Sir, - Your Editorial (August 27th) on John Howard's statement of regret about the past mistreatment of Australia's indigenous people by the settlers and their descendents entirely misses the point of what is at stake in the current Australian debate over reconciliation between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians, as does President McAleese's naive comparison between the position of Aborigines and that of Travellers in Irish society.
The issue is not simply one of a disadvantaged minority struggling for tolerance and equal rights, but of a dispossessed people struggling for the fact of their dispossession and its consequences to be fully acknowledged. In this, the experience of the Australian Aborigines is more analagous to that of the Irish under British rule than the Travellers.
When Britain claimed sovereignty over Australia, its indigenous people became, without their knowledge or consent, landless British subjects, their ancient and complex relationship to the land obliterated in the eyes of British law by the convenient legal doctrine of terra nullius, which held that although the land was inhabited it was not possessed or lawfully occupied. In 1992, the High Court finally overturned terra nullius in the Mabo decision, finding that at the time of British settlement native title did in fact exist and that in some limited circumstances it may have survived 200 years of European occupation.
For the first time, indigenous Australians had acknowledgment in law that their relationship with the Australian state was different in kind from that of all other Australians. Mr Howard and his government have done everything they can to limit the implications of this decision, in terms both of current land law and of Australians' understanding of their past. Mr Howard continually uses the terms "stains" and "blemishes" to refer to past injustices towards indigenous people. But stains and blemishes are only ever skin deep; they can be removed or washed away. The wrongs against Australia's original inhabitants were and are not just a matter of superficial mistakes and misguided good intentions; they were built into the very foundation of the Australian state, which was based on dispossession justified by doctrines of racial superiority.
This is the truth John Howard and many other Australians refuse to face. They think they can still dictate the terms as they have until now; that Mabo has changed nothing. So when those whose families were destroyed by state policies say that a sincere apology would help them come to terms with their experience, Mr Howard continues to insist that it is the non-indigenous, not the indigenous Australians who will choose the terms of reconciliation and offers them his "regrets". Refusing to confront the structural moral flaw in the foundation of the Australian nation, John Howard keeps scrubbing away at the "blemishes" in the vain hope that he can turn black into white. - Yours, etc.,
Judith Brett, Keith Cameron Professor of Australian History, University College, Dublin.