The Uluru statement, four years on This year marks the beginning of the second decade of constitutional recognition. Who could’ve known when Julia Gillard created the expert panel, at the urging of the Greens and independents Rob Oakeshott and Tony Windsor, that 10 years, seven processes and nine reports later the nation would still be waiting for the Commonwealth to act? Constitutional recognition is a common form of legal recognition in liberal democracies with Indigenous populations. It is recognition born not of race but of culture. It is a nation-building exercise that seeks to include the First Peoples within the framework of the state to ensure that, despite their vulnerability and unique issues, they have recognition by the state.