This week two events — seemingly unrelated — have opened a sliding door into our history: just how different things could have been.

Australia named its squad for the upcoming rugby union series against New Zealand, and the Referendum Council handed the Federal Parliament its report recommending a change to our constitution to empower Indigenous people.

How are they linked? Keep reading. By the end of this article you may know why the Kiwis are so much better than us when it comes to race and rugby.

Imagine if New Zealand had become part of Australia.

No All Blacks for a start! Australia would have at least three more rugby world cups.

Well, it could have happened.

'Civilisation delayed'

William Russell was New Zealand's delegate in early discussions on Federation. ( Supplied )

Let's go back to that crossroad of history.

It is 1890 and the leaders of the colonies have come together in Melbourne to thrash out the details of this new nation, Australia.

The future Father of Federation, Henry Parkes, moves a motion that the "Australasian colonies should federate".

But someone objects.

Captain William Russell is New Zealand's delegate and he moves an amendment.

Captain Russell wants to substitute "Australasian" with "Australian".

In a year New Zealand will withdraw entirely from the discussions: it would never join Australia.

But why?

The answer reveals a blight on our nation and goes to the very heart of the legitimacy of the Australian settlement.

Captain Russell didn't trust the Australians.

He feared joining his nation's fate with the Australian Commonwealth could reignite the Maori wars.

The whole of New Zealand politics, Captain Russell said, "hinged on the native question".

"This issue, more than any other, had destroyed governments," he told the other delegates.

Keeping the peace was essential, and becoming part of Australia would imperil it all.

"The difficulty which precluded settlement for years in the North Island might appear again," he warned.

While Captain Russell hoped an outbreak of new hostilities would be "improbable", he warned that "the advance of civilisation (sic) would be enormously delayed".

Captain Russell had no faith in Australia to manage "native affairs".

He said New Zealand would not hand over its future to "an elective body, mostly Australians, that knows nothing and cares nothing about native administration".

Consider those words: "knows nothing and cares nothing".

'Now we are one people'

The signing of the Treaty of Waitangi ( Supplied )

By 1890 New Zealand was already well ahead of Australia.

Half a century earlier it had signed a treaty with Maori people.

The Treaty of Waitangi secured sovereignty for the British enshrining the rights of Maori.

At the official signing ceremony, New Zealand's first governor William Hobson famously spoke these words:

"He iwi tahi tatou." (Now we are one people.)

The treaty has been the source of friction and challenge, there have been questions about exactly what Maori leaders had agreed to, this is the nature of all treaties: a beginning not an end.

But deficiencies aside, New Zealand achieved what Australia has still failed to do.

Nearly 180 years after the Treaty of Waitangi, there is no treaty with Indigenous peoples here.

Australia has never truly been able to utter the words of William Hobson — "now we are one".

Fast forward to 2017 and Australia is again being challenged to recognise the rights of the first peoples.

This week the Referendum Council presented its report to the Federal Parliament asking for a vote on giving Indigenous people a voice in the Australian constitution — a representative body that can advise on policy.

It is a call that comes from the heart; the plea for a voice was enshrined in the Uluru Statement — a document signed by Indigenous leaders from across the country.

I can hear the words of Captain Russell: "Knows nothing and cares nothing".

What does Australia know of Indigenous peoples? What does it care?

We have had apologies and talk of reconciliation and closing the gap.

We have Native Title and land rights, but what of the place of Indigenous people in Australia? What of the inherent rights of Indigenous people? What of self-determination or sovereignty?

Australia's history is a poor one.

'A plain and sacred right'

Sorry, this video has expired The archaeologists uncovered thousands of artefacts. (Photo: Supplied)

In 1837 a British House of Commons Select Committee reported into the treatment of Aboriginal peoples in British settlements.

The members said: "It might be presumed that the native inhabitants of any land have an incontrovertible right to their own soil : a plain and sacred right."

New Zealand recognised that sovereignty. Australia instead was deemed "terra-nullius" — an empty land — the rights of the first peoples were extinguished.

This week it is worth considering that term empty land, as new archaeological evidence has pushed back human occupation of this continent to at least 65,000 years.

Artefacts in a rock shelter in the Northern Territory show people here were using stone tools thousands of years before any other humans on Earth.

The ancestors of these people had made the first open water journey in the history of humanity.

But when Captain Cook claimed this land for the Crown, tens of thousands of years of occupation, law, culture and economy counted for nothing.

The House of Commons Committee was damning in its report:

"In the formation of these settlements it does not appear that the territorial rights of the natives were considered, and very little care has since been taken to protect them from the violence or the contamination of the dregs of our countrymen."

The Committee quoted the evidence of Bishop William Broughton, who bemoaned the treatment of Aboriginal people.

"They do not so much retire as decay; wherever Europeans meet with them they appear to wear out, and gradually to decay: they diminish in numbers; they appear actually to vanish from the face of the Earth."

By 1901, a decade after Captain Russell warned colonial leaders about their treatment of "natives", his concerns would have been vindicated: the Constitution of Australia wrote Aboriginal people out of the new nation.

Section 127 specified that the first people of this land would not be counted among the Australian population.

Two steps forward, one step back

Gough Whitlam pours sand into Vincent Lingiari's hand at the end of the Wave Hill walk-off dispute in 1975. ( Supplied: Mervyn Bishop )

There has been much progress since then.

The 1967 referendum finally allowed for Indigenous people to be counted.

The legal fiction of "terra nullius" has been struck down in the 1992 Mabo High Court ruling.

But a final settlement has proved elusive.

Indigenous people have remained resolute: they want to have power over their own lives and reclaim as much of their sovereignty as possible.

But generations of petitions, statements and demands have come to nothing.

Promises of treaties have never materialised.

30 years ago rock band Yothu Yindi wrote about "all those talking politicians".

As they said in their hit song Treaty, "Words are easy, words are cheap".

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This year, the Uluru Statement reminded Australia of "the torment of our powerlessness".

Now once again there is a moment; an opportunity to set things right.

Perhaps the arc of history is bending towards justice.

Nearly two centuries after New Zealand signed its treaty, Australian states — South Australia and Victoria — are taking their own first steps towards treaties.

But Indigenous people are frustrated and impatient.

Some reject constitutional reform or "recognition", preferring nothing less than acknowledgment of sovereignty.

Others believe recognition and treaty can co-exist, separate paths toward the same goal.

A new political opportunity

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders exchange gifts at the opening ceremony of the Uluru summit. ( ABC News: Stephanie Zillman )

Regardless of the path, little is possible without political leadership.

Referendum Council chair Mark Liebler challenged the Federal Parliament this week to make good on the aspirations of Indigenous people or "put it off for the next 20 years".

For Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull there is a tantalising window to leave his mark on history.

The Uluru statement calls for a "makaratta" — a Yolngu word for coming together after a struggle.

The naysayers claim that any political change would create uncertainty. Yes, it would; big moments of history always do.

But strong democracies overcome uncertainty.

The critics warn of a divided Australia; but can we really say that on this issue, the rights of the first peoples, have we ever been united?

Would treaties or constitutional change be a panacea for all that ails Indigenous communities? Of course not.

Reversing two centuries of history requires more than the stroke of a pen or tick at the ballot box.

The Treaty of Waitangi has not alleviated the impact of colonisation in New Zealand either, but it is woven deep into the fabric of the nation; it tells the story of that country.

Rugby and race

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The Wallabies next month will face the All Blacks for the Bledisloe Cup.

The Kiwis will perform their traditional Haka, Maori, Islander and Pakeha (white) will all stand proudly, defiantly together presenting a ceremonial challenge to the Aussies.

Maori culture, heritage, language and sovereignty are inextricably linked to the very idea of New Zealand.

It's why so many Indigenous children — including me — grew up barracking for the All Blacks.

This year Australia, maybe, will have just one Indigenous player (Kurtley Beale). The team will stand for the national anthem, Advance Australia Fair.

"Australians all let us rejoice", but of course we don't rejoice — not all.

Listen to the words of Yothu Yindi:

"Now two rivers run their course

Separated for so long

I'm dreaming of a brighter day

When the waters will be one"

"Now we are one people."

New Zealand, whatever its faults, gets closer to saying that than we ever have.

Rugby and race — the Kiwis have done both better.

When the All Blacks line up against the Wallabies New Zealanders will surely be glad that Captain William Russell said no to becoming part of Australia.