INTERROGATING  NATURAL  JUSTICE:  TREATY,  NATIVE TITLE  AND  THE POLITICS / POETICS / PASSIVITY  OF  A  RECONCILED  NATION

Dr Sandy Toussaint

Senior Lecturer in Anthropology, School of Social and Cultural Studies, The University of Western Australia

toussain@cyllene.uwa.edu.au

Reconciliation, like natural justice, implies rather than assures serious attention to a socially and culturally reconciled nation and equality before the law.  Poetic concepts at one level, they are also captive to the politics of passivity and a legal culture which has emerged from a questionable colonial history.  A treaty, land claims and native title held and hold significant potential to put into practice realiseable and reconciled aspirations.  But such aspirations are constantly haunted by high rates of Indigenous premature death and custodial experience.  This paper considers such a profoundly disturbing contradiction and explores issues related to the active possibilities of reconciliation and of natural justice.

Sandy Toussaint has worked extensively as an applied anthropologist, including as senior researcher for the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody.  She lectures in legal and applied anthropology at The University of Western Australia.