Conning us into Recognition
12/09/2023
We often hear from Yes supporters that they despair at the thought of waking up in an Australia where the ‘no vote’ has been successful. These so-called progressives are desperate to ignore the inconvenient truth of both No campaigns, which is that they reflect the reality of the Australian colony far more than the Yes campaign could ever hope to.
The ‘racist’ No campaign embodies the reality of this settler colony and reflects the ideological foundation and spirit of the Australian nation. It highlights the deeply vicious, anti-Indigenous sentiment that resides at the core of the Australian national identity. To be Australian is to accept the narrative about us as a dispossessed and defeated people, as boongs, petrol-sniffers and dole-bludgers, in need of care and control by the white man who knows best: It is to want to eradicate us, whether that be by extermination or assimilation. This is the reality that Yes campaigners refuse to reckon with, the reality too many Mob live with every day. A colony that kills us, that steals our children, that destroys our land, that poisons our water, blows up our sacred sites, throws us in prison and then tells us that we are the problem. It is a nation that tells us we do not belong on our own land.
The ‘progressive’ No campaign embodies the spirit of revolutionary justice by demanding we confront the history of the Australian nation. The Yes campaigners will do well to remember that this is a history that has never been reckoned with in any meaningful way. We do not want to be recognised by the colonial constitution. We do not want to be part of it at all. Those who say that this inclusion would be a meaningful step do not speak for us. We do not want reconciliation; we want a reckoning. When we say that First Nations Sovereignty was never ceded, we do not simply mean that our Spiritual Sovereignty remains intact regardless of the colony’s existence. We mean that we maintain our legitimate claim to the lands and resources of this continent and the right to determine our own lives and future and we do not recognise the Sovereignty of the illegal invader. We view the colonial federation as an occupying force whose existence to this day is predicated on the ongoing theft of our lands and the genocide of our people. Sovereignty is both our right to our lands and resources and our own self-determinate governance structures, and First Nations people have not ceded our Sovereignty.
The Yes campaign is living in an illusion, where Australia is a progressive nation, where unity can be found through democratic participation and racism can be addressed through voting. Some of the Yes campaigners attempt to justify a reluctant or coerced position by claiming that they are seeking to avoid future harm and promote inclusion. All too often it is those who are not at risk of harm preaching harm reduction, those who aren’t starving telling us to take the scraps we are offered. Labor, Noel Pearson, Marcia Langton, and their gang of bullies would have us all believe that this is Australia’s one chance to give First Nations people a step towards progress. To be told that our only chance of receiving any sort of help must come in a regressive conservative measure is nothing short of blackmail. The progressive veneer belies a sinister reality, which is that the campaign is funded by mining giants and stacked with LNP affiliates. The Voice body itself will be utterly powerless, with the ability to advise only, and on just a handful of issues. Right now, any single individual or any organisation can submit a representation to Parliament on any single agenda - but the Voice body won't even be able to do this because they'll only be able to submit representations on specific issues the government allows them to. It will have less power than any individual on the streets right now - and we are supposed to risk the threat to our Sovereignty for this? We are supposed to consent to being recognised by the very entity that destroys us in order to exist? We’re supposed to be grateful?
Protesting for self determination, a photograph from the ATSIC Melbourne office. Photo: Alick Jackomos. National Museum of Australia
Some people claim that the call for constitutional recognition is the culmination of decades of hard work and struggle by Aboriginal people. They often reference the 1995 ATSIC Report to Keating on Native Title Social Justice measures that recommended constitutional recognition. This is deceptive because the report called for sweeping social justice reforms and recognition was only one part of a wider range of recommendations and even then, only had partial support from First Nations people. It is misleading to extract constitutional recognition from the ATSIC report and claim it is what First Nations people have been asking for, because it was intended to be part of wider reforms that conferred much more power and control to First Nations people over our land and affairs. Constitutional recognition was meant to enshrine the rights derived from these grand reforms that were being proposed: Treaty, Land Rights, self-governance.
This idea being promoted today that First Nations people have been calling for constitutional recognition since back then is not accurate. We know that, because we know the history of the political movement was always about Land Rights, Treaty and Self-Determination. Political struggles are not fought over symbolic gestures. Our people did not fight and struggle so long for constitutional recognition, and certainly not for a form of it that confers us no authority over our own lives or our land. What is on offer today is not the culmination of our ancestors' struggles. Our people called for Land Rights, Treaty and enshrined political, social and economic rights - we did not call for recognition alone, and when we did call for recognition, it was purely to enshrine substantive enforceable rights. This entire aspect of our struggle has been ignored and swept under the rug.
Commonwealth Games Protest 1982 - Adelaide St Brisbane
None of these demands have ever been implemented. Instead, we have been offered symbolism, and a powerless advisory body.
The idea of constitutional recognition has had bipartisan support since its inception, and although its current iteration did not gain any traction until John Howard’s 2007 proposal, we can see in the 1990s that there were already two emerging distinct conceptions of what recognition means. It seems that Howard’s concept has prevailed - because that is what is on offer today, a symbolic gesture void of any practical power in any sense whatsoever. The distinction is clear and apparent: you have symbolic constitutional recognition on the one hand, which is what has political presence today, then on the other hand you have the idea of constitutional recognition of substantial rights and powers, as proposed in the ATSIC Report–and that was what was supported by some Mob in the 90s. It was still conservative in the sense that it proposed to reform the colonial law, but it was a major reform of the constitution by enshrining rights for First Nations people and is substantial in comparison to what is being proposed today.
The two things are very different, and we must be clear about that: being “recognised” could make absolutely no difference to our lives whatsoever, or it could make an enormous difference. The Black Peoples Union does not endorse or support constitutional recognition, but it does support free, prior, and informed consent for our people when voting on our political future. If we are being told that we only have one shot to amend the constitution to recognise us, then right now, we have opted for the weakest form of recognition, that gives us the least amount of power and protection. There are Yes campaigners telling us that this is self-determination. Self-determination means control over our own social, political, and economic affairs. This proposal is not the self-determination asked for in the ATSIC report, nor our Land Rights movements, nor at the regional dialogues, nor in the dictionary definition - it does not allow us to determine our own affairs, only advise on them.
There has always been a soft and a radical approach to Indigenous politics, but if you really look at the history of the movement; the Tent Embassy, the Land Rights movement, the refusal to cede Sovereignty - this is the mainstay of our political movement, our movement has never been about reform. Treaty was what we were talking about in the 1980s, it still was in the 90s, and then we had Mabo. This is where a split really emerged - we have people like Noel Pearson and Marcia Langton rallying behind John Howard’s Native Title reforms, and then we have people like Gary Foley, Chicka Dixon and Michael Mansell who were always critical of native title and its divide and conquer impact on our people. There were the radicals who opposed it, and then there were those who supported it – an emerging class of First Nations people who were close to government and took the softer approach of reform, foregoing the concrete demands of economic rights and Land Rights that characterised our struggle.
Alan Sharpley (holding the sign) and John Newfong (far right) at the Aboriginal Tent Embassy in Canberra
This is where constitutional recognition is situated; within the reconciliation era, the soft approach orchestrated by the Pearsons and Langtons that calls for us to unify and assimilate into the colony. This is what we are seeing play out today, and in the same way that Native Title was a devastating attack on the Land Rights movements, constitutional recognition will be yet another attack on our struggle for our land and our self-determination. The colony is telling us what our place is: the only “Land Rights” they will give us is Native Title and the only “self-determination” they will allow are powerless advisory bodies and symbolic recognition in their constitution.
So, what is the Uluru Statement From The Heart?
The answer to this begins back in 2015, when then LNP Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull established the Referendum Council – a collective of hand selected First Nations people sitting alongside former LNP ministers and staffers, joined by a small handful of Labor ministers responsible for selling off public assets, and executives from mining and energy conglomerates. This Referendum Council was tasked with “talking to Australians about changing our Constitution to recognise our Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples".
In the lead up to the Yulara Convention, twelve Regional Dialogues and one information day were held across the continent. This consultation is boasted as being the most in-depth consultation of First Nations people to have ever taken place; the sad reality however is that the greatest consultation to have ever taken place involved 0.1% of our population from only a mere twelve of our 250+ individual Nations.
A document released earlier in the year as a result of an FOI request shows what First Nations people asked for at these regional dialogues - designated seats in parliament, tangible Land Rights, Self-Determination, and Treaty. No one had asked for a powerless voice to parliament to be enshrined in the constitution, and where there were mentions of a parliamentary body it was specifically stated each time that it would need to have more than just advisory capabilities, and instead would need to have the power for First Nations people to introduce their own legislation and amendments and veto proposals that could negatively impact First Nations lands and communities.
The Referendum Council then held the Yulara Convention, where they deliberately excluded many prominent and dedicated activists, leaders, and campaigners from attending.
Despite the exclusions, many of the people at the Yulara Convention still walked out in protest at the way the Convention was being held, specifically, that First Nations people present didn’t actually get any input on the wording of the Uluru Statement and instead had to choose between taking what was being offered by the Referendum Council, or nothing at all. Those that chose to stay and sign the Uluru Statement signed a blank canvas that was filled in later by the Referendum Council with emotive language that has no real material calls for progress or empowerment, just constitutional recognition wrapped up in a pretty package.
Noel Pearson pictured with the blank USFTH
To fully understand why the government’s push for constitutional recognition came about, we need to go back to the early 1990s. The Aboriginal Land Rights campaign was a strong and successful political movement. It had gained traction and widening public support in the 80s, and it gained even more power in the 90s with the 1992 Mabo decision, which exposed the legal fiction of terra nullius. Sovereignty, Land Rights, compensation, and justice were all at the forefront of both First Nations and the Australian public’s consciousness and for the colonial government, that was dangerous.
So, what was needed to rein in these threats to the colony? Firstly, the Australian government introduced the concept of Reconciliation, “let’s just all get along, unity is the most important thing above all”. Then in 1993 they introduced the Native Title Act, the weakest form of Land Rights in a western legal system. These two bones were thrown to First Nations people — and effectively drained all of the radical and revolutionary energy from the Land Rights movement, sucking it into the damaging and lengthy legal processes of making a Native Title claim.
In 1999, John Howard first supported the proposal for a preamble in the constitution to recognise First Nations people. And then, in 2007, after instituting the Intervention, John Howard put forward the proposal himself that the colonial government would recognise First Nations people in their constitution.
John Howard, excerpt from “The Right Time: Constitutional Recognition for Indigenous Australians”
These events - intervention and recognition - indicate, apparently, two polar opposites in intention. One, on the face of it, is an apartheid-style military occupation of First Nations communities. The other, on the face of it, sounds progressive and is framed by the government as a gift for Aboriginal people. Putting forth the idea of constitutional recognition at this time, was not merely a sinister, cynical ploy to divert attention away from the crimes being committed against First Nations people under the Intervention, although it was that too. It was also a further step in the conservative efforts to rein in what had been a strong and successful political movement. Constitutional recognition has bipartisan political support because ultimately it benefits the colony and only the colony.
Constitutional recognition is not a First Nations idea – just like Native Title and reconciliation are not First Nations ideas. These are three hugely significant instances of non-Indigenous ideas taking up the entire room of Indigenous political struggle, supplanting the Land Rights movement and diverting energy into the native title claims process. Reconciliation softens the strength and potency of the Land Rights and Sovereignty claims by diverting attention to vague notions of unity and incrementalism. Constitutional recognition may not have made any traction until 2007, but its genesis was in the conservative reaction against the Land Rights movement and in that context its ultimate goal can be seen — it is not a vehicle for progressing First Nations Rights, it is a vehicle for halting them.
The reality is Australia does not exist. It is an illusion; a handful of American and British companies in a trench coat. This government commits some of the worst human rights abuses in the world, against our very own people and against those seeking refuge at our land’s shores. In fact, it would be fair to say that Australia is one of the most racist, classist and immoral developed nations in the world. Don’t believe us? Go and compare any social or health statistic for Mob with any other group anywhere else in the world. First Nations people suffer under some of the world’s worst conditions - highest incarceration and deaths in custody rates, highest rates of several chronic illnesses, SIDS, and suicide, highest missing and murdered women and children rates, and the highest rate of homelessness just to name a few.
Australia is home to the largest racial genocide in known history, where 98% of not just a culture, or a religious group, but 98% of an entire race was murdered. And Australia still denies the allegation of genocide while trying to force us into their constitution. Australia's recent history includes a massacre in the 1970s, atomic bomb testing on First Nations communities alongside the US, and racial slavery as recent as 45 years ago, long after the US abolished it. The country still disproportionately targets First Nations people in the criminal and family courts. Politicians prioritise spending on corporate bailouts and military ventures while scrutinising us for a predicament they not only put us in but keep us in. And thanks to a corporate monopoly owning the newspapers, TV stations, radio stations, and other mainstream media, the vast majority of Australians are completely oblivious to their own nation’s backyard, content in the “lucky country”.
The Constitution is not a progressive document, and this state is not a progressive nation that we can be proud to be included in.
Voting Yes to a proposal that First Nations people have already said no to three times will do nothing to reckon with the racist and violent reality of Australia. The British landed on these shores 235 years ago and the colonial states federated into the modern nation of Australia 122 years ago. As it does in every nation, the time has come for so-called Australia to mature and reckon with its history and the reality of what it is today. This is not going to happen if a Yes vote gets up, and we spend the next two years having a public debate about the form and substance of the Voice body. It is not going to happen through representatives in government buildings, NGOs and corporations deciding what is best for us. We, as First Nations people, have already been subject to abuse and vilification throughout the referendum campaign. Until we have substantially addressed the racism that lies at the core of this nation it is irresponsible to throw us under the bus in a culture war for a powerless body and recognition that we don’t want.
Yes campaigners are out of touch with reality if they think a No vote is going to embolden racism. We are already ‘given too much’, according to racists, so we’re sure you can imagine the outrage that awaits us if First Nations people are given our very own constitutional Voice in modern-day colonial Australia; a nation where Nazis can openly sieg heil on the steps of Parliament under police protection and where First Nations children are run down in cars driven by grown men. The reality is, a No vote won’t change the way things are, but it will force the Yes campaign and its supporters to reckon with the reality that Australia isn’t ready for this kind of change and that serious steps need to be taken before any kind of legal action concerning the political future of First Nations people is attempted again.
So, what should we do when we wake up in an Australia where the No vote has won?
We should continue to voice our demands for self-determination, and we should continue building a mass movement to help us enforce them. The reality is that First Nations people can never place our liberation into the hands of our oppressors, the colonial government. We will never be given an option to vote our way to freedom. The very survival of the colony depends on the continued exploitation and oppression of our people and lands. As a start, we need to demand Truth Telling across this continent. We need an end to the theft of our babies and the locking away of our children. We need to stop the murder of our people at the hands of police and lynch mobs, and we need to take police guns out of communities. We need to eradicate poverty, illiteracy, and poor health from our people's reality. We need to demand reparations for slavery and stolen wages, and ultimately, we need to take back the land and natural resources that are rightfully ours.
These are things that can only be achieved through a Pan-Aboriginal movement with our allies by our side where we have enough strength as a united political force to effect real change. The government bodies, NGOs and corporations that have been working to ‘reduce the gap’ in statistical outcomes for First Nations people have a lot to answer for, as that gap has only widened each year while their pockets have grown fatter. We must call this betrayal out for what it is. We cannot place our faith or our future in the hands of a neoliberal colony whose every aspect and function reproduce the conditions for our oppression and destruction.
As for the rest of Australia, there is a reckoning with the truth that needs to occur before First Nations people are ever asked to risk our Sovereignty again. There is a sickness and a trauma that lies at the heart of the Australian nation. This wound needs to be addressed and reparations need to be made. To those who consider voting Yes to be a progressive stance, we hope that you consider our analysis in good faith and come to see the Voice as the meaningless, regressive, consolation prize that it is. Because our bottom line is this: We will no longer accept poisonous scraps and feel-good platitudes from the colony; and we will no longer tolerate fear of the truth. Australians must reckon with the reality that this continent is our Sovereign land, and it has not been ceded.