by Kristen Smith
The Courier Mail (Australia)
Queensland’s leading academic on the administration of indigenous affairs
has urged Aborigines to reject a push to distribute $8 million as settlement
of wages and earnings withheld by the state.
The Beattie Government is negotiating for settlement of the Welfare Fund
based on the $8 million figure, although government sources in the early
1990s said it should contain about $200 million. During the period from 1897
into the 1970s, up to 80 per cent of the wages and savings of Aborigines
were held in accounts administered by community “protectors” and later the
state.
In a speech to be delivered today at the University of Queensland, historian
and author Ros Kidd questions the Government’s fiduciary duty in
administering the fund which she said was “habitually raided” by government.
The State Government claims documentation of the flow of money is too
sketchy to determine what has been stripped.
Such a defense failed in the US when American Indians made a similar claim.
In the case of Cobell versus Norton, on the issue of the Native American
Trust Fund, a US federal appeals court ruled the Government had a legally
enforceable duty to properly manage and account for Indian trust assets.
A legal challenge appears imminent in Queensland with the state’s newest
Order of Australia recipient, Cec Fisher, pursuing action over withdrawals
from his account, discovered after he gained access to his file in 1994.
“In 1955 I came back from Korea after being in the war . . . and 40 years
later I see to my surprise that I brought a wife back,” he said. “I never
had a wife at the time. I was single, but these things appeared on my papers
from Cherbourg.”
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