Stamm, Mort --- "Book Review - Aboriginal Australians (Minority Rights Group Report No. 35, 1982)" [1982] AboriginalLawB 57; (1982) 1(5) Aboriginal Law Bulletin 20

• Book Review-Aboriginal Australians (Minority Rights Group Report No. 35, 1982)

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Book Review -

Aboriginal Australians
(Minority Rights Group Report No. 35, 1982)

by Keith D. Suter and Kaye Stearman

available from Australian Council for Overseas Aid

PO Box 1562, Canberra City, ACT, 2601 ($2.50).

Reviewed by Mort Stamm

The Minority Rights Group Report on Aboriginal Australians is certainly an interesttweaking primer, for foreign and domestic readers alike, on the condition of Australia's most oppressed and dispossessed minority. It is- only a primer, however, because many more than fourteen pages and 20,000 words (the heart of the Report, pp. 4-17) are necessary in order to unravel the complexities of a problem which Australian society has seemed, to date, unable or unwilling to address in any substantive way.

The Report does, however, provide a mass of information which is largely uncolored by any obvious interpretative bias. This can serve as a starting point for both increasing the public awareness about the situation of black Australians and making further investigations along any number of lines of inquiry which suggest themselves to those who may want to develop a more informed personal opinion about this vexing problem.

This is not a report about a minority which can work with the political potential inherent in the numerical majorities of the native Zimbabweans, South Africans, South-East Asians, or sub-continental Indians. Neither is it a report about a people who, being small in numbers, can seek to legally rehabilitate and socially resurrect themselves, like the native North Americans, through the provisions of treaties which recognize separate nations and peoples, as well as specific rights and grants of land and autonomy guaranteed (if largely disregarded until late) by the government, and chief antagonist, which bound itself and the society it represents in the treaty documents. Black Australians have neither the numbers nor the treaties nor, at this time, the organizational representation and solidarity to prop up aspirations similar to those of other indigenous people. They do, nevertheless, have the aspirations and the rest of Australia must contend with the demands inherent in them.

Black and white Australians must remember, however, that while Aboriginal Australians are like other indigenous peoples in some ways, there are many ways in which they are not alike - ranging from the uniqueness of their own cultures to the particular historicall and political framework within which the issues surrounding them must be resolved. Comparative vote-taking is a continual necessity so that what is unique to the Australian situation is not forfotten. Somewhat more emphasis could have been put on this point in the Report in place of the straightforward description of the Aborigines as they see themselves and their struggle. This point might have been made in the same matterof-fact way that the rest of the Report is presented, so that readers do not assume that options open to and exercised by other indigenous gioups are equally available to black Australians.

Given what the Aborigines do not have working in their favor, the essentially NGO (non-governmental organization) exercise in research and publicity evidenced by this Report can serve a useful informational role in the local, national, and even international debate about the ways in which the issues posed by the situation of the Australian Aborigines can and should be resolved.

These are human rights issues of the most basic kind which, in many practical ways, run the gamut of those set out in the United Nations' Covenants on Civil and Political Rights (1966) and Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (1966). The very substantial numerical inferiority and social and georaphical remoteness of those directly involved, however, makes first-hand contact with the problem impossible for most Australians and people overseas. It is their informed perception of the unequal and unjust treatment of a minority people which will be essential if black Australians are to gain a foothold of any enduring sort in the collective conscience of the country and its ruling establishment. This is a prelude to any subsequent social and political action by the country on then behalf.

The Minority Group Report can help bridge this gap as a compact package of information which others can use, one would hope, with good faith and contructive resolve.