Skepticlawyer

I was not brought up in any particular religious context. There’s not much standing on ceremony in my family. Still, if I ever go to someone else’s house, I try to make sure that I follow their traditions, whatever they may be. I just think that it’s the respectful thing to do. Secretly, just between you and I, sometimes ceremonies may seem pointless or boring to me, but if it’s important to someone else, I think I’ve got to sit there and take it on the chin. I think ceremony can actually be a very important binding process. It’s not just symbolism, it’s more than that.

The other day, Tony Abbott slammed Labor’s practice of acknowledging the traditional owners of the land before every speech. He said that it was “tokenism”. Now, there is a part of me that thinks if an acknowledgment becomes something which people do by rote, without really thinking about it, it is token. Sometimes I sigh inwardly when someone trots out the set phrases about traditional ownership without without much feeling, and I feel that they’d have been better off leaving it out if they were going to do it half-heartedly.

But nonetheless, I do think that there is an important symbolism inherent in the practice. It’s about acknowledging that this land was owned by others and that they were systematically dispossessed of that land. Acknowledging that fact is, to my mind, a really important step towards reconciliation. And we should remember it. Token and symbolic gestures bind us together and makes us closer.

The Hoydens have a really nice link round up of responses to Abbott’s statements. They highlight, in particular, an article by Noel Pearson in The Australian. Off-blog, SL and I decided that we think it is simply one of the best and most subtle newspaper opinion pieces we’ve ever read. Here is a large excerpt (emphasis added for the bits I particularly like):

Belatedly, our country will need to work out what place Aboriginal Australians will occupy within the nation-state of Australia.

This process will be complicated. At the heart of our challenge will be the question of how we reconcile the recognition of indigenous people within one nation where all Australians share the same indivisible citizenship, as Australians.

My view is that such a reconciliation is not only possible but necessary. Settlement of recognition will include many things: land issues and connection to land, solutions to economic and social issues, language rights and many other things.

There will be symbolism as well.

In each of these spheres, there is going to be compromise. The things Aboriginal Australians have won, the acknowledgments they have received, the concessions they have extracted from the all-powerful colonisers are few and fragile.

What we have managed to win back are remnants, and this will remain the case when the process of settlement is completed.

It is for this reason that I react instinctively against a debate about welcomes to country and acknowledgment of traditional owners.

Some acknowledgments may have been incorrect or tedious or silly or tokenistic.

But all that is unimportant. There is no problem with acknowledging traditional owners that is so big that anybody needs to make it a big issue, let alone be miserable about it.

We all see and hear things that make us cringe sometimes. The sensible thing is to be gracious and let other people do what they think is proper. You don’t have to do it yourself if you don’t agree.

It is not a bad development in Australian culture that traditional owners are acknowledged and that there is a welcome to country.

If you can’t sit through those few minutes or few seconds it is unlikely that you are only annoyed with the occasional political correctness or silliness of it.

It is legitimate to criticise specific instances of Aboriginal policies or Aboriginal behaviour, but it is highly problematic to make sweeping criticisms of the extent of Aboriginal Australians’ wins in any broad area, even a seemingly peripheral one such as symbolic recognition. If you do that you cross a line.

Acknowledgment of Australia’s indigenous people is only a fraction of what it should be.

This piece is just fabulous. I might think that some acknowledgments of indigenous ownership are silly, or token, but I’d never say that we should back down from that to less recognition. The main thing that worries me about token recognition is that sometimes, it is not followed up by anything more concrete. People think that they can make a token nice-sounding statement, and voila! everything is fixed. Whereas, of course, it is not fixed. Symbolic gestures are all well and good, but as Pearson notes, indigenous people do not have strong property rights in land. Native title is the most pathetic property right that there has ever been. It is so fragile as to be practically non-existent. The Courts and Parliament have watered it down so much that almost anything can extinguish native title. When I teach property law, I draw a scale of strength of property laws, and native title is right at the bottom. At the top is fee simple – the kind of ownership which most landowners have. Unlike indigenous people, we also don’t have to run around proving that we’ve not moved off the land and that we have an unbroken tradition.

There’s a few other points I really like about Pearson’s piece.  He emphasises that it’s really important to note that it is legitimate to criticise Aboriginal organisations, communities and individuals, and that it is legitimate to criticise policies in indigenous affairs and reconciliation. I know that some of my indigenous friends got really frustrated at some indigenous political figures who used to shout “racism!” every time someone criticised them, when, in the opinion of my friends, these people were very much deserving of criticism from blackfellas and whitefellas alike. Shouting “racism!” every time someone criticises you turns you into the boy who cried “wolf!” – the risk is that people tune out to your cries when real racism occurs (and it does occur).

All too often, it should be remembered that the resources thrown at the “indigenous problem” often don’t actually get to the people who need it most. It’s diffused among different levels of government, different bureaucracies at various levels, and tied up in red tape (take this recent story here, about the slow progress of houses being built in Groote Eylandt).

Coming full circle, recognition of indigenous ownership may be token, but at least it’s something. Ritual is important. Such ritual may help bind indigenous and non-indigenous people together. (In passing, I would have thought that a devout Catholic would understand the importance of ceremony and ritual. I’m sure that for some people, reciting Grace before meals is a token gesture, but would Abbott say that it’s worthless as a result? Personally, although I don’t say Grace myself, I think it is a positive thing to remember that we are blessed to have good food on the table.)

If people think regularly about the fact that indigenous people used to own this land, that is a positive thing. People may even become aware of the minuscule nature of the property rights indigenous people possess. It’s just simple manners to sit through an acknowledgment even if you think it’s token or silly. As Pearson says, Abbott doesn’t have to do it himself if he doesn’t want to, but he shouldn’t stop others from doing so if they want to do so. Why take that small symbol away from indigenous people? Rather I’d say let’s move beyond the symbolic and offer more concrete rights. Indeed, why not give indigenous people proper fee simple title, and then they can do as they wish with it, just as the rest of us can?

P.S. One of my bugbears since commencing blogging almost 4 years ago has been educating people properly about the nature of native title – NO – indigenous people can’t take your backyard! Grr.

Update: Interesting post and discussion on Pearson’s parallels between Jews and Aborigines at Larvatus Prodeo. Personally, I don’t think the analogy is far-fetched.