Australian 'Aboriginal' Reconciliation: The Latest Phase in the Colonial Project 1 (original) (raw)

In the 1990s several countries that had been divided by episodes of mass violence or gross human rights violations instigated projects of national 'reconciliation'. Reconciliation initiatives sought to provide an alternative to traditional state diplomacy and realpolitik by focusing on restoring and rebuilding relationships in novel and context sensitive ways that promoted state legitimacy, forgiveness and social stability. In 1991 the Australian parliament unanimously passed the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation Act, which heralded the start of a process of reconciliation between the indigenous peoples and wider society. The Preamble to the Act founded the need for a reconciliation process on the injustice of colonial dispossession and on the continuing dispersal of indigenous people from their traditional lands. Yet, as this paper will show, the notion of 'justice' was deemed inappropriate from the start, and the resulting process was framed in a nation building discourse that placed a definite ceiling on indigenous aspirations. This paper seeks to demonstrate that, far from being a genuine attempt at atonement that is responsive to indigenous aspirations, Official Reconciliation exhibits a subtle, yet pervasive, assimilationist agenda, and consequently the process should be understood as but the latest phase in the colonial project. The paper will conclude by suggesting a de-colonising approach to reconciliation that addresses the problem of internal colonisation and which more closely reflects indigenous aspirations.