27th March 2000
Recent findings of a survey by the Reconciliation Council show that Aboriginal people worry white Australians. Apparently their pursuit of land rights, the welfare bill that they send us and their need for an apology from the nation’s leaders troubles us. Clearly mainstream Australia secretly wishes that the Aboriginal problem would just go away. There is no more accurate assessment of this mood than that of the Reconciliation Council’s Boni Robertson that “Australia is a nation in denial”.
It even extends to the highest levels of Government with Minister for Aboriginal Affairs, Senator John Herron denying that there even was such a thing as a “Stolen Generation”.
It’s time for a reality check. White settlers occupied Aboriginal lands, devastated their food supply, massacred them at will, destroyed their way of life and brought disease which they had no defence against. We punished them for resisting us and justified our actions by telling ourselves they were an inferior race so it didn’t matter.
Then to make up for these excesses we began to take them from their traditional lands so we could farm and mine without interference or conscience. We told ourselves it was for “their own good” to take them from their traditional life of “savagery” and turn them into loyal British Christian subjects. When they didn’t respond to our teachings we blamed them.
We’re still blaming them. We refuse to accept that the problems of the present are inextricably linked to the past. We know all this in our heart of hearts but we cannot bring ourselves to face it. Why? Is it that the truth is just too painful? Whatever happened to that famous Aussie courage?
Instead some have seized on a report into indigenous violence on remote communities and used it to vilify the only Aboriginal organisation that stands a chance of making a difference to Aboriginal people’s lives. ATSIC is less than ten years old yet its leaders are being blamed for not making enough progress in the areas of Indigenous health, education, domestic violence and unemployment. The seeds of Aboriginal destruction were not sewn in the last decade, they were scattered by white settlement and their bitter harvest is still being reaped by Aboriginal people today.
In comparison where was White Australia’s energy and outrage when the report into the Stolen Generation was released? There was none.
Yet look at the typical reaction to the report by ATSIC’s Women’s Task Force on Domestic Violence. Though cries for immediate action on the findings are warranted, no such immediacy was apparent when the report into the findings of the Stolen Generation was first published. Perhaps this is why Herron feels he’s on safe ground with his comments.
Is it simply that it is easier to call for action against perceived (seemingly familiar) Aboriginal failings than it is to call for action to rectify the modern day consequences of past practices and policies of our own predecessors? What does that say about 21st century Australia?
It is impossible for any fair minded citizen to read the report into the Stolen Generation without coming to the conclusion that white Australia once hoped to rid itself of its Aboriginal “problem” by passive institutionalised genocide.
Sadly “Bringing Them Home” – the report into the “Stolen Generation” – remains largely unread.
All the evidence, from individual submissions from members of the Stolen Generation, to official Government documents, clearly show that the original motivation and the intent of the policy of separating part-Aboriginal children from their mothers, was to leave the island continent a pure white jewel in a foreign region.
The belief was that “full bloods” would eventually die out, “half castes” would be gradually integrated and the Aboriginal race bred out. Thereby solving the “problem” altogether.
Aboriginal people are still with us but far too many bear the intergenerational scars passed down over the years. Especially in communities created by white authorities. Places like Palm Island, Woorabinda and Doomadgee. Places where Aboriginal people have no real familial or communal connections to the land. One study submitted at the inquiry into the Stolen Generation found that petrol sniffing was rare in communities which had not experienced missionary or government intrusion into family life.
Perhaps surprisingly these communities had been the ones engaged in the pastoral industry years ago. Pastoralists not only didn’t intrude into indigenous families but they valued them living on their traditional lands. The reason was self-interest- a convenient workforce – nevertheless they left the family and communities largely intact and consequently stronger and more self-reliant.
Other studies discussed at the enquiry concluded that self-destructive behaviour among young indigenous men is a consequence of the undermining of family roles and in particular, of male role models.
Professor Ernest Hunter looked beyond the contemporary indigenous family to explain the absence of effective male role models. He said – “I believe that violence to significant others and self-harm are related and represent [the consequences of the protracted and damaging intrusion into family life that accompanied and followed colonisation]. I contend that the destabilisation continues as a result of the poor social circumstances and disadvantage of contemporary Aboriginal societies.”
The absence of an effective male role model is especially critical. Where effective males existed they were usually gaoled or killed for resisting white settlement and expansionism. Too many of those that survived were scarred by their experiences at the hands of the newcomers and their authority fatally undermined by their failure to protect their families and tribes from the invading forces.
Still Senator Herron, Minister for Aboriginal Affairs, basks in the warm inner glow of his own personal belief that it is up to the “individual”. Extrapolating that view on a national scale, it is as if we believe each new Aboriginal baby should be born with the instinct to “pull themselves up by the bootlaces” no matter what circumstances they find themselves growing up in.
Yet we know children learn from imitation. If your father and mother, uncles and aunties, cousins and contemporaries, are beaten and desperate people, your chances of learning to be any different are limited.
That the official government view as espoused by Senator Herron mirrors the Reconciliation Council’s survey appears to show both the Howard Government and mainstream Australia to be without any sense of responsibility. But who’s leading who? What value is there in being a nation that contents itself with the notion that any wrongs done to Aboriginal people were done so long ago as to make restitution “not our problem”.
Undoubtedly many still prefer to believe Aboriginal people bring all their problems on themselves by “choice”.
It is not possible to properly study the history of white settlement of Australia without honestly concluding that it has been an absolute disaster for the majority of the original inhabitants of this nation. It is however possible to lie to ourselves and shirk our responsibilities.
Instead of willful and culpable ignorance we must move forward as an informed and an aware society. We can no longer tolerate shock jocks, “cash for comments” talk show hosts and populist current affairs shows with their tainted infotainment schedule, hijacking the national agenda by expressing our worst thoughts and pandering to our least worthy prejudices.
Denial cannot relieve guilt it can only suppress it. We cannot continue to refuse to believe the indisputable. Somehow or other we have to find the collective will and courage to ask ourselves the hard questions and seek the painful truth if we hope to be able to greet the future with a shared sense of honour, honesty and goodwill.