The Land is Life campaign of Community Aid Abroad is a response to the International Year for the Worlds Indigenous Peoples (IYIP), 1993, and the ongoing debates in Queensland about the content of its Land Act. CAA has been working with indigenous peoples in many countries, often the poorest of the poor. We have experienced the effects of colonialism on indigenous peoples in the many projects we have assisted in countries such as India, Guatemala and in Aboriginal Australia.
Indigenous people everywhere have been robbed of their most crucial asset - the land in which their culture, religion and lifestyle is based. Consequently, this booklet and the Land is life campaign focus on the legal mechanisms which have been used to restrict indigenous peoples' access to land as wellas some case studies of ways in which that access has been restored. Indigenous people are increasingly working together to overcome the effects of colonialism - to restore control of their land and to rebuild their traditional culture as a living culture which is adapted to their present situation.
However, no matter what steps indigenous people take, the final step in overcoming the effects of colonialism is the reconciliation between indigenous and non-indigenous inhabitants. As Paul Keating said at the launch of IYIP:
The starting point might be to recognise that the problem starts with us non-Aboriginal Australians. We took the traditional lands and smashed the traditional way of life. We brought the diseases, the alcohol. We committed murders. We took the children from their mothers. We practiced discrimination and exclusion. It was our ignorance and our prejudice. And our failure to imagine these things being done to us. With noble exceptions, we failed to make the most basic human response and enter into their hearts and minds. We failed to ask - how would I feel if this were done to me? As a consequence, we failed to see that what we were doing degraded all of us.The way forward is reconciliation, a coming to terms with each other. This may take the form of symbolic documents such as treaties; financial compensation such as the Pay the Rent campaign; Biodiversity levies to compensate traditional farmers for the commercial use of their plant varieties; and legal title and control of traditional land and the resources on it. However commendable these actions in improving the lot of indigenous people, it does not address the roots of the problem - the attitudes and values of non-indigenous people.
The reconciliation with indigenous people will only be lasting if there are two further, parallel, processes of reconciliation. We need to become reconciled with our history and we need to become reconciled with the land we now inhabit. Reconciliation with our history as the children of colonialists will require us to accept the history of massacre and land theft which allowed the colony to grow and expand. This history needs to be documented and taught in schools so that future generations grow up accepting the truth of the past.
Another more personal reconciliation that we need to undergo is with our family history of migration. Many of us were born under southern skies, we have no place in the north. For whatever reason, we have been severed from connection with the land of our forebears both physically and spiritually. Many of us have no clear cultural tradition to be part of. We are the embodiment of the mixing of many cultures in a land far removed from the land which was the basis of those cultures. My own story is typical - I was born in the open spaces of Africa. I found Europe, the land of my forebears, claustrophobic, weighed down in the patterns of history, no stone left unturned, no wilderness not tamed by man. I felt totally alien in the land of my forebears, whichever that was - Portugal, Netherlands, England or Germany - I am a mixture of all of them.
Australians such as I, have two main options for reconciliation. We can become global citizensı - not attached to any place, or we can accept what we are - a nation of the remnants of a multiplicity of cultures, and forge these into a society rooted in this place. We will then build a unique identity - an identity which reflects the variety of subcultures making up the whole. We have the opportunity to build a future in Australia which values each person with no judgement on race, colour or creed. This future would be adapted to this place. The land would shape the lifestyle. We still celebrate our religious festivals on the same date as they do in Europe or Asia - Christmas turkey in midsummer and Spring festivals like Mayday in Autumn. We still rely on a colonial economy - resource extraction to supply the "home country", or the cargo cult that expects Asia to solve our problems. To become based in this land, our economy and culture needs to be adapted to the climate, landform and resources here. Only then will we have any opportunity of understanding the basis of Aboriginal claims for land.
The other option for children of migrants is to become "global citizens", part of some new culture which attempts to disregard the limitations and variety of its resource base. This future is not sustainable and leads inevitably to loss of the great diversity of human cultures, some of which may have important lessons to teach us all about sustainable lifestyles. Only when we develop a culture rooted in Australia, will there be a true reconciliation between the original inhabitants, children of migrants and the land we all rely on for life.