Is reconciliation a lost cause?
By Wayne Applebee
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In the lead up to reconciliation week, Monitor is running a series of columns by members of the University about what reconciliation means to them. Indigenous student Wayne Appleby launches the series. Next week senior student equity adviser Leonie-Ruth Acland discusses the language of reconciliation. |
1 May 2007: What does reconciliation 2007 style mean'?
To Indigenous people it means a return to the dark ages of 200 years of subjugation lies and deceit, a roll back of hard won rights. The Howard government did not stop with the destruction of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders Commission (ATSIC), it usurped the important legal decisions concerning The Indigenous Native Title Act, Mabo, and Wik. Our culture and life's infrastructure has steadily been left in tatters with a legacy of deprivation and injustice. In what could only be described as a cynical joke these important decisions to reconcile indigenous Australia with long overdue equity and justice was virtually legislated into oblivion by the Howard government and his blatant denial of our rights.
What does reconciliation mean to someone with chronic health problems, no prospects for work and living in third world conditions. Indigenous Australians know what we have always known, reconciliation is nothing without the more important considerations of political, economic and social justice and power and the mundane basic everyday rights to have jobs, decent housing, health care, and education.
The walk for reconciliation across the Sydney Harbour Bridge is a distant memory for Aboriginal people and those that supported us, what is left, is the collective conscience of a society that has lost its way. It was a time of hope but it was shattered under the Howard government before it had a chance to grow; or was it yet another cynical calculated effort to toy with our legitimate expectations.
| "We have no economic, political or social power and our efforts to gain these have for over 200 years been thwarted by successive Governments" |
Aboriginal people no longer need say what does reconciliation means for me, better we say, what does it actually mean to you Australia? Aboriginal people are powerless. We have no economic, political or social power and our efforts to gain these through legitimate channels and through mediation have for over 200 years been thwarted by successive Governments. What Howard has done to overturn our legitimate rights is indicative of a (not so covert) racist regime, more prone to existence in the third world or some foreign dictatorship.
What we continue to suffer is open racism of the highest order and this alone should bring condemnation and sanctions from World Leaders, United Nations and economically powerful Multi-National Corporations. This precedent was set in the apartheid days of South Africa, and should be set again against Howard.
This author labours under no illusions that full and true reconciliation is as far away as ever before.
