Are there any examples of a program as described ever working? Many similar programs have failed miserably.
The Spanish missionaries (mostly in California) tried it with Indian people, minus the cultural respect, and it failed miserably.
The only thing that seems to actually benefitting Native Americans is the gambling casinos on indian land. And they appear to have no problem sharing the wealth with area non-indians. As their living standard goes up, so does (it seems) their interest in their culture.
Opponents of the scheme have cited failed Canadian examples, although I am about to leave the house and don’t have a cite handy. Apparently, the Aboriginal ownership of Uluru has helped them through good ol’ capitalism.
I think this is a fantastic move, yes its racist, but has others have suggested I think its ‘good’ racism. Most of Australia, let alone the rest of the world just don’t understand how dire the problems are.
I’ve lived in Alice Springs for several years now which has the largest population of Aborigines in any city (I don’t know much about the communities, smaller towns, etc). Let me tell you it was a shock first moving here. All over town at any time of the day, there will be very drunk aborigines stumbling around. This was such a problem, a few years ago laws were passed banning the sale of alcohol before 2pm, this didn’t change much although now you can see the lines of aborigines queueing up at 2pm, when the shop first opens they go through a little process having a chat with each one to make sure they are not already drunk, and about 90% of them get kicked out since they can barely even stand up. About a year after this, they banned the sale of any more than 2 litres of wine because the booze of choice was large casks, they also bumped up the prices on the 2 litre casks. Yeah this one really helped - now they don’t sell cask wine anymore - instead they’re buying bottles of beer. The main consequence of this for me is the town is covered in broken glass. Everywhere. All the street cleaners seem to do a stand-up job, but its not as if they have an army to do the work. Not to mention the increased amount of stabbings with broken bottles. All these changes have also led to much more petrol sniffing, so they banned the sale of regular petrol. They’ve introduced something called ‘Opal’ fuel, which somehow can’t be sniffed. I don’t understand how it can’t be worse for your car, but that seems to be working at least. Another thing that irritates me is recently mouthwash is kept behind the counter - apparently that can be cheaper than beer. Oh and a while ago methylated spirits was all turned purple (some additives that make you vomit if you drink it I believe) because that used to be pretty popular to drink. Also tackling all these problems are the police, there must be 10x more police in Alice Springs than any other similar sized town, literally just driving around you’ll see a police car every few minutes. I guess I just mean to say - we’ve tried, really hard (many communities in the Northern Territory are already ‘dry’ - no alcohol at all), but nothing seems to have changed, something drastic needs to be done.
Of course, the drinking is just a large cause of the real problems. I don’t get to see any of it first hand really, but through my work I get to chat to a lot of the lawyers who deal with cases of horrific murders and rapes going on all the time in communities - that often don’t even make it into the newspaper.
One of them spoke out last year (pretty graphic, but text only): ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)
TONY JONES: Let’s go to another case. In 2003 there was perhaps even a worse case. It involved a much younger baby - seven-months-old. Can you tell us about that?
NANETTE ROGERS: That was in a remote community. The child or the baby was asleep with other adults in a room in the house. The offender came along and removed the sleeping baby and was in the process of taking it outside the house. One of the adult women woke up and took the baby back and put it back into bed with her and they went back to sleep. Unbeknownst to the sleeping adults, he came back again and removed the child. A man in the house was - saw someone on the verandah at some point, he went out, and he found the offender with this baby and the baby was naked from the waist down. He didn’t know anything untoward had happened. He persuaded the man to relinquish the baby because it was cold and all the rest of it. So the offender relinquished the baby after some talking and the man then put it back inside and they went to sleep. In the morning, the mother of the baby - she’d been drinking, she was still drunk - she came back to the house. She changed the clothes of the baby. There was blood on the clothing. The mother then went - left the house.
TONY JONES: She didn’t notice? Is the evidence, in fact, that she was too drunk to realise what had happened to her own baby?
NANETTE ROGERS: That’s one way of looking at it. The…when the mother left the house, one of the other adult women went and got the child, changed the baby’s nappy, noticed the blood and so on and that baby, the seven-month-old baby and the two-year-old both required surgery for external and internal injuries under general anaesthetic.
This kind of thing just can’t go on. Excuse me while I go watch the story about this on 60 minutes now.
Agree with it or not, I can see the argument against alcohol, but porn ? I see nothing benevolent in that; mere prudish control freakishness.
Of course, stress certainly makes things worse; there’s no need to invokes that to explain high alcoholism.
However, another claim I read years ago ( I’m no geneticist, so I can hardly confirm it ) is that they have a problem inherited from their ancient Asian forebears, although last I’ve heard no one’s tried to test for it; too politically & religiously sensitive. Supposedly Asians commonly lack a gene that lets other groups eliminate a particular toxin caused by drinking alcohol; this means that they suffer from more severe hangovers. As a side effect, they produce much fewer moderate alcoholics; drinking moderately too much is just too painful. So, you end up with people who either only drink a little too much at most, or drink so much that they seldom sober up and feel the hangover; since the drunks that exist are more spectacular, this leads to the illusion of a greater vulnerability to alcohol. If this is true, and it applies to Native Americans as well, you have the legend of the Indians who can’t handle alcohol.
Or the whole idea was disproven ten years ago and the disproof published in some science journal that I’ve never seen; take your pick.
I’d not seen/heard the interview on Lateline until now, thanks Suda. It’s nauseating to read, but sometimes the things we most need to accept are the hardest to swallow so to speak.
I agree that government intervention is a good thing, but I STILL maintain that merely banning booze and porn, making sure all kids have complete health checks and changing the leasing structure of aboriginal lands doesn’t go far enough.
The key point to note is that no one knows what to do or refrain from doing in relation to aborigines. While there is a lot of racism in Australia, there is also a huge body of middle class people who do wield considerable power in terms of - at the least - controlling the debate, who have a large amount of sympathy for the plight of aborigines. However, every action gets criticized as doing too much, and every inaction as doing too little. I thought TLD’s comment above was very perceptive: we are not so much concerned with whether or not the proposed policy is racist as whether it will be effective, because very many of us would gladly be labelled whatever-the-hell if we could sleep easier at night knowing a policy would result in aboriginal Australians, on average, enjoying the same good life the rest of us Australians do. In reality however, no one knows what the hell to do or not do.
Exactly.
Canadian Natives want Native self-government as part of the solution; has that been considered or tried for Australia’s Aboriginal people?
The whole issue is pretty complicated, and comparisons between NZ and Australia are fairly useless, as very different histories are involved. Im a bit surprised NZ gets such short shrift, I think they’ve made some pretty serious efforts in regards to living down their colonial past, and wouldnt compare the two directly.
Oz wise, a simplistic way of putting it would be that there were moves towards some level of self govt, rightly or wrongly, and the current govt killed a fair part of that off, under the argument that it wasnt working, was corrupt, would divide peoples etc - with some justification in my view.
As a result now that the issues are rising up again, they onus is on them to show that they’re going to do something that will work, given they undid the last effort on the basis that it wasnt. And we’re back to the more interventionist approach after a period of avoiding it, due to the ‘stolen generation’ and the like, presumably in the hope that it just wasnt done right last time. Various attempts have been made at challenging accepted history, including disputing how many people were ‘stolen’ as opposed to ‘saved’, emphasising the level of squalor, that things were done accoridng to procedure etc.
Basically Oz seems to ping pong between self determination and interventionism but never quite getting up the gumption to do either and stick with it, leaving things in a fairly horrible limbo as a result. I dont see any real change happening for some decades yet.
Otara
It is racist - there is no way white communities would get away with abusing children the way the reports claim is happening to aboriginal children. Aboriginal children need to be as safe as most white children are. Please see the actions of the government (one which I usually do not praise) in terms of the report which triggered it. They couldn’t just get that report and then do nothing. The children MUST be protected.
Please also be aware that the action is supported by many aboriginal leaders. It is not a simple case, but the actions are - I believe - because we cannot let aboriginal children be so horribly disadvantaged for another day. Whatever nice solutions you want to talk about for the long term in terms of jobs and all those good things - the children must be protected now. All children - black and white.
Aboriginal children deserve a chance! Until anyone has a better solution - something which will help these children right now - then please accept that this seems to be the best of a whole lot of lousy options. No-one is happy about it, but at least Australia is trying to protect its indigenous children.
I couldn’t agree more about protecting the children, Lynne.
So make a blanket law protecting all children, each and every one. The white children in danger of, or being abused deserve the same care as the indigenous kids. There are, I promise you, plenty of them (abused white children).
Ban booze and porn for all, if that’s what it takes. But that, by itself, won’t work. There is great doubt as to whether it will help at all.
Yeah, it’s a tough situation. Pretty much everywhere, I’m afraid.
Peace,
mangeorge
I am watching the new at this very moment showing Aboriginal elders welcoming the police and armed forces with open arms. One of the Aborignal leaders is addressing the community wearing one of the army guy’s jacket. The woman elder is asking why it took so long for someone to come and help them.
You are focussing on the banning of porn and alcohol. I don’t reven know if that is happening. It is not what the discussion is about here. It’s about law enforcement.
To pretend there is the same level of abuse in white communities, or in the huge Asian communities we have, or any others, is to ignore the reality - and that is what is hurting the Aboriginal kids so much. They need the help now, so by trying to expand that to the entire population (100 times the Aboriginal population) is to water down what can be done for our indigenous people by a factor of 100. Let’s put them first for once. We are really struggling to get the police resources needed for these communities - and if you could see the way they are welcoming the army and police and asking for permanent presence, then you would be as biased as I am.
Lynne
That sounds very promising. However, I am at this very moment reading about families fleeing in panic that there will be a repeat of the “stolen generation”, not to mention a letter signed by more than 90 individuals, indigenous groups and community organisations presented to the government criticising the gevernment’s proposed methods.
Well, yes I am. That’s primarily what the OP asks about. But we’ve taken an important turn.
And if the population is 100/1, I’d be suprised if the problem is 100/1. Are there more aboriginal children in danger than white children in all the rest of Australia combined, or are they simply more concentrated geographically?
The interviews with the Mutitjulu aboriginal leaders on the ABC news tonight said that there was no truth in the families fleeing story. Who is putting out these stories and why? Who is trying to keep things as they are and has a vested interest in doing so? I don’t know and claim no expertise in this issue. I am quite confused about it all.
I am not convinced it is the right solution, only that I can’t stand the thought of nothing being done. I am a tad emotional about this because I have just had all my ideas changed by a single girl who is studying in Melbourne on a scholarship from one of the NT remote communities. Her quiet request a few days ago about being able to stay in Melbourne so she won’t be abused has really upset me. I saw her role as being a leader to help her people - but then again, why should I place that obligation on her just because she got the education everyone else in her school takes for granted?
So we can play all the statistical games you like about white kids and other kids needing protection. I have worked with abused children in schools. We have manadtory reporting laws binding all teachers to report any signs of abuse of any child in a school. They may not be working fantastically, but there are options. The aboriginal kids don’t seem to have the same options because they aren’t attending school and the problem is so big per capita. Much bigger than in any other social sub-set, to the best of my knowledge. I am more than happy to see any alternatives - but I am not interested in complaints about this approach unless they include an alternative which isn’t just the platitudes we’ve heard for decades about discussion and involvement and getting rid of poverty. The past approaches haven’t worked. We’ll have another generation of aboriginal children destroyed before such long term talk fests can take effect.
What is your plan, Lynne? I’ve kinda lost track in this thread. What would like to see the govt try right now?
I’d like to see then make a real effort to enforce “mandatory report” laws (which you mention) already on the books. Hold those eager native leaders to task for their own communities. See if they have an agenda of their own. Set up a system (if there isn’t one already) for the people in those areas to report abuses anonymously, and make the authorities act on those tips.
I can not believe that all, or even most, of the people who live there approve of what’s happening.
And don’t dismiss others concerns and ideas as “platitudes”.
From m-w;
To do so is simply disingenuous.
mangeorge - I agree with every word you have said, including my inaccurate use of the word platitude. I guess I am just tired and frustrated with all the good theories I believed in for so long having failed so dismally. I am also concerned how often the solutions are ‘dull or insipid’ - things like - ‘develop mutual respect’ - these statements are just too vague. Solutions need practical implementations. How do you practically develop mutual respect? Add that to the statement, and it loses the vagueness.
I am very conscious of the fact that I am writing from the south of the continent about problems that ar a long way away and that I don’t really know enough about. Until the issue was first fully aired about a month ago, I had no idea the problem was so bad.
The mandatory reporting laws are state based, so I don’t know what the status is in the Northern Territory nor the rate of response. I know that in the cases I have been involved in way down here in Victoria, the response from authorities was within hours every time. The child did not go home unprotected. I just want that for every child - including those who don’t get it here. This state is far from perfectly protecting its children.
In the long term, self-respect, mutual respect and jobs and all those things are the only solution. The debate today seems to be about time limits on the government control which is currently set at five years. I’d like to see a firm timetable starting from the strict intervention at the moment - which is mostly about medical checks and getting kids into schools and safe - through to much more long term whole community solutions in the five year time scale. With real, measurable outcomes. For example, unemployment rates to decrease by, say, 5% each 6 months, and practical startegies to make sure that happens.
But today I have kids in my own juristiction to worry about, so I shall return to them!
Huh? only marginally better - from what I know of the situation, the Maori were and are amongst the best treated of any inidgenous peoples. This is not to say that their treatment was perfect, or that errors weren’t made. However at the time it was light years beyond what anyone else was doing.
I wish you, and all the kids, well Lynne. People do appreciate your efforts and the good they do.