Makarrata is another word for Treaty or agreement-making. It is the culmination of our agenda. It captures our aspirations for a fair and honest relationship with government and a better future for our children based on justice and self-determination.

The Uluru Statement from the Heart was born from a series of regional dialogues held across the country, culminating in a National Constitutional Convention at Uluru in 2017. The purpose of these 12 Dialogues and 1 regional meeting was to consult and educate, resulting in the most proportionally significant consultation process of First Nations peoples Australia has ever seen

A constitutional convention bringing together over 250 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander leaders met last month at the foot of Uluru in Central Australia on the lands of the Aṉangu people.

The majority resolved, in the ‘Uluru Statement from the Heart’, to call for the establishment of a ‘First Nations Voice’ in the Australian Constitution and a ‘Makarrata Commission’ to supervise a process of ‘agreement-making’ and ‘truth-telling’ between governments and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

The Voice will be an advisory body that gives First Nations Australians a say on matters that directly affect them.

Anthony Albanese’s first act as Prime Minister was to replace two of the three Australian flags in the Parliaments House (Media) Blue Room, and replace them with an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander ensign. Significantly, the Aboriginal Flag was in the centre, with the Australian flag off to one side. Mr Albanese then opened with the following commitment:

A large majority of voters still back Indigenous constitutional recognition and giving First Nations Australians a say in developing policies that affect them, even after the resounding defeat of the voice to parliament, according to a new survey.

Indigenous peoples have historically been positioned through a racialized lens of exclusion and bias, as Moreton-Robinson describes above. In Australia, distorted narratives of Aboriginal peoples continue across a range of platforms and speak to Indigenous peoples’ wider marginalisation and exclusion (Carlson, 2017; Carlson and Frazer, 2015; McCallum et al., 2012). Bias – whether demonstrated through inclusion, exclusion, or how content is presented – reflects power imbalances that often silence or distort presentations of some groups, while prioritising and legitimising the voices of others (Entman, 2007; Thomas et al., 2019). Entman (2007) explains three core types of media bias, all of which can be identified in relation to media discourses surrounding Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.