home | news l

Is There Hope for the Aborigines?

By Russell Skelton

26 August 2007 - ALICE SPRINGS, Australia In the air-conditioned plywood room that is the Alice Springs youth court, five Aboriginal teenagers -- four boys and a pregnant 16-year-old girl whose mouth seems permanently fixed in an eerily detached smile -- face a preliminary hearing for the rape and killing of a 14-year-old indigenous girl.

The judge is dressed like a bank clerk in shirtsleeves and trousers. The accused wear football sweaters. Their families sit in the back, chatting. Many of the witnesses, especially the young boys and girls, speak English so poorly that they require an interpreter. Even then their evidence is often faltering and barely coherent.

A father in his 30s describes how he, his sons and nephews downed five five-liter casks of wine the weekend the girl, the great-granddaughter of Australia's first celebrated Aboriginal painter, Albert Namatjira, was beaten to death. He said he drank until he passed out, woke up the next day and started drinking again. He could not remember much.

A female witness pleaded to testify by video link because she was terrified that relatives of the suspects, who packed the court, would target her for "payback" -- ritual spearing. Witness after witness, both Aboriginal and white, told the court that they saw the girl, bashed unconscious by earlier attackers, lying in the gutter of a suburban street over a 10-hour period. No one helped her.

Then three boys happened by. Assuming that the girl was close to death, they raped her. They used condoms, which they discarded at the crime scene; at least their meager education had dealt with the dangers of unprotected sex. The case against them will be decided later this month.

Close to the geographic center of Australia, Alice Springs is "ground zero" for my country's indigenous people, who constitute 2.5 percent of Australia's population of 20.4 million. They are a tragic group. While the average life expectancy of a non-indigenous Australian is over 80, Aborigines are lucky if they reach 60. Compare that to Native Americans in the United States, who die seven years earlier than the average American and have an infant mortality rate 50 percent lower than Australia's Aborigines, and you begin to get an idea of how bad things are here.

Alice Springs has the highest rate of violent crime in this country, and brutal clashes on suburban streets between Aboriginal mobs are common. In the past two years, unspeakable crimes have been committed in surrounding desert communities: Babies have been raped and drowned; women have had burning sticks forced into their vaginas; others have had legs broken to stop them from escaping.

Last month, 12 Aboriginal men from Halls Creek, a remote community in the northwest, were charged with 31 offenses, including sodomy of a child. The victims were 11 and 14. Police are now investigating a case in Western Australia where a group of men sodomized a young boy. In the "secret men's business" ceremonies
where boys are initiated into manhood, there have been reports from medical staff of penises so badly mutilated that it's difficult to urinate.

Forty years after a 1967 referendum gave the national government the authority to help Aborigines with health and education needs, there appears to be little to celebrate. While Aborigines received the right to vote in 1962, it was hoped that the 1967 plebiscite -- universally regarded as the historical turning point in the treatment and status of Aboriginal people -- would mark the end of misery for Australia's indigenous population.

But not much has changed. The national conversation on Aboriginal violence took a dramatic turn two months ago with the release of a report titled "Little Children Are Sacred," commissioned by the Northern Territory's Labor government. The report found rampant alcoholism and sexual abuse in the majority of communities there. It identified children as young as 3 as victims of assault. "We should have been more humble. We have our 'Katrina,' here and now," Prime Minister John Howard said after the report's release. "That it has unfolded more slowly and absent the hand of God should make us humbler still."

Over the past two months, with Howard's support, Mal Brough, the minister of indigenous affairs and a pugnacious former soldier, has forced through legislation -- about 500 pages -- that has swept aside 50 years of policy and put the national government firmly back in charge of indigenous communities in the Northern Territory -- home to about 66,000 Aborigines. Indigenous self-rule has been dumped for a set of strict government controls that include compulsory health checks, extra police, bans on the consumption of alcohol and a "mutual obligation" regime that requires parents to, among other things, send their children to school. Those who don't comply will have their welfare payments docked.

Brough's actions are splitting the country in unexpected ways. He has some high-profile Aboriginal leaders at his side, agreeing that something radical needs to be done; others bay accusations of racism and genocide and allege that the policy is nothing but a front for a land-rights grab and a means to wind back the clock to the ideology of assimilation.

When reporters questioned Brough about the cost of his crusade -- it has blown up to $400 million in just six weeks -- he asked: What price should society put on saving a child?

With a national election expected in November and Howard trailing far behind in polls, the motives of Brough and the prime minister have been questioned. Howard has never been a champion of indigenous causes and has dragged his feet on other social issues during his 11 years as prime minister. His government abolished the nation's first indigenous Parliament, and he has previously passed up opportunities to take action on abuse when reports more damning than "Little Children Are Sacred" were released in 1999 and 2002. Few, however, doubt Brough's sincerity.

And there can be no doubt that male violence among the indigenous population is a profound problem in the territory.

Indigenous communities, including 30 town camps for members of various Aboriginal groups in Alice Springs and Tennant Creek, have been compared to South Africa's notorious shantytowns. Most Aborigines live in tiny, often unpoliced settlements, scattered throughout the desert, that are awash in a feral culture marked by a weird convergence of American rap culture, welfare (known in the community as "sit-down money") and substance abuse. Rates of sexually transmitted disease among children and teenagers have been found to be 25 times the national average. It is not uncommon for parents raised on "bush tucker" -- lean kangaroo meat, roasted lizard, yams and berries -- to outlive cor years national and local governments have dumped money at the community gate -- well more than $1 billion in 2001, for example -- but have done little to control how it was spent. Self-rule gave communities the power to decide how the money was doled out, so dominant individuals and clans did as they pleased.

Under Brough's legislation, which passed the senate last week, much that was set up under self-rule has gone, including a permit system that barred the media from reporting conditions in the communities. In have come teams of doctors, soldiers and police with a brief to assess health and safety needs and put systems in place to protect children, not just from sexual abuse, but from physical and psychological neglect as well.

But will it work? Brough's approach relies heavily on his own missionary zeal, new punitive powers and a theory of indigenous behavior that, like all the others before it, remains open to question. Though the minister has won praise for shaking the nation out of a long slumber of indifference, the whiff of failure already swirls around the venture like red desert dust. Imposing punitive measures on people who are constantly on the move will be difficult and will require an army of bureaucrats. Should you deduct welfare payments from a family attending the traditional "sorry camp" hundreds of miles away following the death of a relative? Compulsory health checks will not in themselves confirm abuse, as promiscuity is rife among adolescents. What protection can police offer victims who are threatened by their own families for speaking out?

While many Australians hope that the outcome of this new policy might deliver safety and prosperity to Australia's Aborigines, lasting solutions are more likely to be found with a new generation of indigenous leaders and professionals less hung up on past struggles.

As Australian Labor Party President Warren Mundine, one Aboriginal leader who supports Brough's efforts, put it: "We have 150 lawyers, but we need 1,000; we have 80 accountants, but we need 1,000; we have 100 doctors but we need 1,500. We need them to bring about fundamental and dramatic change."

Russell Skelton covers indigenous issues for the newspaper The Age in Melbourne.

Source: The Washington Post

Further information: NT Intervention issues page - includes news index and external links

|| click to go to the top of this page