I’ve got a lot of issues to catch up on now that I have access to my blog again, but one that deserves immediate attention is the issue of sexual abuse of children in aboriginal communities. A report was released on the 30th of April outlining the issue to the Northern Territory government. It seems that aboriginal children are being sexually abused and then going on to sexually abuse their youngers in a self-perpetuating downward spiral. The report cites lack of education, alcohol and other drugs, lack of employment and pornography as major causes.
Once it had a chance to read the report, the NT government admitted that it hadn’t done enough to address the issue and, as advised in the report, requested urgent assistance from the national government. The issue was taken up and suddenly became a top priority. Actions I’ve heard taken include:
- Vastly increasing the number of police in the communities
- Making school attendance compulsory
- Controlling of spending so that half their earnings must be used for food
- Banning of alcohol
- Banning of pornography
- Removing the permit system for controlling entry
Now, the situation is bound to be far more complex than I understand, but here are my thoughts on these actions.
This not just an aboriginal issue. The report itself says, ‘Sexual abuse of children is not restricted to those of aboriginal descent, nor committed only by those of aboriginal descent, nor to just the Northern Territory. The phenomenon knows no racial, age or gender borders. It is a national and international problem.‘
Although the report states that ‘It is critical that both governments commit to genuine consultation with Aboriginal people in designing initiatives for Aboriginal communities,’ every action I hear is done without such collaboration.
Giving aboriginals their own space is the one thing we’ve done right. If individual aborigines want to join white society, they should be welcomed, but if they choose to keep their own culture, we should let them. It’s been 200 years since we took their land and we still haven’t come to a mutual understanding. I doubt we will while we continue to impose our lifestyle on them. Giving them money to buy the vices of our civilisation but not giving them equal right to jobs or fair justice is taking the side of evil.
Imposing values on another culture never works. Cultural change must come from the people themselves. If sexual use of children is considered normal in aboriginal culture, I’ll keep my opinions to myself. But most comments from aboriginals (all through the media, unfortunately) agree that they don’t want it. The very causes that are cited in the report are all western influences. We’ve created the problem ourselves.
But taking away their control is only going to make the problem worse. If alcohol and pornography are to be banned and white people allowed unrestricted access to their sacred lands, what do they have left? How are they meant to respect themselves? Improving education is a great initiative, but if it’s forced on them, how likely are they to accept it? How much stronger will the animosity be between our cultures?
What’s pornography got to do with it anyway? I heard an interview on the radio with a religious nutter who says that there’s plenty of evidence to say that pornography causes sexual violence and that common sense agrees. I know of no such reports and can’t say I see the connection. If pornography depicting rape and child abuse is available, then viewers might come to see it as normal behaviour, but those are banned nationwide anyway. Does watching consenting adults have sex make anyone want to rape a child?
It seems to me that our government has two choices. Either give the aboriginals all the rights and rules and support that other Australians have, or let them manage their own affairs. To impose new laws on them only is only going to increase the divide and outrage them anew.
If we make these rules on spending and banning of alcohol and pornography, then they should be nationwide. Protection should be given to all children, not just aborigines.
If we must differentiate, work with the local leaders to create the plan. Then, rather than sending in the military to police aboriginal communities, we should be making trained security professionals (police, military, security guards) available to support the communities’ own nominated law enforcers.
The government is using this to demonstrate decisiveness before the election, when they should be using it to demonstrate compassion and a willingness to cooperate with the aboriginal culture.
The very causes that are cited in the report are all western influences. We’ve created the problem ourselves.
It’s hardly that simple. Did sexual abuse exist in Aboriginal society before westerners arrived. If so, you can hardly bash western society for the problem. If not, can you blame society for the conscious actions of an individual? Well, you can to a point, but even that is not completely assured.
Point being, people love to assign blame. Blame society, blame government, blame the neighbour, blame alcohol, blame the devil, blame pornography. It seems that the blame is being laid everywhere, except with the person who committed the action in the first place.
I believe that education and social leadership is the answer. The community themselves need to solve this, and government needs to guide the community. Let the ones to educate or punish the individual, be that individuals peers, the people who know or understand them best.
When it’s a one-off or a small number of cases, you can just look to the individual, but when it’s epidemic (as the report claims) you need to look to society as well. I think you’re right that the individuals need to be blamed (and I don’t think this is being ignored), but so does society – whether or not the problem existed before westerners came.
But I agree completely that the community needs to solve the problems and that we should be providing support and yes, even guidance, as long as the community makes the final decisions and its members see their own as having control.
I agree there are is no simple answers…..but any hope that the Australian Government would encourage Aboriginal communities to be empowered to take care of their own communities was lost with the announcement of this new campaign.
No sooner had Aboriginal peoples achieved, after a tremendous expenditure of time, effort, expertise and money, freehold title to bits and pieces of country under the 1976 Aboriginal Land Rights Act that we are marching into 70 or so autonomous Aboriginal communities in NT with hordes of police and defense force. How are we to expect Aboriginal people to respect whitefella’s law if we are sending a message that we can march on the land that they fought so hard to reclaim? How are we showing respect for our own laws?
Howard should know, however, that most of the areas under Aboriginal control in NT are already dry. The elders would have greater success in keeping them that way if Howard rather than wresting nominal control of Aboriginal homelands which undermines the authority of the elders could bring the full force of the law to bear on the whitefellas who bring grog into dry Aboriginal communities by night and sell it at exorbitant prices. Anyone who really cared about what alcohol was doing to Aboriginal communities would surely have done something to curb this illicit trade.
Not for nothing did Howard single out the best-known Aboriginal community in Australia, Mutitjulu, home of the traditional owners of Uluru, visited by 500,000 tourists a year, to begin his campaign against child abuse in Aboriginal communities. The papers call it paedophilia; to someone standing closer it looks less like a sexual perversion than a hideous extension of demented self-destructiveness. It is part of a continuum that includes the tragically high rates of suicide in Aboriginal communities and the suffering of Aboriginal women and children at the hands of their depressed men folk.
As whitefellas tear their country apart, blackfellas are tearing themselves apart. This “cultural stuff†has always been a problem for white administrators. If we think the Australian Government are empowering Aboriginal people with this new campaign we have been successfully fooled by the illusion they want us to believe.
An interesting perspective, Belinda. It sounds like you’re closer to the issue than I am. I’d love to be able to spend time with our homeland’s people and understand them better, but the only people of aboriginal descent I’ve seen in since I got back have been entertainers. In the short term, my hope lies in being able to visit some schools to install videoconferencing as part of my new contract with the Department of Education to set up VC in every school in NSW. Perhaps then I’ll be able to feel the problems you describe first hand.