Individual and collective rights: advocacy approaches and differences

¶ … right" embodies the notion that one has the sovereignty to act without obtaining the permission of others (Lea, 2004). This concept carries an implicit unstated postscript with it in that one may exercise one's rights as long as one does not violate the individual rights of others. Individual rights pertain to the rights that are deemed universal to all people regardless of any group affiliations they may have. For example freedom of speech is considered a universal individual right in many societies. Governments are formed to protect the individual rights of all, but at the same time restrict some rights to ensure equality.

Collective rights refer to the rights that groups have, or to the rights held only by those individuals within a specified group (Lea, 2004). For instance, a certain group of indigenous people may lay claim to certain rights such as the right to live on native lands or to practice a specific religious ceremony, which may occur at the expense of those not belonging to a specific group.

Lea (2004) noted that in the West the tradition up until recently was to favor the individual rights over the collective rights of groups to allow for political and economic parity for all. However, there has been a recent shift to recognizing the importance of cultural and that the community is an important function for its members and this should be revered at the expense of some of the individual rights of those not belonging to the particular group. Thus, governments instituted empowerment programs for certain disenfranchised groups (disenfranchised by the focus on individual rights that attempted to assimilate diversity) such as those for the Aboriginal people in Australia (Tsey & Every, 2000). This resulted in heated debates over what rights are being exploited, individual or collective.

2. Basically I believe that Jack Paten and Charles Perkins were advocating for similar rights, despite the time differences and different styles of writing each used to project their concerns. Both were advocating for the incorporation of individual rights for Aboriginal people. For example Patten states:

…We don't want to be given charity. We don't want you to study us as scientific curiosities. What we DO want is this. We want to be regarded as normal, average, human beings, the same as yourselves. We ask you not to treat us as outcasts, but to give us education and equal opportunity, which is our birth-right

Perkins states:

...The Aboriginal people in Australia today - full-blood and part-blood - do not want the sympathy of white people with an attitude such as Smith's. We have had enough of this in the past. What we want is good education, respect, pride in our ancestry, more job opportunities and understanding. All our lives Aborigines have lived in a secondary position to the white Australian.