Six years ago, the Uluru Statement from the heart was spoken to the world. Two of the women who helped write it, and who have carried it with them, are sitting at the rock, taking stock of that long journey.
Friday marks the anniversary of the Uluru statement, a “gift” which Pat Anderson and Megan Davis say was given to the Australian people in 2017, which underpins the voice to parliament, and which is about to enter its final phase: a referendum by the end of the year.
Pat Anderson, an Alyawarre woman, says it’s been a long battle, punctuated too frequently by the losses of elders who spent their lives fighting for the rights of Indigenous people, including Yolngu leader, Yunupingu. It also includes Yarrabah elder Alfred Neal, one of the original organisers of the 1967 referendum, who died on Wednesday aged 101, and whose fervent wish was to vote yes in this one.
“Of course the struggle has gone on much longer than [six years],” Anderson says, who with Davis is at Uluru for a meeting of the government’s voice referendum group, followed by anniversary celebrations of the Uluru statement. “This is a 12-year struggle here, but we actually started all this not long after the first boats came, really.”
Anderson says the nation is entering the final phase of the campaign for an Indigenous voice to parliament, as legislation on the referendum moves through the House of Representatives.
“It’s a really important time for the nation and who we are, a time to evaluate who we are today. What do we stand for? What are our values?” Anderson says.
“What’s on the table is this gift to the Australian people, to walk with us, as the invitation says from the Uluru statement from the heart, to walk with us to a better future. That’s where we’re at now.”
More than 80 lower house MPs have already spoken on the bill, with more speeches expected next week before it goes to the Senate. The government hopes to pass the bill in June, for a vote in early October.
Prof Megan Davis, the Balnaves chair in constitutional law at the University of NSW, read the statement to the delegates at the rock six years ago, and says she is glad to be back “on country” with the taxing “retail politics” debates almost over.
“It’s nice to be out here, because we want to put a book end to what we call retail Australian politics, and just reset ourselves and anchor ourselves back here at the rock.
“We said six years ago that we were at base camp. This is our base camp, where we started that trek. And now we’re headed to the ballot box,” Prof Davis says.
Both women say they are alarmed at the amount of misinformation circulating on social media about the voice and the vote and the recent rapid increase in racial abuse online.
“We knew we were coming up against an era of Trumpian misinformation – it’s the only referendum that’s been run in the era of social media. But now, when you watch it, and you’re actually in it, you can see just how detrimental it is, just how destructive it is to liberal democracy. It’s really dangerous,” Davis says.
Anderson says racism has been “raining down” on Aboriginal and Islander people over the last few weeks.
On Monday, the minister for Indigenous Australians, Linda Burney, blasted Peter Dutton for spreading “misinformation and scare campaigns” about the Indigenous voice, after the opposition leader invoked George Orwell in claiming that the referendum would wind back progress of the civil rights movement.
Linda Burney accused critics of the voice of being “hell-bent on stoking division”.
“There’s a tsunami of misinformation and disinformation out there,” Anderson says. “And racism has rained down on us these last few weeks. It’s always there, we know that, but it’s raining down. And it’s not a surprise, but it takes its toll.”
As their campaign enters the final stretch, they say they retain hope in the common decency of their fellow Australians.
“It’s emotional, it’s tiring,” Davis says. “It’s been a long six years.
“And hopefully, we can just bring it home now.”
