Contemporary Indigenous Australian issues are generally not of great interest to White Australians. However with the call for
reconcilliation going out from our Aboriginal brothers and sisters we should all at least make an attempt to understand the
beauty and power of what was traditional Aboriginal society and just how our incursion on it has decimated it these last Two
hundred years, Reconciliation is now very important to both Australian races. Certainly to the Whites who carry the guilt of
usurping this land. To atone for the past White Australians need to humble themselves and enter into the spirit of Reconciliation
with the same goodwill that Aboriginals have.

Currently, with racist forces marshalling behind Pauline Hanson and her ilk, the need for reconciliation and restitution are
greater than they have ever been in the last two decades. There is a tide of "red neck" racism emerging that could, if not turned
back, engulf the idigenous people of Australia and see a new beginning of the genocide that has all but destroyed them as a
people since the white invasion of Australia.
 
I will look at the key issues of Reconciliation in the terms of the topics covered in this unit.

Key issue I. Understanding Country - Land and Sea.The land and the sea are important to every Australian. But traditionally
Aboriginals and Torres Strait Islander peoples have a special, unique relationship with them. This relationship centres on
Ceremonies and the Dreaming, a time beyond when great spirit beings created the world, people and animals. Their tracks live
on in this land and sea. Aboriginal people mus care for their country it is sacred. This is done through rituals, ceremonies,
respect for the law and looking after the environment.

White Australians as a whole need to understand this perspctive, this sacred link that Aboriginals have with their country to
allow the reconcilliation process to proceed. To understand the reason for this sacred link between people and culture we only
have to look at any of the Dreaming stories of Creation handed down from generation to generation among tribal groups. For
example to the Gagudji people the world always existed. But long, long ago before the Dreamtime, before time could be
counted it had no shape. The land was featureless without rivers or nountains and in neither the sea nor the land was there any
life. There were no fish, grasses or singing birds. But below the surface, lying dormant  were the creator Spirits... Then, at the
time of the Dreamtime, the time of genesis, a creator being, a woman called Warramurrungundji, came out of the sea. She
brought plants and implements and once ashore she gave birth to the first people and gave them their languages. She planted
vegetables, plunged her digging stick into the ground and created waterholes. Other creator beings appeared and each one
added to the things in the world and gave it form and shape as the land responded to their acts of creation. Some of the
ancestral spirits came  as animals, who brought order to human society and shape to the land.

Everything that is was made by these creator beings. For example Ginga the giant crocodile forced a passage through the
rocks to reach the East Alligator River. Gangagitji, the antelope Kangaroo formed rock outcrops and hollowed out depressions as he moved about the land and so on.But most importantly when the spirit ancestors had completed their creative acts, they did  not simply disappear. They put themselves into the landscapes  asrock formations, as spontaneous image in the form of rock painting or in other ways. And there they remain for all time. And exremely important, the rocks, pools, paintings and other special places where the spirit ancestors of the Dreaming now reside still contain their power and energy. At these sacred
places, the Dreaming sites, the Gagadju can draw on this power through painting, song, dance and other rituals.(Breedon, S,
1991, pp. 21-22).

To understand this to comprehend exactly what this land means to Aboriginal people, white Australians, in the cause of
reconciliation need to experience it, to live it, albeit briefly or periodically, to take time to be one with their Earth. This will allow them to understand their Aboriginal brothers and sisters.

White Australians cannot hope to participate in the reconcilliation till they understand the Aboriginal perspective on country.
For this is seminal to the very way of being for Aboriginals. "In the Dreamtime creation, the Ancestors' travels skirmishes, hunts, assaults and lovemaking scored the earth's surface, leaving their imprints in the earth's topography. In our (the whiteman's)
scientiffic view, the earth evolved through a phase in whichpowerful geological and climactic forces shaped the earth's surface,
raising mountains, creating oceans, carving river beds and forming rocks and deserts. The major difference is that our
cosmologuy acknowledges only physical forces and the Aborigines attribute conciousness to te creative forces and everything in creation." (Lawlor,R, 1991, p 45-46).
 
One way to help us see the land through Aboriginl eyes would be to see it as their "Bible." For, to Europeans the Bible is both
the source of our being, containing our creation story,  and the source of all the laws that underpin English "common law." In the cause of reconcilliation we need to see that for the Aboriginal people every part of the land is revelatory and contains the
numinous.

White Australians need to understand also in this context that Aboriginal society is not made up of politically unified groups.
They never were like European society which is based on a centralised government.

Aboriginal society is a society made up of small groups, each united by a common descent from an ancestor and associated
with an area of land...the society is egalitarian in the strict sense of having no overall leadership. Instead, each descent group is
linked to those around it, as equals, by many cross-cutting economic, political and religious obligations. These obligations are
based on the tjukurr, the Aboriginal law of the creation period.(Layton, R, 1986, pp.9-10).

We would also do well, as Whites, to put aside the popularised concept of the Aboriginals as scruffy, lazy wasters and aimless
wanderers. Notice the following summation from the brilliant Australian historian Geoffrey Blainey:"They (the Aboriginals) were
not drifters, they reigned over the continent of Australia, and displayed a surprising mastery of its resources." (Blainey, G, 1975, p. vi.)

The following comment made by an elderly Aboriginal woman to her grandson would be well to be considered very carefully
by all white Austrlians seeking to share the path to reconciliation: "The white men say terrible things about the Aborigines, only
because we are not farmers, builders, merchants and soldiers. The Aborigines are something else - they are dancers, hunters,
wanderers and mystics, and because of that they call us ignorant and lazy. Someday, Brian, you will see the beauty and power
of our people." (quoted by Lawlor, R, p.3).

Not only is the land the source of their being in an ontological sense but for the Aboriginals it is the source of their law and the
laws that have goverened their conduct for millenia. To take Aboriginal people from their land is to tear the fabric of their soul
asunder. A second key issue in the reconciliation process is the need for improving the relaionships between our two races. To
date the relationship between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and the wider Australian community has been poor.
 
It is an indisputable fact that indigenous Australians have long suffered from violence, disposession, racism and the failure of
governmental policies. It has been up until only recently standard practice for  Aboriginal children to be taken from their families and homes...whole communities have been shifted from their homes to another part of the country. Aboriginal and Islander life
has been regulated and supervised at almost every turn. There was no choice!
 
And this isn't just history. Indigenous Australians still suffer intense scrutiny wherever they go and whatever they do.
Reconciliation means white and black Australians working together to heal these ruptured relationships. The first step this
healing process may be to immediately address the situations that have led to the following statistics (As supplied by ATSIC
Lismore - Source :Census Applications Pty Ltd. - Dimensions of Aboriginal Disadvantage," 1990):

  *40% of the Aboriginal population is under 15 years old (compared to less than 25% of the white population)

  *Less than 8% of the Aboriginal population is over 50 (compared to more than 25% of the white population

  *Unemployment amongst Aborigines is 40% compared to 10% of the white population)

  *Unemployment in the 15-19 year age group is approx. 60% for those not in education (compared to 20% of white youths)

  *55% of Aboriginal employment is provided by the private sector (compared to 78% of non-Aboriginal employment)

  *Aboriginal people are significantly underrepresented in the wholesale/retail industry and in the Finance/Business sector)

  *35% of Aboriginal males' jobs are classified as 'labourers' (compared to 15% of the non-Aboriginal population)

  *20% of Aborigial females jobs are classified as 'labourers' (compared to 12.5% of the non-aboriginal female population)

  *9% of Aboriginal have any post school qualifications (compared to 26% of the overall population)

  *53% of Aborigines live in rental accommodation (compared to 14% of total population)

  *Median incomes for Aboriginal people are 60% of those of the general population.Source ATSIC:

  *Aboriginal life expectancy is 15 to 17 years less than for the whole population

  *Death rates associated with the circulatory system are 2.5 times greater than for the total population

  *Admissions to hospitals are up to 3 times more frequent than for the total population

  *Aboriginal people have a much higher incidence of chronic disability, asthma, eye disease, ear infections and diabetes than
the rest of the population

  *10% of the Aboriginal population live more than 100 kms from a hospital, 17% have no access to a doctor and a further
19% have no access to a nurse

  *Aboriginal imprisonment is 18 times that of non Aborigines

  *20% of those detained in custody are Aboriginal and yet Aboriginals represent only 2.5% of the overall population

  *10% of Aboriginal people aged over 25 were taken away from their natural family by a church or government agency.

  *The arrest rate of Aboriginal "stolen children" is 32% compared to 19% of "non-stolen" Aborigines.

I have included these damning statistics to indicate the extent of the deprivations suffered by the Aboriginal people. They
basically demonstate the hideous result of white Australians not understanding nor caring about the incredible importance of
family to Aboriginal people. By destroying the family and the "kinship" system of Aborigines white Australians over the last 100
years have participated in what almost amounts to a genicide.

For reconciliation white Australians must come to an understanding of the importance of kinship, family, to Aboriginal people.
It has been estimated that a European is in contact during his life with around ten to fifteen relatives, while Aboriginals
traditionally had many more kinship relationships being in contact during their life with up to 500 "relations"- members of their
extended family. For Aboriginal people family is sacred and extremely important and extended beyond just blood relationships
to people related totemically or by way or moety or ownership of  particular Dreaming place, to give just a few examples. To
Aboriginals these relationships were as important, if as often not more important, than our relations based on the European
concept of relations resulting only from  a blood connection.
 

As Berndt points out, for Aboriginals "kinship is the mesh that links people in the most direct and personal way. It includes
guidelines and blueprints for behaviour in all sorts of circumstances. There were once several quite distinct kinship systems
throughput the Australian continent, and a few are still being used in everyday situations, as well as in religious ritual affairs and
marrriage arrangements ... social and personal identity, the rested on a number of factors, but in the traditional Aboriginal
environment there was no getting away from kinship. In everyday life it was a part of the environment... everyone within a
community or tribe acknowledged at least a nominal kin relationship with everyone else..."(Berndt, C & Berndt, R, 1983,
pp.36-38.)

Kinship, family, relationships were of paramount importance to the traditional Aboriginals and the deprecation of their being
resulting from the shifting of groups, the stealing of children and the creation of an environment where traditional kinship
relationships which had permeated every aspect of life were now largely lost or irrelevant has devasted Aboriginal personal
reality and social life. White people need to understand this and make right as far as possible the wrongs perpetrated by the
acts of vandalism against the Aboriginal family.