Indigenous Human Rights in Australia: Who Speaks for the Stolen Generations?

Abstract

On January 26, 1988, the Australian government staged a grand Bicentennial celebration to mark two hundred years of continuous European settlement. On that day, two separate but interconnected events drew the nation’s attention to the disparities between the lives of Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians and their very different investments in the nation’s history. While (mainly white) officials and crowds gathered at Sydney Cove to watch a reenactment of Captain Arthur Phillip’s arrival and landing of the First Fleet, delivering officers, soldiers, and convicts to the shores of Botany Bay to establish a penal colony in Britain’s far-flung outpost of Empire in 1788, Indigenous Australians and their supporters began a march through the streets of Sydney to protest against what for them was Invasion Day.

It is my belief that when the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander story of Australia is heard and understood then there will be a true reconciliation. The abstract language of human rights and justice will settle down on the realities of the lives and aspirations of individual men, women and children who wish simply to have their humanity respected and their distinctive identity recognised.

—Michael Dodson, Social Justice Commission: First Report 1993

I believe Australia is still illegally occupied. … This is my land and … we are in the 208^th year of occupation and we have never been given any justice or any rights.

—Murrandoo Yanner, Carpentaria Land Council activist (1996), Sydney Morning Herald