The Australian Formal Reconciliation Process: Unfinished Business

The Australian Formal Reconciliation Process: Unfinished Business, by Andrew Gunstone. North Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Publication 2007. ISBN 8781740971492 (paperback) 345pp. $39.95.

Andrew Gunstone has written a timely analysis of the formal reconciliation process in Australia. The intervention of the Commonwealth into the lives of Indigenous Australians in the Northern Territory has brought to public attention the appalling living conditions faced by many of the original custodians of this country.

Forty years after the referendum we could have hoped for improvement in the living conditions and life chances of Indigenous Australians. The Commonwealth was given power to legislate in relation to Indigenous affairs and an overwhelming mandate to redress the marginalisation of Indigenous people in Australian society. What has followed has been a succession of often ad hoc and reactionary policy which has done little to address either the citizenship rights or Indigenous rights of Australia's original custodians.

Much publicised and promoted as a positive step forward was the 10 year process of Reconciliation. However, many Indigenous and non-Indigenous people were sceptical of the Reconciliation process for a number of reasons. In his new book Unfinished Business: The Australian Formal Reconciliation Process, Andrew Gunstone clearly articulates many of the reasons for this scepticism:

What did 'reconciliation' mean? It would seem that this never adequately defined concept and process meant many things to different people. Who was reconciling to whom, and to what aspects of history. Some have contended, as outlined by Gunstone, that Indigenous people were being expected to reconcile to the invasion and dispossession that led to their marginalised and largely powerless position within Australian society. This reconciliation was to take the form of acceptance and moving on. The contribution of past policies and practices to the contemporary situation was not to be analysed and accepted. My own research strongly supports the notion that history needs to be reflected on and its role recognised in a framework of respect for contemporary Indigenous people and their circumstances.

From an Indigenous perspective Australian history since 1788 has been negative. As Gunstone (2007, 160) pointed out the reconciliation process largely ignored the wider implications of our history. It focussed on people's attitudes rather than on promoting knowledge. Issues of institutional racism, structural violence and cultural violence were ignored,...