National Reconciliation Week is celebrated across Australia each year between
27 May and 3 June. The dates commemorate two significant milestones in
the reconciliation journey—the anniversaries of the successful 1967
referendum and the High Court Mabo decision.
The week is a time for all Australians to learn
about our shared histories, cultures and achievements and to explore how
each of us can join the national reconciliation effort.
May 27 marks the anniversary of Australia’s most successful referendum
and a defining event in our
nation’s history. The 1967 referendum saw over 90 per cent of
Australians vote to give the Commonwealth the power to make laws for
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and recognise them in the
national census.
On 3 June, 1992, the High Court of Australia delivered its landmark Mabo decision
which legally recognized
that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples have a special
relationship to the land—that existed prior to colonisation and still
exists today. This recognition paved the way for land rights called
Native Title. 2012 marked the 20th anniversary of the Mabo decision.
There are lots of resources at JCU library which can help you explore reconciliation.
Check out a new publication by Bruce Pascoe called Dark Emu: black seeds: agriculture or accident which puts forward an argument for a
reconsideration of the hunter-gatherer tag for precolonial Aboriginal
Australians. The evidence insists that Aboriginal people right across
the continent were using domesticated plants, sowing, harvesting,
irrigating and storing-behaviours inconsistent with the hunter-gatherer
tag. Gerritsen and Gammage in their latest books support this premise
but Pascoe takes this further and challenges the hunter-gatherer tag as a
convenient lie. Almost all the evidence comes from the records and
diaries of the Australian explorers, impeccable sources.
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