Mick Dodson: too much unfinished business ails the reconciliation process

By SIMON KUPERMAN

There is a mass of "unfinished business" hurting his people – and that riles Mick Dodson, one of Australia's most important Indigenous leaders.

"They took children away, they took culture away, they took language away, and moreover they took land, without consent and without fee. Now those things were wrong, and virtually nothing has been done about it,” he said. 

“Reconciliation is a process that will go on from generation to generation … it doesn’t really have an end point, each generation will take it a little bit further.”

Professor Dodson – the Vice-Chancellor’s Professorial Fellow at Monash University – was speaking ahead of the Annual Reconciliation Lecture at the Melbourne Town Hall on May 18. 

The prominent academic, lawyer and indigenous rights activist said that when it came to reconciliation, the theft of the land had to be addressed. 

• From the 1967 Referendum to the Mabo decision to what can we do now – for the FULL TEXT of this wide-ranging interview, see below

“One of the fundamental problems in this country is that we need to address what we Indigenous people called unfinished business. And the biggest bit of unfinished business is the way in which the non-indigenous people came by the country,” he said.

“The British came in what was effectively an invasion ... and proceeded over 200-plus years to disperse and decimate the Aboriginal population, to slaughter thousands of people, to wage war against the first Australians.

Prof Dodson said that everything was taken – children, language, land – and little had been done to fix it. 

"There hasn’t even been an apology – you know we’re sorry we stole your land off you, we stole your kids, we stole your culture, we killed your language, we’ve taken over your land and all it’s resources, we dominate your waters, we locked you up in reserves tantamount to concentration camps. You put us to labour without salary, we were effectively slaves. You wouldn’t allow us to enjoy citizenship or even identity, and we’re grieving about that and you’ve done nothing about it."

Land remains a central issue. “The theft of the country ... that's in my view the biggest obstacle to a reconciliation. There are a myriad other things that have flowed from that dispossession,” he said.

There was more unfinished business he identifies, including “solid recommendations that get ignored” from the myriad inquiries, reports, surveys and investigations that have been held.

It’s the “promise of a social justice program that’s never been delivered”, first offered by then prime minister Paul Keating.

“There's all this unfinished business everywhere, and until we have a plan, a strategy, and perhaps that could be done through a treaty, let’s do the constitutional change and then let’s sit down and negotiate.

“Why don’t we have a treaty to work out how the rest of the country intends to treat Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders as equal citizens in this country and let’s deal with all this other stuff while we're sitting down. In that process let’s talk about the question of sovereignty and how we might in our own communities and in our own societies, share that sovereignty, we need some political power.”

Professor Dodson spoke of the Closing the Gap report, which details the ongoing divide between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people in education, health and employment and the philosophical problem he sees.

“By concentrating on the gap, we’re forgetting what’s happening outside the gap,” he said. 

“Take smoking, for example. The gap between Aboriginal smokers and non-Aboriginal smokers is large", but the work being done to reduce the rate of Aboriginal smokers has been quite successful, having in recent years dropped by 10 per cent.  

“Let’s not concentrate on the gap, let’s concentrate on what we did right there to get that 10 per cent drop and let’s do more of that, rather than pull our hair out about this gap.”

Professor Dodson was also speaking as the First Nations Convention was being held at Uluru – a culmination of meetings held around the country by the Referendum Council. 

The aim was to reach broad agreement on how to "recognise" Indigenous Australians in the Constitution, with these recommendations to form the crux of a referendum in 2018 to recognise Indigenous Australians in the constitution.

He said he supported the recognition of Indigenous Australians as the first Australians and as equals in the constitution. He also backed the idea of a constitutionally mandated Indigenous body to advise and consult the parliament on Indigenous affairs, and reserved seats in Parliament for Indigenous people.

However, he said he was sceptical if these ideas could be sold to the Australian electorate.

“I’m not opposed to the idea of putting things in the constitution ... but how do we get it in there politically, what’s the reality that we can achieve that politically?”

“One thing I know for sure, if we put up a proposal to a referendum that the voters reject, that’d be devastating, it would be devastating, it would worsen relationships, it would derail reconciliation, and we’d be back to square one."

Ideally, he said, he’d like “as a part of our right to self-determination", more autonomy and self-government for Indigenous Australians, particularly in regions where they’re the major land holder.

Well the biggest resistance is people don’t accept this as part of our history. There’s still this crazy notion that somehow Australia was peacefully settled, which is nonsense, it was an invasion and a war was waged."

Language is also important. He would like to have every local primary school give children an introduction to the local Aboriginal language.

This year is also the 50th anniversary of the referendum, in 1967, that granted the vote to Aboriginal people. 

Prof Dodson spoke of the incredible amount of “discriminatory practices, policies and laws that governed and dominated aboriginal people’s lives”, that all existed within his lifetime.

“The removal of children, those policies and practices were still active and being implemented. There was control over people's jobs, movement, property and money ... It was almost impossible for an Aboriginal person in the '60s, to own property outright ... you weren’t allowed to manage your wages, they were managed by the ministry.

“The '60s was the mark of a time when public policy was charging ahead to assimilation, that was the buzzword. A lot of those laws have disappeared, I don’t know whether the attitudes have.”

A major barrier to making things better is those attitudes, and a reluctance to accept history.

"The biggest resistance is people don’t accept this as part of our history. There’s still this crazy notion that somehow Australia was peacefully settled, which is nonsense, it was an invasion and a war was waged."

But still, he has hope that things can improve. “I’m always an optimist,” he said. 

From the 1967 Referendum to the Mabo decision to now – the full text of this wide-ranging interview 

Simon Kuperman: To start with, looking at what you're speaking about tonight, part of it is your recollections of the 1967 referendum, can you just briefly touch on that now? What was the atmosphere in Australia like, the public attitude towards it, etc?

Professor Mick Dodson: How old do you think I am? So I was 17 when the referendum was on, I was still at school. I don’t have any specific memory about it. I think it was mentioned in the school, I was at boarding school. I really don’t honestly have an independent memory what happened, I have no idea what the atmosphere was like, I wasn't involved in it, I was oblivious to it really. It wasn’t until subsequently, probably when I got to university that I became interested in it, particularly when I was doing my Law degree and studying constitutional law. At the time (1967), really I didn’t know about it, I more worried the following year as I was in the Vietnam draft. I was eligible and had to register the following year (1968) and the ballot was the year after that 1969, and I didn’t get called up. 1967, you had to be 21 to vote, it wasn't til Vietnam that they reduced the age to 18. So, I don’t have any independent memory of it (1967 referendum), all my knowledge of it is subsequent, I wasn’t involved at the time. I was at a quiet Catholic boarding school in western Victoria, that was apolitical. That’s probably not true either, I think they leant towards the DLP.

SK: At the time were you aware of any of the issues that the referendum was dealing with, such as how Indigenous Australians weren’t counted in the census?

Prof Dodson: No I had no knowledge of that whatsoever, just wasn’t one of those things we were taught at school.

SK: Before the final ruling in the Mabo case in 1992, was the Australian public aware of the significance that it was going to have, or was it only after the ruling was handed down?

Prof Dodson: Oh I think some people knew that if the decision fell in favour of the plaintiffs, that would have repercussions for Australian property and Australian property law. You know I wouldn’t say most people, but a lot of people were aware of the potential repercussions of a decision in favour of the plaintiffs. At the time (the case began), I was working at the Northern Land Council as a Senior Legal Advisor dealing in land claims, so it was something in the forefront of my mind, but when the decision was made I was actually the CEO of the Land Council. We were having a Land Council meeting a Daly River when the decision came through. We used to fax machines back then, I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of a fax machine.

SK: What the media and public reaction to the decision?

Prof Dodson: My recollection was that there wasn't sort of, immediate panic, because people had to absorb what the judges had said. Some people had said things that were pretty outrageous who hadn’t read it, including future Prime Minister John Howard, who later confessed that he hadn’t read it before he opened his mouth. A lot of people were mouthing off about it who hadn’t read the judgement. There’s nothing legally radical about this decision, it’s a sound decision, but the that reactions came after, I wouldn’t say well after, from industry, particularly the mining industry, people such as the mineral council, the farmers federation, pastoralists, a range of vested interests, there was a lot of scaremongering going on. Some of the more outrageous commentators were suggesting people were going to lose their backyards, which is just silly and cowardly in lots of ways because it was designed to generate fear which was totally unnecessary.

SK: Looking more to reconciliation, what significant changes in the relationship between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians, and that movement towards reconciliation, would you say you’ve seen in your lifetime?

Prof Dodson: Well things have certainly improved since I was a lad, you know in my lifetime there were pretty oppressive laws that applied to Aboriginal people. In the ‘67 referendum, there was an organisation called FCAATSI, it had a big role in the campaign for the Yes vote in the 67’ referendum. Bob Menzies the Prime Minister, invited the people who were working, Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal, who were working for the Yes campaign, to Parliament House for a reception. You know there was finger food and alcohol, and someone from, I forget, might have been his own department, pointed out to him that it was illegal to serve alcohol to Aborigines, and Menzies who was silk, he was a Queen’s Counsel, he didn’t know that. Though sorts of laws were around in '67, the removal of children, the laws that applied to that, the policies and practises were still active and being implemented. The segregationist laws about people on reserves, missions and government stations. There was control over people's jobs, movement, property and money. It was almost impossible for an Aboriginal person in the '60s, this is in my lifetime, to own property outright. Certainly you weren’t allowed to manage your wages, they were managed by the ministry. There was still a lot of discriminatory practises, policies and laws that governed and dominated Aboriginal people’s lives. A lot of those laws have disappeared, I don’t know whether the attitudes have.

The '60s was the mark of a time when public policy was charging ahead to assimilation, that was the buzzword, that was the policy approach by government federally, and in the states and territories, which the feds largely controlled, particularly the Northern Territory and the ACT. In those days, there was no self government in the ACT. There was a legislative council, I think, in the Northern Territory which had no power whatsoever, it depended on what the Ministry for Territories said. The laws were widespread and they were mainly, with the exception of the Northern Territory, they were state laws, they were still part of the old protection acts that arose from the British select committee looking at the situation of natives in the colonies back in 1837. Victoria was actually the first colonial government to pass protectionist laws in 1869. Those laws persisted right into the '60s and in Queensland, the final bits of what was known as the Queensland Act, which was the Sale of Opium and Protection of Aborigines Act, didn’t get repelled until 1984. Most of the nasties had been taken out of it by then, but the laws of the land were a total violation of people's humanity in a sense, but certainly their human right and fundamental freedoms were not apparent.

SK: Does reconciliation have an end point? How would we measure reconciliation?

Prof Dodson: No, reconciliation is a process that will go on from generation to generation. I’m gonna say a bit about this tonight, but you know it doesn’t really have an end point, each generation will take it a little bit further. One of the fundamental problems in this country is that we need to address what we Indigenous people called unfinished business. The biggest bit of unfinished business is the way in which the non-Indigenous people came by the country. What happened in 1770 and 1788, we have a legitimate grievance about that. The British came in what was effectively an invasion they planted their flag, they too the country in the name of the King, said it was theirs, and proceeded over two hundred plus years to disperse and decimate the Aboriginal population, to slaughter thousands of people, to wage war for almost a hundred years against the first Australians.

They took children away, they took culture away, they took language away, and moreover they took land, without consent and without fee. Now those things were wrong, and virtually nothing has been done about it. There hasn’t even been an apology, you know we’re sorry we stole your land off you, we stole your kids, we stole your culture, we killed your language, we’ve taken over your land and all it’s resources, we dominate your waters, we locked you up in reserves tantamount to concentration camps. You put us to labour without salary, we were effectively slaves. You wouldn’t allow us to enjoy citizenship or even identity, and we’re grieving about that and you’ve done nothing about it.

You know the word reconciliation has an ordinary English meaning in the English language, and if you do something wrong to someone, reconciliation is about fixing that wrong, and making up as best you can to fix the wrong, but there’s not even an attempt here. The approach to reconciliation from the non-Indigenous perspective is okay provided that the non-Indigenous have to do anything, like addressing the theft of the country. So that‘s the biggest piece of unfinished business, that's in my view the biggest obstacle to a reconciliation, and we need to face up to that historical fact and start addressing it. And there are a myriad other things that have flowed from that dispossession, and they need to be addressed to because there's a herd of elephants in the room that people keep not seeing, willfully not seeing in some instances.

We could address that through a number of things, proper constitutional change, our constitution practically doesn’t treat indigenous people as equal to every other citizen in the country, so proper constitutional change that treats us as equal citizens. Addressing the myriad of inquires and reports and surveys and investigations that we’ve had, that sit rotting on a shelf in some darkened room. The Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, the Bringing Them Home report, there’s health and medical reports, there’s reports about housing, there's reports about child care, there's reports about this, there’s reports about that, mostly commissioned by government, mostly done rigorously and professionally, coming up with solid recommendations that get ignored. So that’s another pile of unfinished business we seem to be capable of addressing.

Of course in the post-Mabo settlement, using that term loosely, because it wasn’t truly a settlement, the prime minister Paul Keating said well this is what I can do, this is what I can’t do. Well can we talk about the things you can’t do and he said no they're off the table, and that’s not a proper negotiation, but he did promise a social justice program that’s never been delivered. So that’s another piece of unfinished business, there's all this unfinished business everywhere, and until we have a plan, a strategy, and perhaps that could be done through a treaty, let’s do the constitutional change and then let’s sit down and negotiate. If the constitutional change says yes, Aboriginal people and Torres Strait Islander people are equal citizens in this country, let’s sit down now and why don’t we have a treaty to work out how the rest of the country intends to treat Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders as equal citizens in this country.

Let’s deal with all this other stuff while we're sitting down, and in that process let’s talk about the question of sovereignty and how we might in our own communities, our own societies, share that sovereignty. We need some political power, we need to share some of that political power otherwise it’s gonna be same old same old. Until we get to the heart of it, which I think those things are, the unfinished business represents, we’re not going to get true reconciliation. We might get friendlier, we might do some nice things together, we might do some significant things together, but until the fundamental grievance and legitimate grievance of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders peoples of the way in which non-Indigenous Australia came by the country, until that’s dealt with, there’s going to be no true reconciliation.

SK: What’s the ideal way you’d like to see the unfinished business dealt with?

Prof Dodson: Well the biggest resistance is people don’t accept this as part of our history. There’s still this crazy notion that somehow Australia was peacefully settled, which is nonsense, it was an invasion and a war was waged. We were getting people massacred into the late 1920s, 80-90 years ago we were still slaughtering people. Police possies going out and shooting up Aboriginal people, that’s part of our history. That’s why I told you the story about Bob Menzies, he was an eminent Queen’s Counsel who didn’t know what he was doing in entertaining the pro-Yes people on the referendum, that he was breaking the law by supplying alcohol to the Aboriginal people of those. Talk about inequality, that was probably one of the first great coming together of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people, at a National level to fight together for an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cause, but they weren’t equal people in that room. It was probably the best illustration as to why we needed to demonstrate that, and they did it in spades, that Aboriginal people weren’t treated equally, because that’s how the campaign ran. I’ve found that out subsequently because of my own readings and research.

SK: You mentioned future constitutional amendments, I’m assuming you’re referring to the recognise campaign that you're involved in?

Prof Dodson: No I’m not involved in it. Everybody says that to me and I’m not involved in it. I was employed last year to be a facilitator in three meetings. There was one meeting in Broome, where I was a facilitator, I wasn’t necessarily a participant. There was a meeting at Port Kennedy, which is Thursday Island, and there was a meeting in Melbourne. That’s it, that’s the only involvement and that was all last year. I haven’t been involved in any of these regional consultations, I’m not invited to the thing in Uluru, I’ve had nothing to do with it. I’ve got no idea what people have been saying, I know what people said in the three peak meetings last year, but I haven’t been involved since.

SK: There’s been quite a lot of talk about it recently, Noel Pearson proposed a constitutionally mandated Indigenous body to advise and consult the parliament on Indigenous affairs, to be included in the referendum, what are your thoughts about the proposal?

Prof Dodson: Yeah it’s a good idea, but it’s not going to get up. Just look at the history of referenda, we’ve had forty four, eight have succeeded. I think only two of those eight were proposals to put words into the constitution, Noel’s proposal is to put words into the constitution. Six out of the eight were to take words out of the constitution, people feel a little easier about that then putting words in. I think any sort of elaborate, re-drafting of the constitution won’t get up, I think it’s politically impossible.

We’ve got two problems, we’ve got a problem where people don’t trust the politicians and we don’t know how to do incrementalism. We Australians want everything solved in one hit, and Indigenous Australians aren’t that much different. I’m very much an incrementalist, let’s try this out and see how it goes, if we need to adjust it or amend it or review let’s do that. Let’s not wait till we agree on everything, otherwise, it becomes a very long game and that was the ‘67 referendum, it was a very long game. It probably started in the Day of Mourning in 1938 in Sydney, because some of the people there in ‘67 were the children of the people involved in the Day of Mourning protest in 1938. One of them I think was Faith Bandler said, because she was central to the group that got together to run the campaign in the 60s, that it’s a long game and it’s a long game because we Australians lack trust in each other, particularly trust in our politicians, perhaps because they’ve let us down so often.

We (Australians) want everything nicely packaged and tied up in a bow, well that’s not really going to get us any progress, because we’re gonna fight about the packaging, we’re gonna fight about the shape of the box, we’re gonna fight about the ribbon we use, we’re gonna fight about the colour of that ribbon. Before we even think about what’s inside the box and what benefit it might deliver. That’s what’s happening in this process, I can see it. I don’t know if I’m right or wrong, but one thing I know for sure, if we put up a proposal to a referendum that the voters reject, that’d be devastating, it would be devastating, it would worsen relationships, it would derail reconciliation, and we’d be back to square one. So I think we’ve got to think very carefully about what’s proposed. It’s a bit weird anyway because no one knows what the question might be.

SK: Yeah there was the initial expert panel that delivered its set of recommendations for changes to the constitution under the Gillard Government in 2012.

Prof Dodson: Then there was the Select Committee as well, then there was Parliamentary report, Senate report and now there’s a referendum council and it’s got the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander members going off doing these consultations which is culmination in this big convention in Uluru next week. The Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition have been invited and they’ve declined to go, which I think is very good. I think that’s a very good decision on their part. They weren’t invited to the convention, they were invited to come at the end when I guess they’re hoping there will be some sort of statement that they want to deliver to Government and the Opposition.

SK: You mentioned greater political representation, other nations have dedicated seats for Indigenous people in their Parliaments, would you support a similar system in Australia?

Prof Dodson: Yeah, I mean I don’t oppose these things, I don’t not support them, but I think they’re unrealistic, politically at the moment in Australia, they won’t float. It’d be great if we had, as a part of our right to self-determination, more autonomy and self government, particularly in regions where we’re the major land holder. You don’t need to base self government on territory or land ownership, it can be territorial based, but not land based, if you understand what I’m saying. You don’t have own land to run a form of government over it.

SK:  Forgetting pragmatism for a moment, in your ideal situation, what would you like to see?

Prof Dodson: Well we now have in the Federal Parliament more Aboriginal – I don’t think we’ve got Torres Strait Islander, but we’ve got more Aboriginal – representatives in the Federal Parliament now than we’ve ever had in the history of the Federal Parliament. You know I’m not opposed to the idea of having reserved seats, but I don’t know if politically you can sell it. I’m not opposed to the idea of putting things in the constitution, like Noel Pearson’s idea, I think that’s a very good sound idea, but how do we get it in there politically, what’s the reality that we can achieve that politically. I think it’s slim, but I hope I’m bloody wrong about that.

SK: On a more micro level, local and community level, what can non-Indigenous Australians do to contribute to reconciliation?

Prof Dodson: Why do non-Indigenous people always ask us that question? Well it’s up to you is my answer. I can’t tell you what you ought to do. You know get out there and talk about it, talk to your friends about it, study Australian history in the last 220-odd years, read some more, go and volunteer in an Indigenous organisation, donate money to a charity supporting Indigenous kids, I dunno know. My reaction, and this is not a criticism of you, because a lot of people ask me this question, I think it’s a very lazy response. You tell me what I should do, I don’t have to do any thinking or lift a finger, that sort of thing, I want to be spoon fed. Anybody that asks me that question, I answer just about the same way I’m answering you, without trying to be offensive.

SK: The annual Closing the Gap report this year has shown that progress has stalled or in some cases even gotten worse, with only one of the seven major goals being on track to being achieved (within the given timeframe). Is there certain initiatives or policies that you would support or advocate being implemented to close the gap?

Prof Dodson: Well I think firstly there’s a philosophical problem here. By concentrating on the gap, we’re forgetting what’s happening outside the gap. Take smoking for example, the gap between Aboriginal smokers and non-Aboriginal smokers is large. I forget what it is, but it’s huge, it's like I think 16-18% percent of the general population smoke, you know there’s 82-84% who don’t smoke. Aboriginal population, it was 68%, it’s down to 58%, it’s dropping, but the gap’s roughly the same. So you look at the gap and say oh shock horror, we’re not closing the gap. The gap’s closed by you know 0.8% or something, but it’s nevertheless closed by a little bit. What about that 10% that gave up smoking and what about the 42% that now don’t smoke. What did we do to get that smoking rate down by 10%. Let’s not concentrate on the gap, let’s concentrate on what we did right there to get that 10% drop and let’s do more of that, rather than pull our hair out about this gap.

The good thing for the country, is both the rates are dropping, the non-Indigenous rate is dropping, the Indigenous rate is dropping and by a lot more. 10%, if you’re doing that every year you’re gonna get it down to the National rate within five years, and how many lives might you save from that. I think it’s problematic to concentrate on the gap if you’re forgetting about the good things you’re doing outside the gap, and say well look this is actually reducing the rate of smoking by 10%, shit we ought to be doing more of that. Look at allow the other indicators that you’re measuring and where there’s improvement and say, what did we do right here? Bang let’s do some more of that, let’s speed it up, let’s put more resources into that because it’s obviously working. Let’s forget about the gap for now, because that’ll close if we keep doing the right things to bring the rate down. So I think we should be looking at the rate, rather than the gap and see how we’re getting the rate to drop.

SK: The NAIDOC Week theme this year is languages, what do you feel can be done to preserve Indigenous languages?

Prof Dodson: There’s lots being done already. I don’t speak my language fluently, my language the Yawuru language from Broome Western Australia, but you know our language we’ve got a language and culture centre that we’ve set up as a part of our Native Title settlement. Night classes are taught in the language for anybody who wants to come along, and a lot of white fellas do it, lot of other Aboriginal people who aren’t Yawuru do it. Lot of people who are non-Yawuru who work for Yawuru do it, because Yawuru we have a certain level of language competency necessary to work for Yawuru. You need to at least know the greetings, protocols and things like that. It’s taught in two of the Primary Schools, a lot of kids take it, Indigenous and non-Indigenous kids. There’s a lot of that happening around Australia, there’s lots of rural schools around the country that teach from the full on language course to rudimentary courses in Primary Schools. Years ago, the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies did the dictionary project to record all these languages. The ANU has language thing going now for Aboriginal languages.

I mean there’s lots of things happening, we shouldn’t think oh God the languages are gonna go, actually there's lots of language revival going on, and lots of preservation language going on, lot’s of work around getting language out there. My desire would be to have every local Primary School in the country to have either a full term of classes or a whole year of classes for kids that you're gonna get an introduction to the local Aboriginal language. You need people to put the dictionaries together, put the teaching age together, to put all this paraphernalia to the kids so that they can learn, and why not, why shouldn’t they (all learn the local Aboriginal language). Perhaps it’s an opt in opt out thing, because we still have a problem with racism in this country. Tell the parents your kid doesn’t have to do it, but we’re gonna offer it, we’re gonna offer it to kids who want to do it. As with everything, there’s a lot more that could be done, but we shouldn’t fall into the trap of thinking that nothing’s happening.

SK: So you’re optimistic about the future?

Prof Dodson: I’m always an optimist, I’m still thinking the Swannies might be able to make the eight.