The Aboriginal cause, loosely defined, has been advanced mainly by virtue of the fact that Australians of all backgrounds know more about Aboriginal history than they did in the past. Gerard Henderson, Sydney Institute (1996)

In 1991, legacies of Australia's past remained as a troubling challenge in the present.

The nation faced a significant challenge as it entered the decade leading to the centenary of its Federation. Would it deny the wounds of its past or would it seek to heal them? Would it ignore the dispossession, disadvantage and rights of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, or would it seek to address them? Would it assume that 'she'll be right' or would it act to make things right?

A century before, in the decade leading to Federation on 1 January 1901, Australians had ignored Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peop les as they debated the foundation of the nation.

But in 1991, the Commonwealth Parliament showed vision, leadership and unity when it voted unanimously to establish the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation and a formal reconciliation process. The Parliament noted that there had been no formal process of reconciliation to date, and that it was 'most desirable that there be such a reconciliation' by the year 2001, the centenary of Federation.

The Parliament's decision to shape a better future can only be understood against the backdrop of a past not yet dealt with, and therefore still a dark shadow on the present.

The past not yet dealt with

Britain established its colony at Sydney Cove on 26 January 1788 without consent and without negotiating a fair deal with the original inhabitants. In the following decades, other colonies were also established around the continent to which convicts were exported and in which free settlers and emancipists were granted title to lands.

Many Aboriginal people were dispossessed and displaced from their lands, forced into reserves, and killed in battles for their land, or by hunting parties and poisoning of waterholes. Many died from introduced diseases. In the second half of the 19^th Century, Torres Strait Islanders also lost their independence when the Queensland Government annexed the Torres Strait Islands. Many were also killed by introduced diseases.

As numbers declined and traditional lifestyles and cultures were disrupted, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples became marginalised. Many were moved, often forcibly, to missions or government reserves. Some became fringe dwellers on the outskirts of cities and towns, while others managed a meagre living in the casual labour force of rural and outback Australia. They were no longer allowed to live as they had done for tens of thousands of years, but neither were they able to become equal partners and citizens in the wider society that had taken their land.

It has been a slow and painful process for all of us to talk about our shared history... The simple historical truth needs to be put into the most important legal document for our entire national life - the Constitution. Julie McCrossin, television personality (1998) The Tent Embassy, Canberra, 1972. Photo: Peter Wells/ Canberra Times

The social impact

Many official reports have noted that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples are the most disadvantaged people in Australian society today. These reports also conclude that this situation stems directly from colonisation, dispossession from their lands and forced marginalisation, depriving them of the rights and opportunities taken for granted by other citizens.

Nevertheless, many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples fought for their rights and maintained their cultures. More than 200 years after the first British settlement in Sydney, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples can celebrate their survival spiritually, physically and culturally.

In the wider society, ever since the early days of colonisation and settlement, dissenting voices have been raised, arguing against the harsh treatment of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and calling for recognition of their rights, including for just agreements over land.

Once a minority view, and often not heard for years at a time, over the last 30 years or so the need to address these issues has become a mainstream view, growing hand in hand with the emergence of movements and organisations of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples working for their own rights.

Federation

In the decade of public debate leading up to Federation in 1901, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples were not involved in any of the conventions and consultations, and were largely ignored. As the 'Founding Fathers' hammered out a draft Constitution of the Commonwealth of Australia, they discussed Aboriginal people only to:

1. specifically deny the new Commonwealth Parliament the power to make laws for Aboriginal people; and

2. exclude the necessity to count them in the census.

These exclusions reflected the exclusion of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples from Australian society generally, and from the rights, responsibilities and benefits which other Australian citizens enjoyed.

The Federation itself was founded on the assumption that the Aborigines would, quite literally, disappear. Gough Whitlam, Vincent Lingiari Memorial Lecture, 1997 Prime Minister Gough Whitlam pours soil into the hands of Gurindji elder Vincent Lingiari in 1975 symbolising the return of traditional lands to the Gurindji people. Photo: courtesy AIATSIS

A gradual awakening

From the time of Federation it took two thirds of a century for Australians to recognise that the Constitution of 1901 had to be changed to give the Commonwealth Parliament the power to make laws for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and to ensure that Aboriginal people and Torres Strait Islanders would be counted in the census.

Even then, it took a long 10-year campaign by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and their supporters before both sides of the Parliament agreed that a referendum should be held to change the Constitution in these ways. In the historic referendum of 27 May 1967, over 90 per cent of eligible voters supported the proposed changes, by far the most overwhelming 'Yes' vote at an Australian referendum.

In the years before that, other events were beginning to arouse the nation's conscience and reshape our understanding of our own history and of the legacies which that history had bequeathed to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

In 1965, the Freedom Ride through north-western NSW exposed to public gaze the racism experienced by Aboriginal people and the poverty and degradation of their living conditions. In 1966, Vincent Lingiari led the Gurindji people in a walk-off and strike from the Wave Hill cattle station in the Northern Territory, owned by Britain's Lord Vestey. The Gurindji's initial protest was over wages and living conditions but soon became a claim for the return of their traditional lands.

The effects of these and other similar events rippled across the nation, raising the nation's awareness and stimulating the modern movements for the rights of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

The years after the 1967 Referendum saw the growth and development of these movements and of the autonomous organisations of Aboriginal people and Torres Strait Islanders. In 1972, the Aboriginal Tent Embassy was established on the lawns in front of Parliament House in Canberra.

The return of some of the Labor Gurindji people's traditional lands in 1975, nine years after the Wave Hill strike, by the then Labor Prime Minister, Gough Whitlam, marked a sign of hope for other Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples that their land rights too would be recognised.

In 1976, the Liberal Government of Malcolm Fraser put legislation through the Federal Parliament which became the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act 1976 , the first land rights legislation in Australia.

Then in 1992, the High Court made its historic Mabo judgment after a case lasting eight years in which Eddie Mabo and four other Torres Strait Islanders from Mer (Murray Island) asked for legal recognition of their traditional native title rights to their island. In a landmark judgment, the High Court overturned the fallacy of terra nullius (land belonging to no one) and recognised native title within the common law of Australia.

Subsequently, the Parliament passed the Native Title Act 1993 which was amended in 1998 following the High Court's Wik judgment.

1967 Referendum Poster. Photo: courtesy AIATSIS

Disadvantage and injustice

In the 25 years following the 1967 referendum, awareness and understanding of the injustices and inequalities suffered by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples grew in significant sections of the wider community. The nation began to realise that decisive measures were required to address these disadvantages which contradicted the 'fair go' image of the 'lucky country'.

No formal agreement

During the whole process of colonisation and settlement, not once did Britain or those in authority in the colonies conclude a formal treaty or agreement with the original inhabitants. Australia is the only Commonwealth country that never signed an official treaty with its Indigenous peoples.

In the 1830s and 1840s various eminent people in the colonies in Sydney, Hobart, Perth and Adelaide argued that, for example, treaties should be entered into with Aboriginal people and that their rights to land should be respected.

It is hard to realise that the history we were taught of a great empty land being settled by brave explorers was largely false. It is hard for us to understand that the real history of Australia was quite different from that which we were taught as children. The Rt Hon Malcolm Fraser, Vincent Lingiari Memorial Lecture (2000)   ... the question of how the British acquired the sovereignty over Australia in the absence of conquest or treaty remains. Professor Henry Reynolds, historian (1998)

Such arguments did not produce results, and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples were never formally recognised as the first inhabitants of this continent or as one of the oldest cultures in the world.

Yet Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples never gave up their own yearnings for recognition, rights and justice.

In 1963, the Yolngu people of Arnhem Land presented federal Parliament with their Bark Petition in protest at a government decision to grant leases for bauxite mining on land excised from their reserve.

In 1972, the Larrakia people of the Darwin area requested treaties.

During the Bicentennial year of 1988, in which the wider society celebrated 200 years since British settlement, many Aboriginal people took the opportunity through demonstrations and other means to point to the legacies of that settlement for them. 'We have survived' was a rallying call.

In June 1988, the Chairmen of the Central and Northern Land Councils, Wenten Rubuntja and Galarrwuy Yunupingu, presented the then Prime Minister, Bob Hawke, with the Barunga Statement. This called for Aboriginal self-management, a national system of land rights, compensation for loss of lands, respect for Aboriginal identity, an end to discrimination, and the granting of full civil, economic, social, political and cultural rights. It also called on the Commonwealth Parliament:

to negotiate with us a Treaty or Compact recognising our prior ownership, continued occupation and sovereignty and affirming our human rights and freedoms.

In response, the Prime Minister and the then Minister for Aboriginal Affairs, Gerry Hand, signed a five-point statement which included:

1. The Government affirms that it is committed to work for a negotiated Treaty with Aboriginal people.

2. The Government sees the next step as Aborigines deciding what they believe should be in the Treaty.

However, as with similar proposals a few years earlier, broad agreement could not be reached on these proposals in Parliament, the wider community, or among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

We cannot rewrite history, but we can shape the future. The Hon Kim Beazley (1997) Freedom Ride in northern NSW 1965. Photo: State Library of New South Wales The 1991 Report of the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody pointed out underlying reasons for facts such as that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander males were 28 times more likely than other males to be taken into custody. These and other expressions of disadvantage, such as much lower life expectancy for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and higher birth mortality are the product of the history of dispossession and social marginalisation. The cycle of poverty, poor health and little education trapped Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians in an existence very different to most other Australians. For these reasons, the Royal Commission in its final recommendation suggested: That all political leaders and their parties recognise that reconciliation between the Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal communities in Australia must be achieved if community division, discord and injustice to Aboriginal people are to be avoided. Soon after, the Commonwealth Parliament voted to establish the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation with the object of: promoting a process of reconciliation between Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders and the wider Australian community...