Cherbourg, Australia CNN —
Built on the land of the Wakka-Wakka people, Cherbourg’s modern motto, “Many Tribes, One Community,” reflects the diverse origins of its 1,700 residents, descendants of people who were once forced to live there under segregationist laws.
According to the Queensland government, between 1905 and 1971, more than 2,600 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people were forcibly removed from their land to Cherbourg, then known as Barambah.
Some were marched barefoot through the Australian bush by colonial settlers under a law that called for the removal of indigenous people from their ancestral lands so that they could be housed and educated in a colonial manner.
Today residents live in tidy rows of single-story houses, their rent paid to a council determined to transform the former government reserve into a thriving community where people want to live – and it seems to be working.
“We have around 260 people on our waiting list,” said Chatur Zala, CEO of Cherbourg City Council. “There is a lot of demand for social housing because our rents are quite cheap.
“Rent in big cities is so expensive that people can’t afford it.”
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The lives of people in Cherbourg have changed, but in Australia there is still a gap between non-Indigenous and Indigenous people on a range of measures – from child mortality to employment, suicide and incarceration.
Indigenous people have proposed an idea that they say could help close the gap, and the entire country will vote on it on October 14th.
A yes vote would recognize Indigenous peoples in the constitution and create a body – a vote to Parliament – to advise the government on issues affecting them. A no would mean no change.
So how does Cherbourg, a community born out of the politics of segregation, work? Assimilation, think about what is being touted as historic progress for Indigenous reconciliation?
“My community is very, very confused,” Mayor Elvie Sandow said from her air-conditioned office in central Cherbourg. “They are confused with the voice and then with the way to get there [a] Contract.”
The mayor said residents would vote because if they didn’t they would be fined under Australia’s compulsory voting laws, then immediately corrected herself.
“Well, they probably won’t vote,” she said. “They’ll just go out and have their name checked off [electoral] roll so they can be spared a fine.”
Hilary Whiteman/CNN
Cherbourg Mayor Elvie Sandow and CEO Chatur Zala are working to create jobs and improve municipal infrastructure.
A record number of Australians – about 17.67 million out of a population of 25.69 million – have registered to vote in the country’s first referendum in almost 25 years, according to the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC).
Early voting has already begun in remote communities, and AEC workers are traveling long distances by four-wheel drive vehicles, helicopters, planes and ferries to get there.
Activists on both sides – yes and no – have also trodden the same paths, speaking to locals, organizing rallies and spending millions of dollars on radio, television and online advertising to win their votes.
“I think this is one of the most important events of my life,” said Erin Johnston, who was among thousands of people who attended a recent yes rally in Brisbane organized by the charity Australians for Indigenous Constitutional Recognition.
“We have a chance to right a great wrong,” Johnston said.
Hilary Whiteman/CNN
Erin Johnston (centre) with friends Michael Blair (left) and Andy Roache (right) at a Yes rally in Brisbane on Sunday September 17, 2023.
But two weeks before the vote, polls show the referendum is on track to fail, a potential blow to Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, who has made it a campaign promise.
The prime minister has stressed that the Voice was not his idea, but a “humble request” from representatives of hundreds of Aboriginal nations who held meetings across the country in 2017.
Together they agreed on a one-page statement entitled “Uluru Statement from the Heart,” which calls for “a First Nations voice enshrined in the Constitution.”
When we have power over our destiny, our children will thrive.
Uluru statement from the heart
“We seek constitutional reforms to empower our people and take a rightful place in our own country. When we have power over our destiny, our children will thrive. They will walk in two worlds and their culture will be a gift to their country,” it said.
Aunt Ruth Hegarty remembers her early days as a child in Cherbourg. There the children did not thrive, they did not walk in two worlds and their culture was seen not as a gift but as something that had to be eradicated.
94-year-old Aunt Ruth has written an award-winning book about growing up in the settlement. She was just a baby when her parents moved there from the Mitchell district of southwest Queensland in search of work during the Great Depression.
Upon arrival, the family was divided into different areas of the settlement. Then they realized they couldn’t leave.
Queensland Museum/Betty McKenzie Collection
A view of Cherbourg around 1938.
The Aboriginals Protection and Restriction of the Sale of Opium Act 1897 (Qld) allowed authorities to relocate indigenous peoples to state reserves and regulate almost every aspect of their lives.
Aunt Ruth was allowed to stay with her mother in the women’s section of an overcrowded dormitory until she was four and a half years old.
But after her first day of school, she was informed that she would no longer be living with her mother. “You’re a schoolgirl now,” she was told before being ushered into the girls’ section, where she shared beds, bathrooms, towels and meals with other students.
“We weren’t allowed to cry,” Aunt Ruth wrote. “Crying always resulted in punishment.”
Punishment meant being caned, having their heads shaved or being locked alone in a wooden cell at the back of the property, she wrote.
Queensland Museum/Betty McKenzie Collection
A group of children in the girls’ dormitory in Cherbourg around 1930.
Mothers were sent as domestic servants for settlers while men did manual labor, and when she was 14, Ruth was also sent away to earn money. At 22, she applied for a marriage license from the state, and when restrictions were eased in the late 1960s, she moved to Brisbane with her husband and six children to start a new life outside the settlement.
“We got away well. But we had to convince my husband,” she told CNN from her Brisbane home. “I told him there is no work for the children. Even if they graduated high school, they wouldn’t get a job in our city. White people worked in every office in Cherbourg, so there were no jobs for them. So I had to tell him we were leaving,” she said.
Sitting under a pergola surrounded by flowers in her garden, Ruth still has the energy of an activist who has spent much of her life trying to improve the lives of her people.
Wearing an orange yes badge, she says she hopes the referendum will bring about change.
Hilary Whiteman/CNN
Aunt Ruth Hegarty, 94, grew up in the girls’ hostel in Cherbourg after being separated from her mother when she started school.
“All I want is my constitutional recognition for myself and my children,” she said, leaning forward. “We need a change. We need change.”
To her right sits her daughter Moira Bligh, president of the voluntary Noonga Reconciliation Group, said: “We have overcome disadvantage, but unless we are all at our stage, we will not stop.”
“I won’t stop,” Aunt Ruth added, “because I think it’s the right thing for us.”
On a Wednesday evening across the city, an audience of No voters at an event hosted by the conservative political lobbying group Advance offers a clue as to why this referendum is so contentious.
Wearing No hats and T-shirts handed out at the door, they cheer loudly as leaders of the No camp call on them to reject the division.
“The Yes campaign focuses on the past. We are focused on the now and the future and on making Australia the envy of the world,” said Nyunggai Warren Mundine, a member of the Bundjalung, Gumbaynggirr and Yuin people.
We are focused on the now and the future and on making Australia the envy of the world.
Nyunggai Warren Mundine
Carpenter Blair Gilchrist, sitting in the back row, says Indigenous people wouldn’t need a voice if politicians did their job right and spent money where it was needed. He is not a fan of Albanese’s Labor government.
“Money needs to be better controlled. I think that’s probably the main thing. That the money is well spent,” he said.
Successive governments have spent billions of dollars to close the persistent gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians in national health and social care statistics, but many targets are not being met. And on some measures the gap is widening — including incarceration, suicide and child care rates.
The Voice wants to give the government non-binding advice on what could help end inequality – but critics say it’s not necessary.
“Child mortality has gone down, life expectancy has gone up, it may not be at the level we need, but it is going in that direction,” Northern Territory Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, a descendant of the Warlpiri people, told the audience .
Richard Milnes/Shutterstock
Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price at a Conservative political action conference in August 2023.
According to government data, between 2015 and 2019, the mortality rate for Indigenous children aged 0 to 4 was 2.1 times higher than the rate for non-Indigenous children. On average, non-Indigenous men live 8.6 years longer than Indigenous men – for women it is 7.8 years. Statistics show the gap is even greater in remote communities.
“The voice suggests that Indigenous Australians … are inherently disadvantaged for no reason other than our racial heritage,” Price said. “It is suggested that each of us needs special measures [to be] incorporated into the constitution. That’s another lie. I mean, look at me and Warren, we’re fine, aren’t we?” she said.
Both The yes and no camps want more accountability – evidence that the billions of dollars spent on Indigenous programs each year are used to help the most vulnerable. And both want a better future for the most disadvantaged indigenous peoples, although they disagree on how to get there.
It is believed that each of us needs special measures [to be] incorporated into the constitution. That’s another lie.
Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price
Many in the yes camp say the future must begin with the recognition that the First Nations, as the world’s oldest continuous civilization, inhabited the land for 60,000 years before British settlers arrived just over 200 years ago.
The official No camp believes that nothing divides Australians – from Aboriginal people to new migrants – and that changing the constitution will cause division. For the yes camp, indigenous peoples hold a special place in the country’s history and their existence must be recognized, along with a permanent body that cannot be dissolved for political reasons by future governments.
Other indigenous peoples are voting no because that’s not enough – they want treaties negotiated between the traditional owners of the land and those who occupy it.
Back in Cherbourg, visitors walk through the old food shed where people from hundreds of Aboriginal nations once lined up to receive their weekly supply of tea, sugar, rice, salt, sago, tapioca, split peas, porridge, flour and meat .
Today it is a museum where the elders tell stories about life back then.
Hilary Whiteman/CNN
Tourists visiting the Ration Shed Museum are shown the interior of the old boys’ dormitory. The girls’ dormitory burned down in the 1990s.
Zala said Cherbourg City Council has made gains in recent years since Mayor Elvie was elected in 2020. The number of positions on the city council has doubled to 130, most of which are filled by local employees, Zala said.
“The highest employment rate of any indigenous community,” he boasted.
They opened the first recycling center in an indigenous community, disposing of waste from surrounding areas; and the first digital service center with an indigenous workforce gaining experience and skills.
There are plans to expand the water treatment plant beyond the upgrades unveiled last year. Most importantly, the council is working to provide a new home for the hundreds of people who want to move there.
It’s a difficult task – Cherbourg still operates as a DOGIT (Deed of Grant in Trust) community, so it relies on government funding. There is very little private property – almost all houses are owned and maintained by the community.
For years the council has encouraged residents to buy the homes their families have lived in for decades, but there are few financial incentives – there is no market for houses, meaning there are no capital gains, and some would-be homeowners shy away from shouldering the costs of private maintenance after years of council support, Zala said.
As a lifelong resident, Mayor Elvie knows the issues well. Her mother lived in the Cherbourg dormitory until she was old enough to marry. When the future mayor was born in the 1970s, restrictions were gradually phased out.
She’s not afraid of change, but she doesn’t see how a Voice to Parliament in Canberra can help address the daily challenges she faces in providing jobs, housing and education in her community guarantee.
For this reason she will vote no.
“I don’t make my decision lightly,” she said. “I’ve had a number of conversations with different mayors and municipalities, and some mayors are in favor of the yes vote.” It’s very divided down the middle.
“I say no because I just feel like it’s a duplication. Ultimately, I am the voice of Cherbourg because I am the elected mayor of this municipality.”
I am the voice of Cherbourg because I am the elected mayor of this municipality.
Mayor Elvie Sandow
Zala is one of the newer Australians. According to the No camp, it would be a disservice if the country’s indigenous population were given special recognition in the constitution. Born in Gujarat, India, he moved to Australia in 2006 and has been working in Cherbourg since 2011 to bridge the gap.
“That is still my motivation every day when I come here. I don’t accept why we have to be different than any other community. I have always believed that we do not want to create a community that is so behind,” he said.
From The Voice he said he would vote yes.
“At least if you vote yes, you have hope. We don’t know the details [of] What’s going to happen after the Voice, but it’s best to get it through and see if something good could happen to the community,” he said. “And I think a lot of people will do the same.”