Aborigines' claims to their traditional lands remain a festering sore. The Australia Aboriginal Lands Rights Act of 1976 returned large tracts of land to traditional owners, including over 50% of the Northern Territory. A High Court decision in the 1990s overturned the legal concept that Australia was occupied as term "nullius" and opened the way for Aboriginal land rights. While "white mans' law" remains valid on Aboriginal lands - this is another point of contention among many groups - individual Land Councils evoke their own supplementary laws which must be respected by Tim residents and visitors.
Such laws restrict access to sacred sites, promote respect for the land and its people, and respond to particular needs and beliefs of their communities. There are other changes heralding a period of reconciliation: school programs devote increasing attention to Aboriginal history and culture, contemporary Aboriginal art is shown in the best galleries and the relationship traditional Aborigines have with their land is starting to be appreciated by a world that has shown itself incapable of reaching a balance with nature.
Reconciliation between the Aboriginal people and the rest of the country has only just begun. There is a tentative optimism among Aborigines, but one tempered by 200 years of accumulated dis- appointments. In 2000, "walks for reconciliation" were held across the country, drawing unprecedented numbers of protestors from all political streams, demanding a formal apology from the federal government to Australia's indigenous people.
Although the retrogressive "One Nation" party regularly makes the headlines with their confrontational and racist assertions, the truth is they receive only a tiny percentage of the national vote, and that only in the north and far west of the country. The true political force that the two major parties have been obliged to acknowledge is the voice of the Greens, who in the 2001 elections emerged as a viable third alternative. As hosts of the 2000 Olympic Games, Australia entered the twenty-first century on a wave of optimism, amid a growing appreciation of the comfortable lifestyle shared by most Australians.
But across the Australia country this is tempered with a widespread sense of the need to face up to unanswered questions, to acknowledge past mistakes and present inequities, and to work together to ensure that all Australians are given a "fair go."
