The Age article below provides a valuable point of view from a board member of Reconcilaition Australia. Additional web based Treaty info can be found below the article. Mark Leibler is senior partner of Arnold Bloch Leibler and a board member of Reconciliation Australia, the successor to the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation. We hear it said that a treaty between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians is out of the question because treaties are made between sovereign nations, not among the peoples of a single nation.
Experience elsewhere suggests otherwise.
Consider the ways other nations have managed their British colonial legacy. From early in its life the United States made treaties with its first peoples. In Canada, its First Nations peoples were not treated as sovereign powers but treaties were made from 1693. In 1982 the Canadian Constitution recognised and affirmed existing aboriginal and treaty rights. The Treaty of Waitangi of 1840 has produced, through various cases, some treaty principles for New Zealand.