We Need to Talk About Linda - Part 1
This post looks into some aspects of the politics that is calling for the implementation of Uluru Statement from the Heart and the enshrinement of a ‘Voice” in our Constitution.
Linda Burney and the Uluru Statement from the Heart
The new Labor Minister for Indigenous Australians, the Hon Linda Burney MP is a strong supporter of this new political push and has been quoted as saying that,
‘her priority [as the new minister] would be [in] implementing the Uluru Statement from the Heart which calls for a constitutionally enshrined Indigenous voice to Parliament and a Makarrata commission to oversee treaty and truth-telling’ (NITV, 24 May 2022).
In this post we will discuss the ancestry, heritage and life journey of Wiradjuri woman, Linda Burney who, as a proponent of increasing the recognition of Aboriginal identity, is a perfect proxy to help us understand the issues of the politicisation of race, identity and ancestry in Australia, as well as the Aboriginal political movement that promotes Treaty and Truth-telling based on this new understanding of Aboriginal identity.
This discussion is especially important as Linda Burney herself is calling upon Australians to support the referendum to enshrine an Aboriginal Voice in our Constitution, a Voice restricted to only those Australians of a recognised Aboriginal race, identity and ancestry. She is also a major proponent of Treaty and Truth-Telling.
The Hon Linda Burney MP, Minister for Indigenous Australians. Source
Whenever we at Dark Emu Exposed enter into questions of a person’s identity and motivations, in this case those of the Hon Linda Burney MP, it is hard to avoid being accused of the ad hominem but, in the following discussion, more than enough valid argument and legitimate discussion will be provided to defend us from this charge.
Let us say up front that there is very much to admire in Linda Burney - her long years of dedication in the public service and politics in NSW and now federally is to be greatly admired. She has a particular political outlook to which she is dedicated and works very hard to achieve, which should earn her our respect even if we don’t agree with her politics.
Nevertheless, Linda Burney, is still a public servant who has been put into our parliament by us, the voters of Australia. She has been tasked by us to make crucial decisions with regard to ‘implementing (or not, as the case might turn out to be) the Uluru Statement from the Heart’. Our discussion in this blog post is about her politics and this vision for Australia. We will therefore necessarily have to touch on her own personal background, ancestry and heritage when we believe these may have an influence on her politics and the indentity-based, even ‘race-based’, proposals she is asking Australians to accept.
Given that she has openly declared that Aboriginal people are ‘special’, she thus appears to accept that the ancestry, heritage and spirituality of Aboriginal people sets them apart in this regard from other, non-Aboriginal Australians (See film clip below).
To many Australians this sets off serious warning bells - many are horrified that Burney’s proposals will most certainly lead Australia down a path towards a New Apartheid - it will involve a legal and constitutionally enshrined separation of Australians into two racial groupings - the 3% of the population who identify as Indigenous Australians, and the remaining 97% of us who are non-Indigenous Australians.
Indigenous Australians will thus be forever locked into this new ‘special’ category whether they agree or not. They will be forever marginalised as the 3-percenters. Those that disagree will have their individual agency over-ridden and they will be denied the opportunity to be just like, and equal to, all other Australians. They will have laws made on their behalf simply because of their race.
This can only lead to a divisiveness in our society which, over a generation or two, could lead to severe civil strife and a potential, political breakup of Australia into two separate polities.
In this short film-clip from 2019, Linda Burney states, on the ABC’s Q&A program, her belief that Aboriginal people have some inherent ‘specialness’ due to their ancestry. She also indicates that Australians of today are in some way culpable for the alleged sins of our ancestors, despite the fact that there is no way that we of today could have changed ‘the outcomes of our history’, even if we wanted to. It is too much for Burney to try and make us feel guilty for not travelling back in a time machine to correct these supposed historical injustices.
We will use this post to show that some of Burney’s attacks on our nation, its current Constitution and its history are unfair, and indeed may be hypocritical given her own ancestry as we will disclose.
We will also show that Australia’s unique history of colonisation by settlement, rather than by cession (via Treaty) or conquest (via war) has led to far better outcomes for its Indigenous population than in the comparable colonial encounters in the United States and Canada, where both cession and conquest were the modus operandi of firstly, the British, and then the Canadians and the Americans.
Hon Linda Burney MP and the Outdated Concept of Race
Burney’s racial claim that Aboriginal or, in the new political parlance ‘First Nations’, people are ‘special’ will, by definition, mean that the rest of us Australians are therefore ‘different’ and ‘not special’.
This new and divisive racial ideology flies in the face of the real progress made by the Australian project over the past 200 years. As an historically progressive society we have, decade by decade, become more egalitarian, democratic, respectful, prosperous and fairer. Democratically, the notion of One Person-One Vote has become one of our underlying Sacred Values. We have cultivated an underlying belief in equality for all members of society no matter what their sexuality, ethnicity, ancestry, religion or political persuasion. It has not been an easy or steady progress, often with pauses and even reversals in progress, but overall it has been positive with the real evidence to be seen all around us every day in this wonderful country of ours.
Given that the Uluru Statement from the Heart is essentially asking Australians to put new ‘race’ clauses back into the Constitution by enshrining benefits for Aboriginal people based on their race, ethnicity and their ancient ancestral self-claimed connection to this land, we have decided in this post to look at the genealogy, ancestry and connections to land of one of its proponents, our proxy subject, the Hon Linda Burney MP. We are doing this to try to get a deeper understanding of what might be the motivations of Aboriginal people, such as Linda Burney, in this desire, indeed this rush, to introduce new racial clauses based on ancestry into our Constitution.
This study of Linda Burney’s ancestry and ‘specialness’ also ties in with the genealogical emphasis that we have been exploring over the past few months at this Dark Emu Exposed website, as driven by the rising interest in Indigenous ancestry and identity within Australia today. To paraphrase the French artist, Paul Gaugin, it seems many Australians are asking, Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?
In this blog-post we will endeavour to convince the reader that it is a very bad idea for a modern, liberal, democratic nation like Australia to go down a path that uses race, ethnicity, specialness or privilege to politically stratify and segregate its citizens. This is what enshrining a Voice in the Constitution will mean, as being proposed by Linda Burney and the Labor Party.
One has only to look at places where this has been tried, where race or ethnicity has been used to stratify a society, such as in Apartheid South Africa, within the caste system in India, in the failed state of Lebanon, or via the anti-Chinese discrimination policies of Malaysia and Indonesia and, most horrifying of all, in the promotion of Aryan ‘specialness’ and ‘connection to land’ within 1930s Germany, to realise what a dangerous idea it is to raise the race or class of one ethnic group above all the others in a society.
Background to Hon Linda Burney MP
Firstly, it is worth reading a transcript of an interview that Linda Burney gave to the Australian Women’s Weekly in 2018 here. Her life journey is truely inspirational and a great credit to her. Similarly, readers can actually listen to her relating her life’s journey in her 2016 conversation with the ABC’s Richard Fidler here.
As we learnt of Burney’s life story, we began to think that she was being unfair in some of her criticisms of Australia and its history. Despite what appeared to be a difficult start in life, she persevered and prospered. Indeed, the Australian system allowed her to prosper and progress despite her race. Like any other Australian from any racial or ethnic background she could progress as far as she wanted to, provided she put in the effort, as she certainly did.
We also note that Burney has openly acknowledged her Scottish ancestry and heritage via her mother and the great aunt and uncle who raised her. Indeed, the Laings, as the elderly guardians of Burney, seemed to have instilled in the young Linda all the Scottish virtues and values one would have expected from a standard Scottish heritage upbringing. As Burney herself tells us,
My great aunt and uncle Letitia and William Laing who raised me were born around the [end of the 19th Century]. They were a brave, non-Aboriginal brother and sister. Neither of whom ever married. They lived through two world wars and the depression, defining events that shaped our nation and those within it. It shaped them well. I know the principles that defined this generation. I am a product of them: pragmatic, frugal, compassionate, respectful, resourceful, humble and appreciative.
- The Hon Linda Burney MP, Shadow Minister for Indigenous Australians Speaking in Darwin 3rd October 2019 giving the HC Nugget Coombs Memorial lecture here
We understand that Burney did not meet her Aboriginal father or his family until she was 28 years old. So presumably, all her formative and early career years were spent in an Australian-Scottish heritage cultural environment, a culture that gave her the skills and opportunity to raise a family of her own, gain top-tier professional employment in the public service and now politics, as well as financial independence (Burney reportedly has assets that includes 5 properties). And that is fine and a tribute to Burney. It also provides real evidence that, in general, our Australian society provides the framework for such upward mobility despite one’s race or ethnic background.
But where we do take issue is when Burney selectively emphasizes, or indeed defines herself solely by the Aboriginal part of her ancestry, playing down or even ignoring her other Scottish ancestry. She seems to want to only rely on her Aboriginality when setting public policy that will affect the lives of all other Australians. She wants us to accept that she has ‘special’ Aboriginal or ‘First Nations’ rights based on the 50% ancestry she inherited from her Aboriginal father.
Meanwhile, she is making no ‘special’ claims based on the 50% ancestry she inherited from her mother, who was of Scottish descent, and which she shares with many hundreds of thousands of other Australians.
Now, that would be fine if her politics and actions were restricted to her own life and that of her family. But her Aboriginal-centric policies will have a massive effect on the rest of us Australians if they are implemented.
We agree totally that Linda Burney has the absolute perfect right to identify, as she does, as an Aboriginal Wiradjuri woman. She is fully entitled to expect others to respect her right to identify herself in this way. She is also entilted to expect others to accord her the level of acknowledgement and respect that we all should show to each other as equal citizens of this wonderful country of ours.
However, when she wants to make new laws for this country based on the ‘special’ rights that she says her Aboriginality gives her, then she is making a political statement that other Australians are fully entitled to debate. We are fully entitled to question her motivations, her opinions and ideas and indeed to investigate her ancestry, given that she wants us to believe that her ancestry gives her a ‘special’ relationship to this land, that she suggests the rest of us 97% of Australians lack.
So, in this blog post we will investigate the ancestry and heritage of Linda Burney in an attempt to try to understand what she means by her ‘special’ Aboriginal or ‘First Nations’ relationship to this land. We want to try to understand why she only seems to want to set public policy in this country by reaching back into deep-time via the 50% Aboriginal ancestry she inherited from her father, a man and his family we understand she never met until she was 28 years old.
Why does she not also appear to want to set public policy in Australia based on the deep-time wisdom and her lived-experiences available to her from the 50% Scottish ancestry and heritage that she inherited from her mothers family?
Linda Burney’s Ancestry and Heritage
We begin by tracing Linda Burney’s family tree on her mothers side. Although we know her Aboriginal father was Laurance ‘Nonny/Nonnie’ Ingram, we have not progressed his branch of the family tree any further. This is because it is the Scottish ancestry of Burney, and her apparent downplaying of it when she extolls Australians to support her policies as a Wuradjuri woman politician, that interests us in this blogpost.
Her mother Rita May Burney has a direct ancestral line to the Scottish Laing family via her grandmother Amelia and great grandfather Temple Sinclair Laing as shown in Figure 1. Further connections then link Linda Burney to the Sinclair clan, as represented by Susan Sinclair, in Scotland. It is a fascinating observation that in Scotland there were some 500 clans, and the Sinclairs were one of the top 10. The motto of the Sinclairs is “Commit Thy Work to God”.
The coincidental parallels with Linda Burney’s Aboriginal ancestry some might think are spooky - there were some 500 Aboriginal tribes in Australia of which Burney’s tribe, the Wiradjuri, was in the top 10 largest. The Wiradjuri committed themselves on a daily basis to the spiritual and practical maintenance (work) of their world and ‘religious’ beliefs in the Dreaming [one could say perhaps, “Commit Thy Work to the Dreaming”].
Another point of note is that it is believed that the Clan Sinclair came to Scotland during the Norman Conquest of the 11th century. So, like the ancestors of many Australians today who are labeled as ‘colonisers’, it seems that Linda Burney’s ancestors on her mother side were also ‘colonisers’ long ago.
The first branch of the alleged family tree of Linda Burney that we have constructed is based on a detailed study of the publically available genealogical records. It shows the ancestral links of the Hon Linda Burney MP, back via her mother’s family, to Susan Sinclair born around 1798 in Scotland (Figure 1).
Figure 1 - Alleged Maternal Family Tree for the Hon Linda Burney MP. (Sources publicly available Births Deaths and Marriages and independent Family historians.) - File here
The details for each member of this alleged family tree branch are shown in the following two figures. The first figure details the alleged links from Linda Burney herself to her grandmother, Amelia May Laing. The second figure shows the alleged links from Amelia May Laing up to Linda Burney’s 3X great grandmother, Susan Sinclair of the Sinclair Clan in Scotland.
Figure 2 - Alleged Maternal Family tree linking the Hon Linda Burney MP with the Laing Family in Australia
Figure 3 - Alleged Maternal Family tree linking the Hon Linda Burney MP via the Laing Family in Australia to the Sinclair Family in Scotland.
As our genealogists continued to work up the Sinclair line they made a stunning discovery.
They found that Susan Sinclair, who they believed to be Linda Burney’s 3X great grandmother was also in fact the daughter of the famous Lieutenant-General Patrick Sinclair, Fifth of Lybster. Like many Scots, Patrick Sinclair sought adventure and advancement by joining the British army. He rose to such prominence in the British colonisation of North West America that for three years he was the most important man on the upper Great Lakes, near present day Michigan.
He is remembered as an important historical figure to this day wth his own entry in Dictionary of Canadian Biography and Wikipedia.
Figure 4 - Alleged Maternal Family tree linking the ancestry of Hon Linda Burney MP to Lieutenant General Patrick Sinclair of the Great Lakes in North America
Figure 5 - Believed to be the only likeness to exist of Linda Burney’s 4X great grandfather. From H. B. Eaton, LIEUTENANT-GENERAL PATRICK SINCLAIR: An Account of His Military Career, Journal of the Society for Army Historical Research , Vol. 56, No. 227 (AUTUMN 1978), pp. 128-142
Truth-Telling About Our Family Histories
Linda Burney’s 4x Great grandfather - Lieutenant General Patrick Sinclair
There is a developing, common solidarity amongst ‘First Nations’ peoples from around the world as they pursue the process of self-determination and Truth-Telling. This solidarity is especially strong between the politicised ‘First Nations’ peoples who come from the former British colonies in Australia, Canada and the USA.
Our research has discovered evidence to suggest that Australia’s new Minister for Indigenous Australians, Linda Burney, may be uniquely placed to be at the forefront of this new International solidarity in the Truth-Telling process.
She may in fact be the only senior government representative worldwide who can legitimately claim ancestry and heritage equally at a senior level to both sides of the colonial encounter - our research suggests that she is, in equal measure, an ancestral member at the highest level of the colonised Wiradjuri people as well as being the 4X great daughter of Lieutenant General Patrick Sinclair, one of Britain’s premier colonisers of North America.
Patrick Sinclair, was the Lieutenant-Governor and Commandant from ca1775 to 1782 of the British forts of Michilimackinac, and its adjacent island Mackinac during the colonisation of North America.
Figure 6 - Reconstructed sketch of what Fort Michillimackinac looked like in Patrick Sinclair’s time. Source Ref 6, p135 facing
Both the forts were British defensive and trading forts on the Great Lakes in the present day Michigan state of the United States.
As a ‘Michillimackinac commandant, [Sinclair] had to negotiate the demands of the British military and government and the expectations of its Indian allies and to ensure the vitality of the fur trade.’ (Ref 2, p119-20).
As the fur trade economy was heavily reliant on slaves (both black, Indian and Spanish & French prisoners of war), the regulation of the slave-trade came under Sinclair’s control.
When Patrick Sinclair took command of Michilimackinac, ‘he decreed that no person could hire nor harbor Indian or African slaves without the permission of their owners. It was a common practice to hire slaves out and then have the fee split between the slave and the owner’. (Ref 3. p5).
Sinclair also used slaves to assist in the building of his new fort on Mackinac Island. (Ref 3, p6).
Thus, we see that Patrick Sinclair, who the records suggest is Linda Burney’s 4X Great grandfather, was in fact deeply involved in the day-to-day regulation of the slave trade in the regions under his control.
Figure 7 - Location of original British forts Michilimackinac (later Mackinaw City) and Mackinac Island between Lakes Michigan and Huron in 1800. These were under Patrick Sinclair’s control during his tenure as Lieutenant-Governor. Source: Ref 4, p137
Reporting to Patrick Sinclair was the position of fort commissionary, which was filled by a trader or other responsible person who also had responsibility in handling and dispensing the government stores. In Sinclair’s time the position was filled by two successful slave traders, firstly John Askin, who Sinclair dismissed, due to Askin’s misappropriation of the government stores, and secondly with the local physician David Mitchell. Both these men were successful slave traders, ‘since the role of fort commissionary in the Great Lakes came with a secondary, implicit duty: the role of slave trader. Well-positioned fort officials. …supplying customers with slaves became part and parcel of supplying them with wheat, rum and other necessities’. (Ref 4 p88).
During Sinclair’s time, Askin was a well known supplier of ‘panis’, the term used to describe Native Indian slaves.
‘Many Indian slaves were not originally from the Great Lakes region but instead had been captured farther west, beyond the Missouri River. Members of the western Pawnee nation made up a notable number of Indian captives around the lakes, as this group was a target of slave raids carried out by Missouri and Little Osage bands in order to produce captives to sell to French traders.’ (Ref 5, p41).
In the years prior to his becoming the fort commandant, Sinclair who it is recorded, "hath served his Majesty near six years last past on the Great Lakes in North America where he had the honor [sic] to command his Majesty's vessels on the Lakes Erie, Sinclair, Huron and Michigan," was presented with a silver bowl from the traders of Detroit as a ‘public testimony of their gratitude’. (Figure 8)
Many of these Detroit businessmen were slave traders who no doubt were grateful for Patrick Sinclair’s ability to keep the waterways open for their slave and fur trading. (Ref 5. p6).
Figure 8 - There were slave traders amongst the Detroit merchants who presented this bowl to Patrick Sinclair, who genealogical research has shown to be Linda Burney’s 4X great grandfather. Source Ref 5, p6
In addition, Patrick Sinclair had previously seen service during Pontiac’s War in 1763, a brutal war in which the British finally suppressed an uprising by a confederation of local Indian nations. Nevertheless, after the war Sinclair went on to build excellent relationships with the local Ojibwa Indians. He was able to negotiate a title for land on the Huon River from the Ojibwa and Odawa Indians of Detroit.
The land was given as an example of, ‘the love and regard [the Ojibwa and Odawa] bear for our friend Lieut. Patrick Sinclair and … for the many charitable acts he hass done us, our wives and children’.
He then returned home to Scotland for a number of years before returning as the new commandant at Fort Michilimackinac (Ref 2, p124-5 and Wikipedia).
The Complex Ancestral Backgrounds of All of Us
Our point in providing these details of Patrick Sinclair’s life is to show that Linda Burney, like many of us, appears to have a very complex and nuanced ancestry. We are all, if we dig deep enough, descendants of both the oppressor and the oppressed, the slave and the slaver, the coloniser and the colonised.
However, our new Federal Minister for Indigenous Australians, Linda Burney, wants Australians to accept her political and policy views concerning the Uluru Statement from the Heart, views that she admits are informed by the ancestry and heritage that flows from her Aboriginal father and his family’s legacy of colonisation, with its oppression and near slave-like treatment of some Aboriginal people.
But on the other hand she completely ignores any reference to what, if any, of her political and policy views are informed by the ancestry and heritage that flows presumably equally from her mother’s side - the British coloniser heritage, which genealogical records indicate is exemplified by her 4x Great grandfather, who is believed to be the coloniser exemplar, Lieutenant-General Patrick Sinclair.
If her ancestral links to Aboriginal culture via her father matter so deeply, why don’t her equally deep ancestral links to Scottish and British colonial culture inherited from her mother matter as well? Why don’t these deep ancestral coloniser links inform her Aboriginal politics and policies today?
Which was Better for Indigenous Peoples? - Australia’s settlement without Treaty, or North America’s Ceding of Land by Treaty?
Some readers may be wondering why a detailed discussion of Linda Burney’s ancestry matters at all. In normal times they would be right. But these are not normal times in the politics of Australia. We are at a crossroads. As a country, we have spent the past 250 years slowly, but steadily, getting ‘race’ out of our Australian polity. But now the Hon Linda Burney MP and the Labor government are asking us to put ‘race’ squarely back into our Constitution.
And that is why, we believe Linda Burney represents an excellent proxy for Australia in its discussions on ancestry, heritage and race when looking at the success and plight of Indigenous peoples from the world’s largest British settler colonisations, those of Australia, Canada and the United States.
Genealogical records appear to show that by her ancestry she straddles all three of these colonial projects - she is the inheritor of the highest office for Indigenous affairs in the Austraian colonial project and, by her ancestral links to Lieutenant-General Patrick Sinclair, she is believed to be able to trace a direct ancestral line back to the foundations of the British colonial encounter in Canada and the US.
Thus, it will be very illuminating to compare how Indigenous peoples fared under the British and the subsequent colonial governments, in the case of Australia where no treaties were signed with Aboriginal peoples, and in Canada and North America where hundreds of treaties were signed between the British and Indian nations.
In Australia today many people, both Aboriginal and non-Indigenous as well, lament the fact that the British did not sign any treaties at the start of the British colonisation of Australia.
However, we believe that the evidence today suggests that Australia’s Indigenous peoples have achieved better political and land ownership outcomes because no treaties were signed - Indigenous Australians were better served in the long-run because the British legally settled Australia by occupation and not by cession (via treaties) or by conquest (via war).
Consider the alternative that played out in Canada, some 25 years prior to Australia’s settlement in 1788.
British Colonisation by Treaty in Canada
The British issued The Royal Proclamation of 1763, which formally established the treaty making process in Canada. The Government of Canada today recognizes 70 historic treaties in Canada, signed between 1701 and 1923, that are directly linked to the Proclamation of 1763 (Source).
Figure 9 - Image of The Royal Proclamation of 1763 Source.
The Royal Proclamation of 1763 is a wide ranging document, but particularly it established a western geographical limit to settlement for the North American colonies.
The Proclamation also stipulated that the new Indian Department would be the primary point of contact between Aboriginal peoples and the colonies and stipulated that only the Crown could purchase Aboriginal lands. This was to stop the widespread encroachment of settlement on Aboriginal land and maintain strong and peaceful relations.
Although there is considerable scholarly disagreement, some see the Royal Proclamation of 1763 as a ‘fundamental document’ for First Nations land claims and self-government. It has been described as ‘the first legal recognition by the British Crown of Aboriginal rights’ and imposes a fiduciary duty of care on the Crown (Wikipedia).
Similarly, the Indigenous peoples of North America signed hundreds of local treaties with the United States Government, once it become formally recognised by Britain in 1783 by the Treaty of Paris after the American War of Independence (1775-1783).
An example of a typical treaty for land cession, a land transfer deed or for the conclusion of hostilities (a North American version of a Makarrata perhaps?) is shown in Figure 10, with the signatures and marks of the Indians.
Figure 10 - An example of one of the hundreds of treaties signed between North American Indian Nations peoples and Britain, France or the United States. This example is signed by the European representatives and the Indians, who are indicated by their Anglicised name and ‘character’ as well as a cross or thumbprint. Source - See Smithsonian Institute for examples
Patrick Sinclair, who is believed to be Linda Burney’s 4x great grandfather, himself obtained a typical deed or treaty,
'from the Indians ‘to a tract of land upon the St. Clair River, 2 1/2 miles along the river by the same in depth…. The deed is dated July 27th, 1768, and was signed by Massigiash and Ottawa, Chiefs of the Chippewa Nation, in the presence of 15 Indians of that Nation and of George Turnbull, Captain of the Second Battalion of the 60th Regiment, George Archbold, Lieutenant, and ensigns Robert Johnson and John Amiel of the same Regiment, also of John Lewis Gage, Ensign of the 31st Regiment, and Lieut.John Hay of the 60th Regiment, Commissary of Indian affairs’. (Source page 10).
The Hon Linda Burney MP is thus believed to be the ancestral inheritor of the two systems by which the British obtained the lands of Indigenous Peoples - by settlement in Australia, as reflected by her father’s Aboriginal ancestry and heritage, and by cession with treaties by her mother’s Scottish & British ancestry and heritage.
How do these two systems compare and what was the outcome for Indigenous peoples using the Australian Approach compared to the North American Approach?
Indigenous Peoples Progress in Australia Compared to Canada and the USA
From the earliest times of the colony, when Australia was settled by occupation by the British in 1788, the Aboriginal peoples were treated as British subjects and thus no treaties were signed.
A Treaty, as referred to by Aboriginal politicians today, is an internationally recognised instrument between two sovereign states or nations. Subjects or citizens, who are members of one single sovereign nation like Australia, cannot write treaties between themselves. They would be ‘Toytown’ treaties and would not be internationally recognised as being legal under International Law.
All the land of New South Wales (and ultimately Australia) became Crown property in 1788 and was then distributed under a system of various Crown Titles over the next 250 years. The Crown acquired full and sole sovereignty that was recognised (and still is) by International Law.
Even under the Mabo judgement, the High Court determined that,
‘native land title rights survived settlement, though subject to the sovereignty of the Crown.’ (See bottom of post here).
Thus, at the time of settlement, all the land of New South Wales (and later, all of Australia) was under the sovereignty of the Crown. The Crown then issued titles to that land as required. This included the issuing of Native Title after the Mabo judgements.
So given this history, how do the outcomes of land ownership and control by Indigenous Australians compare to that experienced by the Indigenous peoples of North America, who were treated as separate Nations by the British and thus dealt with by treaties?
Australia has the Most Indigenous Politicians
The three largest of Britain’s settler colonies were Australia, Canada and the United States. One measure of how people of Indigenous descent have been included within each of these societies in modern times is to compare the percentage of parliamentarians who identify as Indigenous with the percentage of Indigenous people within the population at large.
Australia, which was a colony established by occupation or settlement and not by cession (via treaties) or by conquest (via war) is the only one of the three countries where the percentage of Indigenous parliamentarians exceeds the percentage of Indigenous peoples in the general population - that is, Indigenous Australians have a higher parliamentary occupation rate than non-Indigenous Australians (4.8% in parliament but only 3.2% of the population - Table 1)
Additionally, Australia has more Indigenous people in parliament as a percent of total parliamentarians than both Canada and the US (4.8% of Australian parliamentarians are Indigenous compared to only 0.7% in the US and 3.3% in Canada - See Table 1)
Thus it seems that colonisation by cession, as represented by the British colonial outposts in North America established by the likes of Patrick Sinclair, has not led to a greater share of modern day Indigenous parliamentary representation than we have achieved in Australia. The legal process of colonisation by settlement, in which no treaties were signed has resulted in more Indigenous representation in our Australian parliament compared to the parliaments of Canada and the US.
Australia has the Most Indigenous Land Ownership
From an Indigenous land ownership point of view, Australia is a standout ‘success’ compared to the other British colonial experiences in the USA and Canada.
In Australia, a colony established by settlement with no treaties, other societal and political movements together with legislation have resulted in Indigenous Australians controlling or owning about 26% of Australia’s land mass on an exclusive basis. This rises to about 54% on a non-exclusive basis when one considers land that is controlled or owned by Indigenous peoples in conjunction with others who also have legal access to that land (such as pastoral leases on native title land).
By comparison, Indigenous peoples in the USA only control about 2.3% of America’s land mass. This is despite the many hundreds of treaties that were signed between the Native American nations and the British, the French and their successor, the United States of America.
Similarly, the First Nations peoples of modern-day Canada only own or control around 6.3% of Canada’s land mass. (Source for the above statistics - Table 1 and map in Figure 11).
Thus on these three parameters, proportional parliamentary representation, the number of parliamentarians and the area of native title lands, Australia’s Indigenous peoples are way ahead in outcomes compared to their Indigenous counterparts in the USA and Canada.
Like many other Aboriginal commentators, Burney has said she is "very supportive of a treaty” in Australia between the Government and First Nations peoples.
The actual evidence we have presented here suggests that colonisation by Treaty does not necessarily enhance the Indigenous Voice in a nation’s parliament. Indigenous Australians already have a higher proportional Voice in parliament despite not having a Treaty.
It thus appears that Linda Burney’s request for a further Treaty (as part of the Uluru Statement from the Heart) is not warranted.
Figure 11 - Australian Native Title Determinations and Claims as of 1 July 2022. Source: Australian Government National Native Title Tribunal (NNTT) - Select pull down menu here for National Claims and Determinations.
[Ed note : These percentages of total Native Title area from the NNTT are at slight odds to those we have produced in Table 1, which were sourced from the newspaper Guardian Online Australia. We have included the Guardian’s variant figures as many of our detractors who read our posts would rather believe what the Guardian says over the official government figures. Nevertheless, both sources show that a half or more of Australia is now covered by Native Title. Or more worryingly, if the claims that are in process are successful, then only about 1/3 (37%) of Australia will NOT be under some form of Native Title.
Figure 12 - Source SBS Our House Podcast 11 July 2022 - Linda Burney.
- Listen to full interview from about 05:30 here
This SBS Our House series, ‘interviews politicians from multi-cultural backgrounds who are changing the face and culture of parliament.’ (listen at 15:20 at end)
There is No Need for a New Voice in our Constitution
Based on the evidence provided above, Australians should not feel any moral or ethical imperative to vote ‘Yes’ for Linda Burney’s and the Labor Party’s Voice referendum. Australians don’t need to feel bullied into believing that the colonisation of Australia was particularly bad for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples because no Treaty was signed.
The Hon Linda Burney MP is perfectly entitled to mount her political case for the enshrinement in the Constitution of the claimed ‘special’ Aboriginal racial relationship with this land that we now call Australia - and many other Australians are just as morally and ethically justified in voting “No” to this political demand, which is based on race and for which no real evidence has been presented by the Hon Linda Burney MP to support her assertions that it will provide any better outcomes for Australians, Indigenous or otherwise.
In the next Part of our investigation into the influence or otherwise of the ancestry of The Hon Linda Burney MP into the politics of the Uluru Statement from the Heart, we follow the ancestry of Linda Burney deep into the Scottish aristocracy - so deep that some of our genealogists are wondering whether there might be a subconscious push to establish an Aboriginal Aristocracy in Australia?
So stay tuned.
References
Keen, Ian. (ed) Being Black - Aboriginal Cultures in ‘Settled’ Australia, Aboriginal Studies Press 1988 (1991).
Carroll, J.M., The Merchant John Askin, Michigan State University Press 2017
Magnaghi, R., Black Americans in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula – Part One, 5 Jan 2021 (Rural Insights)
Miles, T., The Dawn of Detroit - A Chronicle of Slavery and Freedom in the City of the Straits, 2017,
Jenks, William L., Patrick Sinclair, Michigan Historical Commission, State Department of History and Archives, 1914
Eaton, H.B., LIEUTENANT-GENERAL PATRICK SINCLAIR: An Account of His Military Career, Journal of the Society for Army Historical Research , AUTUMN 1978, Vol. 56, pp. 128-142.
Further Reading
1. The Royal Proclamation of 1763 in North America
‘The first land cession under the protocols of the Royal Proclamation was concluded between Sir William Johnson of the Indian Department and the Seneca, a member group of the powerful Six Nations Haudenosaunee Confederacy. In 1764, the Seneca negotiated a treaty with the British that granted the British unimpeded access to two miles on either side of the Niagara River for the purposes of communication and travel between Lake Erie and Lake Ontario.
The land cession was only one part of the Niagara Conference, which renewed alliances, restored trade interrupted by the [Seven Years] War, and strengthened Britain's presence in the Great Lakes Basin.
Three additional land surrenders were concluded between the Department of Indian Affairs and Aboriginal communities between 1764 and 1783. These treaties form the basis of the relationship between the Crown and 364 First Nations, representing over 600,000 First Nation peoples in Canada today’ (Source : here and here )
Note that these treaties were being negotiated just a few years prior to the launching of the First Fleet in 1787 - the great colonising project that was to establish our Australia so successfully by settlement and occupation, without the need for any treaty or war.
‘At the end of the Seven Years’ War in 1763, France surrendered Canada and much of the Ohio and Mississippi valleys—two-thirds of eastern North America—to England. The Proclamation of 1763 “preserved to the said Indians” the lands west of the Appalachian Mountains and ordered White settlers “there forthwith to remove themselves from such Settlements,” forbade White settlement, and restricted commerce with the American Indians to traders licensed by the British government, requiring settlers to “take out a License for carrying on such Trade from the Governor or Commander in Chief of any of Our Colonies respectively.”
Power over westward expansion was in the hands of British officials, outside the colonists’ control. By preventing the colonial population from moving inland the British ministry hoped to avoid costly wars, protect the western fur trade, and keep western land speculation under the control of the crown. To enforce the proclamation, Britain authorized positioning 10,000 troops along the frontier, with the costs of 250,000 pounds sterling per year to be paid by the colonists.
The Americans, who looked at the new land as an opportunity for settlement without the interference of the British government, resented the terms of the proclamation’. (Source - here)
2.Land Cession Treaties
‘The Ojibwe of Wisconsin signed three major land cession treaties with the United States in 1837, 1842, and 1854, ceding their entire homeland to the U.S. and establishing reservations for four Ojibwe bands in the state.
The 1837 land cession treaty between the United States and the Ojibwe was concluded at a conference held near present-day Minneapolis-St. Paul in Minnesota. There, the Ojibwe traded the majority of their Wisconsin lands for a 20-year annuity of $9,500 in cash, $19,000 in goods (blankets, rifles, and cooking utensils), $2,000 worth of provisions, $3,000 to establish and maintain three blacksmiths' shops, and $500 worth of tobacco.
Congress appropriated another $75,000 to pay debts the tribe owed to fur traders. A final treaty provision reserved the Ojibwe's right to hunt, fish, and gather wild rice on ceded lands’. (Source)
3. If Aboriginal People Were a Country They Would be the 10th Richest in the World!
The settlement of Australia without Treaties has not held back the economic development of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. This is evidenced by the fact that based on Mean Annual Household Income in US Dollars, Indigenous Australians are ahead of The Kiwis, the Germans and ironically the British, their original colonisers! (Source File).
The well-being of disadvantaged Aboriginal communities is often within their own hands - they don’t need a Voice enshrined in our Constitution. They need to standup and take control of their own lives and express their agency for their own communities good. The reportedly dysfunctional Aurukun community for example, is reported to have $120million cash in the bank.
Many Australians of goodwill are therefore prompted to ask, why should we agree to the desecration of our Constitution by the insertion of a racial clause of supremacy, supposedly to improve the economic outcomes for Aboriginal people, when it appears that they already have their own substantial economic independence?
4.The Maori Have had a Treaty and a Voice in Parliament for Nearly 200 Years - But They Still Can’t Close the Gap
The Hon Linda Burney MP has provided no real evidence that enshrining a Voice in Our Constitution and establishing a Treaty between the 3% of Indigenous Australians and the other 97% of us will do anything to ‘close the Gap’ on parameters such as life expectancy.
The New Zealand experience is evidence that Treaty and Voice do not by necessity ‘close the gap’ in life expectancy between Indigenous and non-Indigenous citizens.
Figure 13 - Source
