Kath Butler didn’t attend the first National Reconciliation Week event in 2000 because she was pregnant with her first child, but she can still recall watching 250,000 people marching across the Sydney Harbour Bridge for more than six hours.
“I was on maternity leave that’s why I didn’t do the walk,” she said.
“I had friends do it. I remember watching it, you couldn’t miss that many people, and I know there was a real feeling of optimism.”
Kath Butler, Head of the Wollotuka Institute at the University of Newcastle, said she remains optimistic about reconciliation.
The Worimi and Bundjalung woman believes if both Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians share a common goal to reconcile, it can be achieved.
This week, on the 20th anniversary of reconciliation week, she sat down with Newcastle Weekly reporter Rebecca Riddle to talk about the annual event and what it means to Australia.
Newcastle Weekly: What does reconciliation week 2020 look like for you this year?
Kath Butler: “It’s obviously a different time for us (during COVID-19). We’d normally be having large scale events here at the university and in the community, but this year we’ve had to try and do that online. We’ve had live broadcasts. We were lucky to have [Newcastle Federal MP] Sharon Claydon come and speak, as well as Ray Kelly Junior.
This (pandemic) has made us think how we are a community even when we can’t physically get together. The amazing thing is we are still very much a community.
NW: This year’s theme is ‘In this together’. What does that mean?
KB: “It’s kind of ironic isn’t it? That theme was chosen months ago. It does speak to the same idea – if there’s any issue that we need to address it has to have a buy-in from everybody. Reconciliation is about having everybody involved.
It’s not necessarily Aboriginal-led. It has to have non-Aboriginal involvement too. It has to have courageous conversations, it has to have people willing to make a safe space to talk and have really honest conversations and it needs people being aware of the history of Australia.
On one level it is about reflection and recognition. The other level is about transformation – so what are we going to do moving forward?
That’s where it becomes relevant for the whole of Australia.
NW: This year is the 20th anniversary of reconciliation. How far do you think we have come?
KB: That’s very difficult to answer because change comes with many ebbs and flows.
For us in the university, we see that participation is at an all-time high. The number of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island PHD students is at an all-time high. For Newcastle we’ve always been known for producing a proportion of Australia’s Indigenous doctors but we’ve also produced an amazing number of teachers, and speech pathologists and scientists, so that’s a huge change from 20 years ago.
University of Newcastle has the most number of Indigenous students of any university in Australia. We have 1,000 enrolled in 2020 and we’ve graduated over 100 Indigenous doctors over 30 years.
We were also the first university to make learning Indigenous studies for teachers compulsory.
One thing I love about reconciliation is that it comes with an element of celebration. Let’s acknowledge some of the great things.
We also celebrate that some of the students who are non-indigenous choose to come here because they want to have a better understanding of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. They want to be able to better engage with these people when they are working as architects, and teachers, and doctors.
The idea that when you are teaching you are creating change-makers, the change-makers that are coming out of here are not just Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander and some of those people will have the opportunities to say things in different spaces.
NW: Are we any closer to achieving reconciliation?
KB: The fact that we’re having debates about treaty or constitutional reconciliation is a step forward. In 1988, [former Prime Minister] Bob Hawke said he’d make a treaty with Aboriginal people. Then it fell off the agenda. Now it’s back on the agenda. If these things took generations to get into place then implementation is going to take generations as well. I think Aboriginal people are pretty good at holding the course.
Having a national curriculum from Kindergarten to Year 12 means that all students have to learn about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander history and culture and that is a great thing.
It’s important to remember that even when you have what some people might term ‘failures’, it sends you in a better direction.
I’m an optimist. There’s a part in Paul Keating’s Redfern address that speaks to me where he says: ‘It seems to me that if we can imagine injustice then we can imagine justice’. I think that’s what reconciliation is all about. About imagining what a just society looks like and then putting it into practice.
It’s about sharing the responsibility for addressing racism.
NW: What can we do to move forward?
KB: Go to NAIDOC events, watch Aboriginal-produced media, be aware of Aboriginal culture, ask questions, seek answers.
NW: What about treaty?
KB: A treaty sets the terms, it’s one road map moving forward. It would mean regardless of a change of government there would be a common set of purposes, a set of rules. Legislation can change but this would set the rules. It would be a game-changer.
It would give us a common direction.
Everybody else can’t move forward if there is people who are disadvantaged.
I think if you said to most people should Australia be fair they would say yes, well this is how we make it fair.
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