“A Treaty process will seek to correct some of the historic injustices that have continued to impact the lives of First Peoples today,” writes Senior Social Justice Advocate Mark Zirnsak. Image: First Peoples’ Assembly of Victoria
By Mark Zirnsak
In November I went to Mexico for an international meeting on addressing forced labour in the production of goods that are exported across borders.
I had the opportunity to visit many of the temple ruins around Mexico city.
The history around the ruins aligned to my recent reading on empires.
Associate Professor of Philosophy Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò had drawn my attention to the need to read history carefully in examining the colonial past, in his book ‘Reconsidering Reparations’.
The history of empires and colonialisation does not split neatly down racial lines.
Instead, the common feature of empires and colonialisation is that there was always a small group of people who have been able to use empire to accumulate wealth, power and privilege to themselves and command or persuade others to use lethal violence in the process.
That was true in Mexico, where the Aztec empire had used lethal violence against other local tribes to accumulate wealth and power for a small ruling class.
They were then subject to conquest from the Spanish empire, who plundered the accumulated wealth for a small ruling class of Spaniards. The Spaniards were assisted by local tribes that had been at war with the Aztecs.
Jesus also lived under the shadow of an exploitive and brutal empire. It has been estimated that the wealthiest 1.5 per cent of the ruling group in the Roman Empire owned 20 per cent of the wealth.
Jesus made it very clear the rule or Kingdom of God is not one modelled on exploitive human empires.
Those who strive to be faithful must not seek to accumulate wealth and power for themselves (Mark 9:35; Luke 16:19-31; Matthew 19:16-30).
Thus, as Christians we need to seek a society and world that is one that looks to the wellbeing of all people.
We need to reject the political systems of empire that use lethal violence for the accumulation of wealth, power and privilege for the few.
We should seek the correction of historical injustices to assist people who were conquered to address the intergenerational trauma they have been subjected to.
In conversation with church members sceptical about the need to address the ongoing harm of the racist colonial period in Australia, it is accepting the evidence the First Peoples across the world still suffer from the trauma of being on the receiving end of empire that appears to be one of the largest barriers.
Recent books, David Marr’s ‘Killing for Country’ and James Boyce ‘1835, the founding of Melbourne and the conquest of Australia’, document the brutal conquest of Australia.
Their works document how a small group of men seized land for themselves in pursuit of wealth, often against instructions from London and against the wishes of the Governor of the time.
The result was that First Peoples had their food sources disrupted, so they would take sheep or cattle as compensation.
Armed conflict would result, with First Peoples being gunned down or poisoned and shepherds being speared.
When a shepherd or stockman was murdered the response would be to send out death squads to carry out massacres of any First People in the area, regardless of whether they had anything to do with the murder.
There were strong public objections to the massacres from some of the British colonisers, but with the exception of one trial after the massacre at Myall Creek in NSW in 1838, mostly the colonial courts failed to uphold the law and protect First Peoples from being murdered for the financial benefit of wealthy squatters.
In Victoria we have an opportunity to express our support for a Treaty process that will seek to correct some of the historic injustices that have continued to impact the lives of First Peoples today.
