Former Senator Pat Dodson, known to many as the Father of Reconciliation, shared his wisdom and insights in the 2025 Reconciliation Memoirs.

The fourth memoir of a series of five organised by Reconciliation WA, on Thursday Mr Dodson, in collaboration with journalist and author Victoria Laurie, spoke at Subiaco Theatre Centre before a sold-out audience.

The Yawuru Elder from Broome started his advocacy journey in 1975, when he was ordained as Australia's first Aboriginal Catholic priest. Having dedicated his life to supporting the recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, he was elected to the Senate representing Western Australia in 2016 and served in Parliament for eight years before retiring from politics in 2024.

Mr Dodson spoke with National Indigenous Times during National Reconciliation Week in the lead up to the Memoir event, as well as a breakfast address earlier in the week.

"I've come down to Perth at the invitation of the Western Australian Aboriginal Reconciliation Committee to be part of a breakfast address with a young fellow from the Kimberley Tremane (Baxter-Edwards, a young Indigenous leader) and to be part of a discussion later in the week on material that's been put together by Victoria Laurie, with some of my recollections of the work I've done over the years, and encounters I've had with reconciliation… and also I'm going out to Banksia Hill prison to see the young people who were who were there," he said.

"It's an opportunity to say some things about where we're at, I think, as a nation, and where we've come from, and that the world didn't start or end with the awful outcome of the (Voice) referendum, we've had some marvellous opportunities at reconciliation.

"It started with the promise of a treaty in Barunga some years ago by the then Prime Minister Bob Hawke. It failed to get the support of the parties in the parliament. And so the process, the formal process of reconciliation, was set up with a hope that within 10 years, as we went towards this century, we may have a greater understanding amongst Australians, and we may have developed the basis for some documents of reconciliation that would deal with the legacy issues of settlement and colonisation and its impact upon unique sovereign peoples, the first peoples of this country, and would deal with also the social, the systemic social and economic poverty problems that First People suffer as a consequence of being disempowered by policies and practices over the years.

"So it's a chance to for me, an opportunity to say to the people of Australia, look, this is a time of optimism. We've just had a Labor Party re-elected with a huge majority. We as the people of Australia should not let the party off the hook in terms of the commitment to the Uluru Statement from the Heart, because when the Aboriginal leaders went to Uluru and crafted that marvellous statement from the heart, they pointed out three key destinations for us; the voice, the treaty and truth.

"We've gone down one of those processes through the constitutional path, and that's failed. But there are other tracks. There are other ways to achieve a national voice. And we've got to get the government to now work on setting up the Makarrata commission so that the establishment of the mechanisms for truth telling and treaty making can, in fact, be embarked upon. So there's much for us to take heart from, and there's clarity as to where we ought to be going as we build the new bridges."

Mr Dodson said the progress of reconciliation efforts in Australia over the past year have been nevertheless been "very disappointing and dispiriting and hurtful for many Aboriginal leaders and Aboriginal people".

"Particularly so with the high levels of incarceration of young people… the lack of meeting the targets of the Closing the Gap matters.

"It's hard to find enthusiasm for many people when they're so surrounded by systemic and persistent poverty and disempowerment so and then on top of that, the crushing return in the poll on the proposition to set up a voice in the Constitution.

"But, that referendum is not the summation of reference of reconciliation. Reconciliation is a big thing. It's about this nation's integrity, about its pride, and about it facing the world from a modern perspective, not from the old White Australia policy perspective. It's about facing Australia and the rest of the world with pride in whom we are, with our history, with the legacy, but having resolved that. So, when we travel to the Pacific, or we travel anywhere… people there will know that Australia, as a modern democracy, has dealt in a very respectful way with the First Peoples of this country, and resolve those issues with those First Peoples in a manner that gives pride to us as Australians, all of Australia, as well as enables the First Peoples to enjoy the uniqueness of whom they are as First Peoples within this democracy."

Mr Dodson said he is "not sure" Australians understand the history and ongoing legacy of colonisation, given "the responses to what's called the unfinished business that is the consequences of colonisation and settlement".

"We've had clarity given to us by the High Court in Mabo and Wik, Mabo clearly said that the legal fiction of Terra Nullius was created in order to disempower the Aboriginal people. Now that's going to be understood. Wik said that native title rights are concurrent with the rights of a pastoral lease holder. We've had the Bringing Them Home report, which goes to the Stolen Generations, which highlighted the almost genocidal policies that were extracted or enacted upon Aboriginal people, taking them away from their families. And we've had opportunities. We have a COAG agreement that's aimed at closing the gaps. We have targets that we're not meeting, but the peaks tell us they need to have greater resources and greater autonomy.

"So, let's deal with that question we've got. We've made a commitment as a nation to the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. We've signed up to that now, after we delayed for some time, but we've signed up to that, and let's go about implementing the management… so that we can give respect to the Indigenous peoples, the First Peoples of this country.

"And that's something we can do. We've also got the reports, like the Calma-Langton report, which talked about regional voices. So we've got a lot of information that can help build the next bridge. It's been there waiting to be utilised, and despite the setbacks that often come our way, we've got to continue to rebuild and refresh our enthusiasm and our commitment to achieving those objectives. Because the Aboriginal people, when they went to Uluru, set out clearly where we need to be going, - voice, treaty and truth - now, until they tell us differently, then we're not at liberty to just dismiss them or disregard them or pretend that that was just a little exercise that didn't matter, and that's what we've got to hold governments to account about, to honour the confidence, the trust that the Aboriginal peoples put in to this nation and to governments in the future to start down the pathway to build the bridge to make this country better than what it is."

The longtime justice and human rights advocate said despite the challenges, his message to all people is that "this is a time for optimism".

"This is a time for us to hope. It's very hard to do that when we're surrounded by awful information or information about awful things, the high incarceration rates of our young people, for instance. But this is a time where the Australian public showed that they wanted change. They want healing, they want unity. They want to be able to have national pride, and they've elected a government that's got the capacity to do that.

"We should take pride in the fact that we as the electors can ensure that our government, our national government and our state governments pick up those wishes and not let them be kicked to the curb, as so many things where First Peoples have indicated ways to go forward have happened. This is not a time for that.

"This is a time when I have confidence in the young people of this country, Black and white, who want to see this nation in the best light possible, and are capable of making sure we achieve it. And we the older people, have got an ability to help support them and encourage them and to make sure that the flame of promise, the flame of the campfire that Mr. Yunupingu entrusted to the now Prime Minister of this country to carry for the future of our peoples is not dropped to the ground and allowed to go out."