'Australia' - what's in a name? Part 3. Getting our spirits right.

“Getting the spirit right” is a lot easier to say than to achieve.

The expression “Getting the spirit right” can be understood as a shorthand way of summing up a vast number of factors which have to be tweaked to fine-tune life to the high point it strives to reach.

While there are many areas of contemporary life in this country which have to be reworked in order to move towards restoring balance to life here, the ideal of “Getting the spirit right” may serve to remind us of what is truly important in what can be a confusing mix of voices, policies, platforms for powerbases, official strategies and so on.

“Getting our spirits right” has to be seen as a primary and key objective if we are to move any significant distance to healing the relationship between First Peoples and those of us who – one way or another – have come to be this country since 1788.

We will never get the right spirit into this relationship until we non-indigenous peoples cease from insisting that First Peoples must accommodate themselves to our reality, and that our realities should not be expected to have to be modified or reformed to better accommodate First Peoples realities.

While dominating (and increasingly strident) Anglo-Australian voices may insist that their’s is the only yardstick for evaluating life in this country, that imperial measure yardstick is already obsolete. Life is moving on whether they like it or not.

What we need to ask now is “What do we have to change in Anglo-Australian life in order to provide better living conditions – as judged by First Peoples -  for First Peoples by way of recognition and the proper resources needed to live full lives?”

And better living conditions does not mean employment, housing, education and health as defined by culturally one-sided values, although it may well include all of that. Better living conditions must include recognition and affirmation of First Peoples as First Peoples, and not merely as captives of a modern nation-state.

Until there has been some serious major reform of the cluster of values; attitudes; cultural practices and constitutional arrangements the provision of better employment, education, housing and health will not produce the affirmation of Being required for full well-being.

Making the restoration and maintenance of First Peoples full well-being, health and happiness – as assessed on their own terms - the measure by which we non-indigenous gauge our success requires a comprehensive rethinking of who we are, where we are and where we fit into life.

It is my view that lasting social healing requires a sound and uncompromising diagnosis – followed by the gentlest of treatments. Dissolving blockages – rather than attempting to smash through - is far more preferable.

DISSOLVING BLOCKAGES

Much symbolic energy has been invested (by those opposed to First Peoples) in the term 'Australia'. That name has a very strong hold on all of us. 

Coming to see that 'Australia' - standing on its own and as presently constituted - is seriously lacking something vital is an example of dissolving a blockage.

Briefly stated, one of the problems with the name ‘Australia’ (and the accompanying term ‘Australian’) is that – without some dual name from an indigenous source - it is culturally one-sided and embodies the wrong spirit.

The challenge which confronts us to find something new which contains the right spirit.

And merely adding a new indigenous name of names  is not sufficient to work healing magic. The addition of that indigenous name (or names) has to signify real changes to the formal and informal constitution of modern Australia.

Irrespective of the fine characteristics of so many of the people who live in this country, and who are proud to call themselves ‘Australian’, the term ‘Australia’ – under the present Constitution – enshrines  institutionalised racism against this country’s First Peoples.

As another recent issue clearly demonstrates, the picture is far from simple. There has been a suggestion by Professor Tim Flannery that the Australian War Memorial should honour First Peoples warriors who died defending their country from colonial invasion.

But the country they died defending is not the same country for which the Australian War Memorial embodies as a ritual shrine. It could be said that First Peoples warriors died defending their country from ‘Australia’.

And, further, that ‘Australia’ is the eventual name of the occupying power which institutionalised itself here after those warriors lost that phase of their long and ongoing struggle.

Of course, this is exactly the kind of message which Prime Ministers past and present do not want to be part of a conversation about the respective places of indigenous and non-indigenous peoples in this country. No official ‘oxygen’ for such voices.

Fortunately, in addition to my views, there are many indigenous people in this country who have been saying this sort of thing for many years – as part of a much wider ‘conversation’ about life here. The views these people represent have been denied official ‘oxygen’ for some hundreds of years now, and are not dependant on it for survival.

Their message “We have survived” is proof of this. “We have survived” despite a long affirmation drought spanning two centuries. 

Not surprising, given the lame provisions for constitutional recognition on offer from Anglo-Australia authorities, many of these First Australian reject the limited terms of the official ‘conversation’ about constitutional recognition.

They add issues such as unextinguished sovereignty; the lack of a treaty or treaties; reparations for past and present damages; the need to undertake reform of past and present Western practices; the need for a fair-dinkum and culturally appropriate means of representation in the governance of this country – and more.

The issues these First Peoples bring to the ‘conversation’ need to be added to the discussional agenda – not brushed aside as inconvenient.

What we need – to heal life in this country - is not merely a culturally one-sided conversation but a robust dialogue which genuinely affirms First Peoples as cultural partners in life here. We really need to provide spaces for these voices in the conversation if we are to find a stable foundation for future life in this country.

I don’t expect this to happen under the Abbott government, which is reportedly cutting funding to the National Congress of Australia’s First Peoples and relying, instead, on a totally unrepresentative Indigenous Advisory Council.

Presently the National Congress is the only indigenous body which has a chance of providing the means for a country-wide consultation process.

And the National Congress itself is regarded, by a number of First Australians, as not a representative body for them. At the core of First Peoples Ways is a deep distrust of any process which allows a disproportionate amount of power to accumulate in any one person or group.  As soon as a process concentrating power in one locus becomes apparent, something will be done to derail that process.

Concentrations of power – of the kind which are enabled by the modern nation-state – are anathema to those who lives are informed by First Peoples Ways.

So even if funding was secured for the National Congress and it was used as a vehicle for Constitutional reform, considerable work would remain to be done in order to find some means of including voices which are presently marginalised and which insist that indigenous sovereignty was never extinguished.

It is hard to imagine the Prime Minister’s hand-picked Indigenous Advisory Council ever embracing this challenge – but the National Congress has some chance of providing a two-way conduit for a robust dialogue 

Maybe Congress, working with local First Peoples, could tell us the answer to this long neglected question: "By what original name or names do we call this country?"

That might work as a genuine conversation starter.