Well, that’s Reconciliation Week done and dusted for another
year.
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| The symbol for the "Recognise" campaign. |
Wrong, wrong, wrong!
Maybe the actual week is over, but its intent, its reason
and the idea that drives it goes on.
The matters discussed in Reconciliation Week are simply
about human decency and they continue irrespective of what the week is called.
The treatment of Australia’s indigenous people got off to a
rather bad start from the moment the first fleet arrived in January 1788.
The country’s indigenous people watched bemusedly as the
rag-tag bunch of English men and women struggled to find a foothold in their
new home, unaware that those new arrivals were about to be subject them to a
genocide that constitutionally continues today.
Although Aboriginals had lived happily, sustainably and
successfully on this country for thousands of years, the English arrived, acted
as if it was empty and set about to recreate their homeland, and that included
getting rid of whatever stood in their way, among them a few troublesome
locals.
Those “troublesome locals” were slaughtered, harassed,
herded, stolen, disposed and finally being considered a dying race, were not
recognised in any sense in the 1901 Australian constitution.
About 50 people listened recently in Shepparton as
constitutional lawyer and University of New South Wales law professor George
Williams explained the dispossession and discrimination that is now a constitutional
part of Australia’s indigenous citizens’ lives.
Professor Williams’ visit coincided with national
Reconciliation Week and the launch of the pamphlet “Recognise”, a nation-wide
initiative to make all people fully aware of the detrimental wording in the
current constitution has on many people; particularly the many indigenous
people who are a critical and vital part of the social mosaic of Australian
communities.
Listening to Prof Williams was rather uncomfortable, for as
a “white fella” who linage is linked to those “first fleeters”, I fall in with
those naïve, insensitive, brutal and single-minded people who treated rather
badly the original inhabitants of what we now call “Australia”.
I can do little to make right the transgressions of those early
European colonizers for what is done is
done, but the constitutional genocide goes on and it is through that more than
100 year old document we could make some adjustments, as minor and as seemingly
insignificant to us they may seem.
What happened in the lead-up to the writing of Australia’s
constitution was, seen through today’s eyes, clearly wrong, but it had legitimacy
then, but now is not then and the responsibility to change, update and
recognise our original inhabitants will fall upon as all within about 18 months
when the matter goes to a referendum.
Between now and then, it’s our responsibility to learn about
the need for change and recognise it is simply about human decency.
