Indigenous Australians and Violence – Some Answers

Australian indigenous leader Bess Nungarrayi Price has said, “We need to support those who tell the truth.” She has said this in respect to policy and programs relating to Aboriginal Australians. Dr Stephanie Jarrett, author of Liberating Aboriginal Australians from Violence, has long studied the ancient culture of Australia’s indigenous tribes. Her findings reveal a paternalism and violence which need to be faced as indigenous culture is modified with integration. Dr Gary Johns, former Labor MP and author of Aboriginal Self-Determination – The Whiteman’s Dream also supports indigenous policies that recognise any reform must accept an admission that behavioural problems must be confronted head-on. Stephanie Jarrett and Gary Johns addressed The Sydney Institute on Tuesday 19 March 2013.

                                        INDIGENOUS AUSTRALIANS AND VIOLENCE – SOME ANSWERS[1] 

STEPHANIE  JARRETT      

 There is great public concern about the extent of injurious violence in remote Aboriginal communities. However, largely for ideological reasons, there has been a heightened public disagreement for nearly a decade about the causes of Aboriginal violence. Important government reports including those headed by Aboriginal women, namely Queensland’s Robertson Report of 1999[2], and Western Australia’s Gordon Inquiry of 2002[3], alerted us to the extent and severity of violence against Aboriginal women.

These reports argued that the main causal factors for the higher rate of violence relate to colonial dispossession which resulted in grief from loss and disruption, dysfunctional family and community life, and alcohol abuse. Several books – written by Joan Kimm[4], Louis Nowra[5], and Peter Sutton[6] – soon emerged which presented anew, evidence that interpersonal violence, including against women, was also severe and at high levels in pre-contact Australia. Despite the high quality of their evidence, denial of pre-contact interpersonal violence continues among commentators.

These disagreements are declining, with concurrence emerging on some key matters regarding the high level and severity of Indigenous violence. First, there is more acceptance, or perhaps more willingness to publicly agree, that in pre-contact Aboriginal Australia, interpersonal violence including against women was widespread and severe. Stephen Webb’s palaeopathology study of evidence covering thousands of years from across mainland Australia, of the high rate of cranial and arm fractures caused by intentional attack, along with early, including first contact reports, render this undeniable. Webb found that in pre-contact times, cranial injury from attack was consistently higher among women than among men, indeed nearly four times higher among women than men in the tropical north coast.[7] Second, there is some agreement that pre-contact violence is a factor in present day Aboriginal violence, particularly regarding traditional matters such as the punishment of spearing, and the imperative for payback.

However, persisting differences remain, with significant policy implications. It is still widely considered, and has been for decades, that white impact factors are uppermost as causal for today’s violence. These include loss of land and culture, removal of children, alcohol and other substance abuse, and welfare dependency. Hence, addressing these factors has been considered the path to violence reduction: restoring culture and land, making amends for child removal, reducing alcohol abuse and welfare dependency, all within the context of self-determination, and for remote communities, this includes on their discreet ancestral lands.

White impact factors can and do exacerbate violence. Welfare dependency lowers self-esteem, and unlike having a job, it extends no restraint on negative behaviour, rendering it sadly compatible with interpersonal violence. Alcohol can be an aggressant because it lowers restraint on behaviour. However, most criminologists agree that alcohol increases violence among those for whom violence is already regarded as a legitimate response. Hence, high alcohol consumption is inadequate as an explanation. Moreover, there are no major differences between remote and non-remote, and declining differences in Indigenous and non-Indigenous, alcohol consumption patterns.

 Indigenous alcohol consumption levels by location 2004-05 (%)[8]

                              high risk       low risk         never

major cities                8.0               36.5             7.0

remote                      8.2               31.4             10.6

 “Alcohol consumption by short-term and long-term risk status, people aged 14 years and over, Australia”(%)[9]

                                                          Short-term risk         Long-term risk

                                     Abstainer/    Low      Risky or        Low      Risky or

2007                              ex-drinker     risk      high risk       risk     high risk

Indigenous                          23.4          49.2         27.4             64.2       12.5

Non-Indigenous                  16.8          63.1          20.1             3.0         10.2

2004

Indigenous                         21.3           40.0           38.7           56.0        22.7

Non-Indigenous                  16.1           63.3           20.5            74.1       9.7

2001

Indigenous                         20.6           30.7            48.7            59.5      19.9

Non-Indigenous                  17.3           48.4            34.3            73.0      9.7

Despite these positive trends in Indigenous alcohol consumption patterns – indeed now close to mainstream levels and patterns – objective measures for violence show little improvement. For instance, Australia’s hospitalisation for family violence remains much higher than mainstream levels, particularly in remote areas, as these figures show:

 Hospitalisation rate per 1000 for family violence related assault by region, 2008-9[10]

                             Indigenous          Other

Major cities               2.1                     0.1

Regional                   3.2                     0.2

Remote                    10.4                    0.3

Hospitalisation rate per 1000 for family violence, female victims[11]

                            Indigenous          Other

2004-5                    6.6                      0.2

2005-6                    6.6                      0.2

2006-7                    7.0                      0.2

2007-8                    6.5                      0.2

2008-9                    6.5                      0.2

The difference in gender victimisation between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians is also noteworthy, as in these Northern Territory figures:

Northern Territory victimisation to assault, numbers, 2008 and 2009[12]

                             Indigenous             Non-Indigenous

2008

Male                          730                              1228

Female                      2380                               567

2009

Male                          974                              1210

Female                      3107                               592

These markedly different gender patterns between Indigenous and non-Indigenous assault victims indicate that the higher rate of violence among Indigenous Australians cannot be explained just by welfare or alcohol or other post-colonial factors. Rather, they are indicative of a different culture, one with a greater legitimisation of violence against women. Until such underlying cultural legitimisers, such as oppressive gender relations, are addressed, gains in reducing Indigenous violence will remain limited. Furthermore, loss of land and removal of children, both traumatic experiences, do not explain the high violence levels. As I have written:

 Remote Northern Territory, which records one of the lowest levels of removal from natural family in NATSISS, is the region with the highest objective measures for Indigenous violence including homicide.[13]

 And,

 No matter how unfair they, their family, or their community have been or continue to be treated by mainstream Australia, it is – in seeming irony – the mainstream context where Aboriginal violence is more effectively suppressed and less tolerated by Aboriginal people themselves. It is in traditional contexts, on lands of dreams and ideals hard-won after years of political battles with white conquerors, where violence is a legitimised tool to uphold law and male dominance.[14]

Recent policies and principles which encourage cultural difference and separatism from the mainstream have facilitated the continuity of traditional cultural norms and laws that break universal human rights. The ready embracing of misleading statistics which have dulled clarity about how dangerous remote Australia can be for Indigenous women,[15] and rhetoric about an idyllic traditional past have served to delay better policy-making here, with self-determination a difficult principle to criticise without being seen as “courageous” or reactionary.

What is needed? To develop effective strategies against Indigenous violence, the nation and its policymakers need:

• • Greater professionalism in the collection of statistics regarding Aboriginal violence, and greater professionalism in their interpretation. This need is evident in the discrepancy between NATSISS violence data which failed to reflect the higher victimisation to violence among Indigenous women in remote locations which other, more objective measures such as police and hospital data have identified. Moreover, important reports and studies have uncritically utilised this NATSISS data, resulting in further misleading reportage and analyses.[16]

• • Greater awareness about the extent and the varying kinds of traditional oppressive and violent practices within remote Australia, that are anathema to universal human rights principles. A dilemma facing Indigenous young people in remote Australia is the choice between compliance to tradition, or non-compliance and face violence as punishment. Traditional practices such as forced promised marriage, strict “correct skin” marriage rules, and injurious male initiation practices are becoming too restrictive, too onerous for young Indigenous people in traditional communities. To effectively uphold these young people’s rights, we need to be more fully aware that these practices, while declining, are not rare and continue to cause suffering, intergenerational conflict, and violence in remote Australia, and we need to provide the full protection of the state and its laws to these young people.[17]

• • A consistent, higher prioritisation – including by our judicial system – of women’s rights, young people’s rights, children’s rights, over a “right” to practise Indigenous culture. Section 91 of Northern Territory National Emergency Response Act 2007 bans consideration of customary law and practice in sentence mitigation.[18] Nevertheless, how effective this can be is uncertain, given that the process of sentencing within our western judicial system includes consideration of an offender’s background. Among some of our judiciary and commentators, there remains discomfort with the idea of a ban on consideration of customary law and practice in sentence consideration.[19]

• • Acknowledgment that the level of cultural change needed to significantly reduce Indigenous violence is just too hard, too unlikely, in most separate community settings. In his research on residential segregation of minority groups, Eric Uslaner found that such segregation reduced trust of outsiders, rendering it harder for positive interaction with people of other backgrounds.[20] While such settings enhance in-group trust and norms, they reduce between-group trust and the likelihood that mainstream norms, thus “necessitating” interventions to address violent and oppressive customs and practices. The paradox is,

Aboriginal Australians when given the opportunity have, particularly since the 1950s, displayed great capacity for cultural adaptation including educational achievement, and many thousands of Aboriginal Australians live successful, violence-free well-adapted lives.[21]

Above all, the nation needs to embark on a compassionate program of breaking down barriers, so that interaction rather than separation is emphasised. Ending the permit system, more visitors, perhaps as volunteers, to remote areas, more “welcoming” programs for remote people. The Family Re-settlement Program of the 1970s is an exemplar of success here.[22] Sister programs might work well too: sister parishes, schools, towns. These are programs of integration, not assimilation, hence the emphasis is on its voluntary nature, to break down barriers and to increase between-group trust. With such greater interaction and trust, the adoption of more liberal-democratic norms regarding interpersonal use of violence and individual rights will be more readily adopted.

Appendix

Extracts from Ian Mitchell’s Quality Of Life Or Querulous Betrayal? The Bennelong Society Conference 2006: Leaving Remote Communities, on the Family Re-settlement Program. Ian Mitchell’s article is now on Quadrant Online as “A program so good it had to be stopped”, Feb 18, 2013. These extracts portray some of the program’s achievements.

Education: A telling measure was the number of absentee days for children involved in the program. Four children attending Bourke School for the year 1972, migrated during the Christmas holidays, then attended Newcastle schools in 1973. At Bourke, those four children totalled 69.5 days away from school. That is over 17 days of absenteeism for each child in a year. Those same children a year later in Newcastle had a total of only 7 days.

Health: The deplorable state of Aboriginal health has been well documented. Of the children under 5 years of age living in Bourke, 72 per cent were admitted to the Bourke District Hospital at least once in the pre-migration year of 1972. Sixteen percent were admitted over four times. After migration, no child was hospitalised although several did visit the doctor. Additionally, the extent of alcoholism reduced markedly.

Esteem: Not surprisingly, the self-esteem felt by the migrants was greatest among the children. They competed comfortably with their non-Aboriginal peers, grew socially in a manner that would have been unthinkable in Bourke, took part actively in sporting and other leisure pursuits and found friends from the school irrespective of their Aboriginality. Overall, all of the families expressed the strong belief that they experienced far less racism in Newcastle than they believed possible. In turn, this created a sense of self-value as Australians.

Mitchell also wrote that:

 It was labour intensive, with a minimal caseload, and therefore expensive. But after the first few months, most families gradually assumed responsibility for their own affairs and became less a burden on the organisation and the Counsellor. Concomitantly, the costs to government reduced dramatically. There were no welfare payments, the wage earners began paying taxes, the families themselves gradually bore the costs of living, the children settled quickly and willingly into school and health expenses plunged. None came to the notice of police. The expectation, which proved correct, was that after a few families had successfully integrated into their new life-styles, there would be a chain migration effect. Indeed, once this had begun, the ‘old’ families acted as counsellors to the new.