Is it possible for Australia to establish its initial Indigenous Treaty by the upcoming year?

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While the federal government has gone quiet on the idea of a national treaty with Australia’s First Peoples in the wake of the failed 2023 referendum, the Victorian government is aiming for a statewide agreement by June next year.

Victoria’s Minister for Treaty and First Nations People, Natalie Hutchins, told the Public Accounts and Estimates Committee on Thursday she would like to see new legislation in place this year and a treaty signed before the end of the next financial year.

Talks began in Victoria in 2021, and a process of treaty negotiation between the state government and First Peoples started last November.

But recognition of Indigenous sovereignty and the march towards a formal agreement began years before Britain planted the Union Jack on Aboriginal land.

The history of Indigenous sovereignty recognition

Two hundred and fifty-seven years ago, as Captain James Cook prepared to set sail into the Pacific on his Endeavour voyage, he was given some ‘hints’ by the president of the Royal Society, James Douglas, 14th Earl of Morton.

These hints related to how the people of the lands that Cook and his crew encountered should be treated.

“They are the natural, and in the strictest sense of the word, the legal possessors of the several regions they inhabit,” Douglas wrote.

“No European Nation has a right to occupy any part of their country, or settle among them without their voluntary consent. Conquest over such people can give no just title; because they could never be the Aggressors.”

In 1832, after the ‘Black War’ had all but wiped the palawa peoples of Tasmania, Governor George Arthur concluded that: “It was a fatal error in the first settlement of Van Diemen’s Land that a treaty was not entered into with the Natives.”

In the 20th century, there was a renewed flourishing of advocacy for Treaty undertaken by emerging Aboriginal leaders and non-Indigenous Australians.

From the late 1970s onwards, high-profile Australians such as economist and public servant Herbert Cole ‘Nugget’ Coombs and poet Judith Wright were driving forces in the formation of the Aboriginal Treaty Committee (1979-83), whose aim was to promote Treaty amongst non-Indigenous Australians.

At Barunga in 1988, then-prime minister Bob Hawke famously promised a treaty “before the end of the life of this parliament”.

But the deadline passed, and Indigenous frustration was channelled into Yothu Yindi’s 1991 global hit single that demanded “Treaty now”.

More recently, treaty was one of the three key reforms called for in the 2017 Uluru Statement from the Heart, but in the wake of the failed referendum on a Voice to Parliament, Treaty and truth-telling at a national level face an uncertain future.

In the states and territories, however, it’s a different story — particularly, in Victoria, where the First Peoples’ treaty talks with the Victorian government continue, and look set to deliver a statewide treaty by June next year.

Speaking on NITV’s The Point, Ngarra Murray, a Wamba Wamba, Yorta Yorta, Dhudhuroa and Dja Dja Wurrung woman and co-chair of the First Peoples’ Assembly of Victoria, said a statewide Treaty had been generations in the making.

“In the last 10 years, we’ve made significant progress towards treaty and those foundational pieces that we needed to set up treaty-making well into the future,” she said.

“For us, treaty is a movement. It’s about resetting relationships, new relationships around truth-telling and accountability.”

A woman with long black hair speaking, with others behind her.

Ngarra Murray said there had been significant progress towards Treaty in the last 10 years. Source: AAP / Diego Fedele

Nyangbal and Arakwal woman Naomi Moran is one of three recently appointed NSW Treaty Commissioners.

NSW opened the door for Treaty in 2023 and committed to a 12-month consultation process.

“We know that we’ve been tasked to go in and have conversations with our mob, with Aboriginal people throughout New South Wales around those two questions: do you want a treaty or other formal agreement-making processes, and what does that look like?” Moran said.

“I think what’s really important in the integrity and how we carry ourselves in this work is understanding that we’re also dealing with the behaviours of a wider community that for over 235 years just haven’t taken the time to understand who we are as Aboriginal people.”

In Queensland, a Path to Treaty process which began under Labor in 2019 was scrapped in 2024 by the incoming Liberal National Party.

A man and two women standing near each other and smiling, in front of a wall that has a mural of people marching with signs displaying First Nations messages.

(Left to right) Former Queensland Truth-Telling and Healing Inquiry chairperson Joshua Creamer, NSW Treaty Commissioner Naomi Moran and co-chair of the First Peoples’ Assembly of Victoria Ngarra Murray. Credit: NITV / The Point

It was a major setback for Josh Creamer, the Waanyi and Kalkadoon barrister and former chair of the Queensland government’s Truth-telling and Healing Inquiry that was launched as the first step towards a formal agreement.

“A change in government and different political views, and we’re out the door quite easily, so really disappointing,” he said.

“In recognising Queensland’s 165 years of existence as a colony separate from New South Wales, never in our history had we taken the journey to sit down and understand the impact of that history on our First Peoples.

“We had the opportunity to hear from a number of Aboriginal witnesses in our Truth-telling Hearing in Brisbane, and I realised from that the people who’d been treated the worst in our system, who have had all the trauma, have all the abuse afflicted on them, are the ones who are working for reconciliation.

“And there’s no reason they should be, having listened to the stories of what has happened to them, but they’re the ones putting out their hand. There’s a responsibility on all of us to just listen, and that’s all truth-telling is really about.”