In a statement released for World Peace Day on Sunday, the former Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town said it should be followed by a "national healing process for all Australians".

Aboriginal elders Djiniyini Gondarra, senior Dhurili clan leader of the Yolngu peoples of north-east Arnhem Land, and Rosalie Kunoth-Monks, a former Anglican nun based in Utopia in Central Australia, wrote to the archbishop this month to express their concerns about the slow movement towards indigenous self-determination.

"I pray for the rights of the Aboriginal peoples of Australia to determine their own destiny," the archbishop said. "It is a severe indictment on Australia that many of its indigenous peoples still feel that their culture and dignity are being eroded and that they continue to be treated as second-class citizens.

"Community councils have been closed down and management of many aspects of the peoples' lives has been transferred to non-indigenous institutions. The exclusion of local Aboriginal perspectives from decision-making is directly eroding customs, laws, languages and land-use aspirations.

"The imposition of legislation generally known as the Northern Territory intervention in 2007 virtually stripped them of their voice."

"The archbishop has been one of my heroes and it is an answer to my prayer that the archbishop has responded and taken it seriously," Ms Kunoth-Monks said.

"Forty-two years after becoming a signatory to the UN's International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, Australian government policy has still not seriously looked at human rights whereas the first people are concerned."

Mrs Kunoth-Monks said some form of truth commission should be considered. "I certainly am calling for a national journey for that truth and justice, bringing in the history of all the horrors and the assaults that are continuing under the government's policies," she said.

"The wounds are still open and raw."