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Peter Read |
|
Peter Read |
| BIO Peter Read is a Senior Fellow at the Centre for Cross
Cultural Research, ANU, Canberra. He was a member of the Aboriginal
Treaty Committee in the early 1980s, from which experience his
discussion is drawn.
After working in Aboriginal history for some years (The Stolen Generations, A Hundred Years War, Charles Perkins A Biography), he began working in Australian place studies. At present he is writing the third volume of his trilogy on how Australians form attachments to certain areas of country. The titles are Returning to Nothing, Belonging and (in progress) The Crosswires of Time and Place Paper: Twenty Years On; Aboriginal Leaders Reflect Upon the Treaty, 1982 My particular role in the Treaty Committee was the 'Oral Program', for which I made three radio programs on the proposal. The first included members of the committee itself (Coombs, Rowley, Brandl). The second was on the NAC's proposals (including Munro and Anderson), and the third canvassed the ideas of a number of Indigenous spokespeople at the time (Perkins, Bonner, Langton, O'Shane, Willmot, Foley, Coe). None of the speakers in the third program liked the way the NAC was handling negotiations, some didn't like Coombs' committee, but all shared interestingly varied opinions about the principle of the treaty itself. In my talk I shall discuss the voices of this third program. |