Silencing ‘Voice’ of the Indigenous in Australia

Voting in a referendum on October 14th Australians overwhelmingly rejected the most serious effort ever made to redress the flagrant injustices inflicted by colonising Europeans on that country’s indigenous “First People.” Australians were asked to vote on a constitutional amendment, the first in 24 years, that would create an indigenous advisory body which would put forward the concerns of Aboriginal and Torress Strait Island people. This body was to be called the “Voice to Parliament.” It was to have no legislative or executive power.

The “yes” vote was 39.3 per cent and the “no” vote was 60.69 per cent. For adoption, majorities in six of eight states had to approve the proposition. Only one did by 60 per cent. Amnesty International called the result “heartbreaking” and accused opponents of mounting “rampant disinformation about the consequences of the referendum.” Politicians campaigning against “Voices” told constituents that, once installed, this body would encourage the First People to demand the return of expropriated lands, reparations, and compensation. The price would be higher taxes. Supporters of the amendment argued that native peoples would gain recognition and respect as well as securing their rights and gaining the feeling that they belong in and to the continent where they have made their home for tens of thousands of years.

Ahead of the vote, Human Rights Watch pointed out, “For a long time, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have asked the government to address the marginalisation and discrimination they face, including disproportionately high rates of incarceration and other systemic socio-economic disadvantages.” The Voice would be “a chance for Australians to listen to the requests of First Nations people and show commitment to implementing human rights principles.” By amending the constitution, Australians would, for the first time, have recognised the indigenous communities as the First Peoples of the land. The change would give native peoples security and independence via the Voice which could only be abolished by another referendum.

Rejection was also seen as a setback to the government’s efforts to cut connotational connections with the British monarchy, transforming Australia into a republic with an elected president. The “no” vote was a blow to Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s centre-left Labour party government during the first year of its three-year term. Australians rejected a republic at their last referendum in 1999. King Charles III remains head of state. No referendum has succeeded since 1977. Australia’s First Nations peoples are the original humans to settle in Australia. They are divided into two main groups: natives of the Australian mainland and Tasmania, and the Torres Strait Islander peoples from the seas between Queensland and Papua New Guinea. They belong to hundreds of sub-groups which speak 150 languages and have separate histories and cultural traditions. They number just one million and count for only 3.8 per cent of the total population.

Indigenous peoples may have lived in Australia for at least 65,000 years, the late Abdel Karim Iriani — a former Yemeni prime minister — told me during an interview in 2007. A US-trained geneticist, Iriani said the migration of the earliest humans (homo sapiens) out of Africa began some 270,000 years ago and took place in waves. He pointed out that humans crossed from Somalia to Yemen before fanning out across the world.

He was proud of Yemen’s role in peopling the globe.

Iriani held that the Australian Aborigines are the sole latter day descendants of the first humans who gained ascendancy over the Neanderthals who lived in Eurasia 40,000 years ago. Fossils dating to 130,000 years ago show that they have a far longer history of existence.

Iriani said earliest waves of humans flowed along the Mediterranean coast where they paused in Palestine and Syria to tame wild grasses and develop rudimentary agriculture before moving on to Western Europe. Subsequent waves rolled into the Indian subcontinent and China while arrivals in Australasia came later.

Aboriginal Australians are largely descended from Eastern Eurasians and are most closely related to other Oceaniac peoples, such as Melanesians. They arrived in Australia around 65,000 years ago and 1.6 billion are believed to have dwelt in Australia during the millennia before the British arrived.

Native Australians relied on foraging for wild foods, hunting, fishing, banana cultivation, and eel farming in ponds. They domesticated wild dogs, called dingos, settled in villages, and developed complex social structures and close physical and spiritual connections with the land.

While the total indigenous population is said to have been 750,000 to 1 million before British colonisation began in 1778, the native population declined to 60,000 due to warfare, mass murder, ethnic cleansing, and disease brought in by Western settlers.

Until 1992, the legal principle regarding Aboriginal land was “terra nullius” which has governed the rapacious behaviour of colonising powers the world over. In Australia, this meant the land was empty before the British arrived, belonged to no-one, and could legitimately be taken over.

Australian natives have not been able to reclaim their land and its loss land has devastated their communities. More than half First Peoples live in towns, often in shanty settlements on the outskirts where conditions are terrible. Others work as labourers on cattle ranches that have expropriated their land. Natives face racism in the media and in society and violations of human rights.

Children are still removed from their mothers while youths and adults suffer incarceration in inhumane conditions. Poverty, unemployment, relegation to menial jobs, and alcoholism have depleted the energies of First Nations peoples and cast them adrift.

The recent history of the colonisation of ancient Australians has followed the pattern established elsewhere and has resulted in abusive attempts to assimilate indigenous peoples, marginalisation, and discrimination. The constitutional amendment was a rather weak effort to give Australian First Peoples a voice without ceding to them a share of power with the dominant white population.