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Torres Strait Islander leaders and organisations have repeatedly stated a desire for greater regional autonomy. In recent years both sides of Federal politics have publicly affirmed support for this in principle, most recently when Prime Minister Howard visited.[1]
The recognition of distinct regional cultures with defined political and administrative autonomy for their traditional territories within nation–states is found in many countries. Such arrangements have been enacted and boasted about by conservative, liberal, republican, democratic, and labour/social democratic governments. The Australian territorial arrangements for Norfolk, Cocos–Keeling, and Christmas Islands are in this mould. Torres Strait proposals fall at the modest end of this international spectrum.[2]
However, there has been little discussion in Australia on the meaning of autonomy. For Torres Strait, there has been too little work on how real, as opposed to cosmetic, autonomy might work. Views are usually very general, lacking consideration of many issues. The new report on Torres Strait autonomy by the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs may focus thinking.[3]
Some principles apply in any scenario. The first is that greater indigenous design and management solutions to local problems are essential elements of any successful progress on indigenous needs anywhere. Non–indigenous majorities are often reluctant to accept this, but until governments at least have the sense to accept some real indigenous autonomy, indigenous ills and grievances will remain ‘insoluble’.
It is also important to realise that the impulses of indigenous ethno–politics are largely determined within an indigenous community itself, not by the convenience, comfort, or timetables of others. Like federalism and labour unionism, indigenous struggles for recognition and autonomy are an awkward fact of life resulting from awkward social history, with their own imperatives and seasons.
Further, there is a predictably recurring list of matters which make up regional indigenous goals. These form a whole, and major items denied will soon cause trouble. In Torres Strait, marine rights, environment management roles, and control of local administration and purse–strings are such basic items. Without them Islanders can be little more than pleaders before government administrators, ie a situation much less than autonomy or self–reliance.
One final point is crucial. Indigenous or regional autonomy is not a farewell, but the beginning of a new relationship. The Australian public as represented by their governments on the one hand, and the regional and indigenous community on the other, will write and live a new history together in more equal and just terms. To put it another way, indigenous or regional autonomy is not separation from the nation–state; rather, it is the beginning of full participation in national life.
Australia is not one of those countries which enacts recommendations of expert or delegated bodies on sensitive matters (as Norway did with the Sami Rights and Sami Culture Committee reports of 1984 and 1985) without extensive debate and much revision or rejection. Public discussion and understanding are required for progress on Torres Strait. Islander leaders will have to inform and guide the Australian community on these matters to achieve a satisfactory outcome.
Torres Strait is unique, a Melanesian society distinct from but adjacent to Melanesian Papua to the north and the Aboriginal societies of Cape York Peninsula to the south. Islanders were never isolated or withdrawn, but had many contacts and connections, notably in the south–west Strait with Cape York peoples[4] and with the heterogeneous South Sea trade, mission, and work forces from the south–west Pacific.[5] Today the Torres Strait Treaty enshrines ongoing cross–border ceremonial, trading, and social relations contacts of traditional peoples.[6] A flood of Asians and Europeans in the 19th and early 20th centuries made Thursday Island the most multi–racial multi–cultural community in Australia, a vivid boom–time society like a Conrad novel.[7]
The Islanders’ desire to be politically and administratively distinct from Aborigines has received much publicity. This is not bloody–mindedness, but stems from earlier in this century when Queensland’s Aboriginal administration was introduced with much pain and loss of freedom for Islanders.[8]
Approximately 6,000 Islanders live in the Strait region, plus 564 mixed Islander–Aborigines at the 1996 census, many more having migrated to towns and cities of Queensland and elsewhere (this dispersed non–Strait population now totalling 22,500 Islanders and 10,000 mixed Islander–Aborigines).[9] These latter were seeking better jobs and schooling, and more freedom and opportunity, than was possible under the old paternal and authoritarian rule of Queensland in Torres Strait. Whereas the resident Islander population of Torres Strait and in the two Strait–side communities of Bamaga and Seisia on Cape York must have the clear defining role in any future political settlement, being a large majority of the population as well as the traditional owners and users of the lands, seas, and reefs, governments will be mindful of other Straits residents, too. Many in the Thursday Island region of the south–west do not identify as Islanders, despite having some Islander blood. The Islanders away from the region but still culturally proud and active, and in touch with their home islands, also have much to offer the Strait, not least being a supply of educated and work–skilled Islander personnel.
Problems of poverty, disease, and dislocation in adjacent Papua, not to mention pressure on those communities from Australian resource companies, create problems for Australia’s one peopled international frontier, Torres Strait. Unless Australia or the gods soon provide better living conditions and health in Papua itself, and a climate for cooperation in controlling unwanted human, disease, pest, and cargo movements through the Strait, these problems will grow and impact very negatively on the region as a whole. Problems are already alarming, a fact which the Islanders constantly din into the heads of Australian authorities.
The legal and jurisdictional aspects of Torres Strait are sufficiently remarkable that an innovative and unique framework will be needed. The area is an international strait, and a sensitive issue of international law as recent Indonesia–USA talks about national versus international rights in nearby straits remind us. The US leads the world hard line on straits and is very tough, eg in Canada’s Northwest Passage.[10] The Americans care little about the environment or traditional inhabitants’ rights where the potential passage of their warships is concerned. Australia could perhaps work at international level for regulation of dangerous reef–strewn waters to safeguard ecosystems and livelihoods, however. Canadians did this successfully for ice–filled waters in the Law of the Sea, although still unable to control US nuclear submarine traffic in the Inuit oceans.
Overlapping Federal, Queensland, and Papua–New Guinea jurisdiction in the Strait, and feuds between government departments and agencies within or between levels of Australian government, will also keep the situation lively. While local issues consume political interest and energy in the Strait, larger geo–political and constitutional issues will determine its future. These higher level issues are not properly understood, discussed, or addressed in Torres Strait. Real autonomy seems remote. The Circumpolar Arctic is a glaring case study in how coastal indigenous peoples could be ignored and have imposed on them unsuitable or irrelevant political conditions by high level thinkers out of touch with indigenous reality and daily needs.[11] The story of how Inuit bridged that problem and redefined the Arctic in policy and politics is a story which would be no less interesting to Islanders.[12]
Important socio–economic studies have been undertaken in Torres Strait[13] and major conferences on linked sustainable development, Islander rights, and environment management have been held.[14] There are constraints on economic activity, eg lack of fresh water, distance, transport costs etc, but Islanders point out that the sea could supply not only household needs but a stronger regional fisheries economy. Islanders have too little role in commercial fisheries now. Much–needed public services and greater Islander participation in such jobs would also help.
Islanders constantly state the need for a regional environmental and sustainable development strategy. With the support of Federal and Queensland governments they have sponsored studies and consensus–building to achieve this.[15] Such work could be both pilot project and cornerstone for a future tropical or Australia–wide coastal management plan. It is an irony of ‘first world’ countries that poorly educated indigenes in remote places often have more success in achieving sustainable development frameworks than highly educated experts and officials burying them in glossy pages of noble–sounding intentions. The difference is the political will and socio–economic importance of the primary resource economy of indigenous peoples.[16]
Governmental comprehension is needed more widely. Social, economic, and environmental policies have a special character in relation to territorial peoples such as Islanders and Aborigines, thanks to international commitments for the survival and well–being of distinct peoples. (Article 27 of the 1966 International Convention on Civil and Political Rights may be the most relevant such guide for Torres Strait, as for other areas of Australia.[17]) If imperatives of cultural diversity and ethno–cultural rights are not always popular in some Australian circles today, they are not going to go away.
Remote and sparsely populated areas pose another problem. Governments often regard them as too expensive and unrewarding for full public services, infrastructure, and self–government. An outstanding exception is North Norway, where governments after World War II ensured the best possible conditions for Sami and non–indigenous residents alike in difficult and isolated areas. A study of North Norway should be the starting point for any Australian work on indigenous health, for instance.
As global inquiries have shown, the survival of non–industrial ways and indigenous peoples may be most important for such hinterland regions, and local empowerment rather than neglect the logical and best policy.[18] The devastation of the indigenous Arctic coastal peoples of the former Soviet Union by mainstream industrial and social policies is the grimmest reminder of these truths, some of those peoples now hovering on the edge of extinction.[19]
The Parliamentary inquiry into Torres Strait autonomy is important because it is one of the very few instances where the current Federal government seems ready to explore a political as opposed to social welfare or administrative rationalisation issue.[20] On the other hand, the report may have greatest appeal in Canberra precisely because rationalisation and streamlining are its major theme. That is, the duplicated roles and personnel of the three major Strait representative bodies—the Island Coordinating Council (ICC), the Torres Strait Regional Authority (TSRA), and Torres Shire—would be conflated to a single new body, ‘a Torres Strait Regional Assembly to be a joint Commonwealth–State regional organisation’.[21] This proposal should be popular in the Strait where the proliferation of official bodies and confusion of responsibilities within and between levels of government has long been a curse, and one ably dissected by an outstanding PhD thesis in recent years.[22] Some, of course, may see it as a cutback of official effort and spending in an already disadvantaged region.
‘Autonomy’ has so many meanings for so many people involved with Torres Strait, it seems, that the report is unable to contribute much new.[23] This may be no bad thing: the lack of a focused political agenda within the Strait, except on the burning issue of Islander sea rights, may make it desirable for the notion to appeal to as many people as possible, neither threatening nor exclusive.
Inclusion is the most important achievement of the report. It wades through old prejudices and fears to insist simply that all residents of the Strait be included—Kaurareg and Aborigines no less than Islanders and long–time Thursday Islanders—and that no other basis is reasonable for any Torres Strait political future.[24] This is an important step, a blessing in disguise. It will not disadvantage ethnic Islanders in practice, it will reconcile other groups to a regional outcome (or at least give them no practical excuse to reject it), and it will eliminate the slanging and bitterness which might otherwise accompany any regional political project. After all, as the report notes, the Strait’s different areas have had complex ethno–cultural, historical, and jurisdictional realities overlaying them in the past 150 years. Indeed, one can say that in old times ‘Torres Strait Islanders traditionally lived on islands that were separate, although culturally similar, sovereign entities. It was not until after European contact that the various island communities were identified as a single cultural group by outsiders’.[25] Politics within the Strait can be too factionalised, too splintered. Now Parliament has made the Strait a gift of a clean new slate on which to begin writing a regional future.
As for specifics, those who look for a positive recommendation on the distribution of powers will be disappointed. The Committee clearly did not wish to pre–empt Queensland’s views, the more wise when one recalls that the last serious attempt to move things along in the 1990s saw a Labor Prime Minister and Labor Queensland Premier slanging it out on the front pages of the newspapers before Islander leaders were even involved in the subject.
The report is full of useful information and new statistics. It is modest in its goals, but clear and confident in what it proposes. At several points the report notes the useful parallel of the new Canadian northern territory being established by the Inuit indigenous inhabitants, Nunavut, in negotiation with the Canadian federal government.[26] One hopes that Island leaders will recognise what a favour has been done them by clearing away some difficult, even poisonous, issues and establishing a foundation for future political work. How the Islander leaders respond and what they make of it remains to be seen.
The report ends with a curious point. ‘The Minister for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs has suggested that the Committee consider whether the granting of greater autonomy for Torres Strait Islanders would be seen as a precedent for a similar approach to indigenous autonomy on the mainland’.[27] What a mean–spirited government is thereby revealed! To its credit, ‘the Committee does not believe that reforms for Torres Strait Islanders should be compromised for fear of creating a precedent for other groups’, and, ‘[i]n fact, the Committee believes that more effort should be made to help Aboriginals and Torres Strait Islanders become more self reliant and manage their own affairs’.[28]
One of the objectives stated in the federal Torres Strait Regional Authority’s corporate plan, number 25 on a list of 26, is to ‘Develop and maintain links with indigenous peoples throughout the world with whom we share common experiences.’[29] This is no fanciful idea: many of the problems and much of the work needed in Torres Strait have overseas precedents.
When Torres Strait ICC chairman Getano Lui Jr visited the Arctic coast of Norway in late 1993 for a conference on indigenous self–government, he met with Sami leaders, discussed coastal and fishing issues, and visited a Sami fjord township.[30] Earlier he had met in Darwin with John Amagoalik, the architect of Nunavut (see below), now in its final implementation.[31] Later he and other Strait leaders met with Greenland premier Johansen to hear about that self–governing Inuit country and fishing economy.[32] Other Australian travellers have looked into Alaskan Inuit and Indian experience with self–government and regional land and sea issues.[33] The Inuit of North Alaska have been especially effective in fighting for the coastal environment and sea mammal management.[34]
Consensus–building and the means of negotiating frameworks and institutions of autonomy are as important as precise outcomes when designing governing arrangements. Legitimacy, workability, and an end to grievances depend on them. Several overseas cases are instructive. In Greenland, once a special committee had confirmed the wish of the largely Inuit population for autonomy within the Danish realm, a Home Rule Commission was set up to work out details.[35] It consisted of seven Danish MPs from Conservative to Communist, seven elected Greenlanders (the two Greenland MPs in the Danish parliament and five members of the elected Greenland advisory council), and a law professor as chair. This approach ensured political reality and salability of proposals.
A referendum in Greenland approved the plan 2–1 despite a strong ‘anti’ campaign. During the negotiations Greenland political parties formed around the main factional tendencies, parties which have governed the Arctic island alone or in various coalitions since May 1979, when home rule came into force. Politics of environment and development have been central to Greenland life ever since, but have operated within that earlier agreed framework without endangering Inuit–Danish relations.
In North Alaska, Inuit in numbers and dispersal similar to Islanders in Torres Strait achieved a ‘home rule borough’ government within the State of Alaska, despite their preference for federal government protection.[36] Although US constitutional law and structures differ from Australian practice, North Slope Borough experiences are relevant. The uncertainty and conflict in Alaskan indigenous relations with the state government, now in a new phase with the Venetie case, show the dangers of an incomplete claims policy failing basic indigenous needs.[37]
In Canada’s Quebec province, Inuit in the far north and Cree of the mid–north forced a political settlement in the 1970s by court injunction, stopping work on the huge James Bay hydroelectric power project. Both peoples negotiated a regional government framework, the Inuit with Quebec and the Cree with Canada. The Inuit case proved frustrating in practice and for the same reasons as in Torres Strait (eg fragmentation of authority, funding procedures, marine needs). This has driven Inuit leaders to renegotiate for a more coherent, workable, efficient, and cost–effective governing system,[38] and to negotiate a comprehensive marine rights agreement, which is now under way.
In Canada’s British Columbia province, a region similar in history, politics, economy, and race relations to Queensland,[39] a first regional indigenous claims and autonomy
agreement–in–principle, complete with fisheries component, was recently reached.[40] That process was unnecessarily traumatic, with governments cowed by some fierce non–
indigenous groups’ disinformation campaign. Canada’s Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples has now proposed an overall approach to regional framework documents, land and sea rights, self–government, and resource management, building on Canada’s growing experience with these issues over 30 years.[41]
These issues of territoriality and culture are not unique to indigenous peoples. Shetland Islanders may reactivate their campaign for home rule ties to London instead of accepting Scottish devolution.[42] Marine economy, environment, regional culture, and autonomy are motivating concerns. Shetland already has some flexibility within the Westminster system. To the north, the Faroe Islands have a home rule arrangement with Denmark, long attracting Shetland envy. Faroese are a fishing people whose strong commitment to their culture overcame centuries of marginalisation to rebuild a successful autonomous society.[43]
In Canada’s Northwest Territories (‘NWT’) the history of Inuit organising their islands and coasts as a new self–governing territory, Nunavut, is nearing completion.[44] The long implementation and phase–in on an already strong base of Inuit–centred public services and good community facilities makes this case especially interesting for Australians. Inuit, like Torres Strait Islanders, have been concerned about protection, economy, and management of seas, cultural survival, employment, and a real say in decision–making. A Nunavut Constitutional Forum in the 1980s prepared studies and positions for public consultation, carrying out a transparent process of consensus– and proposal–building, the Forum’s members being elected Inuit leaders chaired by a non–Inuit lawyer (who represented a largely Inuit area in the NWT legislature and was NWT minister for aboriginal rights).
Exotic problems of indigenous coastal peoples abound in Russia, eg among Nenets and Inuit, with desperate international study and support projects underway to help them survive as peoples autonomously in traditional areas.[45] The Sami of Norway’s Arctic coast struggle to remain a viable coastal society in the face of unhelpful policies and assimilationist social pressures.[46] Despite impressive and successful national achievements in material and social well–being for Sami and other residents of the northern margins, the Scandinavian countries have failed repeatedly and embarrassingly to meet their own promises on indigenous rights, a reminder that social progress is not a seamless web of attitudes or aptitudes.[47] Some Sami meanwhile look to Mabo and Wik for inspiration.
Isolation means ignorance, and isolation from world currents and standards keeps indigenous peoples in many parts of the world ignorant of possibilities and precedents which could both inspire and assist them. The TSRA objective of plugging into the world of available information and experience is wise, and should make the future of Torres Strait smoother. Australians are quick to pick up health, technical, and sporting advances from abroad, not to mention music, fashion, and film. The accumulating international experience of indigenous politics, still largely confined to the oral expression of those directly involved, is the greatest unused political asset of indigenous people today.
Governments in Canberra and Brisbane appear neither to understand nor accept the principle of autonomy and identity for indigenous peoples on cultural—let alone political—grounds. This makes discussion of indigenous futures difficult: where white politicians in charge think they are merely making small concessions in a spirit of local goodwill, others see them bumbling into a very different arena with clear rules, hard edges, and many dangers.
However, there remain important inducements for government action in Torres Strait, whatever one’s view. Public sector dominance as employer and economic generator, through special national and international responsibilities in the region plus roles in local affairs, make these islands virtually a ‘company town’. The whole region numbers only a small town in size, and should reflect its powerful corporate citizens’ image, not become a paradisal slum.[48]
At the same time, Australia will wish Torres Strait to be a confident and self–reliant part of the national community, not merely dependent. This cannot be achieved unless and until Islanders make their own decisions and manage their own affairs (including some inevitable blunders). The hardest thing for governments to do is to let go, to remove the guiding hand of outside civil servants who find endlessly sincere and ingenious ways to keep their hands on the controls.
Australia’s inevitable role as exhorter, idea exporter, and socio–economic and environment standard bearer for South Pacific island nations is another imperative. Australia’s own bit of South Pacific island culture should be an example of the best policies and of well–being.
Then there are the negative reasons. That unless Australia is seen to do something significant, something which withstands real scrutiny, in the area of indigenous recognition, world pressure and criticism will continue to mount. That unless Islanders are running their own show, their health, social, and other problems will not be solved, powerlessness being the greatest worker of woe in the indigenous world. That unless Islanders are content, well–off, and confident in Australian public authorities, Torres Strait will be impossible to maintain as a secure frontier against dangerous biological or illegal product movements. That when the inevitable regional politico–environmental incident erupts with a tanker accident or other project fiasco, in Torres Strait itself or adjacent Papua New Guinea or Indonesia, there is a framework and process for coping, for mopping up, and for preventing a serious and open–ended political furore.[49]
Torres Strait in general and island leaders have strong supporters in Parliament in all parties. One may hope that if there is a break in the clouds over indigenous policy in the near future, Islanders will benefit.
The first requirements of progress on autonomy or other regional Torres Strait goals are:
While the current governments in Brisbane and Canberra may be too unpredictable to anticipate, what with their African rhino hunts and refusal to acknowledge sea level rise, it is unlikely any modern government would make a serious constitutional settlement such as Torres Strait requires on the strength of a handshake over lunch or a closed and abridged process. Too much can go wrong, there are too many passions involved on many sides, the need for transparency and authenticity of Islander opinion and self–determination are too great within the Strait region, the need for ostentatious deference to statistically measurable Islander opinion is too great for governments in the country and the world. It is safe to say that an open and carefully deliberated process of political consensus–building among Islanders, and of negotiation with Canberra and Brisbane, will be required to make progress.
The extensive and largely invisible goings–on in Canberra, and between Canberra and the States, in respect of the Northern Territory constitution supports this view. The NT situation is a simple one—at least as viewed by governments in Darwin and Canberra who leave out Aboriginal rights and interests on anything like an acceptable basis. If senior governments seem to be courting one or two Islander leaders, waltzing them towards any outcomes, all other Islanders should be alert and alarmed. Such tactics already seem to have been employed in other instances by the Howard government, eg in relation to Century Zinc, the Sydney Olympics, etc. Anything governments attempt to bestow before the 2000 Olympics, for instance, should be scrutinised warily.
The Parliamentary committee has usefully cleared some ground and established some ground rules for organising a political or constitutional event. It provides for a clear strong regional political capacity dominated by Islanders, while also maintaining the powers and unique identities of the individual local Island councils. The shape, nature, and timing of any future steps, however, depend on the initiative, will, and energy of Torres Strait Islanders themselves.
[2] Main proposals are GLui, ‘A Torres Strait perspective’ in Voices from the Land: 1993 Boyer Lectures, Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Sydney, 1994, pp 62–75; Island Coordinating Council, Principles and Objectives for the Future of the Torres Strait, Thursday Island, Queensland, May 1991; Island Coordinating Council, Position on the Political Future of Torres Strait, Thursday Island, Queensland, 20 January 1993; Torres Strait Regional Authority [TSRA], Submission to the Social Justice Task Force (published collection of documents), Thursday Island, Queensland, 1994; and TSRA, Corporate Plan (including Objectives for 1996–2000), Thursday Island, Queensland, 1996.
[3] L Lieberman et al, Torres Strait Islanders: A New Deal—A Report on Greater Autonomy for Torres Strait Islanders, House of Representatives Standing Committee on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs, Parliament of the Commonwealth of Australia, Canberra, August 1997.
[4] N Sharp, Footprints Along the Cape York Sandbeaches, Aboriginal Studies Press, Canberra, 1992. These Kaurareg and their special outlook and belated inclusion in Strait political structures are discussed in the 1997 Parliamentary report.
[5] S Mullins, Torres Strait: A History of Colonial Occupation and Culture Contact 1864–1897, Central Queensland University Press, Rockhampton, Queensland, 1994.
[6] R Babbage et al, The strategic significance of Torres Strait, Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, Australian National University, Canberra, 1990. For insight into treaty workings, see S Vlacci, Managing the unmanageable? The Torres Strait Treaty: its effectiveness today, International Relations MA sub–thesis, Australian National University, Canberra, 1996.
[7] R Ganter, The Pearl–Shellers of Torres Strait: Resource Use, Development and Decline, 1860s–1960s, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 1994. See also J Beckett, Torres Strait Islanders: custom and colonialism, Cambridge University Press, 1987; and J Singe, The Torres Strait: People and History, University of Queensland Press, St Lucia, 1989.
[8] N Sharp, Stars of Tagai: The Torres Strait Islanders, Aboriginal Studies Press, Canberra, 1993.
[9] Figures rounded from L Lieberman et al, Torres Strait Islanders: A New Deal—A Report on Greater Autonomy for Torres Strait Islanders, House of Representatives Standing Committee on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs, Parliament of the Commonwealth of Australia, Canberra, August 1997.
[10] F Griffiths (ed), Politics of the Northwest Passage, McGill–Queen’s University Press, Montreal, Canada, 1987.
[11] See ‘Canada’s Interests in the International Arctic’, Proceedings of Changing Times, Challenging Agendas: Economic and Political Issues in Canada’s North, Canadian Arctic Resources Centre, seminar held in Toronto, Canada, 30–31 October 1986, pp 109–159. See also this author’s conference paper, ‘Canadian Policy and Perspective in the Circumpolar North’, pp 140–159.
[12] For example, P Jull, ‘Internationalism, Indigenous Peoples and Sustainable Development’ in D Lawrence and T Cansfield–Smith (eds), Sustainable development for traditional inhabitants of the Torres Strait Region, Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority, Townsville, Queensland, 1991, pp 427–439.
[13] Beginning with JPLea, OGStanley and PJPhibbs, Torres Strait regional development plan, 1990–95, Department of Urban and Regional Planning, University of Sydney, 1990; and WSArthur and V McGrath, Torres Strait development study, 1989, Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies, Canberra, 1990.
[14] D Lawrence and T Cansfield–Smith (eds), Sustainable development for traditional inhabitants of the Torres Strait region, GBRMPA Workshop Series 16, AGPS, Canberra, 1991; and M Mulrennan and N Hanssen (eds), Marine Strategy for Torres Strait: Policy Directions, Australian National University North Australia Research Unity, Darwin and Island Coordinating Council, Torres Strait, 1994.
[15] See Mulrennan and Hanssen, 1994, in note 14.
[16] P Jull, A Sea Change: Overseas Indigenous–Government Relations in the Coastal Zone, Resource Assessment Commission, Canberra, September 1993.
[17] ‘General Comment Adopted by the Human Rights Committee ...’, United Nations Human Rights Committee, Document CCPR/ C/21/Rev.1/Add.5, April 26, 1994. For a discussion, see ‘International Human Rights Developments’ in M Dodson, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner, Third Report, 1995, Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, Commonwealth of Australia, Sydney, 1995, pp 58–94.
[18] See GHBrundtland et al, Our Common Future: The Report of the World Commission on Environment and Development (Australian Edition), with The Commission for the Future, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1990, pp 158–160.
[19] A Pika, J Dahl and I Larsen (eds), Anxious North: Indigenous Peoples in Soviet and Post–Soviet Russia: Selected Documents, Letters, and Articles, IWGIA Document No 82, International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs, Copenhagen, 1996. A survey of the indigenous coastal areas of Yakutia, now Sakha, is also illustrative: SIBoyakova et al, Influence of the Northern Sea Route on Social and Cultural Development of Indigenous Peoples of the Arctic Zone of the Sakha Republic (Yakutia), INSROP Working Paper No 49–1996, IV.4.1, International Northern Sea Route Programme, Fridtjof Nansen Institute, Oslo, 1996.
[20] L Lieberman et al, Torres Strait Islanders: A New Deal—A Report on Greater Autonomy for Torres Strait Islanders, House of Representatives Standing Committee on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs, Parliament of the Commonwealth of Australia, Canberra, August 1997.
[21] Ibid, summary para 13.
[22] SJKehoe–Forutan, The effectiveness of Thursday Island as an urban centre in meeting the needs of its community, PhD thesis, University of Queensland, Brisbane, 1990. A brief paper is SJKehoe–Forutan, ‘Self–management and the bureaucracy: the example of Thursday Island’ in D Lawrence and T Cansfield–Smith (eds), Sustainable development for traditional inhabitants of the Torres Strait region, GBRMPA Workshop Series 16, AGPS, Canberra, 1991, pp 421–6.
[23] L Lieberman et al, Chapter 3.
[24] Ibid, 2.4–2.12.
[25] Ibid, 2.6
[26] A slice of Nunavut life in newsagents now is M Parfit, ‘A dream called Nunavut’, with photos by JB Pinneo and double–sided map supplement ‘The Making of Canada: The North’ in National Geographic, Vol 192, No 3 (September 1997), pp 68–91. Pauline Hanson MP denounced Nunavut in her 1 October 1997 speech on native title in Parliament without revealing any actual knowledge of the subject.
[27] L Lieberman et al, Torres Strait Islanders: A New Deal—A Report on Greater Autonomy for Torres Strait Islanders, House of Representatives Standing Committee on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs, Parliament of the Commonwealth of Australia, Canberra, August 1997, 7.5.
[28] Ibid 7.8, 7.9.
[29] TSRA, Corporate Plan (including Objectives for 1996–2000), Thursday Island, Queensland, 1996.
[30] For his impression, see GLui, ‘A Torres Strait perspective’ in Voices from the Land: 1993 Boyer Lectures, Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Sydney, 1994, pp 62–75.
[31] Two Nunavut representatives at the Darwin conference gave talks most relevant to Torres Strait today. See J Amagoalik, ‘Canada’s Nunavut: an indigenous northern territory’, pp 23–25, and T Fenge, ‘The Nunavut Agreement: the environment, land and sea use and indigenous rights’, pp 31–37, in P Jull et al (eds), Surviving Colombus: Indigenous Peoples, Political Reform and Environmental Management in North Australia, Australian National University North Australia Research Unit, Darwin, 1994.
[32] LEJohansen, ‘Greenland—The Home Rule Experience’, in A Harris (ed), A good idea waiting to happen: Regional Agreements in Australia, Proceedings from the Cairns Workshop July 1994, Cape York Land Council, Cairns, 1995, pp 19–23.
[33] For some discussion and reading see P Jull, Constitution–Making in Northern Territories: Legitimacy and Governance in Australia, Central Land Council, Alice Springs, 1996.
[34] Eg S Anjum, ‘Land–use Planning in the North Slope Borough’ in National and Regional Interests in the North: Third National Workshop on People, Resources, and the Environment North of 60°, Canadian Arctic Resources Committee, Ottawa, Canada, pp 269–289; MMRFreeman, ‘The Alaska Eskimo Whaling Commission: Successful Co–Management under Extreme Conditions’, pp 137–153, and SJLangdon, ‘Prospects for Co–Management of Marine Animals in Alaska’, pp 154–169, in E Pinkerton (ed), Co–Operative Management of Local Fisheries: New Directions for Improved Management and Community Development, University of British Columbia Press, Vancouver, Canada, 1984.
[35] I Foighel, ‘Home Rule in Greenland 1979’ with English translation of the Greenland Home Rule Act, Nordic Journal of International Law, Vol 48, Nos 1–2, 4–14, 1979; P Jull, ‘Greenland: Lessons of self–government and development’, Northern Perspectives, Vol VII, No 8, Canadian Arctic Resources Committee, Ottawa, Canada, 1979.
[36] See GAMcBeath and TAMorehouse, The Dynamics of Alaskan Native Self–Government, University Press of America, Lanham, Maryland, USA, 1980; and GAMcBeath, North Slope Borough Government and Policymaking, Institute of Social and Economic Research, University of Alaska, Anchorage, USA, 1981.
[37] Summarised in ‘Alaska’ in The Indigenous World 1996–97, International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs, Copenhagen, pp 28–30. A more full account is ‘Q&A: Indian Country and tribal status in Alaska’, Tundra Times, Anchorage, 14 May 1997. For the flawed Alaskan claims experience see T Berger, Village Journey: The Report of the Alaska Native Review Commission, Hill and Wang, New York, 1985.
[38] SHendrie, ‘On the Path to a Nunavik Government’, Makivik News, No 32, Fall 1994, pp 5–9.
[39] P Tennant, Aboriginal Peoples and Politics: The Indian Land Question in British Columbia, 1849–1989, University of British Colombia Press, Vancouver, 1990.
[40] Nisga’a Treaty Negotiations Agreement–in–Principle, issued jointly by the Government of Canada, Province of British Columbia, and Nisga’a Tribal Council, Vancouver, Canada, 15 February 1996.
[41] Restructuring the Relationship, Vol2 (published in two parts), Report of the Royal commision on Aboriginal Peoples, Ottawa, Canada, 1996.
[42] Nevis Institute, The Shetland Report: A Constitutional Study, Edinburgh, 1978; J Goodlad, ‘Self–Government in the British Isles: The experience of the Shetland Islands and the aspirations of the Shetland movement’, Nordic Journal of International Law, Vol 55, Nos 1–2, pp 122–130.
[43] JWest, Faroe: the Emergence of a Nation, Hurst, London, England, and Eriksson, New York, USA, 1972.
[44] P Jull, An Aboriginal Northern Territory: Creating Canada’s Nunavut, Discussion Paper No 9, Australian National University North Australia Research Unit, Darwin, 1992; PJull, ‘Them Eskimo Mob: International Implications of Nunavut, Revised 2nd Edition’, For Seven Generations, The Report of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples (1996) including Background Reports etc, CD–ROM, Public Works and Government Services (Publishing), Ottawa, Canada, 1997.
[45] GOsherenko, ‘Property Rights and Transformation in Russia: Institutional Change in the Far North’, Europe–Asia Studies, Vol 47, No 7, 1995, pp 1077–1108; A Pika, J Dahl and I Larsen (eds), Anxious North: Indigenous Peoples in Soviet and Post–Soviet Russia: Selected Documents, Letters, and Articles, IWGIA Document No 82, International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs, Copenhagen, 1996.
[46] I Björklund, ‘Property in common, common property or private property; Norwegian fishery management in a Sami coastal area’, in North Atlantic Studies, Vol 3, No 1, 1991, pp 41–45; S Pedersen, ‘The Coastal Sami of Norway’, Symposium paper for Man and Barents Sea Ecosystem, Arctic Centre, University of Groningen, November 19–20, 1992; P Jull, ‘Northern Norway’, A Sea Change: Overseas Indigenous– Government Relations in the Coastal Zone, Resource Assessment Commission, Canberra, September 1993, pp 18–28.
[47] FKorsmo, ‘Claiming Territory: The Saami Assemblies as Ethno–Political Institutions’, Polar Geography, 20.3, 1996, pp 163–179.
[48] An author known to this author is writing a novel in which bits of Australia, including Queensland, are governed by an eccentric Japanese billionaire and her fashion retailing and project management empire as trustee, an outcome brought on by world pressure over indigenous race relations failures and Canberra needing a ploy to avoid UN expulsion; a domestic arrangement achieved under federal emergency powers, no doubt.
[49] Marine pollution or its likelihood associated with resource exploration, extraction, and transport activities has accounted for the most intense indigenous political activism in northern hinterlands of the northern hemisphere in recent decades, and in non–indigenous areas, too. It could yet end the superficially easy–going informality of Torres Strait relations with the rest of Australia, bringing a mature political settlement and a recognised place in Australia. That being said, the lack of bile in Islander–government relations can be a considerable Islander political asset, as Inuit have found all across northern Canada.
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