Fact check: Were Indigenous Australians classified under a flora and fauna act until the 1967 referendum?
The claim दावा
A regularly repeated claim in public debate is that Indigenous Australians were covered by a flora and fauna act, which did not classify them as human beings, and that this only changed when the constitution was amended following the 1967 referendum.
लोकांच्या चर्चेचा नियमितपणे पुन्हा पुन्हा दावा केला जात आहे की स्वदेशी ऑस्ट्रेलियन लोक वनस्पती आणि प्राणी अधिनियमांनी व्यापलेले होते, ज्यामुळे त्यांचे मानव म्हणून वर्गीकरण झाले नाही आणि 1967 च्या जनमत नंतर घटनेत सुधारणा करण्यात आली तेव्हाच हे बदलले.
For at least the past 10 years, academics, media commentators and Aboriginal people, including an Indigenous MP, have claimed this to be true.
कमीतकमी गेल्या 10 वर्षांपासून, शिक्षणशास्त्रज्ञ, माध्यम भाष्य करणारे आणि आदिवासी खासदारांसह आदिवासींनी हे सत्य असल्याचा दावा केला आहे.
Most recently, the Indigenous actor Shareena Clanton said on ABC TV's Q&A program: "My mother was born in 1965 and she was not considered a human being until the referendum came through from the flora and fauna act in 1967."
अलीकडे एबीसी टीव्हीच्या प्रश्नोत्तर कार्यक्रमात देशी अभिनेत्री शारिना क्लेंटन म्हणाली: "माझ्या आईचा जन्म 1965 मध्ये झाला होता आणि 1967 मध्ये वनस्पती आणि प्राणी अधिनियमातून जनमत संग्रह होईपर्यंत तिचा माणूस मानला जात नव्हता."
Warren Mundine, a businessman and former national president of the Australian Labor Party, who was also chairman of former prime minister Tony Abbott's Indigenous Advisory Council, used Twitter to suggest this claim should be fact-checked.
ऑस्ट्रेलियन लेबर पार्टीचे व्यापारी आणि माजी पंतप्रधान टोनी अ‍ॅबॉट यांच्या स्वदेशी सल्लागार मंडळाचे अध्यक्ष असलेले वॉरेन मुंडिने यांनी ट्विटरचा वापर करून या दाव्याची सत्यता तपासली जावी असे सुचवले.
So, is it true that Indigenous Australians were classified according to a flora and fauna act until the 1967 referendum? RMIT ABC Fact Check investigates.
तर मग हे खरे आहे की 1967 च्या सार्वमतपूर्तीपर्यंत स्वदेशी ऑस्ट्रेलियन लोक वनस्पती आणि वनौषधीनुसार वर्गीकृत होते? आरएमआयटी एबीसी फॅक्ट चेक तपास.
The verdict
निकाल
Ms Clanton's claim is a myth.
सुश्री क्लॅंटन यांचा दावा एक मिथक आहे.
Aboriginal people in Australia have never been covered by a flora and fauna act, either under federal or state law.
ऑस्ट्रेलियामधील आदिवासी लोक कधीही फेडरल किंवा राज्य कायद्यांतर्गत वनौषधी आणि जीव-जंतूंच्या कायद्याने झाकलेले नाहीत.
But despite several attempts by various people to set the record straight, the myth continues to circulate, perhaps because, as one academic told Fact Check, it "embodies elements of a deeper truth about discrimination".
परंतु विविध लोकांकडून विक्रम सरळ करण्यासाठी अनेक प्रयत्नांनंतरही ही मिथक प्रचलित आहे, कारण कदाचित एखाद्या शैक्षणिक संस्थेने फॅक्ट चेकला सांगितले आहे की, यात "भेदभावाबद्दलच्या खोल सत्याचे घटक आहेत".
Although the claim has been repeated more frequently during the past 10 years, there is evidence to suggest the myth originated in the early 1970s.
गेल्या 10 वर्षात या दाव्यांची वारंवार पुनरावृत्ती झाली असली तरी 1970 च्या दशकाच्या सुरूवातीस या दंतकथा अस्तित्त्वात आल्या आहेत असे सूचित करणारे पुरावे आहेत.
Both an expert consulted by Fact Check and a museum website in Western Australia suggest several factors have given rise to the notion that a flora and fauna act once existed.
फॅक्ट चेक आणि वेस्टर्न ऑस्ट्रेलियामधील संग्रहालय संकेतस्थळाने सल्लामसलत केलेल्या दोन्ही तज्ञांनी असे सुचवले आहे की वनस्पती आणि जीव-जंतुनाशक कृत्य एकदा अस्तित्वात होते या कल्पनेला कित्येक घटकांनी वाढ दिली आहे.
Such factors include the existence at one time or another of government departments and historical reports with titles that bring together the words "flora", "fauna" and "Aboriginal".
अशा घटकांमध्ये एकाच वेळी किंवा इतर सरकारी विभागांचे अस्तित्व आणि "वनस्पती", "जीवजंतू" आणि "आदिवासी" शब्द एकत्रित करणार्‍या शीर्षकांसह ऐतिहासिक अहवाल समाविष्ट आहेत.
Also, a widespread and energetic campaign for a yes vote in the 1967 referendum played a crucial role in setting the conditions for the myth to emerge.
तसेच, 1967 च्या जनमत सार्वत्रिक निवडणूकीत होकारण्याच्या मतदानासाठी व्यापक आणि दमदार मोहिमेने ही मिथक अस्तित्त्वात येण्यासाठी परिस्थिती निश्चित करण्यात महत्त्वपूर्ण भूमिका बजावली.
Experts told Fact Check that the referendum involved "dry" technical amendments to the constitution relating to Indigenous Australians.
तज्ज्ञांनी फॅक्ट चेकला सांगितले की जनमत संग्रहात स्वदेशी ऑस्ट्रेलियन्सशी संबंधित घटनेत "कोरडे" तांत्रिक दुरुस्त्यांचा समावेश होता.
As these were difficult to explain in a campaign-friendly way, campaigners for a yes vote instead pushed the idea of equal rights and justice for Aboriginal people.
हे मोहिमेस अनुकूल मार्गाने स्पष्ट करणे कठीण असल्याने, हो मतासाठी प्रचलित करणाऱ्यांनी त्याऐवजी आदिवासींसाठी समान हक्क आणि न्याय या कल्पनेला धक्का दिला.
The hugely successful referendum was thereby imbued with a symbolism that further enriched the conditions for the myth to take root; that before the constitution was amended, Indigenous Australians were classified according to a flora and fauna act — a completely incorrect conclusion.
प्रचंड यशस्वी जनमत संग्रह अशा प्रकारे एक प्रतीकात्मक चिंतन होते जे या कल्पनेला मान्यता देण्यासाठीच्या परिस्थितीस अधिक समृद्ध करते; राज्यघटनेत दुरुस्ती होण्यापूर्वी स्वदेशी ऑस्ट्रेलियन लोकांना वनस्पती आणि प्राणी अधिनियमानुसार वर्गीकृत केले गेले होते - एक पूर्णपणे चुकीचा निष्कर्ष.
Who else has made this claim?
In the 1960s, a civil rights organisation known as the Federal Council for the Advancement of Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders campaigned for Indigenous peoples' welfare and lobbied in favour of the 1967 referendum.
1960 च्या दशकात फेडरल कौन्सिल फॉर अ‍ॅडव्हान्समेंट ऑफ अ‍ॅबोरिजिन्स अँड टोरेस स्ट्रॅट आयलँडर्स या नावाने ओळखल्या जाणार्‍या नागरी हक्क संघटनेने स्वदेशी लोकांच्या कल्याणासाठी मोहीम राबविली आणि 1967 च्या सार्वमत बाजू मांडली.
Professor Marcia Langton, one of Australia's most respected Indigenous academics, told Fact Check that the so-called flora and fauna act was first mentioned by pioneer Aboriginal filmmaker Lester Bostock during a council meeting in Canberra in the 1970s.
"Lester Bostock (now deceased) gave a regular speech about how we were classified under the 'flora and fauna act'," Professor Langton wrote in an email.
"लेस्टर बोस्टॉक (आता मृत) यांनी 'फ्लोरा अँड फौना अ‍ॅक्ट'अंतर्गत आमचे वर्गीकरण कसे केले याबद्दल नियमित भाषण केले," प्रोफेसर लँग्टन यांनी एका ईमेलमध्ये लिहिले.
"I thought at the time, and so did many others, that he meant this in a metaphorical way. I had no idea that this would grow into the urban myth that it is today."
"मी त्यावेळी विचार केला होता आणि इतर बर्‍याच जणांनीही याचा अर्थ असा केला आहे की त्याचा हा अर्थ एक रूपक पद्धतीने आहे. आजच्या शहरी मिथकांमध्ये ही वाढ होईल याची मला कल्पना नव्हती."
However, she added: "We were not classified under the 'flora and fauna act' but we were treated as animals."
तथापि, ती पुढे म्हणाली: "आमचे 'फ्लोरा अँड फौना अ‍ॅक्ट' अंतर्गत वर्गीकरण झाले नाही तर आमच्यावर प्राणी म्हणून वर्तन केले गेले."
Since the 1970s, the claim has been repeated many times.
1970 च्या दशकापासून हा दावा अनेक वेळा पुनरावृत्ती झाला आहे.
On becoming the first Indigenous member of the NSW Parliament, Linda Burney said in her maiden speech on May 6, 2003: "For the first 10 years of my life, like all Indigenous people at that time, I was not a citizen of this country. We existed under the flora and fauna act of New South Wales."
एनएसडब्ल्यू संसदेच्या पहिल्या स्वदेशी सदस्या झाल्याबद्दल लिंडा बर्नी यांनी ०६ मे, २००३रोजी आपल्या पहिल्या भाषणात म्हटले: “माझ्या आयुष्यातील पहिल्या दहा वर्षापर्यंत, सर्व देशी लोकांप्रमाणे मीही या देशाचा नागरिक नव्हतो. "आम्ही न्यू साउथ वेल्सच्या फ्लोरा आणि जंतुनिर्मिती कायद्यांतर्गत अस्तित्त्वात आहोत."
Media outlets, bloggers, entertainers, and others have helped perpetuate the myth.
मिडिया आउटलेट्स, ब्लॉगर, करमणूक करणारे आणि इतरांनी ही मान्यता कायम ठेवण्यास मदत केली आहे.
In 2013, comedian Charlie Pickering wrote in an opinion article published by Mamamia: "I know that until the 1967 referendum altered our constitution to include all Australians as enfranchised citizens, our first peoples were regulated by the flora and fauna act."
2013 मध्ये, विनोदकार चार्ली पिकरिंग यांनी मामामियाने प्रकाशित केलेल्या एका मत लेखात लिहिले आहे: "मला माहित आहे की 1967 च्या जनमत चा आधार घेत सर्व ऑस्ट्रेलियन नागरिकांना अनधिकृत नागरिक म्हणून समाविष्ट करण्यासाठी आमच्या घटनेत बदल घडवून आणले गेले नाहीत तोपर्यंत आमच्या पहिल्या लोकांवर वनस्पती आणि प्राणी-प्राणी अधिनियम होते."
Academics and Aboriginal public figures, such as Sol Bellear, have also made the claim.
But, in 2017, Aboriginal artist Vernon Ah Kee told the ABC that it was only in jest that a 'flora and fauna act' was mentioned by Aboriginal people.
"Blackfellas jokingly say that we weren't considered people so we must be part of the flora and fauna act, but that's not even true. The fact is that we didn't exist at all."
Dispelling the myth
A number of attempts have been made to explain that Australia's Aboriginal people were never classified according to a flora and fauna act, including by SBS Radio and also Professor Helen Irving, an expert on Australia's constitution.
"The myth that the constitution included a reference to Aboriginal people under the 'flora and fauna' section is entirely erroneous," she wrote in a 2015 post for the University of Sydney's Constitutional Critique blog.
"The words 'flora and fauna' do not appear anywhere in the [c]onstitution, nor did they prior to 1967. There was no "flora and fauna act" either. No legislation referred to or classified the Aboriginal people in such terms," she wrote.
Websites such as Club Troppo and Wafflesatnoon have also sought to dispel the myth.
The most comprehensive dismantling of the myth was undertaken by University of Canberra tutor Samuel Byrnand, who devoted an honours project to the topic in 2015.
Mr Byrnand told Fact Check he was compelled to set the record straight because allowing Aboriginal people to believe they were once classified under a flora and fauna act risked perpetuating "transgenerational trauma".
"There are enough horror stories in Aboriginal Australia; real, actual stories that need to be addressed. We don't need to be making it up," he said.
In search of a flora and fauna act
In searches of Commonwealth and state legal databases, Fact Check found no record of a flora and fauna act that administered the affairs of Indigenous Australians at either a state or federal level.
Experts consulted by Fact Check were unanimous in confirming this. Adding their voices to those of Professor Langton, Professor Irving and Mr Byrnand, were James Cook University Adjunct Professor of History Russell McGregor and University of NSW Law Professor Megan Davis.
They all said Australia had never had a flora and fauna act that covered Aboriginal people.
So, how could the confusion have arisen?
Fact Check found that a number of acts existing in Queensland, South Australia, Tasmania, Victoria and WA between 1919 and 1988 had included the word "fauna". However, none of these involved Aboriginal people.
The Western Australian Museum website states that a flora and fauna act that supposedly classed Aboriginal people alongside native Australian flora and fauna never existed, but "the New South Wales National Parks and Wildlife Act 1974 may have encouraged this belief" as it gave the NSW Government control over Aboriginal heritage and landscape.
The website also states that, in 1909, separate authorities responsible for Aboriginal affairs and for fisheries in WA were amalgamated to form the Department of Aborigines and Fisheries (DAF).
In his honours paper, Canberra University's Mr Byrnand states: "It is understandable that the formation of the DAF might have been misconstrued to mean that Aboriginal people were officially determined to be of equal status to fish or fauna, in WA."
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My Byrnand's research also refers to a 1929 report of a Royal Commission on the Constitution of the Commonwealth, which includes a chapter heading "Aborigines, Fauna and Flora, Fisheries and Forestry".
This too, he writes, may have been misconstrued as Aboriginal people coming under the same classification as plants and animals.
But each topic is mentioned separately, with no suggestion of any connection between them.
Professor Davis, the Pro Vice-Chancellor Indigenous at the University of NSW, told Fact Check by email that the Expert Panel on Constitutional Recognition of Indigenous Australians in 2011 had forensically searched for a flora and fauna act, but found nothing.
"No such legislation exists," she wrote.
How is the 1967 referendum connected to the myth of a flora and fauna act?
The 1967 referendum paved the way for amendments to the Australian constitution that allowed greater Commonwealth involvement in Aboriginal affairs, but it also held symbolic significance.
A 2007 research brief, compiled by the Department of Parliamentary Services, described the referendum as a watershed, quoting yes campaigner Faith Bandler as saying it had "chang[ed] forever the social and political relationship between Aborigines and non-Aborigines".
It is worth considering the legal and symbolic implications of the referendum separately.
Legal changes achieved by the referendum
The referendum of May 27, 1967 approved two amendments to the constitution relating to Indigenous Australians.
Section 51 (xxvi) was altered and section 127 was deleted. More than 90 per cent of the nation and a majority in all states voted yes.
Before the referendum, the Commonwealth could not make special laws for Aboriginal people (except in the territories) because they were governed by state laws.
Removing a reference to Aboriginal people in section 51 (xxvi) meant the Commonwealth gained the power to make special laws for Aboriginal people.
Constitutional law expert Professor Anne Twomey, in a 2017 opinion article in The Australian, cited native title laws as an example of this.
Meanwhile, section 127 of the constitution had excluded Aboriginal people from being counted for constitutional purposes; they were not included in the populations of states and territories for the purposes of allocating federal seats in Parliament.
Nor were they counted for the purposes of calculating certain Commonwealth grants. The removal of section 127 allowed Aboriginal people to be counted for these purposes.
Professor Twomey noted that this did not prevent Aboriginal people from being counted for other purposes — they were counted in the first Commonwealth census in 1911 (except in remote areas).
Also, by 1967, Indigenous Australians were already able to vote in federal and state elections.
Symbolic changes achieved by the constitution
The 1967 referendum was the culmination of a long struggle for Aboriginal rights and equality.
Professor Irving told Fact Check the constitutional changes of 1967 were "very technical and difficult to explain", so campaigners focussed instead on Aboriginal rights, fairness and justice.
According to Professor McGregor, the yes campaigners transformed "what could have been a dry legalistic tinkering with the Constitution into a plebiscite on Australian nationhood."
He told Fact Check the referendum is popularly remembered as the moment when Aboriginal people won equal rights, even though that was not its legal outcome.
"There is this incredible exaggeration of the importance of the 1967 referendum," he said.
"I've argued in various places it was important in a symbolic way but it wasn't important in a legalistic sense."
Due to the absence of a no campaign, Aboriginal people and yes campaigners had a monopoly on the narrative spun around the referendum and their triumph had been largely a symbolic victory, Professor McGregor said.
However, the idea that Aboriginal people were covered by a flora and fauna act before the referendum was not true.
"Amongst some Aboriginal people it's a pervasive myth and it's one that is hard to shake because, although empirically it's false, it embodies elements of a deeper truth about discrimination," he said.
"They were discriminated against in other ways, not by being part of the flora and fauna act."
Lead researcher: Sushi Das, Senior Researcher, RMIT ABC Fact Check
Editor's note (20/03/2018): A previous version of this fact check contained information about Indigenous voting rights and a table showing the various rights of Indigenous people in some states by 1967. The information and table were sourced from the National Museum of Australia. After publication, it was discovered that the source material was erroneous, and has therefore been removed. It does not change our verdict.
Sources
- Shareena Clanton, speaking on the ABC's Q&A program. February 19, 2018
- Federal Register of Legislation
- Australian Legal Information Institute
- Australian Government Office of Parliamentary Counsel
- Reconfiguring History: The 'Flora and Fauna Act' and other myths of the Australian legislation, by Samuel Byrnand, Researchgate, May 2015
- Aborigines classified as animals under flora and fauna act? Wafflesatnoon, June 1, 2016
- Myths persist about the 1967 referendum, by Ron Sutton, sbs,com.au, March 11, 2014
- Were Indigenous (Aboriginal) Australians regulated by the flora & fauna act? By David Walker, Club Troppo, June 3, 2013
- Myths about 1967 referendum should be discarded, Anne Twomey, The Australian, May 26, 2017
- Indigenous recognition and constitutional myths by Helen Irving, Constitutional Critique blog, University of Sydney, June 9, 2015
- 'Right wrongs, write yes': what was the 1967 referendum all about? Russell McGregor, The Conversation, May 26, 2017
- The 1967 referendum - history and myths, Department of Parliamentary Services, Parliament of Australia, May 2, 2007
- Museum of Western Australia
- National Archives of Australia - 1967 referendum fact sheet
- Parliamentary Education Office - referendums and plebiscites
- Linda Burney, maiden speech in Parliament of NSW, May 6, 2003
- Vernon Ah Kee, ABC interview
- Constitution of Australia
- National Museum of Australia
- Australian Electoral Commission, Electoral milestones for Indigenous Australians
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