Workshop 2000: Aboriginal Policy: Failure, Reappraisal and Reform

Response to Fr Leary's Paper and Input from Other Participants

Reverend Steve Etherington

* It was good to have a venue where people could risk hypotheses, undertake heuristic discussion and try to make policy in a context not driven by political expediency or current media urgencies.

* My perspective and I think Fr Leary's was to focus on the human consequences of Aboriginal policy development in Aboriginal communities where English is not the first language of most people. These people are variously described as 'traditional', 'tribal' or 'remote', and I would argue that they constitute the most vulnerable minority within Australia's indigenous minority. This personal perspective was complementary to the papers focused on logical, historical and other types of inaccuracies in mainstream discourse. Generally, public debate is in terms of a political solution or a political position, as if there was some real chance that decisions made by any government can impact human nature.

Fr Leary described some of the unintended but catastrophic effects of unexamined benevolence on Aboriginal people as people. These are people with the same intellectual capacity and creativity, the same capacity for moral thinking and learning as any other group of human beings. Somehow we have usurped their roles as key stakeholders in their own lives. We (the minority of non-Aboriginal Australians who actually care about all this) need to re-examine our motivations for the various positions we take on Aboriginal issues. Firstly, we should stop the culture of blame, where endless name-calling has replaced any concern to either hear from Aboriginal people or establish the truth. 'Racist' now means 'I disagree with what you've said about Aboriginal people'. Aboriginal policy has become a kind of icon to be used as a blunt political weapon between whites.

* There is a legitimate question as to how it is that a person of non-Aboriginal descent is speaking on behalf of Aboriginal people, this minority within the minority. Despite the discomfort of this concern, someone needs to be their voice in some contexts---contexts in which they authorise others to speak. This minority group speaks almost exclusively their own traditional language, and their experience of mainstream schooling has been minimal. They are simply not able to take effective part in discussions with mainstream Australians in English. There are two significantly different groups across Aboriginal Australia---those who grow up speaking an English as their first language and those who do not. Increasingly, English skills predict health, unemployment, educational and other social indices. Lack of access to political debate, to health information, to legal processes and legislative processes are serious consequences of inadequate English levels.

Consultation with non-English-speaking Aboriginal people is highly problematic and is usually replaced with discussions among white people whose pro-Aboriginal motivation, they believe, will adequately compensate for lack of real input from the key stakeholders. Often consultations are done in haste and in English. More seriously, government departments prefer to use an English-speaking Aboriginal person to liaise with non-English-speaking Aboriginal people who may well reject them as being basically indistinguishable from white people. English again is seen as the key defining factor, rather than colour or some attempted pan-Aboriginal bonding.

More tragically of course, inadequate English skills lead to dependence on English-speaking people to provide services of every kind, whether medical, educational or legal. Continuing protectionist models where non-Aborigines or English-speaking Aborigines are essential go-betweens for non-English-speaking Aborigines, will simply prolong the situation of radical dependency.

This dependency is not simply economic, as may well be the case in English-speaking Aboriginal Australia. The dependency that has developed among the non-English-speaking minority of Aborigines is a pathological mental, emotional and volitional state, similar to what psychologists have described as dependent personality disorder. This psychological dependency is one of several core areas leading to massive mental health issues in these minorities within the minority. I believe that mental health will be the dominant health concern in these communities over the next decades. (Other core areas of health concern are closely tied to this---depression, suicide, domestic violence and substance abuse generally).

Examples of this radical dependency from two non-English-speaking Aboriginal communities. These representative anecdotes point to the key features of this deep dependency---a rejection of personal accountability, and deeply depressed self esteem and a total absence of power to control ones own life. There are also the two usually unnoticed but fundamental attitudinal problems that dictate how non-English-speaking Aborigines will interact with structures and processes from the mainstream: First and most importantly, Aboriginal people do not regard themselves as the prime stakeholders in their own lives outside their own immediate families, and secondly, whereas every mainstream structure assumes and understanding of basic democratic procedures and rights, non-English-speaking Aborigines do not share this understanding. Its as if we have intruded into their lives a vast system, run mainly through meeting and committee procedures, yet without ensuring anyone knows the fundamental democratic participatory controlling mechanisms of these procedures.

• An Aboriginal man describes his job at the council office as 'signing cheques'. He cannot read or write beyond this.
• It is common in non-English-speaking Aboriginal communities for Aboriginal people to leave their credit cards and PIN numbers with trusted white people whether shop managers, charter aircraft operators, outstation managers etc.
• Almost no adult wears a watch despite most of their daily lives needing to be co-ordinated with opening and closing times, travel etc..
• Parents tell the school that if they want their children to attend, the teachers will have to come and get them.
• An Aboriginal woman is murdered by an Aboriginal man. A week later, some petrol-sniffers break into the local club and steal grog. The white people who run the local council and the club call an urgent public meeting to discuss this latter crime. The white people have effective power over most parts of peoples' lives. The two main mechanisms are: (1) The threat of restricting someone's access to alcohol; (2) Control over credit. (Typically people drink up to the amount of their next social security or CDEP payment. Virtually all life is lived on credit. There is a kind of chronic poverty where a typical family will have a four-wheel drive vehicle for a while, as part of a mining company pay-out, but have no capacity to earn money or manage money for maintenance.)

There is also an almost completely impregnable system for managing affairs in small Aboriginal communities which is legal though far from ethical and provides watertight protection for the white power holders. Whatever the organisation, its white managers set up an Aboriginal management committee---whether this is the club, the out stations resource centre, and arts and crafts centre, the local government council doesn't matter. The process is: the white management call the meetings and dictate the agenda. The Aboriginal people attend and may well have a part in discussions, minutes and all other paperwork are in English. When agreements are obtained, the meeting is finished and the sitting fees paid. Should anyone outside the organisation attempt any criticism, one of two things can be then be said: 'An Aboriginal committee has voted on this matter, any criticism will be therefore racist in motivation.' Or, if a local Aboriginal person criticises the decision: 'Oh, you'll need to take this up with your countrymen on the committee.'

Of course many Aboriginal people understand the ethical and other problems here, but their responses are constrained by a deep seated fear based on the following:

• These organisations are the only source to most people in these communities of access to the outside world, banks, travel, legal advice and so on.
• Most non-English-speaking Aboriginal people are conditioned to be quite frightened of white people. The threat of white people is used to discipline children at home. And unfortunately, there are always enough white people around of the type who will actually use physical force and threats to coerce Aboriginal behaviour. I know of police using an Aboriginal police assistant to brutally bash local people, and I have heard direct threats made by other white people.
• There is a fear of losing a co-operative white person with their expertise. The self perception of Aboriginal people justifies their tolerance of white abuses of power. An Aboriginal man who later became his community's council president once told me: Look. You white people control the government, the police, the Federal government, the army, the legal profession, the hospital system, the schools and the banks. What do we do?' When this man was council president he didn't have his own office (as the white town clerk did), he didn't have his own vehicle (as the white town clerk did), he was the one normally delegated to drive to the airport and meet white people who stream into these communities daily for various purposes.

What are our motives as a nation when we engage in policy-making about Aboriginal people?

[1] We have a spiritual void in our own lives that attracts us to people who we regard as deeply spiritual. Perhaps Australia's best kept secret is the existence in every Aboriginal community of a strong indigenous Christian Church. There are ordained Aboriginal clergy in Catholic, Uniting, Anglican, Lutheran and many other denominations. Non-English-speaking Aboriginal groups have ongoing Bible translation projects. Services are held in many Aboriginal languages across Australia every week. Several years ago when four hundred Aboriginal Christian leaders met with the PM and the Minister of Aboriginal Affairs in the great hall of Parliament House in Canberra, there was a general media yawn. Generally we don't want to face the possibility that as white Australia has moved away from its own spiritual roots, the Aboriginal people by and large have embraced Christianity and are working out how to live as Christians in their own societies.

[2] We have as a nation had it pretty easy, at least for a long time. In a sense we want to now own for ourselves the suffering of the Aboriginal people. This is the most breathtaking abrogation of their own pain for our own spiritual purposes. So the 'Stolen Generations' inquiry acted as a means of personal spiritual satisfaction for many white Australians. Its methodology was dictated by the personal emotional needs of white Australians, most of whom simply want to be rid of the irritant of historical guilt. The political element allows us all to blame each other for the inevitable and unavoidable costs to Aboriginal people of white settlement. City can blame the country. Southern states can blame the north. Each side of politics can blame the other. We are not mature enough to say yet as a nation, 'Yes, our coming had irrevocably changed Aboriginal life. What can we do to give them the power they need now to sort out how to live here and now?'

It is significant that in the 'Stolen Generations' and the deaths in custody inquiries, not one of the hundreds of recommendations that emerged was directed at any Aboriginal person having to take back control of any aspect of their own lives. It is as if we want to disqualify them as the prime and only effective stakeholders in their own lives.

[3] There is an astonishing degree of cognitive dissonance in public debate about Aboriginal issues. There is a set of tensions that lead to sometimes unnecessary divisions among those discussing policies and which can also add to the mental health pressures on Aboriginal people. Most dramatic of these bipolar issues is where it is simply impossible to achieve both aims. We want to provide Aboriginal people with health, education and other services and experiences at the same level as enjoyed by mainstream Australians, but without altering their traditional values and practices. Clearly we cannot do both. For example:

• We want Aboriginal people to have equality of access to schooling/ education, without them turning their backs on their own cultural learning. Yet, our schooling/education system demands a full-time involvement from the ages of five to at least sixteen. Other systems of learning will need to fit around the periphery of these demands. The body of knowledge to be mastered excludes every significant Aboriginal adult as a relevant authority. In a society where girls are mothers at fourteen, there is not space for this social duality.
• We want Aboriginal people to match mainstream standards in health, yet we insist on their valorising their traditional approaches to medicine, which are not based on the same fundamental premises of mainstream health, whether the tension is between social versus natural causes or illness, or between the individual as the primary stakeholder in his/her own health versus the magic men/doctors as the prime stakeholders.
• We want to believe that Aboriginal people have authentic indigenous knowledge at a high level, and that they also have appropriate knowledge and wisdom to cope with mainstream inputs, such as hygiene, budgeting money and time and taking part in political processes. We don't want to face the possibility that their knowledge of mainstream processes and structures may be as limited as our knowledge of theirs. We don't want to then realise that their situation is catastrophic---whereas our ignorance of survival skills in their world will never affect us personally, they are daily faced with the disastrous consequences of their own ignorance.
• We want Aboriginal people to be able to take part in mainstream life, economically and in other ways, yet we want them to maintain their traditional life styles. In fact, mainstream participation means employment/career options. In fact, almost no Aboriginal people live a traditional lifestyle or even want to. We have unintentionally created a group of people who are required to be on permanent holiday at various outstation /homeland centres without any meaningful employment and with a white staff to undertake management of areas of life that every other Australian sees as part of his own responsibility. This kind of publicly supported post-traditional lifestyle bears on the most superficial resemblance to pre-contact lifestyles and will create unemployable people capable only of living in this artificial environment. Again, out stations/homelands were well motivated initially, as Aboriginal people tried to manage the rate and depth of impact on their lives of the outside world. Again, mainstream Australia has taken over this part of Aboriginal life and funded and thereby controlled it.
• We want Aboriginal people to live authentically as we believe they should, but we want them to do this in mainstream style housing. It is commonplace to blame disease and social problems on overcrowded housing in Aboriginal communities, yet there is a strong element of choice in this high density living. It is possible to meet this need by appropriately modified housing design, but rates of disease will not decrease where this is done unless knowledge of hygiene is tackled, and unless the level of alcohol abuse is minimised. Behind much of the disease too is a fatalistic acceptance of poor health which is a natural consequence of depressed self esteem and despair. There is a more sinister element to this pattern: public awareness of some urgent failure in Aboriginal health, leads to blame on inadequate infrastructure or spending (sometimes true), leads to mutual blaming, and all supported by TV coverage that features file footage of Aboriginal people living in apparent poverty and without housing. Apart from the fact that these visuals are either out-of-date or deliberately misleading in other ways, the perhaps well-intentioned journalistic efforts behind their use are producing a tragic reinforcement in Aboriginal and white thinking of the Aboriginal people as losers. This is a real tragedy. Are the media really limited to 'blaming the victim' or reinforcing the victim status of Aborigines? Perhaps this bipolar choice is an inevitable by-product of the political polarisation of the discussion.
• We want Aboriginal people to produce authentic indigenous art, yet we don't want to face the extortionary pressures for change that this art industry intrudes into their lives. We dictate what to paint and the medium for art, we create a tension between art for sale versus art as celebration, as pedagogy, as part of a social process or even a religious process. The artist as a valuable source of income or pleasure for us, versus the artist as a real person with his/her own life.

Some possible recommendations.

* There is an urgent need to return to a bipartisan approach to Aboriginal policy making at Federal level. The politicisation of Aboriginal issues in Australian political debate has not helped at the grass roots level for Aboriginal people with immediate and serious social, mental health and other problems. Should a bipartisan approach be achieved, unemployment should be its first area of concern.

* Non-English-speaking Aborigines are urgently in need of structured employment. It is misleading to think of this group as unemployed. Firstly, from a public policy viewpoint, they are often involved in some or other work-for-the-dole scheme, whether CDEP or other token employment. From their own viewpoint, they increasingly see themselves as radically unemployable. This is a reasonable viewpoint. Every year the bar is raised for entry to employment in their communities. At least minimal literacy in English is now a condition for virtually every area of work. The agenda of the mainstream is to provide mainstream level schooling, infrastructure, local government and health. Effective participation in any of these requires mainstream language skills. This implies then the need for English-speaking middle-men, usually non-Aboriginal. Virtually every well motivated expenditure on Aboriginal communities worsens the crisis of unemployability and despairingly low self-esteem. It seemed like a long overdue reform when a sewerage system was installed at one Top End community, yet the eleven Aboriginal men who had been employed managing the pan toilet system were instantly unemployed, and two white people with appropriate skills moved into the community to manage the pumps and other technical details. Hygiene levels deteriorated as the community learned to come to terms with sewerage systems. Providing some forms of government-scaffolded, structured real employment in remote communities is the biggest single need in Aboriginal policy.

* It is a commonplace to blame missionaries for interfering with Aboriginal culture. I don't want to take time to go into detailed defences of this kind of criticism---the linguistic work alone of missionaries is a formidable argument. But a number of people at this conference were implying that maybe the missionaries are blameworthy for having left the task too soon!! It is not reasonable to look for an influx of missionary personnel to solve the on-the-ground problems of Aboriginal communities, but there is a strong case for a federally funded corps of people who can monitor and advise at local level. They would need the power to bring in accountants and lawyers where corruption is suspected, and an approach that could use other methods than high profile court procedures which could implicate Aboriginal people. In the Northern Territory, at least, legal rights to access Aboriginal land could provide a means of moving undesirable whites out.

* Aboriginal health statistics are slowly improving as the ratio of mainstream staff increases at remote localities. This is one are where, without hesitation, I advocate greater spending so long as there is a strong element of community health education.

* The future of non-English-speaking Aboriginal community education is totally bleak. Its failure is well documented and points to a future generation of self-destructively depressed people, with almost no significant traditional or mainstream skills except as required to provide employment for white helpers. My own PhD research has focused on how such people think and talk in their own language and contexts about education in both their own culture and that provided through schooling and, overwhelmingly, the feeling among community elders is one of despair. There is a most urgent need to fund any and all genuinely community-based initiatives in Aboriginal education, whether church schools or other community institutions.