In the meantime, the government has repeatedly reiterated its commitment to “practical reconciliation” by implementing “new arrangements” in indigenous affairs. They include the abolition of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (Atsic), the creation of a government-appointed National Indigenous Council, the “mainstreaming” of indigenous service delivery and the signing of nearly 100 shared responsibility agreements (SRAs). Also in train are reforms to indigenous land ownership and the community development employment programme (CDEP).

A contested past

This is not to say that the government is completely averse to symbolic expressions of reconciliation. If you walk between the high court and the national library in Canberra, you may come across seven very stylish “slivers” commemorating the contributions of indigenous Australians to the life of the nation. But Reconciliation Place was initially designed and constructed without the direct involvement of any indigenous representatives, and was criticised for whitewashing the “stolen generation” issue – involving claims for justice and recompense by the thousands of descendants of indigenous children forcibly taken from their families and placed in state institutions and foster homes – through its failure to depict the emotional trauma involved. Efforts are apparently afoot to make it more substantial and visible, but in terms of national symbols it’s a token gesture.

While there are still many local reconciliation groups around the country, and Australians for Native Title and Reconciliation (Antar) continues to campaign hard on issues such as the return of stolen wages, anecdotal evidence suggests that in the absence of national leadership, popular support for reconciliation has waned, and most state reconciliation councils are receiving little support from their respective governments.

Overall, it’s a melancholy picture. As former governor-general and Car chair Sir William Deane said in March 2005: “In the years since Corroboree 2000, relations between Indigenous Australians … and our nation seem to me to have significantly deteriorated.” Few people outside the government would disagree.

It is easy to blame John Howard, who has consistently opposed anything other than practical measures to improve indigenous disadvantage. On this front, the impact of the government’s new arrangements is too early to assess, with a productivity commission report in mid-2005 concluding that “(in) all areas, the gap between the experience of Indigenous peoples and other Australians is still wide.” Even if they are ultimately successful in practical terms, the new arrangements have been imposed by Canberra in what many indigenous leaders say is a return to the old days of paternalism and assimiliationism.

The government, however, is motivated by popular opinion as well as ideology. Opinion polls have consistently shown that while the majority of Australians are willing to accept that indigenous people were mistreated in the past, they are divided as to whether disadvantage today represents continuing mistreatment or is rather the fault of indigenous people themselves. They are certainly not in favour of apologising for the actions of people long dead, and do not see themselves as perpetuating racism and exploitation by their lifestyles and attitudes. In addition, John Howard’s government has done a sterling job of associating an apology to the stolen generation with personal and legal responsibility for their plight, rather than understanding “sorry” to be a simple expression of compassion.

But the Labor Party also shares responsibility for the demise of the reconciliation process. Realising, like the government, that indigenous issues are not vote-winners, it has failed to articulate clear policy alternatives, and has engaged – here as in other portfolios – in an egregious “me-tooism”. When the ALP does criticise government policy, such as in the report of the 2004 senate inquiry into life after Atsic, it is often unable to articulate a clear policy alternative.

The days when (in 1975) Gough Whitlam poured desert sand through his hands and into those of Vincent Lingiari to mark the handing back of the Wave Hill cattle station to the Gurindji people; or when (in 1992) Paul Keating delivered the Redfern Park speech, the most wholehearted and profound acknowledgement of past wrongs and immediate needs ever uttered in Australia – now seem impossibly distant.

The problem is more than one of a failure of political will. The “decade of reconciliation” was born from a promise made soon after his election in 1983 by a third former ALP leader and prime minister – Keating’s predecessor Bob Hawke – to negotiate national land-rights legislation and a treaty in order to deal with “unfinished business.” The practical edge of the initial proposal made it easier to see the discourse of “reconciliation” that followed in its wake as a soft option that could be interpreted as a way to avoid giving substantial rights to indigenous people. Indeed, were it not for the fact that reconciliation has a currency much larger than modern Australian political history — rooted as it is in the Catholic sacrament of penance, and more recently in transitional-justice processes used by post-conflict societies such as South Africa and East Timor — we might want to abandon it altogether.

The foundation of a future

But ironically, the further one moves away from “big R” reconciliation, the brighter the picture looks. In art, film and television; in Australian football and rugby league; in mining, tourism, the pastoral industry and other businesses, indigenous cultures and people are overcoming centuries of prejudice and oppression to make their mark.

Still, these advances are no substitute for rights and symbols. As Pat Dodson reminded the May 2005 national reconciliation workshop, there is no foundation to the relationship between indigenous and other Australians. Many white Australians acknowledge that their existence in this land lacks an important measure of legitimacy, while indigenous people need recognition of prior ownership in order to feel part of the body politic. Sooner or later, a formal agreement which acknowledges past mistakes without apportioning blame will be needed to create such a firm foundation for the future of this nation. After the historic Mabo judgment by the high court in 1992 which recognised indigenous people’s land rights, a “culture of agreement-making” has arisen in respect of native title claims, indigenous land-use agreements and the like. There are also numerous examples of such agreements with indigenous peoples in other former British colonies that could be used as models.

The Howard government has sidestepped the issue by claiming that that a treaty can only be made between sovereign states, thus raising the fear among non-indigenous Australians of a “nation within the nation.” This is a furphy. It is usually referred to as a treaty because that is what should have been negotiated between the nations before British settlement. Whatever it is called, it is the negotiation of a formal and comprehensive basis for shared custodianship of this land and equal participation in its social life that is called for. As others have pointed out, the resolution of this issue is intimately bound up with the push for an Australian republic. It’s a matter of taking care of the past before we can step into the future.