Australia will hold an historic vote on a Voice to Parliament this year but Indigenous people are divided on how useful it would be.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
This comes as sporting codes such as the AFL and NRL and the Australian Olympic Committee say they will back a 'yes' vote in the referendum, expected some time in spring.
The referendum will ask voters whether an independent advisory body of First Nations people should be enshrined in the constitution.
Debate has been dominated by politicians and has split traditional allies.
Former Indigenous Australians minister Ken Wyatt quit the Liberals when the party announced its opposition to the Voice.
When the Greens backed the Voice, Senator Lidia Thorpe, a DjabWurrung Gunnai Gunditjmara woman, resigned from her party.
Polling by Roy Morgan found 46 per cent of Australians supported the Voice in April 2023, down seven percentage points in four months.
There is a wide range of views among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people including those firmly against the plan like Country Liberal NT senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, who is the opposition spokeswoman for Indigenous people.
ACM spoke to Indigenous Australians about the Voice's potential, risks and the prospect of a negative vote.
Righting the wrongs of the past
The Voice could remedy a history of federal government's poor decision-making about Indigenous people, Wiradyuri man James Blackwell said.
"It's about making sure that we are consulted fairly and equitably over policy," the Australian National University Indigenous diplomacy research fellow said.
"For so long parliament hasn't done that; Canberra hasn't done right by us.
"It's consistently almost done the opposite, regardless of how many Indigenous politicians are in the parliament," he said.
Dr Blackwell rejects the argument that constitutional recognition could compromise Indigenous sovereignty.
"I think what the Voice does, to me at least, is it gives that sovereignty force in the white system, it creates a body through which our sovereignty can be heard," he said.
"So we can speak for our country again."
'Not much difference at all'
But the Voice to Parliament is not the first representative body for Indigenous Australians within the political system.
The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC) was established under the Hawke government in 1990 to give advice on policy. ATSIC was abolished in 2004.
Ngadjuri and Bundjalung woman Kelly Menzel, a senior lecturer in Indigenous knowledge at Southern Cross University, said the Voice would not be effective in a vacuum.
"Without all of the other discussions around treaty and truth and unpacking all of the really complex things that go with that, like whiteness and power and privilege and oppression, the stuff that makes people a little bit uncomfortable, it will potentially not make very much difference at all," she said.
"We've had representative bodies before and those things haven't been addressed fully. So I worry about the same sort of mistakes being made."
Despite her concerns, Dr Menzel said that an unsuccessful referendum would be disappointing.
"It would be grim if it doesn't pass. I think it will set back the concept of reconciliation," she said.
Voice's power to heal 'long overdue'
Others are more optimistic of its potential to help heal the wounds of the stolen generations.
"There's a consensus particularly among those we've been talking to across the country that it's been a long time coming," The Healing Foundation CEO Fiona Cornforth said.
"It's about time that Australia has documented and tabled as part of lawmaking and policymaking what the voices of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are saying."
It's estimated that as many as 1 in 3 Indigenous children were taken between 1910 and the 1970s under government policies, affecting most Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities in Australia.
Ms Cornforth, a descendent of the Wuthathi people in far north Queensland with family roots in the Torres Strait, said for stolen generations survivors, constitutional recognition was "well overdue".
"The absence of a Voice has meant that some of their pain and suffering has continued, and some of the trauma cycles have continued," she said.
A 'no' vote would be a setback, according to Ms Cornforth.
"In the conversations that I've had with the people that we work closely with, there's sadness at the thought of that not happening," she said.
"And the sadness comes with not being recognised or seen as worthy, or deserving, or of equal esteem by your non-Indigenous neighbours, and community members."
'Invest in things that are working'
A Voice to parliament has the potential to provide expert and culturally sensitive advice to policy makers so that the best interests of First Nations children can be protected in legislation and policy relating to them.
This potential is significant for Victorian Aboriginal Child Care Agency CEO Muriel Bamblett who described the Voice as a "no brainer".
"We don't feel that we have a voice to be able to say, look at the communities where things are doing really well, and let's invest in things that are working, rather than see us as a dysfunction that needs to be fixed," Ms Bamblett, a Yorta Yorta and Dja Dja Wurrung woman said.
"I don't think the Voice should focus on seeing the bad in Aboriginal communities, Voice is about really putting Aboriginal peoples nationhood as well as civil rights before the system."
