Page 3095 - Week 11 - Tuesday, 10 September 1991
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It is appropriate that I comment on these matters as we once again have a group of Aboriginal people visiting the ACT in an attempt to obtain something that has been denied them for over 200 years. I refer, of course, to land rights. Another symbol of these original inhabitants of our continent is, of course, the Aboriginal flag, recently flown in the courtyard outside the Assembly.
Mr Connolly: Upside down?
MR JENSEN: This celebrated some 20 years since its first public display in Adelaide, South Australia - and I am sure that on that occasion they got it the right way up.
The colours of the flag are particularly important to the Aboriginal people, as the black represents Aboriginal people, past, present and future; the yellow represents the sun, the giver of life; while the red in the bottom section represents the earth, red ochre, and the spiritual relationship of the Aboriginal people to the land. It is that relationship that I wish to address tonight in my remarks.
It is a relationship that the majority of white people cannot understand, or do not appear to understand, because to us the land means wealth and wealth means power and influence. For the Aboriginal people, their relationship with the land is a spiritual thing, and that is one of the reasons why contact with the land of their ancestors and the various dreaming trails mean so much to them. Having spent some time looking at these issues during a period at the ANU with some of the most well read people on this subject, I developed quite an interest in it over those years.
Early this year I was approached by a representative of the Ngunnawal Land Council seeking my assistance in providing them with an area in our public cemeteries that could be set aside for their specific use in accordance with the customs and ceremonies that they are seeking more and more to return to. The Ngunnawal people were the original settlers of the limestone plains, as we know them; and evidence suggests that they were in this region more than 20,000 years ago, maintaining a relationship with the land and the flora and fauna that were on this particular stage.
During those discussions it was clear to me that such a place was very important to the remnants of what was a large group of people who were persecuted by the early European settlers in much the same way as happened throughout Australia - an issue about which more and more white Australians are slowly becoming aware. Those who saw the program on the ABC last Sunday about the history of Fraser Island and the Myall Creek massacre will, I think, know exactly what I mean.
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