On white politics for Blak people
Ideas like The Voice to Parliament, that non-Indigenous people have cooked up for our supposed betterment, are an ideological battle ground that we have been forced to fight on.
I originally wrote the draft of this article prior to the campaign for the referendum of The Voice to Parliament being announced. Originally this article was about the Reconciliation movement, the failed Recognise campaign and why these are both campaigns that I believe Blakfullas should not have to have anything to do with. That even having anything to do with them is a part of the colonisation project. These ideas; The Voice, Reconciliation, Recognise and other movements that non-indigenous people have cooked up for our supposed betterment are an ideological battle ground that we have been forced to fight on and that are demonstrably filled with traps.
To understand my stance on the topic you need to know about who I am as a person, so that you can have contrasting context with your own;
I was born in 1988 in a country town in New South Wales on Wonnarua/Gamilaroi country. I am Gamilaroi and Darug, I also have Dutch, Scottish and have heritage that can be traced back to the First Fleet. I grew up in a small country town in QLD on Ngarabal/Bigambul/Gamilaroi land. I was born as a First Nations person on occupied territory and I live as a First Nations person on occupied territory. My pronouns are he/him. This is the reality of my existence.
I founded and I run a First Nations non-for-profit organisation, registered with ORIC under The Corporations (Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander) Act 2006 (CATSI Act). The organisation was recently approved as a charity under the Australian Charities and Non-for-profits Commission Act 2012 (ACNC). I co-founded a private entity that is by my own design a profit-or-purpose business model - a business that is able to make partnerships with other businesses and organisations and leverage them to make (what I see as) positive change in the world; including this publication.
I am also a writer, artist, composer, podcaster and I run these as for profit businesses as an individual. All of what I do in these businesses is within the laws and system of the British colony currently known as ‘australia’. As an artist I describe myself as an aspirational political futurist.
I am not an expert on economic, political or social issues. I am however a lived experience expert in being ‘Aboriginal’ and in understanding my place in relation to the state of ‘australia’.
Subtext: I believe that the logical outcome of growing up in the society that I was born into has left me without any other path than the one I am currently on. To do anything else would be unconscionable.
For additional context when I use ‘I’ in the following writing I mean ‘I’ in the first person, when I say ‘we’ (We) I mean First Nations people living on this continent. When I say we I do not mean to speak of a pan-Aboriginal experience nor do I mean to speak for each and every single person in the collective First Nations people living on this continent. Within each cultural and social group there are those who oppose social structures and political ideologies. When I say We I mean to say what I as an individual believe is in the best interest of the collective we.
I feel that this is incredibly important in terms of positionality and determining the legitimacy of my position in contrast to the position of the reader, so that the reader can know where I am coming from and position their perspective in relation to my own. I hope with this context you will be able to understand my perspective even if you don’t agree with it.
This statement of positionality is not something I would normally make in the context of something like this article. However, this being my first article for this publication that may go wider than my current sphere of influence I feel it is important to give people this statement to know where I, a Gamilaroi man, am coming from.
We no longer have generational ownership over the lands on which we live. This is a fact and a hard one. Our lands are occupied territory, they were taken by people whose descendants now control the use of those lands. We continue to live and survive here even under the continued threat of state violence. We have lived under this threat since the illegal occupation of ‘australia’ began.
I was born into a culture that has had its fundamental human rights taken away from it before I was even born.
As part of the illegal invasion (conquest) and occupation of this continent the invading force (England) established themselves legally and economically as the privileged class within the continent; ignoring generations of societal structures already in place. The invading force systematically assigned themselves a monopoly of the land ownership and also appointed a priesthood from within their own cultural ranks. Alongside this priesthood they put themselves in control of education and every facet of society's functions as well as creating a system of values that favoured them over the ‘conquered’ culture. As you can probably surmise from this paragraph there is an inherent issue of power, control or agency within this enforced societal structure.
In 1991 the concept of reconciliation was introduced into the national conversation with regards to Aboriginal and non-indigenous relations. This was enshrined in the wake of the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody as a formal government act that Australian Parliament unanimously voted for (Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation Act 1991).
At surface level, reconciliation and ‘The Voice’ is a fine idea. Delving any deeper though, these are concepts that we (First Nations people) were sold, by non-Indigenous people in positions of power whose aim it is to keep that power. Taking reconciliation as the example the modern reconciliation process is really still in its infancy, the timeline on the Reconciliation Australia website details that the National Reconciliation Planning Workshop was held and attended by the Prime Minister (John Howard) and the Leader of the Opposition in 2005 (Either Kim Beasley or Mark Latham). Neither three of these old, white men have a personal stake in true reconciliation. In fact they have more to gain by faking a process of reconciliation and continuing to profit and maintain power within their social and political circles.
Like other First Nations people have put forward before me, reconciliation is not for First Nations people to enact. Reconciliation is the responsibility of non-Indigenous people to be done on the terms of First Nations people. Non-indigenous people don’t get to dictate the framework or the terms of the reconciliation in the same way that they don't get to gaslight the Stolen Generations by saying ‘Sorry is not the hardest word to say. The hardest is ‘I forgive you’ (Scott Morrison, 13th February 2022 on the 14 year anniversary of the Apology to Australia’s Indigenous People).
True reconciliation action in practice would require at very least all of the following three things:
Truth Telling
‘australia’ as a state still doesn’t recognise a lot of the injustices that were forced upon us. ‘australian’ politicians, government bodies and institutions continue to attempt to control and maintain narratives of colonial neutrality that inherently benefit the state. This represents a conflict of interest in any practise of reconciliation from the perspective of the state and constitutes corruption. There can be no real reconciliation without recognising and enshrining the true version of history by this illegally occupying force. There is 250 years of history of illegal occupation that needs to be accounted for.Divesting of Power (land)
In addition to Truth Telling to rebalance the scales of injustice that is inherent within our society, control of land, power and decision making needs to be assigned back to First Nations people. Having land and the opportunity to utilise the resources that come with that land will allow First Nations people to compete on an even playing field with the occupying force. We need to be able to benefit from the resources of land. Whilst some measures have been enacted, through the Aboriginal Land Rights act, there are too often caveats and the scope of getting land back is too narrow. There is currently too little divesting of power along with land back.Agency (Self Determination)
Alongside Truth Telling and Divesting of Land First Nations people need to have Agency to make decisions about our own future. We are currently a part of the ‘australian’ constitution illegally. No treaty was ever entered into between ‘australia’ and any of the First Nation’s nation groups. The achievement of reconciliation is not possible without negotiations of treaties with each and every First Nations nation group and for those nation groups to be able to once again be free to handle their own affairs with tribal and cultural rights and authority.
Truth Telling, Divesting of Power & Agency would need to happen to a level that First Nations people are content with for them be successful. We would need to decide the metric for their success and application.
We can’t even begin the process of ‘reconciliation’ until we can have self determination because the very act of reconciliation is being practiced under false pretences. ‘australians’ live on illegally stolen First Nations land. First Nations people pay tax to an illegal state that has legal control over them.
Once this is fixed we can start to enact true reconciliation processes, for example;
We should have the opportunity to reinvigorate our cultural-religious practices at the same level that western organised religion is practiced with on par tax implications
We should have control over (all) our lands and cultural monuments and they should no longer be under threat of destruction by corporations and the state.
We should be able to run our own education systems
We should be able to run our own government/ political structures and collect tax from the people who are currently living on our land
We should be able to run cultural practices as an organised religion without threat of persecution and receive the same protections as current religious organisations do
We should be remunerated for past injustices, use of land and the exploitation of our land as a resource. The profits from said land exploitation since occupation should be immediately transferred to First Nations control (with interest)
A ‘Voice to Parliament’ is not something for non-Indigenous people to allow. It’s not a constitutional change that should be voted on by every person on this continent. Similar to the calls during the Same Sex Marriage Plebicite for it to not be up to anyone however the First Nations claim to this is even greater. The constitution and the federation of the nation currently known as ‘australia’ is a state set up on illegally occupied territories.
Even the premise of how The Voice has been positioned is incredibly problematic. There have been calls for proponents of The Voice to stop using the name Uluru. We have seen calls from the National Party that they will not support it because The Voice won’t Close the Gap (that other government movement that we’re meant to be happy about).
We are backed into a corner to either vote Yes and continue to assent to our Voice being at the control and behest of successive non-Indigenous governments or we vote No and are in the same corner as the racists and the people who would use the No vote as permission to continue their racism to greater heights. And all of this does not even begin to touch on the effect that this is having of First Nations people mentally through this process (if another white person slides into my DMs or asks me in person my thoughts on The Voice I may punch them - take this as fair warning) although the government has budgeted some additional money for mental health support for Indigenous people during the course of the campaign…
Currently I can foresee that non-indigenous advertising companies will be given the contracts to roll out the campaign for the Yes (and No) votes. The budget allotment for the referendum itself is $365 million, including $10.6 million just for information pamphlets. This is an indictment of the way this process has rolled out so far and will continue to roll out. Any tangible benefit from the process will go to the few Aboriginal people who are on board as propped up figureheads and spokespeople and the non-indigenous commercial companies on Non-government organisations that are in charge of the money.
Any vote for Yes or No is completely flawed from the premise. First Nations people have a much stronger position in denying our assent to the process.
There can be no continued process of actual reconciliation and no real governmental change without ensuring both; that First Nations people are able to negotiate the terms of that reconciliation from a place of equal power to the ‘australian’ state & that England makes a treaty or sets up a new constitution within a contractual framework that is agreed by each and every First Nations tribal group (Nations) on this continent.
In practice of course, this is ‘too hard’.
This essay borrows some words from Albert Einstein’s Why Socialism from the first issue of The Monthly Review (May 1949). It also extrapolates on some of the words from (what I believe) is a First Nations perspective, giving them context from the point of view of someone with my positionality. One of the key sentences I would draw on from that publication to round out this piece is; Man can find meaning in life, short and perilous as it is, only through devoting himself to society.
I, like every other human being, is not given a choice into which society they are born into. Some of us are born into privilege and others are not. This is a fundamental way of the world. What makes us valued members of society is what we choose to do with our time on this planet. For me as a Gamilaroi person who recognises the simple truth that the society we live in isn’t the society we should be living in, that the world does not work in a way that is just or fair; I have chosen to devote myself to shaping society around me with the hope to achieve a start towards positive social change. I have chosen to do that in way that I personally believe will affect change.
I believe that the discussion of alternative modes of societal function outside of the current dominant western constructs is the clearest path to achieve this, along with the discussion of the practical application of theory. So much of what we are asked to do by non-indigenous organisations is to speak on these subjects and give them (and their audiences) the answers.
In this time of attempted mass mobilisation of non-Indigenous involvement in what should be First Nations business, through political movements that if successful, will do nothing more than advance the profile of key individuals within the campaign. The founding of this journal as a First Nations space for the advancement of Blak Thought, Theory and Practice without the hindrance of non-indigenous interference is, I consider an important public service.
