Indigenous Voices in Australian Parliament
By 
This is something the U.S. should also do:
Indigenous Australians will launch a campaign Saturday to change the constitution and ensure that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders’ views are better represented in Parliament, part of a years-long effort to make sure they are consulted on major policy initiatives.
The effort to have the Voice to Parliament enshrined in the country’s founding document is a “once-in-a-generation opportunity,” Minister for Indigenous Australians Linda Burney said last month.
The Voice, as it is shortened Down Under, would give First Nations people a right to express their views on policy through representatives elected by their communities. Lawmakers would not be bound to follow the body’s advice, but they would be required to at least listen.
Thomas Mayo, a First Nations union official who wrote a book about the Voice proposal, said it would be a moral and practical step. “It’s been a long time coming,” he said. “There’s a belief in ourselves and our fellow Australians that this could be achieved.”
It would be a “right to be consulted on laws and policies that are made,” said Megan Davis, a constitutional law professor at the University of New South Wales, who is Indigenous and co-chaired the Uluru Dialogue.
In 2016-2017, a council appointed by Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull hosted meetings in 13 towns and cities across Australia to ask First Nations Australians what form constitutional recognition should take. About 270 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander leaders, chosen to represent their home communities, then traveled to Uluru, in the center of the continent, and produced the Uluru Statement from the Heart.
The statement called for the establishment of the Voice to Parliament; the establishment of a commission to oversee agreement-making between Indigenous people and the Australian government; and a truth-telling process about Australia’s history. Together, they are referred to as Voice, Treaty and Truth.