The president of the Human Rights and Equal Opportunities Commission (HREOC) has told a conference in Darwin that Australia is struggling to come to terms with its past.

John Von Doussa QC told the National Mediation Conference that people are still trying to understand reconciliation between black and white Australians.

But Mr Von Doussa says the use of mediation in recent years to resolve issues involving Indigenous people is working.

"Unfortunately the colonisers of this Australia placed no value at all in the laws and customs and cultures of Indigenous people who were here when they arrived," he said.

"In fact seems to have done everything they could to denigrate and deny the very existence of the good features of the systems that were in place here."