90% OF METROPOLITIAN AUSTRALIANS HAVE NOT MET AN ABORIGINAL PERSON

I would suggest that some ninety per cent of metropolitan Australians haven’t even met, let alone sat down and had a meaningful conversation with an indigenous person. Without this happening how can we hope to understand and connect with indigenous Australians?

As someone who walked across the Sydney Harbour Bridge in support of reconciliation on 28 May 2000, I and many of my colleagues wondered how we could focus the growing support by the Australian people for meaningful reconciliation.
Of course the Reconciliation Walk during Corroborree 2000 was motivated by both goodwill and guilt.

There was guilt for suffering imposed on Aboriginal people in the past and guilt for current living conditions in many communities.
But meaningful reconciliation will never be more than words for many Australians until knowledge and understanding can be used to heal the past and improve the living conditions of indigenous communities now and into the future.

I have never learnt anything without making the effort to listen. However the most powerful messages in life must be absorbed by both the ears and the eyes if you want to change the heart. We must see things first hand and experience them in person. It is an important first step on the journey. Without better understanding there will remain the intractable clashes of culture.
One example of this is the current debate on certainty of title to land.