The Real Australia

(8 of 8)

The key to all Aboriginal rights is land. Land is identity; to own none is to be no one, deracinated, invisible. Land is also theology. In Aboriginal myth, the Australian earth — its valleys, hills and watercourses, together with everything that grew and lived on it — was shaped by ancestral beings during an ahistoric period called the Dreamtime. When these Ancestors withdrew from the earth, they left behind not only the humans they had created but also a body of sacred law, embedded in dances, songs and images, that described their worldmaking acts. These images showed how the spirits of the dead were continually absorbed into the land and recycled into the newborn living. Hence, to Aborigines, land is far more than real estate. In their struggle for rights, it is the key element.

But it has taken a very long time to drag the Australian courts and government into admitting that the Aborigines owned their land before white arrival; that the doctrine of terra nullius — "no man's land" — was legally invalid. This finally happened in 1992, when Eddie Mabo, a member of the Meriam clan on the Murray Islands in the Torres Strait off northern Australia, successfully argued before the high court that his people had been there before the whites and had never given up their ancient rights of ownership. This was the first "native title" victory in Australian law.

Its results have been explosive. Huge deposits of minerals, including, at Jabaluka in the Northern Territory, the richest known uranium deposits in the southern hemisphere, lie beneath the earth. No less than 15% of the total land area of Australia is owned or controlled by Aboriginal groups and councils. Some 700 land claims, covering 50% of the Australian landmass, await determination by the courts — and more are coming in every day. This avalanche has caused legal and bureaucratic gridlock. Few Aboriginal groups accept mediation by whites. No two groups agree on land use. Some, for instance, think that tribal land should not be exploited at all, and left sacrosanct. Others are for all-out mining.

And then there is the question of proving original ownership. Sometimes a group can show it has been on a given tract of land since records began. But this situation is rare. Often a claim is just that, a mere assertion unbacked by documents of any kind, made by Aborigines who live in an entirely different area. This infuriates some Australian graziers, especially those whose stations (ranches) are on land they do not own outright but hold in lease from the Crown. A native title claim on their land, even a weak one, can freeze their assets and put bank loans out of reach. Moreover, it is facile to fall in with the favorite assumption of white urban Australian liberals: that only Aborigines have an authentic spiritual connection to the land. Why cannot whites have one too?

The point is, however, that this and a hundred other issues between black and white in Australia can be worked out only in an atmosphere of reason, trust and reconciliation. The time of name calling should be over. But despite the dignity and moderation of Aboriginal leaders, and the goodwill of so many whites, it is manifestly not over. Finishing it off, at last, is work that will take us into the millennium. But it has to be done, or we are a much lesser nation for it.