Indigenous have voices but need Canberra’s ear
THE last time the Voice was voted on in the Parliament was in 2019 after a treaty. ALP Senator Pat Dodson and Greens Senator Rachel Siewert co-sponsored a motion for Prime Minister Scott Morrison to accept the message sticks that I carried 8500km through 50 First Nations countries.
Outside parliament house on election day that same year, I declared that by delivering the message sticks I was putting the government on notice to begin treaty negotiations with First Nations peoples.
The Liberal Party voted against the motion. Senator Jonathon Duniam spoke for the government in saying that treaty is a state and territory matter, the “process sits rightly with them, not the federal government”.
Pauline Hanson’s One Nation opposed it by referencing that the Anangu people of Uluru would not accept the Yolngu people’s language of Arnhem Land in describing a treaty as “Makarrata”.
Makarrata is a word chosen for this motion that I understood as one mob’s lore so that every other mob could translate it into their own language, for their own treaties, on their own countries, in their own terms. In 2019, every ALP senator present supported the resequencing of the Uluru Statement from Voice, Treaty, Truth to Truth, Treaty, Voice because they actually listened to what First Nations peoples wanted at the time.
That year, two years after the Uluru Statement, I met with 50 First Nations peoples in ceremony, dance and dialogue as I took a 12 million step journey to Canberra. Many of the messages I carried disagreed with the idea of one national Indigenous Voice.
In 2023, one national Indigenous Voice can’t speak for 300 plus First Nations countries just because the government wants it to. For 65,000 years, First Nations people have survived with the lore that no country can speak for any other country.
My mob can’t speak for your mob. Your mob can’t speak for my mob.
The government must be stopped from erasing our lore and recolonising us with this referendum without consent.
The right way to support First Nations peoples is to stop the referendum in its tracks and demand the government funds a free prior informed consent process first in this May budget.
All the 300 plus First Nations must be given an equal opportunity to have their say on the Indigenous Voice before the government tables a Bill on the referendum question soon.
The Australian Parliament will have to vote on the wrong or right way to do a referendum. No MP or senator should support the Bill without the government having the consent of the First Nations peoples in their electorate and local government areas first.
Consent is needed because if First Nations peoples are only three per cent of the population, whose Voice would it really be in the constitution if mob all voted no but the nonIndigenous 97 per cent voted yes?
The Uluru Statement also supports consent as a right but they have not implemented it.
Really, if you support the Uluru Statement then you should support a consent process. Consent will stop our country from becoming racially divided and give non-Indigenous Australia the answer to the referendum question. That is if First Nations people want to ask for an Indigenous Voice in the constitution.
Maybe in 2017 mob did but it’s 2023 now and the Queen died.
Maybe First Nations peoples want to ask the Australian people to become a republic? Maybe First Nations people want their sovereign rights to treaties to be their Voice in the Constitution?
That is what consent will establish. Australia, we need your help to do the referendum the right way with consent. No change could affect First Nation peoples more than a permanent constitutional amendment.
One permanent national Voice would divide our mob into a governance structure of 35 administrative regions that mean
nothing to the boundaries of 300 plus First Nations peoples that have lasted 65,000 years in our song lines, our culture, our countries.
That’s why I’m standing up for First Nations rights and starting a campaign to stop the referendum for a free prior informed consent process to be funded this May Federal Budget.
First Nations peoples already have voices. They need Canberra’s ear. Without free prior informed consent first, this referendum is just another colonial act of assimilation.
We deserve better.