COMMENT BY KIM BULLIMORE
The Olympic Games were surely the "perfect" platform to showcase the issues that affect indigenous Australia. When almost half a million people showed their support for indigenous people by marching across the Sydney Harbour Bridge on May 28, the Olympic platform seemed the obvious next step in our campaign against racism and this federal government.
But instead of tens of thousands of people turning out to support Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander rights during the Olympics, only several hundred people have turned out, to two separate and counterposed rallies.
The reason for the low turnout is not that people have lost interest in indigenous issues or do not support Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people's campaign for land rights, a treaty or social justice.
It is because the indigenous rights movement is divided. It has allowed its agenda to be set by those in power: the federal and state governments, big business and those agencies by which these forces project their power, namely the police, the government-controlled Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC) and the establishment media.
Divided
By allowing the agenda to be set by these agencies of power, the ability to build a politically independent movement has been lost. With it goes any real opportunity to make substantial and permanent change which will benefit the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people of Australia.
If an indigenous leader wins a seat in parliament or on the ATSIC board but, as a condition, has to keep quiet about the political status quo, then it is not an achievement for indigenous people and it will not build our movement for justice.
If indigenous groups win a tender for an Olympic exhibition, but, as a condition, agree to remove any political statements and photos which might be an embarrassment to the established political powers, then it is not an achievement for indigenous people and it will not build our movement for justice.
If an Aboriginal peace camp is set up but, out of fear, acquiesces to the wishes of police, who dictate who can and can't be allied with the movement, then it is not an achievement for indigenous people and it will not build our movement for justice
These things could all assist our people's fight for liberation. But only if they address the political needs of our movement: to be independent from all these forces of power so that we can fight our own battles.
If we are only seeking to win reforms from the current political establishment, if we are too afraid to say we want more than concessions, then we are nowhere near winning real liberation.
Who is with us?
To win real liberation we need to change the way the world works. That means we need to work out who is with us and who is against us, who is willing to stand and fight with us and who will try to stop us.
The picture was made clear only days before the Olympics started, ath the S11 protests against the World Economic Forum.
These protests showed who is with us: all the other oppressed groups; those seeking stop the exploitation of the poor, those seeking to win liberation for women, for gays and lesbians; those seeking to win decent wages not only in the First World but also in the Third World; those seeking to stop the destruction of the environment; and those seeking to stop racism against indigenous people, against refugees and all people of colour.
These are our allies, these are the people who are with us, who we can rely on. These are the people who will help us win our liberation.
At S11 we also learnt who was against us: it was the police, the governments, the mainstream media and those who seek to exploit the majority in order to create private profits for the minority.
Far from being our allies, it is these groups who will seek to co-opt us with nice-sounding offers of "dialogue", who will seek to frighten us with threats and who will seek to divide us against each other.
Understanding that we are kept subservient by tactics of divide and rule is the second lesson we need to learn if we are to win our liberation.
When the huge wave of the indigenous rights movement started in the 1960s and 1970s, our movement was proudly independent of any agenda set by the federal government or any other institutionalised seats of power.
The original Aboriginal Tent Embassy in Canberra stood proudly defiant of the federal police, the McMahon Coalition government and the mainstream media. It built alliances with all those who supported the call for indigenous rights: students, workers, communists, progressive non-indigenous people and anyone else who was willing to fight alongside it.
Over the last decade, however, those in power have succeeded in wearing down or winning over those who originally resisted. Many of the most radical leaders of the 1970s have now become part of the bureaucracy established by the federal and state governments. These bureaucracies are now presented as the only legitimate way of dealing with indigenous affairs.
A number of reforms have been won through these bureaucracies. But they have never been substantial or permanent. Because these reforms are won within a structure steeped in institutionalised racism, only limited gains will and can be allowed.
Whose agenda?
For far too long, the agenda of the indigenous rights movement has not been based on the political needs of the people it seeks to liberate.
The reason that "reconciliation", for instance, is promoted by the present Coalition and former Labor governments is because it poses no real threat to the established power. The official reconciliation process has done, and will do, little to achieve real social justice, land rights and equality for indigenous Australians.
We are told that we should be happy with the few concessions we've been given during the reconciliation process, because "reconciliation is a long road and indigenous rights are something which can not be won overnight".
We have been given symbols and gestures, in an attempt to placate us and make us forget our demands for land right, a treaty, self-determination. But we have been given no justice.
The Olympic Games have been a perfect example of that. While the indigenous community can take pride in the achievements of Cathy Freeman, Nova Peris-Kneebone and other athletes, we should not be fooled into thinking that the inclusion of Aboriginal athletes in the games or of dancers in the opening ceremony will do anything substantial to change the overwhelming social and economic disadvantage that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people suffer in this country.
Meanwhile, government policy has been all about ensuring the rights of the big businesses, mining companies and large pastoral lease holders. Reconciliation as it currently stands is nothing more than smoke and mirrors.
There are many in the indigenous community who have rejected the government-sponsored reconciliation process, like those who have protested on the opening day of the Olympic Games, like the Aboriginal Tent Embassy and the Metropolitan Land Council.
But we have yet to build a coherent alternative to the policies of those in power. We are still divided and fractured and have lost our perspective of becoming a strong, politically independent movement.
How are we going to overcome this?
A further lesson which can and should be drawn from S11 is the power of collective, mass action. S11 was a success because it worked outside the established corridors of power. It relied instead on the people, the building of alliances between oppressed groups and the power of collective action.
A politically independent movement, which mobilises the biggest number of people, which builds alliances between the oppressed, is how we will win liberation not only for indigenous people but for all people. Our strength has come when we have remembered this: the land rights movement in the 1970s, the protests during the 1982 Commonwealth Games in Brisbane, the anti-Bicentennial marches in 1988, the campaign against deaths in custody.
For Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders, the situation is urgent. Our people are dying 20 years younger than other Australians, our children have a mortality rate three times higher than other Australian children, our people are suffering and dying from curable diseases in a wealthy country, our young people are being locked up at increasing rates and are dying in jails, our people have the highest rate of unemployment and the least education.
We can not keep going the way we are currently are. We need to change the way we have been doing things.
We need to do what works: bring people onto the streets; assert our independence from the institutions of power which oppress us and everyone else; ally with all those who support the struggle for indigenous Rights, whether they be black or white. It is only when we do this that the door to real liberation for our people will be opened.
[Kim Bullimore is a member of the Indigenous Student Network and the Democratic Socialist Party. This article is based on a speech by the author to a forum, entitled "Indigenous protest and the Olympics", sponsored by Green Left Weekly, which was held in Sydney on September 20.]