Amnesty International Australia

About the resource

• Background
• Receive an email alert alert when the full resource is released

Some sample materials from the resource

• Indigenous rights in Australia today: starting points for discussion
• Land and Indigenous Rights

Background

Amnesty International will shortly be releasing curriculum resources on Indigenous rights in Australia today.

The provisional title of the resource package is "Indigenous rights in Australia today: where do you stand?" There will be a broad focus on Indigenous rights, and a particular focus on the issues raised by the Northern Territory Intervention.

Chapters of the resource will include:

• Where do you stand? Starting points for discussion
• Indigenous rights in Australia: cartoons
• The Northern Territory intervention: Human rights issues facing Australians today
• The Northern Territory intervention: The debate in the media
• Land and Indigenous rights in Australia
• Taking Action
• Indigenous self determination: what does it mean?
• Indigenous health

The materials are designed for students at middle and senior secondary level around Australia. They will be useful for History, English, Legal Studies, Aboriginal Studies, Civics and Citizenship, Politics and Legal Studies.

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Receive an email alert alert when the full resource is released

To receive an email when the full resource is released, subscribe to our human rights education newsletter (see "Stay Informed" on the right side of our Human Rights today page) or email us at hre@amnesty.org.au.

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Indigenous rights in Australia today: starting points for discussion

Introduction

"The Government's apology to the Stolen Generations and other Indigenous Australians...is a welcome shift from the past...but to achieve the returns it wants it must replace its blunt and blanket policy approaches."

Irene Khan, Secretary General, Amnesty International

Back in 2000, more than 300,000 people joined the walk across the Sydney Harbour Bridge in support of reconciliation, showing a large constituency in Australia wanting a new relationship between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people.

Since then, we have seen more examples of Australia moving forward in recognising Indigenous rights. Examples include the national apology to the Stolen Generations, the Federal Government’s support for the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, and plans to hold a referendum on recognising Indigenous Peoples in Australia’s Constitution.

Despite this, continuing racism, both in individuals and in society, show that much still needs to be done to make the vision of Indigenous rights a reality in Australia.

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Indigenous rights in Australia today: some case studies

Below are some stories of people affected by these issues.

Charged for receiving a stolen Freddo Frog

In 2009, a 12-year-old Indigenous boy from Western Australia was charged with receiving a stolen Freddo Frog valued at about 70 cents.

At the time, WA Aboriginal Legal Service chief lawyer Peter Collins observed, "It's hard not to imagine that if this had have happened to a non-Aboriginal kid from an affluent Perth suburb with professional parents, that we wouldn't be in this situation…"

After a public outcry, the charges were withdrawn.

Education: some improvements

The first decade of the 21st century has seen some improvements in Indigenous education. Census figures show that the proportion of Indigenous people aged 15 years and over who had completed school to Year 12, increased from 20 per cent in 2001 to 23 per cent in 2006.

Respected leader dies in a prison van

On 26 January 2008, a respected Aboriginal community leader, Mr. Ward, was arrested. The next day he was dead, after receiving third degree burns during a 350 km trip in the back of a commercially operated prison van.

The coroner said it was a disgrace that a prisoner should be transported in this way in the 21st century. The Justice of the Peace who refused Mr. Ward bail, requiring him to be transported to Kalgoorlie, was asked by ABC Four Corners whether he knew whether Mr. Ward was well respected. He replied, "No. No. He was an Aboriginal in a very drunken state or very groggy state. That's all I knew him as".

Following the coroner's report, the Western Australian Government made some welcome changes, including training of police and public officials.

Life expectancy and living conditions

An Indigenous child born in Australia today can expect to die up to 20 years earlier than a non-Indigenous child.

This statistic is shown in a 2010 UN report. It also reveals that Indigenous households are half as likely to own their own homes, and they are more likely to live in overcrowded conditions. The situation is particularly serious in rural and remote communities where people frequently do not have access to affordable adequate food, water and housing and have poor access to basic services and infrastructure.

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The Northern Territory intervention: case studies and voices

Here is one case study from the resource about the Northern Territory intervention.

The Ampilatwatja walk off

To protest against the NT intervention, 300 people walked from their community at Ampilatwatja (pronounced um-blud-ah-watch, also spelled Amperlatwaty) and set up camp at Honeymoon Bore. The walk off is a significant event in the Indigenous response to the intervention.

The leaders of the walk off explain the background in a statement to supporters:

On 14 July 2009, the elders from the Ampilatwatja community, three hours northeast of Alice Springs, walked out of our houses and set up camp in the bush. We are fed up with the Federal Government's intervention, controls and measures, visions and goals forced onto us from outside...

The intervention has meant more hardship and shame for our people. We're suffering under the welfare quarantining system – 50 per cent of Indigenous peoples' welfare payment is converted into Basics cards, which we can only use at certain shops. Elders who have gone through earlier welfare days are feeling degraded – it's same old ration days of flour, tea and sugar and some clothing.

We have written to Jenny Macklin with our concerns and she has ignored us. A recent intervention 'consultation' session was an embarrassment, with our concerns being completely ignored. We no longer have confidence in her, her government, or the government business managers (GBMs) installed in our communities as part of the intervention. Under the GBM, our community fell into disarray and dysfunction. For us, the last straw was when the government took over our independent, community controlled store...

We demand the federal government:

• Stop the NT Intervention
• Genuinely consult with us on any plans that will affect our lives now and for the future
• Reinstate the full Racial Discrimination Act without conditions or measures
• Fund housing and community development, not intervention
• Stop the compulsory five-year leases and restore Aboriginal land rights. Until these demands are met, we are asking for the help of trade unions and any other organisations to establish and maintain our new camp.

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Timeline of Indigenous and non-Indigenous history.

60,000 BP (Before present)	Two rock shelters in Arnhem Land show the earliest known evidence of human presence in Australia. This is 20,000 years earlier than the famous cave paintings in Lascaux, France.
43,000 BP	A man from the Lake Mungo area is buried in a shallow grave and covered with powdered red ochre. This is one of the earliest known burials of homo sapiens.
40,000–35,000 BP	A woman is buried in Lake Mungo: this is the earliest evidence of ritual cremation anywhere in the world.
30,000 BP	Oldest evidence of bread making in the world at Cuddie Springs, Western NSW.
29,500 BP	The ‘devil’s lair’, a cave in the southwest of Western Australia, was first occupied. Occupation ceased about 23,000 years later.
20,000–15,000 BP	In caves deep beneath the Nullarbor Plains, Indigenous people mine flint and leave grooved designs on the cave walls.
18,000 BP	Animals that are now extinct are depicted in art at Ubirr in Kakadu National Park.
12,000 BP	Tasmania is separated from the mainland following sea-level rises.
3,000 BP	Large trade networks transport stone axes across southern Australia. Axes mined at Mt William in Victoria reach.
1,451	Dutch documents record the journeys of Macassan trepangers (traders seeking trepang or sea-cucumber) to ‘Marege’, as the Macassans called Australia. The trade continues until 1906.
1768	Secret instructions to Captain Cook for his 1770 voyage state “You are…with the Consent of the Natives to take Possession of the Country”.
1788	Colonisation begins in eastern Australia.
1789	Bennelong, a young man of the Eora nation, is captured, and taken to live with Governor Arthur Phillip. He escapes, but after Phillip is speared in 1790, he reestablishes contact. Phillip builds a hut for him on the site of the Sydney Opera House. He is taken to Britain in 1792 but returns finding that he belonged to neither culture.
1824	Martial law is declared in Bathurst, NSW, after Wiradjuri people kill several Europeans. Armed Indigenous opposition is seen as a serious threat to white presence in the colony and martial law continues for several months.
1828	Black War begins in Tasmania.
1831–33	Yagan’s resistance campaign in WA.
1837	People involved in the anti-slavery movement, which by 1833 had successfully campaigned to abolish slaver
1860	John McDouall Stuart and his party enter Kaytetye country, in the area of modern Tenant Creek. Sponsored by the South Australian land speculators, they come searching for land to be taken by European pastoralists.
1911	The Federal Government takes control of the NT, dubbed the Commonwealth government’s ‘first intervention’
1937	National Native Welfare Conference adopts assimilation as national policy, stating “this Conference believes that the destiny of the natives of Aboriginal origin, but not of the full blood, lies in ultimate absorption by the people of the Commonwealth, and it therefore recommends that all efforts be directed to that end”.
1938	Indigenous people declare a Day of Mourning to mark 150 years since colonisation. Indigenous leader Jack Patten calls for change saying, “We, as Aborigines, have no reason to rejoice on Australia’s 150th birthday...We refuse to be pushed into the background. We have decided to make ourselves heard”.
1964	Charles Perkins and a number of white students launch the ‘Freedom Rides’, traveling through northwestern NSW towns by bus to highlight discrimination, such as segregated cinemas and whites-only swimming pools. The resulting publicity and the hostility of town residents forces some change.
1966	Gurindji people walk off Wave Hill station in the NT, owned by British Lord Vestey, where they worked for little or no money. Their protest leads to the modern land rights movement.
1967	Over 90 per cent of voters support a referendum amending discriminatory sections of the Australian constitution. As a result, Indigenous people are counted in the Australian census and the Commonwealth Government is given the power to make laws affecting them.
1972	The Aboriginal Tent Embassy calling for land rights is established outside Parliament House in Canberra.
1975	Racial Discrimination Act passed.
1976	Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser’s government passes the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act.
1988	Bicentenary of the colonisation of Australia. Tens of thousands of Indigenous people and non-Indigenous supporters converge on Sydney on 26 January as part of the ‘March for Freedom, Justice and Hope’. The largest Indigenous protest ever held in Australia, it celebrates Indigenous people’s survival and calls for change. In June, Indigenous leaders present Australia’s Prime Minister with the Barunga Statement, calling for self-determination.
1992	The Mabo decision of the High Court recognises that native title existed before 1788 and that it continues today.
2000	More than 300,000 people walk across Sydney Harbour Bridge in support of Indigenous rights and reconciliation.
2007	Little Children are sacred report released.
2007	The Northern Territory Emergency Response (NTER), also known as the intervention, is launched. While it offers more doctors, nurses, police, health professionals and anti-violence programs, the government also acquires Indigenous-owned land, and manages Indigenous peoples’ income regardless of whether they manage it well or not. Key policies of the intervention are only possible because the government suspends the Racial Discrimination Act.
2008	Prime Minister Kevin Rudd delivers the Apology to the Stolen Generations.
2009	Australia supports the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
2010	Changes to the intervention that partially reinstate the Racial Discrimination Act are introduced, however much of the intervention remains in place. The changes allow race-based welfare quarantining to continue; fail to restore the permit system and allow for the continuation of discriminatory measures such as compulsory lease acquisitions on Indigenous lands. They also fail to fully reinstate the Racial Discrimination Act.
2010	A new national organisation to represent Indigenous people in Australia is established.

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Discussing the issues: resources

Below are some useful internet resources on the NT intervention. A full list of web and DVD resources will be available when the resource is released.

Useful links on the intervention

• 'An entire culture is at stake', The Age, 13 July 2007
• ‘Aboriginal welfare’, The Age, 16 July 2007
• Australian Government website

Websites with information on indigenous rights

• Little Red Yellow Black Site, Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies
• Collaborating for Indigenous rights website, National Museum of Australia
• Q&A factsheets, Reconciliation Australia
• Australians for Native Title and Reconciliation
• Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice webpage, Australian Human Rights Commission

Indigenous media

• Koori Mail
• National Indigenous Times
• Message Stick
• Living Black

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Land and Indigenous Rights

Land has been and remains central to the relationship between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people in Australia. The issue of land brings into focus many of the unresolved human rights issues which have resulted from colonisation. For non-Indigenous people, facing these issues has often sparked a sense of guilt about what was done in the past, apprehension about economic issues and unfounded fears that their backyards are somehow vulnerable – that somehow what was done to Indigenous people will be done in return to those who have inherited the land that was taken away.

Facing the issues that arise from Australia's past is important, however it is also important to focus on the effects of government actions in the present. Indigenous leader Professor Patrick Dodson, known as the 'father of reconciliation' has stated in an article that criticises the Northern Territory intervention:

While large sections of Australian society can indulge in contemporary grief about past injustices inflicted on indigenous peoples, there is a pervasive silence about the policies of national, state and territory governments.

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Debates about land in Australian history

The Mabo decision

In 1992, the Mabo decision of the High Court recognised that Indigenous Peoples’ right to land existed before colonisation and that this right continues today. Opponents of the decision ran a scare campaign declaring that people’s backyards were under threat from land claims. In fact, Australian law recognises the security of private property, including people’s backyards. Native title claims cannot be made on land which is fully owned by someone else. It can only be recognised in the following areas:

• Vacant land owned by the government (crown land).
• Some national parks and forests.
• Some pastoral leases (where the pastoralist rents a cattle or sheep station from the government without owning the land).
• Indigenous reserves.
• Beaches, seas, lakes and rivers that are not privately owned.

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The Intervention: investigating the issues

"Community dysfunction is now understood as the fault of the colonised and their persistent cultural practices, rather than as a result of violent dispossession, brutal colonisation and authoritarian state Intervention..."

Professor Patrick Dodson, a Yawaru man from the Kimberley known as the ‘father of reconciliation’, former director of the Central Land Council and the Kimberley Land Council.

While the Northern Territory intervention has been justified in relation to meeting the needs of women and children, it has included far-reaching changes that affect Indigenous rights to land.

Changes made under the intervention allow the Federal Government to:

• Acquire land compulsorily in areas affected by the intervention under renewable five-year leases, which give the government exclusive possession of the land while the lease is in force.
• Abolish the permit system, which enabled Indigenous communities to control who came onto their land.
• Pressure Indigenous organisations to sign away land ‘voluntarily’ under five to 90 year leases as a condition for receiving government services such as housing and rubbish collection.

Governments are now proposing that small Indigenous communities living in homelands in the Northern Territory and other parts of Australia be relocated to larger towns.

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Indigenous rights to land: useful readings

This section in the chapter will feature the following:

• An extract from an article written by Professor Pat Dodson just after the Intervention was launched. The full article appears in the media section of this resource.
• Statement on the Northern Territory intervention by Richard Downs - the leader of the Ampilatwatja walk-off.
• Comments from members of Indigenous communities during government consultations on the NT intervention
• Lyrics to Thou Shalt Not Steal, by Indigenous Australian singer-songwriter Kev Carmody
• Transcript from the 7.30 Report, which provides an overview of the debate about basic government services being offered in exchange for leases on Aboriginal land.

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