AUSTRALIA: Australia Day or Invasion Day?

Politicians in this country tend to make some odd decisions when it is time to nominate the person who will be appointed Australian of the Year on 26 January. This was the day in 1788 when an English sea-captain called Arthur Phillips sailed into Botany Bay with several boatloads of convicts and the European invasion of Australia began.

Within 50 years, the population of the original inhabitants who had occupied the land for more than 60,000 years was decimated and the vast majority of the clans wiped out, along with their languages, their culture and their intimate knowledge of the country.

In 2007, former conservative Prime Minister and climate-change sceptic John Howard chose Professor Tim Flannery, a leading advocate of the dangers of global warning, to be Australian of the Year. This year, Labor Prime Minister Kevin Rudd approved the choice of another academic, Professor Mick Dodson - one of the most outspoken activist Aborigines in the nation who believes 26 January is a horrible day to celebrate for black Australians.

Dodson said he "angsted" over the offer from the Prime Minister, thought about it deeply and declared that "I too share the concern of my indigenous brothers and sisters about the date. To many indigenous Australians, in fact most indigenous Australians, it really reflects the day in which our world came crashing down."

But then he decided to accept the honour and work to raise Australian consciousness about the troubling issues surrounding the health, education and rights of black Australians from the platform the nomination would give him.

Born in the Northern Territory to an Irish Australian father and an Aboriginal woman from the Yawuru people of the Broome region, Dodson was orphaned at 11 and went to school in Darwin and Katherine but then boarded at a private Catholic boarding school in Victoria's Western District.

He earned a law degree at Monash University and was the first Aborigine to be admitted to the Victorian Bar - 150 years after Europeans arrived in the state. He worked for the Victorian Aboriginal legal service before becoming a barrister and then moving to Darwin where he worked for the Northern Land Council and with other leading activists in fighting for Aboriginal land rights, social justice and recompense for past wrongs done to the First Australians.

For five years from 1993, Dodson was an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner. It was during this time he joined a government-commissioned inquiry and co-authored one of the most disturbing documents to be published about black-white relations.

The Bringing them Home report documented in appalling detail hundreds of cases of black children across northern Australia who had been removed from their mothers and put in orphanages, church missions and private homes. This was simply because the authorities believed they were "half-caste" and should not be raised among their black relatives. Many never saw their mothers or fathers or any of their relatives again.

The Howard government promptly shelved the report and refused every call for a national apology to what became known as the Stolen Generation. That is, until Labor was re-elected in November 2007 and on the first sitting day of the new parliament in February last year, Rudd gave an eloquent and moving apology, not only to the Stolen Generation but to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people whose lives had been affected by the white invasion and the ongoing domination by the white community.

By this time, Dodson was occupying a chair at the Australian National University where he had been director of its centre for indigenous studies since its inception in 2005. He was, as well, chair of the Australian Institute for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies and co-chair of Reconciliation Australia - the body set up to try to reconcile black and white Australia.

A gruff, no-nonsense man who describes himself as "a persistent bugger", Dodson said he would use the next 12 months in the national spotlight to try to build an understanding among Australians about the importance of human rights.

ANU Vice-Chancellor Professor Ian Chubb congratulated Dodson publicly on accepting the nomination. Chubb said he has worked to advance indigenous rights on the national and international stage, as well as continuing his research into aspects of human rights and international law.

"We applaud the selection of Professor Dodson as Australian of the Year, and are proud to count him as one of our academic leaders," Chubb said. "He has tirelessly combined advocacy, diplomatic and academic roles. He has overcome prejudice and blazed pathways for indigenous Australians. His record is an outstanding example of the high value we place on combining scholarly research with public engagement. For all these reasons we celebrate him and his achievements."

Chubb said that at the international level, Dodson had campaigned to put the human rights of the world's indigenous peoples on the United Nations agenda and had participated for more than a decade in bringing the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples to fruition.

"As the current community representative for the Pacific region at the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, Professor Mick Dodson continues his vital service to the Australian community and especially to indigenous peoples, at home and worldwide," Chubb said.

geoff.maslen@uw-news.com