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Over the next few days, the beach 20 umbrella was replaced by several tents, as Aboriginal people travelled to Canberra from other 21 states to lend support to the demonstration see Foley in Foley, Schaap, and Howell The then recently designed and now internationally recog- 27 nized Aboriginal flag was flown at the Embassy. In addition to large numbers of tourists, visitors 28 to the embassy included Soviet diplomats, a representative from the Canadian Indian Claims 29 Commission, an IRA cadre, and opposition leader Gough Whitlam, who announced his com- 30 mitment to removing all discriminatory legislation and his support for land rights Robinson in 31 Foley, Schaap, and Howell In a material sense, specific areas of 33 land were claimed in order to provide an economic base for Aboriginal communities.
Interviewed 34 in , for instance, Gary Foley insisted: 35 We want the land that we get to be completely independent of white Australia in all 36 forms including independent in terms of law and independent in terms of governmental 37 controls…Once we get this land we want to develop it as black communities where 38 Aborigines can live as Aborigines without interference from outside society…We are very 39 specific about the land we want.
We want the reserves in which Aborigines live. However, the Embassy provided dramatic expression of 3 a pan-Aboriginal movement that demanded land rights in the changed circumstances in which 4 the Federal Government had the power to enact legislative change for the benefit of Aboriginal 5 people Briscoe in Foley, Schaap, and Howell Through the formidable talents of its 6 Communications Minister, John Newfong, the Embassy harnessed the energies of the national 7 and international media to bring the question of land to the forefront of the negotiation of the 8 place of Aboriginal people within the Australian nation.
In a positive sense, land was synonymous with identity and survival. Land was at 11 the centre of hard-fought struggles by communities to retain their cultural and social values by 12 organizing themselves in relation to their own land. In a positive sense, by occupying the land directly in front of 19 Parliament House, the Embassy demonstrated the survival of Aboriginal peoples in the heart of 20 the national capital where their presence had been erased by formal planning and the monumental 21 architecture of the ceremonial precinct of the Parliamentary Triangle.
In a negative sense, the 22 Embassy also demonstrated the dispossession of Aboriginal people. For many of the residents who passed through 28 and stayed for a while it was more luxurious than their own homes despite the cold, the 29 lack of facilities, the constant need for money, for food. The embassy was everything that 30 the people still are. Although this demand 35 was expressed by refusing to identify as Australian citizens and claiming a separate political iden- 36 tity, the concerns that animated the Embassy demonstration were broadly the same as those that 37 motivated the referendum campaign for full citizenship.
White, cited in Foley, 40 Schaap, and Howell Now the white 44 Australian Government has decided that the assimilation policy is the policy that they 45 want. Now, it seems that at no time was there any sort of 2 dialogue with the Aboriginal people themselves about what they thought, how they should 3 live their lives. Not someone else deciding it on our behalf. Positively, self-determination was not only a goal to be attained, but an 13 organizing principle of the movement, which was put into action in the same way as the sur- 14 vival programmes in Redfern.
As a mobilization that was initiated, organized, and sustained by 15 Aboriginal people, the Embassy was an act of self-determination that demonstrated Aboriginal 16 political agency. The demonstrators created a public platform in which they controlled the 17 terms in which they would interact with representatives of the settler society.
By refusing to 18 identify as Australian citizens, flying their own flag, and opening diplomatic relations with the 19 Australian state on behalf of a pan-Aboriginal polity, they demonstrated their sovereignty and a 20 fundamental equality with settler Australians. In this way it high- 27 lighted the failure of the state to redeem the promise of full citizenship for Aboriginal people 28 that the referendum represented in the popular imagination. Throughout the time the Embassy was encamped before Parliament 32 House in , the conservative government sought to dismiss the young activists who led 33 the demonstration as a group of unrepresentative urban militants Clark This was 34 a strategy that eventually backfired on the government, given the broad-based support that the 35 Embassy received from Aboriginal people.
In July , the government instructed the police to 36 remove the Embassy three times. The dramatic scenes of police violence against the protestors were 37 broadcast on national and international television.
Cambridge Core - Politics: General Interest - Citizens without Rights - by John Chesterman. Aborigines and Australian Citizenship. Citizens without Rights. "Citizens Without Rights: Aborigines and Australian Citizenship By John Chesterman and Brian Galligan (Cambridge University Press.
As Paul Coe later reflected, this made the 38 white violence that is experienced on a daily basis in Aboriginal communities publicly visible to 39 white Australia for the first time cited by Nicoll in Foley, Schaap, and Howell The 40 removal of the Embassy symbolically re-enacted the colonial dispossession of Aboriginal peoples 41 in the public sphere that had been constituted by the demonstrators.
Today they are all here…. And no amount of 6 police bashings, no amount of police brutality is going to stop us from standing up and 7 demanding what rightfully belongs to us.
This point cannot be made strongly enough. Inherent to the concept of citizenship is the concept of allegiance to a nation. The organisation expressed great concern at the race based immigration restrictions enacted in Commonwealth legislation. The significant point in terms of the relationship between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples is that the very foundations of the current accepted Australian legal, political and social systems were based on the total denial of pre-existing structures. As decolonisation occurs, new nations and political structures are being formed in former colonies. Original Title. For a fuller exploration of the principles of national integrity and non-interference, see the Charter of the United Nations, Article 2 and Chapter 7.
The Embassy inspired Aboriginal people across the nation to demand land rights and create 22 the conditions in which a new relation between Aboriginal people and the state might be possible 23 Foley a. It opened the way for a new era in Aboriginal politics in 27 which it was believed that Aboriginal people could have both land and the ability to determine 28 their own futures. Within months of the election of the new Labour Government led by Gough 29 Whitlam, however, the Embassy was back.
The anniversary of the 35 referendum was not a day of pride for Australia, Gilbert insisted, since Aboriginal people were still 36 dying and nothing had changed Gilbert, cited in Attwood and Marcus Yet, it is important that the event of the Embassy should not be folded into 40 a Whiggish narrative of the development of citizenship rights for Aboriginal people in Australia 41 that would lend legitimacy to the settler state.
From — there was 46 a formal reconciliation process. That native title is the most inferior form 4 of land tenure under British law makes a mockery of the widespread belief that native title is 5 land justice see Watson in Foley, Schaap, and Howell At the same time, however, the state continues to make Aboriginal 16 people exceptions to the norm of citizenship, for example, with the passing of the Northern 17 Territory Emergency Response legislation, the suspension of the Racial Discrimination Act , 18 and the rolling out of wide-ranging welfare quarantining measures specifically designed to target 19 Aboriginal people.
As Larissa Behrendt observes: 22 While at the time, this change was seen as an important tool in allowing the federal govern- 23 ment to pass laws to assist Indigenous people, it has turned out that the power can also be 24 used to repeal or limit the rights of Indigenous people as well.
For example, native title can 25 be legislated but also repealed; heritage protection can be enacted but can also be repealed; 26 the Racial Discrimination Act has been stopped from applying to some aspects of native title. Yet the event of the Aboriginal Embassy reminds 34 us of the transformative possibilities created when non-Indigenous Australians place themselves 35 in active solidarity with the struggles of Aboriginal peoples to refuse to identify as Australian 36 citizens.
When Namatjira died 44 of heart failure, shortly after his release from prison, this led to renewed debate about citizenship for 45 Aboriginal people Wells and Christie Bandler , Faith. Chesterman , John.
Civil rights: how indigenous Australians won formal equality , Citizens without rights : Aborigines and Australian citizenship , Clark, Jennifer. Gilbert, Stephanie. Uncommon ground : white women in Aboriginal history , Commonwealth Electoral Office Australia. Statistical returns : in relation to the submission to the electors of proposed laws for the alteration of the Constitution McGregor, Russell. Turning points in Australian history , Davis, Megan and Williams, George. Everything you need to know about the referendum to recognise indigenous Australians , Ephemera collection.
Referendum, South Australian material produced for the Referendum. Lake, Marilyn. McGinnis, Joe. Son of Alyandabu : my fight for Aboriginal rights , Maynard, John. Fight for liberty and freedom : the origins of Australian Aboriginal activism , Social and Political Philosophy. Edit this record.
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And Will Sanders, Eds. Australian Citizenship - - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 78 3 Mark J. Towards Refining the Concept of Corporate Citizenship. Human Rights, or Citizenship?