The Makarrata Project

The Way of the Ancestors and how it can help us hear The Voice

Retrieved on: 
星期二, 十月 3, 2023
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The book opens a window into the private Aboriginal world of law, justice and politics.

Key Points: 
  • The book opens a window into the private Aboriginal world of law, justice and politics.
  • But the thrust of The Way of the Ancestors goes deeper into the law governing human relationships, authority, justice, reconciliation, and the settling of grievances (Makarrata).
  • Already published are those on Songlines, Design, Country, Astronomy and Plants, with an edition on Innovation to be released shortly.
  • Indeed, for the first time the outside world is permitted to glimpse the deep concepts, practices, and emotions of a way of living that sustained 2000 generations.

Building ‘moral muscle’

    • The colonisers’ common law, while containing provisions respecting individual rights, was largely intended to protect property and good order.
    • The constitution they constructed for Federation, explicitly excluded First Peoples, along with Chinese and other non-Europeans, from citizenship.
    • Indigenous law’s purpose is not to protect the wealth, power, and property of the leadership class.
    • The capital of Indigenous society is intellectual and moral, not material, and the law is about proper behaviour towards other people and the natural world.
    • Indigenous Law has evolved to ensure the wellbeing of the society by building the inner wellbeing of individuals and collective wellbeing.
    • The Yolungu see this as the building of “moral muscle”.

Managing emotions

    • Central to traditional life is learning to manage emotions, feelings that can be both productive and hideously destructive.
    • One strategy is the use of Pitjantjatjara/English fridge magnets containing the words for around 50 emotions in both languages.
    • Senior women had observed that young people, especially young males, could not express their emotions in either their own language or in English.

Before the Barunga Declaration, there was the Barunga Statement, and Hawke's promise of Treaty

Retrieved on: 
星期五, 六月 23, 2023
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This week at Parliament House during Barunga Festival, four NT Land Council representatives presented Prime Minister Anthony Albanese with the Barunga Declaration.

Key Points: 
  • This week at Parliament House during Barunga Festival, four NT Land Council representatives presented Prime Minister Anthony Albanese with the Barunga Declaration.
  • Signed by the four NT Land Council representatives, the declaration calls on Australians to vote “yes” in the upcoming referendum for an Indigenous Voice to Parliament.
  • NT Land Council representatives Dr Samuel Bush-Blanasi (Northern Land Council), Matthew Palmer (Central Land Council), Gibson Farmer Illortaminni (Tiwi Land Council) and Thomas Amagula (Anindilyakwa Land Council) brought the Barunga Declaration to Parliament House.

Treaty ’88 and the Barunga Statement

    • The Barunga Statement was the outcome of years of careful deliberation and discussion.
    • It was delivered from “the Indigenous owners and occupiers of Australia”, requesting the Australian government legislate for national land rights and begin treaty negotiations.
    • It also called for laws for a national elected Aboriginal body, and recognition of customary law by police and justice systems.
    • The Barunga Statement was presented during a time where there were increasing calls for a treaty.
    • The Treaty ’88 campaign declared that Australia was invaded by a foreign power with no treaty.

‘Treaty by 1990’

    • However, others have highlighted the reconciliation movement’s departure from treaty.
    • Playwright Wesley Enoch and actress Deborah Mailman’s play 7 Stages of Grieving includes a poem emphasising instead the “wreck”, “con” and “silly” in reconciliation.
    • This would symbolise the burial of hopes for a treaty, saying
      Sovereignty became treaty, treaty became reconciliation and reconciliation turned into nothing.

To properly consider the Voice, we need to look to how we got here

    • However, the Voice aims to address a key problem that recreates disadvantage: First Nations’ political power.
    • First Nations peoples have long sought representation to seek particular rights to land, culture and heritage, language, self-determination and self-governance.
    • The referendum for a Voice is the first of a three-part sequence of reforms, outlined in the 2017 Uluru Statement, followed by treaty and truth-telling.