Corroboree 2000 came at a time of reckoning for Australia’s relationship with its own history. The 1990s saw landmark inquiries, such as the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody (1991) and the National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from their Families (1997), which revealed the deep, ongoing legacy caused by state intervention in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander families and communities. 

The Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation (CAR) – Reconciliation Australia’s predecessor – was established in 1991 by a unanimous vote in the Australian Parliament following the Royal Commission’s findings. The Council was tasked with fostering reconciliation, culminating in Corroboree 2000, a two-day event ahead of the centenary of Federation. 

The event started on 27 May 2000, with the largest gathering of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander and non-Indigenous leaders in Australian history, taking to the stage of the Sydney Opera House to witness the delivery of the Council’s final documents to the Australian people.

Formed through months of consultation, the Australian Declaration towards Reconciliation and Roadmap for Reconciliation made key arguments: the decade of formal reconciliation was not enough to address 200 years of history, and that the majority of Australians agreed reconciliation was vital for Australia’s future. 

The essence of the declaration was conveyed in its final message, ‘Our hope is for a united Australia that respects this land of ours; values the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander heritage; and provides justice and equality for all.’ 

This support was apparent the next morning, Sunday 28 May at the People’s Walk for Reconciliation, the highlight of Corroboree 2000. 

Educators are always looking for appropriate resources that truly reflect the wisdom of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples produced by − or in collaboration with − First Nations peoples. 

Reconciliation Australia’s Narragunnawali: Reconciliation in Education program provides resources for teachers and educators to take action towards reconciliation between non-Indigenous and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, and to help build understanding on how to respectfully include First Nations perspectives in learning environments. 

First Nations Voices in Education is the latest professional learning resource produced by Narragunnawali  in collaboration with Gilimbaa  Creative Agency.  

Much more than a collection of ideas, it is a set of films accompanied by an extensive guide shaped by the hard work and actions of five committed Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander education champions who understand the power of truth-telling and cultural integrity in education. 

The five champions − Aunty Denise Proud, Professor Peter Buckskin, Dr Kaye Price, Aunty Geraldine Atkinson and Ned David − have fought for change in the Australian education system over many decades, leading to some of the policy and curriculum reforms that all learners benefit from today. 

The content in First Nations Voices in Education equips teachers and educators with the knowledge and understanding to appropriately include Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander perspectives into their work with confidence and respect, creating classrooms where all children and students can learn from the oldest living cultures in the world. 

Mapped against Australian Professional Standards for Teachers, this professional learning resource is designed for facilitated as well as self-guided and self-paced use, whether individually, in small groups, or during all-staff professional development opportunities. 

Education advocate and contributor to the First Nations Voices in Education project Dr Kaye Price said, ‘If you don’t embed those cross-curriculum perspectives into your teaching, then you are really doing the country as a whole a disservice. It’s just paramount that people who live in this country know about the country.’ 

In the post-referendum world, we now know what our actual place in modern Australia is and how and what our fellow Australians think and feel about us. Many of the assumptions we believed to be rock solid were in fact revealed to be uncertain. 

We now understand that a social policy, rights-based agenda has limited cache and this alone will not be able to carry us to equity. It is a sad, but true fact that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander matters have been weaponised in the eternal game of one-upmanship that, these days, passes for the contest of ideas. 

However, I am an unapologetic policy nerd, I believe well thought through and well applied policy is much more productive than shallow, short-term, thought-bubble, single issue responses to the headline of the day. 

Which takes me to something I’m sure many of us are thinking about – if we know the limitations of the approaches we have been using for many years, and we can see that we’ve probably reached the limits of these, then how do we advance and progress our people? 

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander matters have almost exclusively resided in the world of social policy – and rightly so, given the fundamental disparities and injustices that need to be confronted – but social policy has reached the limits of its ability to deliver substantive progression and advancement. This does not mean we should back off from our efforts in social policy areas – far from it – it means we need to add to it. 

The obvious addition is economic policy. 

If social and economic policy had credit cards, social policy is just about maxed out, while the economic policy card has barely been used. 

All the economic effort to date has been basically microeconomic in nature. That is, focussing on one thing, one place or one issue. While these are noble, they are neither substantial, substantive nor sustaining. 

Example 1: Procurement policies have enabled the establishment of a rapidly growing First Nations-owned small business sector, servicing government. A wonderful thing, however, many of these businesses are maturing and looking to grow and expand customer markets which usually means a need to access growth capital. But where to access capital? The banking sector is not as prepared for this as we need them to be and government has very limited capacity in the area. Many Aboriginal business owners have spoken of hitting a brick wall trying to access business growth capital. 

Example 2: Nearly all Aboriginal employment programs are designed to get people into employment – moving people from unemployed to employed – again, a wonderful thing. Once people are in employment, however, there are virtually no programs designed to support Aboriginal people moving up the employment ladder. 

This micro-economic approach short-changes the Australian economy of vast veins of talent and capacity. In a world that is economically uncertain, I would have thought that this is a time for ‘all hands on deck’. Aboriginal Australians are some of the most clever, industrious and able people that this country has – and we, as a nation, are wasting this invaluable resource. 

So, what do we do about it? Simple – change micro for macro. Not that simple, but here goes. 

Firstly, governments should not solely focus on redressing specific disadvantage. A proper macro-economic approach would need to think about all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in all circumstances – urban, regional, rural and remote. Secondly, it should be about participation in all aspects of the economy. Thirdly, it should be at all levels of the economy. Imagine, for example, how much better corporate governance in this country would be if Aboriginal people were more commonly in the boardrooms of Australia. Not to mention in executive level roles that are not Aboriginal focussed – as I often say, blackfellas are able to do much more than just blackfella stuff. 

Fourthly, and perhaps most importantly, the Australian economy largely exists outside of the purview of government. It primarily exists in the realm of private sector, and to a lesser extent, the community/NFP sector. It is only logical − and necessary − for the private and community sectors to make substantial and meaningful efforts to uplift Aboriginal people by way of the economy writ large. 

For example, the banking sector has an extensive and deep understanding of the Australian economy. There are equally many other sectors and people who can contribute much to this contest of ideas. 

In 2024, the Commonwealth Government allocated $16 million for the development of an Indigenous macro-economic framework and the Victorian Government is part way through implementing its own Aboriginal Economic Strategy. So, the possibility for a new approach to First Nations economics is real. 

Those corporate entities with Reconciliation Action Plans must expand their remit and exercise leadership. What can we do to enhance Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people’s economic outcomes? How do we ensure that the focus is on supporting hopes and ambitions of Aboriginal people for a better life and align those with our own business and objectives? 

And why should ordinary Australians get on board with this? Quite simply, it’s in their interests to do so. If Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are participating across the economy at all levels, this will broaden the national tax base, thus spreading the tax load meaning a decline in the incremental tax burden on personal and business tax. Everyone’s a winner. 

There is one thing that is not a choice issue. Sometimes it is assumed that we must choose between our cultural identity, and advancement in a broader economic and social sense. No, we don’t. 

Our fundamental values and cultural identity are not up for negotiation – at any price. In any case, as we move up the social and economic ladders non-Aboriginal Australians might learn from us and that can only be a good thing. Quite frankly, the Australian economy could do with some blackening up! 

In 1984 a group of Bardi and Jawi people walked out of the Lombadina Catholic Mission on Western Australia’s Dampier Peninsular to establish their own free community of Djarindjin. 

They left to end their subservience to the Catholic Church, exercise their right to self-determination and reclaim their cultural identity after years of being forbidden from speaking their language or practicing their culture. 

More than 40 years later, the tiny remote community of Djarindjin continues to thrive and has become a beacon for First Nations communities across the region and the country. 

However, as Djarindjin’s CEO, Nathan McIvor explains, it has been a gruelling journey, made even harder by the West Australian Government’s refusal to formally recognise the community until March 2024 – decades after its establishment. 

Yet, the community still does not have title over the land it is built on. 

‘Three hundred and fifty people live here but we don’t own the land or the houses. We don’t own the buildings but we’re having to maintain the community with our own money, by and large. 

‘We are living self-determination and financial independence, but we work for it,’ he said. 

The key to Djarindjin’s success has been a combination of good governance, a sheer unyielding community determination to do things the “Djarindjin way’’ and a strategic decision 15 years ago to invest in hot refuelling for helicopters servicing the oil and gas industry. 

A $4.5 million loan was negotiated with the Broome International Airport’s subsidiary company and when refuelling began, Djarindjin’s share of the profits started to roll in. 

‘Initially when we first started, we were getting 15%, then 30%, then 50% of the profits. Then, when I came on board in 2019, we were sitting at 70%,’ reports Nathan. 

‘Over the next nine years we paid off the loan, but we still didn’t run the airport or own all the profits, and in 2021 we asked Broome International Airport for a plan to transition into full Djarindjin ownership. 

‘They came to the board with a 10-year extension but no transition plan,’ he explains. ‘They offered to pay us an extra 15% taking our share to 85%.’ 

The board rejected the offer, and, in February 2022, the community took full ownership and operation of the airport. Revenue from the airport and other Djarindjin businesses ballooned from $2.9 million to nearly $20 million in 2024. 

The airport is a source of great community pride. 

‘We’re now running the only hot refuelling service in the Southern Hemisphere, there’s only one other in the Northern Hemisphere and we’re the only Indigenous owned and operated commercial airport in Australia,’ he said. 

Djarindjin also runs its own community store, owns the local roadhouse, campground, caravan park, and has a 50% share in the temporarily closed Kooljaman Resort at nearby Cape Leveque. 

With inadequate government funding, Djarindjin generates about 70% of its revenue from the airport with most of the rest coming from other businesses. Only 10% comes from government grants for community services. 

‘We get $300,000 from the state government, so we’re having to top that up by about $1 million each year to be able to maintain the community’s basic needs, and to cover the costs of maintaining land that belongs to the state,’ he reveals. 

The community now funds many of its activities, including the safe house, aged care and cultural programs from its own revenue. 

‘We are close to self-determining because we generate our own money. This gives us control over our community’s development creating more employment and more training options, and it distributes the wealth across the Dampier Peninsula’, said Nathan. ‘We went from 20 or 30 people being employed in 2019 to 140 currently and we’re running programs up and down the Dampier Peninsula.’ 

The community is currently negotiating the establishment of the Aalga Goorlil Sun Turtle Djarindjin Community Power Project and recently received a conditional offer of $5 million grant funding from the West Australian Government’s Lower Carbon Grants Program (LCG), allowing Djarindjin to build, own and operate a 100% community-owned renewable energy facility to supply most of the electricity needs of the Djarindjin and neighbouring Lombadina community. 

Djarindjin has described the project as a “transformative initiative that underscores our unwavering commitment to self-determination and self-empowerment”. 

Nathan said the community has turned the tables and is now in a position where it can dictate its own development agenda to governments and has even knocked back funding from the government for not meeting community priorities. 

‘The community is saying no to stuff that we’re not interested in, we don’t want to be beholden to the government, we want to be change makers for our own family, for our own selves.’ 

He argued that the community’s overwhelming hunger for self-determination and economic independence is not all about money but has a significant impact on health and culture. 

‘The “Djarindjin way” is as much about all of the socio-economic stuff that we talk about; the wellbeing, the mental health, the physical health, and kidney disease, those things are all important. We recognise that if we don’t do things about the health of our community today, in 20 years’ time there will be no young people to run the show.’ 

Economic independence is also leading to revival of language and cultural practices following long years of suppression by the church. 

‘Language and culture are coming back. Djarindjin now offers adult Bardi language lessons funded by their enterprises. We’re teaching local people in community to speak their own language which was lost over the mission years.’ 

Nathan says Djarindjin’s new 20-year strategic plan will ensure community priorities are addressed in a systematic way. 

‘We just don’t see any reason why we should have to do what the government wants us to do,’ said Nathan firmly. 

‘We will be a powerhouse in WA, providing funding to other community organisations,’ he predicted. ‘We’ll be different to other councils who receive their revenue from the government because it’s our money to spend as we decide.’

In September of 1982, a most unlikely song hit the Australian music charts. The song, Solid Rock, by Goanna, reached number three and remained on the charts for six months. 

Shane Howard’s record label at the time, WEA, was opposed to releasing it as a single because they thought it had little commercial appeal. 

The song directly challenged Australia’s official colonial history of peaceful settlement while at the same time winning enormous affection from the Australian music-listening public. 

Australian musicologist, and writer of the Encyclopedia of Australian Rock and Pop, Ian McFarlane, described Solid Rock as ‘a damning indictment of the European invasion of Australia’. 

How does a song which includes the verse ‘It wasn’t long before they felt the sting/ White man, white law, white gun’, go on to win Best Debut Single at the 1982 Countdown Music and Video Awards, or be ranked by MTV Classic in 2021 as number 10 of their special Top 100 Big in the 80s countdown? 

How does a white man from a working-class family in the tiny Victorian country town of Dennington write a song that became an anthemic call for First Nations justice, land rights and reconciliation? 

Shane explains that his family were of Irish stock. ‘Anyone whose people lived through the colonial imposition on Ireland for 600 years or more should be empathetic to the circumstances of Aboriginal people’, he explained. 

Shane grew up just miles away from Victoria’s Framlingham Mission. ‘So Aboriginal people were a part of my life. The history we were taught at school didn’t equate with the disempowerment I saw around me. I saw how broken things were and I didn’t hear much language spoken. No one was dancing. I saw the wreckage that colonisation has brought a people. 

‘We should be more empathetic than we are. I mean to lose language, to lose your children, to lose your family, to lose your country, to lose everything is almost an unbearable suffering. Too many non-Indigenous people are not in tune to what that feels like.’ 

While grape picking in Mildura in 1975, Shane saw a bench in the main street with a “Whites Only” sign. ‘That was a shock, I thought those things only happened in South Africa or the deep south of the USA,’ he said. 

But it was a 1980 trip to Uluru that ultimately focused his attention on the dispossession and injustices suffered by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. A chance encounter at the base of Uluru saw him invited to an inma (a highly significant Aṉangu ceremony with dance and song). 

‘“You should go”, I was told, and I did, walking around the rock just before sunset and here was this mob painting up. As the moon rose the singing and dancing began, and it shifted my thinking; a revelation came to me after that experience, I am in someone else’s Country, this Country was stolen. We have never had a treaty, we never declared war, there is still no negotiated arrangement for how we share this continent. 

‘I saw an incredible injustice that needed to be dealt with. I had to reassess my whole relationship with the land and the landscape, and understand that we had come from somewhere else, and we had disempowered a whole race of people when we arrived. 

‘This diminishes us, and it’s long overdue that we come to an agreement with the peoples whose lands we stole.’ 

After 43 years, Solid Rock maintains resonance across generations and genres, as it continues to be covered by dozens of Australian musicians. Shane declares confidently, ‘It’s got a great riff, a great drum beat but most importantly it’s honest and it is true. There is not a word wrong, not a word out of place. 

‘Some songs come from you, and some come through you, and I believe that song was guided through me by the Old Peoples’ spirit watching over me.’ 

Shane said that he is deeply honoured that Solid Rock was chosen for the Voices for Reconciliation choirs project this National Reconciliation Week and he has some advice for the choirs performing it. 

‘Sing it with gusto, sing it like you mean it, sing it like it matters, because it does. Sing it like we are on a journey to somewhere much better, because we are. 

‘It’s all in the song and we still haven’t faced up as a nation and proclaimed “Let us tell the truth, let us get on with the business of truth-telling, and then let’s get on with the treaty business. Let’s turn our anger into action.”’ 

After a few moments’ further thought Shane quotes the late great Yolŋu leader and theologian Rev Dr Gondarra ‘It’s not enough to walk beside us, you need to feel our pain.’ 

‘We whitefellas must do the work now, to reach out to our non-Indigenous brothers and sisters and help them understand. We have to do more,’ he concludes.