Land rights and sovereignty are basic to the full restoration of Aboriginal health. This is a challenging statement. Yet the individual is doomed to failure who seeks to establish a strategy for lasting positive change in the health status of Aboriginal people but ignores their relation to land and their struggle to maintain and restore this relationship. To place this statement in context, we must examine the reality of history and the reality of today.

Freedom of choice is a revered principle of democratic countries, and essentially, -there is unanimity within Australia on this point.

In accord with this principle, then, it is recognized that there are individuals of Aboriginal descent, who have been voluntarily assimilated [into non-Aboriginal culture) in varying degrees. That has been their choice, and they have the right to that choice.

There are also many Aboriginal people who were forcibly removed from their families and communities and raised in non-Aboriginal institutions or families. Some were aware of their Aboriginal descent, but in their formative years were unable to "run away" from what was being done to them. Others were too young to know. Many of these individuals have since sought out their Aboriginal families and communities, where possible, or have been adopted by Aboriginal communities. This also is their right and choice.

Then there are those Aboriginal people who have been fortunate enough, in the midst of an alien society, to have remained part of Aboriginal communities and families. They have chosen to remain so, and that is their right.

In our approach to health regeneration, we must also recognize that, fortunately, even after 200 years there are still Aboriginal people living a traditional life-style, almost untouched by the invasion (of Australia by white settlers in 1788]. And there are others who are part of the homelands movement and are moving back to their lands, their country, taking with them those elements of Western society that serve their needs. They are re-establishing traditional practices. That is their strong desire, their choice, and their right.

It is a reality that the majority of Aboriginal people has, at some point in the history of their families, been dispossessed of their land and dispersed against their will. In turn, the vast majority of these people recognize the reality of their dispossession but also the impracticality of restoring all traditional lifeways and practices. However, they do wish to regenerate most, if not all, traditional value systems for themselves and their families and to regenerate those lifeways that will restore their health and that of their communities. That is their choice and their right.

Next we must recognize that, as a consequence of the invasion, thousands of Aborigines are of mixed genetic descent. Federal governments and certain other authorities have wisely recognized, as evident in their definition of the term "Aboriginal," that "Aboriginality" is not dependent upon degree of descent, nor is it dependent upon descent alone. Again, regardless of degree of Aboriginal descent, government or legislative decree cannot and w1ll not change the people's perception, definition, and acceptance of each other. That is their right.

Interdependent to dependent

Aboriginal people and Communities have traditionally recognized their interdependence in relation to one another and their environment. The recognition of this interdependence is one very real difference between Aboriginal society and non-Aboriginal society (predominantly European) as it is structured in Australia today.

Aboriginal people reject the domination and dependency which have been their experience since [the imposition of non-Aboriginal society, beginning in] 1788. A system of domination and dependence is unjust, and such injustice inevitably causes disease, mental stress, and illness in the one dominated.

To restore Aboriginal physical, mental, and spiritual health, we must remove the structures that foster domination and dependency, which breed inequity and encourage a welfare mentality, leaving the dependents with no alternatives but "hand-outs" for survival.

To establish structures for changing the current reality, we should examine the reality of pre-invasion Aboriginal Australia, the Aboriginal relationship to land, the traditional law, and the cultural and spiritual practices of the day. Traditional law may well be described as the practice of sovereignty - being rulers over our own lifeway.

Historically, both pre- and post-invasion Aboriginal culture, law, and ceremonies were evolving in response to the reality of each particular era. One of the "myth creations" of non-Aboriginal Australia, which must be recognized as a lie, is that Aboriginal culture has died. Aboriginal culture may have been bruised, banned, and buried, but it is not dead anywhere in Australia. It is changing in response to reality and to meet the challenges. It is regenerating itself from the seeds left by those who have died, but it is not dead.

The establishment of Aboriginal communities and organizations, initiated and managed by urban Aborigines, or "gutter blacks" as they have been called, are proof of the continued adaptation of Aboriginal culture so that it might survive, generation by generation.

A resource for living -the land

Traditionally, life came from and through the land. Life was revealed in the land. The land was not an inanimate "thing." It was and is alive, Physical birth is a ritual, though unembellished, and death is a ritual celebration of the transformation of life back into the Dreaming, for eventual return. The process is comparable to the coming and going of the seasons, the environmental renewal of resources. Living men, women, and children are among those resources intimately bound up with the land. Land is thus pivotal to Aboriginal existence. Aboriginal spirituality was and is essentially land centred.

Traditionally, Aboriginal people were utterly dependent on the land for survival, and their social organizations were related to this dependency, to the need to relate successfully to their natural environment. Traditional Aboriginal social systems are models - blue-prints for living - based on the interrelationship between people and land, people and creator beings, and between people themselves. Ideally, they stimulate interdependence within and between each set of relationships.

The general position

While much has changed, much also remains. The traditions carry on into the present. Even in areas of Australia where the right to land in terms of traditional relationships can no longer be demonstrated, what still exists is the idea of "my country," with all this implies in the way of a right to the land and 'its resources. The emphasis is placed, quite rightly, on the economics of such a claim, which is of utmost importance if, in the midst of an alien society, the Aboriginal people are to see a physical, mental, and spiritual regeneration, hence the full restoration of their health.

The facts since the Invasion

For many years now, activists within Australian society have been advocating land rights for Aborigines. Most observers have perceived land rights as a vague term referring to social equality; to others it has appeared as a threat to their right to personal property. Neither perception is correct.

In espousing land rights, Aborigines have called non-Aborigines simply to recognize the Aboriginal right to land as part of their right to law. Non-Aboriginals have perceived this as a call for same, kind of token action to satisfy Aboriginal demands. This has happened at all levels, individual, institutional, and governmental.

What Aborigines have, in fact, been on about is that we own this land and that nothing has been done, either by Aboriginal law or white man's law, at a national or International level, to change that status. The reality is that Aborigines own this land, and they have been denied use of it by non-Aborigines, for whatever reason, and this has continued for 200 years.

The demand for land rights now means that non-Aborigines

1 ) concede to our sovereignty over our lands and seas within what is now known as Australia, and

2) begin to Pay the Rent.

We believe that we have grounds to challenge the legal basis of the invasion and subsequent occupation of Australia, At no time have we given consent to the occupation of our land and seas, and this occupation without consent directly contradicts the British Crown's instructions to Captain Cook. The fact that Cook did not obtain our forebears consent makes the continuing occupation of our illegal under English/Australian law, as well as under Aboriginal law We are !living in a society that is living the lie of Terra Nullius [an "empty land," as it was declared by Cook in his report to the Crown upon his arrival],

This lie - upon which was based the invasion, occupation, and subsequent cultural, legal, and spiritual imposition by the invader -has denied us our sovereign rights, has dispossessed us of our land, suppressed our culture, suppressed our identity, often sought to obliterate many of our languages and suppressed all and eliminated many of our ceremonies and spiritual practices and beliefs.

This oppression has continued, although varying in nature and design according to policy changes by colonial and successive state, territory, and federal governments.

This oppression is the cause of our diseases, our physical and mental ill health as seen in our mortality and morbidity rates.

Requirements for health

We consider four elements to be necessary to an individual's mental health:

1. The assurance of his or her own identity.

2. A belief 'in something external to himself, or herself.

3. The availability of options for future personal decision-making,

4. The possession of a language common to his or her group or community (particularly in an alien and threatening society).

All four of the above elements have been suppressed or eliminated by non-Aboriginal authorities in their "handling" of Aborigines throughout the past 200 years.

The need for sovereignty or power over our own lives

In modern Australian society, we have been unable to govern our own lives, to determine our own future, to live out sovereignty, and to claim our right to the land.

For almost 200 years, land rights (rather the retention of land rights) have been the focal point of our claim for cultural survival as a unique people. The Aboriginal claim to land rights is a collective term we use to cover the many other legitimate rights we, as the indigenous people of this land, possess.

In recent years, new words have been used to describe the unique position and status of Aboriginal peoples. The use of these new words should not detract from the assertion of the Aboriginal relationship with the land, but should serve to articulate more clearly what Aboriginal peoples have been seeking for the last 200 years-the right to be who they are, the right to be Aborigines without physical or political interference and free of economic or religious manipulation.

Sovereignty is the commitment of the Australian nation to the survival of this continent's indigenous people, representatives of the world's oldest surviving culture.

Sovereignty is self-determination for Aboriginal peoples. By definition this includes the final say in the management of our economic, social, cultural, and political resources. Sovereignty will allow us to tie resources to community needs in one move, independent of political or bureaucratic interference or threat thereof.

Rock stays, earth stays.
I die and put my bones in cave or earth.
Soon my bones become earth...all the same.
My spirit has gone back to my
country ...
my mother.

from"Kakadu Man" by Bill Neidjie

Sovereignty for Aboriginal people is not the first step towards the destruction of the Australian nation state: -

Sovereignty is the correction of a 200 year old lie.

Sovereignty is the recognition of the Aboriginal people's legitimate rights.

"Big brother" not trusting us, looking over our shoulder breeds distrust, resentment, and in accountability. Accountability of Aboriginal people to their own communities, however, will lead to a restoration of traditional structures and traditional values. Community initiative, community participation, and community control are the tools for implementing sovereignty.

In the context of a national health strategy, sovereignty is a practical response to Aboriginal needs in the areas of housing, education, employment, health, legal and judicial systems, child care, and care, of the elderly, In addition sovereignty is an appropriate response to the complex causative factors underlying Aboriginal deaths in custody.

As borne out by past experience, programmes not in keeping with the goals, aspirations, and needs of Aboriginal people will fall, waste resources, arid compound problems.

On the contrary, the assurance of our right to make decisions about our lives, Without interference and without the threat of interference wi11 be a collective leap forward for all Aboriginal people. Sovereignty is clearly the straightforward, honest, and most economically effective approach to meeting our health needs.

VAHS
© 1988