Book review - "A Decision to Discriminate: Aboriginal Disempowerment in the Northern Territory"

Over the Australia Day long weekend I read and reviewed A Decision to Discriminate: Aboriginal Disempowerment in the Northern Territory, for Right Now.

The book which discusses the consultation process undertaken by the Federal Government in Aboriginal communities ahead of introducing it's Stronger Futures legislation and paints pretty appalling and disenchanting picture.

It won't be an election issue, but while our politicians engage in petty stunts for media attention, everyone is ignoring some of the most disadvantaged and disempowered people in our country.

  
"A Decision to Discriminate: Aboriginal Disempowerment in the Northern Territory"


Almost 70 years ago Albert Camus wrote that “goodwill can cause almost as much damage as ill-will if it is not enlightened” -  a sentiment it seems that could well apply to the Australian government’s approach to Indigenous affairs.

Reading A Decision to Discriminate: Aboriginal Disempowerment in the Northern Territory, published by Concerned Australians, leaves you with the troubling impression that the Gillard Government’s Stronger Futures legislation – which followed on from the Howard Government’s Northern Territory Emergency Response (NTER) and drifted quietly through Parliament in early 2012 – was at worst a continuation of arrogant and destructive disempowerment, and at best an act of wilful naivety in what is deemed by government and media to be an issue of minimal importance.

Read more...

Indigenous Exceptionalism - MWF review

Article written for Right Now, and appears on the website with other human rights reviews here.


Is ‘race’ is an inherently negative word and is it time we stopped using it?

‘Racism’ has been a useful term for defining and addressing undesirable attitudes and conduct, but race – a term devised by European explorers – is often a simplistic, generalised method of identification that relies on physical appearance, rather than nationality, culture, ancestry or any meaningful feature of identity. We are, after all, members of a single human race, comprised of millions of ethnicities.

Professor Marcia Langton, Chair of Indigenous Studies at the University of Melbourne, was part of an expert panel set up by the federal government to look into recognition of Indigenous Australians in the Australian Constitution. In a Melbourne Writers Festival address, titled Indigenous Exceptionalism, she discussed race and the need to remove reference to it in the Constitution.

Until 1967, the Constitution allowed the parliament to legislate in the interests of “the people of any race, other than the aboriginal race in any State, for whom it is deemed necessary to make special laws”.

Following the referendum of 1967 the words “other than the aboriginal race in any State” were removed.

However, the lingering reference to ‘race’ remains problematic, and the panel’s recommendations, handed down in January this year, included removing it, as well as acknowledging Indigenous Australians as the first peoples of Australia and the aspiration for cultural maintenance, including languages.

Professor Langton called recognition of Indigenous Australians in the Constitution “a large, fraught topic full of legal, as well as moral, challenges.”

She called race an out-dated, crude concept – historically used to justify colonialism by portraying non-white peoples as inferior – and one that is “such a discredited biological and social construct that its citation in a democratic constitution is undesirable.”

“Defining Aboriginal people as a race, as the Constitution does,” she said “sets up the conditions for Indigenous people to be treated, not just as different, but exceptional and, moreover, inherently incapable of joining the Australian polity and society.”

“In the slowly building campaign for constitutional recognition of Indigenous people, it is vital that we broaden the understanding that the constitutional tradition of treating Aborigines as a race must be replaced with the idea of first peoples,” Professor Langton said.

The problem of race is evident in comments such as those by Andrew Bolt, who was found guilty of breaching the Racial Discrimination Act 1975 (Cth) in 2011, for implying that some fair-skinned Aboriginals were not true Aboriginals. Such perceptions are based on appearance rather than lineage and ties to place and culture.

Professor Langton actually shares Bolt’s cynicism towards some claims to Aboriginality by people seeking access to special treatment. The difference is, however, that her criticism is not based on skin tone but abuses of special treatment by those who cannot be described as disadvantaged, and those who claim Aboriginality on paper to claim benefit, but not in public.

Where temporary special assistance is required, she argued, the test for assistance must be economic disadvantage not Aboriginal ancestry. Aboriginality does not automatically equate to economic disadvantage and Professor Langton believes the entitlement mentality that has developed is poisoning Aboriginal society just as much as it is poisoning Australian attitudes towards Indigenous people.

The challenge ahead is addressing “the poorly understood friction between bringing Indigenous Australians firmly into the national polity and, on the other hand, maintaining their exceptional status as inextricably different.”

Despite her strong stance, Professor Langton believes a referendum should not be rushed, citing Australia’s record of rejecting constitutional change and the potentially harmful outcomes a negative result would have. Not only does she fear defeat would prevent the change being made in her lifetime, but she believes it would also lead to disappointment and bitterness among the Indigenous community, and Australia being seen internationally as racist.

Whether you agree with her views or not, Professor Langton is a formidable speaker and one of those wonderfully fascinating and considered people who seem impossible to pin down on the traditional political spectrum, making it all the more difficult to dismiss her argument’s challenge to one’s own perceptions. On such an important issue, even if a symbolic one, it is important for us all to keep an open mind and consider our own perceptions.

Listening but not Hearing Indigenous Australians

On 8 March I attended the lauch of the Listening but not Hearing report into consultation for the Gillard Government's Stronger Futures legislation, which applies to Aboriginal communities in teh Northern Territory, for RightNow. Read the full article on their website.

On 27 February 2012, in a virtually empty House of Representatives, the Government’s Stronger Futures legislation was passed with little debate and no formal division. It is proposed to replace the Northern Territory Emergency Response (NTER) laws – otherwise known as the Northern Territory Intervention – introduced by the Howard Government in 2007.

Many concerns have been raised regarding the legislation itself, but even the consultation process that was meant to inform it shows an alarming degree of disregard by the Government for the people its decisions will affect.

Co-author Nicole Watson believes that Stronger Futures is merely an extension of the intervention and its most discriminatory aspects.

On Thursday 8 March, former Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser launched the Listening but not Hearing report at the Sir Zelman Cowen Centre, Victoria University. The report was prepared by the Jumbunna Indigenous House of Learning at the University of Technology Sydney as an evaluation of the Stronger Futures consultation process.

Co-author Nicole Watson believes that Stronger Futures is merely an extension of the intervention and its most discriminatory aspects. Issues such as income management; land control; the removal of customary law as a consideration in legal proceedings or bail reviews; and alcohol restrictions continue to stigmatise Northern Territory communities and restrict self-determination.Malcolm Fraser said that:

"If there had been any good from the intervention, the Government would have been swamping us with statistics of fewer people in jail, of more people in the decent housing, of improved health, of better performances in schools, of higher attendances in schools."

cont...

Full article

Movie - 'murundak: songs of freedom'

A couple of weeks ago I popped along to the Melbourne Festival and caught the doco murundak: songs of freedom as part of the Give Peace a Chance program for Right Now. The full review, and reviews of the other films as well as a bunch of great human rights-related reading is available at the Right Now website.

First couple of paragraphs here, but it's only fair to head to their website for the full thing.

"Since the height of the Aboriginal rights protest movement in the 1970s, Indigenous Australian music has developed a strong voice of resistance and identity; and it’s only getting stronger.

Feature documentary Murundak: Songs of Freedom (2011) explores the cultural and political significance of this music via the Black Arm Band (featuring Aboriginal artists Archie Roach, Bart Willoughby, Dan Sultan, the late Ruby Hunter and several others) who travel from big cities to remote communities performing Murundak, a celebration of songs that have captured an essential and often elusive element of Australia’s Indigenous history."

The rest...