of disruptive whites. The Coalition government, in particular, was ‘slow to abandon Cold War horror at the conspicuous involvement of communists and other Labour Movement activists in the Gurindji case’ (the 1966 strike and walk-off of indigenous pastoral workers on the Vesteys’ lease in central Australia, which drew national attention).125 Yet, indigenous peoples’ views seemed more diverse. Faith Bandler recalled: … it is true that most progressive organisations in those years had to face such propaganda. But to us in the fellowship it didn’t seem a major handicap; we felt that most of the people attacking us would have done so anyway, whether we had communists in our ranks or not.126 However, one historian has argued that Charles Perkins and other leaders were happy to surf fear of communist infiltration of the black movement in order to encourage government to grant indigenous leaders more autonomy and power.127

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The Left drew on superior numbers and better organisation than the religious advocates, but was no more powerful a motivation. The alliance that formed between Perkins and the white preacher Ted Noffs stemmed from a discomfort of some with ‘left-wing, union-based, more overtly political organisations such as the AAF, also dominated by nonAborigines’. Noffs suggested the Freedom Ride of 1965, a tour of inspection of reserve life.128 Student Action for Aborigines (SAFA) was formed at Sydney University in June 1964. Its members came from across the spectrum of activism, from social justice Christians to orthodox Marxists. In SAFA’s letter to the NSW Aborigines Welfare Board in January 1965, Perkins announced their intentions: ‘S.A.F.A. proposes also to integrate certain theatres, swimming pools etc which discriminate against Aboriginal people. The tactics will follow the pattern set by the Rev. Martin Luther King’.129 Scholar of social movements Sean Scalmer has considered at length the exact manner in which ‘modular’ politics from abroad, such as freedom rides, were introduced into the domestic milieu. Stressing the importance of publicity, Scalmer uses the concept of ‘framing’ to point out the ways that activist strategy, a philosophy of justice and the media presentation were brought together in ways that gave an overall coherence and forcefulness that was new. The students themselves, as well as their advocates, and the media covering the events all relied on a conceptualisation of racial discrimination that was drawn from the civil rights campaigns of the US south. It was that convergence that enabled campaigns to overcome their ‘vulnerable status as recent importations’.130 But in order to do successful ‘framing work’, movements have to work with the existing norms and values of a society. Activists are ‘consumers of existing cultural meanings as well as producers of new ones’.131 The co-operative transnationalism of human rights was not simply the linking of Australian failure to international norms, but the articulation of some aspirations within Australian society itself. Historian and Freedom Rider Ann Curthoys described the moment as imagining: … a New Left beyond earlier Cold War certainties of either the self-congratulation of the ‘free world’ or the rigid authoritarianism of communism, [it was] interested in challenging consciousness as well as social structures and institutions.132 Though such things were dreamed, they were not dominant, not even in the movement itself. In the aftermath of the Freedom Rides, the

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agenda for change ‘among governments and their critics alike … was on the great nation-building theme of inclusion … never more confidently expounded than in the quest for constitutional reform’.133 The goal was very specific and required ‘winning over voters’ hearts and minds’.134 Historians Bain Attwood and Andrew Markus have extensively analysed the 1967 referendum.135 Specifically, it repealed section 127 and the racist clause of section 51(26). This gave the Commonwealth a concurrent right to legislate in the area of Aboriginal affairs and enabled the counting of indigenous peoples in the national census. It conferred on indigenous peoples neither citizenship nor the right to vote.136 By the end of the referendum campaign, the original argument of reformers, that any control by state governments over indigenous peoples was illogical, indiscriminate and inappropriate, had been downplayed significantly in order to avoid a confrontation between federal and state interests. Indeed, argument based on the cultural difference of indigenous peoples, the fledgling thought among campaigners a decade earlier, was not a major part of the campaign, ‘the more commonly expressed, and longer running, argument based on equal rights was politically safer’.137 Peter Read described the referendum success as the greatest triumph of the post-war Aboriginal movement’s co-operative reformist agenda.138 However, there now appears to be permanent confusion in the way Australians remember the actual effect of the referendum. Mostly it is remembered as an event of singular goodness, a day (27 May) on which important activities involving indigenous peoples are usually scheduled. Certainly forgotten is the fact that there was ‘a strong inverse relationship between the percentage of electors agreeing to the proposals and the ratio of Aboriginal to “European” populations’.139 The assumption was that such minority attitudes were rendered obsolete by an overwhelming national majority, a sentimentality that has grown with time.140 Markus observed that positive episodes in the history of indigenous–settler relations are hard to find and that there is a need to amplify those few events that could possibly be seen as expressions of unity.141 Perhaps of greater significance was the way that the referendum shaped indigenous political mobilisation thereafter. Anthropologist Jeremy Beckett suggested that the 1967 referendum ‘prefigured the Tent Embassy’, while Tim Rowse described the result as ‘potently equivocal’: on the one hand, it was a national rejection of discrimination, while, on the other, it compelled ‘recognition of Aboriginal people as a

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special case, for whom targeted ameliorative programs – temporary but of indefinite duration – were urgently required’.142 It was ironic that the ascendancy of the liberal rights discourse of the 1950s and 1960s had as one of its consequences the consolidation of indigenous politics. Murri activist Sam Watson recalled the effect of the referendum on the political identity and confidence of indigenous peoples themselves: The true legacies of the 1967 movement could not be measured so much in terms of the ramifications of constitutional change but more in terms of the lessons we learnt about how to unite behind a common goal and ally ourselves with like-minded people in other movements such as the trade union movement, the student movement, the Churches. And to work together to achieve that goal, to create a campaign where you use public awareness to advance a cause and to sustain the momentum. Because there’s this timehonoured image in white Australia that Aboriginal people, our minds, our attention-span is very short, you know that we ‘keep going walkabout’, which is absolute bullshit … So we convinced everybody, we convinced ourselves that we could do it that we could achieve great things. Like I said, that then galvanised people to then look beyond our own shores at what was happening in other places.143

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Chapter four

RADICAL T R A N S N AT I O N A L I S M

By the second half of the 1960s, there were clear divergences in the political opinions of indigenous Australians, as well as between them and their non-indigenous supporters. Much of this stemmed from the growing awareness of decolonisation and radical struggles for liberation and the variety of responses that people made to these global phenomena. A pivotal moment in Australia was the establishment of the Aboriginal Tent Embassy, a powerful example of indigenous transnationalism that demonstrated the processes of political education with which indigenous activists were adapting the radical and global discourse of nationalism to their own struggles. This chapter documents these developments and shows how imported ideologies operated within the domestic context. This meant the development of new dispositions towards whites, as well as new organisational and political forms and a realisation that an effective politics would have to be built onto local indigenous cultural forms, rather than adopted from elsewhere. The chapter considers how indigenous politics changed in the period after the 1967 referendum. What new ideologies did indigenous peoples draw on? What were the limits of these imported ideas and how were they adapted to create more relevant forms of political expression and social organisation?

After the referendum Soon after the referendum, many saw that its promise might not be fulfilled; there was a lack of immediate and substantive change to match the assumptions of the campaign’s supporters. One problem was that the referendum campaign created an illusion of consensus. On the one

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hand, it seemed to many indigenous peoples a major act of recognition; yet, for most whites it was in fact the high-water mark of the assimilation project. In 1958, at the first annual conference of FCAA, Bert Groves, a unionist closely involved in the AAF, was among the first openly to criticise assimilation: … what does it imply? Certainly, citizenship and equal status – so far so good; but also disappearance of Aboriginals as a separate cultural group, and ultimately their physical absorption by the European part of the population … I don’t see any difference between ‘assimilation’ and ‘extermination’. ‘Integration’, yes, but not ‘assimilation’.1 While FCAATSI did adopt the term ‘integration’ in line with the text of ILO 107, it was not clear what this meant or how it was distinct from assimilation. As noted in chapter 3, those campaigning for the referendum, particularly FCAATSI, crafted their presentation of the change almost entirely as a measure of mainstream inclusion.2 The change itself removed discriminatory references to Aborigines in the Constitution (indeed, all references), but lacked specificity about positive measures. Of course, granting the federal government a concurrent power did eventually lead to positive legislation, but the Holt government initially saw the change as allowing them better to work with state governments, rather than requiring a national agenda of reform. They were reluctant reformers who had spent the previous decade lugubriously removing formally discriminatory pieces of federal law and had no plan to introduce upon gaining the power to do so. Yet, indigenous people held great expectations and for many, ‘disillusionment after 1967 hit hard’.3 Kath Walker felt that the referendum had only ‘eased the guilty conscience of white Australians in this country and overseas’.4 Non-indigenous member of FCAATSI Barrie Pittock explained the ‘increasing impatience and dissatisfaction’ to the readers of Smoke Signals in 1969 as arising from ‘the illusory nature of many of the trumpeted gains; gains are measured against the past, rather than clear principles of equality’.5 The co-operative organisations and movement for civil rights became the logical site for this dissatisfaction to boil over and indeed started to be seen as part of the problem, overturning ‘the implied social contract’ of organisations like FCAATSI.6 Anthropologists had played a role in bringing about this change: Bain Attwood described a growing body of ethnographic work that emphasised indigenous racial and cultural difference. As early as 1937, anthropologists such as WEH Stanner advocated segregated places so

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indigenous cultures could be maintained. Donald Thomson imagined a place for indigenous peoples where they could pursue both ‘racial pride’ as well as the ‘fundamental rights to freedom’ enjoyed by all Australians.7 By the 1960s, a growing number of Australians had some understanding of anthropology as well as knowledge of indigenous policies in New Zealand and North America, including pastor Frank Engel, activist Ian Spalding and Barrie Pittock. Spalding spent considerable time visiting Aboriginal communities and introduced several people to the work of Darcy McNickle. McNickle was Métis (a member of the community formed through intermarriage between predominantly French fur traders and indigenous peoples in British North America) and an adopted member of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribe, who had worked for the US Bureau of Indian Affairs during John Collier’s so-called ‘Indian New Deal’ from 1936 to 1952. Pittock travelled to Colorado to study with McNickle and thereafter referred frequently to the indigenous role in decision-making on land and resource-use in other countries, enthusing about the US system of ‘reservation councils and business committees legally constituted under the Indian Re-Organization Act (1934)’.8 Pittock recalled in a 1996 interview, that the mindset that underpinned the ‘Indian New Deal’ was inconceivable in Australia: ‘the problem was that lawyers had all been trained one way in Australia which was that terra nullius was the law’.9 Peter Read suggested that Pittock was probably the first white to realise that the civil rights/citizenship approach ‘might actually be stifling the growth of an indigenous identity’.10 This was the real challenge. Not whether non-indigenous people were capable of enough generosity or creativity in their thinking, but whether and how they would be involved in a reorganised indigenous movement once the institutional yokes of formal racial discrimination had been removed. What vision of Australia existed that included indigenous peoples and celebrated their difference? The old liberal cooperative organisations did not confront the problem. However, it was hardly something that they could not see coming. Pearl Gibbs had founded the AAF to give indigenous perspectives and peoples a platform. In 1960, Doug Nicholls’s establishment of an indigenous caucus within FCAA was hailed as a ‘milestone’. Nicholls initially described it as giving confidence to indigenous peoples who were ‘just in from the mulga’. At its first meeting, Jacob Oberdoo and Gladys O’Shane spoke, traditional people whose personalities, speech and stories were confronting and revealing for many. Yet, the caucus was immediately forthright in its actions; one of the main resolutions of

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the indigenous caucus in 1961 was for the abolition of ‘apartheid in our own country’. Sue Taffe noted that in its early years the caucus enabled those more experienced in mainstream politics to dominate, like Charles Perkins and Margaret Valadian, but ‘[r]acial identity was the marker of eligibility’.11 Attwood noted the range of organisations that became Aboriginalonly or created dedicated spaces for Aboriginal people during the 1960s, including Eric Onus’s Australian Aborigines’ League in 1963, Doug Nicholls’s Aborigines-only section of the AAL in 1964, and Bert Groves’s resuscitation of the APA in 1963–64, which was dominated by Aborigines.12 Ken Brindle and Charles Leon organised a conference in 1965 that prioritised the views of a broader range of Aboriginal people, particularly those from rural areas who had not been able to participate in the urban organisations.13 On his return from overseas, Perkins was preoccupied by ‘something missing … When it came to the nitty-gritty decisions, white people … still made them all’.14 In 1967, he tried to set up a National Aboriginal Affairs Association as a strictly indigenous body. In 1968, FCAATSI passed a motion proposed by Nicholls to establish an ‘All-Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Action and Advisory Committee’.15 In 1969, at the FCAATSI conference, Harry Penrith (later known as Burnum Burnum) argued that most indigenous peoples had no knowledge whatsoever of FCAATSI’s existence.16 Kath Walker’s paper to the July 1969 executive meeting of FCAATSI was called ‘Coalition of Black and White Australians’, but in it she argued that ‘togetherness’ was impossible until black Australians could ‘dictate their own terms’ of advancement; the proper role of whites was to be ‘supportive’. Another officer in the AAL, Stan Smith, responded to Walker’s growing radicalism with a muscular defence that betrayed the limits of his understanding: ‘Aborigines, like anyone else with a cause, will not endear themselves to the public if they strive for justice, freedom and equality by dishonest methods’.17 His position was supported by some nonwhites as well. Neville Bonner of OPAL later wrote that the politics that had unfolded was divisive, emotional and irrational.18 Faith Bandler recalled that she had been to Africa and seen: … what Black racism was about – particularly in Kenya. And I saw it raising its ugly head [here] in 1970 and I said ‘Don’t want it. Not an inch of it’.19 Those obstructing radical change were called ‘Uncle Toms’. Radical activist Bob Maza envisaged a Black patrie:

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If there are black integrateds who are playing the part of whites whom you know, then pity them, for in their blindness they show their desperation to be an accepted people. When all the black people of this country are nationally welded together, the integrateds will soon have to identify themselves. To deny your brothers and sisters is treason of the highest degree.20 Such interventions redrew the lines of political activism. Aboriginal writer and activist John Newfong targeted what he saw as the ego aspect of the co-operative era: ‘The big-star era of the Aboriginal Advancement Movement is over … it’s time for teamwork and the utilisation of our diversity’. By the time of the 1970 FCAATSI conference, when the radicals failed to rewrite the Constitution to secure an indigenous executive, white affiliates to FCAATSI responded with the refrain of a reactionary liberalism: indigenous assertions were simply ‘nurtured by some Abschol members who are do-gooders themselves and are only attempting to satisfy their social conscience by their involvement in the movement’.21 If it was true that Aborigines had long been subjected to ‘the selfevident truth that the European way of life is in every respect superior and more desirable than their own’, by the start of the 1970s many had long stopped believing it. Koori activist Bruce McGuinness wrote in 1971 that Aboriginal people had ‘lost faith in white leadership but [are] rapidly gaining faith in ourselves’.22 Peter Read thought the real problem was a failure of white empathy: While sympathetic Whites acknowledged Aboriginal frustration, few recognised the hatred, conscious or unconscious, that Aborigines directed at them. Yet the obvious fact that the Whites were the invaders and oppressors was accepted, at one level of consciousness or another, by almost every Aborigine in Australia. It was the unity of oppressed Aboriginality not the left and right wing of European-style politics, which was the first and most fundamental division in Aboriginal affairs of the 1960s.23 Charles Perkins often spoke of ‘the meaning of the eyes’, the sense that Aborigines increasingly felt something when they caught each other’s eye, that they shared a situation that demanded to be changed. One correspondent to The Koorier in 1969 addressed whites directly:

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For the gubs who feel antagonism towards me and hate me I say thank you, for at least showing me your hate towards me, you honour me by not hiding behind apathy.24 McGuinness saw this as unifying: ‘We are tied together by poverty, oppression, skin pigmentation and the White Man’s hate for us’.25 Some of those sympathetic to Aboriginal demands were less hostile than confused and thought that the new political turn needed greater direction. The cultivation of an indigenous leadership was a priority for Nugget Coombs, who chaired the government’s postreferendum consultative body, the Council for Aboriginal Affairs (CAA). His biographer, Tim Rowse, saw the conflict between a desire to encourage the indigenous intelligentsia and a fear of pre-empting its development as the central dynamic of Coombs’s work in indigenous affairs. ‘[T]he emergence of an Aboriginal intelligentsia’, Coombs felt, was: … critical. We should be seeking the potential intellectuals, identifying and helping them, helping them into places where they can develop their capacity, giving them the instruments they need … We must open the channels of communication so that they can talk to us, but more importantly so that they can talk to their own people.26

Mobility, communication and radicalism Urbanisation was for indigenous peoples, as for other groups, a profoundly transformative and politicising experience. During the postwar years, and especially during the 1960s, indigenous people became much more mobile, adding to the communities that had existed in the major centres of south-eastern Australia for decades. Aboriginal rights activist Gary Foley remembered that the 1967 referendum was a major catalyst in forcing rural Aborigines into cities, with the population going from about 2000 to around 35 000 in the year after 1967: ‘Almost overnight the population skyrocketed, as people came to Sydney in a mass exodus from the reserves’.27 The new mass media played a significant role: … thanks to the invention of the transistor, there has been a revolution in communications and awareness of injustice and inequality … now even the most illiterate and isolated Aborigine in this country is able to know what is going on in the world, and what he is missing. He is

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learning, particularly through the commercials, just what material things are summed up in that phrase ‘a high standard of living’.28 Foley has said that one of the first things he ever saw on television was a speech by Martin Luther King Jr. The new urban environment faced by Aboriginal people in cities helped match their own experiences to an awareness of others in similar situations, such as the ghettoes full of African Americans who had fled slavery and the Jim Crow South.29 In cities, indigenous people faced the dual strengthening of identity known to many migrants: the ostracism and prejudice of the majority and the conscious assertion of membership within communities. Scholar Colin Tatz drew on WE Du Bois’s idea of ‘double consciousness’ to convey the transformative experience of urbanisation; that the different know not only of their difference, but of others’ awareness of that difference.30 Foley was politicised by ‘a specific flogging’ he received at the hands of the Redfern police. Landing in community-based organisations such as the Foundation for Aboriginal Affairs, a generation of Aboriginal activists, including Foley, Paul Coe, Billy Craigie and Gary Williams, not only found their feet but saw leaders like Charles Perkins and Chicka Dixon showing initiative and taking action. Coe gave Foley a copy of The Autobiography of Malcolm X and sought his involvement in a protest against police harassment: ‘Malcolm X exploded in my mind’. Sam Watson read everything he could get his hands on through the socialist network in Brisbane, predominantly radical African American literature. For Kevin Gilbert, Aborigines reading African American writers like Frederick Douglass or Malcolm X ‘makes sense’ because life on the reserves was in such stark contrast to the wider atmosphere of celebration of ‘the Lucky Country’.31 Dixon hosted discussion nights in Sydney that provided a focus and outlet for discontent, particularly for those from the bush.32 As Gilbert later realised, the new generation of radicals had: … mostly lived on the reserves themselves, are pretty closely in touch with the conditions and feelings of the reserve people (even though they mightn’t always report these feelings quite accurately) and are often only younger, more aware, more vocal, more active and less crushed versions of typical reserve people. They yearn, in varying degrees for more, not less black identification and have shown an interest in recapturing facets of their decaying Aboriginal culture.33

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This was a dynamic transnationalism, where young indigenous leaders encouraged themselves and each other, learnt to articulate their own identities and demands, taking energy and ideas from the canonical texts of the New Left readily to hand, conscious that they were part of something that was gripping and changing the world. The internal dynamics of the Aboriginal population in Australia mirrored the growing transnational mobility of many colonised peoples. In the early 1970s, Gilbert reflected on the problems of individual mobilisation facing indigenous peoples, concluding that ‘the average reserve black has the mental horizons of a Tennessee hillbilly … it is interesting, therefore, to see what an overseas trip does for an Aboriginal person’.34 The numbers of indigenous people who travelled outside the country increased dramatically during the 1960s. In addition, other indigenous and minority peoples started visiting Australia more regularly. Among the first overtly political travellers were Phillip Roberts and Davis Daniels, respectively the President and Secretary of the Northern Territory CAR. The two went to Kenya in December 1964, at the invitation of Tom Mboya (then Minister for Justice in Kenya). Mboya had visited Australia earlier that year and was displeased when, at a meeting arranged with the leaders of FCAATSI, he found himself talking to Jack Horner and Stan Davey, two white men.35 Mboya left saying of indigenous peoples, ‘[w]e want to awaken in them ambitions for their own people to take a far greater part in running Australia’.36 The visit to Africa left a great impression on both men, energising them for their own political struggle. An interview published in The Bulletin on their return observed that Roberts, once ‘reserved, hard to draw out, even reticent’, was now thinking of running for the NT legislative council: ‘Now he speaks with poise and confidence, showing glimpses of a mind toughened by what he saw in Kenya’. John Chesterman noted that the ‘most succinct’ intervention into the equal wages case in the Northern Territory was by Daniels the month after he returned from Kenya, where he wrote to the Conciliation and Arbitration Commission: … quoting part of Article 23 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which reads: ‘Everyone, without any discrimination, has the right to equal pay for equal work.’ Daniels then wrote: ‘It is respectfully suggested that you have the opportunity to put this admirable sentiment into practice’.37 Perkins returned overseas in 1966 as a consultant to the Department of External Affairs. He visited reserves in the US south-west, where he

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saw ‘Indians drinking their lives away … I thought, “This is what my black people will possibly be like in another fifty years’ time – if we don’t do something now”’. He also saw the signs of a reconstructed indigenous identity: … an embarrassing and awkward first step but it must be taken. Otherwise, without a sense of identity, the people have no reason for existence. This kind of experience must be gone through. Our big fight in Australia at the moment is to find ourselves once again.38 Margaret Valadian travelled to Hawaii in 1967, ‘to find out how the community was developing for itself’. She spent two years there and a further two years in North America, visiting black communities and Indian reserves. Black ‘economic power’ impressed her. ‘Black Banks, Black Industry all over the United States’ were already superseding the Black Power movement there. She also stressed the need for cultural reconstruction: We’ve been playing around with Aboriginal culture, and playing around with the arts, but we haven’t really done anything yet that would enable us to use the Aboriginal Culture to build a strong sense of identity both in the urban communities and in the tribal communities.39 Perkins visited Europe and the United States in 1967, to try ‘to see Australian race relations in a wider, more objective context’. He spent a week with the Reverend Jesse Jackson, who was organising Operation Breadbasket and pressuring white businesses to ‘sell products made in Black factories, employ Blacks at senior management levels [and] use the Black banks’.40 Kath Walker attended the World Conference of Churches’ Consultation on Racism in London, in June 1969 and returned ‘with a new sense of urgency’.41 Don Brady received a Churchill Fellowship that took him to Fiji, New Zealand and the United States. He was present at race riots in Chicago on the first anniversary of Martin Luther King’s death in April 1969.42 In 1970, a group of indigenous people attended a major Black Power conference in Atlanta, Georgia. Patsy Kruger, along with Bruce McGuinness, Bob Maza, Jack Davis and Sol Bellear, mingled with notable US attendees such as Imamu Baraka (LeRoi Jones), Jesse Jackson and Adam Clayton Powell. McGuinness felt that Aborigines had to ‘make alliances with other people engaged in liberation struggles or face extinction’. The five attended workshops designed to

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resolve the conflicts between praxis and theory, such as one on ‘Economic autonomy’ that drew on the concept of Ujaama (Julius Nyerere’s co-operative economics); and ‘Communications and systems analysis’, where workshop participants investigated ‘the role of communications in developing Black nationhood’. McGuinness stressed that such travel was ‘invaluable in ensuring Australia’s growth to racial equality and harmony by helping us all to understand and bypass the bitter tragedies of other countries’.43 Roberta (‘Bobbi’) Sykes also travelled extensively in the early 1970s. First to the United Kingdom and Europe in mid-1972 with the assistance of the London-based indigenous advocacy group, ABJAB. The three objectives of her tour were to inform the ‘aware sections of the British people’, open up ‘independent relations and lines of communication between black Australians and the black peoples of the world’, and to introduce ‘an international element into the forthcoming Australian general elections where the conditions and struggles of black Australians are an election issue for the first time in history’.44 Sykes reported that a large and sympathetic network of anti-apartheid activists existed in the United Kingdom: ‘I told them, “you don’t need to change your machinery. The same things exist in Australia.” They were all quite stunned’.45 Foley went to China in 1973, following a group led by Chicka Dixon in 1971, and later writing that he had travelled there ‘in order to extend and develop my knowledge and ideas, I was on the lookout for concepts that would be applicable to the Australian Aboriginal situation’. He found his own ideas for ‘autonomous economically self-reliant communities’ were being realised there and thought the model of the Workers’ Cultural Palace that he saw in Shanghai was: … an ideal concept for the urban (particularly Sydney) Aboriginals … a vehicle for the enormous latent creative talent in Redfern. The natural follow on from this would be an urban resurgence of pride, dignity and ultimately an identity.46 ‘In China’, he felt, ‘we were treated, for the first time, as human beings’.47 For a long period, other minority peoples had been visiting Australia expressly to engage with indigenous peoples. The National Aboriginal Day of Observance Committee in 1968 brought international indigenous leaders to discuss land rights, including Inuit, Maori and Native Americans. George Manuel, the great Shuswap leader from British Columbia, was moved by the solidarity he felt. The following year, Bob Maza welcomed the visit of a Black Power leader from the Caribbean, Roosevelt Brown; it was the ‘day that enlightenment came

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to Australia’. At the press conference on 28 August 1969, there was concern among some indigenous leaders, such as Doug Nicholls, who thought the Black Power ideology would divert the Australian movement. However, the impact was significant and the visit widely reported. Brown’s rationale for visiting was that the international solidarity movement needed to be informed about the Australian situation and that the only way was for someone to: … come here and ask questions and see the problems … [but] the main thing is to let them know that, as the story goes, there is someone up there who cares, or outside, who cares.48 In the early 1970s, the range of visitors included those who had fought in the armed decolonisation struggles in southern Africa, including Eddison Zvobgo and Herbert Chitepo, the ‘Che Guevara of Southern Africa’, who visited in July 1973 to address the National Press Club. In an address to the FCAATSI meeting of 1977, Taban Lo Liyong, a scholar from Uganda, reflected on the transnationalism of an earlier era that had given many Africans a theoretical understanding of decolonisation: ‘Africa would not have gained her independence had African, West Indian and Black American theoreticians not plotted out the course in their student days in America and Britain twenty years earlier’. He spoke of George Padmore, WE Du Bois, Kwame N’krumah, Jomo Kenyatta and others.49 In the mid-1970s, the Commonwealth Department of Education began running an overseas scholarships program, the application materials for which asked ‘why overseas travel is important to you in your work for the advancement of Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders’. Applicants were required to ‘explain your position of responsibility and the role you would be expected to play on your return from overseas’. A similar program was established by Rotary, which in 1976 funded five Aborigines – Eric Conway, Phillipa Cook, Robert Isaacs, Lorna Little and Robert Winroe – to undertake a special social work training program under Dr Kenneth Griffiths, the director of the American Indian Social Work training program at the University of Utah.50 Foley maintained that there were two parts to the transnational rationale: learning new methods and causing embarrassment: We were looking at other peoples in the world in similar situations to us and we were looking at the methodology that some of them were using in terms of making the world

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aware of their problem and if you could get the attention of the world, I mean we always thought the greatest vulnerability and susceptibility of the Australian government was in its self-consciousness about its own image in the eyes of the world.51 WA indigenous leader Ribnga Green could see that transnational connections came with a responsibility as well: It follows, therefore, that even Aboriginal leaders with no experience of overseas travel must evaluate their position and think about what image we are projecting … we need to be aware of how the new contacts can be used to advance the status of Aborigines.52 One borrowed ideology of liberation and empowerment that drew a great deal of attention was Black Power. The term first gained prominence during James Meredith’s ‘march against fear’ from Memphis, Tennessee to Jackson, Mississippi in June 1966. Meredith was shot and wounded on the second day of his march, whereupon black leaders from across the civil rights spectrum joined the march, including Martin Luther King as well as Stokely Carmichael and Willie Ricks of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee. At a rally in Greenwood, Mississippi, Ricks electrified the crowd by saying, ‘what we need is black power’. Yet, King was immediately ambivalent about the concept’s potential; he could see its unifying force, but worried about the implications of violence and separatism. Black Power surfaced in Australia in 1968 and its advocates thought that it would flourish in the same nexus of racism, marginalisation and poverty that had radicalised African Americans. Bruce McGuinness was the key indigenous thinker, drawing on US texts as well as other interpreters of colonialism such as French writer JeanPaul Sartre: Not so very long ago, the earth numbered two thousand million inhabitants: five hundred million men, and one thousand five hundred million natives. That is white power. Since the end of World War II, many of the coloured peoples who lived under white colonial rule have gained their independence and coloured minorities in multi-racial nations are claiming the right to determine the course of their own affairs in contradiction to the inferior state under which they lived. That is black power.53

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It was through separatism that new possibilities emerged. Chicka Dixon described the new generation’s impatience: ‘They say: “You oldies, you squares, you cop this, you bow your head to the white man, we won’t bow our head”’. Activist and historian Gordon Briscoe remembered their: … style of talking. They wouldn’t talk to anyone. You had to almost bow and scrape … when Foley, McGuinness, Gary Williams, Billy Craigie, Tony Cooray, John Newfong, Dennis Walker hit the scene, God, it was on! It was a new breed of people bringing in new ideas about how the fuck they should operate, you know?54 Sam Watson drew on exactly the same energy in Brisbane: … when people started talking up this Black Power, that was exciting. The beauty of Black Power, was in the fact … [that] everything black was superior … it was totally understandable, and totally justifiable, after being so downtrodden for all those decades, and feel like trash and garbage and told that we were filthy, dirty blacks and that we had nothing to offer … Then to emerge into this sunlight, where being black was something that was beautiful – because that was the phrase, ‘Black is Beautiful’, right on right on. So we used a lot of Americanisms to fire up young blacks and make them proud, make them proud of our culture … American slogans and phrases and models [were] a bridge to bring us back to a point where we could then explore and reconstitute our cultural identity.55 A short-lived variation on Black Power was the Black Panther Party of Australia (BPA) that Foley, Walker and a few others set up in December 1971. It was radical and glamorous but created confusion with its talk of ‘county gaols’ and ‘honkies’ and extracts from the US Declaration of Independence. However, the BPA also formulated policy on education, to ‘give our people a knowledge of self’, and advocated a national indigenous self-determination through ‘a United Nations-supervised plebiscite to be held throughout the black colony in which only black colonial subjects will be allowed to participate’.56 Yet, many saw the limitations of an unthinking adoption of overseas analyses. In 1968, Charles Perkins lamented that Australia was ‘becoming a duplication of America, not only in the industrial and commercial situation, but also in the handling of the race situation’. Though he was then blaming whites and the government, he soon realised that

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a naïve transnationalism might stunt indigenous development. Perkins came to the view while with he was with Jesse Jackson that ‘to the rest of the world Aborigines did not matter’. African Americans had ‘no sympathy and little knowledge’ of Aborigines’ concerns and Aborigines would have to fight their own battles. In 1971, Roberta Sykes drew attention to problems of historical comparison: Australians are making a grave error when they draw comparisons between the American Negro and their own Aborigines … The Negro is as much an interloper … as his white counterpart, though his arrival was not by choice.57 Ali Mazrui, a political scientist from Uganda, gave the Australian Institute of International Affairs’ Dyason Lecture in 1972, which he called ‘Black Australians?’ He argued that because Aborigines had no chance of national liberation they were ‘faced with a choice between cultural autonomy and economic justice – and cannot have both in full measure’.58 Sue Chilly, an Aboriginal woman activist attending a tribunal in Brussels on women’s struggles, reported on the problems of imposed doctrines, noting that: … the Tribunal was a prime example of the lack of communication and understanding between the women’s movements and the struggles of working class women, Black women and Third World struggles in particular.59 Political scientist Christine Jennett, reflecting on the period in 1980, concluded that it was the period’s ‘pluralist underpinnings … [that were] self-defeating in the long-term’.60 Yet, these developments indicated the strength of the desire to be part of a global resistance movement. Roberta Sykes explained the dominance of the term ‘black’ in the late 1960s and early 1970s: ‘In an effort to elevate the broad black struggle being undertaken here to a Third World level, use of the word “black” becomes highly desirable’. But the real point and achievement of Black Power was that it provided space for indigenous peoples to develop their own understanding of the situation and helped build confidence and community strength. It was ‘the power generated by people who seek to identify their own problems and those of the community as a whole, and who strive to take action in all possible forms to solve those problems’.61 It was in a new range of expressions, organisations and community programs that this took place.

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Aboriginal Power As Kevin Gilbert realised, life on reserves not only denied indigenous traditions but stunted individuals’ mental and political development because access to information was so limited and the provision of education so poor. Certainly, there was a widening availability of mass media, but on reserves a major handicap was that so ‘few blacks read, regularly and consistently, even about their own movement. One reason is that not a few are illiterate’.62 For this reason, the explosion of indigenous publishing in the 1960s and 1970s was a remarkable phenomenon, attesting to the creativity and urge for expression among indigenous communities across Australia. As access to education, urbanisation and a growing sense of audience all expanded in the 1960s, the proliferation of publications, usually associated with particular organisations, was extraordinary. Journals such as the Westralian Aborigine and Churinga, which took the view that Aborigines should work hard to fit into white society, gave way by the late 1960s to militant titles like Koorier, Black News Service and Koori-Bina, that celebrated Aboriginal experiences on their own terms. As journalist Michael Rose noted, these publications: … would occasionally include innovative or culturallyspecific ways of using the medium. The roughly-typewritten Koorier newsletter of 1968 to 1970, for example, often included hand-drawn and hand-coloured illustrations and did not attempt to emulate the mainstream press in its concerns, content, discourse or distribution practices.63 The new journals, as well as the newsletters associated with the main indigenous organisations, were designed not only to connect different indigenous communities but also to encourage indigenous Australians to identify with minorities elsewhere. John Newfong, a significant figure in this era and the editor of the journal Identity, thought their approach needed to be flexible enough to allow both nationalist and cultural politics to influence editorial policy: At times it will seem similar to publications such as Black Orpheus and Pan Africa or some of the Indian newspapers before independence. At other times it will seem more like Black American publications such as Ebony and Jet.64 Cheryl Buchanan, Lionel Fogarty and others founded the Black Resource Centre in Melbourne in 1975 and the paper they published, Black News Service, contained reprints of articles, letters and reports

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from all over the world, invoking a broad community of struggle. One issue from 1978 contained the following: a reprint of an article from a New Zealand publication called Takaparawha, entitled ‘Comments on the Joint Planning Group report on Bastion Point: The Views of the Orakei Maori Committee Action Group’, which discussed in detail a housing and development project in Auckland and its effects on local indigenous interests; then there was a letter and reprinted article from the United States, detailing the case of JoAnne Little, a black woman accused of murdering the man who attacked and raped her; then a piece on events in Palau, including an article from the Honolulu Advertiser on the expulsion of an MP from the Congress of Micronesia and an open letter signed by 125 elected Palauan officials justifying the events.65 Nothing placed this material in context, except the implied mandate of a ‘Black News Service’. Indeed, the lack of information about these particular struggles attests to the inherent validity of the articles within that political time; the reader was simply to understand the political and ideological simultaneity of all these stories. Reprinting articles from other publications was hardly unique to indigenous publications during the 1970s, but the assortment does reveal a disposition to certain forms of political struggle and activity; all speak of a prior commitment to struggles against colonialism in its many forms. The fact that these articles appeared between news of the situation in Australian Aboriginal communities and the particulars of their political struggles, such as against uranium mining, the establishment of a Black Community School in Brisbane and the internal politics of the National Aboriginal Conference (NAC), offers some sense of the situated politics of radical transnationalism. The most visible manifestation of the changes taking place, however, was in the new organisations, especially the formation of the National Tribal Council (NTC) after the split within FCAATSI in 1970. After failing to change the Constitution to ensure indigenous control of the executive, the radicals walked out. They took on new representations, first at the 1970 FCAATSI conference, where they wore red headbands, ‘a symbol of those who felt they had seized the higher ground’. But the new organisation innovated much further with indigenous and particularly Islander political motifs. Barrie Pittock attended the ceremony to establish the NTC, in which Doug Nicholls was installed as ‘Bapu Mamus’, describing it as ‘concrete evidence that the new organisation was truly Aboriginal rather than a white man’s organisation’. For Gordon Briscoe, the symbolism of the organisation’s stationery, an ‘ochre letterhead with the Tribal Council feather’, signalled ‘the

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chauvinism of Island politics had come to the fore rather than the timidness of Aboriginal politics’. Peter Read observed that ‘Blacks were moving into areas where Whites could not follow.66 The NTC’s manifesto called for federal responsibility and action with an elected indigenous national administration; full recognition and ownership of indigenous land and mineral rights; compensation for past actions; better access to employment and health services, and legal aid, as well as education, and particularly cultural education ‘to keep indigenous traditions alive’. As the organisation reorganised itself into the Brisbane Aboriginal and Islander Tribal Council, its theoretical inclinations transformed into a practical politics based on the provision of services. As Sam Watson explained: We saw the Council’s primary role as being a service provider and as a forum for free and open black political thought. So through Tribal Council we also set up programs to deliver real help in the areas of employment, education, housing, legal services.67 Similar developments were taking place in Redfern, where the new generation of practical activists were providing the community with basic welfare services. Some organisations evolved out of specific programs, like the Murraweena Aboriginal Women’s and Children’s Centre in Sydney, which Aboriginal women started as a breakfast program. Others, such as the Aboriginal Legal Service (ALS) and then the AMS, were set up by Aborigines who drew on the expertise of sympathetic whites like Hal Wootten and Dr Fred Hollows. The AMS had a clear self-determination policy: … the AMS is dedicated to self-help, and where possible, members of the Black community are employed as staff, the only white persons included and employed are those who have the skills not found amongst members of the Black Community.68 Accompanying these examples of community self-determination was the growing visibility of indigenous culture. Kevin Gilbert understood that to overcome ‘the spiritual turmoil and loss … identity can only be re-established by according dignity and justice to the Aboriginal’. On his return from Atlanta, Bruce McGuinness was ‘now thoroughly convinced that culture is a key to Aboriginal advancement. We must learn all about our Black heritage … then we must impart this feeling of pride and knowledge to the European people’.69 This had been visible

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in indigenous writing for some time, but perhaps the most striking development was in indigenous theatre. The National Black Theatre was set up in New South Wales in 1972 and gave its first performance in October 1972, called Basically Black. Though the play was a financial disaster, Bob Maza pointed to the obligations of indigenous self-determination, in which indigenous people had to do ‘stupid things like acting as a social welfare agency as well as a theatre. But I don’t see any line separating these two areas anyway’. Gilbert saw the possibilities of indigenous theatre: It can make blacks pull up and assess their situation, help them think about where they are going, what they are lacking. Sure, a lot of traditional culture can’t be put on stage, especially the spiritual stuff. But a lot can, and it will help blacks in the identity thing.70 Gary Foley later wrote that the success of this era could be seen in the rest of Australian society: Aboriginal people in the last twenty years have shown the rest of society how to overcome some of the problems we all have in common. Aboriginal people set up the first women’s refuges in this country. They also set up the first free legal aid centres and the first community-controlled health and childcare centres. All of these new concepts have been adopted and adapted by other groups in the Australian community to meet their needs and overcome their problems.71 Yet, this form of self-determination was developed for community survival and was not thought a long-term solution: These were what we called community self-help programs. They were designed to alleviate specific problems within the community until such time as an overall answer emerged. And we saw that answer as being in the concept of land rights.72 Of course, land rights had never been off the political agenda of indigenous peoples. But, during the 1960s, struggles for land came into the centre of national debate for the first time. The Yirrkala bark petition of 1963, the Gurindji walk-off of 1966 and the Yirrkala land case from 1969 to 1971 helped condense these new expressions.73 The bark petition signalled a new phase of transnational politics from within. As scholar of indigenous culture Howard Morphy insightfully pointed out:

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The genius of the bark petition was that it introduced an Aboriginal symbol into Parliamentary discourse, making it harder for Europeans to respond in terms of their own cultural precedents … [it was] almost a subversive act: an assertion at an introduced ceremony that the most valuable thing you have to offer is something of your own culture … [and] signified that factors other than those generally considered under Australian law were relevant.74 By the late 1960s, regular protests in Australian cities demanded land justice, but the protest for land rights that began on Australia Day, 1972 made an indelible mark on Australian political history. Tim Rowse pointed out that the legal defeat of the Yirrkala claim in the Federal Court was rescripted as a moral victory by sympathetic sections of the media and public.75 The federal government’s indifferent response to the judgment precipitated an action that put the new politics of Aboriginality at centre-stage. The Aboriginal Tent Embassy is perhaps the clearest moment of indigenous transnationalism in Australian history; the embassy activists’ claims exposed the incoherence of the egalitarian nation-state, but also connected the domestic debate about indigenous affairs to global events. It did so by distilling the global currents of decolonisation and liberation into a doctrine of indigenous nationalism that captured public attention and exposed the intellectual exhaustion of the governing party. Like many significant moments of history, its exact origins are the subject of some discussion. Peter Read thought that it was Charles Perkins who ‘suggested to two radicals, Michael Anderson and Kevin Gilbert, that they erect a couple of tents outside Parliament House and call them the Aboriginal embassy’. Gilbert is often credited with having the idea himself. Only two months before, he had written an article for the indigenous periodical Alchuringa, which told the story of a poet who had fasted outside Parliament House in Canberra in order to bring attention to the plight of Pakistani refugees, and who had had some success in gaining $7m in foreign aid from the Commonwealth Government. Tim Rowse has suggested that a ‘Croatian embassy’ established by émigrés may also have been a reference point. Bain Attwood argued that it ‘owed much to William Cooper and Bill Ferguson’s “Day of Mourning”’.76 However, the radicalisation of indigenous politics worldwide, and especially in North America, was undoubtedly influential. The American Indian Movement (AIM) occupied the island of Alcatraz in San Francisco Bay in 1969. The newsletter of the Queensland Aborigines and Torres Strait Islander Advancement Council reported that in Washington ‘Red

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Indians had set up symbolic teepees on the banks of the Potomac river to lobby for Indian rights and to stop the trail of broken treaties’. Roberta Sykes, one of the figures involved in the Aboriginal Tent Embassy, later described the embassy’s rationale as an attempt to expose: … the global conspiracy of silence about the expropriation of Australia from the Aboriginal people … We realised the effort would require a great deal of imagination and ingenuity from a people with no resources.77 The material beginnings of the embassy were basic indeed: in the late evening of 26 January 1972, four young Aboriginal men set up camp on the open ground immediately in front of the seat of national power, the Parliament of Australia. Gary Foley recalled the initial realisation of the scale of what they were doing: ‘this is an embassy: the Prime Minister’s statement yesterday effectively makes us aliens in our own land, so like the other aliens we need an embassy’. Their original consulate was little more than ‘a beach umbrella and placards’. Photographs confirm its humble and demotic character: Aboriginal people and their supporters sit on the ground, cook and eat in the open, and sleep in half a dozen tents; visitors, including numerous Australian politicians who left Parliament House to consult the chief spokespeople of the embassy, look out of place in their suits among the informal clothing and bare feet.78 Local government ordinances did not proscribe temporary dwellings and so prevented the government from removing the embassy legally; numerous observers saw the irony of this, given that so many indigenous people lived their entire lives in similarly constructed housing. The embassy’s critical force was its demonstration of the absolute failure of Australia’s self-designated egalitarianism. It redrew the contours of the Australian public imagination about indigenous lives. It was, as journalist Stewart Harris pointed out, ‘a way of opening ordinary Australian eyes to the lives of Aborigines who have been “invisible” to them’. However, it simultaneously went beyond this representation of the lack of indigenous autonomy, in its construction of a new political space: … the ‘weaving’ of the Tent Embassy also has a collaborative aspect. As a moveable and ephemeral architectural statement it is erected and maintained collaboratively. The grouping of elements is organic, and does not follow a Western geometric pattern like a military camp. The Tent Embassy functions as an expression of its heterogeneous contributors and of the mixing of spaces and materials.79

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It was to this ‘mixed space’ that indigenous peoples from outside the south-east came, including Yolngu people from Yirrkala and the islands of Arnhem Land, giving credence to the embassy’s ‘pan-Aboriginal’ assertion. One historian wrote of ‘a constantly changing and fluctuating population of Aboriginal people from throughout Australia [who] remained encamped under the red, black and green flag of international Black unity’.80 Even for those who did not visit, the Aboriginal Tent Embassy was a bold recasting of indigenous identity and helped consolidate a new form of autonomy: that of being Aboriginal, a shared experience of dispossession and collective difference. Though conceived and enacted by radicals, the embassy nevertheless remains highly regarded by those with more orthodox methods in mind. Faith Bandler reported that the embassy ‘brought everybody together and strengthened ties between the black people’. Christine Jennett argued that the embassy triggered the progression of identity: ‘one can trace a continuing change in emphasis back from “black” to “Aborigine” steadily from the period of the Aboriginal Embassy’. Interviewed on television during the embassy, Paul Coe spoke about the creation of indigenous majorities in places like the Northern Territory that would be a ‘spiritual homeland’ where all indigenous peoples could find an ‘emotional kind of security … the Aboriginal’s sort of Mecca’.81

Transnational Aboriginality The Tent Embassy’s reconstruction of Aboriginality was not simply a domestic phenomenon, but took additional force by explicitly connecting Aboriginality to the main currents of world politics. This was readily apparent to numerous international visitors, who came to meet with the participants in order to understand this new expression of indigenous autonomy: … visitors to the embassy included Soviet diplomats, a representative of the Canadian Claims Commission, and a cadre from the Irish Republican Army who donated a linen handkerchief to the cause.82 Embassy activists felt that the international publicity that they had created was crucial: … the federal government was being criticized in the world press – The New York Times, the London Times, Japanese newspapers, TASS Soviet news agency and even The

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Peking Daily ran stories. They might’ve thought that if it was allowed to go on, it might get to the stage where some of their exports could’ve been jeopardized by embargoes against Australia.83 Gary Foley later reflected that the embassy: … was a moment in Australian history when Aboriginal political activists forced their demands onto the national political agenda. Australia has never been able to ignore the situation of Aboriginal people since. It not only put us onto the national agenda it put the issue onto the television screens of the world.84 Foley returned to China in 1974 with film of police breaking up the embassy and ‘other evidence of how the Government was treating minority groups in Australia’. Charles Perkins’s 1975 trip to the United Kingdom also suggested the breadth of the radical moment after the embassy: the highlight was a protest with Harry Penrith and Bob Liddle on the steps of Australia House in London, from whence Perkins proceeded ‘to 10 Downing Street where he distributed a leaflet entitled “Australia is a racist country”’. The press castigated him for the ‘gross treachery’ of his overseas criticism, The Age declaring his trip ‘a wasted Walkabout … Australians will not thank him for this overseas smear campaign’. Perkins responded on his return that he would take the cause of the Aborigines to ‘the UN, the Arab league and the African bloc’.85 Foley, Bruce McGuinness, Jim Berg and other radical activists established the National Aboriginal Liberation Front (NALF) secretly in 1974, ‘the reason for secrecy should be obvious to all politically aware blacks’. It was: … to operate as a political wing of the established Aboriginal Community Survival Programs (Health, Legal and Housing Services etc) … [and was] the first nationally co-ordinated, Aboriginal conceived attempt to internationalise the general Aboriginal political struggle.86 Their manifesto called for unity as indigenous peoples entered ‘the new sphere of International politics for the first time’. In 1979, Foley and McGuinness planned a European tour to realise their ten-point plan, which was: to establish an Aboriginal Information Centre in London; to locate support in Europe for the AIC; to funnel additional resources to Aboriginal organisations in Australia; to set up an Aboriginal newspaper

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for a European audience; to build a database of European contacts for Aboriginal groups; to create mass media coverage in Europe of the struggle; to get speaking rights in the UN General Assembly from a decolonised nation; to build contacts with sympathisers in the entertainment industry; to promote Aboriginal studies in English and European schools and universities; and to secure ongoing support for ‘the protracted struggle’. They pointed out that the Aboriginal movement was ‘virtually the only national liberation movement in the world which does not have direct representation (via an office) in a European capital’ and noted that many indigenous leaders in Australia had ‘come to realise that the possibility of an internal settlement is hopeless. In the same way other liberation movements (Zimbabwe etc) have successfully done this, then so must we’.87 But by this time, the texture of global politics was altered. Many former colonies had achieved independence and were struggling with statehood by the late 1970s. Though the liberation struggle continued in parts of southern Africa and South-East Asia, the deep well of European guilt over imperialism was being drained, limiting sympathy with new liberation movements, especially those inside countries with white majorities. In its stead a new type of activism was emerging within social movements based on personal and cultural freedom, and environmental concern. It was against that backdrop that the sustained transnational politics of indigenous activism against multinational mining companies took shape. As set out in chapter 3, after the Second World War the vast spaces of the Australian interior, hitherto ignored by whites, were drawn into the technological imaginary of the nuclear age. Aboriginal lands endured rocket tests, nuclear explosions, and were increasingly exploited for uranium deposits at Rum Jungle and elsewhere.88 Other minerals were soon being extracted from remote Australia, with Australian governments forcibly relocating indigenous people at Weipa and Mapoon to facilitate such enterprises. One of the less obvious consequences of decolonisation was that it made resource-based exploration and extraction in Australia more attractive. In 1980, American lawyer Stephen Zorn pointed out that almost ‘90% of all investment in mining globally is in the “safe” countries of Australia, Canada, South Africa and the US’.89 Transnational corporations were taking a longterm view in which exploitation of indigenous lands in Cape York and elsewhere were seen ‘in a global rather than a regional context’.90 For Aboriginal poet Jack Davis, it was an unanticipated and troubling development: ‘Yellow cake, yellow cake, where have you been? I’ve been asleep in the ground, Not a part of the scene’.91

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The anti-nuclear and peace movements in Europe gained critical mass and soon recognised the links between the issues of decolonisation, indigenous rights, the global resource economy and peace. Organisations appeared to work on precisely those connections, such as Colonialism and Indigenous Minorities Research Action (CIMRA), founded by Jan Roberts in London in the mid-1970s.92 Roberts later set out the connection in her book From Massacres to Mining. But it was in the Kimberley region of Western Australia that transnational activism against mining was fully realised. After the Commonwealth Government had acquired in 1976 a pastoral lease and granted it to them, the Yungngora people were able to return to live on some of their traditional lands at Noonkanbah on the Fitzroy River in the Kimberley region of north-west Western Australia. However, their optimism and energy at rebuilding their community according to their traditions and values, after a dispossessed life on the fringes of a small town, soon gave way to the realisation that their new title gave them no power in the face of a rapacious resource-hungry economy. Oil and diamonds had been found in the area and exploration permits and mining licences burdened their leasehold when it was returned to the community. The struggle that followed, from June 1978, when the community instructed the ALS to prevent further development, encapsulated the weakness of the new rights to land and how little had fundamentally changed. The Yungngora, argued Steve Hawke, the most thorough chronicler of the events at Noonkanbah, ‘were of the opinion that white law could and should be overridden by moral and spiritual arguments’. The Western Australian Government encouraged the licence holders Amax to pursue their legal rights to drill on a particular site in the face of concerted community claims that the site was of sacred importance to them. From 1979, there was increasing Aboriginal support from across the Kimberley and the state, and also a steadily growing network of non-indigenous supporters. After much bureaucratic and legal wrangling, the company proceeded, but in April 1980, the Yungngora blockaded their lands and evicted Amax from its land in a striking demonstration of the strength of their community and values.93 In late July, the drill site and the road to it were excised from the Noonkanbah lease, removing any legal impediments. On the 25th, a second blockade began and was dispersed without violence by the police. Equipment was brought onto the site but the main drilling equipment followed in a convoy organised by the state government in August – a secretive convoy of anti-union truck drivers and equipment escorted by police cars and planes, which Charles Rowley called ‘the

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most disgraceful expedition any Australian government has ever launched’. On its way from Perth to Noonkanbah, the convoy faced numerous protests and blockades. The Yungngora once again blocked an access road and this time were forcibly removed by police, but by the time the convoy arrived, news filtered in that the Australian Workers’ Union had placed a work-ban on the site and the drilling crew were now refusing to work the rig. The AWU organised a strike fund for this altruistic effort and rallied international unionists to make formal protests against the multinational Amax.94 Noonkanbah was now seen in a global context. Addressing the Aboriginal Treaty Committee (ATC), the chairman of the NAC, Jim Hagan, said: What is happening at Noonkanbah now is more than a local issue … Australia is now dangerously out of step with international opinion in failing to come to terms with its indigenous inhabitants. The timing of these developments was deeply embarrassing to the Australian Prime Minister, Malcolm Fraser, a strident campaigner for human rights and decolonisation of Rhodesia/Zimbabwe, who was that month to receive a major human rights award from the B’nai Brith organisation. Steve Hawke cited a departmental official from Foreign Affairs as saying for the state government and Amax to proceed any further ‘would be disastrous for Australia … in our international wheeling and dealing. It could all be sabotaged from our international relations point of view’. The WA Premier, Charles Court, sent a letter to the Prime Minister noting that he understood the Prime Minister: … would want to avoid a situation where Australia is subject to criticism overseas … but my considered view is that there comes a time when we have to call a halt to appeasement … I can also confirm that we are not impressed by the threats of Aborigines going overseas to Geneva and ‘pouring a bucket’ over their country which is trying to do the right thing by them and has treated them in recent years with generosity and understanding.95 Fraser and half the federal Cabinet met with the NAC; their brief was to prevent an international embarrassment. In this they failed and Jimmy Bieundurry and Reg Birch of the Kimberley Land Council (KLC) and NAC Chairman, Jim Hagan, left for the UN Sub-Commission on Human Rights in Geneva on 29 August 1980, the same day that the

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state government and the mining company, in an outrageous piece of financial and legal engineering involving the transfer of the mining lease to a company created solely for the purpose, began drilling at the Noonkanbah site. There was great anger from many sectors of the community. Nugget Coombs, then Chair of the ATC, notified B’nai Brith that Fraser’s ‘record in his own country denies his suitability’ for the human rights medal they were about to bestow on him. Native American protesters demonstrated outside the ceremony in New York with a sign that read ‘Human Rights Begin at Home’.96 As Hawke recorded, 3 September 1980 was a day of two firsts in the indigenous movement: the first appearance of an indigenous delegation from Australia before a UN human rights committee and the first combined meeting of Aboriginal land councils. The latter led to creation of the National Federation of Land Councils (NFLC). Hagan said the government had failed its indigenous peoples and its obligations under international law: ‘In a climate of despair, the Aboriginal people of Australia now turn to you, the men of International law, to assist in their struggle for equality and freedom’. The outcome of the sub-commission meeting was a motion to the effect that the issues of discrimination against Australian Aborigines should be studied. Eventually, the site was drilled in its exploration phase, but proved to be worthless. The episode confirmed for many observers that Australian governments and institutions were incapable of taking indigenous interests properly into account. As Hagan told the Foreign Affairs Association in Canberra in 1981, ‘Will we go overseas again? Of course we will. And we will continue to speak with a voice of authority no matter where’.97 What was notable about this period, given the nature of world events, was the lack of violence. At the time, the rhetoric of many implied that violence was inevitable. In 1967, Barrie Pittock declared that if violence was to be averted, whites needed to ‘become infected with some of the impatience which is surging through the veins of Black Australians’. Victorian MP David Bornstein welcomed new Australian citizens in 1972 with a speech informing them that ‘to an increasing number of Aborigines, Australia represents a totalitarian dictatorship. They seek to overthrow its rulers in the same way that oppressed peoples throughout history have striven to break their chains – by violent means’. Bruce McGuinness, however, advocated violence against property rather than persons ‘the desecration of sacred places of worship (not churches) of the white Australian, the statues, the monuments, the

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places of learning … to use red paint … to signify the blood of murdered Aboriginal tribes’. Kevin Gilbert agreed that: … the best action is not against the white man’s person, but against his property, for property is his god. Reprisals against white injustice would, in this view, be better directed against petrol, electricity or gas installations … mass poisoning of the waterholes of stud stock could be thought about. Wheat fields and forests could be razed, using chemical substances that ignite after a delay. That blacks have got to the point of dreaming such dreams is in itself an indictment of Australia’s treatment of its black people.98 In March 1974, three Aboriginal men, one of whom, Bobby McLeod, was carrying a .38 calibre pistol, entered Commonwealth offices in Canberra and took two senior officials of the Department of Aboriginal Affairs (DAA) hostage. The Secretary of the Department, Barrie Dexter, was away, but believed himself to be the target of an ill-conceived assassination attempt, as he was then embroiled in a controversy between the Minister and Charles Perkins over caustic public criticism that Perkins had made, with great pressure from the Minister to sack Perkins. Perkins was summoned by federal police to deal with the crisis, and did so, convincing McLeod and the others to abandon the action, besieged as they were by heavily armed police. Perkins hid the bullets from the .38 to reduce the severity of the charges and later described McLeod’s actions as courageous and ‘so Aboriginal’.99 Some, like Roberta Sykes, saw violence as the understandable response of desperation: For a minority as small as the blacks in this country, this course would surely be suicide. Yet one can also see that even suicide might be considered an alternative to allowing things to continue the way they are.100 In 1979, Colin Tatz insisted that: … the absence of violence has contributed to the invisibility of Aborigines internationally … If, or, when Aborigines get to the point of throwing rocks or bottles, then attention may be paid in Canberra. And if the responses should be gas, batons and bullets, there will be serious attention in Washington, Cairo, London, Lagos, Delhi and Jakarta.101 The candour with which such issues could be discussed then now seems remarkable. Yet, Gary Foley insisted that talk of violence was never more than rhetoric:

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Despite the fact that many people in those days viewed the likes of myself, Denis Walker, Bruce McGuinness, Paul Coe, Lynne Thompson or any of these people, they all regarded us as maniacal sort of radicals and crazies. But we were really responsible people. We had a very strong sense of the responsibility we had not only to our own community but you know, one of the reasons that nobody was hurt at the Aboriginal Embassy demonstrations, the last one which was the big one that people could easily have gotten killed in, was because we had a sense of responsibility to our people to ensure that they didn’t get hurt. And despite us advocating at times beating up coppers and that, that didn’t mean we were necessarily in favour of violence, which everybody thought we were.102 Canadian anthropologist Ronald Niezen has described the ‘looping effect’, by which non-indigenous desires and aspirations are able to feed back into the political realisation and adaptation of indigenous peoples. That is, non-indigenous imaginations of indigenous peoples are an important resource for indigenous struggles. For this reason, indigenous activism has usually found its limits in the stand-off or the blockade. Avoiding actual violence, while maintaining the threat that it might have to be used, exposes the inherent inequity of the relationship.103 Yet, in many respects, the era of transnationalism had hardened the differences between indigenous and non-indigenous peoples. Poverty existed not only in social and economic terms, but in the psychological gulf in the national imagination. This was possible because Aboriginality, the triumph of the Tent Embassy and the growth of an indigenous sector of government, were for most Australians a series of news stories rather than a reality in which their own stake and roles were clear. Anthropologist Sally Weaver wrote of ‘public ethnicity’, the ‘public arena of relations between the nation-state and the aboriginal minorities’, which stood in contrast to the private ethnicity performed and lived in local relationships, in particular indigenous communities, institutions and networks. Public objectification of Aboriginality offered a kind of recognition and visibility, but was double-edged.104 Many Australians did not appreciate what the transformed politics of indigenous peoples meant for their own identities and for the legitimacy of Australia. Though white liberal activists had been forced to come to terms with what political autonomy implied by being excluded, for those who saw the 1967

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referendum as a moment of unity and equality, the events of the 1970s were inexplicable. Indigenous Australians constructed new identities and organisations and began to articulate their rights as indigenous peoples, but found inadequate mainstream support for these claims. So, using the links that they had been forming since the 1960s, indigenous Australians sought support elsewhere.

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Chapter five

INDIGENOUS

PEOPLES AND INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTIONS

At the moment that indigenous Australians were radicalising, similar events were taking place all over the world. Indigenous peoples were realising more deeply the circumstances and nature of their particular oppression; and were celebrating and rediscovering culture as the ground of unique political expressions. Recognition of the simultaneity of the indigenous experience led to stronger networks of information and solidarity. These interacted with new movements of non-indigenous peoples and drew on deeper realisations of the implications of human rights, the limits of the existing international instruments to protect indigenous interests, and the extension of consideration to other forms of human and non-human experience. Australian Aborigines and Islanders played a significant role during this period. International organisations such as the World Council of Indigenous Peoples (WCIP) emerged and began to exert pressure on a UN system hitherto concerned with the civil and political rights of minorities. This pressure created space within the UN system where an agenda of indigenous rights to land, culture and heritage could systematically be pursued. This chapter answers the following questions: how did indigenous peoples come to the realisation that international instruments were not adequate to their purposes? What social networks did they build? What new deliberative bodies and legal instruments in the international arena did they create?

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Indigenous solidarity On his visit to Nigeria for the Pan-African Arts Festival in 1977, Ribnga Green took with him a handful of earth from his own country at Halls Creek, ‘a little of the real Australia’, which he shared with the people he met. He wrote of ‘the far-reaching implications of the mere fact of our presence … people overseas are now learning first-hand from Australian Blacks of conditions here, past and present’. But Green also realised that the politicised space in which he was encountering other colonised and formerly colonised peoples was still very much under construction. He described: … a new forum for ideological rejuvenation, where our parochial views can be eliminated … delegates to the [WCIP] 1979 conference in Sweden were assuming a nonalignment stance: that is, that neither marxist nor capitalist ideals were espoused … The concept of the Fourth World is still very much in its formative stage. Australian Aborigines still have the important opportunity of determining the paradigm of such a movement.1 Visiting Geneva as NAC delegate in 1981, Cedric Jacob laid out what he saw as the basic elements of indigenous solidarity: Today this ancient and enduring philosophy is facing the challenge of western confrontation. The difference between such dissimilar ideologies is that one, the western, is materially based, while traditional Aboriginal society is spiritually based. The indigenous people of Australia, therefore, find themselves in the same situation as other fourth world groups. They are embedded in a society composed largely of those who have come to live in their land and, as such, are determined that they will not surrender individuality or identity.2 George Manuel was central in the process of articulating a global indigenous philosophy. Manuel was a Secwepemc (Shuswap) man and revered indigenous leader from British Columbia, who had visited Australia and New Zealand in 1969 and who, in the early 1970s, led Native Canadians to a more radical and assertive politics. His book The Fourth World celebrated the unique character of indigenous life. For eminent Native American scholar Vine Deloria Jr, Manuel had ‘opened a whole new chapter in the experiences of mankind’.3 What sociologist Manuel Castells called ‘primary identities’ – the traditional identities of indigenous peoples – were fundamentally

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denied by European modernity, but their denial had produced ‘resistance identities’.4 George Manuel stressed that it was the universal spiritual basis of indigenous life, rather than the politics of resistance to oppression, that was the source of identity for the Fourth World and the politics it would need to pursue. The profound rootedness of indigenous traditions in particular responsibilities and relationships to place was the foundation of his activism. This asserted a shared indigenous view about the meaning of human life that imperialism and colonisation had tried to erase. So, the realisation that these were global phenomena meant that the solidarity of the transnational movement could be grounded in a positive philosophy of spiritual attachment to place, rather than simply in the obstruction of modernity and development. Indigeneity was not simply the practice of resistance but also a goal in and of itself, pursued all over the world in the 1970s. The Yirrkala petitions, the Gurindji walk-off and the Aboriginal Tent Embassy were local examples of it. These broadened the ground on which politics was taking place, from campaigns for the redistribution of resources, to a struggle for identity, meaning and purpose. Numerical inferiority and marginalisation also forced indigenous peoples to engage power differently. Observing Saami radicalism in the late 1970s, scholar Robert Paine saw ‘an appeal to values which are widely recognized as intrinsic and thus supra-transactional … much of Fourth World politics is about turning physical powerlessness into moral power’. Through ‘ethnodrama’ the Fourth World existed: … in its own stagings of the fact; only by such means can certain political truths be experienced … for a Fourth World ideology to possess a political life it is necessary for it to attract the broadest public by an event of particular force. Just as the Aboriginal Tent Embassy enacted landlessness and poverty, Saami hunger strikes in the 1970s and early 1980s upset ‘the politically dominant reality’ of Norwegian prosperity; the hunger strikers shaped reality to their own concerns and ‘attained their reality in the very act of portraying it’.5 The growing coherence of the movement meant that particular examples of indigeneity could stand for the whole. For example, the AIM resistance at Pine Ridge, South Dakota in 1973 and the FBI’s response revealed the basic power structure in the liberal and democratic countries was no different to anywhere else. But for those involved it also was a breaking-point for the old consciousness:

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What was accomplished at Wounded Knee? First of all, we won recognition by the world that we are native and sovereign and have treaty rights. The world now knows that the Indian people are alive and well. We are not buried in the past. In that world forum, we instilled pride among Indian people throughout the western hemisphere and among the Aborigines in Australia.6 From the earliest moments, some felt an urge to formalise the new identities. Probably the first attempt was the Declaration of Barbados for the Liberation of the Indians (25–30 January 1971). The declaration stressed that it was ‘impossible to emphasise in all its historical significance, the growing ethnic consciousness observable at present throughout the continent’ among all the indigenous peoples of the Americas. It called for ‘the liberation of the Indians … a total rejection of colonial relationships, internal and external’ and set out seven rights: ‘the right to be and to remain themselves’; recognition of indigenous territories; rights of self-governance, and full citizenship in the nationstate; the need to regulate ‘first contacts’; protection against military and police outrages; and a designated ‘National Public Authority’ to deal with indigenous peoples.7 It also called for a new relationship between indigenous peoples and white advocates, particularly anthropologists and religious groups. Many groups clung to their own way of constructing the indigenous problem and the appropriate response. For example, Lars Persson, a member of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, sought to intervene by describing how little agency indigenous peoples had: ‘Very many of these are inarticulate, commercially valueless, politically impotent, minorities at the mercy of the governments of the sovereign states in which they dwell’. The World Council of Churches Consultation on Racism thought the best way for it to proceed was: … to send a delegation to Australia to express solidarity with the Aboriginal people, to consult with the Australian churches about their own response to racism and to enable the world Christian community, through informed prayer and effective action, to support the Aborigines in their struggle for justice.8 But in fact a new generation of activists was already assisting the new indigenous political actors with organisational support, legal and other resources. European activists established the International Work Group on Indigenous Affairs (IWGIA) in 1968; Survival International

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emerged in 1969; the Society for Threatened Peoples in 1970; and Cultural Survival (International) in 1972. IWGIA, based in Copenhagen, was the most research focused, with the other organisations based in the US oriented to political campaigning.9 Scholars and activists established both the Indian Law Resource Center (ILRC) in Washington and Indigena, an education and documentation centre at Berkeley in the early 1970s. A UN report in 1977 laid out the valuable work such NGOs did. They were a source of information and documentation, either initiating their own research or sponsoring others to do it, as well as funding regular publications and sponsoring conferences. They undertook public advocacy, particularly where NGO members had legal and anthropological training. And NGOs with UN standing presented complaints on behalf of indigenous peoples.10 Indigenous groups such as the NFLC initially used Survival International in order to present their submissions because the rules of the UN involved a complex process of accreditation. This was valuable certainly, but untenable in the long term given the new era of indigenous assertion and control. Indigenous peoples met at conferences where they discussed common problems and learnt how to engage the UN system. The North American Conference on the Protection of Human Rights for Indians and Inuit was such a meeting. Held in Racine, Wisconsin, the conference staged sessions on culture, law, health, criminal justice, governance, and relations with the international community. Speakers explained how to make submissions to the UN Special Rapporteur then compiling the first major international study of indigenous peoples. In this initial period, ‘indigenous achievements were made possible by the heightened state of awareness and debate created by the active and idealist voices’.11 As leader of the National Indian Brotherhood of Canada, George Manuel took the decision in 1972 that his organisation needed to get UN ECOSOC consultative status, in order to reposition itself in relation to the Canadian Government. The move led to the formation of the WCIP in 1975 at a meeting on Vancouver Island, attended by indigenous representatives from 15 countries.12 The new international organisation built directly on older networks in the prairies and Great Lakes regions. These began in 1961 with a meeting in Chicago where representatives from 90 tribes delivered a ‘Declaration of Intent’, in which they resolved ‘to reaffirm their sovereignty as Indian Nations’. In June 1974, the first International Indian Treaty Conference was held at Standing Rock Sioux reservation in South Dakota. Four thousand representatives from 97 tribes across the US and Canada met and formed the International Indian Treaty Council (IITC).13

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Indigenous Australians did not attend the first meeting of the WCIP, which drew its delegates mostly from the Americas and Scandinavia. However, near the end of the decade, the importance and consolidation of the organisation made it imperative that Aborigines and Islanders engage. Ribnga Green met Hans Mathison, a Saami activist, and others involved in WCIP at the Lagos cultural festival in 1977 and was inspired by what he heard. In 1979, the NAC affiliated to WCIP, the same year that the organisation got UN consultative status. Lyall Munro, Lowitja (Lois) O’Donoghue and Reg Birch went to the WCIP Second General Assembly in Montreal to ensure affiliation and proposed that the WCIP Third General Assembly be held in Australia. Reg Birch pointed out that, ‘[i]n the past the Aboriginal or indigenous peoples of the world have been voiceless in global politics, but now the WCIP gives them the opportunity to make their opinions known and to work towards changing instances of injustice’.14 The Fraser government gave the NAC a grant of $90 000 to host the 1981 WCIP meeting in Canberra, the theme of which was ‘Indigenous Freedom Now’. Five hundred delegates came from 27 countries, including Argentina, Killasuyo-Bolivia, Canada, Costa Rica, Chile, Dominica, Kalaallit Nunat-Greenland, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Peru and Saamiland (Finland, Norway, Sweden). WCIP President George Manuel could not attend, but had a speech read at the opening. The Australian Minister for Aboriginal Affairs, Peter Baume, welcomed the delegates in a letter: I have been most impressed with the strength of the common thread that unites Aboriginal people and their indigenous brothers and sisters throughout the world. This is their belief in their own separate identity and culture in the midst of the total community.15

Institutional reform in the UN Many scholars have sought to explain the rapid growth of human rights and other transnational social movements from the late 1960s. Social movement scholars describe both the ‘push’ towards the international realm that comes from discrimination and repression and the ‘pull’ of international norms and agencies drawing the marginalised into their orbit.16 Adapting Charles Tilly’s argument that the state was central to the earlier shift in the level of protest from the local to national, social movement scholar Florence Passy suggested that the ‘creation of supranational political structures leads to an analogous transformation of protest from the national to international level’.17 It

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was because of this shift that the varied concerns of indigenous peoples could be examined as collective transgressions of existing international human rights law and norms. The growth of global social movement networks was also strongly correlated with the activation of the two main covenants of human rights in the mid-1970s, the ICCPR and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR). Scholars have recently shown that transnational actors increased their influence when they expressed their grievances as infringing these norms.18 As noted in chapter 3, UN interest in indigenous populations had a history extending to the earliest days of the organisation. At the UN Seminar on the Multinational Society held in Ljubljana, Yugoslavia in 1965, participants raised concerns about the particular status of indigenous peoples and in 1967 the Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights (hereafter the Sub-Commission) resolved to examine how states had implemented Article 27 of the UDHR in the case of indigenous peoples. Decolonisation also directed UN focus towards the specific claims of indigenous peoples: The anti-discrimination movement owes its ideology and modern impetus to the resentment of the new political elites of African and Asian states at old attitudes and practices. These groups were themselves the indigenous peoples of the colonial age; now that the focus shifts to such groups in independent States in the post-colonial age, it is logical that there should be a connection between the antidiscrimination movement in international law and the movement to secure justice for indigenous groups.19 United Nations ECOSOC resolution 1589(L) (21 May 1971) was the beginning of the UN charter system’s formal interest in indigenous peoples.20 It authorised the Sub-Commission to take action to investigate discrimination against indigenous peoples worldwide. Shortly afterwards, Sub-Commission Resolution (XXIV) (18 August 1971) appointed a Special Rapporteur, Jose Martinez-Cobo, who began preparing his lengthy and comprehensive report. His method was to prepare a series of ‘country monographs’ reporting on each country’s situation in order to build a rich comparative picture of the indigenous world, and in June 1973 he visited Australia.21 Martinez-Cobo’s 1975 report (the first of a series) was immediately striking in its introduction of a quite different definition of indigenous peoples, in which ancestry, culture, communal identification and acceptance, residence patterns and group consciousness were central.

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Though there was still a major emphasis on reaching a universal formal definition that stressed socio-economic development, it signalled an opening to the issue of indigenous culture and difference.22 Over the next five years, the UN staged a series of conferences as part of its decision to make 1973–82 the ‘Decade for Action to Combat Racism and Racial Discrimination’. In September 1977, the International NGO Conference on Discrimination against Indigenous Populations in the Americas met in Geneva. Two further seminars on indigenous issues were held in Geneva (1979) and Managua (1981). In September 1981, the Sub-committee on Racism, Racial Discrimination, Apartheid and Decolonization convened the International NGO Conference on Indigenous Peoples and the Land, ‘the biggest and most significant ever held’ to that point, which included delegates from the NAC. Martinez-Cobo referred to all these meetings in his reports. In 1977, he wrote that after assessing indigenous peoples’ access to existing human rights instruments: … a fairly dismal picture emerges of continuing dependence on appeals to the compassion of sovereign states. Protection of indigenous populations may have evolved into a customary international law to the extent other human rights have achieved that status. Where there were clear legal and procedural remedies, he continued, these measures remain: … bogged down in politics and diplomacy, in requirements such as the exhaustion of domestic remedies, the consent of States to investigations, the confidentiality of complaints, and in circumstances like the conflict felt by the members of the committees who examine human rights communications. By 1983, he had concluded that existing human rights standards were ‘not fully applied’ and ‘not wholly adequate’ for indigenous peoples’ interests. He called for a separate declaration on the rights of indigenous peoples. The final report was ‘an appeal to the international community’.23 Its recommendations fell into several distinct areas. First, there was analysis of the UN’s existing mechanisms; in particular, the Working Group on Indigenous Populations (WGIP, see below), which was to be fully supported as the UN’s central point of intake of material on existing and emerging circumstances and standards pertaining to indigenous peoples. It also recommended support for the

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revision of ILO 107 (paras. 335–41); the support of UNESCO in the application of its general aims for ‘ethnodevelopment’ and the protection of the right to transmit culture to future generations (paras. 342–46); as well as the ongoing research and policy reform efforts of the WHO and FAO (paras. 347–52). It set out a working definition of indigenous peoples, drawn from the range of emphases that indigenous peoples placed on their own definitions, but also with acknowledgment of legislative and other factors affecting identification. It discussed the specific effects of a range of social and economic issues, such as employment, training, land and health, as they affected indigenous peoples.24 The conception of human rights appeared to be shifting. Indigenous peoples and their advocates in the UN thought that crude liberal constructions of equality may give way to a more subtle understanding, in which culture informed a differentiated conception of equality.

Indigenous Australians at the UN The new iteration of human rights started to take institutional shape in the creation in 1982 of a dedicated annual meeting at which indigenous peoples could present their situations and claims to a team of experts. The WGIP became the key site for indigenous peoples in the UN system. Although initially dominated by the presentation of grievances, a feature that persists, the motivations to substantive standard-setting were there at the start. The involvement of indigenous Australians in this body has been considerable. They could rightly speak about the extraordinary change in the institutions, but they also realised that institutional reform was simply a first step. The five expert members of the WGIP are appointed by the SubCommission and their mandate is two-fold: … to review developments pertaining to the promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms of indigenous peoples; and to give attention to the evolution of international standards concerning indigenous rights. The first mandate enabled the WGIP explicitly to criticise state behaviour. Each session hears submissions from a wide range of indigenous peoples as well as member states. Advocates advise WGIP of policy developments, state or corporate behaviour or other issues pertaining to their rights. States often respond as well as making presentations about the positive policy developments pertaining to indigenous peoples.

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From its earliest years, WGIP heard grievances that were very particular and localised and many of the first interventions made by indigenous Australians were of this sort. Issues raised included the handling of the Commonwealth Games protests in 1982 – state legislation had restricted any protest activity, including banning T-shirts, and allowed for mandatory psychiatric counselling. Or the case of Alwyn Peters, a Cape York man who, in a drunken rage, had murdered his girlfriend, becoming Australia’s first poster-child for Aboriginal dysfunction.25 Partly, this was to do with the absence of a procedural mechanism of grievance that indigenous peoples could access. In a submission in 1984, the National Aboriginal and Islander Legal Services Secretariat (NAILSS) highlighted the limits indigenous people faced in exercising their rights by not having access to the ICJ, by pointing to the health problems faced by Maralinga Tjaruta people, on whose lands the British Government had conducted nuclear tests decades earlier.26 Yet, indigenous participants recognised the structural character of such local tragedies. Indeed, this readiness to sympathise enabled the construction of shared normative positions about the reform of rights. Moreover, indigenous Australians felt they had a great deal of experience to offer. As Marcia Langton pointed out: Aboriginal people have achieved a great deal, and also rethought their conditions in Australia, so that in the international arenas we are one of the indigenous groups who have devised workable strategies. We have for instance, legal services, health services, housing co-operatives and other organisations which are Aboriginal controlled, which have recognition from the Commonwealth government, and which provide essential services in default of the state and the local governments. That’s tremendous in world terms for indigenous peoples.27 Indigenous Australians saw the WGIP from its inception as a necessary adjunct to domestic work, making greater ideological and policy space in which to allow self-determination and the building and maintenance of the new organisations of the Aboriginal sector. After the Noonkanbah delegation in September 1980, Aborigines attended UN bodies on a regular basis. In 1981, the National Federation of Aboriginal Land Councils attended the Sub-Commission, first attended by NAC delegates in 1980. From 1982, a broad range of groups went to the WGIP, including NAILSS, all the land councils, the National Council of Aboriginal Organisations (NCAO) and the Top End Coalition.

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In 1985, the Australian Government included Charles Perkins, as well as Robert Winroe, Ken Colbung and Ray Robinson, in its delegation. These were all people with a history of involvement in indigenous political organisations, most of whom had not been shy of criticising the government on occasion. Australia sent a total of eight delegates that year, compared to Canada’s one, and two from Brazil. In addition, NAILLS sent Paul Coe, Delia Lowe and Hewitt Whyman; the National Aboriginal and Islander Health Organisation (NAIHO) sent Anthony Bond, Alan Brown, Shane Houston, Margarete Mallard and Alma Thorpe; the NFLC sent Geoff Clark, Pat Dodson, Bob Weatherall and Peter Yu; the NSW Land Council sent Garry Green; and the Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre sent Michael Mansell. Ossie Cruse was the Australian delegate from the WCIP. Such a gathering of indigenous leaders rarely took place within Australia, and for a few years the density of indigenous Australians’ participation in the WGIP suggested that it may be a space where the spontaneous diversity of indigenous political leadership could be fully revealed. Caucuses, of indigenous Australians as well as representatives from regions such as the South Pacific and Latin America, formed early on in the WGIP. Moreover, while often critical, the relationship between indigenous representatives and the government revealed the latter’s basic commitment to the body. The 1989 WGIP session was the first at which representatives from the Torres Strait Islands spoke: Ellie Gaffney, representing the Torres Strait Islands United Nations, presented the report of the International Indigenous Women’s Conference, which met in Adelaide in July 1989 and was attended by 1500 women from 15 countries. An ATSIC delegation began to attend after its creation in 1990. In 1991 there were submissions from ATSIC, the Northern Land Council (NLC), NAILSS, Top End Aboriginal Coalition, the Queensland Federation of Aboriginal Land Councils, the Federation of Aboriginal Education Consultative Groups; the Central Land Council (CLC); and the Committee to Defend Black Rights. Particular indigenous Australians played central roles in these indigenous forums, including Jim Hagan, Lowitja (Lois) O’Donoghue, Mick Dodson and Frank Guivarra, who was for a time Chair of the Indigenous Caucus. In 1997, Dodson was elected Chairperson of the Voluntary Fund for Indigenous Populations and in 2004 he was elected to the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (discussed in chapter 6).28 In the immediate aftermath of the Mabo decision, Henry Reynolds could legitimately describe Australia as ‘one of the leaders in the debate for recognition of indigenous rights’.29 Mick Dodson later reflected that the international realm was the more promising:

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To be fair I must say that the Australian government has been by far the most co-operative and supportive of any government represented at the Working Group. It is a pity that they don’t bring that attitude back on the plane from Geneva.30 It should be said that there are also criticisms, usually made privately, of the poor fit of UN institutions with indigenous needs and aspirations. Bill Barker wrote of the young indigenous woman at the WGIP who, weeping continuously as she presented her community’s situation, was ‘gavelled into silence’ by the Chairman.31 Conversely, in the corridors of the UN Permanent Forum in 2003, delegates (often representing NGOs rather than indigenous communities), suggested that the litanies of oppression were wasting the forum’s valuable time, which would be better spent holding the various agencies of the UN system directly accountable for their policies regarding indigenous peoples.

Reforming international law From the earliest sessions of the WGIP, indigenous peoples made a consistent effort to introduce an understanding of land rights that contrasted the materialist and commodified approaches that were dominant. A statement made by indigenous Australians spoke of the misleading abstraction of distinguishing ‘land’ from people or culture.32 Yet, the only existing instrument for protecting indigenous interests, ILO 107, had as its highest goal, the integration of indigenous peoples into a modern economy by removing the social, economic and cultural barriers standing in their way. Patrick Thornberry observed that during the 1970s there was a widespread view that ILO 107 had formalised the last stages of colonialism. At the series of conferences during 1977, this criticism was reiterated and informed Martinez-Cobo’s reports. Moreover, only 27 countries had ratified ILO 107 since its agreement in 1957.33 Pressure for revision of ILO 107 came from indigenous and academic sources from the 1970s on, and the ILO convened a panel in 1986 to consider revision. The experts agreed that the paternalistic philosophy underlying the text would need to be overhauled, deciding that the ‘integrationist approach … was obsolete and that its application was detrimental in the modern world’. However, they warned that the aspirations for self-determination of indigenous peoples would make the revised convention ‘unratifiable’ for governments.34 During the discussions, indigenous peoples consolidated their position on ‘free and informed consent’. Indigenous peoples did not assert

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that they were against ‘modernisation’ or ‘development’, but that ‘the element of choice and participation is a precondition of the adaptation process’.35 Also noticeable was the subtle but visible shift in terms; ‘indigenous populations’ was long out of favour (even though it remained part of the title of the WGIP), with ‘indigenous peoples’ now the standard usage. In the late 1980s, the capitalisation of both – ‘Indigenous Peoples’ – became first more prevalent at the UN and soon standard for NGOs and many nation-states. Lee Swepston, who led the negotiations for the ILO, saw three groups form during the discussions: first, a bloc of indigenous peoples plus some workers’ groups and a few member states who saw the need for a comprehensive document on the rights of indigenous peoples that would focus on the principles of consent and self-determination; the second group, the employers’ organisations (which have standing in the ILO) and most states rejected these principles as threatening the nation-state; while the ILO itself took a middle position, advocating a ‘minimum standards’ approach that defined acceptable state and industrial behaviour affecting indigenous peoples.36 The language of the proposed text – ILO 169 – was quite changed, with new emphases including that on ‘the distinctive contributions of indigenous and tribal peoples to the cultural diversity and social and ecological harmony of humankind and to international co-operation and understanding’.37 The text stressed self-identification as the only acceptable mode of definition of indigenous peoples (Article 1.2), but it left the impression that only indigenous peoples living wholly or partly according to traditional law were being considered. Moreover, the problem that was to recur as indigenous peoples tried to reform international institutions first came to centre stage in these discussions. In Article 1.3, the text confirmed that the: … use of the term ‘peoples’ (to refer to the self-determination rights of indigenous peoples) in this Convention shall not be construed as having any implications as regards the rights which may attach to the term under international law. International Labour Office researcher Manuela Tomei recalled that ‘the ILO decided that it did not have the legal capacity, inside the UN system, to decide what this term implied in the rest of international law’.38 Predictably, indigenous peoples who saw themselves as ‘peoples’ with status at international law were unhappy with this outcome. Swepston called it a ‘promotional Convention’ – in that it set out goals to which all nation-states should aspire. However, it compromised on basic issues such as whether indigenous peoples had a right to consent

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to decisions affecting their lives and livelihoods, or merely had the right to be consulted. For those committed to enshrining and achieving their rights of self-determination, this was a significant step backward. There was, however, a divide between the global north and south reflected in attitudes to the final text, Swepston arguing that: … those from the ‘north’ were the most vocal in expressing dissatisfaction with the final text of the new Convention as it did not respond to their highly political and ideological demands; while those from the ‘south’ tended to see it as a working tool which could lend concrete assistance to the most disadvantaged people.39 Many condemned the new convention at the WGIP that year: … the revision process was paternalistic and racially discriminatory … [it] reduced Indigenous Peoples to indirect and demeaning levels of participation and that the ILO only wanted to lend credibility to the process … Indigenous Peoples shall view governments ratifying the revised convention as exposing their intentions towards Indigenous Peoples.40 Thornberry pointed out that the ILO was an organisation ‘whose basic concerns and institutional structure are ill-suited to advance the cause of indigenous groups’. At several points, observers had raised the question of whether ILO work in the specific area of indigenous peoples was something permitted under the organisation’s mandate and charter.41 As it is still the only formal instrument for the protection of indigenous rights, we could ask what its effect has been. Tomei insists on its ‘significant influence on domestic policies, as well as the policy guidelines of several funding agencies’, citing direct policy shifts in Guatemala and the Philippines, as well as reform within the World and regional Development Banks, and the creation of Regional Funds for the Development of Indigenous Peoples.42 ILO 107 had 27 ratifications from 1957 to 1977; ILO 169 has had 17 since 1989. Though as we saw in chapter 3, ILO 107 helped frame Australian activists’ campaigns in the post-war period, linking international concerns about human rights to the situation of indigenous people, ILO 169 has not been used as the basis for changes in Australian policy. Indigenous Australians do not campaign for their government to sign it, and have put considerable energy into a process and document they felt could actually acknowledge their interests.

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The Draft Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples The move towards a formal and comprehensive document setting out the rights of indigenous peoples has been under way for over 20 years. In 1984, WGIP agreed to a five-year plan that would begin with providing an appropriate definition of indigenous peoples before moving to rights. The initial push for a comprehensive document came from two directions simultaneously. The UN Special-Rapporteur, MartinezCobo, had been moving steadily towards that view in his series of studies, which had set the frameworks for discussion at the UN. However, it was indigenous organisations that mobilised to ensure that this happened. The WCIP in 1983 had circulated a ‘Draft Covenant on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples’, which included self-determination, civil and political rights, economic rights, social and cultural rights, as well as measures on ratification and implementation.43 At the WGIP in 1983, the Australian Government sponsored a resolution urging that the body move toward a statement of ‘principles or guidelines to protect and promote indigenous rights’.44 The government took a position that was similar to that proposed by indigenous peoples: ‘The right to define what and who is indigenous must be recognized to the indigenous peoples themselves’. States, moreover, had no right to pass laws infringing on this aspect of self-definition: It is clear that indigenous peoples consider themselves to be different from the other groups that form the society of present-day nation-states where they find themselves included. They consider themselves to be the historical successors to the peoples and nations that existed on their territories before the coming of the invaders of these territories who came to prevail over them and imposed on them forms of colonial or other subjection, and whose historical successors now form the predominant sectors of society.45 In 1985, NAILSS, together with the ILRC, the Four Directions Council, National Indian Youth Council, the Inuit Circumpolar Conference and the IITC, established a drafting group that issued a Declaration of Principles. Indigenous nations were to be considered: … positive subjects of international law … If there is still conflict after negotiations, then the indigenous nations and peoples must have equal standing to appear in the International Court of Justice. Hopefully this approach

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would elevate the land concessions we now have to the basis of land rights and be binding as such on successive governments.46 By 1988, a draft based on extensive consultations among indigenous organisations was circulated, and in 1989 a revised Draft Declaration was published for discussion. It was an elaborate document that set out indigenous peoples’ rights as individuals and collectives; rights of distinctiveness as well as full civic and political participation in the states where they lived; rights to the maintenance and protection of indigenous cultures; and the right to decide their own futures as peoples, self-determination. NAILSS stressed that indigenous peoples had ‘entered a crucial and creative phase’ and that from now on they must use a language: … which draws on the inherently collective nature of indigenous Peoples, Society and their integral relationship, as a political entity, with their territory … securely based in the recognition that Indigenous Peoples and Nations possess the Right to Self-Determination.47 At the WGIP in 1990, Australia submitted a major response to the text, in which it advocated the adoption of a Declaration that would encourage states to re-examine existing human rights conventions with a view to additional protocols that articulated indigenous interests.48 As scholar Russel Barsh pointed out, the legal problem of indigenous peoples could be viewed two ways: as a problem of ‘either discrimination or assimilation, i.e. the lack of equality or forced equality with the population of the administering state’. Thornberry described this as the difference between: … persuading governments to observe more stringently existing international legal principles and humanitarian standards, and demanding wholesale ‘rectification’ of international law by claiming statehood, self-determination, and reinstatement of whatever personality was formerly held by indigenous communities.49 The WGIP completed its work on the Draft Declaration in 1993 and at its 12th session in 1994 transmitted it to the Sub-Commission. SubCommission resolution 1994/45 contained in its annex the ‘Draft United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples’. That resolution also asked the Secretary-General to invite governments, NGOs and IGOs in consultative status with ECOSOC to comment on

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the Draft Declaration. With resolution 1995/32 (3 March 1995), the Commission on Human Rights agreed to establish an open-ended Inter-sessional Working Group (IWG) to ‘elaborate’ the Draft Declaration.50 At the first meeting of the IWG, Mick Dodson firmly and carefully laid down what were to be the principles for discussing the document under consideration. So lucidly did he put the case for indigenous peoples that those involved in this discussion have since referred to them as the ‘Dodson Principles’. His argument dealt with the taken-forgranted understanding of what human rights are and the limitations that this placed on the exercise of indigenous aspirations. It is worth reading this closely: No human rights instrument to date, either domestic or international has adequately dealt with the specific human rights of Indigenous Peoples. We assert and will continue to assert that as Indigenous Peoples we are unique peoples … The rights of Indigenous Peoples must not be permitted to fade into the general morass of other human rights issues. Nor must their definition be taken out of our hands. There are a number of core principles which I see as crucial in relation to achieving justice for Indigenous Peoples. Those are: Firstly, non-discrimination. Secondly, difference or distinctive status. Thirdly, group rights. Finally, selfdetermination. Non-discrimination means not depriving Indigenous Peoples of the basic rights which belong to all peoples on this planet … ‘Difference’ refers to the principle that we are distinct peoples with distinct rights. It amounts to the ability to set up and control social and legal institutions, and to have them operate according to our belief systems and needs, as we define them. The third principle concerns the recognition of group or collective rights … the most significant and unrecognised rights for which Indigenous Peoples are seeking recognition concerns our rights as peoples … it could be said that at the heart of all the violations of our human rights has been the failure to respect our integrity, and the insistence in speaking for us, defining our needs and controlling our lives. Self-determination is the river in which all other rights swim.51

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Self-definition and self-determination A comprehensive discussion of the issues raised by the Draft Declaration or the debates in the IWG is not possible here.52 What follows focuses on two intertwining and fundamental issues: the matter of self-definition and the concept of self-determination. The latter has been heavily criticised in Australia in recent years and sometimes serves as a proxy for the ‘progressive thinking’ that has allegedly marginalised some indigenous communities. However, this shows the yawning chasm between Australian and international understandings of the concept. Despite Wilsonian rhetoric and dreams of a jus gentium, self-determination didn’t become positive law until the UN Charter, when it was built into Articles 1(2) and 55. The use of the term ‘peoples’ attached to it was done conscious of the fact that it denoted ‘groups of human beings who may, or may not, comprise States or nations’. UN official and long-time advocate of indigenous interests Erica-Irene Daes concluded that: … self-determination, in contrast to sovereignty, and all that flows from it, was not originally perceived as an operative principle of the Charter; the principle of selfdetermination was one of the desiderata of the Charter rather than a legal right that could be invoked as such. The 1960 UN General Assembly Declaration (discussed in chapter 3) was then ‘the beginning of a revolutionary process … the cornerstone of what may be called the new U.N. law of self-determination’. But this simply shifted the problem to the definition of peoples. Daes argued that weight should be placed on ‘the extent to which members within the group perceive the group’s identity as distinct from the identities of other groups’.53 So, who were the ‘peoples’ imagined to hold rights to self-determination? In its earliest calculations, the Sub-Commission did no more than place indigenous peoples ‘somewhere between individuals and states on the legal spectrum’.54 Martinez-Cobo began in 1983 to consider the application of self-determination, which: … constitutes the exercise of free choice by indigenous peoples, who must to a large extent, create the specific content of this principle, in both its internal and external expression, which do not necessarily include the rights to secede from the State in which they may live.55

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Patrick Thornberry described indigenous claims to self-determination in this period as ‘a broad portmanteau concept embracing education and land rights as well as rights pertinent to external self-determination which is in effect the right to a separate sovereignty’.56 Legal scholar Frederik Harhoff stated that: … it is difficult to handle a principle which refers to some rights to which there are not, however, any well-defined subjects, any clear material substance, any binding obligations or commitments on states, and any sanctions to be invoked against an alleged violator.57 Yet, for some this was a necessary destabilisation. Academic and lawyer S James Anaya insisted that indigenous activism would transform perceptions of self-determination: ‘indigenous peoples have pointedly undermined the premise of the state as the highest and most liberating form of human association’.58 Indigenous self-determination, if protected at an international level, may represent the historical culmination of an identity formed particularly through the experiences of imperialism and colonialism. The claim took additional force from its evocation of ‘pre-modern’ ideas, those that had grounded George Manuel’s conception of the Fourth World. Anthropologist Noel Dyck addressed these issues thoughtfully in a 1985 analysis of the ‘Fourth World’ concept. Concluding that claims deriving from the concept were unlikely to be satisfied through the ballot box, he suggested that the Fourth World: … might most usefully be envisioned as comprising not so much discreet [sic] groups of people or specified aboriginal societies as complex political, economic and ideological relations between modern nation-states and a distinctive category of people.59 The challenge of self-determination is, in this sense, one of refiguring relations. Canadian sociologist Menno Boldt agreed that transnational politics placed indigenous peoples in a particular relation to the nationstate, but saw it as forcing a decision between participating in domestic policy debates as a minority, or conversely as ‘peoples’ encountering colonial nation-states in ‘nation-to-nation’ relations: By participating in the constitutional reform process, Indian leaders may have crossed a critical invisible line … if Indians hope to be recognized by the United Nations as ‘peoples’ they need to develop ideologies, political concepts,

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and linkages with ethnic minorities in other states that will identify and include them as part of the worldwide ethnic liberation movement.60 Political scientist Peter Jull disagreed, insisting that there is no necessary contradiction between domestic and transnational indigenous politics, but that those working at the UN must recognise the potential and the achievements of domestic campaigns: … if internationalists continue to make demands while refusing to acknowledge the success stories in their midst, they will lose credibility with many indigenous people, hopelessly divide the indigenous movement between practitioners of self-government and purists outside it, and give governments a good reason to ignore indigenous rights and other political voices because they are impossible to satisfy.61 These problems are deepened by the issue of self-definition. As noted above, it is self-definition that is the operative approach in the Martinez-Cobo reports and the WGIP. Ronald Niezen suggests that this is viable because solidarity emerges out of shared histories: Sociohistorical autopsies reveal consistent patterns of conquest, genocide, ethnocide and political marginalization. Indigenism is an identity, like that which unifies survivors of the Holocaust, grounded in evidence, testimony and collective memory. Those who have identified and been accepted as indigenous are inside ‘a boundary of membership and experience that can be crossed only by birth or hard-won international recognition. It links local, primordial sentiments to a universal category’.62 The lack of an explicit definition has been highlighted as a ‘significant feature’ of the Draft Declaration.63 Asian nation-states had sought to restrict the term ‘indigenous’ to the Americas, the Arctic regions and Australia in the WGIP in 1984, but a compromise was reached that stressed the importance of a ‘broad geographical representation (involving indigenous groups) in all parts of the world’.64 Yet, states in Asia maintain that they have no indigenous citizens, regardless of the fact of indigenous assertions within their borders. Niezen has insisted that ownership of the term ‘indigenous peoples’ is ‘changing hands’.65 However, it is more likely that it is not something that can be owned. Just as had happened in the WGIP during the 1980s,

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discussion in the IWG initially focused on the definition of indigenous peoples, reflecting states’ concerns about the loose definition posited by Martinez-Cobo’s report. This was not resolved before the discussion moved on to the issue of participation and whether clauses of the Draft Declaration would be open to revision by states.66 Consider, for example, the Retrieve Foundation of Indigenous Celtic Heritage, located in Armagh in Northern Ireland, which made a statement to the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues in 2003 on behalf of the ‘Ancient Celtic clan known as the Indigenous Nine Fold, Keepers of the Ancient Wisdom and Knowledge’, who have survived the colonisation and neglect of the elected government of Ireland.67 While their presence barely registered at the meeting, this group sought to position itself in the main current of the indigenous movement and was not – indeed, could not be – restrained or restricted from doing so. It is likely that indigenous delegates from the major nations involved in the Americas and the Pacific have more pressing matters to deal with in the annual sessions of the forum, or perhaps they see no difficulty in including the Celts, because they have suffered at the hands of the British. Regardless, a point will be reached at which definitions of who is and who is not indigenous will be required, and it is likely that this will be before the rights of indigenous peoples are institutionalised and honoured widely. While the spiritual platform of indigenous lifeways – sometimes collated as Indigenous Knowledge – and its denial, together form the intersubjective basis of indigenous involvements in the international political order, the foundations have never been systematically presented. Some anthropologists are struggling very hard to provide this, but given indigenous assertions of how contrary to the deepest commitments of the modern world their knowledge is, it is far from clear how articulate this can become in the context of scholarly, institutional or public discourse. And in the absence of any systematic position, the basis of the institutional claim for self-definition/self-determination hinges solely on the historical dimension: a collective experience of invasion, dispossession, impoverishment, denigration and assimilation. The real problem is then the sense of temporality that attaches to the definition. Unlike all other categories of human rights, which are considered universal through time, the rights of indigenous peoples have been heavily shaped by constructions of indigeneity arising through the practices of European imperialism and colonialism. This raises the question of indigenous peoples inside independent African and Asian states, whose governments do not recognise their status or rights. Will they, like many minority women, find that the new

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order of human rights was not all it was supposed to be? Will, alternatively, disputes about indigeneity, on the unsteady ground of selfdefinition/self-determination, become more common? We should think carefully about a set of rights that covers peoples who are not clearly defined and will in perpetuity define themselves. One could suggest an initial register of those eligible to claim the status. Such a thing seems absurd, not least in the absence of any standard definition of indigenous peoples. Even if a conventional definition were agreed, we would still have to expect profound transformation, changes that to some would be transgressive. We live in an age in which men have become women as a matter of law. We have, quite rightly, relegated biology in our legal categories of status and processes of differentiation; but our mode of socio-legal identification places great emphasis on the value of experience, the sensuous immediacy of status. How will the institutions of indigeneity work in the Caucasus? What would prevent the Sunni minority from claiming indigenous rights of self-determination in a post-conflict, Shia-dominated Iraq? Indigenous activists and their supporters tend to dismiss the possibility of manipulation, in the same way that some indigenous Australians did not take seriously the indigenous ‘communities of memory’ finding voice during the 1990s in Tasmania, supposedly ethnically cleansed of indigenous peoples by the 1830s. People will make claims that severely test the institutional definitions of any legal entitlements, if those rights are thought to be beneficial. Part of the indigenous rhetorical strategy has been to distinguish between external and internal forms of self-determination. Erica-Irene Daes suggested that the latter would include ‘the selection of both the desired system of government and the substantive nature (democratic, socialist or other) of the regime selected’. But how just is the argument for territorial integrity? ‘It would be strange, and arguably racist,’ noted Daes, ‘for the United Nations to recognize the break-up of a historical union of European peoples, but to condemn the break-up of a union elsewhere in the world simply because indigenous peoples were involved’.68 There is something deeply attractive about a right to self-determination. Most indigenous peoples who are engaged in this debate see the right to self-determination as fundamental – in the words of Mick Dodson, ‘the river in which all other rights swim’. Self-determination also rhymes with liberal concerns about freedom and autonomy. Others value indigeneity because it promises to destabilise the realist dogma of the human condition, overturning the naturalised categories

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of nation and state, of nature and culture. It aims to articulate in law what some think is happening in practice: the erosion of nation-state power and the redefinition of autonomy. An indigenous right of selfdetermination would help to recognise the mutable and layered conditions of being, an ontological solution that might resolve our fundamental ecological and social crises.69 Yet, the paradox of selfdefinition/self-determination is that it requires others to recognise and respect such acts. Former Human Rights and Equal Opportunities Commission (HREOC) Social Justice Commissioner Bill Jonas strongly advocates seeing self-determination as a process: As in the case of peace building and disarmament, there is a preliminary need for confidence-building, through a gradual process of co-operation and collaboration. In other words, self determination can never be defined in the abstract. It can only arise out of a process of sincere engagement.70 International relations theorist Paul Keal has similarly argued that law should be considered ‘a social process, in which the boundaries between law and politics are less clearly drawn’.71 As chapter 6 shows, even establishing a robust instrument of positive international law to protect indigenous peoples’ human rights (a seventh Convention) would be no guarantee that that those rights would actually be respected. This does not mean that it should not be an aim, but that deep thought should be given to the relational dimensions of indigenous rights claims, that require the reconstruction of nation-states’ and citizens’ perceptions of their own interests and values.

New engagements with international institutions Mick Dodson pointed out in 1993 that the importance of land to indigenous peoples was that it was the only way to enjoy rights set out in Article 27 of the ICCPR: that the loss of the land on which to live out hunting and gathering cultures could not but damage the right to ‘transmit culture from one generation to another’.72 Indeed, using existing instruments may be a more fruitful approach.73 Even S James Anaya admitted that success depends on indigenous peoples articulating their own vision that is grounded in ‘generally applicable human rights principles’.74 Here the extension of existing rights may, in fact, improve the rights of all. Thinking through the import of Dodson’s argument, if one comes to see, for example, the natural environment as

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indistinguishable from culture, as many indigenous peoples strongly do and as some non-indigenous peoples are coming to do, then Article 27 provides legal protection for the environment experienced as culture. Though he has been one of the most committed advocates of a comprehensive statement on indigenous rights, Dodson asserts that indigenous peoples ‘have got to get a lot wiser about accessing the spectrum of the international system, whether they be the treaty bodies, [or] the World Bank’.75 One area in which a broader approach is visible is on the issue of ‘data disaggregation’. The goal is to build more accurate statistical pictures of the actual circumstances of indigenous peoples. At the level of generality at which international institutions, like large and diverse nation-states as well, are obliged to work, accurate statistical information is essential to an informed decision-making process. Considerable information submitted to the UN identifies indigenous and tribal peoples. However, this is inconsistent in its definitions, concerns and quality. Data collection is often dominated by state goals, relying on administrative records and sporadic or regional surveys. The UN Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights (OHCHR) in a recent paper examining the problem, pointed out that ‘the indicators on which data collection is based may not always be seen as relevant by indigenous peoples, and do not necessarily allow measurement of issues such as land loss or degree of participation in decision-making’. It called for the need to combine qualitative and quantitative data, in order to properly contextualise problems. Moreover, the study showed that some countries disaggregate national statistics by ethnicity (including Australia), while many others do not. Some do this because there are no good definitions that are widely accepted, or because such data collection is either proscribed by law or prevailing norms, such as those articulating non-discrimination or national unity.76 But it would be an error to see indigenous transnationalism as solely interested in its own status, or in not realising that the fate of indigenous peoples is bound up with others in the common and global problems of humanity. In 1985, indigenous peoples intervened in discussions about the Draft Convention on the Rights of the Child as it pertained to indigenous children, as well as a major study that was under way into religious intolerance. Indigenous people were active in debates about genocide and the rights of disabled people. Russel Barsh has argued that there are signs of a politics that is: … more than indigenism. Indigenous organizations are emerging as a kind of regional group with broad interests,

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which seems likely to enhance both their credibility and the force of their claims to a degree of political responsibility.77 We can see this holistic conception in the statements of indigenous consensus reached on issues of broad global concern.78 For example, the First Summit between Indigenous Peoples and Environmentalists, held in the Amazon (9–11 May 1990), led to the ‘Iquitos Declaration’, on the conjunction of Indigenous and environmental rights. A conference of indigenous peoples of tropical regions held in Malaysia (15 February 1992) led to a Statement of the International Alliance of the IndigenousTribal Peoples of the Tropical Forest. The World Conference of Indigenous Peoples on Territory, Environment and Development, in Brazil (30 May 1992), resulted in the ‘Kari-Oca Declaration’ which spoke of indigenous spirituality, human rights, culture and intellectual property in the context of development. The First International Conference on the Cultural and Intellectual Property Rights of Indigenous Peoples, held at Whakatane in Aotearoa/New Zealand (12–18 June 1993), resulted in ‘The Mataatua Declaration on Cultural and Intellectual Property Rights of Indigenous Peoples’. These meetings were held on indigenous territories in advance of major UN meetings, so as to define and assert an indigenous perspective in each discussion. For example, the Kari-Oca Declaration was timed to precede the UN Conference on Environment and Development, June 1992, which led to the ‘Rio Declaration’ and the Convention on Biological Diversity. One observer argued that this intervention played a ‘critical role’ in the deliberations.79 The First World Summit of Indigenous Peoples preceded the World Conference on Human Rights in Vienna in 1993 (24–28 May 1993). Held on the B’okob’ (Chimaltenango) territory of the Maya-Kaqchikeles, the meeting produced the ‘B’okob Declaration’: We hope for a future in which our mother earth becomes healthy again, in which we enjoy equal relationships, mutual respect, and solidarity among individuals, peoples and the different nations of the world. The ‘Kimberley Declaration’ (28 August 2002) was made on Khoi-San territory by the International Indigenous Peoples Summit on Sustainable Development, and preceded the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg in 2002. These alternative summits on indigenous territory, perhaps more than the texts themselves, draw attention to the complex geography of global concerns. They demonstrate that indigenous peoples reside in

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many of the places that face multiple crises and challenges, highlighting not only the marginality of indigenous peoples to the major debates conducted in ‘global cities’, but the alternative that their perspectives could offer based on the groundedness and locatedness of indigenous difference. Such campaigns reiterate the dual character of resistance and alternatives at the heart of indigeneity. A broadened horizon may be the future for indigenous transnationalism. International relations scholars have for some time considered the role of ‘epistemic communities’ in international decision-making communities.80 Observing international regulation regarding marine mammals, Peter Haas argued that policy-makers from national departments of resources and environment or international agencies interact with biologists and other scientists, as well as NGOs such as conservation groups. It was their shared discussions that need to be understood if we want to analyse decision-making at the global level, where the absence of a clear state authority made expertise more consequential. Those in: … transnational epistemic communities can influence state interests either by directly identifying them for decisionmakers or by illuminating the salient dimensions of an issue from which the decision-makers may then deduce their interests.81 This has been happening for decades, as knowledge constructs decisions in particular moments where power and interests are absent or unfocused. Indigenous peoples are increasingly finding ways into such epistemic communities, bringing not only an assertion of their own needs, but also demonstrating the relevance of new forms of knowledge itself, providing new methods and conceptions of effective action. This has arguably been the case in the negotiations the led to the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants, in which indigenous peoples of the Arctic played a significant role.82 However, as the institutional phase of transnationalism continues to unfold, indigenous activists have a great deal to resolve. Their assertions to non-indigenous institutions require ever greater expertise; work on a broader range of fronts; and a coherence that will be tested by its own success. What role will indigenous Australians play in these challenges?

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Chapter six

D O M E S T I C AT I N G INDIGENOUS POLITICS IN THE ERA OF G L O B A L I S AT I O N The new politics of cultural difference and its connections to the global movement of indigenous peoples revealed the incoherence of a national project predicated on shared culture, liberal human rights and territorial isolation. In response to the new landscape of indigenous–settler relations, and as a result of the reforms of the 1970s that gave many indigenous communities a new organisational platform, progressive nationalists inside both Conservative and Labor governments began, in the late 1970s, entertaining ideas about reconstructing the nation-state. The details were perennially vague but always gestured at some moment or act of inclusion of indigenous peoples. The first attempt at national reconstruction was the ‘makarrata’ process. That collapsed, and was followed by promises of a national land rights policy. Its failure led to the creation of a national indigenous political administration, and finally into reconciliation, the substantive aim of reconstruction deferred until the Australian people were deemed ready. Transnational politics certainly did not stop during these efforts, but its relationship to domestic debate became steadily more strained. On the one hand, radical activists staged ‘transnational protest events’ aimed at generating international attention, using the politics of embarrassment to highlight domestic problems. On the other hand, many tried to apply existing international legal norms inside Australia using domestic legislation, as well as making regular representations to the UN treaty-bodies. However, indigenous peoples knew the problems with these instruments and continued to work on reforms to the international institutions.

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But in the 1990s transnationalism began to play a functional role in critical representations of the ‘Aboriginal predicament’. Particularly in the decade since Conservative parties returned to power, attempting to rethink the indigenous situation with reference to events, norms or arguments made outside the country has met with official contempt and the withdrawal of status and funding. In this chapter, I consider how Australia responded from the late 1970s to the rise of a new indigenous politics influenced by transnationalism. The chapter also examines how international human rights law has been deployed in Australia by indigenous peoples and shows that the Australian Government has actively worked to contain indigenous transnationalism.

Reconstructing the nation Indigenous peoples were placed in a subordinate position during the formation of the nation-state. State policies of ‘protection’ offered no autonomous entry to citizenship, while the Constitution ensured that the states remained sovereign over this area until 1967 and legislation on the franchise, social security and other elements of national inclusion excluded indigenous peoples.1 Later reforms of citizenship measures from the late 1950s have not included indigenous peoples as indigenous but merely as marginalised persons. Indigenous peoples’ transformation of their status in Australian cultural and political life from the mid-1960s on, however, made some Australians feel that the original injustice needed to be rectified. From the late 1970s until the mid-1990s, successive governments discussed various ways of doing so.2 The first indigenous Member of Parliament, Neville Bonner, sponsored a resolution in the Senate in February 1975, calling for acceptance of prior occupancy and the payment of compensation.3 It was passed unanimously and was frequently invoked as the ‘starting point’ of negotiations. In the space of a few months in 1979, both the elected NAC and the non-indigenous group, the ATC, called for an act of settlement. The subject matter of the treaty would include protection of indigenous cultural, language and land rights, control over mining on traditional territories, compensation for loss of lands and damage to traditional modes of life, and the right to self-determination.4 Malcolm Fraser’s Coalition government referred the matter to the Senate Standing Committee on Constitutional and Legal Affairs. The committee’s report, Two Hundred Years Later … (hereafter the Senate Report), began from the premise that ‘traditional perceptions of the historical relationship between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people from the time of European settlement in this country require reap-

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praisal’ and there was, ‘a growing appreciation of evidence’ that the orthodox narrative was no longer adequate.5 The Senate Report considered four legal positions for an agreement: a treaty in international law; an agreement that was constitutionally embedded; a legislative agreement; and a simple agreement or contract. The first was rejected on the grounds that Aboriginal people did not constitute a nation. In 1978, Paul Coe and the ALS in Sydney sought to place the question of Australian sovereignty before the High Court of Australia on behalf of all Aboriginal organisations. The High Court decision in 1979 was a unanimous rejection of the case and the capacity of any municipal court to examine the legal foundation of the state. The committee saw ‘obvious political limitation’, to the legislative option, given that any statute would remain subject to subsequent parliamentary scrutiny. A simple agreement or contract was rejected because of problems that were thought likely to arise over the question of enforcement and whether a highly technical contract would be understood by indigenous peoples. What that left was an agreement with explicit constitutional support, which required a referendum gaining the majority of the Australian electorate. The advantages were clear. Such an agreement would be protected from ‘any damage due to short-term political and social expediency’, and it would enjoy the special status gained from the prior commitment of Australian electors to the concept of a compact. However, a problem arose: … there was widespread lack of information and understanding among Aboriginal communities of the idea of a compact between Aboriginal people and the Commonwealth … The Committee also found, in some instances, only a limited understanding of the concept even among informed non-Aboriginal witnesses. Refusing to see that ignorance as an insurmountable obstacle, the committee suggested that the way forward was through a process of community education and discussion, so that complexities and potential misunderstandings could be addressed.6 The report itself was not released until the government had changed, and the ALP, now in power, suggested it would use the findings of the report to give shape to government thinking on a treaty.7 However, the government effectively ignored the report and shifted its focus onto the passage of national land rights legislation, the ALP platform federally since 1982 (since 1978 in Western Australia). However, the government quickly discovered the limits of enthusiasm for a

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reconstruction that devolved control over land. The proposal was stridently opposed by the WA Labor government led by Brian Burke, as well as the power of the mining lobby. Political scientist Ronald Libby recalled that the Burke government ‘refused to accept over-riding land rights legislation, and the federal government refused to abandon its national land rights policy without assurances that Western Australia would come up to national standards for land rights as determined by the federal government’.8 Throughout the period of Western Australia’s intransigence, the mining lobby found itself able to erode the provisions of the proposed legislation to the detriment of indigenous interests, with the government finally abandoning it. That volte-face, claimed lawyer Frank Brennan, was: … the grossest breach of faith committed by any government towards Aboriginal people since white settlement. Never had so much been promised, with absolutely nothing being delivered, and with Aborigines themselves receiving the blame.9 Re-elected in 1987, Bob Hawke’s third government set out its direction in Foundations for the Future. The policy statement foresaw selfdetermination through the devolution of services to indigenous communities by introducing legislation to establish ATSIC, a body that would both administer social services and act as a political forum. The government also proposed a series of discussions about an agreement with indigenous people that would take place in 1988.10 Hawke then told the ALP National Conference in 1988 that ‘there is no doubt that a Bicentenary provides us with a golden opportunity to start serious work towards an agreement’.11 Hawke immediately took his own inspiration to a meeting of Aboriginal elders in the Northern Territory, who presented him with the ‘Barunga Statement’. This was a document in which Aboriginal groups in central Australia called for the recognition and protection of their cultural rights; for self-determination and control of lands; for compensation for loss of lands; and for the negotiation of a ‘Treaty or Compact recognising our prior ownership, continued occupation and sovereignty’.12 Hawke’s response was to commit his government once again to negotiate a treaty. But the onus was now on indigenous people to speak with one voice and present a united front to the government in order for the negotiations to begin.13 A greater problem was that Hawke’s new stance had the effect of congealing political opposition. Then Leader of the Opposition, John

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Howard, issued a press release the following day in which he argued that a treaty was ‘a leap into the constitutional unknown’.14 The Liberal Party’s 1988 platform decried ‘the absurd proposition that government can make a treaty with itself in favour of some of the citizens it is elected to serve at the expense of others’.15 The debate was soon joined by right-wing intellectuals, ably supported by mining industry connections.16 Minister for Aboriginal Affairs in Paul Keating’s government, Robert Tickner, later explained that, in the face of concerted opposition: … the proposal for a treaty was soon put into the too hard basket by the government until this and the associated issues were addressed through the strategic advancement of the reconciliation process.17 The ‘strategic advancement’ had been worked on for some time: in early 1988, the Australian Heads of Churches presented politicians with a document entitled ‘Towards Reconciliation in Australian Society’. Written by Frank Brennan, it called for a ‘formal acknowledgment of the nation’s Aboriginal heritage’.18 The idea was that the resolution would become the first business of the Commonwealth Parliament in its new building. Hawke’s introduction to the reconciliation motion gave a sense of the magnitude of what he envisaged: At the same time, the Government is committed to a real and lasting reconciliation, achieved through full consultation and honest negotiation between Aboriginal and nonAboriginal citizens of this nation. This will be recognised by the preamble to the Commission legislation. It will be recognised by the compact or treaty which we are committed to negotiating with Aboriginal and Islander people, and it will be recognised by our support for this motion. Without this overall approach, without a proper settlement and proper recognition, there can be no real and lasting improvement for the Aboriginal and Islander people.19 To summarise the ‘overall approach’: there was no preamble to the ATSIC legislation, there is still no compact or treaty with Aboriginal and Islander people, and the motion of acknowledgment, affirmation and reconciliation was forced through the house only by government majority. By 1990, the government had learnt from the failure of the Bicentennial resolution and sought considerable input from the Opposition in the legislation that came to found the reconciliation

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process – the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation Act (1991). A treaty was no longer under consideration and an ‘instrument of reconciliation’ was seen to defuse the potential division inherent in a treaty. According to Bob Hawke: ‘the nature of a treaty involves an agreement between two nations … it has never been in the Government’s mind that the reconciliation process lead to such an outcome’.20 Frank Brennan’s analysis of that period reveals that the Labor government had come up against the limits of what could be widely supported in the Australian community and achieved through the political process. A treaty had no possibility of Conservative support, and would therefore become the source of major political confrontation over what Australia was. What Brennan described as the Conservative idea of ‘One Australia’ was the renewed visibility of defensive nationalism as a positive doctrine in Australian life: ‘loyalty to Australian institutions and values should transcend loyalty to any other set of values anywhere in the world’. There was really only one direction in which this energy could go: the imperative of national unity would kill off any sense of an agreement based on a recognition of difference. A Liberal party spokesman asserted that there was: … nothing more fundamentally likely to increase tensions and divisions or to set group against group, person against person, institution against institution than a motion passed by the Commonwealth Parliament which says that we want to have an instrument of understanding and reconciliation.21 The corollary point to consider through this discussion is whether a single body representing indigenous interests is either conceivable or appropriate. How could the complex and various expressions of indigenous politics and identity engage the nation-state in one single moment of reconstruction? Some, like Kevin Gilbert, felt that any national agreement between all Aborigines and the government would ‘take away the right to go outside Australia to obtain support, so reducing Aboriginal affairs to a purely domestic matter’.22 Tim Rowse observed that ‘indigenous debate on the treaty became a competition for moral and political legitimacy, between those more and less favoured by government patronage, in which all laid claim to the language of sovereignty and nationhood’.23 Others doubted the utility of the goal. Gary Foley, for example, pointed out that treaties were a guarantee of nothing at all and that the history of treaty-making countries was one of negligence and bad faith.24 As indigenous peoples all over North America knew only too well, the belief that a treaty provided inviolable recognition of

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indigenous rights was rarely shared by colonial powers. Locating an alternative source of authority was, for some indigenous activists, an essential first step. But by the end of the 1980s, it seemed the only way forward for government was into the nebulous territory of reconciliation. The ground had shifted, to the soul, the psyche, the emotional core of Australia. Hawke began by declaring Australia’s innocence. Reconciliation would not be a process, he said, ‘predicated on the notion of … collective and irredeemable guilt’ of settler society.25 In the new environment, the Conservatives’ strategy of ‘One Australia’ had triumphed by appropriating the terms of ‘nation’, ‘identity’ and ‘community’, enforcing unity through a fear of division. The principles of an agreement that had originally motivated progressive nationalists’ search for national reconstruction were now far from view. Reconciliation has had modest success in resocialising sections of the Australian community. Of more impact by far on social attitudes, however, has been the incoming Conservative government, which from its election in 1996 began a systematic assault on the legacy of the previous 20 years in Aboriginal affairs, most notably through amendments to the Native Title Act, intense scrutiny, funding cuts and the eventual abolition of ATSIC, the issue of a just response to the Stolen Generations, and in efforts to reform statutory land rights.26 What was made clear by the fruitless trek to national reconstruction of the 1980s and 1990s was that the challenge of making a treaty or reaching reconciliation is not simply the difficulty of reaching an agreement between white and black: there were several points early on where indigenous and non-indigenous leaderships might have done so on particular issues. The real obstacle is in whites agreeing with whites, and also in blacks agreeing with blacks.27 The reconciliation campaign did not resolve that central dilemma. Wanting only to bridge the difference between indigenous and non-indigenous peoples automatically prioritised the coherence and completion of each, in pursuit of the larger fantasy of a coherent and meaningful national story. Indeed, it did not squarely address the substantial diversity of non-indigenous opinion – including reservoirs of profound racism – at all. The Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation had neither the resources nor the legitimacy to steady non-indigenous Australia’s gaze at itself in order to effect the coherence reconciliation required. Both treaties and reconciliation remain elusive to their supporters; to their opponents, treaties are divisive, while reconciliation has shamelessly been refashioned as a policy to extend the basic provisions of Australian citizenship, increasingly through a model of enforcement.

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Australian national identity is, for progressive nationalists at least, incomplete. For defensive nationalists, national identity hinges on a simple egalitarianism that does not countenance claims to indigenous rights. In the context, the rationale for transnational analysis and activism remains.

Transnational protest events In 1979, long-serving indigenous leader Joe McGinness felt moved to write to unions calling for ‘a rescue operation’ of national indigenous politics. He felt that the post-1972 Whitlam reforms were ‘channelling the human resources into (local organisations) and away from a national body’.28 One of the consequences of the growth of the ‘indigenous sector’ was that it brought the debate over indigenous affairs into a different discursive and political space, where efficiency and accountability prevailed. Author Tom Keneally observed that this now distinguished Australia from the pariah nations to which some compared it: … unlike the South Africans, who apply such blunt methods as tear gas, torture and automatic weapons … we employ the device of budgetary control, budgetary debilitation and budgetary manslaughter to manage a race who were the ancient possessors of our continent. And operating thus we just about get away with a clean international reputation.29 Shorty O’Neill (of the NFLC) bluntly assessed the legalisation of violence against indigenous peoples when he told the inaugural session of the WGIP, ‘[o]f course they do not use guns or poisons anymore, but bulldozers, earthmovers and personal security guards’.30 At least from the time of the anti-apartheid protests of the early 1970s in which many indigenous peoples were involved, activists had exploited what historian Graeme Davison has called ‘the imaginary grandstand’: the desire of Australians to gain esteem in the eyes of the world by triumphing in the sporting arena.31 The Australian preoccupation with sport was a ripe target for indigenous peoples, not least because in addition to success on the sporting field, it was indigenous marginalisation that framed overseas understandings of what Australia was. Protests at sporting fixtures drew these two representations together, deeply annoying many. Of course, this was the point, to show that one group was enjoying its culture while another’s was destroyed on a daily basis.

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An early and unpleasant episode of this performative politics was in 1982 at Olympic Park in Melbourne during an international athletic meeting, when Aboriginal protesters ran onto the track, disrupting the Men’s 200-metre final. The stadium announcer condemned them as they were led away, while spectators hurled rubbish.32 This was a warm-up for the protests at the Commonwealth Games in Brisbane in September 1982: The Brisbane Games provides the Aboriginal people with an opportunity to expose racism in Australia to the rest of the world. There will be a large contingent of international media in Brisbane, providing an opportunity not to be missed of revealing the conditions under which Aboriginal people are forced to live in this country. For too long Malcolm Fraser has been free to strut the international arena as a champion of racial equality. We are determined to shatter this massive fiction and force him to act against the institutional racism that exists in his own backyard.33 The Queensland Government prepared with its Commonwealth Games Bill, an acutely paranoid piece of legislation that gave police the right to arrest anyone holding a placard within 16 kilometres of a Games venue, and magistrates the power to submit people for psychiatric evaluation. Regardless of the law, demonstrators descended on Brisbane for the event, and hundreds of indigenous people and their supporters were arrested. The transnational ‘grandstand’ provided by the Games energised the domestic struggle: ‘The total campaign was a resounding victory for the Land Rights struggle. People came from every corner of the country to be part of this historic occasion’.34 Some observers attribute the origins of ATSIC to the Hawke government’s fear of a repeat of those protests during the bicentenary in 1988. During the Bicentennial, there were many actions, ranging from the alternative indigenous celebration of 26 January as ‘Survival Day’, to Burnum Burnum’s symbolic invasion of Britain which opened this book. In 1994, at the Commonwealth Games on Vancouver Island in Canada, Cathy Freeman won her 400-metre race and celebrated by carrying both Aboriginal and Australian flags in a victory lap. A senior Commonwealth Games official, Arthur Tunstall, criticised her for doing so, but public reaction suggested that Freeman had created a new relationship between indigenous peoples and the ‘imaginary grandstand’. Winning, as she did again so memorably at the Sydney Olympics in 2000, undoubtedly helped. However, at the time of writing, indigenous activists were preparing for a repeat performance at the Commonwealth Games in Melbourne in 2006.35

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Transnationalism also took some unexpected turns during the 1980s, starting with Michael Mansell’s visit to Libya in 1987 as a guest of the high-profile eccentric and dictator, Muammar Gaddafi. Mansell said that the purpose of the visit was to get Gaddafi to help indigenous people put their case at the UN. He also hoped to establish a base or embassy in Libya, reprising Gary Foley and Bruce McGuinness’s dream of an Aboriginal Information Centre: ‘the embassy would be used as a base to lobby all governments with embassies in Libya, about the needs of the Australian Aboriginals’.36 Most media portrayed the trip as a small farce, but some suggested that the ‘simple-minded folly of Tasmanian black activist Michael Mansell could well plunge this country into the centre of the terrorism maelstrom’.37 Mansell returned in June 1988, with others including several Maori activists, and asked Gaddafi to stop the $27 million annual live sheep trade from Australia as an act of solidarity. Several indigenous leaders, including Charles Perkins, contested his Aboriginality.38 In July 1990, Mansell, Bob Weatherall, Geoff Clark and others established the Aboriginal Provisional Government (APG) in Sydney. Among their first efforts was to seek standing at the South Pacific Forum being held in Vanuatu, and identifying with the separatist group Front de libération nationale kanak socialiste (FLNKS).39 After being refused entry, Weatherall and Mansell stood ‘silently on a grassy hill holding the flag as dignitaries, including Mr Hawke, arrived in limousines’. The APG argued that Australia had pulled its financial muscle on the South Pacific nations to exclude them.40 During his first visit to Libya, Mansell had successfully used a passport issued by the APG. In 1990, Josie Crawshaw, the Top End Coalition of Aboriginal Organisations chairwoman, and Geoff Clark, the NFLC chairman, were detained for several hours in Darwin after returning from Europe where they had used APG passports to enter Switzerland and Norway: ‘this is believed to be the first time their use has been obstructed: or that holders have insisted on using them as their only legitimate means of entry’.41 After Mansell’s visit to Libya in 1988, the Coalition Immigration spokesman, Alan Cadman, felt that such actions warranted the revocation of his Australian passport: Mr Mansell apparently does not value his Australian citizenship or passport and, by his visit to Libya, is seeking to undermine the peace and security of Australia … As soon as he gets out of Australia, the Immigration Minister should cancel his Australian passport.42

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Mansell criticised Nelson Mandela, then recently released, for visiting Australia and agreeing not to speak about Aborigines. The APG also argued there was ‘no national basis for Aborigines fighting a racist war against Iraq when the very government we’d be fighting for continues to illegally occupy and control land belonging to Aboriginal people’.43 Weatherall tried to convince Cape York Aborigines to protest the building of the proposed ‘spaceport’, and at an APG conference in 1992 attended by Joe McGinness and other elders, the first Aboriginal birth certificates were issued to babies. Later, the APG offered to hide in indigenous communities non-Aboriginal service personnel who refused to serve in Operation Desert Storm, and they planned an Aboriginal Olympic Games team to go to Barcelona in 1992.44 Since 1972, there had been numerous desultory attempts to resurrect the Aboriginal Tent Embassy. As original member of the embassy Gary Foley put it: … the Embassy was a moment in Australian history … a six month moment … and that was it. … some of us had always argued that the great beauty of the original Embassy as a stunt, and as a political protest, was in its originality, nobody had ever done anything like that before. That’s what captured the imagination of the Australian people: it was a really larrikin act and we got away with it because we found a loophole in the law … within two years of the Embassy coming down every man and his dog had copied the idea … even the farmers had an embassy. The whole idea had been devalued and undermined.45 It seemed that by the 1990s, the sting of transnational protest politics had been drawn, in an age where spectacle became mundane and commercial.

Using and reforming international law What then of domestic reform in the face of indigenous efforts to reform international legal institutions? Surveying the rise of indigenous peoples’ use of international legal procedures in the 1980s, Russel Barsh concluded that the dubious attitude of indigenous peoples to rights talk was breaking down; he explained this was partially the result of erosion and blending of indigenous culture with other forms; the languages of law, force and punishment became more familiar. Indeed, Cape York indigenous leader Noel Pearson’s notion of the ‘right to take responsibility’ is exactly this: the relocation of liberal ideas of human rights into

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local contexts. Indigenous claims are thus ‘embedded in a system of political meanings that are clear to non-indigenous people … the obvious efficacy of demanding that universal principles be implemented for all’.46 In 1975, the Whitlam government introduced the RDA, to give force to CERD, signed by the Holt government in 1966. Its passage, suggested John Chesterman, signalled the acceptance by Australian parliamentarians of the principle that legislation should take the role of changing public attitudes.47 Yet, as Gough Whitlam recalled, during his government’s tenure, he was aware of the limits of the RDA as a mechanism for the protection of indigenous peoples’ human rights. Not only were resources wanting, but some state governments (and later Malcolm Fraser’s Conservative federal government) actively hindered the operations of the legislation and the work of the federal Commissioner for Community Relations.48 In 1983, the peak body of the various Aboriginal Legal Services, NAILSS, declared a ‘total lack of confidence’ in the administration of the Act.49 As Murri leader Sam Watson pointed out: … the Racial Discrimination Act is just a principle, it hasn’t stopped a single death in custody. It hasn’t stopped a single copper from bashing the door of an Aboriginal family and storming in and terrorising us.50 However, the finding of native title in the Mabo decision was a direct result not just of the transnational jurisprudence of the High Court, but the fact that the Commonwealth had ratified CERD and legislated it as the RDA; this prevented the state of Queensland from unilaterally extinguishing Eddie Mabo’s title via statute before the High Court made its historic determination.51 While most of its supporters saw and see the Mabo decision as an expression of the maturity of the national political culture, it also seemed to indicate Australia’s compliance with international norms. Yet, events surrounding the policy of mandatory sentencing contradicted this profoundly. Two jurisdictions restricted judicial discretion in sentencing in the area of property offences. These two jurisdictions, the Northern Territory and Western Australia, also had very high proportions of young and poor indigenous people. There is solid research showing how mandatory sentencing creates inconsistencies between the poor and the affluent, and between ethnicities.52 Some critics thought the legislation racist in its intent. This became a matter of national concern when a 15-year-old indigenous boy hung himself in a NT gaol in early 2000 while serving a mandatory minimum sentence for

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the theft of some stationery. While criminal justice is a matter for the states, in the case of the territories the Australian Government has clear legislative authority and exercised it to overturn the Northern Territory’s euthanasia law in 1999. However, rather than respond to the widespread national disgust, it initially sought to portray these state and territory measures as a fair balance of the interests of the community against those of the indigenous youth who were disproportionately affected by the legislation.53 The relevant international law includes the Convention on the Rights of the Child, and the body monitoring the convention advised Australia in October 1997 that it was ‘particularly concerned at the enactment of new legislation in two states [sic] … which provides for mandatory detention and punitive measures of juveniles’. This was over two years before the tragic death that mobilised Australians at large. Subsequent reports confirmed the discrepant status of mandatory sentencing at international law: the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (March 2000) spoke of its ‘grave concern [at] the rate of incarceration of indigenous people … mandatory sentencing schemes appear to target offences that are committed disproportionately by indigenous Australians’. The Human Rights Committee (July 2000) noted that mandatory sentencing ‘would seem to be inconsistent with the strategies adopted by the State part to reduce the overrepresentation of indigenous persons in the criminal justice system’.54 A Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism visited Australia in 2001, noting in his report the discriminatory effects of the legislation and their tendency to ‘aggravate’ the broader discrimination against indigenous peoples, the abolition of the regime in the Northern Territory on the election of a new government there, and urged the Western Australian Government to follow suit.55 Yet, Sam Watson, who was closely involved in the Brisbane-based campaign against mandatory sentencing, thought that neither international pressure nor argument played a role in mobilising the campaign: … it was people, ordinary mums and dads out in the suburbs who were given information about these young Aboriginal kids, being arrested, you know ‘three strikes and you’re out’ bullshit, carted hundreds of miles away from their homes and families, and these kids killing themselves.56 A change in government in the Northern Territory in 2002 led to the abolition of mandatory sentencing there, yet the legislation remains in place in Western Australia. The federal government rejected a Senate

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proposal to enact provisions of the ICCPR preventing mandatory sentencing of juveniles and instead funded a scheme of diverting juveniles before the trial stage. ‘Australia’, wrote distinguished jurist Elizabeth Evatt, ‘had vented its outrage and went about its business’.57 From the time the Howard government took office in 1996, its enthusiasm for international human rights processes has not been great. Since Howard’s election, criticism has steadily increased.58 In 1998, the CERD committee took the unprecedented decision to cite Australia under CERD’s ‘Urgent Action Procedures and Early Warning Measures’. This was the first time a Western nation had had such a decision, and the committee expressed its concern over the compatibility of the amendments to the Native Title Act with Australia’s existing undertakings under the convention. It cited the lack of any meaningful participation in the renegotiation of the legislation, which was dominated by non-indigenous interests in land. In response, the Attorney-General called the decision an ‘insult’ to Australia. The following year, CERD declared Australia in breach of the convention. ‘We’re in the same company as Bosnia, Uganda and Ecuador’, Mick Dodson remarked sourly.59 The government then instructed the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Native Title and the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Land Fund to review the CERD finding, and the PJC presented a report that reflected party divisions. The main thrust of the government argument was that the CERD committee had taken the amendments of 1998 in isolation and had not taken the overall effect of the NTA, which was beneficial to indigenous peoples; that is, the Howard government was simply ‘balancing’ the interests of non-indigenous people with the toobeneficial provisions of the original legislation passed by Keating’s government in 1993.60 It also dismissed the requirement for any particular mode of consultation with indigenous peoples: … political rights in international instruments do not give rise to a right to participate in the political process in a specific fashion, and groups cannot require governments to undertake a particular form of consultation in relation to legislation.61 Obviously, the government resented the fuel international critics gave to its domestic opponents. But there was also a sense among close observers that ego was at stake. The CERD session in March 2000 was a particularly contentious encounter. During the meeting, the Minister for Aboriginal Affairs, Phillip Ruddock, ‘frequently deflected the questions and criticisms levelled at Australia by committee members by engaging

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in counter-criticism of the human rights record or performance of the nations of their origin’.62 The implication of his argument was that the experts on UN committees are only ever nationals of their countries, and that therefore they should take responsibility for their own states’ infringements rather than criticise others. Not only was this offensively parochial, it ascribed to those individuals something that the Howard government in particular has assiduously denied to its own citizens: the notion of collective responsibility for national acts of injustice. As La Trobe University Professor of Law Spencer Zifcak noted, Ruddock could not appreciate that even democracies were capable of human rights violations. He argued that CERD had ‘failed to grapple with the unique and complex history of race relations in Australia’.63 The Special Rapporteur on Australia, US human rights lawyer Gaye McDougall, responded that she was aware of the impact of history: her own country had fought the Civil War over the human rights of its African American inhabitants. Ruddock said that he would have fought in that war and McDougall responded that she hoped that they would have fought on the same side.64 Journalist David Marr described the government’s response to the criticisms of 2000 as; … one of the great dummy spits of the Howard years, with the Foreign Minister, Alexander Downer, roaring: ‘We won’t cop it any longer. We are a democratically elected government in one of the most liberal and democratic countries you will find on Earth. And if a United Nations committee wants to play domestic politics here in Australia, then it will end up with a bloody nose’.65 Howard joined the fray, declaring that he was ‘not going to cop this country’s human rights name being tarnished in the context of any domestic political argument’.66 Within a few weeks of CERD publishing its findings, the government announced a ‘comprehensive review’ of Australia’s involvement in human rights processes. The report of the interdepartmental committee set up by the government has never been made public, but the government was sure that the entire UN human rights system needed a ‘complete overhaul … to ensure adequate recognition of the primary role of democratically elected governments and the subordinate role of non government organisations’. This contradicts the emerging view that the presence of non-state actors in UN institutions has, since the 1970s, enabled more human beings actually to benefit from the protections of human rights law.67

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In fact, ‘reform’ meant a distinctly tougher line about access for human rights committees and the responsiveness of the Australian Government to their demands. Future reporting to committees would follow ‘a more economical and selective approach’.68 Zifcak unpacked the two assumptions being made. The first was that effective reform really meant that there would be no criticism of democracies. The second was that it was ‘for Australia alone to determine what information it should provide to the UN committees and the format in which it should be provided’. If the purpose of their intervention was actually to improve the work of protecting human rights, it was far from clear how this approach could achieve it.69 Of course, the review was never intended to do the complex intellectual and diplomatic work required to actually reform human rights mechanisms in a productive way. Zifcak admitted that it was all simply for domestic consumption, another form of ‘wedge politics’.70

The Draft Declaration and the Howard era Indigenous Australians have not had great success in using Australia’s international legal obligations to restrain governments in a domestic context. Mick Dodson wearily noted that: After 25 years of reports observing the same, if not worsening conditions, parroting the same recommendations, and receiving the same shocked reaction and promises, we have given ‘exhausting domestic remedies’ a new meaning … it makes absolute sense for us to take our grievances beyond this country to a higher authority.71 As chapter 5 showed, Australia under the Hawke and Keating governments was a firm supporter of the Draft Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, in particular supporting the substantive conceptual rationale of the right to self-determination.72 The election of the Howard government in March 1996 radically changed Australian policy.73 How far first became clear in 1998. Australia announced it was opposed to the right of self-determination; other states, such as France, simultaneously moved the other way, withdrawing their opposition. Only two states then opposed explicitly the recognition of the right to self-determination: the United States and Australia. Australia proposed to withdraw the concept of self-determination and to replace it by ‘selfmanagement’ or ‘self-empowerment’, terms with no existing meaning in international law. Indigenous representatives, in a resolution moved by several groups including ATSIC, showed unanimous support for the

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existing text. A long discussion ensued in which numerous submissions stressed the lack of desire of most indigenous peoples to secede but also the historical inappropriateness and continued discrimination of an inflexible approach regarding the territorial boundaries of states created during the colonial era. Others argued that the real threat to nationstates came not from indigenous peoples but from ‘globalisation’. The government said it understood that the intention of the article was to protect the legitimate aspirations of indigenous peoples to enjoy more direct and meaningful participation in decision-making and political processes and greater autonomy over their own affairs. Yet, in 1999, Australia formally declared itself unable to accept the inclusion of an indigenous right of self-determination in the Draft Declaration, because the term ‘self-determination’ was understood by many people to imply the right to establish separate nations and laws. The government also began to distance itself from a commitment to collective rights, again in the opposite direction to other states. It proposed that the conflict between collective and individual rights needed to be examined. The Indigenous Peoples Caucus responded that: The Declaration affirms, promotes and protects the distinct rights of indigenous peoples, including self-determination and participation in decision-making; land rights and environment; religious practices; languages and oral traditions; and access to education in our own language.74 Only two of the 45 articles of the Draft Declaration were provisionally adopted during the first ten annual sessions of the IWG (1994–2004). Irritation at the lack of progress brought a motion in 2003 from Norway calling for a vote to adopt a broad tranche of articles. However, this failed due to division among the states. A session in 2004 revealed the extent of the despondency and frustration among indigenous peoples and their supporters at the lack of progress. Six indigenous delegates (though no Australians) began a hunger strike in the Palais des Nations over the IWG Chair’s decision to begin discussion on a text different from the draft that had begun in the WGIP. The Indigenous Peoples Caucus issued a statement that there was already substantial agreement on a series of articles and that this should be the basis for further discussion. The hunger strikers were persuaded to desist by the Chairman-Rapporteur by agreeing that their protest would be acknowledged in the annual report that was sent to the Commission on Human Rights.75 In a last-minute action, Australia and other nations ensured that the protest was not mentioned in the report.76

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At the 11th session, in late 2005 and early 2006, large areas of agreement were acknowledged on issues such as rights to the maintenance of culture, full participation in the dominant society, and the role of the UN in promoting indigenous interests. What remained unresolved were the concerns of some powerful states about the impact of the Draft Declaration on the sovereignty and territorial integrity of nation-states, as well as their control over lands and resources. Australia, New Zealand and the United States, supported by Indonesia and China, called for a new language on indigenous self-determination that distinguished that right from the existing concept of self-determination at international law. Indigenous advocates retorted, as they had done many times before, that the fear of the break-up of nation-states ignored the reality by which indigenous and settler peoples were intertwined. At the end of the session in February 2006, the Chair decided to present his own draft to the CHR. At the time of writing, much is uncertain about what input indigenous peopls will have into that draft, whether the CHR will adopt it and submit it to the UNGA, and what will happen after the CHR is abolished and replaced by the new Human Rights Council in June 2006. Advocates of the Draft, not least Australians, have a great deal to be concerned about. In his 2002 Annual Report as Social Justice Commissioner, Bill Jonas included an excellent analysis of how the official Australian attitude to international standard-setting had arrived at the point where the right to self-determination was portrayed simply as ‘a matter of “symbolism” divorced from the day to day lives of indigenous peoples’. He offered four overlapping explanations. First, Jonas thought that public understanding of the term ‘selfdetermination’ was stuck in the 1970s: ‘For many it has become a political slogan and a rhetorical device’. He resiled from the zero-sum game of total government control versus radical indigenous autonomy that reflected neither reality nor aspiration. Second, he thought that the bureaucratic dimension of self-determination as it had unfolded in Australia was hampering further thinking. Indigenous communities were forced into corporate structures in order to access government funding. Too many organisations were serving only one need, relying on short-term grants and creating inefficiency. The third reason was that actual power over governance had not devolved significantly. There were new institutions, but these had simply created ‘new layers of bureaucracy’. Finally, he argued that, although there had been repeated documents affirming indigenous self-determination, such as the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) National Commitment in 1992 or the responses to the Royal Commission into Aboriginal

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Deaths in Custody, none of these had actually been put in place: ‘Selfdetermination as the centre-piece of indigenous policy has to a large extent been a statement of intention rather than of action. Real selfdetermination has never been tried’.77 Jonas went on to argue that the debate about self-determination at the UN had become victim of the fundamental weakness of global governance: … a process that depends on States (or governments) agreeing to set the standards that they will then apply to themselves. In relation to the situation of indigenous peoples the world over, this means that States have selfinterest and illegitimate gains to protect. For this reason, the government was forced to rely on ‘inflammatory, provocative untruths to reject indigenous self-determination’. Sam Watson’s critique of work in international institutions is, in the circumstances, certainly pragmatic: … the only way you’re going to bring about change in Australia is for the Australian people to make a change. I can’t see the UN sailing gunboats up through Sydney Harbour in order to force white Australia to deliver real and lasting reform.78

Caging transnationalism The discovery of native title in the common law of Australia, in June 1992, was a moment when the vague ideal of reconciliation was made material. When Noel Pearson asserted that the Mabo decision stood ‘creditably against similar accommodations in Canada, the United States and New Zealand’, there was substance to the claim.79 The Mabo judgment has been analysed elsewhere and will not be examined in detail. However, the judgment was transnational in the multiple senses used throughout this book. It found that native title pre-dated colonisation of Australia, thereby requiring the contemporary nation-state to open its sovereignty to include another culture and law. The judgment also linked Australian jurisprudence with international currents of thinking on the legal challenges of colonialism. It was a striking opportunity for progressive nationalism to reset policy. But, of course, this is not what happened. It is salutary to look briefly at the closest analogy available and compare the Australian response. In 1973, the Supreme Court of

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Canada handed down its decision in the Calder case. While there were some different issues at stake, in one sense the findings were identical: the confirmation that aboriginal/native title exists independently of the actions of the state. The state as sovereign retained the power to extinguish such titles, but had to do so plainly and explicitly. The Canadian federal government, which under its Constitution has sole authority over indigenous affairs, responded by setting up a process of direct negotiations between the government and potential aboriginal titleholders, such that future jurisprudence on aboriginal title and rights (which has been considerable) could flow into the negotiations. While this system obviously built on Canada’s long history of making treaties (and is not without its critics), it has resulted in several substantial agreements that have strong support by the relevant communities. Some of these agreements are the basis for major social and economic development projects in indigenous communities. The Canadian Government sees indigenous rights as inherent and has never attempted to legislate in the area of aboriginal title. By contrast, the Australian Government saw the judgment as a breach in state power that needed immediate repair. It co-opted the indigenous leadership into supporting legislation that not only reconstructed native title as an Act of parliament, but effectively suspended existing rights (using the ‘special measures’ clause of the RDA) in the process. Most observers of this episode maintain that this was a ‘realistic’ way to deal with the situation in a climate where public fear was being stoked by senior Coalition politicians and business people. But it is worth remembering that others have done things differently. Australian realism was also influencing attitudes to the UN process. Frank Brennan argued in 1992 that: … the international debate is bogged down in semantic discussion of terms … the annual meetings are little more than political word-games … [t]here is little chance, however, that states with large indigenous populations will be party to any international convention that has binding effect … it is 100 years too early for an international convention that would be acceptable to Aboriginal leaders and most governments … For every Australian politician who feels pressured to support the Aboriginal cause by the expression of Aboriginal grievances in Geneva, there is another who hardens their resolve to put an end to all special measures.80

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Some indigenous people involved in the international institutions were finding it hard to see the connections between international work and results inside communities. Shane Houston told the WGIP in 1989 of the struggles inside his organisation: … when we debated our attendance at this session of the Working Group there were some who saw discussions about international standards as clouds simply floating by what was happening on the ground in Aboriginal communities. They wanted to know how the debate in Geneva was going to help them in their efforts to keep their communities alive, together and Aboriginal.81 HREOC’s review of international processes in 2000 concluded that: … While this discourse has elevated the overall level of understanding within the community and within government of the meaning of equality in relation to indigenous people, it has not resulted in fundamental changes to the way in which indigenous issues are approached within the domestic political process.82 As the book set out in earlier chapters, transnational critique has always been filtered through ideological prisms like anti-communism; for some, the views of any non-Australians are ‘forever open to the charge that the group is infiltrated by, or manipulated by, “other” dark and mysterious forces: the ubiquitous Reds, or now that the menace is passé, “do-gooders” as a generalised species’.83 Defensive nationalism was a way of putting a positive spin on it: Whenever we make such a stand it draws the usual domestic chorus of complaints about going overseas to talk Australia down. But we are not talking Australia down, we are talking up our rights which is our obligation and responsibility under the ATSIC Act. We would be derelict in our legal and moral responsibilities not to take this action.84 Mick Dodson saw such patriotism as hypocritical: The strange thing is, these very same people are desperate to keep up with the latest international developments in technology, television and takeaway. It strikes me as a strangely convenient irony that these all too keen internationalists suddenly discover their national pride when it comes to the abuse of human rights.85

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Two problems arise here; both at their core revolve around the nature of indigenous political representation. On the one hand is the state’s ability to control the playing field; on the other is the relation of indigenous politicisation to broader constructions of Aboriginality itself. Canadian scholar Sally Weaver described the concept of ‘representivity’ as it affected indigenous organisations. It is ‘a political resource which governments can award or withdraw – in other words, that representivity can be an assigned political status rather than an achieved political status’.86 This is usefully applied to transnationalism in the Australian context. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the creation of ATSIC and the HREOC Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner forged clear links between indigenous Australians, their communities and organisations, and international legal institutions. These new bodies were influential in the indigenous Australian caucus, and ATSIC funded the participation of many smaller organisations at international meetings. For example, at the WGIP in 1995 the following individuals and organisations gave submissions on behalf of indigenous Australians: Linda Burney for the National Federation of Aboriginal Education Consultative Groups; Barney Mancktelow for NAILSS; Les Malezer for FAIRA; Terry O’Shane for the NCAO; Irene Stainton for the Secretariat of the National Aboriginal and Islander Child Care Services; Mark McKenzie for the KLC; Neita Scott for the NSW ALC; Olga Havnen for the CLC; Maurice Walker for the Committee to Defend Black Rights; Helen (Ulli) Corbett for the Indigenous Women Aboriginal Corporation; and Jeremy Clark for the APG. At the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, the only indigenous contributions in 2004 came from ATSIC and the Foundation for Aboriginal and Islander Research Action (FAIRA).87 By abolishing ATSIC in 2004–05, Australia not only took away a major source of funding for indigenous peoples’ participation in these bodies, but retarded indigenous peoples’ ability to express themselves in a forum they had helped establish. In 2005, indigenous representation was down to the solitary figure of Les Malezer representing FAIRA. David Marr reported that: The apparatus of Australian indigenous lobbying to the UN built up since the late 1970s was falling apart around him … By this month, all four indigenous organisations with official accreditation to the UN were in deep trouble. ATSIC was weeks away from abolition; the NSW Aboriginal Lands Council was under administration; the NAILSS was broke

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and Malezer’s FAIRA was virtually an empty shell. Malezer won’t say how he’s surviving financially in Geneva. Colleagues speculate he’s drawing on his own savings.88 Into the vacuum it had created, the government sent indigenous Australians it approved of, like Shirley Macpherson, the Chairperson of the Indigenous Land Corporation (ILC), a Howard appointee in 2001. In May 2005, as Chairperson of the ILC, she attended the Permanent Forum where she spoke on the ‘landscape of risk’ facing indigenous women and girls, emphasising ‘the plight of girls who are expected to become wives in early marriages’ and calling for the Draft Declaration to ‘enshrine child protection and reject those traditional practices that are harmful’. This is an important argument without question and deserves substantial and careful consideration. However, Macpherson has no expertise in the area of human rights standard-setting – she is an accountant and businessperson – and her position in the ILC comes with no mandate to speak about human rights standard-setting. What was striking about her presentation was the total absence of any sense of indigenous culture or difference except that which might oppress indigenous girls and women. Her speech as published on the DIMIA website did not appear to be a contribution to a discussion about how to make the work of the UN able to deal effectively with all the rights of indigenous women, including rights to culture as well as to protection. It bore little relation to the position taken by indigenous Australian women in international forums for the last 20 years. At least one prominent indigenous woman activist was openly critical of her attendance.89 But the lack of criticism from the mainstream media was predictable, even though Macpherson’s reason for flying to New York to speak to the Permanent Forum is surely less strong than a number of other indigenous Australians who have been roundly chastised for doing precisely the same thing. In a sense, this debate about the effectiveness of international action is also the old one about indigenous peoples’ authenticity. In sending Macpherson, who told the forum of a ‘new wave’ of self-starting indigenous businesswomen, the Howard government sought to undermine any sense of a unified indigenous position on rights. Many critics of indigenous activism, and especially defensive nationalists, present their disagreement in rational terms: indigenous participation at UN conferences in New York or Geneva is simply wasteful of public resources. Yet, this view requires unpacking. First, it takes its force from an understanding of a very particular reality of

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indigenous lives, which is that of dysfunction and misery. And secondly, it asserts that any representations should be clearly amenable to political values shared by all within the nation. Indigenous poverty and misery cannot be denied, other than to say that it is not a complete representation of indigenous life. It is necessary to remind ourselves frequently that there are many parts of being ‘indigenous’, and these do not make up a pathology. Yet, poverty in many indigenous communities is real, and its consequences are visible to anyone who cares to look. And there is a limit to the amount of resources that can fund policy in indigenous affairs. Most ‘real’ politics takes place with this as its orienting (and often its only) motivation. So to ask that nations bear the cost of transnational politics – by funding indigenous agencies to conduct standard-setting work in the international arena, for example – is seen as grossly inappropriate: ‘why should we support some activity that is inherently critical of us, primarily our right to judge what is in our interest or how we should distribute our resources’? The argument implies that, although international standards do in fact exist and have been ratified by Australians, the government has no obligation to support the bodies monitoring those norms. There is circularity as well: are these resources those of the nation? Or those of people who happen to live in it and who may most often see it precisely as a means for the distribution of resources, those for whom ‘national’ identities like political citizenship (with its entitlements to national resources) are merely one among many identities, that include local and communal involvements as well as global commitments? For this reason, we can say that new rationalities emerge in the act of working outside the political nation, in seeing its limited capacity to deal with particular problems: environmental problems, cultural problems, security problems, and indigenous problems. There are new rationalities that hold promise for solving these challenges, such as those that shift away from seeing nation-states as the only valid source of value or context of action. Indigenous transnationalism can be seen as an effort to broaden our sense of what forms of human association and interaction are possible. Argument at the UN on indigenous issues will certainly continue: in one of his last acts as Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner, Bill Jonas argued in a Senate submission that the replacement of ATSIC with an appointed board may contravene CERD yet again.90 A major 2005 report by Australian child welfare organisations drew particular attention to the ongoing abuses faced by indigenous children, as infringements under the Convention on the Rights of

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the Child.91 Meanwhile, the Yorta Yorta, denied native title at every level of the Australian courts, were going to seek relief at the UN.92 But indigenous Australians’ distinct contribution to this aspect of transnational politics is very much in decline. David Marr wrote of the ‘strange silence’ that had attended the latest critical verdict of CERD in 2005: ‘These days Australia’s perceived shortcomings are causing more angst in Geneva than they do back home’.93 When Mick Dodson was elected to the Permanent Forum in 2005 by states and UN agencies, not one major news outlet in Australia carried the story.94 Fiery words attended the destruction of ATSIC in 2004, with some heralding a ‘new era of black radicalism’.95 Yet, the previous year Michael Mansell lamented what he saw as ‘The decline of a movement’. He wrote that indigenous peoples were now: … shadows of what Joe McGinness, Kevin Gilbert and Oodgeroo once epitomised. Indigenous television shies away from politics. ATSIC subsidised the multimilliondollar AFL to display Aboriginal culture at its games. Aboriginal leaders want us to be good Australians. The better we imitate white people, the more successful we are seen to be. If Charles Perkins were alive to repeat his Freedom Rides, he would most likely be condemned by his own people for upsetting the apple cart. Where once the Australian flag was seen by the Aboriginal protest movement as representing white domination, now ATSIC proudly displays it beside the indigenous flags in all its offices. The Aboriginal flag that symbolised the black struggle lost much of its meaning when it was officially recognised under white law. Suddenly, the Aboriginal movement had become acceptable.96 The caravan of indigenous affairs has moved on, and now to talk of rights is to risk being seen as being part of the problem; the only issues to talk about are indigenous communal dysfunction, domestic violence and passive welfare and the only way to do it is in the context of existing national norms and legislation. As Tim Rowse recently observed, in its submission to a 2003 Senate inquiry on the progress of reconciliation the federal government argued that: … a concern with ‘rights’ was not merely irrelevant to ‘practical reconciliation’ but in tension with it. The government was seeking a better balance between the pursuit of indigenous rights and the pursuit of better social outcomes for indigenous people.97

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However, critics suggesting that this takes us back to the period of assimilation have not, as Rowse pointed out, taken into account the ‘indigenous sector’; this is now a feature of the policy landscape with which government simply has to deal.98 But Rowse concluded that the policy emphasis on improved social outcomes – what the government calls ‘practical reconciliation’ – could be carefully shown either to be failing or succeeding, in a way that the previous concept of self-determination could not: Practical reconciliation has a calculable financial cost, but is the Howard government willing to pay it? As long as there is research showing the benchmarks of adequate public provision, the relatively new idea that citizens may fail their governments will still have to compete with the older idea that governments have persistently reneged on their responsibilities to indigenous Australians. By defining ‘social justice’ in terms of ‘practical reconciliation’, the Prime Minister has set governments a formidably difficult target. By emphasising indigenous ‘responsibility’ he is readying the public for the failure of practical reconciliation.99 Where does this leave indigenous transnationalism and the search for a shared social vision in which indigenous peoples can thrive? Some, like Spencer Zifcak and Gatjil Djerkurra, saw the turning away from the international realm in the 1990s as the temporary effect of the ‘One Nation’ phenomenon and Howard’s manipulation of it: ‘I still view Australia as a fortunate and enlightened country, but one that, buffeted by the forces of globalisation and rapid economic and social change, has for the time being lost its way’.100 Marilyn Lake saw ‘a political domain that sometimes seems bereft of courage and compassion’, but urged us ‘to remember that there are other ways of being Australian – and other political traditions to call upon, traditions of acceptance and inclusion and justice’.101 However, the gulf between ideas of indigenous autonomy and the bedrock assumptions of the Australian nation-state are now laid bare, with transnationalism and indigenous rights blamed by many for creating it. As former Minister for Aboriginal Affairs in the Fraser government Fred Chaney recalled recently, it was: … the moving on beyond the equality of rights argument in the seventies that gives rise to the difficulties. The reason for that is that the issue of special rights attaching to indige-

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nous Australians is an uneasy fit with a society based on equality of individual rights.102 The traditions Lake lamented most certainly exist and this book has discussed them. But I have argued, to the contrary, that these other traditions could just as well be seen as outside the nation, and outside any actual expressions of national identity; even as ‘un-Australian’. Many of those who made these traditions, these ‘other ways of seeing’, have channelled transnational values, ideas and practices into the Australian context. It is more accurate to say that there are other ways of being human.

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EPILOGUE

Indigenous transnationalism describes the political activities of indigenous peoples that exceed the bounded culture and politics of the Australian nation-state. To capture that dimension of the indigenous and colonial experience, this book has taken a broad and interdisciplinary approach. But such a study cannot aspire to be comprehensive. Recent work by Henry Reynolds, Ruth Balint and others examines particular aspects of Australian history and society using a transnational approach.1 We have much more to understand about Aboriginal art, for example, as global commodity and culture and a transnational analysis awaits us. The events and experiences described here, some well known and others not at all, are included because they make visible a general pattern of transnationalism; that is, an understanding of connectedness and transboundary relations as existing within larger purposive schemes, or ‘higher authorities’. As politics, then, indigenous transnationalism is a way of making meaning in a world that is known to be shared with others and whose problems or experiences may be in common. We know that before modernity descended on terra australis, its boats bearing sheep and nails and the idea of progress, the inhabitants were already engaging each other across communal boundaries, exchanging material goods, cultural practices and community members. One of the many misfortunes of colonisation is how little of this was understood by the first wave of European migrants, so convinced were they of indigenous peoples’ basic savagery. Early encounters were fearful and often violent; a history of misunderstanding that remains unresolved.

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A few strands of colonial history, however, reveal that Europeans were not uniformly dismissive of indigenous interests. The mid-19th century humanitarian impulse and its allied missionary practice, though as destructive to indigenous culture as the spread of pastoralism was to the indigenous economy, did show indigenous peoples that some Europeans were motivated by principle rather than profit. It is no coincidence that some of the earliest political actions undertaken by indigenous peoples arose out of spaces created by colonists with humanitarian inclinations. In the 20th century, some Australian socialists saw that the discrimination indigenous people faced was another facet of the overwhelming injustice of capitalism. Their engagement with indigenous concerns also influenced the character of the debate. Yet, colonisation and nation-building obscured these stirrings behind a positive doctrine of material progress, environmental mastery and white nationalism. The alternative universal accounts provided by humanism, Christianity and communism did little to sway Australians from their basic disinterest in the concerns of indigenous peoples. It was not until the interests of the Australian nation-state and its people began to intersect with a new universal order that things changed significantly. After the Second World War, the creation of the UN and a positive doctrine of international human rights law, as well as the global push towards decolonisation, meant that Australian political elites saw change as inevitable. Simultaneously, Australian society and culture was changing, a broader range of connections between those inside the country and those outside made possible by new technologies in communication and transport. The boundaries of nation, state and culture had always been porous, but they were now visibly so, making transnational phenomena the drivers of much social and political experience. Indigenous Australians and their supporters used the doctrine of human rights in the changed environment to undo discriminatory legislation in a variety of areas, a period capped by the 1967 referendum. However, this was also the watershed moment, when the political ideologies of indigenous peoples became observably distinct from those advocated by non-indigenous reformists. A new phase of transnationalism ensued, in which non-indigenous peoples and their constructions of the ‘Aboriginal problem’ were pushed aside, while indigenous peoples made connections with other non-white peoples around the world, developing new accounts of their situation and new responses to it. Indigenous identities and cultures became the grounds for political action.

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That new agenda soon met limits: Australians had only recently come to terms with the obligations of a liberal rights ideology and were largely uncomprehending in the face of claims for indigenous rights. Moreover, some of these claims were not yet clear. In new transnational spaces – conferences, networks and international institutions – indigenous peoples coordinated their concerns and worked towards the reform of international institutions, assuming that the logic of universal rights would incorporate claims based on identity and culture. Though there have been notable achievements, not least the founding of distinct spaces for indigenous peoples in the UN system and the articulation of a comprehensive draft statement on indigenous rights, this is largely where the international reform agenda remains. Bill Jonas’s comment that states retain real control in the international system and that they have illegitimate gains to protect remains salient. Others have observed that there is a fundamental contradiction in using the distinctively liberal philosophy and bureaucratic methodology of human rights to defend collective entitlements.2 Indigenous cultural practices may in some instances collide with liberal norms of individual autonomy. Committed defenders of universal rights based on the individual will maintain that these are ‘endangered by particularist and vague conceptions of rights framed in terms of the “national interest”, “national security”, the right to “national self-determination,” or “cultural rights”’.3 The attempt to resolve this contradiction in the pairing of rights of self-determination and self-definition is some distance from realisation. Assertions that indigenous modes and lifeways can overturn the rigid categories of modernity, nation and state remain as enticing to some as they are frightening to others. There are, however, thickening lines of affinity between indigenous Australians’ perspectives and others’ on issues of global concern. These connections provide the grounds for thinking that new approaches to living justly in a world of diverse challenges are possible. One observer of the global movement of indigenous peoples recently suggested that it relied on a world comprising: … two fundamentally different groups: those who continued to live within ecological constraints and those who altered basic ecological, cultural, spiritual, and other assumptions about land and resources, asserting human primacy over the animal, plant and inanimate world.4 Michael Adas, the eminent historian of the role of science and technology in the service of imperialism, reflected on the restraining possibilities of non-Western philosophical and religious traditions,

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suggesting that they may have ‘tempered the Western obsession with material mastery and its consequences: pollution, the squandering of finite resources, and the potential for global destruction’.5 While it is wise to see these as ideal types rather than uniform empirical categories, it is true that a great deal of indigenous transnationalism concerns the environment and natural resource issues and operates in conjunction with individuals, NGOs, international agencies and corporations deeply alarmed by the ecological demands of modernity. Australians and their governments have long been ambivalent towards these developments. In the last decade, an overt hostility towards many of those doing transnational work has accompanied the reaffirmation of basic liberal norms and the right of a democratic nation-state to enforce its own standards. A focus on indigenous rights and other so-called ‘symbolic’ issues is not in the interests of indigenous peoples as the government defines them. But indigenous transnationalism cannot be reduced to annual meetings in New York and Geneva or debates about the wording of texts. Networked communication between indigenous peoples around the Pacific, along the Americas and elsewhere has displaced authority into new flows of ideas and experience, where people are working out how to maintain their cultures, educate their children, improve their health and deal with the challenges that confront them. The Australian debate currently forecloses these possibilities: to work or think about indigenous issues in a way that does not subordinate broad historical and comparative analysis to policy and administrative measures aimed at dealing with communal and domestic violence, substance abuse and the wider pathology of indigenous socio-economic disadvantage is to run the risk of being deemed irrelevant or merely symbolic. In this simplified discourse, the scale of proposed interventions is being lost. Upon learning recently of the extent of the petrolsniffing epidemic in remote Australia, Rosemary Neill, ‘a supporter of indigenous land rights and self-determination’, felt it was ‘high time to ask: Are remote indigenous communities viable?’6 One could reply that very few Australians have ever really thought that they were. Prime Minister John Howard reserves for government the right to define how indigenous peoples might wish to live their lives, and has ignored repeated indigenous calls for national processes of negotiation and restitution. His is simply the latest iteration of defensive nationalism, which seeks to diminish the sources and power of difference from without and within; it tries to measure all claims against their fit with the domestic order. Moreover, he defends his insistence on such a narrow public debate by celebrating the banality of power:

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I thought of an expression that I’ve used at many times during my prime ministership; it’s not particularly original but it seems to me to fit many challenges that this country has and it certainly fits the challenges of reconciliation and that’s my view that the things that unite us as Australians are greater and more enduring than the things that divide us.7 As Bain Attwood concluded recently, little has changed since the beginning of the ‘self-determination’ era in the 1970s: Government has tried to incorporate Aborigines in new ways but for the same end. It has solicitously nurtured Aborigines and Aboriginality in new political and cultural forms, rather than repressing them as of old, but it has largely done so in order to strengthen the nation and control the Aboriginal minority.8 Indigenous peoples may be different, but only in ways that are ‘viable’ and that meet broad Australian norms. In his essay on government interactions with the UN human rights system, Spencer Zifcak highlighted the three consistent themes in the recent criticism made by human rights bodies: lack of basic rights protection measures and remedies; treatment of indigenous peoples; and treatment of refugees.9 Critical international relations scholars, such as Andrew Linklater and RBJ Walker, have argued that there are necessary connections between suppression of difference within nation-states and suspicion of those outside them.10 Apparently, no one thought it odd for the Australian Government to organise its administration of indigenous affairs and immigration into a single department. Lack of recognition of indigenous peoples and the violence exacted on many aspiring migrants suggest inertia as a moral community. We do not seem able to resolve our presence in the territory known as Australia; nor are we at ease with the world outside our door. The conclusion of a transnational account is that policies of national reconstruction, however badged, can never be more than partial responses to the ‘Aboriginal predicament’. Maintaining that course, moreover, distorts broader debates in which Australians and their interests are intimately involved, estranging us from global and transnational developments in which we should be playing a role. While the views of non-indigenous critics, for reasons already discussed, will inevitably be treated with circumspection or hostility, it is unfortunate that the prevailing dogma has silenced so many indigenous voices. But recently Marcia Langton wondered, ‘whether, in the

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end, a post-colonial patriotism is even possible?’11 Patriotism’s need to exclude is contiguous with its commitment to vitiate ‘unviable’ life within; if a ‘post-colonial’ project seeks the recognition and not the assimilation of difference, the two goals are in contradiction. This book has argued that the objects of patriotism – nation-states – are contingent political entities that emerge partly through transnational processes and that problems like the unfinished business between indigenous and settler peoples and values are equally transnational. This book is not a call to abandon domestic struggles to rectify the injustice of colonisation. Much more than we have done so far, nonindigenous Australians should include Aborigines and Islanders in our society, we should learn about indigenous cultures, we should open access to our economy and provide justice in our politics. The Australian nation-state retains great power over the lives of indigenous peoples. However, Australia’s ‘Aboriginal predicament’ is neither unique nor even categorically Australian. Aboriginal and Islander realities and aspirations not only mirror those of other indigenous peoples, they are connected to them. Indigenous Australians’ renaissance, if and when it comes, will be a similarly transnational phenomenon.

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NOTES

Introduction 1 2 3

4 5

6

7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14

Marlene J Norst, Burnum Burnum: A Warrior for Peace (Sydney: Kangaroo Press, 1999), 128–41. Ulf Hannerz, Transnational Connections: Culture, People, Places (London; New York: Comedia; Routledge, 1996). Sanjeev Khagram & Peggy Levitt, ‘Towards a Field of Transnational Studies and a Sociological Transnationalism Research Program’, in Working Papers, Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations (Harvard University, 2004). Michael P Smith, Transnational Urbanism: Locating Globalization (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 2001), 3–4. Sanjeev Khagram, Kathryn Sikkink & James V Riker, Restructuring World Politics: Transnational Social Movements, Networks, and Norms, Social Movements, Protest, and Contention, vol. 14 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2002), 10–11. On the varied aspects of transnational research, see Khagram & Levitt, ‘Towards a Field of Transnational Studies and a Sociological Transnationalism Research Program’), 10–11. Avishai Margalit, The Ethics of Memory (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002), 155. Khagram & Levitt, ‘Towards a Field of Transnational Studies and a Sociological Transnationalism Research Program’, 27–28. Australian Bureau of Statistics, Australia Now (Canberra: Commonwealth of Australia, 2001). Edward Gough Whitlam, The Whitlam Government, 1972–1975 (Melbourne: Viking, 1985), 466. Bain Attwood, The Making of the Aborigines (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1989), xi. Henry Reynolds, This Whispering in Our Hearts (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1998), xiv. Tzvetan Todorov, The Conquest of America: The Question of the Other (New York: Harper & Row, 1984). Colin Tatz, Keith R McConnochie and Armidale College of Advanced

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N o t e s t o p a g e s 1 0 – 11

15 16

17

18 19

20

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Education, Black Viewpoints: The Aboriginal Experience, Race and Aboriginal Studies (Sydney: Australia and New Zealand Book Co, 1975), 40. Bain Attwood, Rights for Aborigines (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2003), xiii. Joe Bandy & Jackie Smith, Coalitions across Borders: Transnational Protest and the Neoliberal Order, People, Passions, and Power (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2005). Sue Taffe, Black and White Together FCAATSI: The Federal Council for the Advancement of Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders, 1958–1973 (St Lucia, Qld: University of Queensland Press, 2005); John Chesterman, Civil Rights: How Indigenous Australians Won Formal Equality (St Lucia, Qld: University of Queensland Press, 2005); Bain Attwood, Rights for Aborigines; Bain Attwood & Andrew Markus, eds, The Struggle for Aboriginal Rights: A Documentary History (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1999); Heather Goodall, Invasion to Embassy: Land in Aboriginal Politics in New South Wales, 1770–1972 (Sydney: Allen & Unwin in association with Black Books, 1996); Steve Hawke & Michael Gallagher, Noonkanbah: Whose Land, Whose Law (Fremantle, WA: Fremantle Arts Centre Press, 1989); Hannah Middleton, But Now We Want the Land Back: A History of the Australian Aboriginal People (Sydney: New Age Publishers, 1977); Lorna Lippmann, Generations of Resistance: The Aboriginal Struggle for Justice (Melbourne: Longman Cheshire, 1981); Jan Roberts, Massacres to Mining (Melbourne: Dove Communications, 1981); Sue Taffe, ‘Australian diplomacy in a policy vacuum: Government and Aboriginal affairs, 1961–62’, Aboriginal History 19, 2 (1995): 154–172. Henry Reynolds, Nowhere People: How International Race Thinking Shaped Australia’s Identity (Melbourne: Viking, 2005). Fiona Paisley, ‘Federalising the Aborigines: Constitutional reform in the late 1920s’, Australian Historical Studies, 111 (1998): 248–66; Fiona Paisley, ‘Citizens of their world: Australian feminism and indigenous rights in the international context, 1920s and 1930s’, Feminist Review, 58 (1998): 66–84; Marilyn Lake, ‘Feminism and the gendered politics of antiracism, Australia 1927–1957: From maternal protectionism to leftist assimilationism’, Australian Historical Studies, 110 (1998): 91–108; Fiona Paisley, Loving Protection? Australian Feminism and Aboriginal Women’s Rights 1919–1939 (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2000). Middleton; Andrew Markus, ‘Talka longa mouth’, in Who are our Enemies? Racism and the Australian Working Class, ed. Ann Curthoys & Andrew Markus (Sydney: Hale & Iremonger, 1978); Bob Boughton, ‘The Communist Party of Australia’s involvement in the struggle for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people’s rights 1920–1970’, in Labour and Community: Historical Essays, ed. R Markey (Wollongong: University of Wollongong Press, 2001). Sarah Pritchard, ‘The United Nations and the making of a Declaration on Indigenous rights’, Indigenous Law Bulletin 3, 89 (1997): 4–9; Martin N Nakata and Australia. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission, Indigenous Peoples, Racism and the United Nations (Altona, VIC: Common Ground Publishing, 2001); Paul Keal, European Conquest and the Rights of Indigenous Peoples: The Moral Backwardness of International Society, Cambridge Studies in International Relations; 92 (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003); Frank Brennan, Sharing the Country (Melbourne: Penguin, 1994); Peter Jull, ‘Indigenous “stunts” abroad’, Arena Magazine 33 (1998): 37–38; Peter Jull, ‘Indigenous internationalism: What should we do next?’, Indigenous

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Affairs, 1 (1999): 12–17. 22 Roberta B Sykes, Snake Circle, Snake Dreaming (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2000); Tatz, McConnochie, and Armidale College of Advanced Education; Peter Read, ‘Doubts about the treaty’ (Murdoch University, 2002); Norst; Marilyn Lake, Faith: Faith Bandler, Gentle Activist (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2002); Ann Curthoys, Freedom Ride: A Freedom Rider Remembers (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2002); Frank J Hardy, The Unlucky Australians (Adelaide: Rigby, 1976); Peter Sekuless, Jessie Street: A Rewarding but Unrewarded Life (St Lucia, Qld: University of Queensland Press, 1978); Charles Perkins, A Bastard Like Me (Sydney: Ure Smith, 1975). 23 Christine Jennett, ‘Black Power as an anti-colonial discourse’ (PhD, University of New South Wales, 1996); Christine Jennett, ‘Aboriginal Black Power and the land rights movement of the 1970s’, Australian Political Studies Association 22nd Annual Conference, 27–29 August 1980; Victorian Aborigines Advancement League, Victims or Victors? The Story of the Victorian Aborigines Advancement League (Melbourne: Hyland House, 1985); Aboriginal Medical Service, A.M.S.: A Political History, 20th Anniversary Book (Redfern: AMS, 1991); Faith Bandler, Turning the Tide: A Personal History of the Federal Council for the Advancement of Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders (Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press for the Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies, 1989); Faith Bandler & Len Fox, The Time was Ripe: A History of the Aboriginal-Australian Fellowship (1956–69) (Sydney: Alternative Publishing Co-operative, 1983); Black Panther Party of Australia, Platform and Programme (1972); Bain Attwood et al., The 1967 Referendum, or, When Aborigines Didn’t Get the Vote (Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press, 1997); SJ Duckett & JM Ellen, The Aboriginal Medical Service in Sydney, Australian Studies in Health Service Administration, no. 36. (Sydney: School of Health Administration University of New South Wales, 1979); Goodall; Peter Read, ‘Cheeky, insolent and anti-white’, Australian Journal of Politics and History 36, 1 (1990): 73–83; Sue Taffe, ‘Federal Council of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders Oral History Project, 1997’, Canberra; John Maynard, ‘“In the interests of our people”: The influence of Garveyism on the rise of Australian Aboriginal political activism’, Aboriginal History (in press); John Maynard, ‘Vision, voice and influence: The rise of the Australian Aboriginal Progressive Association’, Australian Historical Studies 121 (2003): 91–105. 24 Gary Foley, Koori Engagement with Television (1999, accessed June 2004), available from ; Gary Foley, The Road to Native Title: The Aboriginal Rights Movement and the Australian Labor Party 1973–1996 (2001, accessed June 2004), available from ; Gary Foley, Black Power in Redfern 1968–1972 (2001, accessed February 2002), available from ; Gary Foley, Australia and the Holocaust: A Koori Perspective (1998, accessed July 2003), available from ; Roberta B Sykes, Black Majority (Melbourne: Hudson Publishing, 1989); Roberta B Sykes, Neville T Bonner & Ann Turner, Black Power in Australia, On Trial Series. (Melbourne: Heinemann Educational Australia, 1975); Kevin Gilbert, Because a White Man’ll Never Do It (Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1973); Bruce McGuinness, ‘Don’t go it alone!’, Smoke Signals (1970): 7; Bruce McGuinness & Patsy Kruger, Aborigines Visit the US: Report on Trip by Five Aborigines to

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Congress of African People and United Nations (Melbourne: Abschol, 1971). 25 Ronald Niezen, The Origins of Indigenism: Human Rights and the Politics of Identity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), 11, 22. 26 Kay B Warren & Jean E Jackson, Indigenous Movements, Self-representation, and the State in Latin America (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2002); Pamela Martin, Globalization of Contentious Politics: The Amazonian Indigenous Rights Movement, Indigenous Peoples and Politics (New York: Routledge, 2003); Alison Brysk, From Tribal Village to Global Village: Indian Rights and International Relations in Latin America (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2000); Sonia E Alvarez, Evelina Dagnino & Arturo Escobar, Cultures of Politics/Politics of Cultures: Re-visioning Latin American Social Movements (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1998). 27 Niezen, 52. 28 Alice Feldman, ‘Transforming peoples and subverting states: A pedagogical approach to the International Indigenous Peoples Movement’, Ethnicities 1, 2 (2002): 147–78; Andrea Muehlebach, ‘What self in self-determination? Notes from the frontiers of transnational indigenous activism’, Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power 10, 2 (2003): 241–26; George Jerry Sefa Dei, Budd L Hall & Dorothy Goldin Rosenberg, Indigenous Knowledges in Global Contexts: Multiple Readings of Our World (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000); Marie Ann Battiste, Reclaiming Indigenous Voice and Vision (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2000). 29 CC Macknight, The Voyage to Marege: Macassan Trepangers in Northern Australia (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1976), 1.

Chapter 1 1

LR Hiatt, Arguments about Aborigines: Australia and the Evolution of Social Anthropology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 109–12. 2 Hiatt, 115–19. 3 Ian Keen, Aboriginal Economy & Society: Australia at the Threshold of Colonisation (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 2004), 229–31. 4 Fred R Myers, Pintupi Country, Pintupi Self: Sentiment, Place, and Politics among Western Desert Aborigines, Smithsonian Series in Ethnographic Inquiry (Washington; Canberra: Smithsonian Institution Press; Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies, 1986), 155. 5 Peter Sutton, Native Title in Australia: An Ethnographic Perspective (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 7. 6 LR Hiatt, Aboriginal Political Life, The Wentworth Lecture 1984 (Canberra: Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies, 1986), 4–6. 7 RM Berndt & Catherine H Berndt, The World of the First Australians (Adelaide: Rigby Press, 1985), 336. 8 Keen, 244. 9 Valda Blundell & Robert Layton, ‘Marriage, myth and models of exchange in the West Kimberleys’, Mankind 11, 3 (1978): 231–45. 10 Myers, 70. 11 Hiatt, Arguments about Aborigines: Australia and the Evolution of Social Anthropology, 106. 12 Neil Carter, The Politics of the Environment: Ideas, Activism, Policy (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 226–28.

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13 Blundell & Layton. 14 EA Young, Kim Doohan & Australian National University. North Australia Research Unit, Mobility for Survival: A Process Analysis of Aboriginal Population Movement in Central Australia (Darwin: Australian National University North Australia Research Unit, 1989), 25–27; Robert L Kelly, The Foraging Spectrum: Diversity in Hunter-gatherer Lifeways (Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1995). 15 Kelly, 152–58. 16 Nicolas Peterson & JPM Long, Australian Territorial Organization: A Band Perspective (Sydney: University of Sydney, 1986), 143, 35. 17 Harry Lourandos, Continent of Hunter-gatherers: New Perspectives in Australian Prehistory (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 25–26. 18 Myers, 96. 19 Sutton, 2–3. We can think of this as roughly analogous to the distinction modern nation-states make between landed immigrant/permanent resident status and full citizenship. 20 Peterson & Long, 33. 21 Elizabeth Cashdan, ‘Territoriality among human foragers: Ecological models and an application to four Bushman groups’, Current Anthropology 24, 1 (1983): 47–66. 22 Cashdan. 23 Kelly, 193–97. 24 Sutton, 24; Peterson & Long, 33. 25 Tim Flannery, The Explorers (Melbourne, Australia: Text Publishing, 1998), 269; Sarah Murgatroyd, The Dig Tree: The Story of Burke and Wills (Melbourne: Text Publishing, 2002), 285–87. 26 Peterson & Long, 27–28. 27 Flannery, 62. 28 Charles Sturt, Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia, During the Years 1828, 1829, 1830, and 1831: With Observations on the Soil, Climate, and General Resources of the Colony of New South Wales, 2nd edn, vol. I (London: Smith Elder & Co., 1834), 127–28. 29 Derek John Mulvaney, Encounters in Place: Outsiders and Aboriginal Australians, 1606–1985 (St Lucia, Qld: University of Queensland Press, 1989), 1–4. 30 Edward John Eyre & Jill Waterhouse, Autobiographical Narrative of Residence and Exploration in Australia, 1832–1839 (London, Great Britain Dover, NH: Caliban Books, 1984), 156. Later entries made by Eyre suggest that indigenous peoples may have begun to make more calculated use of the signs of peace, as they gained familiarity with the violence that could attend the passage of the Europeans. 31 Flannery, 5. 32 Geoffrey Blainey, Triumph of the Nomads: A History of Ancient Australia (Melbourne: Macmillan, 1975), vi. 33 Henry Reynolds, ‘The land, the explorers and the Aborigines’, Historical Studies XIX, 75 (1980): 213–26. 34 Reynolds. 35 William Clark, ‘Hospitable natives’, in Great Explorations: An Australian Anthology, ed. Jan Bassett (Melbourne; New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 40. 36 Sturt, 101–108.

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37 Sturt, 126. 38 Mulvaney, 5–7. 39 Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976), Books 1–3, 117–18. 40 Matt Ridley, The Origins of Virtue: Human Instincts and the Evolution of Cooperation (New York: Penguin, 1998), 197–99. 41 Keen, 356. 42 FD McCarthy, ‘“Trade” in Aboriginal Australia, and “trade” relationships with Torres Strait, New Guinea and Malaya’, Oceania 9, 4 (1939a): 405–38; FD McCarthy, ‘“Trade” in Aboriginal Australia, and “trade” relationships with Torres Strait, New Guinea and Malaya’, Oceania 10, 1 (1939b): 80–104; McCarthy, ‘“Trade” in Aboriginal Australia, and “trade” relationships with Torres Strait, New Guinea and Malaya’, Oceania 10, 2 (1939c): 171–95. 43 McCarthy, ‘“Trade” in Aboriginal Australia, and “trade” relationships with Torres Strait, New Guinea and Malaya’ (1939c): 174–79. 44 Keen, 377, 352. 45 Kim Akerman, ‘The renascence of Aboriginal law in the Kimberleys’, in Aborigines of the West: Their Past and their Present, ed. Catherine H Berndt & Ronald Murray Berndt (Nedlands, WA: University of Western Australia Press, 1980); Kim Akerman, ‘Material culture and trade in the Kimberleys today’, in Aborigines of the West: Their Past and their Present, ed. Catherine H Berndt & Ronald Murray Berndt (Nedlands, WA: University of Western Australia Press, 1980). 46 Keen, 361. 47 Keen, 357–58. 48 Derek John Mulvaney, ‘The end of the beginning: 6000 years ago to 1788’, in Australians to 1788, ed. Derek John Mulvaney & J Peter White (Sydney: Fairfax Syme & Weldon Associates, 1987), 92; Philip Clarke, Where the Ancestors Walked: Australia as an Aboriginal Landscape (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2003), 107–108; Isabel McBryde, ‘Goods from another country: Exchange networks and the people of the Lake Eyre basin’, in Australians to 1788, ed. Derek John Mulvaney & J Peter White (Sydney: Fairfax Syme & Weldon Associates, 1987), 267. 49 McCarthy, ‘“Trade” in Aboriginal Australia, and “trade” relationships with Torres Strait, New Guinea and Malaya’ (1939b): 98–104. 50 Mulvaney, Encounters in Place: Outsiders and Aboriginal Australians, 1606–1985, 3. 51 McCarthy, ‘“Trade” in Aboriginal Australia, and “trade” relationships with Torres Strait, New Guinea and Malaya’ (1939c): 175–92. 52 Clarke, 61–62. 53 Mulvaney, ‘The end of the beginning: 6000 years ago to 1788’, 92–93; Grahame Clark, ‘Traffic in stone axe & adze blades’, Economic History Review 18, 1, Essays in Economic History Presented to Professor M. M. Postan (1965): 1–28. 54 RA Binns & Isabel McBryde, A Petrological Analysis of Ground-edge Artefacts from Northern New South Wales, Australian Aboriginal Studies, no. 47 (Canberra: Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies, 1972). 55 Keen, 357. 56 McCarthy, ‘“Trade” in Aboriginal Australia, and “trade” relationships with Torres Strait, New Guinea and Malaya’ (1939c): 172–73. 57 Mulvaney, ‘The end of the beginning: 6000 years ago to 1788’, 93.

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58 Clarke, 109–10. 59 McCarthy, ‘“Trade” in Aboriginal Australia, and “trade” relationships with Torres Strait, New Guinea and Malaya’ (1939c): 176. 60 Blainey, 208. 61 Galarrwuy Yunupingu, ‘Opening address’ Garma 2005 – Livelihood, broadcast on ABC Radio National, Late Night Live (8 August 2005). 62 Blainey, 243–45; Mulvaney, Encounters in Place: Outsiders and Aboriginal Australians, 1606–1985, 14–15. 63 Geoffrey Irwin, The Prehistoric Exploration and Colonisation of the Pacific (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 18–30; Clarke, 11. 64 Clarke, 183–86. It should, however, be noted, that the peoples of the Torres Strait have in the modern era sought to distinguish themselves from Papua New Guinea, particularly during the negotiations between Australia and New Guinea over the redrawing of the border through the Strait. However, the outcome of the negotiations was to forgo ‘a precise boundary and to declare the entire strait a shared environmentally protected zone that would include islands, sea, airspace, seabed and subsoil beneath the seabed’, Tim Rowse, Nugget Coombs: A Reforming Life (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 339–43. 65 Ernest Favenc, The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888. Compiled from State Documents, Private Papers and the Most Authentic Sources of Information. Issued under the Auspices of the Governments of the Australian Colonies (London: Griffith Farran Okeden & Welsh, 1888), 383. 66 RM Berndt, ‘External influences on the Aboriginal’, Hemisphere 9, 3 (1965): 2–9. 67 Macassans came from Macassar, now known as Ujung Pandung, a city in the south-west of Sulawesi. CC Macknight, The Voyage to Marege: Macassan Trepangers in Northern Australia (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1976), 1. 68 Macknight, 7–8, 80–81, 94. 69 CA Bayly, ‘“Archaic” and “modern” globalization in the Eurasian and African arena, c. 1750–1850’, in Globalization in World History, ed. AG Hopkins (New York: Norton, 2002); Macknight, 15; Jennifer Isaacs, Australian Dreaming: 40,000 years of Aboriginal History (Sydney; New York: Lansdowne Press, 1979), 264; Mulvaney, Encounters in Place: Outsiders and Aboriginal Australians, 1606–1985, 26. 70 Blainey, 248. 71 Macknight, 59; Isaacs, 275. 72 Like much of indigenous Australia, the Yolngu are divided into two moieties, Yirritja (yiritja/jiridja) and Dhuwa (dua), with Yirritja people having responsibility for all things ‘foreign’. Keen, 233, 235. 73 Isaacs, 276; Berndt, ‘External influences on the Aboriginal’. 74 Keen, 362–68; Mulvaney, Encounters in Place: Outsiders and Aboriginal Australians, 1606–1985, 26–28; Clarke, 178–83; Macknight, 43–47. 75 Macknight, 84–85; John Urry & Michael Walsh, ‘The lost “Macassar language” of northern Australia’, Aboriginal History 5, 2 (1981): 90–108. 76 Macknight, 86; Isaacs, 269–72. 77 Flannery, 79. 78 Macknight, 83–86. 79 CC Macknight, The Farthest Coast: A Selection of Writings Relating to the History of the Northern Coast of Australia (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press,

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1969), 182. 80 Urry & Walsh; Berndt, ‘External influences on the Aboriginal’; Ian McIntosh, ‘Personal names and the negotiation of change: Reconsidering Arnhem Land’s adjustment movement’, Anthropological Forum 14, 2 (2004): 141–162. 81 Ronald Murray Berndt, An adjustment movement in Arnhem Land (Paris: Mouton, 1962), 13; McIntosh. 82 Lisa Palmer, ‘Trepang opening night’, Arena Magazine, 45 (2000). 83 Mulvaney, Encounters in Place: Outsiders and Aboriginal Australians, 1606–1985, 27; Macknight, The Voyage to Marege: Macassan Trepangers in Northern Australia, 3; Ruth Balint, Troubled Waters: Borders, Boundaries and Possession in the Timor Sea (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2005). 84 Macknight, The Voyage to Marege: Macassan Trepangers in Northern Australia, 92. 85 Blainey, 254. 86 Mulvaney, Encounters in Place: Outsiders and Aboriginal Australians, 1606–1985, 27–28. 87 Flannery, 15.

Chapter 2 1 2 3

4

5

6

7

Henry Reynolds, This Whispering in our Hearts (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1998). Marcia Langton, ‘A treaty between our nations?’, Inaugural Professorial Lecture, Inaugural Chair of Indigenous Studies (University of Melbourne: 2000). Hugh Mahon, A West Australian MHR, speaking in 1902, cited in Fiona Paisley, ‘Federalising the Aborigines: Constitutional reform in the late 1920s’, Australian Historical Studies, 111 (1998): 248–66. Recent scholarship has re-evaluated the secular narrative of the 19th century, arguing that the period of settlement of Australia coincided with ‘the triumphal re-emergence and expansion of “religion” in the sense in which we now use the term … (Europeans) often promoted religion as their badge of identity even when they spoke of liberalism and science’. Indeed, the arguments about explanations of human origins have, to a considerable extent, ‘obscured the modus vivendi to which religious people and scientists generally subscribed’ CA Bayly, The Birth of the Modern World, 1780–1914: Global Connections and Comparisons, The Blackwell History of the World (Malden, MA: Blackwell Pub., 2004), 325, 363. See also Sara Sohmer, ‘The Melanesian Mission and Victorian anthropology’, in Darwin’s Laboratory: Evolutionary Theory and Natural History in the Pacific, ed. Roy M MacLeod & Philip F Rehbock (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1994), 317–18 and Niels Gunson, ‘British missionaries and their contribution to science in the Pacific Islands’, in Darwin’s Laboratory: Evolutionary Theory and Natural History in the Pacific, ed. Roy M MacLeod & Philip F Rehbock (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1994), 287–88. Catherine Hall, ‘William Knibb and the constitution of the new black subject’, in Empire and Others: British Encounters with Indigenous Peoples, 1600–1850, ed. MJ Daunton & Rick Halpern (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999), 303–304. Report of the Select Committee on Aborigines (British Settlements), 1837, cited in Henry Richard Fox Bourne, The Aborigines Protection Society: Chapters in its History (London: PS King & Son, 1899). CA Bayly, ‘The British and Indigenous peoples, 1760–1860: Power, perception

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14

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16 17 18

19 20

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and identity’, in Empire and Others: British Encounters with Indigenous Peoples, 1600–1850, ed. MJ Daunton & Rick Halpern (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999), 33–34; Bayly, The Birth of the Modern World, 1780–1914: Global Connections and Comparisons, 330. Hall, 305; Bourne, 3; Bayly, The Birth of the Modern World, 1780–1914: Global Connections and Comparisons, 338. William Wilberforce was the figure at the centre of the abolition campaign. Rt. Hon. Leonard Courtney, Chair of APS (7 April 1897), in Bourne, 11–12. British and Foreign Aborigines Protection Society, Regulations of the Society and Address (London: 1837), 3–4. British and Foreign Aborigines Protection Society, 5. Reynolds. Seymour Drescher, Capitalism and Antislavery: British Mobilization in Comparative Perspective. The Second Anstey Memorial Lectures in the University of Kent at Canterbury, 1984 (Basingstoke, Hampshire: Macmillan, 1986), 67; Bayly, The Birth of the Modern World, 1780–1914: Global Connections and Comparisons, 445. Henry Reynolds, The Law of the Land, 2nd ed. (Melbourne: Penguin, 1992), 84–86; Rt. Hon. Leonard Courtney, Chair of APS (7 April 1897), cited in Bourne, 11–12. Outline of a System of Legislation for Securing Protection to the Aboriginal Inhabitants of all Countries Colonized by Great Britain, Extending to them Political and Social Rights, Ameliorating their Condition, and Promoting their Civilization, Drawn up at the request of the Committee of the Aborigines Protection Society by Standish Motte Esq. (London: John Murray, 1840), 14–20; British and Foreign Aborigines Protection Society, England and her Colonies Considered in Relation to the Aborigines with a Proposal for Affording them Medical Relief (London: 1841). Cited in Reynolds, This Whispering in our Hearts, 116. Reynolds, This Whispering in our Hearts; Reynolds, The Law of the Land, 97–102. Henry Reynolds, Aboriginal Sovereignty: Reflections on Race, State and Nation (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1996); Heather Goodall, Invasion to Embassy: Land in Aboriginal Politics in New South Wales, 1770–1972 (Sydney: Allen & Unwin in association with Black Books, 1996), 42–56. Bain Attwood, Rights for Aborigines (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2003), 8. Andrew Markus, Governing Savages (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1990), 72; Irene Watson, Looking at You Looking at Me: An Aboriginal History of the South-east of South Australia, new edn (Nairne, SA: I Watson, 2002), 89–93; Bain Attwood, The Making of the Aborigines (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1989), xi, 7–25. A detailed account of global prescriptions for missionary architecture and design, and indigenous clothing and mobility, may be found in the Comaroff’s study of South African missions in the second half of the 19th century, Jean Comaroff & John L Comaroff, Of Revelation and Revolution, Volume Two: The Dialectics of Modernity on a South African Frontier (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997), 275–322. Michael Gauvreau, ‘The empire of evangelicalism: Varieties of common sense in Scotland, Canada and the United States’, in Evangelicalism: Comparative Studies of Popular Protestantism in North America, the British Isles, and Beyond, 1700–1990, ed. Mark A Noll, DW Bebbington & George A Rawlyk (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 219.

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22 Attwood, Rights for Aborigines, 28; Lyndsay Head, ‘The pursuit of modernity in Maori society’, in Histories, Power and Loss: Uses of the Past – a New Zealand Commentary, ed. Andrew Sharp, Paul G McHugh & WH Oliver (Wellington, NZ: Bridget Williams Books, 2001), 115–16. 23 From a letter dated 23 August 1936, to The Ladder cited in Andrew Markus, ‘After the outward appearance: Scientists, administrators and politicians’, in All that Dirt, Aborigines 1938: An Australia 1938 Monograph, ed. Bill Gammage & Andrew Markus (Canberra: History Project Incorporated Australian National University, 1982), 83. See also the World Council of Churches’ 1981 report, Justice for Aboriginal Australians, and the account of indigenous theologian Djiniyihi Gondarra in Henry Reynolds, Dispossession: Black Australians and White Invaders (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1989), 180–81. 24 Attwood, Rights for Aborigines, 6–7. 25 MF Christie, Aborigines in Colonial Victoria, 1835–86 (Sydney: Sydney University Press, 1979), 168. 26 Attwood, Rights for Aborigines, 15–16; Christie, 171. 27 A longer comparative history of indigenous petitions is provided in Ravi de Costa, ‘Identity, authority and the moral worlds of indigenous petitions’, Comparative Studies in Society and History 46, 3 (2006). 28 Bain Attwood & Andrew Markus, eds, The Struggle for Aboriginal Rights: A Documentary History (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1999), 38–39. 29 Mavis Thorpe Clark, Pastor Doug: The Story of an Aboriginal Leader (Melbourne: Lansdowne Press, 1966), 22–23; Attwood, Rights for Aborigines, 28–30; Bain Attwood & Andrew Markus, Thinking Black: William Cooper and the Australian Aborigines’ League (Canberra, ACT: Aboriginal Studies Press, 2004), 27. 30 Attwood, Rights for Aborigines, 60. 31 Cited in Attwood & Markus, eds, The Struggle for Aboriginal Rights: A Documentary History, 74. 32 Goodall, 231–32, 343; Peter Read, Down There with Me on the Cowra Mission: An Oral History of Erambie Aboriginal Reserve, Cowra, New South Wales (Sydney; New York: Pergamon Press, 1984), 132. 33 Andrew Markus & Monash University. Dept. of History, Blood from a Stone: William Cooper and the Australian Aborigines’ League, Monash Publications in History; 2 (Melbourne: Dept. of History Monash University, 1986), 6–12. Cooper was also aware of developments in North America, describing the ‘splendid action of a Sister Colony of our Empire’ in preserving the ‘Eskimo race’ in a 1933 letter to the Prime Minister Joseph Lyons. Attwood & Markus, Thinking Black: William Cooper and the Australian Aborigines’ League, 36–37. 34 Andrew Markus, ‘William Cooper and the 1937 petition to the King’, Aboriginal History 7, 1 (1983): 46–60. 35 Markus & Monash University. Dept. of History, Blood from a Stone: William Cooper and the Australian Aborigines’ League, 32–33. 36 Cited in Markus & Monash University. Dept. of History, Blood from a Stone: William Cooper and the Australian Aborigines’ League, 56–57. 37 Markus, ‘William Cooper and the 1937 petition to the King’; Victorian Aborigines Advancement League, Victims or victors? The Story of the Victorian Aborigines Advancement League (Melbourne: Hyland House, 1985), 35. 38 When documents of petition did arrive in the UK from indigenous peoples, as they did from representatives of the Six Nations of the Iroquois in the early 1920s, Colonial Office and Buckingham Palace staff simply returned them to

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the Canadian government. See Ravi de Costa, ‘Identity, authority and the moral worlds of indigenous petitions’, Comparative Studies in Society and History 46, no. 3 (2006). Attwood, The Making of the Aborigines, 102. Another indicator was the franchise. Although the size of the indigenous voting population was never significant in the 19th century, recently historians have argued that ‘such slender opportunities as were offered to Aborigines to participate in settler political processes went to mission-trained men’. Julie Evans et al., Equal Subjects, Unequal Rights: Indigenous Peoples in British Settler Colonies, 1830–1910 (Manchester; New York: Manchester University Press, 2003), 83. Goodall, 76–79. Andrew Bank, ‘Losing faith in the civilizing mission: The premature decline of humanitarian liberalism at the Cape, 1840–60’, in Empire and Others: British Encounters with Indigenous Peoples, 1600–1850, ed. MJ Daunton & Rick Halpern (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999); MJ Daunton & Rick Halpern, eds, Empire and Others: British Encounters with Indigenous Peoples, 1600–1850, Critical Histories (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999). Kevin Gilbert, Because a White Man’ll Never Do It (Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1973), 26. Markus, Governing Savages, 2. Stuart Macintyre, The Reds (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1998), 121. Frank Lewins, ‘Race and ethnic relations’, in Who are our Enemies? Racism and the Australian Working Class, ed. Ann Curthoys & Andrew Markus (Sydney: Hale & Iremonger, 1978), 17; Macintyre, 44. Bob Boughton, ‘The Communist Party of Australia’s involvement in the struggle for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people’s rights 1920–1970’, in Labour and Community: Historical Essays, ed. R Markey (Wollongong: University of Wollongong Press, 2001), 265–66; Andrew Markus, ‘Talka longa mouth’, in Who are our Enemies? Racism and the Australian Working Class, ed. Ann Curthoys & Andrew Markus (Sydney: Hale & Iremonger, 1978), 147–49. Boughton, 266–68. There is some divergence of opinion among historians about the influence of the 1928 document. Boughton suggested that Australian communists took ‘advanced’ positions after being ‘encouraged … by the international movement to which they belonged’. Goodall argued that they did so only after being reprimanded by the Comintern in 1929. Regardless, it is clear that the Comintern had a significant role in changing the intellectual ground on which left thinking about the ‘Aboriginal question’ was conducted. Markus, ‘Talka longa mouth’, 147; Boughton, 265; Goodall, 233. Cited in Boughton. Macintyre, 265–66. Cited in Markus, Governing Savages, 159. Markus, Governing savages, 159–60. Left doctrine was steadily revised in successive decades, in documents such as ‘New deal for Aborigines’, written by the Federal President of the Sheetmetal Workers Union, Tom Wright, in 1944. In 1954 the CPA began to redraft its platform, which culminated in a new statement in 1963 that radically reimagined the possibility of a thriving indigenous social order and rejected all forms of assimilation; Cited in Boughton, 270. Ward Churchill, ‘False promises: An indigenist examination of theory and practice’, in Acts of Rebellion: The Ward Churchill Reader (New York: Routledge, 2003), 252–54. Fundamentally for Churchill, indigenous politics must pursue ‘a

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52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66

67 68 69 70 71 72

73

74 75 76 77 78

79 80

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vision of humanity within rather than apart from and above the natural order’. Macintyre, 265–66. Goodall, 179–80. Macintyre, 126; Markus, ‘Talka longa mouth’, 138–39. Macintyre, 266; Goodall, 235–36; Henry Reynolds, Nowhere People: How International Race Thinking Shaped Australia’s Identity (Melbourne: Viking, 2005). Macintyre, 118–19, 273–88. Markus, ‘Talka longa mouth’, 145. Goodall, 186; Markus, ‘Talka longa mouth’, 149–50. Goodall, 233–34. Markus, ‘Talka longa mouth’, 153. Goodall, 253. Peter Biskup, Not Slaves, Not Citizens: The Aboriginal Problem in Western Australia, 1898–1954 (St Lucia, Qld: University of Queensland Press, 1973), 212–21. Biskup, 239. Attwood, Rights for Aborigines, 134. Goodall, 149–51. John Maynard, ‘Vision, voice and influence: The rise of the Australian Aboriginal Progressive Association’, Australian Historical Studies 121 (2003): 91–105. Maynard; Goodall, 153. Goodall, 168. Joe McGinness, Son of Alyandabu: My Fight for Aboriginal Rights (St Lucia, Qld: University of Queensland Press, 1991), 34–39. Markus, ‘Talka longa mouth’, 149. Fiona Paisley, Loving Protection? Australian Feminism and Aboriginal Women’s Rights 1919–1939 (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2000), 36–39. Antoinette Burton, cited in Fiona Paisley, ‘Citizens of their world: Australian feminism and indigenous rights in the international context, 1920s and 1930s’, Feminist Review, 58 (1998): 66–84. Marilyn Lake, ‘Between old world “barbarism” and Stone Age “primitivism”: The double difference of the White Australian feminist’, in Australian Women: Contemporary Feminist Thought, ed. Norma Grieve & Ailsa Burns (Melbourne; New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 84; Paisley, Loving Protection? Australian Feminism and Aboriginal Women’s Rights 1919–1939, 36–43. Paisley, Loving Protection? Australian Feminism and Aboriginal Women’s Rights 1919–1939, 74–88. Paisley, Loving Protection? Australian Feminism and Aboriginal Women’s Rights 1919–1939, 143. Paisley, Loving Protection? Australian Feminism and Aboriginal Women’s Rights 1919–1939, 114–29. Paisley, Loving Protection? Australian Feminism and Aboriginal Women’s Rights 1919–1939, 136–8. Jackie Huggins, ‘A contemporary view of Aboriginal women’s relationship to the white women’s movement’, in Australian Women: Contemporary Feminist Thought, ed. Norma Grieve & Ailsa Burns (Melbourne; New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 70–71. Paisley, Loving Protection? Australian Feminism and Aboriginal Women’s Rights 1919–1939, 33. See also Attwood, Rights for Aborigines, 56–57. Paisley, Loving Protection? Australian Feminism and Aboriginal Women’s Rights

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1919–1939, 68. 81 Paisley, Loving Protection? Australian Feminism and Aboriginal Women’s Rights 1919–1939, 146. 82 This phenomenon is not particular to Australia. A correlation has been documented between the mission-educated indigenous people whose politicisation was especially important in framing indigenous rights. See, for example, Paul Tennant, Aboriginal Peoples and Politics the Indian Land Question in British Columbia, 1849–1989 (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1991).

Chapter 3 1

2 3 4

5 6 7

8 9 10

11 12 13

14 15 16

Harold William Vazeille Temperley, A History of the Peace Conference of Paris, ed. Institute of International Affairs and Royal Institute of International Affairs, 6 vols, vol. 2 (London: H Frowde and Hodder & Stoughton, 1920), 216; Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (London: Chatto & Windus, 1960), Chapter XLIX. JA Hobson, Imperialism: A Study (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1965), 229–30. George Bernard Shaw & Fabian Society London, Fabianism and the Empire (London: G Richards, 1900), 44–46. Temperley, 221. However, Bismarck, mindful of the ferment of socialism, did introduce social legislation and labour protection in the 1880s in the German colonies of West Africa. Micheline Ishay, The History of Human Rights: From Ancient Times to the Globalization Era (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004), 208–209. Hobson, 232, 237. William Roger Louis, Imperialism at Bay 1941–1945: The United States and the Decolonization of the British Empire (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977), 89. Cited in Fernand van Langenhove, The Question of the Aborigines before the United Nations: The Belgian Thesis (Brussels: Royal Colonial Institute of Belgium, Section of Social and Political Sciences, 1954), 63. Hobson, 239–43. Hobson, 233. Jan Smuts, ‘The League of Nations: Practical suggestions’(16 December 1918), in A History of the Peace Conference of Paris, ed. Harold William Vazeille Temperley, Institute of International Affairs and Royal Institute of International Affairs (London: H Frowde and Hodder & Stoughton, 1920), 53. WE Rappard, ‘The practical working of the mandates system’, Journal of the British Institute of International Affairs 4, 5 (1925): 205–26. Rayford W Logan, ‘The operation of the mandate system in Africa’, Journal of Negro History 13, 4 (1928): 423–77. The Committee of the Anti-Slavery and Aborigines Protection Society, ‘A Draft Colonial Mandate submitted to the Commission on Mandates’ (London: 1919), 2–6. Manchester Guardian, ‘An African charter’ (28 July 1919). Maurice Fanshawe, Reconstruction: Five Years of Work by the League of Nations (London: G Allen & Unwin Ltd, 1925), 70. John Eppstein, ‘The mandate system’, in Ten Years’ Life of the League of Nations: A History of the Origins of the League and of its Development from A.D. 1919 to 1929. Compiled by J. Eppstein, etc., ed. John Eppstein (London: May Fair Press,

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1929), 150. 17 FP Walters, A History of the League of Nations, 2 vols, vol. 1 (London; New York: Oxford University Press, 1952), 56–58; Temperley, 232. 18 Margaret Olwen Macmillan, Paris 1919: Six Months that Changed the World (New York: Random House, 2003), 102–103. 19 Covenant of the League of Nations, Article 22. 20 Eppstein, 156. 21 Walters, 171–75. 22 Walters, 563. 23 Patrick Thornberry, International Law and the Rights of Minorities (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), 41. 24 Henry Reynolds, Aboriginal Sovereignty: Reflections on Race, State and Nation (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1996), 157–58. 25 Reynolds, 156–57; Walters, 63. 26 Macmillan, 101–104; Louis, 93 at note 8. 27 PA Silburn, The Governance of Empire (New York; London: Kennikat Press, 1910), 210. 28 Six Nations, The Redman’s Appeal for Justice: The Position of the Six Nations that they Constitute an Independent State (Brantford, ON: Six Nations, 1924), 21. See also Ravi de Costa, ‘Identity, authority and the moral worlds of indigenous petitions’, Comparative Studies in Society and History 46, 3 (2006); Grace Li Xiu Woo, ‘Canada’s forgotten founders: The modern significance of the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) application for membership of the League of Nations’, Law, Social Justice and Global Development 2003, 1 (2003); Ronald Niezen, ‘Recognizing indigenism: Canadian unity and the International Movement of Indigenous Peoples’, Comparative Studies in Society and History 42, 1 (2000): 119–48. 29 ILO Convention 85 remains the only piece of international law that Australian has ever signed relating to the specific interests of indigenous peoples. It was ratified on 15 June 1973 and denounced on 6 February 2004, and only ever applied to ‘the indigenous population of a non-metropolitan territory’; Australia only ever interpreted this as meaning Norfolk Island. It is possible that the denunciation was made to avoid any conflict created by the expansion of off-shore territories under recent revisions to the Migration Act. Relevant documents are available at . 30 John Eppstein, ‘The minorities problem’, in Ten Years’ Life of the League of Nations: A History of the Origins of the League and of its Development from A.D. 1919 to 1929. Compiled by J. Eppstein, etc., ed. John Eppstein (London: May Fair Press, 1929), 119–20. 31 Gary B Ostrower, The League of Nations: from 1919–1929 (Garden City Park, NY: Avery Pub. Group, 1996), 76; Jacob Robinson et al., Were the Minorities Treaties a Failure? (New York: American Jewish Congress; Antin Press, 1943), 260–63. 32 Walters, 811. 33 Anti-Slavery and Aborigines Protection Society, ‘An International Colonial Convention’ (London: May 1943), 7. 34 Louis, 4, 121. 35 Thornberry, 51–56, 332. 36 Louis, 88, 10–12. 37 Louis, 18.

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38 Some proponents referred by contrast to the ‘saltwater fallacy’. WJ Hudson, Australia and the Colonial Question at the United Nations (Honolulu: East-West Center Press, 1970), 2. 39 Langenhove, 9. 40 Russel Lawrence Barsh, ‘Indigenous peoples: An emerging object of international law’, American Journal of International Law 80, 2 (1986): 369–85. 41 Thornberry, 16–18. 42 Langenhove, 67. 43 Thornberry, 334; Lee Swepston, ‘The adoption of the Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention, 1989 (No. 169)’, Law and Anthropology 5 (1990): 221–35. 44 Swepston. 45 International Labour Office, Indigenous Peoples: Living and Working Conditions of Aboriginal Populations in Independent Countries (Geneva: 1953), iii. 46 For a detailed analysis of the convention, see Thornberry, 336–68. 47 Tim Rowse, ‘Indigenous culture: The politics of vulnerability and survival’, in Handbook of Cultural Analysis, ed. T Bennett & J Frow (Sage, 2006). 48 Marilyn Lake, Faith: Faith Bandler, Gentle Activist (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2002), 55; Sue Taffe, ‘The Federal Council for the Advancement of Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders, 1958–1973: The politics of inter-racial coalition in Australia’ (PhD, Monash University, 2001), 36. 49 Lake, 55. 50 Bain Attwood & Andrew Markus, Thinking Black: William Cooper and the Australian Aborigines’ League (Canberra, ACT: Aboriginal Studies Press, 2004), 69. 51 ‘Deputation not admitted’, Argus (7 December 1938), cited in Attwood & Markus, 108. 52 Heather Goodall, Invasion to Embassy: Land in Aboriginal Politics in New South Wales, 1770–1972 (Sydney: Allen & Unwin in association with Black Books, 1996), 230–31. 53 Jack Horner & Marcia Langton, ‘The Day of Mourning’, in Australians, 1938, ed. Bill Gammage & Peter Spearritt, Australians: A Historical Library (Sydney: Fairfax Syme & Weldon Associates, 1987), 30; Geoff Stokes, ‘Citizenship and Aboriginality: Two conceptions of identity in Aboriginal political thought’, in The Politics of Identity in Australia, ed. Geoff Stokes (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997). 54 Annual Report of the Association for the Protection of Native Races (11 March 1930) presented at 19th Annual Meeting, 4. See also Andrew Markus, Governing Savages (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1990), 140–41. 55 Markus, 140–42. 56 Markus, 174; Stokes, 160–64. There were assertions that some reserves would need to be kept for those who could not be integrated, Goodall, 240–46. 57 Nicolas Peterson & Will Sanders, Citizenship and Indigenous Australians: Changing Conceptions and Possibilities (Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 10. 58 Doreen Kartinyeri, Ngarrindjeri Anzacs (Adelaide: Aboriginal Family History Project South Australian Museum and Raukkan Council, 1996), 9. 59 David Huggonson, ‘The dark diggers of the AIF’, The Australian Quarterly (1989): 352–57; Robert A Hall, The Black Diggers: Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders in the Second World War (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1989), 79. 60 Hall, 60, 144–45.

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61 Joe McGinness, Son of Alyandabu: My Fight for Aboriginal Rights (St Lucia, Qld: University of Queensland Press, 1991), 33. 62 Harry Gordon, The Embarrassing Australian: The Story of an Aboriginal Warrior (Melbourne: Lansdowne Press, 1962), 136; AW Martin, ‘Aborigines in the war’, in Australians from 1939, ed. Ann Curthoys, AW Martin & Tim Rowse, Australians: A Historical Library (Sydney: Fairfax Syme & Weldon Associates, 1987), 26. 63 Len Watson, ‘1945: Enter the black radical’, National Times Magazine (1974): 4–13. 64 Frank S Stevens, The Politics of Prejudice (Sydney: Alternative Publishing Cooperative Ltd, 1980), 57; Wenten Rubuntja, Jenny Green & Tim Rowse, The Town Grew Up Dancing: The Life and Art of Wenten Rubuntja (Alice Springs, NT: Jukurrpa Books, 2002), 69–70. 65 CD Rowley, The Destruction of Aboriginal Society (Melbourne: Penguin, 1972), 337. 66 Charles Tilly, ‘Where do rights come from?’, in Democracy, Revolution, and History, ed. Theda Skocpol (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1998), 55–72. 67 Stephen Hagan, The N Word (Broome, WA: Magabala Books Aboriginal Corporation, 2005), 14. 68 Donald F Thompson, ‘Justice for the Aborigines’, 2. 69 Lake, 63; Faith Bandler & Len Fox, The Time was Ripe: A History of the Aboriginal-Australian Fellowship (1956–69) (Sydney: Alternative Publishing Cooperative, 1983). 70 Jack Horner, Seeking Racial Justice: An Insider’s Memoir of the Movement for Aboriginal Advancement, 1938–1978 (Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press, 2004), 6–7. 71 Charles Perkins, A Bastard Like Me (Sydney: Ure Smith, 1975), 41. 72 Peter Read, Charles Perkins: A Biography (Melbourne; New York: Viking, 1990), 44–54. 73 Margaret Tucker, ‘“As I saw the world abroad” One of our people visits U.S.A.’, Dawn (March 1958), 2–3. 74 Fay Gale, Urban Aborigines, Aborigines in Australian Society, 8 (Canberra: Australian National University Press, 1972), 34. 75 Mavis Thorpe Clark, Pastor Doug: The Story of an Aboriginal Leader (Melbourne: Lansdowne Press, 1966), 140–41. 76 Thomas King, The Truth about Stories: A Native Narrative (Toronto: House of Anansi Press, 2003), 50–53. 77 Read, 62. 78 McGinness, 58–65; Lake, 55–56. 79 John Chesterman, ‘Defending Australia’s reputation: How indigenous Australians won civil rights, Part One’, Australian Historical Studies, 116 (2001): 20–39. 80 Sue Taffe, Black and White Together FCAATSI: The Federal Council for the Advancement of Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders, 1958–1973 (St Lucia, Qld: University of Queensland Press, 2005). 81 Bandler & Fox, 3; Peter Sekuless, Jessie Street: A Rewarding but Unrewarded Life (St Lucia, Qld: University of Queensland Press, 1978), 173; Lake, 59; Aboriginal-Australian Fellowship, ‘Proceedings of the Conference, Aborigines and Ourselves’ (Sydney: 1961). 82 Cited in John Chesterman & Brian Galligan, Citizens without Rights: Aborigines

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91 92 93 94 95 96 97

98

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and Australian Citizenship (Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 58. For a complete account of the framing of the 1901 constitutional provisions regarding indigenous peoples, see Chesterman & Galligan, 58–83. Lake, 66. Sekuless, 27–33, 130–45. Sekuless, 1–2, 165–66. Letter from T Fox-Pitt (Secretary of the Anti-Slavery Society), to Fred Rose (October 1956), Hannah Middleton papers, Box 18, Volume 5 of ‘Australian Papers’. Taffe, ‘The Federal Council for the Advancement of Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders, 1958–1973: The politics of inter-racial coalition in Australia’, 49–51; Sekuless, 171. Clark, 172–82. Taffe, Black and White Together FCAATSI: The Federal Council for the Advancement of Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders, 1958–1973, 3–13. Russell McGregor, Imagined Destinies: Aboriginal Australians and the Doomed Race Theory, 1880–1939 (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1998), 195–205, 260. Barry E Christophers, ‘Mankind is biologically equal’, Smoke Signals (August 1963), 11–13. Chesterman. The full series of this publication is archived on-line at . ‘Home hints’, Dawn (January 1952), 14. Clive Evatt, ‘Chief Secretary’s letter’, Dawn (February 1952), 3. Evatt was Chief Secretary of the Aborigines Welfare Board. AP Elkin, ‘Post-war and the Aborigines’ (Sydney: The National Missionary Council of Australia, 1945), 3–4. Yet, as Tim Rowse has pointed out, this was an unstable mix: ‘assimilation’ implied a ‘timetable of progression and completion’, while reserves were ‘devices of indefinite duration’. Personal communication (23 December 2005). Tim Rowse, Obliged to be Difficult: Nugget Coombs’ Legacy in Indigenous Affairs (Cambridge; Melbourne; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 36–37; Jeremy Beckett, ‘The past in the present; the present in the past: Constructing a national Aboriginality’, in Past and Present: The Construction of Aboriginality, ed. Jeremy Beckett (Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press, 1988), 201; Beckett, 202; Anna Haebich, ‘Imagining assimilation’, Australian Historical Studies 118 (2002): 61–70. It is ironic that the publication Our Aborigines featured the work of Albert Namatjira, the most famous indigenous painter, who was arrested and imprisoned for drinking alcohol with his relatives, who were wards of the state. Horner, Seeking Racial Justice: An Insider’s Memoir of the Movement for Aboriginal Advancement, 1938–1978, 41–42. Biskup, 197–98; AP Elkin, Post-War and the Aborigines (The National Missionary Council of Australia, Sydney: 1945), 16. Rowse, Obliged to be Difficult: Nugget Coombs’ Legacy in Indigenous Affairs, 18, 36. ‘Details of the 2nd FCAA Conference’, Smoke Signals April 1959; Horner, Seeking Racial Justice: An Insider’s Memoir of the Movement for Aboriginal Advancement, 1938–1978, 55.

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103 ‘Details of the 3rd FCAA Conference’, Smoke Signals (April 1960). 104 Edward Gough Whitlam, The Whitlam Government, 1972–1975 (Melbourne: Viking, 1985), 483. 105 Read, 97. 106 Cited in Harriet Ketley, ‘Exclusion by definition: Access to international tribunals for the enforcement of the collective right of indigenous peoples’, International Journal on Minority and Group Rights 8 (2001): 331–68. 107 Whitlam, 506. I deal with the actual effects of the Racial Discrimination Act in chapter 6. 108 Kath Walker, ‘Aboriginal Charter of Rights’, Smoke Signals (October 1962); Read, 57–59. 109 Horner, Seeking Racial Justice: An Insider’s Memoir of the Movement for Aboriginal Advancement, 1938–1978, 30; McGinness, 57–58. 110 Letter from Hon. Frank Bulcock (former Queensland Secretary for Agriculture and Stock, 1932–42), to Courier-Mail (12 July 1962). 111 John Chesterman, ‘Defending Australia’s reputation: How indigenous Australians won civil rights, Part Two’, Australian Historical Studies, 117 (2001): 201–21. 112 ‘Detailed report on natives for U.N.’, Age (13 July 1963). 113 Bain Attwood, Rights for Aborigines (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2003), 261–62. 114 Chesterman, ‘Defending Australia’s reputation: How indigenous Australians won civil rights, Part One’. 115 Taffe, ‘The Federal Council for the Advancement of Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders, 1958–1973: The politics of inter-racial coalition in Australia’, 99–100. 116 Taffe, ‘Australian diplomacy in a policy vacuum: Government and Aboriginal affairs, 1961–62’, Aboriginal History 19, 2 (1995): 154–72. 117 Chesterman, ‘Defending Australia’s reputation: How indigenous Australians won civil rights, Part One’. 118 David Goldsworthy, ‘Australian external policy and the end of Britain’s empire’, Australian Journal of Politics and History 51, 1 (2005): 17–29. 119 Recently, Rowse has suggested that the actions and advice of some bureaucrats in the Department of External Affairs on this issue went beyond ‘prudential diplomacy’ and reflected the idealised liberalism of those who had built their careers in admiration of the UN. Tim Rowse, ‘Review of John Chesterman, “Civil rights: How indigenous Australians won formal equality”‘, Australian Historical Studies (forthcoming). 120 Taffe, ‘Australian diplomacy in a policy vacuum: Government and Aboriginal affairs, 1961–62’; Ann Curthoys, Freedom Ride: A Freedom Rider Remembers (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2002), 14. 121 Hudson, 4–8. 122 David Martin, ‘Australia and her Aborigines: The world is watching’, Smoke Signals (March 1962), 25–31. 123 Taffe, ‘The Federal Council for the Advancement of Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders, 1958–1973: The politics of inter-racial coalition in Australia’, 447. 124 Curthoys; Stuart Macintyre, The Reds (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1998), 52. 125 Rowse, Obliged to be Difficult: Nugget Coombs’ Legacy in Indigenous Affairs, 48. 126 Bandler & Fox, 143–44. 127 Bob Boughton, ‘The Communist Party of Australia’s involvement in the

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130 131

132 133 134 135

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struggle for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people’s rights 1920–1970’, in Labour and Community: Historical Essays, ed. R Markey (Wollongong: University of Wollongong Press, 2001). Taffe, ‘The Federal Council for the Advancement of Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders, 1958–1973: The politics of inter-racial coalition in Australia’; Read, 67; Bain Attwood & Andrew Markus, eds, The Struggle for Aboriginal Rights: A Documentary History (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1999), 216. Freedom Ride website: ; Cited in Attwood & Markus, eds, The Struggle for Aboriginal Rights: A Documentary History, 216. Sean Scalmer, Dissent Events: Protest, the Media, and the Political Gimmick in Australia (Sydney: UNSW Press, 2002), 11–30. Sidney Tarrow, Power in Movement: Social Movements, Collective Action, and Politics, Cambridge Studies in Comparative Politics. (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 119–23. Curthoys, 37. Rowse, Obliged to be Difficult: Nugget Coombs’ Legacy in Indigenous Affairs, 19. Lake, 122. Bain Attwood & Andrew Markus, ‘(The) 1967 (referendum) and all that: Narrative and myth, Aborigines and Australia’, Australian Historical Studies, 111 (1998): 267–88; Bain Attwood & Andrew Markus, ‘Representation matters: The 1967 referendum and citizenship’, in Citizenship and Indigenous Australians: Changing Conceptions and Possibilities, ed. Nicolas Peterson & Will Sanders (Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 1998); Bain Attwood et al., The 1967 Referendum, or, When Aborigines Didn’t Get the Vote (Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press, 1997). John Chesterman, Civil Rights: How Indigenous Australians Won Formal Equality (St Lucia, Qld: University of Queensland Press, 2005). Taffe, Black and White Together FCAATSI: The Federal Council for the Advancement of Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders, 1958–1973, 115–20. Read, 119–20. Ian S Mitchell, ‘Epilogue to a referendum’, Australian Journal of Social Issues, October (1968): 9–12. Attwood et al., The 1967 Referendum, or, When Aborigines Didn’t Get the Vote, 65. Andrew Markus, Australian Race Relations, 1788–1993 (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1994), 177. Beckett, 202–203; Rowse, Obliged to be Difficult: Nugget Coombs’ Legacy in Indigenous Affairs, 20–21. Sam Watson, ‘Transcript of interview, (Interviewer: Dr Ravi de Costa)’, (Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies Unit, University of Queensland: 2003).

Chapter 4 1

2

Cited in Tim Rowse, Obliged to be Difficult: Nugget Coombs’ Legacy in Indigenous Affairs (Cambridge; Melbourne; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 5. Bain Attwood et al., The 1967 Referendum, or, When Aborigines Didn’t Get the Vote (Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press, 1997); Bain Attwood & Andrew Markus, ‘(The) 1967 (referendum) and all that: Narrative and myth, Aborigines and Australia’, Australian Historical Studies, 111 (1998): 267–88; Bain Attwood &

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3 4

5 6 7 8 9 10 11

12 13 14 15 16 17 18

199

Andrew Markus, ‘Representation matters: The 1967 referendum and citizenship’, in Citizenship and Indigenous Australians: Changing Conceptions and Possibilities, ed. Nicolas Peterson & Will Sanders (Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 1998); John Chesterman, ‘Defending Australia’s reputation: How Indigenous Australians won civil rights, Part One’, Australian Historical Studies, 116 (2001): 20–39; John Chesterman, ‘Defending Australia’s reputation: How Indigenous Australians won civil rights, Part Two’, Australian Historical Studies, 117 (2001): 201–21; Sue Taffe, ‘Australian diplomacy in a policy vacuum: Government and Aboriginal affairs, 1961–62’, Aboriginal History 19, 2 (1995): 154–72. Kevin Gilbert, Because a White Man’ll Never Do It (Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1973), 102–103. Kath Walker, ‘Black–white coalition can work’, cited in Bain Attwood & Andrew Markus, eds, The Struggle for Aboriginal Rights: A Documentary History (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1999), 240. Barrie Pittock, ‘Why the rush in Aboriginal affairs?’, Smoke Signals (June 1969), 16–17. Peter Read, ‘Cheeky, insolent and anti-white’, Australian Journal of Politics and History 36, 1 (1990): 73–83. Bain Attwood, Rights for Aborigines (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2003), 82–91, 104, 203. Barrie Pittock, ‘Key issues in Aboriginal affairs: Some personal thoughts’, Smoke Signals (February–March 1967), 14–17. Barrie Pittock (interviewed 16/11/96), Sue Taffe, ‘Federal Council of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders Oral History Project, 1997’, Canberra. Read. Mavis Thorpe Clark, Pastor Doug: The Story of an Aboriginal Leader (Melbourne: Lansdowne Press, 1966), 234; Sue Taffe, Black and White Together FCAATSI: The Federal Council for the Advancement of Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders, 1958–1973 (St Lucia, Qld: University of Queensland Press, 2005), 62–63; Jack Horner, Seeking Racial Justice: An Insider’s Memoir of the Movement for Aboriginal Advancement, 1938–1978 (Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press, 2004), 63–65; Sue Taffe, ‘The Federal Council for the Advancement of Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders, 1958–1973: The politics of inter-racial coalition in Australia’ (PhD, Monash University, 2001), 314. The core motivation seemed to be an idea of visible minority status rather than an early articulation of Aboriginality per se; Bandler’s status as a descendant of South Sea Islanders did not, for example, exclude her and she attended the closed meetings ‘as a matter of course’. Marilyn Lake, Faith: Faith Bandler, Gentle Activist (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2002), 121–22. Attwood, Rights for Aborigines, 309. Taffe, Black and White Together FCAATSI: the Federal Council for the Advancement of Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders, 1958–1973, 226; Lake, 120–21. Charles Perkins, A Bastard Like Me (Sydney: Ure Smith, 1975), 112. Taffe, Black and White Together FCAATSI: The Federal Council for the Advancement of Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders, 1958–1973. Taffe, Black and White Together FCAATSI: The Federal Council for the Advancement of Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders, 1958–1973, 247. Stan Smith, ‘Heads or tails, you can’t win’, Smoke Signals (1969): 13–14. Roberta B Sykes, Neville T Bonner & Ann Turner, Black Power in Australia, On

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Trial Series. (Melbourne: Heinemann Educational Australia, 1975), 67. 19 Faith Bandler (interviewed 7 November 1996) Taffe, ‘Federal Council of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders Oral History Project. 20 Bob Maza, ‘The Koorie’s disillusionment’, Smoke Signals (June 1969), 3–4. 21 Lake, 133; FCAATSI, ‘Report on 1970 FCAATSI Conference’ (Canberra, Easter 1970), Trades and Labor Council delegate, Bob Burns. 22 A Barrie Pittock, ‘Towards a multi-racial society’, in Racism: The Australian Experience; Colonialism, ed. Frank S Stevens (Sydney: Australia and New Zealand Book Company, 1972), 245; Bruce McGuinness & Patsy Kruger, Aborigines Visit the US: Report on Trip by Five Aborigines to Congress of African People and United Nations (Melbourne: Abschol, 1971). 23 Peter Read, Charles Perkins: A Biography (Melbourne; New York: Viking, 1990), 71, 104–105. 24 ‘Mode of Mirrigan’, The Koorier (1969), in Sharman N Stone, Aborigines in White Australia: A Documentary History of the Attitudes Affecting Official Policy and the Australian Aborigine, 1697–1973 (Melbourne: Heinemann, 1974), 214–15. 25 Bruce McGuinness, ‘Will the real honky please stand up?’, Origin (September 1970), 6. 26 Rowse, 9; HC Coombs, ‘Aboriginal Australians – Is it a new era?’ (Speech to Society of Friends), Wahroonga (21 November 1969). 27 On the transformational experience of urbanisation during the anti-slavery movement, for example, see Charles Tilly, Popular Contention in Great Britain, 1758–1834 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995); Seymour Drescher, Capitalism and Antislavery: British Mobilization in Comparative Perspective. The Second Anstey Memorial Lectures in the University of Kent at Canterbury, 1984 (Basingstoke, Hampshire: Macmillan, 1986); Gary Foley, ‘Teaching whites a lesson’, in Staining the Wattle: A People’s History of Australia since 1788, ed. Verity Burgmann & Jenny Lee (Melbourne; New York: McPhee Gribble; Penguin Books, 1988), 203. 28 Barrie Pittock, ‘Why the rush in Aboriginal affairs?’, Smoke Signals (June 1969), 16–17. 29 Gary Foley, Post-Colonial Studies Reading Group Seminar, Department of History, University of Melbourne (26 February 2002); Fay Gale, Urban Aborigines, Aborigines in Australian society, 8 (Canberra: Australian National University Press, 1972), 202, 258–59. 30 Garth Nettheim, International Commission of Jurists. Australian Section, and University of New South Wales. Faculty of Law, Aborigines, Human Rights and the Law (Sydney: Australia and New Zealand Book Co., 1974), 175–76. 31 Gary Foley, Late Night Live with Phillip Adams (ABC Radio National), Broadcast 28 August; Sam Watson, ‘Transcript of interview, (Interviewer: Dr Ravi de Costa)’, (Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies Unit, University of Queensland: 2003); Gilbert, 110. 32 Scott Robinson, ‘The Aboriginal Embassy: An account of the protests of 1972’, Aboriginal History 18, 1 (1994): 49–63. 33 Gilbert, 130. 34 Gilbert, 111. 35 Horner, 96–97. 36 Queensland Aborigines and Torres Strait Islander Advancement Council, Newsletter 29 (January 1965). 37 The Bulletin (23 January 1965); John Chesterman, Civil Rights: How Indigenous

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38 39 40 41

42 43

44 45 46 47 48

49 50

51 52

53

54

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Australians Won Formal Equality (St Lucia, Qld: University of Queensland Press, 2005), 81. Perkins, 111–27. Margaret Valadian, ‘Aborigines and Black Power’, Catholic Worker 449 (May 1974), 3–6. Read, Charles Perkins: A Biography, 78. Christine Jennett, ‘Aboriginal Black Power and the land rights movement of the 1970s’, Australian Political Studies Association 22nd Annual Conference, 27–29 August 1980. Margaret Ann Franklin, Black and White Australians (Melbourne: Heinemann Educational Australia, 1976), 207. ‘Third World seeks unity’, New York Times in McGuinness & Kruger; McGuinness & Kruger; Bruce McGuinness, ‘Travel expenses’, Origin (November 1971). Hannah Middleton papers (ML 1296/93) File 27.7: ABJAB – ‘Letter to members’ (25 September 1972). Gilbert, 113. Gary Foley, ‘Overseas perspectives: Gary Foley’s impressions of China’, Aboriginal News 1, 7 (1974): 14–15. Gilbert, 116. Horner, 136–37; George Manuel & Michael Posluns, The Fourth World: An Indian Reality (New York: Free Press, 1974); Bob Maza, Koorier (August 1969), in Michael Rose, ed., For the Record: 160 Years of Aboriginal Print Journalism (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1996), 69; ‘Roosevelt Brown meets the Press’, Transcript of press conference at AALV (28 August 1969). Black News Service no. 2; Liyong, ‘Address to FCAATSI Annual Meeting 1977’, from Reports and Minutes of Proceedings of the 1977 Conference. Hannah Middleton papers (ML 1296/93) File 13.15: Overseas Awards – Forms for the Overseas Study Awards/Scholarships Scheme; DAA, Aboriginal News, 3(2) (October 1976). Foley, Late Night Live with Phillip Adams. Ribnga Kenneth Green, ‘Aborigines and international politics’, in Aborigines of the West: Their Past and their Present, ed. Catherine H Berndt & Ronald Murray Berndt (Nedlands, WA: University of Western Australia Press, 1980), 389. Charles Perkins, ‘Black Power here?’, Aboriginal Quarterly (October–December 1968), 14; Victorian Aborigines Advancement League, Victims or Victors? The Story of the Victorian Aborigines Advancement League (Melbourne: Hyland House, 1985), 90. Dixon cited in Colin Tatz, Keith R McConnochie & Armidale College of Advanced Education, Black Viewpoints: The Aboriginal Experience, Race and Aboriginal Studies (Sydney: Australia and New Zealand Book Co, 1975), 34; Gordon Briscoe (interviewed 5 December 1996), Taffe, ‘Federal Council of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders Oral History Project. Watson. Attwood, Rights for Aborigines, 340–41; Franklin, 207; BPA, Platform and Programme 1970, 252–53; ‘Simon Townsend talks to the leaders of the Black Panthers’, The Australian (5 December 1971), in Attwood & Markus, eds, The Struggle for Aboriginal Rights: A Documentary History, 252–55. Franklin, 203; Read, Charles Perkins: A Biography, 79–80; Koorier (October 1971), Bobbi Sykes, ‘Parallels’, in Rose, ed., 130.

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58 Ali Mazrui, Black Australians?, Australian Institute of International Affairs’ Dyason Lectures (1972), reprinted in Aboriginal Affairs Planning Authority, Newsletter for the Aboriginal People of Western Australia (October 1972), 6–10. 59 ‘Sue Chilly reports on Women’s Conference in Brussels’, Kooka Bina (June 1976), 9. 60 Jennett. 61 Sykes, Bonner & Turner, 10–12. 62 Gilbert, 110. 63 It is remarkable how little analytical scholarship exists on indigenous periodicals in Australia. Marcia Langton & Brownlee Kirkpatrick, ‘A listing of Aboriginal periodicals’, Aboriginal History 3, 2 (1979): 120–27; Rose, ed; Rose, ed., xxxiii. 64 John Newfong, ‘Editorial’, Identity (November 1972) in Rose, ed., 134–35. 65 Black News Service vol. 4, no. 1, 14–17. 66 Read, ‘Cheeky, insolent and anti-white’; Attwood, Rights for Aborigines, 308; Gordon Briscoe (interviewed 5 December 1996), Taffe, ‘Federal Council of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders Oral History Project; Read, Charles Perkins: A Biography, 138. 67 Franklin, 207; Watson. 68 Foley, ‘Teaching whites a lesson’, 204–205; R Bellear, ‘Aboriginal Medical Service Information Guide’ (20 January 1978), 2. 69 Kevin Gilbert, ‘My countryman, my country’, Identity (July 1971), in Rose, ed., 128–29; ‘On reflection in brief’, in McGuinness & Kruger, 26. 70 Gilbert, 120–22. 71 Foley, ‘Teaching whites a lesson’, 198. 72 Foley, Late Night Live with Phillip Adams. 73 Attwood, Rights for Aborigines, 257–306. 74 Howard Morphy, ‘“Now you understand”: An analysis of the way Yolngu have used sacred knowledge to retain their autonomy’, in Aborigines, Land and Land Rights, ed. Marcia Langton & Nicolas Peterson (Canberra: Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies Press, 1983), 116. 75 Rowse, 57. 76 Read, Charles Perkins: A Biography, 129; Kevin Gilbert, ‘The Pakistani appeal’, Alchuringa (December 1971), reprinted in Rose, ed. 62–63; Personal comment, Tim Rowse; Attwood, Rights for Aborigines, 342–43. 77 Queensland Aborigines and TSI Advancement Council Newsletter, 6; Roberta B Sykes, Black Majority (Melbourne: Hudson Publishing, 1989), 163. 78 The Age (14 April 1995); Robinson; An excellent archive of photographs of the Aboriginal Tent Embassy is maintained by one of its key members, Gary Foley, Gary Foley, The Koori History Website [Internet] (2004, accessed August 2004); available from . 79 Stewart Harris, This Our Land (Canberra: Australian National University Press, 1972), 97; Greg Cowan, Nomadic Resistance: Tent Embassies and Collapsible Architecture, Illegal Architecture and Protest (accessed June 2004), available from . 80 Scott Robinson, ‘The Aboriginal Embassy, 1972’ (MA, Australian National University, 1993), 54.

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81 Lake, 140; Jennett; ‘Monday Conference’, ABC TV (20 March 1972), in Attwood & Markus, eds., The Struggle for Aboriginal Rights: A Documentary History, 260. 82 Robinson, ‘The Aboriginal Embassy: An account of the protests of 1972’. 83 Gilbert, 30. 84 Foley, Late Night Live with Phillip Adams. 85 ‘Blacks to tell China’, Age (17 January 1974), in Attwood & Markus, eds, The Struggle for Aboriginal Rights: A Documentary History, 271; Read, Charles Perkins: A Biography, 177–79. 86 Hannah Middleton papers (ML 1296/93) File 2.2: National Aboriginal Liberation Front – Letter from NALF, Jim Berg to Paul Coe (16 June 1979). 87 Hannah Middleton papers (ML 1296/93) File 2.2: National Aboriginal Liberation Front – NALF, ‘Ten-point plan of priorities’ (undated), signed by James Berg, Minister for Information, NALF. 88 Jan Roberts, Massacres to Mining (Melbourne: Dove Communications, 1981), 153–54. 89 Stephen Zorn, ‘Aboriginal mining rights: A global perspective’, Anthropology Resource Centre Newsletter (December 1980): 7. Stephen Zorn was an American lawyer who arrived in mid-1978 to advise the NLC in their negotiations to stop the Ranger mine. Soon after starting to work with the North Queensland Land Council, he was fingered by the Townsville Bulletin as ‘an international agitator … He was also believed to be associated with the significant unrest at Bougainville copper mining deposits several years ago’, ‘Two banned by Weipa council’, Townsville Daily Bulletin (20 October 1978), 3. 90 Richard Howitt, ‘Beyond the geological imperative? A study of the social impact of the management strategies of the aluminium companies on Cape York peninsula 1955–1978’, Research Papers in Geography, University of Newcastle (1979), p. 1. 91 Jack Davis, ‘Yellow cake – Uranium’, Aboriginal and Islander Forum (August 1978). 92 Victorian Council of Churches, ‘Aboriginal Action Education Centre’ (5 September 1979). 93 Steve Hawke & Michael Gallagher, Noonkanbah: Whose Land, Whose Law (Fremantle, WA: Fremantle Arts Centre Press, 1989), 23, 208–19. 94 Hawke & Gallagher, 270, 290–93. 95 Hawke & Gallagher, 294–98. 96 Hawke & Gallagher, 308. 97 Hawke & Gallagher, 308; Kimberley Land Council, ‘KLC overseas’, Newsletter (March 1981), 24; Stephen Hagan, The N Word (Broome, WA: Magabala Books Aboriginal Corporation, 2005), 71. 98 McGuinness & Kruger; Gilbert, 108. 99 Read, Charles Perkins: A Biography, 167–70. 100 Sykes, Bonner & Turner, Black Power in Australia, 27. 101 Barrie Pittock, ‘Why the rush in Aboriginal affairs?’, Smoke Signals (June 1969), 16–17; David Bornstein, ‘An MP ashamed of his country – Address at the naturalization ceremony held at Brunswick Town Hall, Victoria, January 26, 1972’, Smoke Signals (1972): 24–25; Colin Tatz, Race Politics in Australia Aborigines, Politics and Law (Armidale, NSW: University of New England Publishing Unit, 1979), 104. 102 Foley, Late Night Live with Phillip Adams. 103 Ronald Niezen, The Origins of Indigenism: Human Rights and the Politics of

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Identity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), 210. 104 Jeremy Beckett, ‘The past in the present; the present in the past: Constructing a national Aboriginality’, in Past and Present: The Construction of Aboriginality, ed. Jeremy Beckett (Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press, 1988), 5, 193.

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Ribnga Kenneth Green, ‘Aborigines and international politics’, in Aborigines of the West: Their Past and their Present, ed. Catherine H Berndt & Ronald Murray Berndt (Nedlands, WA: UWA Press, 1980), 388–92. Papers presented by Rev. Cedric Jacob at the International NGO Conference on Indigenous Peoples and the Land. Palais des Nations, Geneva, Switzerland (15–18 September 1981). George Manuel & Michael Posluns, The Fourth World: An Indian Reality (New York: Free Press, 1974), xi. Manuel Castells, The Power of Identity, 3 vols, The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture, vol. II (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 1997), 6–12. Robert Paine, ‘Ethnodrama and the Fourth World: The Saami Action Group in Norway, 1979–81’, in Indigenous Peoples and the Nation-state: ‘Fourth World’ Politics in Canada, Australia, and Norway, ed. Noel Dyck (St John’s, NL: Institute of Social and Economic Research Memorial University of Newfoundland, 1985), 190–201. Herman C Ahrens, ‘Russell Means: Sign of unrest’, Black News Service (‘American Indian Movement Edition’, August 1976), 10–14. Frank S Stevens, ed., Racism: The Australian Experience; Colonialism, vol. 3 (Sydney: Australia and New Zealand Book Company, 1972), 10–15; ‘Declaration of Barbados’, IWGIA Document (No. 1) (30 January 1971), 1–8. Lars Persson, ‘We the people … must demand action’, Origin (18 December 1970), 4; Australian Council of Churches, ‘Justice for all Australians: Report of the World Council of Churches team visit to the Aborigines, June 15 to July 3, 1981’ (Sydney 1981), 5. Kenneth Coates, A Global History of Indigenous Peoples: Struggle and Survival (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), 248. Discrimination Sub-Commission on Racism, Apartheid and Decolonization, ‘Report of the International Non-governmental Organization Conference on Discrimination Against Indigenous Populations in the Americas’ (Geneva: 1977), 26. Margaret E Galey, ‘Indigenous peoples, international consciousness raising and the development of international law on human rights’, Revue des droits de l’homme 8, 1 (1975): 21–39; Peter Jull, ‘Indigenous internationalism: What should we do next?’, Indigenous Affairs, 1 (1999): 12–17. Manuel & Posluns. doCip File: WGIP 1982. Green; Aboriginal Treaty News (October 1983). Rowse notes that the issue of representation for indigenous Australians at the WCIP conference divided indigenous people and many resented the NAC’s dominance, pointing more widely to the difficulties of national representation. Tim Rowse, Obliged to be Difficult: Nugget Coombs’ Legacy in Indigenous Affairs (Cambridge; Melbourne; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 183; Commissioner for Community Relations, Community Relations News

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19 20

21 22

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(March/April 1981); Department of Aboriginal Affairs, Aboriginal Newsletter 80 (1 May 1981). Darren Hawkins, ‘Human rights norms and networks in authoritarian Chile’, in Restructuring World Politics: Transnational Social Movements, Networks, and Norms, Social Movements, Protest, and Contention, ed. Sanjeev Khagram, Kathryn Sikkink & James V Riker, Social Movements, Protest, and Contention (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2002), 48. Florence Passy, ‘Supranational political opportunities as a channel of globalization of political conflicts. The case of the rights of indigenous peoples’, in Social Movements in a Globalizing World, ed. Donatella Della Porta, Hanspeter Kriesi & Dieter Rucht (London: Macmillan, 1999), 149. Kathryn Sikkink & Jackie Smith, ‘Infrastructures for change: Transnational organizations, 1953–93’, in Restructuring World Politics: Transnational Social Movements, Networks, and Norms, ed. Sanjeev Khagram, Kathryn Sikkink & James V Riker, Social Movements, Protest, and Contention (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2002), 29; Daniel C Thomas, ‘Human rights in US foreign policy’, in Restructuring World Politics: Transnational Social Movements, Networks, and Norms, ed. Sanjeev Khagram, Kathryn Sikkink & James V Riker (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2002), 71. Galey; Patrick Thornberry, International Law and the Rights of Minorities (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), 375. There are two modes of human rights work in the UN, the treaty-based system and the charter based system. The former concerns the use of existing instruments and their supervision; the latter involves the political activity of reforming and creating laws. Sub-Commission on Racism, 19–20. Jose R Martinez-Cobo, Study of the Problem of Discrimination against Indigenous Populations (Geneva: United Nations, Economic and Social Council, Commission on Human Rights, Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities, 1975), E/CN.4/Sub.2/L.622. Emphasis in original. Sub-Commission on Racism, 31. The Final Report was published as a series of volumes from 1981 to 1984 and reissued as a comprehensive document in 1987. Jose R Martinez-Cobo, Study of the Problem of Discrimination against Indigenous Populations: Final Report (Geneva: United Nations, Economic and Social Council, Commission on Human Rights, Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities, 1987), E/CN.4/Sub.2/1986/7, para. 305. Judith Wright, We Call for a Treaty (Sydney: Collins/Fontana, 1985), 230. doCip File: WGIP 1984. National Aboriginal and Islander Legal Services, ‘Summary of National Aboriginal and Islander Legal Services response to Mr Clyde Holding’s address’. Langton, cited in Peter Read, ‘Doubts about the treaty: A re-examination of some of the opinions of the 1980s on a Treaty’, Treaty: Advancing Reconciliation Conference, Fremantle, WA (27 June 2002). Sarah Pritchard, ‘Working Group on Indigenous Populations: Mandate, standard-setting activities and future perspectives’, in Indigenous Peoples, the United Nations and Human Rights, ed. Sarah Pritchard (London; Sydney: Zed Books; Federation Press, 1998), 42. Margaret Reynolds, ‘Self-determination: Dispelling some of the public myths’,

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in Aboriginal Self-determination in Australia, ed. Christine Fletcher (Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press, 1994), 14. Pritchard, 64. Bill Barker, ‘Getting government to listen’, in Indigenous Human Rights, ed. Sam Garkawe, Loretta Kelly & Warwick Fisher (Sydney: Institute of Criminology, University of Sydney Faculty of Law, 2001), 222. doCip File: WGIP 1984. ‘Joint Statement by Australian Aboriginal Delegation’ (2 August 1984). International Labour Office, Indigenous Peoples, Living and Working Conditions of Aboriginal Populations in Independent Countries (Geneva: 1953), iii; Thornberry, 369–70; Thornberry, 370–71. However, even in the early 1980s there were those with hopes that it would still be ratified, particularly as Queensland had withdrawn its long-standing opposition in 1977 and the Hawke ALP government was then trying to muster support for its ‘national land rights’ proposal, which would have benefited from 107’s articles on land, Wright, 252. Manuela Tomei & Lee Swepston, A Guide to ILO Convention No. 169 on Indigenous and Tribal Peoples (Geneva: International Labour Office, 1995), 2; Lee Swepston, ‘The adoption of the Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention, 1989 (No. 169)’, Law and Anthropology 5 (1990): 221–35. Russel Lawrence Barsh, ‘United Nations Seminar on Indigenous Peoples and States’, American Journal of International Law 83, 3 (1989): 599–604. Swepston. International Labour Organization, Convention concerning Indigenous and Tribal Peoples in Independent Countries No. 169 (ILO, 1989, accessed July 2004), available from . Tomei & Swepston, 9. Swepston. doCip File: WGIP 1989. ‘Resolution of the Indigenous Peoples’ Preparatory Meeting – Geneva, Relating to the International Labour Organization’s Convention Concerning Indigenous and Tribal Peoples in Independent Countries, 1989’. Thornberry, 367. Tomei & Swepston, v. doCip File: WGIP 1983. doCip File: WGIP 1983. ‘Australia welcomes the establishment of the Working Group’ (2 August 1983). doCip File: WGIP 1983. ‘Australia: Ideas for the definition of indigenous populations from the international point of view’ (9 August 1983). doCip File: WGIP 1985. NAILSS, ‘Statement submitted by the National Aboriginal and Islander Legal Service’, to WGIP 1985. Pritchard, 45; doCip File: WGIP 1988. NAILSS, ‘Evolution of Standards: Statement to the WGIP 6th Session’. doCip File: WGIP 1990. Bill Barker, Acting Permanent Representative of Australia on Behalf of the Australian Delegation: ‘Item 4: Standard-setting activities – Evolution of standards concerning the rights of indigenous populations’. Russel Lawrence Barsh, ‘Indigenous peoples: An emerging object of international law’, American Journal of International Law 80, 2 (1986): 369–85; Thornberry, 374. Pritchard, 50.

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51 Mick Dodson, First Session of the IWG (20 November – 1 December 1995). 52 For a complete account, see Sarah Pritchard, ‘The United Nations and the making of a declaration on indigenous rights’, Indigenous Law Bulletin 3, 89 (1997): 4–9; Pritchard, ‘Working Group on Indigenous Populations: Mandate, standard-setting activities and future perspectives’; Sarah Pritchard, Setting International Standards: An Analysis of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and the First Six Sessions of the Commission on Human Rights Working Group (2001, accessed June 2005), available from http://homepage.mac.com/ les.malezer/les%20Malezieux%20folder/les%20Malezieux/index.html. See also the excellent updates prepared by doCip at . 53 Thornberry, 15; Erica-Irene A Daes, ‘Some considerations on the right of indigenous peoples to self-determination’, Transnational Law and Contemporary Problems 3, 1 (1993): 2–11. 54 Sub-Commission on Racism, 26. 55 Martinez-Cobo, Study of the Problem of Discrimination against Indigenous Populations: Final Report, para. 628. 56 Thornberry, 372. 57 Frederik Harhoff, ‘Constitutional and international legal aspects of Aboriginal rights’, Nordic Journal of International Law, 57 (1988): 289–94. 58 S James Anaya, ‘The influence of indigenous peoples on the development of international law’, in Indigenous Human Rights, ed. Sam Garkawe, Loretta Kelly & Warwick Fisher (Sydney: Institute of Criminology, University of Sydney Faculty of Law, 2001), 112. 59 Noel Dyck, ‘Representation and the ‘Fourth World’: A concluding statement’, in Indigenous Peoples and the Nation-state: ‘Fourth World’ Politics in Canada, Australia, and Norway, ed. Noel Dyck (St John’s, NL: Institute of Social and Economic Research Memorial University of Newfoundland, 1985), 237. 60 Menno Boldt, Surviving as Indians: The Challenge of Self-government (Toronto; Buffalo: University of Toronto Press, 1993), 108. 61 Jull. 62 Ronald Niezen, The Origins of Indigenism: Human Rights and the Politics of Identity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), 15, 9. 63 Pritchard, ‘Working Group on Indigenous Populations: Mandate, standardsetting activities and future perspectives’, 43–44. 64 Barsh, ‘Indigenous peoples: An emerging object of international law’. 65 Niezen, 224. 66 Paul Keal, European Conquest and the Rights of Indigenous Peoples: The Moral Backwardness of International Society, Cambridge Studies in International Relations; 92 (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 119–21. 67 Margaret Connolly (Retrieve Foundation), ‘Statement to 2nd Session of the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, Agenda Item: Youth and Health’ (20 May 2003). 68 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner, Social Justice Report 2002, Chapter 2, available at ; Daes. 69 Deborah Bird Rose, Reports from a Wild Country: Ethics for Decolonisation (Sydney: UNSW Press, 2004). 70 Erica-Irene A Daes, Introduction: Article 3 of the Draft United Nations Declaration

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on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples: Obstacles and Consensus (2002, accessed June 2005), available from . Keal, 154. Keal, 123. On indigenous peoples and the ICCPR, see Sarah Pritchard, ‘The International Convenant on Civil and Political Rights and indigenous peoples’, in Indigenous Peoples, the United Nations and Human Rights, ed. Sarah Pritchard (London; Sydney: Zed Books; Federation Press, 1998); on indigenous peoples and CERD, Michael O’Flaherty, ‘Substantive provisions of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination’, in Indigenous Peoples, the United Nations and Human Rights, ed. Sarah Pritchard (London; Sydney: Zed Books; Federation Press, 1998). Anaya, 112–13. Mick Dodson, ‘Linking international standards with contemporary concerns of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples’, in Indigenous Peoples, the United Nations and Human Rights, ed. Sarah Pritchard (London; Sydney: Zed Books; Federation Press, 1998), 21. UN Permanent Forum Inter-Agency Support Group, ‘Joint Paper on Data Collection and Disaggregation by Ethnicity’ (7 March 2003), 3. Barsh, ‘Indigenous peoples: An emerging object of international law’. Passy. Harriet Ketley, ‘Exclusion by definition: Access to international tribunals for the enforcement of the collective right of indigenous peoples’, International Journal on Minority and Group Rights 8 (2001): 331–68. John Gerard Ruggie, ‘International responses to technology: Concepts and trends’, International Organization 29, 3 (1975): 557–83. Peter M Haas, ‘Introduction: Epistemic communities and international policy coordination’, International Organization 46, 1 (1992): 1–35. Terry Fenge & David Leonard Downie, Northern Lights against POPs: Combatting Toxic Threats in the Arctic (Montreal: Published for the Inuit Circumpolar Conference Canada by McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2003). See the POPS site, .

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John Chesterman & Brian Galligan, Citizens without Rights: Aborigines and Australian Citizenship (Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 1997); Alastair Davidson, From Subject to Citizen: Australian Citizenship in the Twentieth Century (Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 1997). I have described these attempts at reconstruction in detail elsewhere; see Ravi de Costa, ‘New relationships, old certainties: Australia’s reconciliation and the treaty-process in British Columbia’ (PhD, Swinburne University of Technology, 2002), 23–63. Bonner was the first indigenous member of the federal parliament, a Coalition Senator appointed in 1971 to the Senate by the Queensland Government to fill a casual vacancy. He was the first of two indigenous representatives in over 100 years of the institution. Australia. Senate Standing Committee on Constitutional and Legal Affairs, Two Hundred Years Later: Report by the Senate Standing Committee on Constitutional

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and Legal Affairs on the Feasibility of a Compact or ‘Makarrata’ between the Commonwealth and Aboriginal People (Canberra: AGPS, 1983), 12. Australia. Senate Standing Committee on Constitutional and Legal Affairs, 7–12. Australia. Senate Standing Committee on Constitutional and Legal Affairs, 151–56. Frank Brennan, Sharing the Country (Melbourne: Penguin, 1994), 62–63. Ronald T Libby, Hawke’s Law: The Politics of Mining and Aboriginal Land Rights in Australia (Nedlands, WA: University of Western Australia Press, 1989), 151. In parliament, Minister for Aboriginal Affairs Clyde Holding claimed that dissatisfaction among the Land Councils had prevented the passage of any legislation. Brennan, 72. ‘Foundations for the future’, Ministerial Statement, Commonwealth Parliamentary Debates House of Representatives (10 December 1987), 3152. Cited in Brennan, 82. Central and Northern Land Councils, ‘The Barunga Statement’ (12 June 1988), reproduced in RE Tickner, Taking a Stand: Land Rights to Reconciliation (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2001), 40–41. Brennan, 82–83. Brennan, 83. Liberal Party of Australia, ‘Future directions’ (1988), cited in Judith Brett, ‘The treaty process and the limits of Australian liberalism’, in Seminar Series (AIATSIS 2001). K Baker, ed., A Treaty with the Aborigines? (Canberra: Institute for Public Affairs, 1988). Tickner, 26. Catholic Leader (24 January 1988), 10. Hawke, Commonwealth Parliamentary Debates, House of Representatives (23 August 1988), 137. Brennan, 102. Coalition spokesman on Aboriginal Affairs, Senator Chris Puplick in Commonwealth Parliamentary Debates, Senate (17 October 1989), 1972. Lorna Lippmann, Generations of Resistance: The Aboriginal Struggle for Justice (Melbourne: Longman Cheshire, 1981), 207. Tim Rowse, Obliged to be Difficult: Nugget Coombs’ Legacy in Indigenous Affairs (Cambridge; Melbourne; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 184. Gary Foley cited in Cameron Forbes, ‘Black hole of a campaign’, Age (23 March 1990), 11. Brennan, 80. de Costa. A theme pursued in Ravi de Costa, ‘History, democracy and treaty-making in British Columbia’, in Alexandra Harmon, ed., The Power of Promises: Treaties with Indigenous Peoples in the Pacific Northwest and elsewhere (Seattle: University of Washington Press, forthcoming). Hannah Middleton papers (ML 1296/93) File 2.3: NAILM – Letter to Firemen and Deckhands’ Union, Joe McGinness, National Aboriginal and Islanders Liberation Movement (20 March 1979). Tom Keneally, ‘Black Sydney’, National Times (3–8 April 1978): 5–8. ‘Blacks blame miners’, Courier-Mail (14 August 1982). Graeme Davison, ‘The imaginary grandstand’, Meanjin (September 2002).

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32 Message Stick (February 1982), in Michael Rose, ed., For the Record: 160 Years of Aboriginal Print Journalism (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1996), 120–21. 33 Hannah Middleton papers. File 23.9: Commonwealth Games: People for Land Rights and Justice, ‘The whole world’s watching: Aboriginals mobilise against the Games’ (1982). 34 ‘Historic protests at Musgrave Park’, Black Nation: A National Black Newspaper (October 1982): 2–3. 35 Shaun Phillips, ‘Games to face black protest’, Herald-Sun (14 May 2005). 36 Sydney Morning Herald (8 September 1988). 37 M Holliday, ‘Simplistic folly’, Telegraph (24 April 1987). 38 ‘Mansell flies off to meet the Libyan leader, PLO-style’, Advertiser (15 June 1988). 39 ‘Mansell to embarrass PM at Vanuatu talks’, Sydney Morning Herald (27 July 1990). 40 A Bradley, ‘Go away, forum tells Mansell’, Sydney Morning Herald (31 July 1990). 41 AAP, ‘Two enter Australian with Black Passports’, Courier-Mail (18 August 1990). 42 Suzanne Pekol, ‘Cancel Mansell passport call’, Courier-Mail (11 April 1988). 43 Mercury (16 January 1991). 44 Zac Donovan, ‘Aborigines want own Games team’, Advertiser (30 July 1991). 45 Gary Foley, Late Night Live with Phillip Adams (ABC Radio National), Broadcast 28 August. 46 Kathleen Weekley, ‘Introduction’, in Globalization and Citizenship in the AsiaPacific, ed. Alastair Davidson & Kathleen Weekley (London: Macmillan, 1999), 6. 47 Chesterman & Galligan, 195–98. 48 Edward Gough Whitlam, The Whitlam Government, 1972–1975 (Melbourne: Viking, 1985), 478–79. 49 Judith Wright, We Call for a Treaty (Sydney: Collins/Fontana, 1985), 230. 50 Sam Watson, ‘Transcript of interview, (Interviewer: Dr Ravi de Costa)’, (Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies Unit, University of Queensland: 2003). 51 Bill Barker, ‘Getting government to listen’, in Indigenous Human Rights, ed. Sam Garkawe, Loretta Kelly & Warwick Fisher (Sydney: Institute of Criminology, University of Sydney Faculty of Law, 2001), 217. 52 Judith Bessant, ‘Australia’s mandatory sentencing laws, ethnicity and human rights’, International Journal on Minority and Group Rights 8, 4 (2001): 369–84. 53 Elizabeth Evatt, ‘Realising human rights: Utilising UN mechanisms’, in Indigenous Human Rights, ed. Sam Garkawe, Loretta Kelly & Warwick Fisher (Sydney: Institute of Criminology, University of Sydney Faculty of Law, 2001), 201. 54 Human Rights and Equal Opportunities Commission, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner, ‘Appendix 1, Submission to the Expert Seminar on Indigenous Peoples and the Administration of Justice’ (12–14 November 2003), available at . 55 ‘Report by Mr. Maurice Glélé-Ahanhanzo, Special Rapporteur on Contemporary Forms of Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance, submitted pursuant to Commission on Human Rights

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56 57 58 59 60

61

62 63 64 65 66 67

68

69 70 71

72

73 74 75

76 77

211

Resolution 2001/5, Addendum, Mission to Australia, Summary’. (26 February 2002), paras, 76–80. Watson. Evatt, 201. Spencer Zifcak, Mr Ruddock Goes to Geneva, Briefings (Sydney: UNSW Press, 2003), 20. David Marr, ‘Geneva v Canberra’, Sydney Morning Herald (28 March 2005). ‘Sixteenth Report: Consistency of the Native Title Amendment Act 1998 with Australia’s International Obligations under the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD)’ (June 2000), available at Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, Fourteenth periodic reports of States parties due in 2002, Addendum Australia [28 November 2003], paras. 122–23. Zifcak, 15. Zifcak, 17–18. Marr, ‘Geneva v Canberra’. Marr, ‘Geneva v Canberra’. Zifcak, 59. Sanjeev Khagram, Kathryn Sikkink & James V Riker, Restructuring World Politics: Transnational Social Movements, Networks, and Norms, Social Movements, Protest, and Contention, vol. 14 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2002); Zifcak, 40–41. ‘Improving the effectiveness of United Nations committees’, Australian Minister for Foreign Affairs, Alexander Downer, Attorney-General, The Hon Daryl Williams AM QC MP, Minister for Immigration and Multicultural Affairs, The Hon Philip Ruddock MP (29 August 2000), available at . Zifcak, 25–31. Zifcak, 64–65. Mick Dodson, ‘Linking international standards with contemporary concerns of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples’, in Indigenous Peoples, the United Nations and Human Rights, ed. Sarah Pritchard (London; Sydney: Zed Books; Federation Press, 1998), 22, 18. See for example, ‘Standard-setting Activities: Evolution of Standards concerning the Rights of Indigenous Populations, Information Received from Governments, Addendum (Australia and China)’ (9 July 1990). Marcus Priest, ‘Aborigines take their fight to UN Forum source’, Courier Mail (3 August 1996). ‘Statement by the Indigenous Caucus’, Inter-sessional Working Group on the Draft Declaration, 8th session, Geneva (10 December 2002). ‘Statement by the International Indian Treaty Council, the Indigenous World, Association and the International Organization of Indigenous Resource, Development, Non-governmental Organizations in Consultative, Status to the United Nations Economic and Social Council’, Oral statement presented in the plenary session (29 November 2004). Kristyn Wyman & Lisa Matthews, ‘As first international decade closes, indigenous determination strengthens’, Cultural Survival Quarterly (15 March 2005). Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner, Social

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78 79 80 81

82 83

84

85 86

87

88 89 90 91

92 93 94 95 96 97

98 99

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Justice Report 2002, Chapter 2, available at . Watson. Noel Pearson, ‘Mabo: Towards respecting equality and difference’, in Voices from the Land (Sydney: Australian Broadcasting Corporation, 1994), 98. Brennan, 119–27. doCip File: WGIP 1989. Shane Houston, NAIHO: ‘Presentation by the NAIHO, 7th Session of the WGIP, Geneva, 1989’. The photocopy of Houston’s speech in doCip’s file was covered in the author’s handwritten notes wondering what the effect of the comments would be. HREOC, International Review of Indigenous Issues in 2000, Conclusion. Garth Nettheim, International Commission of Jurists. Australian Section, and University of New South Wales. Faculty of Law, Aborigines Human Rights and the Law (Sydney: Australia and New Zealand Book Co., 1974), 177. Gatjil Djerrkura, Chairman, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission, ‘Review of developments’, Working Group on Indigenous Populations, 17th Session (July 1999). Dodson, 19. Sally Weaver, ‘Political representivity and indigenous minorities in Canada and Australia’, in Indigenous Peoples and the Nation-state: ‘Fourth World’ Politics in Canada, Australia, and Norway, ed. Noel Dyck (St John’s, NL: Institute of Social and Economic Research Memorial University of Newfoundland, 1985), 113–16. National Aboriginal Community-Controlled Health Organisation, ‘Statements by delegations from Australia’, Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, Third Session (May 2004). Marr, ‘Geneva v Canberra’. ATSIC Northern Territory Central Zone Commissioner Alison Anderson, ‘Federal government stooge misleads UN’ (14 May 2004). Patricia Karvelas, ‘New black advisory body may breach race convention’, The Australian (23 August 2004). National Children’s and Youth Law Centre & Defence for Children International (Australia), The Non-Government Report on the Implementation of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child in Australia (May 2005, accessed July 2005), available from . Fergus Shiel, ‘Yorta Yorta to take title case to UN’, Age (13 September 2003). Marr, ‘Geneva v Canberra’. UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, ‘Nomination UNPFII 2005–2007’, available at . Misha Schubert, Stuart Rintoul & Samantha Maiden, ‘Few mourn last rites of failed body’, The Australian (16 April 2004). Michael Mansell, ‘The decline of a movement’ (13 August 2003). Tim Rowse, The Politics of Being Practical: Howard and his Quiet Revolution in Indigenous Affairs (2005, accessed July 2005); available from . Rowse, The Politics of Being Practical: Howard and his Quiet Revolution in Indigenous Affairs. Rowse, The Politics of Being Practical: Howard and his Quiet Revolution in

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Indigenous Affairs. 100 Gatjil Djerrkura, ‘Review of developments’, Working Group on Indigenous Populations, 16th session (27–31 July 1998); Zifcak. 101 Marilyn Lake, Faith: Faith Bandler, Gentle Activist (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2002), 208. 102 Fred Chaney, Personal Communication (20 December 2005).

Epilogue 1

Reynolds rethinks assimilation and the Stolen Generations with a transnational account of racial science and its effects on Australian identity, in Henry Reynolds, Nowhere People: How International Race Thinking Shaped Australia’s Identity (Melbourne: Viking, 2005); Balint’s book describes the conflict between Indonesian fishermen and the state in Australian ‘territorial waters’, explaining the long history of the industry, Ruth Balint, Troubled Waters: Borders, Boundaries and Possession in the Timor Sea (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2005); the volume edited by Shnukel, Ramsay and Nagata also examines the transnational flows from Asia to Australia through the islands of the Torres Strait, Anna Shnukel, Guy Ramsay & Yuriko Nagata, eds, Navigating Boundaries: The Asian Diaspora in Torres Strait (Canberra: Pandanus Books, 2004). 2 Ronald Niezen, The Origins of Indigenism: Human Rights and the Politics of Identity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), 26–27. 3 Micheline Ishay, The History of Human Rights: From Ancient Times to the Globalization Era (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004), 198. 4 Kenneth Coates, A Global History of Indigenous Peoples: Struggle and Survival (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), 269. 5 Michael Adas, Machines as the Measure of Men: Science, Technology, and Ideologies of Western Dominance, Cornell Studies in Comparative History (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989), 15. 6 Rosemary Neill, ‘Insularity fuels a toxic lifestyle’, The Australian (18 August 2005). 7 Transcript of the Prime Minister, The Hon. John Howard MP Address at the National Reconciliation Planning Workshop, Old Parliament House, Canberra (30 May 2005), available at . 8 Bain Attwood, Rights for Aborigines (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2003), 349. 9 Spencer Zifcak, Mr Ruddock Goes to Geneva, Briefings (Sydney: UNSW Press, 2003). 10 RBJ Walker, Inside/Outside: International Relations as Political Theory, Cambridge Studies in International Relations; 24 (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993); Andrew Linklater, The Transformation of Political Community: Ethical Foundations of the Post-Westphalian Era (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1998). 11 Marcia Langton, ‘“Whitefella jump up”: Correspondence’, Quarterly Essay, 12 (2003).

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INDEX

ABJAB 101 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission 16, 131, 150–51, 153, 155, 162, 167, 168–69, 170–71 Aboriginal Legal Service 108, 115, 149, 158 Aboriginal Medical Service 10, 108 Aboriginal Progressive Association 47, 72, 95 Aboriginal Provisional Government 156–7, 168 Aboriginal Tent Embassy ix, 47, 90, 92, 110–13, 119, 123, 157 Aboriginal Treaty Committee 117, 136, 148 Aboriginal Welfare Board (NSW) 69 Aboriginality 9, 12, 53, 58, 96, 110, 112–20, 156, 168, 178 Aborigines and Islanders see also Aborigines and Islanders, activism; indigenous peoples Aboriginal sector 119, 130, 154, 172 and non-indigenous peoples 7–9, 10–11, 13, 14, 39–61, 92–94, 117–20, 148–54, 158, 160, 175, 178 art 18, 32, 174 authenticity 169 autonomy 10, 20, 33–34, 36, 51, 88, 105, 111–12, 119, 142–43, 163, 164, 172

awareness of other indigenous peoples 47, 74, 77, 99–100, 101–02, 107, 110–11, 112, 122, 126, 156, 177, 189 n. 33 community organisations 94–95, 100–01, 102, 106–09 cosmology 17–21 identity see Aboriginality diplomacy 5, 14, 21–27 education viii, 15, 51, 72, 78, 92, 104, 106–07, 108, 139, 163 mobility 5, 12, 14, 18–19, 21–27, 99–102 Rainbow Serpent 17–18 traditional economies 28–30 Aborigines and Islanders, activism see also Aborigines and Islanders, organisations anthropology, role of 94 external influences on 33, 55–56, 102–04 franchise, relation of 148, 190 n. 39 impact of communications technology 12, 97–98, 106–07, 175, 177 international media attention, importance of 6–7, 58, 89, 112–14, 155 Islander political symbolism 107–08 leaders and intellectuals, need for

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91, 103, 131 literacy, effects of 50, 97–98, 106 passports, use of 156 petitions, use of 46–9, 67, 79, 109–10, 123, 189 n. 38 problems of representation 9, 48, 51, 113–14, 130–31, 152, 168–70 protests at sporting venues, use of 154–55 publications 106–07, 113–14 strikes, use of 52, 54–55, 60, 88 urbanisation, effect of 52, 77, 98–99, 106 use of violence 3, 103, 117–19 Aborigines and Islanders, land claims ix, 6, 7, 13, 46–47, 49, 51, 55, 72, 73, 109–12, 121, 143, 149–50 national land rights legislation 16, 147, 149–50 native title 7, 44, 158, 165–66, 171 reserves and reservations ix, 43–47, 49, 50, 52, 54, 60, 77, 82–83, 85, 86, 89, 94, 97, 98–100, 106, 125, 194 n.56 rights 51, 101, 109–10, 132, 136, 139, 153, 177 rites of entry into 23–25 spiritual significance of 18–19, 20, 30, 112, 115, 123, 145, 176 Aborigines Protection Society 41–43, 65, 68, 72, 79–80, 86 Abschol 96 Adas, Michael 176–77 African–Americans 15, 51, 77, 98, 102–03, 105, 163 Albrecht, FW 75 American Indian Movement 110, 122 American Indians 69, 85, 94, 99–100, 110–11, 124, 125 Anaya, S James 139, 143 Andrews, Shirley 78, 85 animism 34 Arnhem Land, NT 16, 18, 28, 31–35, 112 Arrernte 20, 24, 27 Arthur, Governor George 40 assimilation 80–83 Association for the Protection of Native Races 54 Attwood, Bain 9, 10, 12, 44–45, 49, 90,

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93, 95, 110, 178 Atwell, Winifred 77 Australia attitudes to international law on indigenous rights 135–36, 160–65, 169–71, 193 n. 29 Constitutional reform 40, 48, 78–79, 87, 91, 92–93, 148–51 Department of Aboriginal Affairs 118 Department of External/Foreign Affairs 69, 86–87, 99, 116 Department of Immigration, Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs 169, 178 international reputation 6–7, 40, 72–73, 85–88, 154 nationalism ix, 6–8, 16, 36, 40, 50, 57, 83, 147, 152–54, 165–67, 169–70, 175, 177 review of UN human rights processes 160–62 Australian Aboriginal Fellowship 78, 89, 93, 94 Australian Aborigines Progressive Association 47, 55–56, 72 Australian Aborigines’ League 47, 54, 72, 95 Australian Council of Trade Unions 78 Australian Imperial Force 73, 75 Australian Labor Party 84, 149–50 Australian Railways Union 54 Australian Workers’ Union 55, 78, 136 B’nai Brith 116–17 Backhouse, James 42 Banda Islands, Indonesia 35 Bandler, Faith 78, 88, 95, 112 Baraka, Imamu 100 Barker, Bill 132 Barsh, Russel 136, 144, 157 Barunga Statement 150 Barwick, Diane 46 Baume, Peter 126 Beckett, Jeremy 90 Belafonte, Harry 77 Belgium 69, 87 Bellear, Sol 100 Bennett, Mary 58, 71 Berg, Jim 113

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Berlin Conference 64 Berndt, Catherine 19 Berndt, Ronald 19, 32, 35 Bieundurry, Jimmy 116 Bin Bin, Dooley 54 Binns, RA 30 Birch, Reg 116, 126 Birindjauwi 35 Black Panther party of Australia 104 Black Power 100–05 Blackburn, Doris 80 Blainey, Geoffrey 33 Boldt, Menno 139 Bond, Anthony 131 Bonner, Neville 95, 148 Bornstein, David 117 Boughton, Bob 51, 190 n. 47 Brady, Don 45, 100 Brennan, Frank 150, 151, 152, 166 Brindle, Ken 95 Briscoe, Gordon 104, 107 Britain 1, 12, 40, 44, 47–48, 56, 66, 69, 72–73, 85, 86 British Commonwealth League 57, 60 Brown, Alan 131 Brown, Roosevelt 101–02 Buchanan, Cheryl 106 Buckley, William 31 Burke, Brian 150 Burke, Robert O’Hara 23, 25 Burney, Linda 168 Burnum Burnum 1, 95, 155 see also Penrith, Harry Burraga, King 47 Burton, Mona 45 Buxton, TH 42 Cadman, Alan 156 Cairns Aborigines and Torres Strait Islander Advancement League 56 Canada ix, 12, 67, 112, 114, 122, 125, 126, 131, 165–66 Calder decision and approach to aboriginal title 166 Indian Claims Commission 112 National Indian Brotherhood 125 Carmichael, Stokely 103 Celebes Islands see Sulawesi, Indonesia Central Land Council 131

Chaney, Fred 172 Chesterman, John 81, 86, 99, 158 Chilly, Sue 105 China 32, 51, 87, 101, 113, 164 Chitepo, Herbert 102 Christianity 4, 5, 7, 50, 60, 88–89, 124, 175 as political resource 45, 192 n. 82 evangelism 40–41 global networks 41–42, 44–45, 188 n. 20 missionaries 41–45 civil rights 6, 12, 15, 43, 56, 77, 85, 87, 88–89, 93–94, 103 Clark, Geoff 131, 156 Clark, Jeremy 168 Clark, William 25 Clarke, Philip 32 Coe, Paul 1, 98, 112, 119, 131, 149 Colbee 23–24 Colbung, Ken 131 Cold War 88, 89 Collier, John 94 Colonialism and Mining Research Action 115 colonisation 5, 7, 10–11, 14, 17, 39–40, 44, 60, 69, 123, 141, 165, 174–75 Coloured Progressive Association 55 Committee for the Defence of Native Rights 54 communism 50–56 see also labour movement anti-communism 167 Communist International (Comintern) 50, 190 n. 47 Communist Party of Australia 50–51, 53, 190 n. 50 indigenous worldviews, relation to 52 united and popular fronts 53 Conciliation and Arbitration Commission 99 Congo Free State 64, 85 Conway, Eric 102 Cook, Phillipa 102 Coombs, HC (Nugget) 97, 117 Cooper, William 47–49, 72, 130 Cooray, Tony 104 Corbett, Helen (Ulli) 168 Council for Aboriginal Affairs 97

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Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation 152–53 Council for Aboriginal Rights 78, 80, 99 Council of Australian Governments 164 Court, Charles 116 Craigie, Billy 98, 104 Crawshaw, Josie 156 Cruse, Ossie 131 cultural survival 125 Cumeragunja reserve 47, 54 Cunnamulla, Queensland 75 Curthoys, Ann 89 Daes, Erica-Irene 138, 142 Daniels, Davis 99 Davey, Stan 99 Davis, Jack 100, 114 Davison, Graeme 154 Dawes, William 42 Day of Mourning 58, 72, 110 Dayak peoples (Borneo) 74 decolonisation 12, 15, 61, 82, 85, 86–87, 92, 102, 110, 115, 116, 127, 175 Democratic Rights Council 78 Deskaheh 67 Dexter, Barrie 118 Dixon, Chicka 98, 101, 104 Djaladjari 35 Djerkurra, Gatjil 172 Dodson, Mick v, 131, 137, 142–43, 160, 162, 167, 171 Dodson, Pat 45, 131 Douglass, Frederick 98 Downer, Alexander 161 Du Bois, WEB 98, 102 Duguid, Charles 78, 80, 83 Duncan, Tod 77 Duren, Jane 47 Dyck, Noel 139 Elkin, AP 82–83 Engel, Frank 94 Evatt, Clive 82 Evatt, Elizabeth 160 Evatt, Herbert Vere (Doc) 69 Eyre, Edward 21, 184 n. 30 Favenc, Ernest 32

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Federal Council for the Advancement of Aborigines (and Torres Strait Islanders) 56, 58, 80–81, 83–85, 93–96, 99, 102, 107 feminism 11, 57–59 Ferguson, Bill 72, 110 First World War 55, 57, 64–65, 69, 75 Flannery, Tim 25, 38 Flinders Island, Tasmania v, 46 Flinders, Matthews 35 Flinders Ranges, SA 31 Fogarty, Lionel 106 Foley, Gary 97, 98, 101, 102–03, 104, 109, 111, 113–14, 138, 152, 156, 157 Forde, Frank 75 Forrest, Alexander 25 Foundation for Aboriginal and Islander Research Action 168–69 Fourth World 122–23, 139 France 66, 87, 162 Fraser, Malcolm 116–17, 126, 148, 155, 158, 172–73 Freedom Rides 89, 171 Front de libération nationale kanak socialiste 156 Gadari 35 Gaddafi, Muammar ix, 156 Gaffney, Ellie 131 Gale, Fay 77 Garvey, Marcus 55 George V, King 47 George VI, King 47 Germany 63, 67, 72–73 Gibbon, Edward 63 Gibbs, Pearl 58, 71, 72, 78, 94 Gilbert, Kevin 98, 99, 106, 108–09, 110, 118, 152, 171 Gillen, Frank 24 Glenelg, Lord 44 globalisation 2, 11, 13, 33, 60, 163, 172 Goldsworthy, David 86 Goodall, Heather 49, 52–53, 54, 58, 73 Green, Garry 131 Green, Ribnga (Kenneth) 103, 122, 126 Grey, Sir George 44 Groves, Bert 93, 95 Guatemala 134 Guiterman, Rosine 76 Guivarra, Frank 131

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Gurindji 88, 109, 123 Haas, Peter 146 Haebich, Anna 83 Hagan, Jim 116–17, 131 Hagenauer, Friedrich 46 Hailey, Lord 69 Hall, Catherine 40 Hall, Robert 74 Halls Creek, WA 122 Harhoff, Frederik 139 Harris, Sir John 72 Harris, Stewart 111 Hasluck, Paul 82 Havnen, Olga 168 Hawke, Bob 150–51, 152, 153, 155, 156 Hawke, Stephen 115–17 Head, Lyndsay 45 Hiatt, Les 17–19 Higgins, Esmonde 51 higher authorities 3–4, 7, 9, 19, 40, 45, 60–61, 88, 162, 174 Ho, Ch’eng 32 Hobson, JA 63–64 Hollows, Fred 10, 108 Holt, Harold 93, 158 Horner, Jack 76, 83, 99 Horner, Jean 76 House of Commons Select Committee (1837) 42–43, 44 Houston, Shane 131, 167, 212 n. 81 Howard, John 8, 150–51, 160–62, 169, 172, 177 Huggins, Jackie 58 Hughes, William (Billy) 67 human rights 4, 5, 62–71, 81, 85, 89 earliest ideas of 15, 62–65 relation to indigenous rights 12, 71–72, 121, 125, 126–29, 141–43, 145, 176 UN, Charter and Treaty system 11, 59, 66, 68–71, 79, 117, 145, 178, 205 n. 20 Human Rights and Equal Opportunities Commission 143, 167, 168 human rights, instruments Berlin Conference, General Act 64 Congress of Vienna, Final Act 64 Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Racial Discrimination

84–85, 158, 160–61, 170–71 Convention on the Rights of the Child 144, 159, 170–71 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights 84, 85, 127, 143, 160 International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights 84, 127 Universal Declaration of Human Rights 55, 78–79, 99, 127 humanitarianism 3, 5, 14, 40–44, 49, 51, 60, 62, 71, 72, 136, 175 see also Christianity, evangelism Hume, Hamilton 24 India 47, 69 Indian Law Resource Center 125, 135 Indians, observations of 99–100 Indigena 125 indigeneity 6, 13, 123, 141, 142, 146 see also Aboriginality indigenous knowledge 13, 141 Indigenous Land Corporation 169 indigenous peoples and culture 122–23, 128, 169 as ecological 133, 143, 176–77 definitions of 12–13, 127–28, 129, 133, 135, 137, 138, 140–43, 176 global movement 147, 176 hunger strikes 123, 163 indigenous peoples, activism epistemic communities 146 impact of communications technology 12, 97–98, 101 political differences amongst 134, 204 n. 15 pressure on UN 121, 132–34 relations to NGOs 125, 132–33, 146, 177 indigenous peoples, international declarations and instruments B’okob Declaration on Human Rights 145 Declaration of Barbados for the Liberation of the Indians 124 Draft Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples 135–43, 162–65, 169 Iquitos Declaration between

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Indigenous Peoples and Environmentalists 145 Kari-Oca Declaration, on Territory, Environment and Development 145 Kimberley Declaration on Sustainable Development 145 Mataatua Declaration on the Cultural and Intellectual Property Rights of Indigenous Peoples 145 International Indian Treaty Council 125, 135 International Labor Defence 54 International Labour Organization 15, 67, 70–71, 83–84, 88, 93, 129, 132–34 ILO Convention 107 (1957) 70–71, 83–84, 93, 129, 132, 206 n. 33 ILO Convention 169 (1989) 133–34 International Women’s Suffrage Alliance 57 International Work Group on Indigenous Affairs 124–25 Inuit Circumpolar Conference 135 Iraq 66, 142, 157 Iroquois, Six Nations of the 40, 67 Isaacs, Robert 102 Islam (Muslims) 34, 36 Italy 66 Jackey Jackey 25 Jackson, Reverend Jesse 100, 105 Jamaduda 35 Japan 67, 132 Jeanneret, Dr 46 Jeffrey, Norm 51 Jennett, Christine 105, 112 Jonas, Bill 143, 164–65, 170, 176 Jones, Le Roi 100 Jull, Peter 140 Kartinyeri, Doreen 73 Karuwa (Little Vanderlin) Island, NT 33 Keal, Paul 143 Keating, Paul 151, 160, 162 Keen, Ian 20, 28 Keneally, Tom 154 Kennedy, Edmund 25 Kenya 95, 99 Kenyatta, Jomo 102

235

Khagram, Sanjeev 4 Khruschev, Nikita 87 Kimberley Land Council 16, 168 Kimberley Ranges, WA 18, 20, 29, 30, 115–16, 145 King, John 23 King, Martin Luther 89, 98, 103 King, Thomas 77 Kipling, Rudyard 62–63 Kruger, Patsy 100 Kulin 46 Kunwinyku 18 labour movement 50–56, 88 FCAATSI, involvement in 56, 80–81, 88–89 relationships with indigenous people 53 role in indigenous activism 53–54 strike actions 54 Lake Eyre, SA 28–30 Lake, Marilyn 57, 172 Langton, Marcia 11, 130, 178 Latin America 12, 131 Laverton, WA 78 League of Nations 15, 62, 64, 65–69, 71, 72–73 Commission on Mandates 65, 66, 68 Covenant of, (1919) 65 mandates 64–66, 72 minorities 66–67 origins 63–65 legislation 48, 85, 93, 130, 147, 148–49, 151, 155, 158–60, 165–66, 171, 175 Racial Discrimination Act 85, 158, 166 Native Title Act 153, 160 Northern Territory Ordinance Act 78 protection regimes 44, 51–52, 57–58, 81–82, 148 Leon, Charles 95 Levi-Strauss, Claude 21 Libby, Ronald 150 Libya 156 Liddle, Bob 113 Linklater, Andrew 178 Little, Lorna 102 Lo Liyong, Taban 102 Lourandos, Harry 22

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Lowe, Delia 131 Luxemburg, Rosa 63 Lyons, Joseph 48 Mabo decision 131, 158, 165–66 Macassans 14, 17, 31–37 Macintyre, Stuart 50, 51, 52, 53 Macknight, CC 32, 33, 35, 36 Macpherson, Shirley 169 makarrata 16, 147 Malcolm X 98 Malezer, Les 168–69 Mallard, Margarete 131 Mancktelow, Barney 168 Mandela, Nelson 157 Mansell, Michael ix, 131, 156–57, 171 Manuel, George 101, 122–23, 125–26, 139 Maori 45, 47, 73, 77, 101, 107, 156 Maralinga Tjaruta 130 Maralinga, SA 78, 85 Margalit, Avishai 4 Markus, Andrew 53–54, 73, 90 Marr, David 161, 168, 171 Martin, Allan 74 Martin, David 87 Martinez-Cobo, Jose 127–28, 132, 135, 138, 141 mass media 12, 97, 106, 114 Mathison, Hans 126 Maynard, Fred 55 Maynard, John 55 Maza, Bob 95–96, 100, 109 Mazrui, Ali 105 Mboya, Tom 99 McBryde, Isobel 30 McCarthy, FD 28–31 McDougall, Gaye 161 McGinness, Joe 56, 74, 78, 154, 157, 171 McGuinness, Bruce 96, 100, 103, 113, 117, 119, 157 McIlraith, Irene 76, 78 McIntosh, Ian 35 McKenna, Clancy 54 McKenzie, Mark 168 McLeod, Bobby 118 McLeod, Don 54 McNickle, Darcy 94 Meggitt, Mervyn 19 Melanesia 30, 32

Menzies, Robert 87 Meredith, James 103 Métis 94 Miles, Bruce 1 mining 36, 54, 85, 107, 114–17, 148, 150–51 Mitchell, Major Thomas 25 Moira 46 Moore Creek, NSW 30 Moore River, WA 58 Moral Rearmament Movement 76 Morphy, Howard 109–10 Mulvaney, John 24, 27, 29, 32, 37 Munro, Lyall 126 Murray River, Australia 26–27, 73 Murris 75, 91, 158 Myers, Fred 20 N’krumah, Kwame 102 National Aboriginal and Islander Day of Observance Committee 101 National Aboriginal and Islander Health Organisation 131 National Aboriginal and Legal Services Secretariat 130, 131, 135, 136, 158, 168 National Aboriginal Conference 107, 116, 122, 126, 128, 130, 148 National Council of Aboriginal Organisations 130, 168 National Federation of Land Councils 117, 125, 131, 154, 156 national identity 8, 153–54, 172–73 National Indian Youth Council 135 National Tribal Council 107–08 nationalism ix, 6–8, 40, 50 Aboriginal nationalism, development of 92, 110–12 defensive nationalism 8, 152, 167, 175, 177 progressive nationalism 7–8, 57, 83, 165 Nauru 85 Neill, Rosemary 177 New South Wales Aboriginal Land Council 168 New Zealand 45, 67, 77, 94, 100, 107, 122, 145, 164, 165 Newfong, John 96, 104, 106 Ngarinyin 18 Nicholls, Doug 45, 77, 78, 80, 86, 95,

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102, 107 Niezen, Ronald 12, 13, 119, 140 noble savage 13 Noffs, Ted 89 Noonkanbah, WA 115–17, 130 Noonuccal, Oodgeroo 85 Northern Land Council 131, 203 n. 89 Norway 123, 126, 156, 163 nuclear testing 78, 85, 114, 130 Nyerere, Julius 101 O’Donoghue. Lowitja (Lois) 126, 131 O’Neill, Shorty 154 O’Shane, Gladys 94 O’Shane, Terry 168 Oberdoo, Jacob 94 One People of Australia League 58, 95 Onus, Eric 95, 150 Ooldea, SA 29 Padmore, George 102 Paine, Robert 123 Paisley, Fiona 57–59 Pan-Pacific Trade Union 50–51 Papua New Guinea 30, 32, 44, 67, 82 Parachilna, SA 31 Passy, Florence 126–27 pastoralism 43, 175 Patten, Cecil 1 Patten, Jack 72 Pearson, Noel 157, 165 Penrith, Harry 1, 95, 113 see also Burnum Burnum Perkins, Charles 76, 85, 88–89, 95, 96, 98–100, 104–05, 110, 113, 118, 131, 156, 171 Persson, Lars 124 Peters, Alwyn 130 Peterson, Nicolas 21–23 Philippines 62, 69, 87, 134 Phillip, Governor Arthur 42 Pilbara, WA 54 Pindan mob 54 Pintupi 18, 20, 22 Pittock, Barrie 93, 94, 107, 117 pituri 28–30 Pobassoo 35 Point Hicks, Victoria 25 Portugal 87 Powell, Adam Clayton 100

237

praus 33–36 Pukardu, SA 31 racial science 11, 50, 53, 57, 73, 79, 81 Ramahyuck mission 45 realism viii, 3, 37, 166 reconciliation 59, 147, 151–53, 165, 171–72, 178 referendum to change Australian Constitution 15, 79, 90–91, 92–93, 97, 120, 149, 175 Returned Services League 74, 75 Reynolds, Henry 10, 11, 25, 39, 42, 44, 53, 131, 174 Ricks, Willie 103 Ridley, Matt 28 Roberts, Jan 115 Roberts, Phillip 99 Robeson, Paul 77 Robinson, Ray 131 Roosevelt, Franklin Delano 69 Rose, Fred 80 Rose, Michael 106 Rowley, Charles 75, 115 Rowse, Tim 71, 90, 97, 110, 152, 171–72 Ruddock, Phillip 160–61 Saami 123, 126 Sarro, Daeng 35 Sartre, Jean-Paul 103 Saunders, Captain Reg 74–75 Scalmer, Sean 89 Scott, Neita 168 Second World War ix, 15, 35, 59, 62, 68, 74, 114, 175 self-determination 12, 63, 66–67, 69–70 indigenous right of 15, 104, 108–09, 130, 133, 135, 136–37, 138–43, 148, 150, 162–65, 172 Belgian thesis 69 saltwater thesis 70, 194 n. 38 Sharpeville massacre 86 Shaw, George Bernard 63 slavery 14, 65, 98 abolition of 40–43 ILO Slavery Convention 67, 71 Smith, Adam 27 Smith, Michael 2 Smith, Shirley (Mum Shirl) 10 Smith, Stan 95

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Smuts, Jan 64 social boundary defence 22–23 social movements 114 framing, use of 89 global movements 126–27 Society for Threatened Peoples 125 South Africa 64, 87, 154 South-east Asia 5, 30, 32–33, 36, 114 Soviet Union 56, 87, 112 Spain 87 Spalding, Ian 94 Spencer, Baldwin 24 Stainton, Irene 168 Stanner, WEH 93 Stevens, Frank 75 Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants 146 Stolen Generations 153 Street, Lady Jessie 79–80, 86 Student Action for Aborigines 89 Sturt, Charles 14, 24, 26–27 Sulawesi, Indonesia 17 Survival International 124 Sutton, Peter 22 Swepston, Lee 133–34 Sykes, Roberta (Bobbi) 101, 105, 111, 118 Taffe, Sue 87, 88, 95 Tatz, Colin 98, 118 Taylor, Luke 18 Tench, Watkin 14, 23 Tenga 35 Thant, U 86 Thompson, Lynne 119 Thomson, Donald 34, 75, 94 Thornberry, Patrick 70, 132, 134, 136, 139 Thorpe, Alma 131 Threlkeld, Lancelot 42 Thursday Island, Queensland 56 Tickner, Robert 151 Tilly, Charles 75, 126 Timbo 35 Tomei, Manuela 133, 134 Top End Coalition 130–31, 156 Torrens, Robert 44 Torres Strait 30, 32, 52 Torres Strait Islands 56, 74, 131 Torres Strait Islands United Nations

131 transnationalism ix–x, 1, 9,10–11, 51, 60, 85, 88–89, 99, 102, 144, 146, 174–75, 177 definition of 2–6 effect on political rationality 104–05, 169–70 interaction with nationalism 6–8, 110, 119, 148, 165–73 treaties 2, 15–16, 111, 116–17, 124, 148–51, 153, 166 trepang 14, 33–36 Tucker, Margaret 76 Ujaama 101 Ulupna 46 Unemployed Workers’ Movement 54 Union of Australian Women 80 United Nations ix, 6, 75, 80, 83, 86–87, 104, 139, 142, 161 see also International Labour Organization Charter of 69 Commission on Human Rights 79, 137, 163–64 Economic and Social Council 127 Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization 70 Food and Agriculture Organization 70, 129 General Assembly 86, 114, 126, 138 International Colonial Commission 68 International Court of Justice 130 Inter-sessional Working Group on a Draft Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples 137, 138, 141, 163–64 Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights 144 Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues 131–32, 141, 168–69 Status of Women Commission 79 Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights 79, 116–17, 127, 129–30, 136, 138 Universal Declaration of Human Rights 55, 78–79, 99, 127, 136 Voluntary Fund for Indigenous Populations 131

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Working Group on Indigenous Populations 128–36, 140, 154, 163, 167–68 World Health Organization 70, 129 Universal Negro Improvement Association 55 Urry, John 34–35 Valadian, Margaret 95 van Langenhove, Fernand 69 Vanuatu 156 Victoria, Queen 46–47 Wakefield, EG 42 Walgett, NSW 78 Walker, Dennis 104, 119 Walker, Kath 85, 93, 100 see also Noonuccal, Oodgeroo Walker, Maurice 168 Walker, RBJ 178 Walsh, Michael 34–35 war and indigenous peoples ix, 15, 35, 55, 57, 62, 65, 65, 68 military service 73–75 labour corps 74–75 Warburton, WA 78, 80, 85 Warfield, William 77 Waterside Workers’ Federation 56 Waterside Workers’ Union 55 Watson, Len 74 Watson, Sam 91, 98, 104, 159 Weatherall, Bob 131, 156–57 Weaver, Sally 119, 168 Weipa, Queensland 85, 114 Wharton, Dave 75 Whitlam, Gough 8, 84–85, 154, 158

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Whyman, Hewitt 131 Wilberforce, William 41 Williams, Gary 98, 104 Wills, William 23, 25 Wilson, Woodrow 67, 69 Windich 25 Winroe, Robert 102, 131 Wiradjuri 27 Women’s Christian Temperance Union 80 Wootten, Hal 108 Workers International Relief 54 World Bank 15, 144 World Council of Indigenous Peoples 121–22, 125–26, 131, 135 World Federation of Trade Unions 54 Worrora 18 Wounded Knee, South Dakota 124 Wunambal 18 Wybalenna reserve 46 Wylie 25 Yandruwandha 23 Yirrkala bark petitions 109–10, 112, 123 Yolngu 17, 31–37, 112, 186 n. 72 Yolngu, Bayini ancestors 35–36 Yolngu, Yirritja moiety 34, 36, 186 n. 72 Yorta Yorta 47, 171 Yu, Peter 131 Yumba community 75 Yungngora 115–16 Yuranigh 25, 27 Zifcak, Spencer 161–62, 172, 178 Zorn, Stephen 114, 203 n. 89 Zvobgo, Eddison 102

recovers the long tradition of indigenous transnationalism – contact with external actors, institutions and ideas – throughout Australia’s history from before white settlement to the present. Indigenous history in Australia is rarely considered in a global context; Ravi de Costa’s insight and careful research allow us to see the global history of

for the fi rst time.

UNSW PRESS

MICK DODSON ‘Refusing the conventional view that Aborigines were brought into contact with the rest of the world by British colonisation, de Costa argues that Indigenous Australians have always been ‘transnational’. When the colonists usurped their sovereignty they renewed this tradition by looking outwards to other colonised and enslaved peoples. As liberal ideologies became globally influential in the twentieth century – yielding new institutions and conventions – Indigenous Australians found the forums in which to globalise their grievances. By honouring Indigenous Australians as political people, de Costa’s brisk narrative throws into relief the timid and inward-turning “Australia” with which they have to deal.’

Ravi de Costa

indigenous Australia

‘I was sitting in a room, 12 000 miles away from home, but if I’d closed my eyes I could just about have been in Maningrida or Doomadgee or Flinders Island. The people wore different clothes, spoke in different languages or with different accents, and their homes had different names. But the stories and the sufferings were the same. We were all part of a community of Indigenous peoples spanning the planet: experiencing the same problems and struggling against the same alienation, marginalisation and sense of powerlessness. We had gathered there united by our shared frustration with the dominant systems in our own countries and their consistent failure to deliver justice. We were all looking for, and demanding, justice from a higher authority.’

A HIGHER AUTHORITY

This important book

A HIGHER AUTHORITY Indigenous transnationalism and Australia

TIM ROWSE

UNSW

PRESS

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