War and peace: the Government’s engagement with Indigenous realities

What will it take to make a peace in this troubled land? How do we end the war? What are the terms and conditions for building trust between the parties?

We need to recognise a state of war (however low level, mundane and tortuous) continues. We need to recognise that the government has a war aim, the total dissolution of Indigenous communal life and the atomisation of Indigenous communities into indistinguishable Australians.

This war aim has been carried out in the recent past through slow desolation and marginalisation, the abandonment of communities to a life-world of environmental corruption and emotional dissolution. Now we are moving into a more active and dangerous phase.

Australian society needs to declare that it wants to make peace, and to espouse a peace plan. It requires a vision of real Indigenous economic development based on the capacity to realise the value extracted from Indigenous lands by our forebears. It means removing the weapons of mass destruction - the epicentre of pornography is the ACT suburb of Fyshwick, less than three kilometres from Parliament House; the government extracts huge revenues from the alcohol excises it collects.

Ultimately, it means having a government that commits itself to ending the war and that orientation depends on a people who want peace. Whether they do, is a question all Australians will have to answer for themselves.