Ideas for winning indigenous rights

Ideas for winning indigenous rights

A good idea waiting to happen: regional agreements in Australia

Proceedings from the Cairns workshop, July 1994

$15 from Colleen Burfitt, Cape York Land Council, PO Box 2496, Cairns Qld 4870

Reviewed by Sujatha Fernandes

This booklet is a collection of papers and addresses given to the Cairns workshop in 1994, as well as extracts of submissions and recommendations made to the federal parliament.

The Cairns workshop was a major meeting organised to investigate the benefits and pitfalls of the Canadian experience of regional agreement. The conference was attended by indigenous people from around the world, including Inuit representatives involved in negotiating and implementing the Nunavut and Inuvialuit agreements in the Canadian Arctic.

The booklet has been published by the Cape York Land Council as a resource for informing indigenous people and their supporters in Australia about the way in which regional agreements have come about in other parts of the world and to develop strategies for these agreements in Australia.

It is a useful document not only because it provides steps forward in addressing Aboriginal land rights issues in Australia, but also because it links up the struggles and experiences of indigenous people around the world.

From GLW issue 195