STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
This next story takes us to Australia, to one of the Australian states - Victoria. That state has negotiated the country's first treaty with its Indigenous peoples. Kristina Kukolja reports.
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KRISTINA KUKOLJA: Celebration as the upper house of the Victorian Parliament passed the historic bill last Thursday. Rueben Berg is the co-chair of the First Peoples' Assembly, which negotiated the treaty with the state government. He says it will give Aboriginal people more say on laws and policy.
RUEBEN BERG: In the past, there was a process where the government would make lots of decisions for Aboriginal people and occasionally involve us in that decision-making process. This resets that so that Aboriginal people are always involved in decisions that are going to affect them.
KUKOLJA: The treaty creates a permanent Aboriginal body to advise the government with elected members who can make representations and question ministers. It comes two years after an attempt to introduce a similar body in the national Parliament overwhelmingly failed in a referendum, which the federal government says won't be repeated. Indigenous people make up around 4% of the Australian population. The Victorian treaty names violence, destruction and dispossession as legacies of European colonization for what are today Australia's most disadvantaged people. Premier Jacinta Allan told Parliament the treaty acknowledges the harms caused.
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JACINTA ALLAN: It reckons with the wrongs of the past and sets a new course guided by truth to a better future.
KUKOLJA: One that's expected to act on the nearly 150 recommendations of a yearslong special inquiry into the impacts of colonialism on Aboriginal Australians. Evidence from the truth-telling process will be used in history education in schools. The treaty also calls for a formal apology to First Nations in the state Parliament and more use of traditional names, including for parks and waterways. Rueben Berg says past treaty negotiations with Indigenous communities in North America were front of mind throughout.
BERG: We've been very mindful of other treaties that have already happened and to draw from those experiences, particularly from British Columbia and the Native American groups, and to be able to learn from that about what's worked and what hasn't worked.
KUKOLJA: The Victorian treaty will be formally signed in the coming weeks.
For NPR News, I'm Kristina Kukolja in Melbourne.
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