Table of Contents
Crowds gather on a flat, dusty, ceremonial ground—witnesses to the first steps in the invention of a capital city. The Duke and Duchess of Kent have travelled from the mother country to preside over proceedings. The sovereign Crown come down under.
In the midst of the huddle one figure stands out. He is an Aboriginal man dressed in an old suit, dogs at his side … A report from the Canberra Times referred to him as ‘a lone representative of a fast vanishing race’ who had come only to salute ‘visiting Royalty’. His name was Jimmy Clements. Whitefellas, as was their way, referred to him as ‘King Billy’. On seeing Clements, a policeman immediately asked him to leave. He was apparently dressed inappropriately for the occasion—a King not fit to be in the presence of English royalty. But Clements did not want to be moved on; this country was his after all.
… the crowd on the stands rallied to his side. There were choruses of advice and encouragement for him to do as he pleased. A well known clergyman stood up and called out that the Aborigine had a better right than any man present to a place on the steps of the House of Parliament and in the Senate during the ceremony. The old man’s persistence won him an excellent position, and also a shower of small change …
The following day, May 10, prominent citizens were paraded before the Duke and Duchess as they stood atop the steps of Parliament House. Clements was among those who passed before them … The Argus reported, ‘an ancient aborigine, who calls himself King Billy and who claims sovereign rights to the Federal Territory, walked slowly forward alone, and saluted the Duke and Duchess. They cheerily acknowledged his greeting.’
… the Aboriginal man who ‘claims sovereign rights’ at the very moment the sovereignty of the Crown and the Australian parliament is asserted.
(McKenna 2004)
Politicians and dignitaries have gathered in the centre of Parliament House for the first-ever indigenous welcome. With rain gently falling across Canberra … Ngambri elder Matilda House-Williams … accompanied by a didgeridoo player and her two grandchildren, greeted Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and presented him a message stick.
She said her welcome, on this occasion, was far different from that accorded Jimmy Clements in 1927 … Ms House-Williams described the day as significant because it was the first time parliament had opened with an Indigenous welcome to country ceremony … ‘A welcome to country acknowledges our people and pays respect to our ancestors’ spirits who’ve created the lands,’ she said. ‘In doing this the prime minister shows what we call proper respect, to us, to his fellow parliamentarians and to all Australians.’ … The welcome symbolised a united Australia, Ms House-Williams said. ‘The hope of a united nation through reconciliation, we can join together the people of the oldest-living culture in the world and with others who have come from all over the globe and who continue to come.’
A smiling Mr Rudd said he would respond, first by honouring the traditional owners of the land, now occupied by Parliament House, as well as the traditional owners of all lands across Australia … He said exactly 100 years ago Canberra was chosen as the site of the nation's capital, 80 years ago the first parliament house was built and 20 years ago new parliament house opened. ‘Yet the human history of this land stretches back thousands of years to the Dreamtime,’ he said.
‘Despite this antiquity among us, despite the fact that parliaments have been meeting here for the better part of a century, today is the first time in our history that as we open the parliament of the nation, that we are officially welcomed to country by the first Australians of this nation,’ … ‘Today we begin with one small step, to set right the wrongs of the past, and in this ceremonial way it is a significant and symbolic step.’ Mr Rudd said the ceremony should become a permanent practice for future governments. ‘Let this become a permanent part of our ceremonial celebration of the Australian democracy.’
(AAP 2008)
The debate about Indigenous governance in Australia teeters on the brink of becoming inane and unilateral. As McKenna (2004) details above, in 1927, Jimmy Clements, or King Billy as he was known to the citizens of Canberra, was seen as ‘a lone representative of a fast vanishing race’. At the same time as his ‘race’ was supposedly vanishing, he ‘claim[ed] sovereign rights’ at the very moment ‘the sovereignty of the Crown’ was being asserted in the opening of the first Australian Parliament. Eighty years later, Indigenous Australians have not disappeared. They are still asserting their sovereign rights and interests as the First Australians, and still doing so within a highly charged and contested environment in which the Australian state holds pre-eminent power. In many ways, government discourse and public understanding of the nature of Indigenous Australians’ own systems of governance, and how these function within contemporary Australian society, have not progressed far since 1927. Their views continue to be pervaded by misunderstanding, half truths and convenient assumptions.
The two news events related above, linked across almost 80 years, stand as a rich allegory for the struggle, vulnerability and sustaining practices of Indigenous governance in Australia. They pose Indigenous systems of governance squarely within an intercultural post-colonial frame, in which the Australian state has overarching sovereign power and jurisdiction. Today, Indigenous Australians have secured only limited jurisdictional authority through the erratic enactment of land rights, native title and local government legislation in the states and territories. In the absence of treaties or constitutional recognition, they are having to find their pathways to self-governance within the wider ‘governance environment’ that encompasses them. This continues to bring them face to face with the governance systems, structures, concepts and values of non-Indigenous Australia—many of which are incompatible with their own.
A broad theme running through Contested Governance: Culture, Power and Institutions in Indigenous Australia is that the engagement between Indigenous people, their organisations and the Australian state is essentially intercultural in nature (cf. Hinkson and Smith 2005; Merlan 1998). That is, what we are trying to understand is a heterogeneous and relational field of governance (see B. Smith this volume, Chapter 6). The case studies presented here illustrate this point vividly. It is simply impossible to understand the governance of Australian Indigenous communities and organisations as separate from the encapsulating governance environment of the Australian state.
This is not an assertion of categorical control or domination by the Australian state. Rather, it identifies the importance of the interplay of relationships, practices and agency taking place in the intercultural governance field. The inter-penetration evolves and is neither uniform nor unidirectional. The focus of the book is squarely on that field, for it is where our research has found contemporary Indigenous governance practices are being shaped and often actively asserted, and where differences between the cultures of governance are being contested and negotiated. In other words, there is significant ‘inter-influence’ (Merlan 1998, 2005).
The case study research presented here indicates that Indigenous and non-Indigenous governance systems are far from separate in respect to issues of power, authority, institutions and relationships. And there are intended and unintended consequences—beneficial and negative—for both Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians arising from what Hinkson and Smith (2005: 160) refer to as ‘the complexities of lived interculturalism’. In particular, the contemporary governance systems of Indigenous communities, their organisations and leaders have been influenced by their interactions with the Australian state over many decades. To a lesser extent, the state has in turn been influenced by its interactions with Indigenous Australian governance systems, an influence that is most apparent at the level of its institutional engagement and policy implementation.