Aboriginal Land Rights Quotes

James Tully, an authority on indigenous rights, spells out the historical implications: land used for hunting and gathering was considered vacant, and ‘if the Aboriginal peoples attempt to subject the Europeans to their laws and customs or to defend the territories that they have mistakenly believed to be their property for thousands of years, then it is they who violate natural law and may be punished or “destroyed” like savage beasts.

[A]rchaeologists and prehistorians constructed the archaeological record to scientifically vindicate the colonialist notions of savagery and staged progressivism to leave little doubt that Indigenous peoples, particularly ‘hunter-gatherers’, represented primordial man … [and that archaeology] has little to do with the rigors of science and all to do with a colonial ideology and a … public that wishes to find scientific support to legitimize colonial dispossession of Aboriginal lands and to delegitimize contemporary Aboriginal claims to Native Title rights.

It is not even remotely a matter of rehabilitating the Aboriginals, or finding them a place in the chorus of human rights, for their revenge lies elsewhere. It lies in their power to destabilize Western rule. It lies in their phantom presence, their viral, spectral presence in the synapses of our brains, in the circuitry of our rocketship, as 'Alien'; in the way in which the Whites have caught the virus of origins, of Indianness, of Aboriginality, of Patagonicity. We murdered all this, but now it infects our blood, into which it has been inexorably transfused and infiltrated. The revenge of the colonized is in no sense the reappropriation by Indians or Aboriginals of their lands, privileges or autonomy: that is our victory. Rather, that revenge may be seen in the way in which the Whites have been mysteriously made aware of the disarray of their own culture, the way in which they have been overwhelmed by an ancestral torpor and are now succumbing little by little to the grip of 'dreamtime'. This reversal is a worldwide phenomenon. It is now becoming clear that everything we once thought dead and buried, everything we thought left behind for ever by the ineluctable march of universal progress, is not dead at all, but on the contrary likely to return - not as some archaic or nostalgic vestige (all our indefatigable museumification notwithstanding), but with a vehemence and a virulence that are modern in every sense - and to reach the very heart of our ultrasophisticated but ultra-vulnerable systems, which it will easily convulse from within without mounting a frontal attack. Such is the destiny of radical otherness - a destiny that no homily of reconciliation and no apologia for difference is going to alter.

as the years go by, the circle of the Ojibway gets bigger and bigger. Canadians of all colours and religion are entering that circle. You might feel that you have roots somewhere else, but in reality, you are right here with us. I do not know if you feel the throbbing of the land in your chest, and if you feel the bear is your brother with a spirit purer and stronger than yours, or if the elk is on a higher level of life than is man. You may not share the spiritual anguish as I see the earth ravaged by the stranger, but you can no longer escape my fate as the soil turns barren and the rivers poison. Much against my will, and probably yours, time and circumstance have put us together in the same circle. And so I come not to plead with you to save me from the monstrous stranger of capitalist greed and technology. I come to inform you that my danger is your danger too. My genocide is your genocide.

One idea that has been repeatedly tested is that low mood can make people better at analyzing their environments. Classic experiments by psychologists Lyn Abramson and Lauren Alloy focused specifically on the accuracy of people’s perceptions of their control of events, using test situations that systematically varied in how much control the subject truly had. In different conditions, subjects’ responses (pressing or not pressing a button) controlled an environmental outcome (turning on a green light) to varying degrees. Interestingly, subjects who were dysphoric (in a negative mood and exhibiting other symptoms of depression) were superior at this task to subjects who were nondysphoric (in a normal mood). Subjects who were in a normal mood were more likely to overestimate or underestimate how much control they had over the light coming on.7 Dubbed depressive realism, Alloy and Abramson’s work has inspired other, often quite sophisticated, experimental demonstrations of ways that low mood can lead to better, clearer thinking.8 In 2007 studies by Australian psychologist Joseph Forgas found that a brief mood induction changed how well people were able to argue. Compared to subjects in a positive mood, subjects who were put in a negative mood (by watching a ten-minute film about death from cancer) produced more effective persuasive messages on a standardized topic such as raising student fees or aboriginal land rights. Follow-up analyses found that the key reason the sadder people were more persuasive was that their arguments were richer in concrete detail (see Figure 2.2).9 In other experiments, Forgas and his colleagues have demonstrated diverse benefits of a sad mood. It can improve memory performance, reduce errors in judgment, make people slightly better at detecting deception in others, and foster more effective interpersonal strategies, such as increasing the politeness of requests. What seems to tie together these disparate effects is that a sad mood, at least of the garden variety, makes people more deliberate, skeptical, and careful in how they process information from their environment.

In his 1996 annual report, Max Yalden, head of the Human Rights Commission of Canada declared, once again, as he has for the past nine years, that the most pressing human rights problem facing Canada is the plight of its First Peoples. The successes associated with mainstream Canadian society continue to elude the aboriginal peoples dispersed across Canada; an overwhelming number of aboriginal peoples live in third world conditions in one of the most affluent nations in the world. During the nine years in question, and indeed since the dawn of white settlement in Canada, the aboriginal peoples have not been passive recipients of all that successive governments have meted out. Aboriginal peoples have fought and continue to fight for a foothold in Canadian society; for political, social, legal and economic equality; to be heard, to be recognized, and to be treated as equals in a society that has, by both subtle and blatant means, relegated them to the margins. In spite of all that has occurred, aboriginal peoples continue to survive in Canada. And that achievement in and of itself is quite remarkable in face of the many attempts to destroy, subdue, control and subjugate them. Furthermore, the natural resources of which the aboriginal peoples were once the only users and guardians continue to be expropriated and exploited without compensation. When the resources being expropriated are on lands under treaty negotiations, the expropriation has been accelerated by companies eager to get as much wealth from the resources as possible before the lands are “won” under land claims agreements by aboriginal groups.

The Colonial Office maintained that land speculators such as the New Zealand Company were a threat to Māori, hence the need for the Crown pre-emption clause of article two. However, rather than protecting Māori, Crown policy based on pre-emption became an effective means of divesting Māori of their lands. Indeed, during Crown colony rule and under the Liberal government, millions of acres were acquired for Pākehā settlement. The privilege of protection was not just about protecting Māori land rights, it was also about amalgamating Māori into settler colonial society. It was envisaged that English law would eventually supplant Māori custom. At first the Crown sought to do this gradually through ‘official’ privileges such as the Protectorate of Aborigines (to ensure Māori interests were taken into account in land transactions) and the Native Exemption Ordinance (to utilise the authority of chiefs in disseminating British law). Pre-emption, the Protectorate of Aborigines and the Native Exemption Ordinance were in essence tools of amalgamation.

The idea of discovery and consequent possession is used by those with neither the intelligence nor sensitivity to see the value in lives other than their own. Anyway, there is no need to possess anything when there is access to everything. It is only when someone says that your mother belongs to them that there is a problem.

In the narrative of the left, Australia was a boring outpost of the British Empire until Gough Whitlam became prime minister, formally ended the White Australia policy, instituted multiculturalism and gave Aborigines land rights. Whitlam’s brief government was certainly a cultural watershed, but not everything that happened before 1972 is irrelevant and not all that happened afterwards is admirable. Australia was never quite the antipodean England of left-wing mythology. People from Africa, Asia and many of the countries of Europe were aboard the early convict fleets, as would be expected in a representative sample of London’s jails. In the 1830s, after the Myall Creek massacre, white men were hanged for the murder of Aborigines. Among the Gold Rush influx were thousands of Chinese, quite a few of whom stayed after the gold they’d chased ran out. The first decade of Australia’s national existence, which brought the passage of the ‘White Australia’ legislation, also saw our first Chinese-speaking MP, Senator Thomas Bakhap.

One evening Steve and I didn’t feel like cooking, and we had ordered a pizza. I noticed that I was a bit leaky, but when you are enormously pregnant, all kinds of weird things happen with your body. I didn’t pay any particular attention. The next day I called the hospital. “You should come right in,” the nurse told me over the phone. Steve was fairly nearby, on the Gold Coast south of Brisbane, filming bull sharks. I won’t bother him, I thought. I’ll just go in for a quick checkup. “If everything checks out okay,” I told them at the hospital, “I’ll just head back.” The nurse looked to see if I was serious. She laughed. “You’re not going anywhere,” she said. “You’re having a baby.” I called Steve. He came up from the Gold Coast as quickly as he could, after losing his car keys, not remembering where he parked, and forgetting which way home was in his excitement. When he arrived at the hospital, I saw that he had brought the whole camera crew with him. John was just as flustered as anyone but suggested we film the event. “It’s okay with me,” Steve said. I was in no mood to argue. I didn’t care if a spaceship landed on the hospital. Each contraction took every bit of my attention. When they finally wheeled me into the delivery room at about eight o’clock that night, I was so tired I didn’t know how I could go on. Steve proved to be a great coach. He encouraged me as though it were a footy game. “You can do it, babe,” he yelled. “Come on, push!” At 9:46 p.m., a little head appeared. Steve was beside himself with excitement. I was in a fog, but I clearly remember the joy on his face. He helped turn and lift the baby out. I heard both Steve and doctor announce simultaneously, “It’s a girl.” Six pounds and two ounces of little baby girl. She was early but she was fine. All pink and perfect. Steve cut the umbilical cord and cradled her, gazing down at his newborn daughter. “Look, she’s our little Bindi.” She was named after a crocodile at the zoo, and it also fit that the word “bindi” was Aboriginal for “young girl.” Here was our own young girl, our little Bindi. I smiled up at Steve. “Bindi Sue,” I said, after his beloved dog, Sui. Steve gently handed her to me. We both looked down at her in utter amazement. He suddenly scooped her up in the towels and blankets and bolted off. “I’ve got a baby girl!” he yelled, as he headed down the hall. The doctor and midwives were still attending to me. After a while, one of the midwives said nervously, “So, is he coming back?” I just laughed. I knew what Steve was doing. He was showing off his beautiful baby girl to the whole maternity ward, even though each and every new parent had their own bundle of joy. Steve was such a proud parent. He came back and laid Bindi beside me. I said, “I couldn’t have done it if you hadn’t been here.” “Yes, you could have.” “No, I really needed you here.” Once again, I had that overwhelming feeling that as long as we were together, everything would be safe and wonderful. I watched Bindi as she stared intently at her daddy with dark, piercing eyes. He gazed back at her and smiled, tears rolling down his cheeks, with such great love for his new daughter. The world had a brand-new wildlife warrior.

Here it is worth repeating the headlines: Residential schools. Limitations on religious freedom through the banning of ceremonies, of potlatches, of the right of spiritual leaders to travel. The bogus rule claiming that First Nations people needed permission to travel. Banning First Nations people from using lawyers. The underfunding of Aboriginal education. Interference in the use of their land. The steady removal of land by a variety of dubious methods. Etc. Etc. Etc. In other words, governments, one after the other, have used their power to betray the Honour of the Crown.

The argument by white and black Australians that the events of 1788 are primarily to blame for the plight of many Aborigines is far too negative. The solutions which have been proposed — massive land rights, white confessions of guilt and the granting of hereditary privileges to Aborigines — essentially look backwards. Moreover, the solutions are based on a version of history which is much less valid than its exponents believe.

The Irish-Indians, who were of dark complexion, would many times claim to be Black Dutch or Black Irish and deny their rightful Indian descent in order to stay in their aboriginal lands.

For just as it is impossible for anyone to be any more or less human at any stage of his own existence, so it is impossible for him to be either more or less human than any other human being. Thus, in essentials the unborn child is the same as you and I, differing from us only in such non-essentials as size and ability, even as you and I differ from each other without lessening the humanity of either. So it is in recognition of their common and invisible humanity that we say all men are equal, subordinating to that equality all the differences in degree between one person and another. And it is because of their common humanity, with its attendant dignity and uniqueness, that we say men may not be used as a means to an end, may not be enslaved or otherwise exploited, may not be killed for the sake of expediency. In the light of this understanding of equality, it is impossible to justify the abortion movement, which would make the differences of the unborn child the basis for denying him the equal protection of the law. If lack of maturity makes him expendable, in principle there is nothing to prevent our declaring that other deficiencies make other persons expendable. Our enslavement of the blacks resulted from just such a denial of their full humanity. The Nazi atrocities resulted from calling an entire people defective by birth. The early settlers of Australia systematically shot the Aborigines for the land and resources they coveted. Defining preborn children out of the human race is no less illogical and callous.

Dubbed depressive realism, Alloy and Abramson’s work has inspired other, often quite sophisticated, experimental demonstrations of ways that low mood can lead to better, clearer thinking. Compared to subjects in a positive mood, subjects who were put in a negative mood (by watching a ten-minute film about death from cancer) produced more effective persuasive messages on a standardized topic such as raising student fees or aboriginal land rights. Follow-up analyses found that the key reason the sadder people were more persuasive was that their arguments were richer in concrete detail. If people who are in a sad mood sometimes assess the world quite accurately, people in a “normal,” healthy mood may be less in touch with reality. At least some data suggest that people in a normal mood can be prone to positive illusions, overconfidence, and blindness to faults.

Eric flipped through Cook’s journal to the strange incident in which native men took umbrage at the sight of captive birds and turtles. “It’s no longer true that Aborigines live at one with the land, but in those days it was so,” Eric said. “The belief was that all creatures deserve life, each have a place in the world. If a bird or kangaroo got away when you were hunting, the attitude was ‘Good on him, he’s got his rights too.’ Also, you only hunted what you needed for that day; you didn’t take more than you needed.