Recent Racist Policies against the Aboriginal Peoples of Australia
I am writing this article to inform people overseas of the abuse of human rights that is occurring in Australia at the present time.

I left Darwin, a city in the Far North of Australia, in 1995. At that time the situation for the indigenous people was shameful, with many Aborigines in remote communities living in third world conditions. But there were signs of hope with land rights claims being won and the introduction of innovative Aboriginal health clinics and employment and educational programs. Above all the then government showed signs of a commitment to the acknowledgement of the past wrongs perpetrated against the indigenous population.

Since then the government has been led by the right wing Liberal Party which has sought to erode many of the hard won gains made by indigenous groups. An election is looming and the Liberal Party has not been doing well in the opinion polls. John Howard, the Prime Minister, has a reputation for pulling rabbits out of hats when it looks like he’s about to lose an election. This usually consists of instilling fear in the population by demonising minority groups such as refugees or Muslims a.k.a. terrorists (this last is probably familiar to UK readers). This time it’s the turn of the Australian Aborigines.

A Brief Historical Background (with apologies to those for whom this is all too familiar)
Aborigines have inhabited Australia for over 40000 years. They comprise 700 language groups and many nations. Until invasion by the white settlers they were a hunter-gatherer peoples with a vibrant culture and a strong spiritual connection to the land
The more recent history of the Australian Aborigines is related to their dispossession. For the white invaders 200 years ago Australia was looked upon as Terra Nullis, uninhabited land with the original inhabitants seen as merely part of the flora and fauna, and it was only in 1967 that Aboriginal people were granted full citizenship and the right to vote. By then many tribes had been broken up and different nations forcibly removed from their lands and herded together on missions. The mission stations were often administered by white managers who controlled movement, food rations and tried to stamp out much of the traditional culture.
Aboriginal women suffered the same massacres and dispossession from land plus the added violence of being raped or used as concubines by the white invaders. Without the labour of Aboriginal people it would have been difficult for the colonists to run their farms and houses. Aboriginal women were used as servants and/ or farm workers for little or no pay.
Added to this there was the systematic taking away of Aboriginal children from their mothers which lasted until well into the nineteen sixties and resulted in a whole “stolen generation” of Aboriginal adults. Many of these children ended up in private homes or in mission schools where they were often physically and sexually abused and used as slave labour.
Many Aborigines now live in urban areas but there are many communities in remote areas some of which are old mission stations some of which are based on traditional land.
The result of all this is often desperate communities traumatised by dispossession with no work, so most people are on social security or what the locals call “sit down money”, often illiterate because of little or no schooling, no proper health care and overcrowded housing. Walking into an Aboriginal community is like walking into a desperately poor village in the third world whereas a few kilometres down the road there may be apartment blocks shopping malls, hospitals and schools.

Although the problem of Aboriginal communities have been known about for decades all programs have been piecemeal and under-resourced. This is the result of the neglect by successive governments to put adequate resources into housing, education and health in remote communities. As Aboriginal writer Alexis Wright said recently in an address to PEN:
I have often thought that indigenous people cannot break through the deafness caused by the walls of the status quo that surrounds our containment, even if we wanted to, because of the layers in the maze of institutional violence. Although individuals might create something for either themselves or their people, as we see in the difficult work our people undertake across the country in the unconnected policies of health, education, employment etc. our desire to survive as people in our own right, with a plan for our cultural future, has been impossible to achieve.

In these desperate communities there are often high levels of drug and alcohol abuse, domestic violence and sexual abuse. When these problems occur it is the women who bear the brunt especially the women elders who have consistently spoken out about violence against women and children It is often the grandmothers who have the care of grandchildren because the mothers are unable to care for them and the women elders who have initiated night patrols to get drunks back home and look after children out on the streets late at night. Women elders in the far north community of Yirrkala have started a healing centre using cultural methods in order to help those with drug and alcohol problems.
The women of Yirrkala say that the problems started when the huge bauxite mine arrived. Aboriginal elder Gulumbu Yunupingu
was quoted as saying “Because of the mine the drugs came, the pub was built”
(Sunday Territorian 24/06/07)

In spite of all this inequality many Aborigines have maintained strong ties with their culture and a belief in the sacred duty they bear towards the land. There are also many remote area Aboriginal communities that have won back their right to their traditional land. Many communities have a permit system whereby outsiders are only allowed in with the permission of the traditional owners and most have established themselves as dry areas by banning alcohol and changing the kind of gasoline they use where petrol sniffing is a big problem amongst the young people
Aboriginal women have also been at the forefront of campaigns to stop uranium mining and nuclear dumps on their traditional lands notably the women in South Australia who prevented a nuclear waste dump from being placed on their land, and the Mirrar women of the Jabiluka region who waged a successful campaigns against uranium mining
I cannot ignore the fact that there is a problem of male violence within Aboriginal communities as there is in all communities. 16 indigenous women have been murdered by their partners or other family members over the last twelve months. Nor would I offer drunkenness and drug abuse as an excuse for this violence. It is extremely difficult for an Aboriginal woman to take proceedings against her violent partner or to leave him without giving up her whole community. When I worked in the north of Australia eleven years ago, as a sexual assault counsellor, I talked to women who had had to leave their communities and break links with their families in order to escape the violence and. they experienced huge sadness and loss Those who put the blame on Aboriginal men also ignore the numbers of white men who are perpetrators. The white men who smuggle alcohol into dry communities where alcohol is banned and sell it at exorbitant rates or who own the liquor stores outside the dry areas, the people who produce the pornography which is viewed by many of the community members on their DVDs, and the white men who rape the children and women and who get the young women to prostitute themselves in return for cigarettes and alcohol. They also fail to mention the high rates of domestic violence and sexual abuse in non=aboriginal communities.

Recent Interventions
So what is the response of the government to all this? Rather than being deeply ashamed of the neglect of their fellow citizens they are blaming the victim. Suddenly this is all the fault of dysfunctional communities that need to be brought under control. Without consulting the elders and ignoring all the under funded and struggling initiatives that have gone before they have declared the state of Aboriginal communities a “national emergency” and sent in the army and the police to “restore order”. Aboriginal artist Julie Dowling summed this up “It shows bad leadership to bring in the army. It means (the government’s) left it too long, too late”.
The justification for this campaign is that they are rescuing children from abuse.
But as Aboriginal elder Banduk Marika states:
And now it seems that our whole culture is being blamed by government and media for the problems associated with grog, poor education, a lack of jobs, houses and health care. … I want to say very clearly that abuse of children is something we mothers and grandmothers are very worried about, because family is even more important to us than it is to most non-indigenous people. But such abuse is not limited to Aboriginal communities. And it occurs in Aboriginal communities because of the situation we are living in, not because of our culture. … The small number of persons who go against their families and bring shame on us all must be held accountable – but it is not the fault of our society as a whole. Many of us do not drink or take drugs and we protect, respect, love and care for our children, our families and our cultural traditions.

The government rushed five pieces of legislation through parliament aimed at controlling every aspect of the lives of Aboriginal Australians in the Northern Territory. This 500 pages of legislation gives government the power to suspend the Racial Discrimination Act in order to allow them to “quarantine” half of the social security payments of Aboriginal people living on most of the communities in the Northern Territory, up to 47000 people, so that the money can be administered by whites to pay for essentials such as food and clothing. This applies to all individuals whether caring for children or not and to all carers whether “good’ or “bad” carers and worst of all targets one particular group only and doesn’t apply to the rest of the population on welfare.
They also plan to “quarantine” up to 100% of welfare payments to families who don’t send their children to school and/or generally keep them well fed and healthy. What they categorise as child neglect is very sketchy and does this mean that a child kept from school for a few days to attend ceremonies or visit ancestral land (very important things for Aboriginal culture) will then be considered to be neglected?
Most of the funding for all this will be taken up by the bureaucracy and the employment of white managers to oversee communities, which as many elders have pointed out is taking Aboriginal people back to the days of the missions.
This legislation is an attack on our people. How would you feel if you had to allow a bureaucrat from … (the government) into your community meetings, netball committee meetings and business meetings? How would you feel is there was a law which made it OK for you to be discriminated against just because of your race? Muriel Bamblett Chairwoman of the Secretariat of National Aboriginal and Islander Child Care.
The government is also suspending land rights and the permit system. Suspending the permit system will open the door to white predators smuggling in alcohol and expose communities up to the unwanted gaze of tourists coming in to photograph “real Australian Aborigines”. Along with this is the suspension of hard won land rights of for many communities.
Curiously the 500 pages of legislaeion meant to concern itself with the welfare of children doesn’t include one mention of the word “child” or “children”. So what are the real reasons behind this racist intervention? The answer quite simply is a land grab. The government is in league with the mining companies to open up more land for uranium mining without having to face lengthy court battles with the traditional owners. It’s also promoting nuclear energy and Aboriginal desert land could provide a useful dumping ground for nuclear waste.
In a newspaper article
Pat Turner Aboriginal woman activist said: We believe that this government is using child sexual abuse as the Trojan horse to resume total control of land rights
The result of all this has been images on the news of the bewildered and frightened Aboriginal women and children who have already experienced centuries of oppression and dislocation. There have been reports of women in communities near Alice Springs terrified that the authorities would remove their taking them into the bush to hide them. A woman I spoke to said that women were desperately cleaning their houses creating echoes of the fifties when social workers inspected Aboriginal homes and took children away if they weren’t up to standard. There have been reports that Aboriginal women are so desperate that they think that anything that draws attention to the sexual abuse of children and the levels of violence could be a good thing but they practically all say that they wish to be consulted, that they have talked about these issues for years and nothing has been done and that they have seen measures come and go. What these women wanted was consultations with communities and resources to carry out meaningful projects not paternalism and punishment across the board.
… I want to say that we do honestly welcome any real help with the problems created by our contact with non-indigenous society, and by past failures to fund and deliver basic services, but we will not be treated as though we have no rights in our own land and lives.(Banduk Marika again)
Real help doesn’t appear to be coming as we have just heard that the government plans to cut funding to the refuge run by Aboriginal women at the Yuendumu community. So this is the way they plan to stop violence against women ?
The Northern Territory is enjoying a mining and tourism boom, but the prosperity of this wealthy area is off the backs of its original owners. Aboriginal spirituality and knowledge of country are used as selling points in advertising Australia to tourists, whilst at the same time totally ignoring Aboriginal spiritual places by establishing mines and trying to dump uranium on them. Aboriginal art is big business and paintings by Aboriginal artists fetch millions of dollars that were often purchased for a few hundred.
The one ray of hope is in the incredible resilience of the Aborigines themselves who have been in Australia for 40000 years. As Germaine Greer said in a recent article (The prime minister) will never defeat the Aboriginal peoples, but he will surely increase the bitterness of their suffering.
But the last word should be given to Banduk Marika senior community elder and famed artist from Yirrkala Arnhem Land
Don’t use our children as an excuse for stealing our land away from us.

References
The Whitefella’s Tyranny Germaine Greer The Guardian Weekly 13.07.07
A Question of Fear Alexis Wright An address to Sydney PEN, 4 July 2007
For those who want to read more there is a wonderful novel by Alexis Wright called Carpentaria which has recent ly won major prizes for this indigenous writer.
Lack of respect will not help indigenous children, Banduk Marika Sydney Morning Herald 14/08/07