Pritchard, Sarah --- "Book Review - Aboriginal Autonomy - Issues and Strategies" [1994] AboriginalLawB 63; (1994) 3(71) Aboriginal Law Bulletin 17

• Book Review-Aboriginal Autonomy: Issues And Strategies

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Book Review-

Aboriginal Autonomy: Issues and Strategies

H.C. Coombs

Cambridge University Press, 1994

Sarah Pritchard investigates Nugget Coombs' strategies for Aboriginal self-determination.

In his Foreword to Nugget Coombs' Aboriginal Autonomy: Issues and Strategies Mick Dodson, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner, notes that a solution to the enormous disadvantage experienced by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples is precluded by the bureaucratic apparatus shrouding Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander affairs.

For over 25 years, Nugget Coombs has been closely involved with the struggles of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples for the recognition of their rights. Few, if any, non-indigenous voices in Australia have as profound an understanding of the myriad of debilitating ways in which arrangements for the administration of Aboriginal affairs have obstructed the realisation of Aboriginal aspirations. Whilst no one non-indigenous voice is likely to succeed in altering the mindsets of all those who advocate the assimilation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities into mainstream Australian society, Nugget Coombs argues his case in a manner which is eloquent, thoughtprovoking and, more often than not, compelling. Mick Dodson has described him as "the whitefella's most senior elder".

The essays in Aboriginal Autonomy: Issues and Strategies examine a number of initiatives and events which have been part of the inexorable movement towards the greater autonomy of Aboriginal communities and institutions. The essays point to considerable progress in the achievement of a lifestyle more healthy, creative and characteristically Aboriginal than possible at any time since dispossession. Some are revised versions of essays which have been previously published or presented at workshops and conferences, others were written specifically for the book. Despite the periods of time between their writing, they present a remarkably consistent analysis of the issues relating to Aboriginal autonomy and a coherent picture of the cogent vision of their author.

The essays are ordered thematically, within sections which address a particular aspect of the role of autonomy within Aboriginal society. In Chapter 1 Coombs considers the distinctive qualities of Aboriginal society. He posits the concept of personal autonomy or independence, on the one hand, and the concept of a reciprocal duty to nurture and to care for others, on the other, as the two crucial components of Aboriginality.

In following chapters, Coombs seeks to demonstrate that Aboriginal society remains strongly committed to the pursuit of autonomy for its people in their individual and corporate lives, as well as to the acceptance of and respect for the rights and autonomy of others. Throughout, he argues for resolution of issues new to Aboriginal society through the application and adaptation of Aboriginal mechanisms and capacities, in accordance with the preferred lifestyle and cultural priorities of particular peoples. The impact on Aboriginal people of the loss of personal and cultural autonomy is seen most clearly in the phenomenon of Aboriginal deaths in custody.

In Chapters 2-4 Coombs considers aspects of Aboriginal peoples' relationship with the land. He examines the outstation or homeland movement as a response to the problems of contact and an attempt to evolve a lifestyle which preserves the essence of the Aboriginal way, whilst drawing on elements of non-Aboriginal society. One of the most important effects of this movement has been the rehabilitation of traditional authority and decision-making structures. This has introduced a political component into Aboriginal plans and a desire to resume control of those aspects of. their lives most severely weakened by European dominance. Coombs notes that community emphasis has been most apparent in developments relating to education, health services and law and order. The homeland movement has strengthened the degree to which Aboriginal Australians are seeking pluralism in Australian society, as well as increasing both opposition to demands for strict financial and administrative accountability and the resolve to allocate resources in accordance with Aboriginal priorities.

Coombs examines the experience of the Walpiri people in land use and management. He reasons that communities are likely to be committed only to those decisions in which they are fully involved and that unilaterally imposed settlements will be divisive, destructive and ineffective. He notes the establishment of small decentralised homeland communities with their own characteristic lifestyles as a component of the land rights movement. He describes an amalgam of traditional hunter-gatherer activities and technologies and productive processes observed in settlements and on cattle properties. Again he refers to the combination of the recognition of land rights, the development of a homeland movement and the adoption of a policy of self-determination for Aboriginal communities to lend power to traditional authority and to increase the political content of Aboriginal demands and expectations. This development of political consciousness as a by product of the land rights campaign has also comprehended more politically activist urban Aborigines, and may prove the most significant development in Aboriginal society since white occupation.

In Chapters 5-7 Coombs is concerned with issues relating to the social world and lifestyles of Aboriginal Australians. In his discussion of the contemporary dimensions of Aboriginal health, education, work and economy, he argues that understanding must be sought more deeply in the destructive impact of colonisation on Aboriginal knowledge and skills, on processes of social control and socialisation, and on local economies. In the area of health, Coombs considers evidence that the restoration of land has enabled Aborigines in parts of the Northern Territory and South Australia to cope more effectively with the problems of contemporary life. Other promising developments are the homeland movement, the voluntary commutation of individual unemployment benefits to bulk payments through the Community Development Employment Projects (CDEP) scheme, as well as the emergence of Aboriginal controlled health services. All of these developments have begun to restore to Aborigines command over the lifestyles they choose to lead. Their success is likely to depend on the relationship established between Aboriginal ways of gaining a livelihood and the market oriented national economy, and the degree to which Aborigines are able to develop and effectively control the institutions they need, in accordance with their own view of the world and its purposes. Examples taken from the field of health indicate that Aborigines are capable of significant political and managerial innovation and competence and suggest considerable scope for the evolution of autonomous economic and social institutions.

In the area of education, Coombs argues that Aboriginal communities must be provided with resources which they control in order to re-establish a system which will strengthen Aboriginal strategies for life in a multicultural society. In the area of work and economy, Coombs envisages the growth of an Aboriginal economy functioning parallel to and in close interaction with the mainstream, whilst maintaining its own cultural emphasis, determining its own stream of development and choosing the points at which it enters and seeks to influence the mainstream. In this context also, Coombs points to evidence of intelligent opportunism and structural innovation in the responses of CDEP communities to opportunities created by their own needs and observed in the interstices of mainstream society. Groups wishing to live in the homeland context are able to identify the extent and manner of the interaction of their small-scale local economy with the mainstream economy. Coombs emphasises the need to protect the growing Aboriginalisation of work in such informal local economies from intrusion in the name of accountability, efficiency and bureaucratic guidelines.

In Chapters 8-10 issues relating to the notion environment, the use of resources and development are considered. In the context of development in the East Kimberley region, Coombs notes that far from being hidebound by tradition and hostile to change, Aborigines have been innovative, flexible and pragmatic. He observes that the Aboriginal concepts of responsibility for land and anxiety about environmental damage have much in common with contemporary notions of sustainable development. Central to Aboriginal concerns in the East Kimberley is the development of a comprehensive strategy for reducing poverty and dependence and increasing capacity to control their own lives. Coombs calls for a careful study of options and a primary emphasis upon the long-term environmental and economic sustainability of proposed resource development activities.

Coombs refers to signs that some mining companies may have realised that many Aboriginal communities are not opposed absolutely to mining, but are, on the contrary, anxious to negotiate with mining enterprises to ensure participation in a manner compatible with their environmental, spiritual and economic concerns. It is a matter of extreme urgency that procedures be established to control the activities of corporations seeking access to lands or resources in which Aborigines have proprietary interests. Coombs notes that discussion following the High Court's decision in Mabo (No.2) have been conducted almost entirely with a view to establishing the effect of native title on the mining industry. Circumstances surrounding the McArthur River mine development, near the settlement of Borroloola in the Northern Territory Gulf country, demonstrate how other concerns, environmental and social, have been ignored in the process.

In Chapters 11-13 Coombs considers issues relating to Aboriginal political organisation and law. He examines the proposals of the Yirrkala community in East Arnhem land for the establishment of a law council responsible for the maintenance of social order and concludes that these are likely to strengthen the prospects of orderly change and continuity in Aboriginal communities. He recommends legislation enabling communities to seek authority to establish their own law council or councils, as well as community courts, and establishing a registrar of Aboriginal courts backed up by a consultative body of Aborigines to provide resources and report to Parliament. In connection with questions concerning Aboriginal political leadership, Coombs concludes that the self-management or self-determination which Aborigines seek is primarily local in its form and purpose. It involves the power to create and control their own institutions, to manage their own affairs, to hold accountable those who exercise power among them and to receive and administer resources necessary for their purposes. He considers it unlikely that a growth in the power of the black bureaucracy will of itself satisfy Aboriginal demands for progress toward self-determination. This will depend instead on the degree to which that bureaucracy is felt to be accountable to, and identified with, Aboriginal communities as an extension of their own political institutions. On a macro level, Coombs draws some conclusions from the New Zealand experience with the Treaty of Waitangi. He considers the idea of a treaty in the form of a statement of basic purposes and principles, supported by a tribunal to interpret those principles and guide their implementation, also to be workable in the Australian context. He characterises the coming together of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Australians to work out a constitutional style basis for living together as the most exciting political and social adventure in the history of the continent.

In Chapters 14-15, Coombs draws attention to a number of recent initiatives to maintain and strengthen local autonomy and control in relation to the land, forms of political organisation and education. With respect to the land, he again points to evidence of adaptation to a world of change, a capacity to take from non-Aboriginal society ideas, institutions and technology and to modify them creatively to maintain continuity with the Aboriginal past and its traditions. He singles out growth in the number of decentralised homeland settlements, attempts by an increasing number of communities to assert control over their work context through admission to the CDEP scheme and possibilities for the use of multi-function parks to support smallscale Aboriginal economic enterprises and attempts at greater self-sufficiency. With respect to initiatives in political organisation, Coombs advocates organisational structures based upon a model of bottom-up federalism and the development of local and regional selfgovernment. The Pitjantjatjara Council and, in particular, the Tangentyere Council, which includes representatives of the Arrente, Warlpiri, Pitjantjatjara, Loritja, Anmatjira, Alyawarra and Kaititja peoples based in camps on the fringes of Alice Springs, offer examples of the type of Aboriginal political organisations he considers will become more common. Because of their bottom-up federal nature, such organisations do not compromise the identity or culture of autonomous groups and are able to give common purpose to shared aspirations, to the provision of services and to political action. Coombs takes issue with the misleading representation of ATSIC as an Aboriginal organisation working for, and accountable to, Aboriginal society. To become a genuinely representative Aboriginal organisation, the structure of ATSIC must be modified to reflect the debates conducted, and decisions made, by Aboriginal society through its legitimate agents at the local level. Regional councils would need to be locked into the wellestablished network of local Aboriginal organisations. Whilst acknowledging potential for ATSIC to contribute to the development of a working relationship between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Australians and to strengthen Aboriginal autonomy, Coombs insists that the ATSIC bureaucracy must be transformed into an accountable structure located within the network of existing local and regional organisations.

In the area of Aboriginal education, Coombs calls for a review of government policies to achieve self-determination in education and recognition that education is a two-way process. This requires opportunities for parents, kin and elders in the design and practice of education and the use of the knowledge and wisdom of Aboriginal experts. Coombs examines the initiatives of the East Arnhem clans in and around Yirrkala to aboriginalise their schools and involve parents, Yolngu teachers and community leaders in the provision of two-way education. Such experiments in curriculum content and pedagogic style provide not only an example of the creativity which Aboriginal autonomy can unleash but are also capable of influencing the theory and practice of pedagogy generally.

In Chapter 17 Coombs explores the implications of the recognition of native title by the High Court in Mabo (No.2) as a basis for the political and cultural autonomy sought by Aboriginal peoples. He concludes that the task of the judiciary in resolving key issues for Aboriginal peoples is unfinished and that test cases may be necessary to clarify the implications of Mabo (No.2) for future legislative action. The issue of Aboriginal rights, not only in land, is perhaps the most important political issue now facing the Australian community and the domestic processes purporting to deal with indigenous rights witnessed by a growing international audience. In the absence of an "act of self-determination" for indigenous Australians, the exercise of sovereignty by the Crown will continue to be tainted by the aggression with which it was originally acquired. Such acts of self-determination are not unknown in Australia. Coombs sees no insuperable barrier to an agreement between Aborigines and the Crown to divide sovereignty and allow Aboriginal communities the power to govern, to live in a style they prefer and to have title to property in forms and quantity sufficient to provide for that lifestyle. Coombs is critical of the Native Title Act 1993 (Cth) and the piecemeal nature of legislated native title rights:

What is being granted by Commonwealth legislative largesse is an Aboriginal native title engineered to suit white proprietary interests.

He rejects the claim that uncertainty for mining and other development interests is intolerable andd requires the extinguishment of native title as A process for the negotiation f a long term settlement must It with Aboriginal people and ganisations at the local level unwarranted. Coombs calls on the Commonwealth to fulfil its promise to enact national land rights legislation and to set in train negotiations for a comprehensive settlement of all outstanding social and political issues. The Mabo (No.2) decision poses problems which can only be considered in the context of a comprehensive settlement which provides a basis for effective Aboriginal self-government.

Finally, in Chapter 18, Coombs offers some suggestions as to how Aboriginal autonomy might be secured through a formal act of self-determination. Legislation to define and establish native title must be seen only as a provisional first step towards what Mick Dodson has described as "a deeper act of reconciliation". Such an act must be directed towards the practical realisation of the fundamental right of selfdetermination, as recognised in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and in a form recognised by the United Nations. A process for the negotiation of a long term settlement

must start with Aboriginal people and their organisations at the local level determining the resolution of regional issues relating to local government, self determination and sovereignty. Coombs accepts that such regional self government proposals could differ considerably: "There must be room for such differences". At the end of a period of negotiation, agreement would be sought on options for self-determination to be put formally to the Aboriginal population. In the case of diverse cultural groups, options could include the division of powers and responsibilities on a territorial basis. Coombs concludes his collection of essays with a not entirely pessimistic reference to Australia's incomparable range of experience in innovative federalism.

Because the focus of much of Nugget Coombs' work has been on issues affecting Aboriginal communities in the North and West, his essays do not address the particular aspirations of Torres Strait Islanders. Nor do they consider the specific concerns of largely dispossessed Aboriginal communities in Eastern and Southeastern Australia. The question of the realisation of meaningful forms of self-determination for dispossessed communities may require further reflection and more differentiated solutions. Of course, many of the ideas Coombs advances are also relevant for urban and rural communities, including the development through CDEP schemes of mini-enterprises, the provision of services of a local government character and involvement in economic initiatives in multi-function parks.

Aboriginal Autonomy - Issues and Strategies is dedicated to the achievement in Australia of a society in which men and women of different races and cultures live in creative diversity, valuing and protecting that diversity in nature and humankind. The work of Nugget Coombs represents a remarkable contribution to the advancement of such a vision.