We are peoples’ under active colonial occupation.

There is a mandate from the UN and the international community at-large to end colonialism.

So what can we do to bring an end the occupation, on our terms?

I think an acceptable solution will never come through using colonial systems. The colonial system is railroading our people into having our sovereignty retrospectively recognised as being the founding component of Australian sovereignty (replacing the British Crown). What this will mean in the long-run is that everything the colony has done – the genocides, murder, theft, rape, removals, forced indoctrinations etc. will have been done in our own name. It will be as if we genocided ourselves. You can’t genocide yourself – so – there is no genocide under this scenario. It will be as if we were never even colonised at all. There will be no justice under this foundation.

This is not limited to acts committed against ourselves. We will become the foundation of authority for everything Australia has done as a nation state. This includes overseas wars. We are the ones who authorised all wars that Australia has ever entered, including controversial ones. Yet we had no say in the matter.

You might think this is impossible to rewrite history in such a dramatic way. But it has happened in the past, as I have touched on in my onion analogy. Another example of the British rewriting history retrospectively is in the Statute of Westminster 1931. The Westminster Statutes were made after World War II, but involved backdating constitutional arrangements back to before the war. Yes – Constitutional foundations can be backdated, and it has happened before.

The only way out at this stage, in my opinion – is to think outside the box.

We already have our own ways of doing things, of making collective decisions. Together, we have a lot of power when we stand together. Here are the steps I think we need to do, to break free and assert our true power.

1. Formalise our representation on our own terms.

We have our ways of doing things as communities. We have our way of making decisions. The problem is, people outside do not respect our ways. This is a huge problem, and leads to outsiders manipulating/cherry picking “leaders” to suit their own agenda – and not the wishes of our communities.

Formalising our forms of representation sets clear expectations to outsiders as how they must deal with us. By formalisation – I mean communities getting together, nominating spokespersons, coming to agreements about who those spokespersons can speak for and what they can speak about. In many cases, the basis of this is already there in our communities. But – once communities have formalised representation – they can be very clearly asserted to ‘the outside world’. It is more about letting people outside clearly know the terms of engaging with us.

This formalisation may be a very complicated process. To really accurately reflect our cultural systems – there may be several over-lapping systems of representation, because our governance is very complex. Normally, the rest of the world works on much simpler and flatter structures. This formalisation process is further complicated by the disruption of our traditional systems by colonialism itself.

But the key things to keep in mind is to foster a system where;

• spokespeople are accountable,
• where it is clear and known who they speak for,
• measures are taken to avoid conflicts of interest of spokespeople,
• and a system where gubba-cherry-picked fakers will stand out like dogs balls.

This may mean we need to compromise somewhat, and adopt a “flatter”, idiot-proof structure for the purposes of dealing with the “outside world”; while maintaining our more complex structures internally. I think this is kind of what the Tent Embassy does, and generally does well IMO – but sadly they are ignored.

2. Formalise our values, from which priorities and goals will flow

Every culture has a set of core values. These values are, in my opinion, the basis of the culture. People often think that stuff like food, dance and stories is culture – but I think that these elements are more like containers of culture. They are very important as they carry the culture, and without them culture will fall away – but ultimately – Culture is Values.

What is important?

Family, connection, country, money, individual freedoms, not leaving anyone behind, personal status, material wealth, saving-face, purity, obedience, respecting elders….????

I do not list, or prioritise specific Aboriginal values here – I just give some examples from different cultures because this is a discussion that needs to happen on a community-by-community basis. Different communities may have different values and prioritise those values differently.

Different cultures have different values at their core.

Values always remain – even where our language and stories have been beaten out of us. Our values survive.

Those values are the basis of setting the way forward. The colonial system has a different set of values – which are very different to ours. Our collective priority, and our ancestral duty is to maintain our values, and not to succumb to those colonial values that conflict with ours.

When our core values are identified – it will make setting priorities and finding a way forward much easier. It will also make it easier for outsiders to see where we are coming from, and make them less afraid of us.

Identifying values will also make us stronger as communities, as we stand behind those values together. Fakers and sell-outs will stand out – because they do not adhere to our value systems.

3. Assert our position Internationally

When we have proper spokespeople, our values, priorities – we have the foundation to stand up internationally. We can stick a firecracker under the colony’s bum.

We leverage our proper spokespeople to establish diplomatic relations internationally – as people independent and separate from Australia. This is our right to do this under international law. As a collective under colonial occupation, we are not Australian. We maintain a status separate and distinct. To establish diplomatic relations with other countries will assert that position.

This could happen – for example, sending a diplomatic delegation to Fiji. Then the Fiji Prime Minister rolls out the diplomatic carpet, and welcomes the delegation as representatives of whatever Aboriginal nation/s they represent. It could also happen by doing a treaty with another country. The treaty doesn’t have to be anything major – the main point is that there is one. These actions are very significant – as it would represent diplomatic recognition.

Historically – the doctrine of terra nullius was probably a result of Abel Tasman. Abel Tasman diplomatically recognised the Maori (by interacting with chiefs, and getting in fights with them), but he did not recognise the people of Van Diemen’s Land because there was no interaction (see Tasman’s instructions vs. his actions – he implied there was no sovereign). On James Cook’s third voyage, William Anderson the ship’s surgeon claimed the people of Van Diemen’s Land are the same stock of people as on the east coast of New Holland. Anderson claimed that people in Van Diemen’s Land had the same name for “Kangaroo” as the people in the Endeavour River. This meant the status of non-recognition in Van Diemen’s Land was extended to mainland New Holland (as they are same stock of people with shared language). This was a stretch of the truth, because the British knew at this time of the existence of the Bass Strait because Tobias Furneaux had discovered it in secret. The British later had to recognise Maori sovereignty because Tasman (the Dutch) had already recognised them. That is why the Maori got a Treaty, and we didn’t.

The missing element historically was international recognition. It’s not too late to do this. International recognition would force a Treaty with terms negotiated by Aboriginal peoples that are internationally enforceable. Under the current colonial-railroad-proposal – the Treaty itself will be internationally enforceable – but Aboriginal-negotiated terms will NOT be internationally enforceable. In the long-run, any treaty offered without us first attaining international diplomatic recognition will not be worth the paper it is written on. Ask the people of Kashmir who had a similar structure of treaty – the negotiated terms have since been flushed down the loo as they are only domestically enforceable. This was even though the negotiated terms were enshrined in article 370 of the Constitution of India itself – they were still broken!

The devil in the Uluru Statement treaty is not in the detail – it is in the structure. We need to get recognition OUTSIDE first – to force a properly structured treaty that will allow us to negotiate internationally enforceable treaty terms and to continue our culture (= our VALUES).