Australia's nation-building: renegotiating the relationship between Indigenous peoples and the state

Abstract

By the time of Australia's Federation in 1901, the colonies had established a long tradition of discrimination against Indigenous peoples. As a colonial country, racism was a founding value of Australian society - it justified the wholesale denial of Indigenous peoples' rights to retain their social, economic and political structures, while denying their rights to participate in the polity that was under construction. This beginning helped to establish the fundamental disrespect for Indigenous peoples that underpins Australia's legal and political development. Disrespect occurs not just in the relationship between the state and Indigenous peoples, but has engendered a more personal disrespect that is experienced by Indigenous people on a daily basis. It is the ongoing tolerance of disrespect that maintains racism as a core value of Australian society. Achieving justice for Indigenous peoples therefore requires fundamental change at every level. As Australia moves into its second century as an independent state, an examination of the vestiges of Australia's colonial origins should move us toward rectifying the fundamental injustices that continue to undermine the foundations of Australian nationhood. Nation-building is an ongoing process. It requires constant reinforcement of values and identity. It is not sufficient to relegate the failure to respect Indigenous peoples as equals to the vagaries of history, because that history constantly informs Australia's identity, values and governance. This paper looks back at those foundations but also at recent public policy debates concerning Indigenous peoples' rights. We identify the shortcomings of recent policies as stemming from the failure to approach Indigenous issues within the context of the structural relationship between Indigenous peoples and the colonial state. We suggest that Indigenous policy can no longer suffer the absence of a process that has the capacity to tear at the institutionalised racism and discrimination of the Australian state and build respect for Indigenous peoples as the first peoples of this land.