Race, reconciliation, and justice in Australia: from denial to acknowledgment

ABSTRACT

The harm perpetrated by the state of Australia against it Indigenous peoples has been structured, prolonged, and driven by race. In this paper, we conceptualize this harm and how it has been denied (and particularly how race has affected this harm and its denial). Although transitional justice literature has not traditionally been applied to an established democracy like Australia, we demonstrate why it is appropriate to apply transitional justice practices to the relationship between the Australian state and Indigenous peoples, and what transitional justice practices might provide in the Australian case. In particular, we argue that a transitional justice framework may allow Indigenous voices to name the harm inflicted on them, and position the state as acknowledging the harm that they have perpetrated – bringing a fundamentally new relationship between the state and Indigenous peoples.

KEYWORDS:

• Indigenous peoples
• transitional justice
• reconciliation
• harm

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Sophie Rigney http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6247-2159

Notes

1. Similarly, in New Zealand a treaty governs the relationship between the state and Indigenous peoples. The literature on transitional justice in New Zealand (see Winter 2014) is of some assistance, but not precisely on point for Australia.

2. Other relevant international human rights documents include the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, and the International Covenant on the Elimination of all forms of Racial Discrimination.

3. When we discuss a “political discourse” as being problematic in this article, we are referring particularly to the way that the reconciliation policy of the Australian state has been undertaken in a political mode – involving the legitimizing of state behavior, rather than a mode of atonement. We do not mean to suggest that all politics are inherently negative; indeed, it is also a political act to engage in transitional justice.