Polity, Capability, Culture

Praise for Polity, Capability, Culture
Let Peter Botsman’s book be a warning to you. There are many Australians, and obviously Ministers of Governments among them, whose attitudes towards Indigenous people, and whose impoverished vision of our place in Australian society, are little different from those that Joe, Theresa and Oodgeroo encountered in Brisbane in those dark years in Queensland. You might think that the civility extended to you is an indication of a willingness to change the state of affairs that grows worse each year and takes more and more Indigenous lives. Remember your history; and understand the machinations of policy.

Marcia Langton

This is a book of optimism about our future together. Let us feed our children with this optimism and continue to refine the ways in which the political, economic and cultural sovereignty of all of the Aboriginal peoples of Australia can be incorporated within the Australian nation.
Gerhardt Pearson Cape York Peninsula

Failed State

Preface by Professor Marcia Langton, AM

I am fed up with reading the dreadful opinion pieces published in Australia’s newspapers, indeed, fed up with reading this unrelenting tabloid press altogether, for fear that I will read yet another opinion-rich, evidence-poor article on why Indigenous people should be social engineered out of existence. I was a youthful witness in the 1950s and 1960s to that nasty period in Queensland history when Indigenous people were campaigning for their rights. Later, I learnt about their bitter disappointment, the widespread ignorance of the facts of history concerning, not just the dispossession and disappearance, but the underdevelopment of Indigenous Australia: all this continues to enervate me, and newspaper opinion pieces rub salt into the wounds. There seems little point in arguing with rabid nonsense when the understanding of settler Australians about the making of their nation is mythological at best, and outright denial of historical fact at worst. But history is so much more than stacking ‘facts’ end to end. So it was with increasing delight that I read this account by Peter Botsman of the nature of the political dilemma in Indigenous affairs and what he believes should be done about it. While I might quibble about some of his points, his analysis is refreshing, clear and offers some cause for hope, that rarest of commodities in the Indigenous world.

This is a manifesto for a truly civil society, rather than a postcolonial order starkly divided up between the rich settler populations of the southern cities and the desperately poor Indigenous communities scattered across the inland rural areas to the far north. My good friend Peter Botsman proposes that by investing in the development of an Indigenous polity and capability and recognising Indigenous cultural sovereignty as a fundamental part of our nation’s fabric, a better period of relations lies ahead. His vision is an optimistic one, which, sometimes, I find difficult to share. He writes, ‘Most Australians look forward to that period with some optimism, we must hold firm to ensure that the nations politicians and civil servants deliver these things in the immediate future.’ His words are persuasive, and his analysis acute and timely, however, and at least that gives me cause for optimism.

If young Indigenous leaders hope to change the course of affairs in the miserable administration of Indigenous matters in Australia, they should read this book. Botsman reminds us in the pages that follow of the great difficulties involved in taking on this challenge. He outlines the terrible history and the successes and failures of several generations of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander leaders, who, before this present generation of hopeful acolytes demanding that the older leaders step aside so that they can do a better job, took on successive federal and state governments to win the reforms that young Indigenous people today enjoy, and, in many cases, take for granted.

I was jolted by a passage in this book:

"A measure of the problem of Indigenous governance over the past forty years is the fact that it has become the most undesirable portfolio for a Commonwealth politician - one Labor politician referred to it as like "cleaning the toilets on the Titanic"2 - and it is a measure of the instability of the Indigenous Affairs portfolio that the average tenure of a Federal minister in the portfolio is less than 2.3 years, with over 17 Ministers serving since its inception in 1968, with an even faster turnover of Opposition spokespersons."

I have personally met with most of the Ministers referred to, and I was keenly aware throughout my own career of advocacy, administration and research in Indigenous affairs that many of the men (and they were all white settler men, although we almost had a Minister of Lebanese descent) who held the high office of Minister held us contempt, and regarded their Ministerial positions as waiting rooms for more important Cabinet roles. The fact is that most of the Aboriginal men and women who served our people by dealing with these characters were better human beings, with better intellects and moral gauges than the leaders of governments they met with. And, usually, throughout much of our history, these Aboriginal men and women were not paid for their services.

In the late 1970s, I worked with Joe McGuinness (1914-2003) who was President of the Federal Council for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs (the precursor of the Department of Aboriginal Affairs, the National Aboriginal Conference, the Aboriginal Development Commission, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission and the other late twentieth century innovations). He was a kind, proud Aboriginal man originally from the Kungarakany nation near Darwin, and worked on the wharves in north Queensland where a peculiar kind of apartheid, as cruel and hateful in its own way as the South African variety, spurred him and many others to take action against the universal injustices that befell Aborigines, as we were called at that time. I was born in Brisbane, Queensland, during that era, and grew up under the influence of people who collaborated with Joe to change the world. I was approached by my formidable ‘great aunt’ Theresa (sister of my grand uncle’s first wife) during my teenage years in the city square in Brisbane. She told me that because I could read and write I had a responsibility to do the right thing and join the movement. She was an old woman then, and even though she lived on an old-age pension, she spent much of her time and money organising meetings and rallies and writing letters. I was also influenced by Oodgeroo Noonucal, or Kath Walker, as she was called then, and it was true, as my dear old friend John Newfong put it, that she was more literate than the Members of the Queensland Parliament; it was unlikely, therefore, he pointed out, that these august men understood much of what she said to them. Her poetry was moving; but her political speech, whether in ordinary conversation or from a podium, was transformational.

It is the thinking that these people initiated that the young Indigenous leaders—and most Australians—take for granted in the wake of the ‘Reconciliation’ movement. Let Peter Botsman’s book be a warning to you. There are many Australians, and obviously Ministers of Governments among them, whose attitudes towards Indigenous people, and whose impoverished vision of our place in Australian society, are little different from those that Joe, Theresa and Oodgeroo encountered in Brisbane in those dark years in Queensland. You might think that the civility extended to you is an indication of a willingness to change the state of affairs that grows worse each year and takes more and more Indigenous lives. Remember your history; and understand the machinations of policy. Most of your carefully crafted words will be wasted on deaf ears. You will be talking to each other and a small audience of embarrassed settler citizens. You will meet very few effective people and you will waste your intellect—and, sadly, your short time on this earth—as you try to persuade privileged settler Australians of the possibility of a dignified place for Indigenous Australians. For your efforts you will be rewarded with bouts of hatred and defamation from shadowy boosters of white supremacisml.

Along with racism and ignorance about the place of Aboriginal people in history and humanity, the constants of Indigenous affairs have been inadequate policy responses and lack of rigour in dealing with the place of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in civil society in Australia. Botsman explains this problem well, and it should be recommended reading for everyone with official responsibilities in Indigenous affairs, whether from behind a Police Station or Centrelink counter, or a bureaucrat’s desk. An evidence-based approach, one that engages with the capable Indigenous organisations that have been formed during the last forty years, is required to meet the urgent needs of the Indigenous Australians trapped in the ‘failed state’ constructed by both federal and state Indigenous affairs administrations.

When young Indigenous people complain to me about the racism they experience, I try hard to listen compassionately, but it is difficult not to think about the racism of that I experienced during my youth, and the stories I heard I heard from elders. Is it better or worse now than in the 1950s when I became conscious of racism in a grocery store in outback Queensland? It is difficult to argue convincingly one way or the other: for an Aboriginal detainee in a police lock up, it may be far worse than conditions for young Aboriginal men thirty years ago. For a well-educated young Indigenous woman with bright career prospects, it is so much better. This stark difference between those whose lives have changed for the better by the advocacy work of our past leaders and those who have not managed to take advantage of the opportunities available to them is the most difficult aspect of the present challenge.

This timely book is a formidable treatise on those problems that lie at the core of the dilemma: capability and polity. It is time that those Australians with formal responsibilities in Indigenous affairs learnt about the way that a civil society can be damaged or improved, depending on the way that it recognises and engages with the capability and polity of its most at-risk population, the Indigenous peoples.