Asia Times: March shows pressure for Aboriginal treaty


	May 30, 2000	atimes.com

Oceania

March shows pressure for Aboriginal treaty
By Bob Burton

SYDNEY - Despite stubborn resistance from Australian Prime Minister John Howard, popular pressure for the government to negotiate a formal treaty with Aboriginal Australia is mounting in the wake of a protest march here Sunday.

More than 250,000 people marched across Sydney's Harbor Bridge in support of Aboriginal reconciliation. The magnitude of the rally, 10 times bigger than the previous largest in support of Aboriginal reconciliation, stunned even the organizers who had predicted a crowd less than half the size.

In the wake of the rally the Australian Labor Party and minor parties in the senate have signalled likely support for the negotiation of a treaty with Aboriginal leaders.

While other Commonwealth countries including Canada and New Zealand have negotiated treaties with their indigenous peoples, it is a proposal the Australian government rejects. ''It implies two nations and I don't think many Australians like that,'' Howard said.

But the tens of thousands of people - some singing, some waving, some quietly pushing baby strollers - streaming across the Harbor Bridge is seen as a peaceful but powerful determination among the public to force the government to bend to public opinion.

At the rally, Aboriginal activists mixed with boisterous students, greying Anglo-Australians and people from Australia's many ethnic communities.

Aboriginal activists have been buoyed by the show of support from non-Aboriginal Australia. One of the early Aboriginal campaigners, an elated 83-year-old Faith Bandler, said: ''Reconciliation has changed a lot of hearts and minds, but it had also had a tremendous influence on the young people.''

Where many Aboriginal leaders were previously wary of advocating a treaty, Sunday's rally has emboldened them. The chairman of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission, Geoff Clark, has given calls for a treaty his support. ''There is no doubt that a couple of hundred thousand people have walked across the bridge and its sufficient mandate for the Prime Minister to go for a treaty,'' he said.

The rally followed a smaller formal handing over to Howard on Saturday of the statement on aboriginal reconciliation, drafted by the government-appointed Council on Aboriginal Reconciliation. The statement includes a call for a government apology for the earlier policy of forcibly removing Aboriginal children from their parents in order to assimilate them into white Australian culture.

While the policy of removing Aboriginal children ended in the 1960s, it is estimated that one in 10 Aboriginal families were affected. Today, many still do not know who their parents are, whether they are still alive or where their homelands are. The removal has created what is widely referred to as the ''stolen generation''.

In a stunning rejection of Howard's refusal to make an apology, a majority of the 2,000-strong audience of community leaders at the formal handover ceremony in the Sydney Opera House stood and turned their backs while Howard spoke. Others booed and heckled Howard as he insisted that the government supported ''practical'' reconciliation.

Faced with growing calls for a treaty, Howard has taken to the radio airwaves defending his refusal to apologize. ''I speak for the entire government on this. We don't think it's appropriate for the current generation of Australians to apologize for the injustices committed by past generations,'' he said.

Howard had previously rejected a formal apology on the grounds that to make one would be accepting ''guilt and blame'' for actions over which the current generation had no control. ''It wasn't this generation that did it,'' Howard said last week.

In a powerful speech to the weekend conference, Aboriginal leader Dr Mick Dodson ridiculed Howard's argument that the ''stolen generation'' was caused by some other generation of political leaders. ''Who did these things to my grandmother, my father, my mother and two sisters? Who was it that tried to take me from my kin in 1960? What generation do we look to if Mr Howard says it wasn't this generation? Where is this mythical group of Australians who made these laws, adopted these policies put them into practice. Who took the kids? I'm at a loss for an answer,'' he said.

While Howard's stubborn refusal to apologize to the stolen generation has frustrated the Aboriginal leadership, it has prompted a grassroots community campaign for Aboriginal reconciliation.

As the rally made its way across the Sydney Harbor Bridge Sunday, a skywriting plane sponsored by a handful of people wrote across the clear blue sky the word Howard could not utter. ''Sorry'', the skywriter wrote a half dozen times as the rally snaked its way across the bridge for more than six hours.

The grassroots movement is determined to press ahead with Aboriginal reconciliation in spite of Howard. Said Dodson: ''Let us not get hung up on this man's incapacity to bring himself to utter a simple human response to the suffering of others,'' he said.

''There are those who will come along and try to denigrate and obstruct reconciliation and our efforts,'' he said. Pointedly referring to Howard, he said ''we must try our best to bring them along on our journey. And, if they are not willing to walk with us, we must leave them behind,'' he explained.

While Howard endured a hall full of turned backs and heckling on Saturday, Dodson was given a sustained standing ovation.

(Inter Press Service)

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