A movement for understanding

"So you may be sitting there listening, or maybe you’re not even listening, but you’re wondering: what can I do? In the case of Indigenous Australians, the greatest good that you can do is understand. Understand that there are differences between cultures and people. Understand that all you have to do is open your eyes and your ears and listen to what people have to say."

When Dean Parkin ’98 addressed the School Assembly on ‘Racism and Prejudice’ as a Year 12 student, he told his audience that he didn’t really mind being taunted on the cricket field for being ‘Indian’ or mistaken for a PNG winger while playing rugby. He could laugh off the comments and nicknames.

A boarder from Moranbah, Parkin was Vice Captain of Harlin House and a member of the First XV. He says now he never really felt the brunt of racism at school, and his speech was more about the way he saw other people treated.

“There was a divide between different cultures at the School, but I don’t think people said things out of malice. They were said in a very casual way, a little bit of the, ‘Oh come on, man, I’m just having a joke, having a bit of fun’.” Parkin said. “I now can see that ‘fun’ comes at the expense of making someone else the ‘other’. These days I certainly don’t let that stuff slide.”

Parkin worked in political offices in Queensland, as a consultant to the UK Department of Health, and in Indigenous community development in Australia. He recently moved to an investment banking position with Tanarra Capital in Melbourne.

With a continuing focus on Indigenous development and reform, Parkin hopes to capitalise on “some of the significant opportunities that are out there for Indigenous people. Economic and business development is such a critical part of helping to address some really challenging issues in Indigenous affairs.”

Tackling these challenges have been Parkin’s life work. In a recent TEDx talk, available online, Parkin argues Australians need to rethink Aboriginal policy, starting with changes to the nation’s founding document, the Australian Constitution.

In his opening remarks, Parkin delivers greetings from the Quandamooka people from Minjerribah (North Stradbroke Island) before explaining the long consultative process that led to the First Nations National Constitutional Convention in May 2017.

As part of a team appointed by a bi-partisan Referendum Council, Parkin travelled around the country facilitating ‘Dialogues’ with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in the lead up to the national convention. The Uluru Statement from the Heart was issued at the Convention’s conclusion. It summarises the Dialogues, and the aspirations people have expressed over the last 200 years.

Reflecting on the speech, Parkin said his aim was to let people know the Uluru Statement from the Heart is not a petition or a protest but ‘an invitation to the Australian people’.

“The Statement begins with the lawful and historical reality that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have never ceded their sovereignty over their land to the Crown,” Parkin said. “That sovereignty exists today in an uneasy tension with the sovereignty imposed by the British colonisation of this country.”

“It invites us to have a meaningful conversation. It asks Australians to consider how we can weave these co-existing sovereignties into a more complete sense of who we are as a country.”

The Statement makes three practical proposals: to create a First Nations Voice to parliament, establish a Makaratta Commission to strike treaty agreements across the country, and start a ‘truth telling’ process to address Australia’s history.

According to Parkin, the failure to Close the Gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians on education, health outcomes and life expectancy proves the need for a new approach.

“Since colonisation, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have been striving and fighting for ways to ensure that we take our rightful place in this nation,” Parkin said. “We were ignored and deliberately excluded in the 1901 Federation, and successive government policies such as the Stolen Generations and moving people to reserves and missions have effectively oppressed Aboriginal people. There have been many times in history when we haven’t had a say in policies that affect us.”

To those who argue things have changed since then, Parkin said policies that are ostensibly designed to ‘help’ Aboriginal people often still work against them.

“Policies drawn up in Canberra or Brisbane often haven’t been informed by Indigenous people, so there’s no surprise that when they hit the ground they don’t actually work,” Parkin said. “The other impediment is the mindsets of people, both policy makers and the general public.”

“In my years working with communities, I’ve seen people tackling challenging social issues, but we’re consistently told by the media that our situation is failing, or corrupt, or we’re not looking after our own children. There’s an overwhelming public voice telling us how bad things are and that it’s our fault.”

Parkin asks us to “think of a greenhouse. We’re trying to nurture seeds, we’re trying to nurture communities, creating the right conditions for individuals and families to flourish. If a big hail storm comes – say the Northern Territory intervention, or laws to water down native title or other land rights – the ceiling gets wiped out. For me, constitutional and structural reform is building that greenhouse.”

To date, the ‘invitation’ issued by the Statement hasn’t been accepted. In October 2017, then Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull rejected the Convention’s proposals as unlikely to pass a referendum process. Parkin disagrees.

“People are crying out for something bigger than what they’re getting right now. They’re crying out for vision and aspiration and something that is actually nation building,” he said.

Support may be building. Mining companies BHP and Rio Tinto have endorsed the Uluru Statement, including its proposal for a First Nations Voice to parliament. Eighteen leading law firms have also recognised the Statement as an ‘historic mandate to create a fuller expression of Australia’s nationhood’.

Parkin hopes Australians will respond positively to the Uluru Statement, not just to benefit Indigenous people, but everyone. “If the 97% of non-Indigenous Australia can finally, genuinely connect with the ancient story and peoples of this land, we’ll think differently about who we are as a country. It’s an incredibly inclusive and welcoming proposal for change.”