Far South Coast Indigenous leader Ossie Cruse is at Uluru this week, representing NSW at a major gathering of Elders on the 50th anniversary of the historic 1967 referendum.
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Speaking ahead of the First Nations convention, which began on Wednesday May 24, the respected 83-year-old pastor and Referendum Advisory Council member made a passionate plea for “shared sovereignty”.
Uncle Ossie said that recognition of Indigenous Australians in the Constitution, together with a treaty between the government and his people, was the way forward.
It was only when young Indigenous people felt equal that the high incidence of suicide and drug dependency could be successfully tackled, he said.
"Our young people need to feel equal and at the moment they're not," he said. “We need to lift them up.”
After the convention the Referendum Advisory Council will present Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and Opposition Leader Bill Shorten with its preferred model for constitutional change. Any change to the Constitution would require Parliamentary approval and a new referendum; no date has been set.
The 1967 referendum amended the Constitution to allow Indigenous Australians to be counted in the census, and empowered the federal parliament to legislate specifically for the nation's first people.
Change was overwhelmingly endorsed by 90.77 per cent of the population in all six states; in Bega, however, 22 per cent of the population voted against it – more than twice the NSW average.
Uncle Ossie said that while the 1967 referendum was an important milestone, there was “no real progress” for Indigenous Australians until the High Court’s Mabo decision in 1992 which overturned the assertion that Australia was terra nullius, or nobody’s land, at the time of British settlement in 1788.
He now hoped the new groundswell for broad recognition of Indigenous Australians in the Constitution would not be “squashed”.
He hoped that soon, the Tent Embassy outside Old Parliament House in Canberra – set up on January 26, 1972, as a place where activists could exercise the right to represent the interests of Indigenous Australians - would no longer be needed.
Uncle Ossie said he was proud to be one of 20 Elders representing NSW at this week’s gathering at Uluru.
‘Ossie’s Way’, co-produced by Far South Coast filmmaker Toni Houston, will be screened on a date to be confirmed on Australian Story on ABC TV.
