Unsettling questions about identity brought on by vote
FITZROY CROSSING, AUSTRALIA ❯❯ Sitting on the banks of the Fitzroy River in remote Western Australia, watching a plume of smoke swirling into the air from a distant wildfire, the Aboriginal elder lamented how his parents' generation worked for sugar, flour and tea, not wages, and his community now relies heavily on welfare after employment programs were withdrawn by the government.
But “we've got something coming,” said Hector Angus Hobbs, 67, who is a member of the Walmajarri tribe. “We're going to win.”
His unwavering optimism will be tested Saturday, when the nation votes on a referendum that would give Indigenous Australians a voice in Parliament in the form of an advisory body.
The proposal, polls show, is broadly supported by the country's Indigenous people, who make up about 4% of the nation's population. Many of them see it as a sign of Australia taking a step to do right by them after centuries of abuse and neglect. Hobbs and many of his neighbors in the town of Fitzroy Crossing believe it would help with everything from solving everyday issues, like repairs for houses, to moving the needle on weighty aspirations, like reparations.
In reality, the measure, known as the Voice, is much more modest, making some of these expectations rather lofty.
At the same time, it has given rise to unrealistic fears — like of homeowners being forced to return their land to Indigenous people — that have galvanized opposition to the Voice. And with many Australians perceiving the referendum as racially divisive, polling suggests its defeat is likely.
“We now know where we sit,” said Joe Ross, a community leader in Fitzroy Crossing from the Bunuba tribe, adding that the debate had “shown the real underbelly of this country.”
The coming vote has surfaced uncomfortable, unsettled questions about Australia's past, present and future. Does it recognize its colonial history as benign or harmful? How does it understand the disadvantages facing Indigenous people? Should the hundreds of Indigenous tribes that first inhabited the continent have the right to decide if and how to meld their traditions and cultures into modern society, or just be encouraged to assimilate?
The Voice was first conceived by Indigenous leaders as a response to entrenched and growing Indigenous disadvantage. Life expectancy in the community is eight years below the general population, while rates of suicide and incarceration are far higher than the national average. The issues are most severe in remote communities, where some Aboriginal people live in order to maintain their connection to their traditional lands.
Experts and Indigenous leaders say that by and large, Australians are aware of this disadvantage but generally do not understand it. Many in the country, they said, see these problems as failures of Indigenous people and communities rather than of the systems that govern them.
It is something that Australians feel a sense of collective but unexamined shame over, said Julianne Schultz, the author of “The Idea of Australia” and a professor at Griffith University.
“The genesis for the shame is when people look at it and think, `We've got some responsibility for why this has happened — but we can't quite figure it out,'” she said.
“And how do you hide that? Well, you blame the victim.”
But the Voice, which would also include constitutional recognition of Indigenous people, has been criticized as toothless because it would have no power to create or veto government decisions or policies.