Two veteran Aboriginal activists want to revive a proposal for an Aboriginal state, saying it would provide Indigenous people with real power over their communities and their land.
Michael Mansell and Geoff Clark say an Aboriginal seventh state could be created, without having to amend Australia's Constitution.
The call comes after the federal government announced half a billion dollars worth of cuts on Indigenous spending, including stripping funding from the Indigenous representative body, the National Congress of Australia's First Peoples.
Both men say the cuts highlight the need for Indigenous Australians to look beyond the short-term and consider options that could bring Aboriginal people closer to self-determination.
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Geoff Clark and Michael Mansell want Indigenous Australians to work towards something they say would give them some real power.
Their idea is something that's been tried before and relies on chapter six of Australia's Constitution.
That chapter allows for the establishment of new states.
It was something considered by the Northern Territory in 1998 and although it was supported by the Howard government, voters in the Northern Territory didn't support it in a referendum.
Michael Mansell has this vision for how an Aboriginal seventh state could work.
"If you took Aboriginal owned land and native title areas around Australia, you got the states to agree that those territories were part of the seventh state, Aboriginal people all around the country could either choose to vote for the Aboriginal assembly or vote in their own states then the powers of the seventh Aboriginal state of Australia is the same as all other states that is it can pass laws saying customary laws in these certain areas are the law of the land, it can decide what rights traditional owners have and one of the things it can do is secure the land against ever being alienated into the future."
Michael Mansell says one of the benefits of this model is that the constitution would protect any laws the Aboriginal seventh state makes.
"If it did those sorts of things, the Australian constitution protects those laws that the Aboriginal assembly would pass. So, in a sense, yes it doesn't operate Australia wide, it operates in particular areas where Aboriginal lands exist or expanded to other areas that the states agree to but the laws that Aboriginal people made, the decisions and policies that Aboriginal people made would be protected against interference by any state of federal government."
Fellow activist Geoff Clark, who once headed the now defunct Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission, says an Aboriginal state would empower Indigenous people.
"This would be land-based, land-linked and Aboriginal people's affinity with the land is well known and I think this process would encourage laws and principles which would be governed by Aboriginal values over those lands. The deficiency in Congress is they don't have programs where the ATSIC model had programs, they don't manage land and they don't have representation in the parliament."
Geoff Clark says not having a service delivery role is a key deficiency of the National Congress of Australia's First Peoples.
But Congress co-chair Kirstie Parker believes that criticism is misplaced.
"What the Congress does and what a lot of other national Aboriginal peak organisations which are bearing the brunt of budgetary measures, for example Aboriginal legal services through their national body NATSILS, is to work towards systemic change to try to reform the system so that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are there front and centre determining the solutions to all the challenges that we're all aware of so this is about Aboriginal people coming forward from a whole range of perspectives and clearly we have community controlled organisations at a number of levels but this is about us coming together collectively having a say on what happens in our communities."
Kirstie Parker says Congress is determined to survive, despite having the funding cuts.
She says it has broad support which is growing all the time.
"We have more than eight thousand members around the country as well as 175 plus organisations at a variety of levels but including our national peaks in the areas of health, legal services, child protection, native title and more so those peak bodies say it's important for us to be able to come together collectively and that's a very good indication of the support for Congress in the broader community, the broader Indigenous community and it's growing all the time."
But Michael Mansell and Geoff Clark say Indigenous people deserve far more than what they have now.
Geoff Clark says their idea might sound ambitious, but they're really not asking for anything more than what's available to non-Indigenous Australians in terms of political representation.
"All we're asking and all we're saying, we want to have the same rights like you have and same control that you have in your state system so we can set up a state system that would give us the same powers to be able to elect our representatives into the parliament through those processes, it's a non-threatening model, it needs work, it needs thinking, it needs, you know, lots of issues, nothing is going to be easy but we think it's a tangible way in which to approach this issue."
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