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

Reconciliation, Assimilation, and the Indigenous Peoples of Australia

International Political Science Review, 2003

Reconciliation as a peacemaking paradigm emerged as an innovative response to some of the mass atrocities and human rights violations that marked the 20th century. It provided an alternative to traditional state diplomacy and realpolitik that focused on restoring and rebuilding relationships. To that end, reconciliation processes have set themselves the difficult task of laying the foundations for forgiveness through the establishment of truth, acknowledgment of harm, and the provision of appropriate forms of justice. In 1991, the Australian government instigated a process of reconciliation between the indigenous peoples and wider society in order to "address progressively" colonial injustice and its legacy (Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation Act 1991. This article seeks to demonstrate, however, that restrictive policy framing and a lack of political will has severely hindered the progress of the Australian reconciliation process. An alternative conceptual approach to settler state and indigenous reconciliation is suggested.

Meanings and Perspectives of Reconciliation in the Australian Socio-political Context

The International Journal of Diversity in Organizations, Communities, and Nations: Annual Review, 2007

The policy of national reconciliation between Indigenous and non Indigenous peoples has been on the social and political agenda for decades, yet progress on this issue of Australian's 'unfinished business', seems to have stalled in the last few years. This paper seeks to map the various interpretations and meanings of 'reconciliation' in the Australian sociopolitical context, from the creation of the Council of Aboriginal Reconciliation in 1991, to the controversies emerging from the 'cultural wars' history debates of the last few years. It provides an framework for the various discourses of Reconciliation, by exploring and analysing the accrued meanings to such terms such as 'genuine' or 'true' reconciliation 'symbolic' reconciliation and 'practical Reconciliation' a term used extensively under the Prime Ministership of John Howard. In the current political context in Australia is reconciliation no more than a normative discourse-a symbolic gesture by mainstream Australia to maintain the status quo and divert our eyes from the more searching questions of the 'unfinished business' of 'substantive' reconciliation such as the issue of a treaty and just compensations for past injustices for Aboriginal people. This paper suggests that the journey towards reconciliation between black and white Australians is convoluted and complex. It is mired with political and social agendas which are inextricably linked with the national consciousness, with Australia's sense of self, the various views and interpretations of its history, and its multiple national identities. In reality, given the lack of national will to address the substantive issues of reconciliation, the journey still has many a path to tread.

Official Apologies, Reconciliation, and Settler Colonialism: Australian Indigenous Alterity and Political Agency

The burgeoning literature on transitional justice, truth commissions, reconciliation and official apologies tends to ignore the conditions of settler states in which ‘reconciliation’ needs to take account of indigenous minorities. The settler colonialism literature is worth including in the general discussion because it is exceptionally reflective about political theory (the constitutional recognition of indigenous rights) and ethnogenesis (the origin and viability of both settler and indigenous identities), challenging mainstream liberalism, in particular, to account for difference beyond platitudes about multiculturalism. This article highlights the postcolonial critiques of the Australian governments’ apology to the indigenous peoples of the country. The authors of these critiques seek to protect indigenous alterity from the Australian state, which they regard as irredeemably colonialist, especially in its liberal and progressive mode. The article suggests that Indigenous political agency transcends the resistance/co-option dichotomy presented in much of the apology’s commentary.

Imagining national community and settler-indigenous reconciliation. Refereed Proceedings of the Australian Political Science Association (APSA) Conference, 2013.

In Australia, dominant framings of indigenous recognition are bound up with the politics of reconciliation, wherein the recognition of Aboriginal difference is seen as part and parcel of the process of reconciling indigenous and settler Australians as equal parties in the nation. It is this focus on ‘building national community’ that has compelled some of the most strident critiques of reconciliation, with a number of critics arguing that community is a conservative trope employed to absorb – and thereby render impotent – indigenous difference and political claims. Reading through the 2008 Stolen Generations apology, I suggest that while such critiques offer an important caution to the possibilities of reconciling community in settler colonial contexts, ‘national community’ need not be seen as an inherently conservative and assimilatory motif. Like Andrew Schaap’s (2004) distinction between ‘reconciliation as ideology’ and ‘reconciliation as politics’, ‘nation-building’ may be either ideological or political, but it is not necessarily one or the other. While the apology is now widely-agreed to have only been a partial act of recognition, failing in its mandate in many instances, I argue that its failings were not rooted in its foregrounding of the ‘reconciled’ national ‘we’. To the contrary, I argue that the apology’s failings were tied to the fact that the Australian state was portrayed as a neutral arbiter in the relations of recognition – when in fact it, like all states, has a deep investment in the processes of identity-making. In this regard, it is not the employment of nation as a rubric for community-building that compromised the apology as an act of recognition, but rather the unwillingness or inability of the Australian state to tussle with its own identity as part of the reconciliation process.

Perspectives on Reconciliation & Indigenous Rights

Cosmopolitan Civil Societies: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 2009

This paper provides an overview of discourses of the movement for national reconciliation prevailing within the Australian socio-political context since the inception of the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation in 1991, to the national apology delivered by the Prime Minister Kevin Rudd on 13 th February 2008. It provides an framework for the various discourses of reconciliation, by exploring and analysing the accrued meanings to such terms such as 'genuine', substantive or 'true' reconciliation; the Howard's Government's 'practical reconciliation' and the Rudd government's great attempt at 'symbolic' reconciliation in the national apology to Indigenous Australians.

Reconciliation and the Problem of Internal Colonialism

Journal of Intercultural Studies, 2005

The prevalence of ‘scientific’ racism and social Darwinism in white colonial nations in the late nineteenth century ensured that indigenous peoples were regarded as an alien ‘other’ to national identities based on racism and progress. This outlook gradually changed over time with the aid of socio-historical understanding developed by indigenous and non-indigenous revisionist historians, academics and activists, which sought to explain past and present indigenous/settler relations by placing white colonial nation-states within a critical account of colonialism and racial discrimination. As white settler nations gradually began to accommodate a plurality of ethnic cultures and in that sense become more multicultural, politicians sought to construct national identities based on the imagery of ‘harmonious multiculturalism’. In settler societies, such as Canada and Australia, a significant political obstacle to this was the continued disquiet of indigenous populations. The emerging post-colonial challenge for politicians in such societies was to find a way to include indigenous people in the cultural fabric of the nation which would seem fair and appropriate and therefore serve a legitimising function for the settler state. Recently the now popular peacemaking language of ‘reconciliation’ has been the preferred rhetorical device for this endeavour in Canada and most notably in Australia.1 The aim of this paper is to outline why two dominant understandings of reconciliation as an outcome that have emerged from post-conflict reconciliation processes would be inappropriate goals for a process concerned with genuinely legitimising an internal colonial situation.2 It begins with a general introduction to the concept of reconciliation, discusses the context-specific problems with the dominant understandings and concludes by suggesting an approach to reconciliation which would genuinely decolonise an internal colonial situation.

Re-Imagining Australia: Exposing The Legacy of Colonialism Through Truth and Reconciliation

This essay focuses on the nature of inter-generational trauma and the legacy of colonialism in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. I discuss how a formal truth and reconciliation could operate to address inter-generational trauma and the legacy of colonialism, placing such a model within the context the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People and concepts of self-determination and decolonisation. Specifically, this essay argues that without addressing Australia’s colonial past and the inter-generational impacts on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, ‘closing the gap’ on Indigenous disadvantage will remain an impossible task. Furthermore, I contest that the implementation of a truth and reconciliation commission will require a drastic ‘re-imagining’ of Australia by non-Aboriginal people based on the precepts of Indigenous human rights, self-determination and decolonisation if it is to attain success.

Aboriginal and non-aboriginal Australia: The dilemma of apologies, forgiveness, and reconciliation

Peace and Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology, 2007

This article presents a qualitative study of the indigenous Australian perspective on reconciliation with nonindigenous Australia, with a focus on the role of an apology for the oppression and violence perpetrated by nonindigenous Australians, and forgiveness on the part of indigenous Australians. A brief historical analysis of the relationship between Aborigines and waves of settlers is presented to demonstrate the extent of the wrong that was perpetrated against Aborigines and the need for social as well as practical reconciliation in the current context. It is argued that negotiated forgiveness is a concept that is pertinent to the discussion of reconciliation, because it requires a dialogue between the parties and ultimately for the wrongdoer to accept accountability and responsibility for offending actions, thereby opening the door for forgiveness and, ultimately, possible reconciliation. It is suggested that a first step in the required reconciliation dialogue is an apology, but the issue of who should give and receive an apology is a complex one. The issue of who should forgive and who should be forgiven is shown to be similarly complex. Qualitative analysis of interview data from 10 participants indicated that at this point in time, forgiveness might not be salient to the indigenous population, whose primary focus is more on the matter of an apology. This suggests that negotiated forgiveness and reconciliation will remain elusive goals until the matter of an apology is resolved.

Reconciliation, Aboriginal Rights and Constitutional Paradox in Australia

Austl. Feminist LJ, 2001

As Australia celebrates the centenary of the Federation of its colonial states to form a Commonwealth in 1901, the status of its indigenous peoples remains a constitutional paradox and a moral flaw at the heart of the nation. Australia is unique among former British colonies in never ...