By the National Aboriginal Political Party
The just resolution of the Aboriginal cultural right of decolonisation and legal return to country is at the very heart of the Australian reconciliation process under the proposed constitutional change being orchestrated by the Gillard federal government, and especially in South Australia under the legal right of the Aboriginal descendants to their proprietary interests, vested irrevocably for always, by the 1836 Letters Patent that erected and established South Australia on the proprietary lands of the original inhabitants and their descendants for always.
Nonetheless, the federal Gillard administration intends to impose a comprehensive constitutional settlement upon all Australian Aborigines, including the descendants in South Australia, in the one fell swoop that will force them to give up their well-recognized legal right of decolonisation and cultural return under the Charter of the United Nations.
The federal intention is to force all Aboriginal people to accept a Bantustan of disjointed and surrounded chunks of statutory land rights grants and native title territory in northern Qld and WA, Vic, Tas, NT, NSW and SA, and judicially sanctioned native title in northern WA and Qld with scattered accidental vestiges of real interests or revocable licences held at the mercy of the State Crowns or in Crown trust in SA, southern WA, NSW, Vic and Tas being recognised in a haphazard manner in the dispossessed south as the irreducible condition to have the constitution expressly recognize Australia as "the sole International Australian State," as newly demanded by John Howard in his black armband view of Australian monarchical history.
Nevertheless all this will fail.
For more than the past two decades, grassroots activists have provided the leadership of the Aboriginal people with advice, counsel and representation at all stages of the reconciliation process.
What now needs to be elaborated is what the Aboriginal people must now do to realise their international legal right of decolonisation and cultural return to country, in keeping with their perception of Australia as nothing more than an illegitimate colonial Bantustan bound for failure.
While an enormous amount of policy development in the grassroots has been generated affirming the Aboriginal right of decolonisation and cultural return under international law, none is as authentic, powerful, personal or convincing as the eloquent pleas of the Aboriginal Political Party.
Proposal for a National Aboriginal Political Party Compact
The members of the National Aboriginal Political Party recognize and affirm that the independence of the Aboriginal Peoples and the future of the Nation can be assured by complete respect for the following seven principles, which represent the greatest sacrifice that can be undertaken in order to achieve a just and lasting reconciliation, and that the continued existence of harmony, justice, peace and stable unity in society is impossible outside of the said seven principles:
First Article - In as much as it is necessary that the destinies of the regions of the Commonwealth which are populated predominantly by an English speaking mother-tongue majority being under the occupation of their colonial descendant authorities, should be determined in accordance with the votes which freely shall be given by their inhabitants, so likewise the whole of those parts also which are inhabited by an Aboriginal majority, united in cultural antecedents, or by race and in aim to remain imbued with mutual respect for each other and with a spirit of sacrifice, and wholly respectful of each other's common racial and social rights and surrounding conditions, and whether within or without the jurisdictions of the English speaking states and territories of the Commonwealth, indubitably form a whole which does not admit of division for any reason in amity, truth or in ordinance.
Second Article - We accept that, in the case of those Aboriginal communities which have united amongst themselves by a general and free vote to abide the exclusive authority of the Commonwealth on or after the 1967 Referendum, it remains necessary for recourse to be had to a new free and secret popular vote.
Third Article - The determination of the juridical status of the northern territory which has been subjugated to the dependency of the Commonwealth from 1912, must be effected in those traditional parts that remain inhabited by an Aboriginal majority in accordance with the votes which shall be given by their inhabitants in a secret ballot in complete freedom as it shall be provided them.
Fourth Article - The security, recognition and respect of Uluru as the cultural seat of the Nation and the city of Alice Springs as the site of the administration and headquarters of the Aboriginal parliament must be protected from every hazard to their Aboriginal cultural significance and from all dangers to the city's capital position to provide for the headquarters of Aboriginal government.
Fifth Article - Provided the principle of the Fourth Article is maintained, whatever decision may be arrived at jointly by us and all other governments concerned, regarding the opening by Referendum of the Commonwealth Constitution to the juridical recognition of the territories and rights of the Aboriginal Peoples and to uphold and undertake their own development including by free commerce and traffic in and to the world, and including by responsible self-government, is valid.
Sixth Article - the rights of the non-English speaking multicultural background minorities already defined and granted by treaties concluded under the Charter of the United Nations, including all their international human rights and those rights that extend to the Aboriginal Peoples, shall be confirmed and assured by us in reliance on the reciprocal trust that the Aboriginal minorities to remain in the states and territories of the Commonwealth subsequent to Referendum also will have the equal benefit of the same rights.
Seventh Article - It is a fundamental condition of our Aboriginal life and continued cultural existence that we, like every country of the United Nations, should enjoy complete independence and liberty in the matter of assuring the means of our development, in order that our national and economic development should be rendered possible and that it should be possible to conduct affairs in the form of a reciprocal and just regularity and parity in administration with self-government.
On the ground and reason of these seven principles we are opposed to restrictions inimical to our development in political, judicial, financial, cultural and other matters.
The conditions of the settlement by reconciliation of our liberation from colonisation shall likewise not be contrary to these seven principles and we commend to the Nation that it reconcile to a whole commitment to the seven axioms of:
Recognition
Respect
Rights
Reform
Reciprocity
Responsibility
Reparations
as our pre-condition to the more complete achievement in Reconciliation of that settlement.
We the undersigned authors of this National Compact for our Aboriginal Liberation:
Contact roma@auspics.org