Preface: Uluru

      If you look at a map of Australia and search for Uluru, it appears to be almost at the centre of the country. It’s located in the Central Desert region, 335 kilometres from Alice Springs. The name refers to the land of the Anangu, the traditional owners. Whether or not it is at the geographical heart of Australia – rather wonderfully, the Australian government’s Geosciences division suggests there is no such thing¹ – the massive sandstone formation, standing almost 350 metres high, with a circumference of more than 9 kilometres, looms large in the geographical, spiritual and metaphysical landscape of both the Central Desert peoples and Australia. Uluru’s history, in so many ways, encapsulates the struggles, hopes, fears, narrow-mindedness and generosity of Aboriginal and European relations over two centuries on this continent.

For the Anangu, the landscape, including Uluru, was created by their ancestral beings at the beginning of time; a connection that entails an unending responsibility to protect and care for those lands. For Europeans, Uluru was originally ‘Ayers Rock’, named by the British surveyor William Gosse in 1873 for his boss, the Chief Secretary of South Australia, Sir Henry Ayers. Throughout much of the twentieth century, Ayers Rock became an iconic tourist destination for Australian and international visitors. But it was also a place of struggle. In 1985, after a wave of strikes, protests and an insurgent land rights movement, the title to the land was finally returned to the Anangu. The park is now jointly managed by them and Parks Australia as Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park.

In May 2017, Uluru played host to another significant moment in Australian history: the First Nations National Constitutional Convention. This meeting was the culmination of work begun by the Referendum Council, established in 2015, charged with advising on the best means for delivering recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in Australia’s constitution. As part of its work, the Council created a series of innovative ‘First Nation Regional Dialogues’ across Australia which prepared the groundwork for the Constitutional Convention, held at the foot of Uluru. What emerged from that meeting was a remarkable political declaration: the ‘Uluru Statement from the Heart’. The allusion in the title is rich and powerful: a statement ‘from the heart’, declared at the metaphysical heart of Anangu country, aimed at the hearts of all Australians, attempting to cut to the heart of issues left unresolved for too long since European settlement. It begins thus:

      Our Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander tribes were the first sovereign Nations of the Australian continent and its adjacent islands, and possessed it under our own laws and customs. … With substantive constitutional change and structural reform, we believe this ancient sovereignty can shine through as a fuller expression of Australia’s nationhood.

      It continues:

      Proportionally, we are the most incarcerated people on the planet. We are not an innately criminal people. Our children are alienated from their families at unprecedented rates. This cannot be because we have no love for them. And our youth languish in detention in obscene numbers. They should be our hope for the future.

      These dimensions of our crisis tell plainly the structural nature of our problem. This is the torment of our powerlessness.

We seek constitutional reforms to empower our people and take a rightful place in our own country. When we have power over our destiny our children will flourish. They will walk in two worlds and their culture will be a gift to their country.

      Three major recommendations emerged from the Convention and the ‘Statement from the Heart’. The first was that a referendum should be held to enshrine a First Nations ‘Voice’ to Parliament. This would be a representative body of First Nations traditional owners to advise Parliament on policy affecting Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. It would be a first step to addressing the ‘torment of our powerlessness’. Further discussions would be needed to define exactly what kind of representative body it would be, but the constitutional guarantee of its existence was critical. Previous advisory bodies have been created but then dismissed at the whim of governments. At the same time, the Council made clear it was not intended to have a veto over legislation. It would be a political mechanism for enhancing dialogue and improving the lives of Indigenous peoples.

The second and third recommendations were extra-constitutional in nature. The Council recommended that a ‘Declaration of Recognition’ be enacted by legislation passed by all Australian parliaments, bringing together the three parts of the ‘Australian story’: ‘our ancient First