Stacey Edwards, this additional quote of the day is for you, thank you for sharing with us in ‘The Decade of Lateral Love around the World 2012 – 2022′ – Brian & Nicola
“Darkness cannot drive out darkness;
only light can do that.
Hate cannot drive out hate;
only love can do that.”
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
“Aboriginalisation is the only way forward for all of humanity. By placing the focus for learning fairly and squarely on the principles of caring, sharing and respect as practiced by our Elders we will bring about the necessary change to enable us to work together for the betterment of this world.” – Brian & Nicola Butler Lateral Love Australia
This critical resource is now in the top 10 ranking on Amazon
Purchase your copy by clicking on the image below to go straight to Amazon.com!
“Masterful and liberatory”- Henry Giroux
“It may be our last hope” -Nancy Turner Banks
“A new way to resist”- John Pilger
“Penetrating, fearless and practical” -Thom Hartman
A first in educational publishing, this text looks at eight common subject areas, from health education and US history to mathematics and geography, and reveals the corporate influence/cultural hegemony that defines mainstream curricula; the consequent failure of schooling to achieve its stated goals; and practical alternative ways to augment the curricula with time-tested approaches to teaching and learning used by traditional Indigenous Peoples for thousands of years to achieve and maintain balance and beauty in social and ecological systems.
Note that all profits from this book will go to worthy American Indian educational associations and foundations. Giving back to the Peoples whose wisdom we borrow is of utmost importance.
Akaywaciankinktay,
Four Arrows, aka Don Trent Jacobs, Ph.D., Ed.D.
http://www.teachingvirtues.net
“Penetrating, fearless and practical, this book offers educators (and anyone else with an interest in our future) a way to create a better world—before it is too late!”—Thom Hartmann
Prime Minister opening WELA July 2012
Prime Minister Julia Gillard toured the Kimberley last July and stopped in Wyndham where she visited the Wyndham Early Learning Centre (WELA). The Prime Minister opened a new purpose-built building for WELA and committed her support and funding to the centre. But to the shock of families dependent on the centre the majority of the funding, less than one year later, will cease on June 30 – WELA will be reduced to very little, operating only for limited hours.
Prime Minister Julia Gillard was greeted warmly when in Wyndham, many turned out for her at the WELA launch. It was the first visit by a Prime Minister to the predominately Aboriginal town, in the far north of Western Australia.
WELA’s general manager, Jane Parker said she is still reeling from the disbelief that the majority of the funding agreement will cease, especially after the Prime Minister’s visit to WELA during her tour de force throughout the Kimberley.
The Kimberley has one of the nation’s highest homelessness rates – officially seven per cent of its population, and 90 per cent of that homelessness is Aboriginal, of which Wyndham bares a sizeable brunt. The majority of Aboriginal peoples throughout the Kimberley, and particularly around Wyndham, are impoverished.
Ms Parker said the programmes run by WELA give families – parents, grandparents and carers – the skills they need to help their children be ready to cope with school. Ms Parker said that pre-primary teachers say they can tell which kids have been to WELA. Many can count and know their alphabet prior to pre-primary, and they are also taught various manners and behaviours and various coping mechanisms. Ms Parker said that the parents of WELA kids are confident and hence are able to visit the school with that confidence in tow to talk to the teachers about their children’s progress.
“So we do not understand why the funding will be reduced to a paltry amount.”
“We do not understand why this has happened in light of the Prime Minister’s very visit to our centre, her launching of a new building and all the publicity around it.”
Prime Minister Gillard was followed by a huge media contingent throughout the Kimberley and the WELA launch was centrepiece to her tour and the news media fanfare.
“In our town many families are disadvantaged, and WELA makes a real difference in helping families to function better and get their kids ready for school,” said the Centre’s former Chairperson Estelle Hunter.
“In fact, as people from Oombulgurri community now live here too, we need more funding not less, so we can provide outreach to families who are not yet ready to come into the centre.”
Oombulgurri has become near desolate with people having relocated to nearby towns to be within services despite many of them finishing up homeless. Both the State and Federal Governments have let down Oombulgurri and its peoples leaving the nearby towns standalone in providing what support they can.
Ms Parker shakes her head in despair and disbelief.
“In the Prime Minister’s Report on Closing the Gap 2013, the first sentence on early learning says, ‘A child’s health and wellbeing from before they are born through to their preschool years helps to set them up for life.’ If that is the case, we do not understand how the Government can stop funding a service that has won awards, been positively evaluated, and is so obviously delivering what is needed.”
WELA’s programmes were named the winners, two years in a row, 2011 and 2012 of awards in the Department of Communities’ Outstanding Family Service Provider to Children.
“They say programmes are being reviewed. We say that interim funding should be provided until the new scenario is clear,” said Ms Parker.
WELA have sought the support of their new Kimberley member of Parliament, Aboriginal woman Josie Farrer, and of the Western Australian Greens Senator Rachel Siewert. Both are asking the questions at their State and Federal levels. The Stringer has emailed questions to the Office of the Prime Minister. There has been no response.
Ms Parker said that staff are trying to hang on despite the cut in funding because they know how important the programmes are to families, many of which are single parent families. But already one worker has left. She herself has seven children to take care of and could no longer hang on due to the Government’s funding backflip.
“More will have to go by the end of the month. All are Aboriginal women with lots of skills that they want to use helping Wyndham families provide a nurturing environment which, as the Prime Minister states ‘can help to instil positive behaviours and values and steer children along a path to success at school and adulthood.’” This is not the first such story out of the Kimberley where management executives of Aboriginal organisations be they in Wyndham, Warmun, Halls Creek, Derby or Broome have complained of funding cuts or their inability to secure promised funding to address the myriad social issues that their peoples face on a daily basis.
http://thestringer.com.au/prime-minister-laps-up-welcome-but-breaks-funding-promise/#.UbmdQN8iPIU
by Aleisha Orr, care of WA Today
Wheelchairs for Kids retirees at work in the wheelchair factory.
In developing countries there are children who spend their days stuck in a bed or on the ground, sometimes on cold concrete or out in the dirt.
While Australian children with medical conditions that make it difficult or impossible to walk use wheelchairs, they are not always affordable or easy to come by in places such as the Solomon Islands, Libya, Lebanon and the Congo.
A group of Perth retirees have been changing the lives of children in more than 60 countries, having built and distributed almost 26,000 wheelchairs for children in need of them.
Children in Tanzania get a new lease on life with wheelchairs from Wheelchairs for Kids.
Wheelchairs for Kids has been operating for 14 years and has more than 100 volunteers making wheelchairs which have been distributed across 66 countries.
According to those involved, it is the only project of its kind that works on such a big scale.
They work with humanitarian groups to distribute the wheelchairs once they are transported overseas.
Wheelchairs for Kids CEO Gordon Hudson and volunteer workshop manager Olly Pickett have seen the project develop since beginning in 1998, producing about 25 wheelchairs a month.
They have seen Wheelchairs for Kids, a Rotary backed project, grow to what it is today, making about 340 wheelchairs a month and about 4000 a year.
Mr Pickett, who spends much of his day in a wheelchair himself because of mobility issues caused by ankle problems, said wheelchairs gave children a whole new lease on life.
“Their lives would be much the poorer, for the simple reason that these little kids are on the ground and the governments sort of don’t give any help to their parents, particularly their mothers,” he said.
“The children are on the ground, just waiting for someone to pick them up.
“But a wheelchair makes a huge difference to them, not only to the children but also to the family, and the kids can get to school now, can get to the markets, just get out and have fun with the other kids, who push them around.
“It gives them a lot of dignity.”
Wheelchairs for Kids also provides a great outlet for retirees such as Mr Pickett, who donate their time to the cause.
“I love it. It’s certainly very rewarding in so far that you’re doing something for someone who’s far less fortunate than what we are,” he said.
“If you can get a smile on a little kid’s face because they’ve got a chance to have a life, just to get out and meet other kids and get to school, I mean it really does something for you.”
Mr Picket said the volunteers enjoyed what they were doing so much that no one ever missed their rostered shift unless they were sick or on holidays.
Mr Hudson said a lot had changed since the early days of Wheelchairs for Kids, and the outfit had become very professional.
“In 1998 it was very small; we were making wheelchairs out of old bike frames in the corner of a workshop,” he said.
“After about a year we realised we could make them new for about the same price as we could to make them out of the old bike frames.
“Four years ago, the World Health Organisation did a survey of wheelchairs supplied into under-resourced countries and they found a lot to be desired.
“The ordinary folding wheelchair just didn’t stand up in the rough terrain and they found that wheelchairs needed to be fitted and adjusted to the recipient.”
Two years ago they stopped production of their standard wheelchair and, using the latest advice, redesigned it.
“We now have a wheelchair made to World Health Organisation specifications, which is completely adjustable to all sizes to suit the growing needs of children,” Mr Hudson said.
“[Now] we have 120 volunteers that work in shifts, across four mornings a week, we have about 30 retiree volunteers on each shift.
“There are millions of children out there spending their time in the dirt, can’t get around, can’t go to school, can’t go to play with other children.
“Giving them a wheelchair changes their life, and changes the life of their family.”
Gerry Georgatos manages the Wheelchairs for Kids project, a job that always poses challenges – more so now that the project has recently lost some of the regular funding it relied upon.
“Cutbacks always tear at the soul of an organisation. It means a lot more people power, but people power can’t really replace all of the materials that we need,” he said.
“We’d like to actually secure the future for wheelchairs for children.”
To secure this future and help more people Mr Georgatos said the group needed to buy the factory.
“That’d give us the capacity to grow the output,” he said.
“There’s millions of kids (we could help). The more kids we can help, the more lives we touch and communities we help. Then they’ll have the opportunity for education – and that’s one thing that they’re definitely deprived of.”
For more information or to contribute to the project visit the Wheelchairs for Kids website.
Western Australia’s Premier Colin Barnett has signalled what may become a national trend; the finding of budget saves by cutting spending to initiatives assisting Aboriginal peoples. The Closing the Gap targets are being touted by some as having been reached, while others claim otherwise, may begin to spiral out of control once again in the decade ahead with less funding to be made available by Governments.
WA’s Premier Colin Barnett is refusing to sign the Closing the Gap Indigenous health agreement until after his Government’s August Budget. Premier Barnett will only commit to Aboriginal health, and obviously to other areas affecting Aboriginal peoples, after the State Budget and obviously he will commit only what his Budget will arguably allow him.
The National Partnership Agreement (NPA) on Indigenous health targets was signed by all States, Territories and the Federal Government in 2008. $1.57 billion was arguably invested over four years on Aboriginal health – to treat chronic disease in particular but also to better develop Aboriginal health systems.
But trachoma, diabetes, renal failure and hearing loss are at horrific levels among Aboriginal peoples, especially among the poorest 200,000 Aboriginal peoples, of whom more than 100,000 thousand live in what have been described as third-world conditions by many, including UN High Commissioner Navi Pillay, Amnesty International Secretary-General Shalil Shetty and world-renowned documentary film maker John Pilger.
The NPA agreement is up on June 30, and a new one needs to be signed but there is no way that WA, Australia’s richest State, will sign it before then.
Despite the WA Government stating that it will interim fund the initiative for another three months past June 30, it will not commit to the spending on Aboriginal health initiatives that is being asked of WA at this time, not till after the August State Budget.
Federal Aboriginal Health Minister Warren Snowdon wrote to Premier Barnett to try and secure his signature on the NPA agreement.
“Under the NPA, all Australian Governments have implemented, or are currently implementing, an extensive range of activities to improve Indigenous health outcomes and contribute to closing the gap in life expectancy,” wrote Mr Snowdon to Premier Barnett.
Insiders have told The Stringer that Premier Barnett intends “less will be spent on Aboriginal health but it will be spent more effectively.”
Coalition leader Tony Abbott earlier in the year told the National Indigenous Times that if he became Prime Minister he would take direct control of Aboriginal Affairs, adding it as portfolio – Prime Minister of Aboriginal Affairs, and that he will work alongside Northern Territorian Nigel Scullion in addressing Aboriginal Affairs – the closing of the gap, health, education and housing.
The Stringer has been told by sources close to Mr Abbott that he too, like his fellow Liberal, Premier Barnett, will take control of how much is to be spent on Aboriginal initiatives. He is bent on making financial saves. The Stringer has been told that Mr Abbott, if and when Prime Minister, will engage a powerful troika to “better executive spending” and from the “bottom end up”. Mr Abbott wants to do away with spending on the heavy bureaucracy and the numerous consultants of Aboriginal Affairs.
“He wants to spend funds directly on addressing alcoholism, on getting kids into schools, on providing services, on getting people into jobs.”
“Some can call this assimilation but in the end it’s about changing lives that everyone and everything else tried has failed to do.”
The powerful troika that is being touted behind the scenes but yet to be announced is Warren Mundine, Professor Marcia Langton and Noel Pearson.
These three are well credentialed but also highly controversial figures who have polarised Aboriginal peoples. Mr Pearson is probably the most controversial of the three with hundreds of millions of Government funding that his Cape York Institute has received yet to show any real advances for the people of the York peninsula. Aurukun is an embarrassment for Mr Pearson.
The Stringer posed the question of the troika to Mr Abbott’s office. For the first time they have decided to not respond to the National Indigenous Times. In other words they will neither confirm or deny the troika – but our sources are on the money.
It is a huge gamble to take, at the expense of impoverished Aboriginal peoples, to reduce expenditure on Aboriginal health, education and housing when clearly many targets are still not being met. Ideally it would have been wiser to maintain at least current spending but reduce bureaucracy and the number of consultants.
The Federal Government in its May Budget committed more spending on Aboriginal programs but this does not mean this spending will be met past September 14.
In WA it looks like Aboriginal spending will take a huge hit, one that the mining rich State’s Aboriginal peoples cannot afford. WA, alongside the NT, has Aboriginal homelessness, youth suicide and health issues such as trachoma and otitis media at horrific levels and with some at world record levels. Aboriginal incarceration rates in Western Australia are a national tragedy with one in 14 Aboriginal adult males in prison, the worst incarceration rate in the world.
Premier Barnett is bracing WA for austerity measures, not dissimilar to Queensland where Premier Campbell Newman will do away with 66,000 public service positions over the next five years.
Already Premier Barnett has confirmed that 1,000 public service jobs will go. Therefore more direct control from ministerial offices will be needed in many areas, for instance Aboriginal Affairs, which will see Premier Barnett and the State’s Aboriginal Affairs Minister Peter Collier more involved – and in making and acquitting the decisions of where and how any funding to Aboriginal programs should be spent.
The Stringer will cover a number of issues in the weeks ahead – the troika of Mundine, Langton and Pearson, and their own track records, and the burden they will be carrying for Aboriginal peoples. The Stringer is also aware of looming changes to the Native Title Act and processes which yes will expedite determinations and future acts and compensation payouts before ‘people die waiting’ but which will be peddled with the express intention to speed up Indigenous Land Access Agreements and tenement tenure for extractive industry miners and developers – it will not be about the Native Title Holders and their rights, it will be about encouraging mining projects.
http://thestringer.com.au/aboriginal-affairs-under-fire-funding-cuts-guaranteed/#.Ubj3O98iPIU
14 June 2013, 7:30pm
Event Cinemas George Street , NSW
Purchase tickets online at sff.org.au
Dir: Ned Lander, Australia, 80mins Prod: Graeme Isaac, Ned Lander, Writ: Graeme Isaac, Ned Lander
Roads, rock and racism! This iconic ’80s film, hailed as a game changer, has been brought back to life frame by painstaking frame. The soundtrack, in all its reggae-infused glory, has been restored to the filmmaker’s original vision. The film follows two days in the lives of Aboriginal bands Us Mob and No Fixed Address, as they trek from Port Adelaide to Point Pearce, South Australia.
The co-writers and band members – Bart Willoughby, Chris Jones, John Miller, Veronica Rankine, Ronnie Ansell, Peter ‘Pedro’ Butler and Wally McArthur – play themselves. The story is based on their real-life experiences and those of their community. Us Mob favours hard rock, No Fixed Address prefers a Jamaican reggae beat. This uncompromising film and its empowering music is as fresh and relevant today as it was 32 years ago.
‘Possesses a rough-edged power and no-holds-barred narrative that combines to make the movie compelling viewing’ – Rolling Stone
This session is presented by the Sydney Film Festival in partnership with the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia (NFSA).
For further information on the Sydney Film Festival please visit sff.org.au.
Photo – http://www.veteranstoday.com
In all of the states with relatively high American Indian populations, incarceration rates average four times that of non-Indians. For example, in Montana, American Indians are 6% of the population, but represent more than 20% of the people in prison. American Indian women represent the same 6% but are 32% of incarcerated women in the state. Indians across the nation also receive relatively longer sentences and have significantly higher suicide rates (Wagner, 2004).[1] With the highest school dropout rates of any minority group, the school to prison pipeline is of major concern. In South Dakota, the statistics are about the same as Montanna’s, and after living there and working as Dean of Education of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, I saw a number of “pipeline” stories throughout the state. In this essay, I combine the facts surrounding a number of cases and write an otherwise fictional narrative that combines them into one story.
The phone was on its third ring. Too early for a Sunday morning call, Mary Red Plume considered not answering it. She had been awake and warm under the covers, working on the gumption to get up in the freezing trailer to start a fire in the stove. She could barely imagine how cold were her friends and relatives who lived in much older trailer homes on the reservation miles away. She remembered when she was younger and lived in one that used only cardboard for windows. With no stove, her father lit wood fires on a sheet of metal placed on the floor. The roof was so full of leaks; the heat would melt the snow, causing it to drip into well-placed pots. Fortunately, the breaks in the roof filtered out just enough smoke to prevent everyone from asphyxiating. Years later her father had been the recipient of a grant-funded project that “loaned” him a new trailer home equipped with a real stove. This was the home she still occupied.
Reluctantly, she answered the phone. The caller was Rick Two Bears. He said he had bad news for her and that he would be at her place in five minutes. She got dressed slowly, lit the newspapers she had placed carefully under the wood the night before, and put a pot of water on top of the stove. By the time Rick knocked on the door, the coffee was made. He apologized for being a little late, explaining he had slid his truck off the road and had to wait for some buddies to pull it back on. Mary sat quietly, sipping and nodding for him to say what he had come to say.
All she heard was “Tommy is no longer with us.” She blanked the rest of the details out. Rick watched as she went to the kitchen and took a small stake knife off of the table. She began cutting her graying hair and chanting a song he had heard too many times before. He knew too well how many young Indian youth killed themselves on and off reservations across the country. He had read that boys committed suicide ten times more often than the national average for children of all races in the U.S. and girls were double that, but it was not the statistics he considered. Rather he was counting the number of children whose funerals he had attended in the past few months. He thought how he himself had considered suicide often throughout his school days and later when he scavenged the garbage cans for remnants of alcohol lurking in the bottom of bottles. Saved by a commitment to his Sun Dance vows, he had tried several times to get Tommy to join him in this sacred ritual. But Tommy, like many others his age laughed at the traditional ways. After all, school had convinced him long ago to dismiss such traditions. What frightened Rick the most was how the idea of suicide somehow seemed a normal option for his people.
That Tommy had killed himself could not be a surprise to his mother. She sang louder as she sliced her long hair to avoid any chance that she would picture him choked to death by his own belt, rigged as high as he could reach on the cell bars. Rick had described it, with a comment that the jailors hardly ever took the belts away from the boys. Mary pushed out such thoughts and she smiled at the memory of Tommy when he was just two-years of age.
For the first two years after his birth, Mary, reared traditionally herself, young and unmarried, carried Tommy in a back cradle. As a result, he spent much time observing his natural environment. Surrounded by wilderness, he spent hours listening to the bird and animal sounds while his mom shucked corn outside their dilapidated trailer several miles from the dirt road that wound through the pine strewn hills for another six miles before hitting the paved road that was twenty more miles from the closest elementary school. Mary had never been to school herself. Her father, who had suffered through the horrors of boarding school, used all of his skills and influences to keep her away from the “white man’s education.” She earned money to help cover basic expenses on weekends in by selling her remarkable artistry and beadwork to tourists who passed by where the dirt road met the paved highway.
By the time Tommy was seven, he could mimic almost every bird and animal in the woods and on the plains. He spoke his Native language beautifully and possessed the patience, honesty and humility that his grandparents’ animal stories cultivated in him. He knew how to hunt and could run like the wind. His grandfather, wanting to follow the traditional ways he had encouraged Mary to do, convinced his daughter to keep Tommy away from the school and did his best to keep Tommy’s existence secret. Word got out about Tommy, however, and one warm spring morning, Mary and her family received a visit from a lady who introduced herself as a child protection specialist assigned “the case” under the auspices of the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) She respectfully interviewed Mary and her parents and talked with Tommy as well. She told them Tommy was the subject of a neglect proceeding and a determination was to be made about whether the state court had jurisdiction over the tribal court or not. The fact that Mary had never gone to school had some significant bearing on outcomes, as did the remoteness of their home and the lack of community, not to mention the criminal record of her grandfather who had been arrested several times in his early days for disorderly conduct. To complicate matters, reservation borderlines had been changed during the past year and the land on which the family lived was no longer legally on the reservation, but now belonged to the state. As such, since Tommy was not technically “domiciled” on the reservation, the state court claimed jurisdiction.
Mary recalled the look of grief in her father’s eyes a week later when he received word from his cousin that the state was mandating involuntary foster care placement and termination of parental rights. Tommy was to be taken away from his family. The next Monday after Mary learned this tragic news, she and Tommy walked and hitchhiked the 26 miles to the school and enrolled him. Mary believed enrolling Tommy, even against her father’s wishes, would prevent him from being taken away. Apparently a school bus came right past where her dirt road met the freeway, so each day they would have only six miles to walk. Moreover, Mary was offered a part-time job helping teach art classes for the children. School began and curiously the state never appeared to take Tommy away. Several months went by and even the Grandfather was starting to admit he had been wrong about keeping Tommy away from school. Tommy seemed to be enjoying himself, at least at first. Because he had not learned to read, however, Tommy had been brought into the first grade with a “special education” label. In addition to not being able to keep up with children his own age in the academic requirements, he was constantly looking out the window and “talking to the birds” as one teacher reported. A psychologist was called and Ritalin was recommended for Tommy. Mary refused to allow it, however, and she was starting to admit her father had been right!
On the fourth month of school, an unhappy Tommy, made fun of by the students and humiliated and punished by the non-Indian teachers from a border town, was called to the director’s office along with Mary. An officer from the state’s child welfare services was waiting. This person was not as friendly as the one who had visited their home. She said that although the ICWA laws were intended to keep Indian families together, the State court was using a judicial exception to the law, quoting an “Existing Indian Family” doctrine, something from The Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997. She showed Mary some papers explaining all of this as well as documentation regarding her father’s Grandfather’s previous arrest record.
Tommy was taken away immediately after the meeting. Mary pleaded in vain. He was not even allowed to return to his home to gather his things or say goodbye to his grandfather and grandmother. Mary called her friend, Rick Two Bears. Rick worked for the reservation police department and had made a few visits to Mary’s weathered trailer home “in the middle of nowhere” with an eye on courtship. Rick drove to the school and found Mary distraught with grief. Her child had been taken away. Rick was not unfamiliar with stories such as this. Foster care had become an economic boon for private group home providers who brought in millions of dollars in state contracts. One in particular, the Evergreen Home for Children, had close connections with the state’s governor. The home had received much of its funding through no-bid contracts as a result. It was as if the schools were making a living off the Indian children. Less than 12 percent of the state’s population was Native but they represented more than 65 percent of the foster home population (Sullivan and Walters, 2011). Rick could not give solace to Mary but his own anger transformed her sense of helplessness into a battle cry.
Within a week of being taken away, Tommy was placed in one of the Evergreen homes located in a mostly white city about 250 miles from the reservation. Mary did everything she could to get Tommy back, but even an attorney Rick managed to have visit her could do nothing. Mary continued to work at the school but never regained her joyful way of being in the world. Two years later, when the new federal NCLB laws came down from the Bush administration requiring all classroom workers in state contract schools to have at least Associate Degrees, Mary was let go (NJTU, 2004). She returned to her efforts at selling her art but only once did she manage to take a bus into the city to visit Tommy before Rick told her he had been moved to a detention center even further away.
By the time Tommy was 11, he had been punished and suspended numerous times from the city schools he attended. Usually the only Indian student in his classes, he fought back against constant teasing. Each time he was singled out as being the instigator of fights and soon branded as “a violent child.” When he was 13, a Mormon couple adopted him. Responding negatively to their strict discipline, he ran away several times and the discipline intensified. One day the sister and brother-in-law of the husband visited Tommy’s new home along with there 11 –year old daughter. While playing cards in the evening, Tommy was discovered “playing doctor” with the little girl in his bedroom. Within an hour the police took Tommy to jail to wait for a court date. He was to be tried as a violent sexual offender. While awaiting his court appearance, he spent four days in an adult cell with three white men. The three men raped him the first night and told him if he said anything they would find him and kill him.
At the hearing when the judge asked Tommy if he had “explored the private parts” of the girl who was the “victim” of his sexual offences, Tommy, who had been taught early on never to tell a lie, nodded his head. It did not matter and was not brought up that the two children were mutually engaged in “playing doctor” and that such “exploration” was no more than the most innocent “peak” at the girl’s blossoming breasts offered when she herself lifted up her shirt. Nor were any culturally relevant understandings offered the judge, a common problem with Indian youth incarceration (AIDA, N.D.)
With his extensive referral history of behaviors which if he had not been Indian would have been ignored or dealt with informally, Tommy was sentenced and sent to a private out-of-state “treatment” facility for youth who were thought to be not suitable for juvenile correctional institutions. With costs over 250 dollars per day charged to the state, these transfers were an economic boon for the service provider. I took three years for Mary to receive letter from the state that was sent to her via the school asking for her to sign her permission for Tommy’s medical treatment if he should need it. She signed it and asked the principal if he could send it back but she never learned where her son had actually been placed.
It was 1999. Tommy was almost 16. This was the year a bill called the “Violent and Repeat Juvenile Offender Accountability and Rehabilitation Act” was passed in the Senate by a vote of 73-25 (S-254, 1999). Senator Paul Wellstone was a member of the Senate minority who opposed the bill because it would eliminate the federal requirement that allows states to address disproportionate minority confinement in the juvenile justice systems. Wellstone argued that minority youth in every state are overrepresented at every stage of the process, from arrest to and especially at the level confinement. In a series of questions put to Republican supporters of the bill, Wellstone asked whether when the police are out there in the streets, and we get to which kids are searched on the streets and which kids are not, you don’t think that has anything to do with race? When we get to the question of which kids are arrested and which kids are not, you don’t think that has anything to do with race today in America? When we get to the question of the evaluation of youth by probation officers, you don’t think that has anything to do with race? When we get to the question of the decision whether to release or detain by a judge, based upon who has the money and who does not have the money to put up a bond, you don’t think that has anything to do with race? And when we get to the question of sentencing, you don’t think that has anything to do with race, Senators? You are sleepwalking through history (Farrell, 1999)
Three years later Senator Wellstone, after speaking against the Iraq war resolution, died in a mysterious plane crash (Four Arrows and Fetzer, 2003)
The staff at the correctional facility where Tommy now resided were young, underpaid and mostly white. Although the laws in the state required reporting physical “take downs,” Tommy had been wrestled to the ground by several hefty counselors a number of times for his fighting with other youth and for his belligerent attitude. Nevertheless, reports were seldom filed. The second week of his stay, he began schooling. When he walked into the classroom, the other children began making fun of his Indianness. When one boy asked him where his tomahawk was and another asked if his squaw mother was a prostitute, Tommy jumped both boys at the same time. Within minutes counselors again had him pinned to the floor. Later he was taken to a small, 3 by 5 concrete room with an iron door and a small window, forced to wear a pink colored jump suit. He spent the night in this solitary confinement with a “suicide watch” staff looking in to check on him. The next morning Tommy was back in the classroom but still in his jumpsuit. The social studies lesson this day was about “the first Americans” as was written on the top of a multiple choice quiz that identified the first Americans as Kit Carson, Davie Crocket and other non-Indian pioneers who made a living exterminating Indians (although this fact was phrased only by referring to them as “Indian fighters.”
The next morning Tommy was taken to the facility’s weekly sexual offender meeting. Staffed with local psychiatrists and psychologists, some from the state and others on the school’s payroll, the system used the traditional Alcoholics Anonymous model. Tommy followed older, seriously harmful sexual offenders in standing before the intimidating group and saying his coached and memorized statement, “My name is Tommy Red Plume and I am a sexual offender.” For the next year, Tommy suffered an education not all that dissimilar from the one his grandfather suffered in boarding schools. Like most Indian prisoners, he was denied release time or home visitations two times more often than his white counterparts. Where the other boys would be merely reprimanded for offenses against him, he received the harshest punishments for lesser offenses that he committed.
Placed in housing with the other boys undergoing sexual offender counseling and fearful he would get raped again, Tommy managed an escape. Run-a-ways were a common event at the facility and boys half frozen by morning were usually picked up several miles down the road or hiding amongst crops in the local fields. It was more than sixty miles to the nearest town. Tommy’s endurance and athletic ability, however, not to mention his early days of tolerating cold weather, allowed him to persevere. He made it to town and fell in with a gang of Indian teenagers.
Most of the children in the gang were between 15 to 17 years of age. Some were escaped foster children but others had run away from abusive homes on the reservation. Often they were arrested for “just being Indian.” When this happened to someone, he would appear in court without parents and without attorneys, but the judges would take their pleas and sentence them anyway. A number of them had been placed in holding cells at one time or another and a few had experienced the same insult that Tommy has suffered. Most of their parents had no idea where their children were. One of the gang members was a beautiful, but obviously not to be taken advantage of, Indian girl around 17 years of age. Remarkably, she had managed to get to high school graduation without experiencing the juvenile justice system. However, when she was not allowed to wear her traditional buckskin dress during the ceremony, she wore it underneath her black robes. Just before she went on stage to get her diploma, she took off the robe. Before she made it to the stage, the principle pulled her aside, reprimanded her, and prevented her from further participation in the ceremony. She knew her brother was in the city gang and decided to chuck it all and join him. In effect, she had become one of the gang’s leaders.
By the time Tommy was 17, he had lived more than a year in the streets. He had been locked up several times and then let go because of overcrowded conditions and political opposition to adult holding cells for youth. In one instance, he made his way back to the reservation to see his mother. His grandmother had passed on and his Grandfather was still mourning her loss. Tommy knew he could not stay and Rick Two Bears drove him back to his gang’s hideout in an abandoned factory. The next week Tommy got drunk in public, was arrested, and was sent to a new private detention facility located only two hours from his reservation. This one, however, was quite different from the others.
The Beaver Trail Youth Ranch was a staff-secured (no fences nor guards) detention facility for youth convicted of various infractions including drive-by shooters from New York and a number of American Indian youths arrested for significantly lessor offences. What was different from the others was that its new director implemented an educational/rehabilitation model based on American Indian values and learning paths. The new program was guided largely by a booklet written by Larry Brendtro, Martin Brokenleg and Steve Van Bockern entitled Reclaiming Youth at Risk published in 1990 by the National Education Service. Based on the belief that American Indian philosophies to child management represent the most effective system of positive discipline ever developed–one based on the empowerment of children, it followed a balanced approach that recognized independence, belonging, mastery and generosity depicted in a “Circle of Courage” medicine wheel. The program director, part-Indian himself, fired more than half the original staff, replacing them with more like-minded and qualified people. He managed to take all the children off their drugs, such as Ritalin, replacing them with “obecalp” pills. (These were actually sugar bills named by spelling placebo backwards.) Soft drink machines were removed from the facility and all students were put on exercise walks daily. Peer culture meetings took control of behavioral issues, with staff sitting outside the youth circles, monitoring and offering help when needed. Horses, cows and pigs were assigned to different youth who took full responsibility for their care. Instead of being locked up or denied exercise opportunities for infractions, students were given chances to “make things right” with logically deduced natural consequences. Within fifteen months of taking over the facility, the director and his new team had managed to reduce physical restraints from 122 per quarter down to less than 20 per quarter. Escape attempts had decreased from a hundred per year to only one.
Tommy thrived in the new environment. Word got out that he was there and Rick Two Bears brought Mary to see Tommy as often as possible, averaging two or three times per month. Tommy’s early childhood skills made him a natural leader and the culturally relevant curriculum and traditional Indigenous approaches to classroom learning brought his reading skills rapidly to grade level by the end of the second year. He participated in traditional ceremonies led by a reservation elder and before his 18th birthday, he had begun preparing for junior college and had submitted two applications for a scholarship. His grandfather passed away and he was allowed to go off campus with Rick to attend the traditional services. He stayed two nights with his mother, who now lived alone in the trailer, and the two caught up on their relationship.
Rick Two Bears had heard about the facility’s radical changes even before he knew Tommy was there. All the Indians were talking about it, it seemed. He also knew its existence was at risk. A number of the conservative and religious right members of the community had written letters of complaint to the juvenile justice administrators. These were the same groups of people who had been responsible for replacing the word, “youth,” with the word, “juvenile,” in the original legislation because the latter word was more detached from possibilities for compassion. They worried that without the more stringent disciplines of the past decade, the community would be at risk. The detention facility was only “staff-secured,” they wrote, and they worried the “inmates” would run away and sneak into their homes and do “God knows what” while the homeowners were sleeping. There was also political pressure from a few owners of other facilities who felt the new model was a bad example. After all, if it worked, as it was obviously doing, this might reduce recidivism and thus reduce profitability, although this was not their argument of course.
True to the prediction, after 18 months of operation, the director of the youth facility was fired. His dismissal came about because he had been ordered to start receiving out of state youth even if medical releases from parents or guardians were not yet on hand. According to the state, too many youth were being sent to other states with more lenient policies. For these reasons, the Youth Ranch was losing money as a result. The director, after consulting with his physicians, learned that this would put the youth at risk if there was ever a need for a serious operation . Additionally , his staff did not have time to find parents or guardians and get signatures as he was being asked. If he could not attain signatures, he would have to continue to require medical release for all new admittances. The next day the head of the larger corporation arrived with apologies, a two-week severance check and a replacement for the director. Within a month, all the innovations were replaced with the standard educational and disciplinary approaches. The children, who were managing well without the drugs, were placed back on their medication regimen .
Two weeks into the “new” program, Tommy overheard one of the newly hired staffers refer to him as a “fucking Indian” in a private conversation with another staffer who laughed and ridiculed the previous director’s affinity for the “savages.” Tommy burst through their office door and jumped both of them. They wrestled him to the ground, called for reinforcements, and Tommy was placed in the concrete solitary room until state police officers arrived. He was taken to the city’s crowded holding facility, placed in an adult cell, again with several drunken Caucasians. At approximately 4:20 AM, according to the coroner, Tommy managed to choke himself to death with his belt. There was nothing spoken about whether or not he was abused by the men as had happened years before.
Epilogue: There are approximately 26,000 American Indians in US jails and prisons. This is a rate of almost 40% higher than in the general population. However, if African-Americans, who constitute about half of all prisoners, are excluded from the calculation, the disproportionality is far worse. The role of “education” and anti-Indianism in all of this is fundamental (Four Arrows, 2013). Too many Indian youth tormented by the hegemony of Western education, then caught in the undercurrents of the social welfare system experience, and further discouraged in youth detention centers, will continue to face what “Tommy” experienced. . In his review of my text, Teaching Truly: A Curriculum to Indigenize Mainstream Education, William Ayer’s speaks to the problem of anti-Indianism with which we must all come to terms when he says that a “spiritual and material collapse” is upon us as a result of a “techno/imperial/capitalist juggernaut” (IBID, backcover). In referring to the goal of incorporating Indigenous value systems and knowledge into our contemporary schooling, Noam Chomsky’s review of the book offers that we must do a better job of taking care of our Indian youth as well as all children, before it is too late: “We must nurture and preserve our common possession, the traditional commons, for future generations, and this must be one of our highest values, or we are all doomed (IBID). doomed.
REFERENCES
American Indian Development (AIDA) (n.d.)
http://www.aidainc.net/Products_Services/mentoring.htm
Farrell, J. 1999) Senate Passes Juvenile Crime Bill S. 254; Wellstone opposed measure over disproportionate minority confinement issue” in common Dreams
http://www.commondreams.org/pressreleases/may99/052199a.htm
Four Arrows and Fetzer, J. (2003) American assassination: The strange death of senator Paul Wellstone. New York: VOX Publishers
Four Arrows (2013) Teaching Truly: A Curriculum to indigenize mainstream education. New York: Peter Lang
New Jersey Teachers Union (2004) “Highly qualified teachers need not apply” The free republic
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1087288/posts
Sullivan, L. and Walters, A. (Oct. 25, 2011). “Native foster care: Lost children, shattered families” National public radio
http://www.npr.org/2011/10/25/141672992/native-foster-care-lost-children-shattered-families
S-254 Bill, 106th Congress.
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c106:S.254
Wagner, P. (Dec. 14, 2004) “Importing constituents” in Prisoners of the census. http://www.prisonersofthecensus.org/montana/importing.html
[1] Because statistics concerning incarceration for whites, blacks and Latinos far outweigh those for American Indians, it is difficult to locate current statistics, but it is likely that these 2004 numbers are even worse today.
Monday 10th June 2013
Today is the 175th Anniversary of the infamous massacre of Aboriginal peoples at Myall Creek in Northern New South Wales which occurred inn June 1838 fifty one (51) years after the British began their penal colony near Sydney cove.
ALBERT NAMATJIRA
(1902 – 1959)
Elea ‘Albert’ Namatjira and his wife Ilkalita ‘Rubina’ in the 1940s http://www.aboriginalartonline.com/art/namatjira.php
Albert Namatjira is one of Australia’s great artists, and perhaps the best known Aboriginal painter.
His western style landscapes – so different to traditional Aboriginal art, made him famous.
Fame led to Albert and his wife becoming the first Aborigines to be granted Australian citizenship.
It was a significant achievement, because at this time Aborigines had few rights.
He wasn’t born Albert.
His parents called him Elea.
But after moving to an Aboriginal mission and adopting Christianity, they baptised and renamed their son.
Mission life was nothing like the life Albert’s people lived in the deserts of the Northern Territory.
That was a lifestyle he knew little about, until he turned thirteen.
At the age of thirteen Albert experienced an important Aboriginal ritual – initiation.
As one of the Aranda tribe, he lived in the bush for six months and was taught traditional laws and customs by tribal elders.
Work as a camel driver took Albert through the country he would later paint, the dreamtime places of his Aranda people.
By this time he had married Ilkalita, a member of a neighbouring community.
The couple built a house near the mission, and Albert supported his growing family by doing odd jobs.
These included making and selling small pieces of artwork.
In 1934 two Melbourne artists visited the mission to exhibit their paintings.
Seeing them, Albert was inspired to paint seriously.
Two years later, he volunteered to show one of the painters, Rex Batterbee, good places to paint.
In exchange, Rex taught Albert how to paint.
Albert was a fast learner.
He thought he had a natural gift, and he was right.
Albert’s first exhibition, held in Melbourne in 1938, sold out.
Exhibitions in Adelaide and Sydney drew similar enthusiasm.
Even the Queen liked his work
Albert was a celebrity, but not always a comfortable one.
It was always a relief for him to leave the big smoke and return to his desert home.
Success brought money – and Albert planned to use it to secure a future for his family.
He wanted to lease a cattle station – but as an Aborigine he wasn’t allowed.
Next he tried to build a house in Alice Springs.
Once again the law prevented him, just because he was Aboriginal.
It was a strange situation.
Here was a man, heralded as a top artist, treated like a celebrity and yet not even allowed to own land.
“He was definitely the beginning of a recognition of Aboriginal people by white Australia.” Charles Perkins
Public outrage at Albert’s predicament pushed the government to grant him and his wife full citizenship in 1957.
This meant they could vote, enter a hotel and build a house anywhere they chose.
It took ten years for the government to grant similar rights to the rest of the Aboriginal population.
As a citizen Albert could now also buy alcohol.
In keeping with Aboriginal custom, Albert’s friends expected him to share any alcohol he bought.
But in doing this he broke white man’s laws.
In 1958, police charged Albert with supplying alcohol to Aboriginal people.
He denied the charge, but the court didn’t believe him.
After two months in prison, Albert emerged a free, but broken man.
He had lost his will to paint, and to live.
Albert Namatjira died in 1959.
He was just fifty-seven years old.
Albert’s life and work have inspired other Aboriginal people to paint.
Among them have been his children and grand-children.
This great painter captured Australia’s heart in artwork and was praised around the world.
His life showed white Australians the injustice of racist laws, and contributed to long overdue changes for his people.
http://www.abc.net.au/schoolstv/australians/namat.htm
Albert Namatjira (1902–59) was one Australia’s most notable artists. His work, watercolour landscapes of Central Australia, is represented in all Australian State art galleries.
Namatjira was born into the Aranda community at the Hermannsburg Lutheran Mission, near Alice Springs, Northern Territory. He was first named Elea but then christened as Albert when his parents adopted Christianity. At 13 years of age Namatjira was initiated into the Aranda community and taught the traditional laws and customs. At 17 he married Ilkalita (Rubina) of the Luritja community. Namatjira met Australian artist Rex Battarbee who visited Hermannsburg in 1934. Battarbee tutored Namatjira in the western tradition of painting and helped him to organise his first exhibition in Melbourne in 1936. This exhibition was a success and Namatjira was encouraged to exhibit his work in Adelaide and Sydney. Other exhibitions of his work followed, especially during the 1950s.
Success brought Namatjira money, which he used to lease a cattle station. Granted in 1949, the lease was cancelled in 1950 when it was realised that cattle grazing in the area would not be viable. Namatjira then attempted to build a house in Alice Springs, but was hampered under the terms of the Aboriginals Ordinance (NT) 1918–1947. Namatjira was granted full citizenship rights in 1957. Unlike many other Aboriginal people of the Northern Territory, Namatjira was then entitled to vote, to live where he wished and to purchase alcohol.
In 1958 the Alice Springs Police charged Namatjira with supplying alcohol to Aboriginal people. He denied the charge and fought the sentence he received in both the Supreme Court and the High Court. His appeals were unsuccessful and he was sentenced to two months in prison. Albert Namatjira died in 1959.
The National Archives holds many records relating to the life and work of Albert Namatjira. Most of these records are held in Canberra or Darwin, but scattered material may also be found in other offices of the Archives. Issues such as the questions over Namatjira’s citizenship rights and his 1958 imprisonment resulted in many personal protests to the Minister responsible for the Northern Territory. These are held in the Department of Territories’ records series A451, and can be identified on RecordSearch by searching on series ‘A451’ and narrowing the result by the keyword ‘namatjira’.
Mollie Dyer (1927- 1998)
Mollie Dyer was born of Yorta Yorta descent and she was instrumental in establishing the first Aboriginal Child Carte service in 1977 which later became the Victorian Aboriginal Child Care Agency (VACCA). Mollie became its first Program Director and lobbied extensively to government for greater Aboriginal community say over vulnerable and at risk children. Mollie fostered 20 children from Aboriginal communities in Victoria, as well as having six of her own. She advocated for the adoption legislation in Victoria to prevent Aboriginal families unnecessarily surrendering their children and was involved with the establishment of the Secretariat of National Aboriginal and Islander Child Care (SNAICC) in the early 1980s.
Mollie received an Advance Australia medal and an Order of Australia award for ‘her outstanding contribution to the advancement and enrichment of Australia, its people and its way of life’. Mollie’s amazing life story was recorded in her autobiography ‘Room for One More: the Life of Mollie Dyer’ which was launched in 2003.
http://www.vacca.org/support-vacca/life-members/
(1924 – 1998)
Shirley Smith is a woman with a big heart.
Everyone knows her as ‘Mum Shirl ‘- she’s been a ‘Mum’ to hundreds.
She’s always been there for people in trouble… people in jail, people without homes, people without families, people who’ve lost hope.
When asked where her amazing capacity to care comes from, Mum Shirl says simply she was brought up by the right people.
Mum Shirl was one of fourteen children born to Aboriginal parents living on a mission in New South Wales.
They named her Colleen Shirley Perry.
Looking after such a large family was exhausting for her parents, so Colleen went to live with her grandparents.
She was born with epilepsy, which meant she could have a fit at any time.
“When I was born, even white people didn’t know what epilepsy was.”
Colleen’s grandfather – whom she called ‘Budjarn’(pron – boodjarn)- looked after her.
“My grandfather was the most powerful and gentlest man that God gave breath to.”
“My grandfather said to me ‘You have to first love yourself, and spread it around’. “
Colleen moved with her family to Sydney in the mid 1930s.
Not long after the move, one of Colleen’s brother’s went to gaol.
“She loved him desperately, and it seems to me that love drove her in to see him.” Rev Kennedy – (Redfern Cath priest)
But Colleen didn’t just see her brother. She began to visit other prisoners too.
And she kept visiting them even after her brother’s release.
“He said to me “I’ll never go back but that doesn’t mean you can’t stop there because my friends are in there and they need someone like you to talk to.” Ron Woodham – (NSW Corrective Services)
“I think the fact she was known as Mum Shirl explains itself, that they had this motherly figure and they would take notice of her.”
One of the most valuable things Mum Shirl did for prisoners was to track down their relatives.
“Once she knew a name she’d be able to tell them who their grandparents were, and their parents, and what mob they were from and where they originated – and really put them in their place.” (Woodham)
Because of her good work, Mum Shirl is the only woman in Australia to have been given unrestricted access to prisons in New South Wales.
“She’d be at one end of the state one day, and seen at the other end of the state the next day. The department wasn’t getting her from A to B. She used to rely on family and friends to get her around.” (Woodham)
Living within the Aboriginal community of Redfern, Mum Shirl learned about what her people needed.
In 1971, she co-founded Australia’s first Aboriginal medical service, and then made sure it had plenty of business!
“If people were in need of medical care and were perhaps a little slow in coming forward, in her estimation, she’d bully them, cajole them, practically drag them into the clinic and say ‘here, I brought you another one’.” Dulcie Flower (Aboriginal Medical Service)
During the 1970s Aboriginal people became more active in such issues as land rights.
And often there would be Mum Shirl, right in the thick of things.
“She has that added fearlessness of being able to cope with white bureacracy.” Rev Kennedy
This fearlessness frequently found Mum Shirl in courthouses, acting as a guardian for people in trouble with the law.
“She would come into court and speak for people, and offer to go bail for them and take them home, and so a lot of people who would have ended up in jail, because of Mum Shirl, got looked after.”
This policy of giving shelter to anyone in need made life a bit crowded in Mum Shirl’s house.
“Always a full house at Aunty Shirl’s, yes, always a full house.” (Benefit Night)
Mum Shirl is elderly now … and in need of care herself.
This benefit night, held in late 1995, was to raise funds to make her life more comfortable.
It was a rare chance for those who had experienced Mum shirl’s extraordinary kindness to return it.
“It’s going to be a long time before anyone takes the place of Mumshirl.” (Benefit Night)
“She’s like the ocean, and it’s very hard to see where her limits
end.” (Kennedy)
“She is greatly missed.” (Woodham)
http://www.abc.net.au/schoolstv/australians/smith.htm
Address delivered by Ted Kennedy May 4 1998
on the occasion of the funeral of Shirley Smith
St Mary’s Cathedral Sydney
“Mum Shirl” was born Colleen Shirley Perry on 22nd November 1924 at Cowra. She was born into what many whites accepted as pre-ordained penury. It is significant that even the two surnames she ever bore were borrowed from an alien culture – Perry from Perry’s Circus, and her husband Darcy Smith was assigned his name as a boxing pseudonym. That branch of her grandfather’s proud traditional name, Boney, was destined to be consigned to oblivion. Like the shabby ill-fitting 2nd-hand clothing that aboriginal people are required to settle for, her family was supposed to accept a false and borrowed name. Such is the way of the inexorable effects of ongoing colonisation. The devastating spoliation extends even to nomenclature. Even the colloquial name for her birthplace Erambie, West Cowra, was “Bagtown”.
It seemed to accent the precarious makeshift existence she was born into. Her birth-date and birth-place silently mark the centenary of the awful tragedy for her tribe the Wiradjuri. One hundred years before, Governor Thomas Brisbane proclaimed Martial Law which virtually amounted to open season of gunfire on the Wiradjuri tribe. The Governor’s edict extended from 14th August 1824 until 11th December 1824. In excess of 100 blacks most of them women and children lay dead. William Cox, Sen, a pastoralist with impeccable family connections and impeccable British manners called on the 49th Regiment to “shoot all the Blacks and manure the ground with their carcasses”.
So the army did. No charges were ever laid; no official account ever given. More than 100 of tile Wiradjuri were massacred; the whole Wiradjuri tribe was cast into mourning. Such is the oral living memory of aboriginal people that – 100 years is but a day when it comes to freshness of memory.
Shirley Perry was born into the unrelenting sorrow and grieving of her tribe. In addition; to be born at Erambie Mission in 1924 was to experience the full brunt of the suffocating power and control of the dreaded Aboriginal Protection Board. As Shirley would later stress in an interview with Kevin Gilbert in 1977 “I’ll tell (what is an aboriginal). An aboriginal is anyone who knows what it was like down at Erambie Mission West Cowra, thirty years ago. An aboriginal is anyone that lived down there with me that knew what it was like”. (Living Black p.251)
It is of the essence of Mum Shirl that she carried in her inner spirit the unfadeable, undilutable memories of her race. In the face of that on-going, ever-present pain she stood as one for whom memory was a sacred trust. That is why it is sickening to hear some whites speak as if time of itself should erase the past, particularly when they have done nothing to case it. The impatient desire that some people express to get things over with is in itself a sign of deep insecurity, and of being out of touch with human nature. We are governed today as if reality itself were subject to a sunset clause. In repudiating a so called “black arm band” view of history this government stands, in uneducated ignorance of what has been established in cross-cultural science, that shameful mechanisms of denial perpetuate grieving and cause ongoing pain. While they might mount sonic sort of case that they arc not now physically bashing blacks, it remains quite clear that while they govern; in shameful dishonour and in incredible insensitivity, the same pathology o William Cox Sen the pastoralist lives on. We have indeed a government without a soul.
We have witnessed in our own time in South Africa, under the leadership of Nelson Mandela, the largeness of heart which bears out the prayer of Francis of Assisi that the forgiving heart is the necessary prelude to a heart forgiven. It is in pardoning that we are pardoned. The South African Trust and Reconciliation Commission has gone such a long way towards setting a whole nation on a path of healing, whereas the forlorn figure of P W Botha recently protesting a clear conscience seems to be expecting pardon at dirt cheap rates without going through the anguish of asking for it, or indeed, of giving the slightest indication of sorrow.
There are analogies we must draw from South Africa for our own country. Guilt, as Pat Dodson rightly says, is a wasted emotion. But shame is another matter. We must accept the shame that all the good things which white Australians now enjoy – good things that are the envy of the world which scent to sparkle the more in the Australian sunlight, we must in all honesty and shame admit that none of the benefits that we now enjoy were acquired except at the horrific expense of massacre and unbelievable grief and starvation, including the snatching of children of Aboriginal people in the past, of selfish grabbing of entitlements from Aboriginal people today. So that whether our ancestors arrived on the first fleet, or we are new migrants who came on the last plane, we must accept the shame, and indeed scream out our shame that clearly identifiable pathologies of the colonizer are re-emerging today. In the end, of course, our continuing neo-colonizers will lose; the price they seemingly must pay for the attempts to extinguish native title would seem to be a self dealing deathful extinguishment of any possible whispering of sacred honour in their own hearts.
As I stand here today looking back over more years than I like to count, I think of the times beyond all counting when I have by my own insensitivity hurt or insulted so many Aborigines. I can say with enormous gratitude to them that in all my days I have never known one to refuse my apologies. Koories are themselves great forgivers. That is why there is a profound poignancy in the contrast that our present Government cannot find the heart to offer them an official word of apology.
All Aborigines today stand in bewildered disbelief when yet the call from Aboriginal people across this land, for an apology for the “stolen generations” and for all the other crimes committed against Aboriginal people, has not been heeded. In the words of Mr Gatjil Djerrkura Chairperson of ATSIC:
The defence of ignorance is no longer available. Individual Australians are not responsible for the past actions of others. But if Australians fail to respond to what you now know, that is another thing. We should not be preoccupied with the material, with the possible cost of compensation, but the words – the fact that we are prepared to say them and acknowledge the fact. That is what means the most to my people, and that is why the Federal Government must apologise.
Shirley was always capable of uncovering this dirty secret of compromise, in uncompromising scarifying language. She stayed unremittingly and derisively on the hard edge of political awareness. In a deceptively unlettered way she mustered a literacy and a direct eloquence that was hard to beat. She stood out from the crowd in that she was incredibly like every single individual in the crowd. She was different only because she was open to all. I think I have never met anyone like her to put people at their ease, a capacity to free peoples’ anxiety, which allowed them to confide in her totally. It was a capacity to comfort the afflicted but never suggesting that she would not afflict the comfortable. She chose to stay in the street world of Aboriginal life in such a way that she was like the flagship of the fleet that had to accommodate its speed to the slowest ship in the fleet.
There was a memorable event late in 1980 when the first ever National Conference of Catholic Social Workers was held at St Joseph’s College, Hunters Hill. Mum Shirl was not invited. In fact no Aboriginals were invited. So she gathered a group of friends and gate-crashed the Conference. As the invited guests returned from dinner to the auditorium where there were a dozen tables with white tablecloths and empty and half empty beer bottles Shirley went to the microphone, and tried to address them, but the guests went on talking. Shirley then proceeded one by one, to tear tablecloths from the tables. The bottles crashed and rolled and splashed, the scene was remarkably reminiscent of the Titanic collision. In the scurry of legs, by the way, the Bishops were the first group to make themselves scarce. Someone staggered downstairs to call for help from Paul Collins who was the official coordinator of the Convention saying that an Aboriginal woman upstairs had gone berserk. That’s when Paul Collins made his famous remark, “But there are 300 social workers up there. That should be enough”.
We whites are slow learners. Often it is only when the inner life of Aborigines reaches epidemic proportions of pain that we acknowledge puzzlingly that something must be wrong. So with the reality of Black Deaths in Custody. We remain guarded and grudging in the ways that we acknowledge, we keep protecting ourselves so that nothing seems to change in our lives. We continue on the escalator, using receding time as an anaesthetic, and we show impatience if people continue to hold the memory which means holding up the mirror of truth that draws our anger. We mutter half-heartedly the need for political answers.
But it was that stark social phenomenon of blacks dying in custody and the continuing pain of the “Stolen Generations” which Mum Shirl always knew in her bones that caused her to confront the harsh reality at a personal level and that was at the deepest political level of all. And she recognised early the promise of the youth and would burst with pride in those taking on the struggle, among them her beloved Paul, Isabel and Jenny Coe, Gary Foley and Charlie Perkins who will soon speak.
From the time she was sixteen, when white institutions would have been enough to stifle the confidence of any timid aboriginal girl, she set herself against the whole draconian system and so responded to the excruciating solitude of prisoners and by her incessant visiting, she gave them solace. She was untiring in giving herself to them and in crashing through the loneliness. For hundreds of prisoners black and white her visits were the only ones to look forward to. The blacks only because often their loved ones could not afford the cost of travel, and the whites, so often because their family could not afford the embarrassment.
A life-size seated image of Mum Shirl done by the sculptor Bill Clements, a personal friend of Mum Shirl, is in existence. It has to be cast in bronze, and placed in relation to excerpts from her autobiography. Funds for this will be needed and a suitable place in the city will need to be found, but it ought to be a permanent reminder to this city of over-dogs of what she meant to the under-dogs. The lesson that Shirley tried to teach us by example was to get to know and love the poor. And because the poor still go to prison in droves your pre-existing friendship will naturally force you to follow them there.
Her very presence set her as one nobly distinguished. Yet her distinction lay in that she made no distinction among people. Her deepest heart was for the “goomies”, those addicted to White Lady, or Methylated Spirits. She took in and lived with their terror described by the aboriginal poet Jack Davis.
We are tired of the benches, our beds in the park
We welcome the sundown that heralds the dark.
White Lady Methylate, keep us warns and from crying
Hold back the hate, and hasten the dying
She intuitively recognised the same sort of desperate terror in the hordes of Aboriginal people incarcerated in Australian jails. She knew exactly what Robert Walker was writing about in his poem “Solitary Confinement”
Have you ever been ordered to strip
before half a dozen barking eyes,
Forcing you against a wall.
Ordering you to part your legs and bend over?
Have you ever had a door slammed
Locking you out of the world, Propelling you Into timeless space –
To the emptiness of silence?
Have you ever laid on a wooden bed –
In regulation pyjamas,
And tried to get a bucket to talk –
In all seriousness?
Have you ever begged for blankets
From an eye staring through a hole in the door,
Rubbing at the cold air digging into your flesh
Biting down on your bottom lip, while mouthing “Please Sir”?
She grieved with an inconsolable grief, as she did with all the others, when Robert Walker finally found death more attractive, took a sock, and hanged himself.
The number of children who once called her “Mummy” is beyond counting, the only mothering one they were ever allowed to know.
“My son, your troubled eyes search mine
Puzzled and hurt by colour line,
Your black skin soft as velvet shine:
What can I tell you, son of mine?
I could tell you of heart break, hatred blind.
I could tell you of crimes that shame mankind,
Of brutal wrong and deeds malign,
Of rape and murder, son of mine.
For the sake of all these countless little ones whose eyes met hers, she maintained a playfulness and a light heartedness, and she begged and borrowed that they might be spared the insecurity and the penury she once knew. It was all important to her that she would give them hope.
But I’ll tell instead of brave and fine
When lives of black and white entwine,
And men in brotherhood combine
This would I tell you, son of mine
(Oodgeroo Noonuccal)
Therein lay the real miracle of Mum Shirl, that while never trying to block out the pain she held on to hope, and thereby held out hope, especially to the young ones.
Look up my people,
The dawn is breaking
The World is waking
To a new bright day,
When none defame us
No restrictions harm us
Nor colour shame us
Nor sneer dismay
(Oodgeroo Noonuccal)
That is why she could always recognise a white ally when she saw one whether it be Germaine Greer or Fred Hollows or Nugget Coombs. She could hold out the hope that these could contribute to a bright new day for her people.
There is hardly a street in the whole of South Sydney where Shirley did not once rent a house, where a dozen little black faces looked out on an alien sometimes hostile world where Shirley offered a safe and secure shelter.
She welcomed the Gospel like a little child. She thirstingly swallowed the Gospel whole, never prepared to spit out the bits that we whites find unsavoury or uncomfortable. In this she remained quintessentially aboriginal. She would, I think, happily take as an epitaph Jack Davis” reminder to white Christians.
This is the pattern your ordered mind
Has forgotten, this way of perceiving
That survival, through sharing and sharing, my friend
Was the Carpenter’s way of believing
Shirley was able to give a new meaning – a new depth and breadth to Australian Feminism. Many a female activist has been inspired by her to uncover the male-directed dominance and control that underpinned every aspect of colonization. I have sometimes counted myself privileged to stand within earshot of Shirley’s own hushed reverence for some poor powerless woman, for Shirley a sacred moment of recognition, for the woman a moment of grace. Such were the millions of moments in Shirley’s life, in the after-hours from 5 pin to 9 am when she responded indefatigably to incessant emergency calls in the night. The film “once were warriors” gives just some intimation of what Shirley knew by heart. I recall there were nights when I would call her five times to meet some emergency: unfailingly she gave this unpaid service.
And there was always the aftermath to the incidents of the night, and Shirley would be there without fail to defend the powerless against overwhelming power whether that power was that of the police, the legal system, the bureaucracy of hospitals, or capitalism in all its forms, all designed to cripple blacks. Here was this extraordinary defiant woman giving warning that if they tried to crush the little ones they’d. have her and her handbag to contend with.
Sometimes I think that it was at that point when her heart might break that the kindness of nature took over and gently lifted her into a kind of sleep that shielded her from further grieving. Laurie Perry, her beloved brother, was acquitted of a trumped up charge, but not before he had suffered a stroke and a heart attack and had lost his speech. Now he was dead. And her beloved Dianne too, the pride and joy of her life was dead. A heart can hold only so much grief.
In the ghetto streets of Redfern
prowls the battler on the dole
the Blacks still free come morning
who survived the nightpatrol
and paddy waggon coffins
who only ply their trade
where politicians don’t count votes
police training grounds are made
(Kevin Gilbert)
Christian Hope for her transcended both pessimism and optimism. It called her to expect God to intervene in the face of despair. She woke up each morning expectantly-expecting God to do that. She never had to wait around, because always, always some rejected person would come around the corner who of course was Christ himself. She had had enough of the phoney Christians who try to peddle a poor-free Christ who is in fact a phoney Christ, not Christ at all. Mum Shirl was, I think, the greatest theologian I have ever known. As a mystical or spiritual theologian, she could beat the socks off Hildegarde of Bingen or Julian of Norwich. She once said “If you can’t find anyone to hang on the Cross between two thieves, I will.”
I’ll end now with a poem by Kevin Gilbert the Wiradgeri poet called “Epitaph”:
Weep not for me for Death is
but the vehicle that unites my soul
with the Creative Essence, God.
My spiritual Being, my love is
still with you, where ever you are
until forever.
You will find me in the quiet moments
in the trees, amidst the rocks,
the cloud and beams of sunshine
indeed, everywhere for I, too, am
a part of the total essence of
creation that radiates everywhere
about you, eternally.
Life, after all, is just a
passing phase.
(Kevin Gilbert)
May black angels lead her into paradise. May Our Lady of the Sacred Heart and St Martin de Porres, the Black Saint be there to welcome her on her way. And may she with Lazarus who was once poor have everlasting rest.
by Fr Ted Kennedy
© Read it first, then copy it right
http://church-mouse.lanuera.com/homilies/ID_OMILYONTHEOCCASIONOFTHEFUNERALOFSHIRLEYSMITH_2XT10.html
“I’m his mum.”
WOMAN HERO: MUM SHIRL
by Sofia & Stefania from Melbourne
http://www.gadigal.org Mum Shirl http://www.gadigal.org
Colleen Shirley Perry Smith was born in Cowra, New South Wales, Australia, on November 22, 1924, and died on the April 28, 1998, when she was 73 years old. She suffered epilepsy all her life. She was also known as the “Black Saint” of Redfern.Shirley did not go to an ordinary school because of her epilepsy. Instead, she was taught by her grandfather and learned to speak 16 different Aboriginal languages. In the 1930s her mum and dad (Isabell and Joseph) moved their family to Sydney.
Colleen Shirley Perry Smith http://www.delorenzo.ozforces.com.au
When her brother went to jail, Shirley would go to visit him. When she visited, other prisoners enjoyed her company. When her brother was released the authorities told him he wasn’t allowed to come back to see his friends. Colleen went for him. When she went back, the authorities would ask her “What relation do you have to the prisoner?” She would answer, “I’m his mum.” That is how she got to be known as ‘Mum Shirl’.
As she visited more and more prisoners, the authorities started to recognise the support she had for prisoners. So they started to allow her access to any prisoner she wished to visit. She acted as a mother to many.
Mum Shirl
In addition to her ‘Prisoner Life,’ Mum Shirl also helped children find homes and families. Another thing on Colleen’s list was to establish the Aboriginal Legal Service. By 1990 she had brought up 60 children.
We class Mum Shirl as a hero because of her help to the Australian community, prisoners and children.
College girls participate in a basic judo camp for self-defence in Ahmedabad on January 5, 2013. The recent Delhi gang-rape is forcing women and girls to protect themselves with basic defence skills like judo and karate. Photo: AFP
A society that had become desensitised to violence against women is now demanding change. Apart from changes in policing and laws training in self-defence can empower women and also build up trust with the police.
“Agitation is the marshalling of the consciousness of a nation to mould its laws”, remarked Robert Peel. The sheer brazenness of perpetrators of violence against women denies the victim’s right to justice and redress. It has led to a cry for stronger laws and harshest punishment to serve as deterrence to such crimes. It’s not just the severity, but the certainty of punishment along with swiftness that ensures its efficacy. Lynch mob mentality spells danger to the rule of law. An effective justice delivery system is the need of the hour. In fact, Thomson Reuters in its report has ranked India fourth along with Afghanistan, Congo and Somalia as the most dangerous place for women. Not a single day passes without incidents of violence against women, many of which may also go unreported.
Mindset of a victim
The continuum of violence against women starts from pre-birth till death. In fact, “victimness” has become a part of the social construction of the “female”. As girls we learn early in life to ignore the whistles, catcalls, stares and lecherous behaviour. We get conditioned to avoidance behaviour — avoid going out late, avoid being alone — and we can’t step out of homes, assured of our total safety. Are women alone responsible for their safety? Is restricted mobility and autonomy a solution? Howsoever secure the child is in the mother’s womb, it cannot obviously be there forever. Girls have to move out of home and society has a duty in providing a secure environment and this duty is cast upon everyone, particularly the law enforcement machinery.
The learnt helplessness in girls rarely gets challenged. One of the first lessons at the start of my career was how not to be either a victim or a mute spectator. I have seen that even educated, empowered women may continue being victimised. Law can regulate human behaviour, but changes in values and attitudes are urgently needed to reshape an India that is safe for women. Hence, legal reforms need to be supplemented by social reforms as violence against women will not end overnight. Gender-based violence is deeply rooted in our culture and social relations between sexes. It should not be forgotten that persons who are in the legal system are also products of society, and their behaviour reflects this.
I have a favourite question that I ask the heads of the police: “In this 21st century how safe would you feel if a woman from your family is required to visit a police thana at night?” That’s an indicator of how much trust you have been able to generate. This aspect needs introspection in order to improve the perceptions of safety and trust that have been lost. Making more police women available also is not the ultimate answer since they too absorb the masculine culture. Some police women may themselves feel unsafe in the presence of male colleagues!
Community policing
Gender-sensitive policing requires constant training, and public evaluation. There is a need to have key performance indicators for gender responsive and gender-sensitive policing. Community policing experiments carried out in this regard, particularly teaching girls self-defence by the police will serve the dual purpose of empowering women and also build up trust with the police. Aspects of crime prevention need a special focus and community policing has to be in the spirit of true partnership. It will require a more visible leadership in the police that strives to create faith, and trust in the community in order to bring order in the system.
How safe do victims feel in approaching the police? After a crime takes place, the first step towards seeking justice is lodging an FIR. The recent incident of a rape victim committing suicide in Patiala district, and another case of Sarita who had consumed poison in front of Haryana police headquarters around four years ago was due to the fact that victims were not heard, were disbelieved. The names of victims may differ, but their problems in struggle for justice remain almost the same. The police at large fails to recognise that rape is not just unwanted sex; it’s a highly traumatic event. Rape victims suffer disintegration of their inner world. The survivors may end up being victimised over and over again and at times many may attempt suicide in their battle for justice.
The justice system
In India very few officers in the criminal justice system – the police, prosecution and the judiciary are aware of the rape trauma syndrome. Research has shown that rape victims suffer a significant degree of psychological trauma during, immediately following and for a considerable time after they have been raped. There are a specific set of physical, cognitive, behavioural and emotional symptoms that may be seen in survivors over time.
The time it takes to recover fully varies for each survivor, depending upon the support systems available as well. In fact, in the courts of South Africa and other countries, this syndrome is introduced as evidence. Victim impact statements must be a part of the sentencing process in India. Aside from deterrence, measures to alleviate the trauma of sufferers are much needed.
Few women, even highly educated amongst us, know what to do if a sexual assault takes place. Valuable evidence may then get lost. It is time that we educate our girls to be prepared and have support systems in place when an incident happens. Rape crisis centres should be set up to help the victims immediate medical and health needs. In the aftermath of an attack, the victim is in a struggle to take back control of her life. Victim blaming takes many forms — in terms of dress, what were you doing etc. Compounding the problem may be reactions of the family, friends, co-workers and the police who ask many of the same questions. These myths — like rape victims invite it themselves, it cannot be without the woman’s consent, most of the rape complaints are fake etc — exist in all countries. Addressing this issue is very important. There is a need to raise awareness and dispel the myths that effectively affect outcomes for victims and the confidence in criminal justice system. Rape is one of the most traumatic events that leave their irreversible impact on victims. Counselling can help these victims to deal with their fear and also cope with the psychological impact of the attack. Rape victims may have to confront different types of fear. The initial response from victims may be of rage, fear, worthlessness, guilt/blame. The initial feelings of shock and disbelief are followed by bewilderment, fright, rage and despair. Victims need time to sort out their emotions before they can come to grips with reporting an incident to the police. Healing takes time and even family members need help in coping with the trauma.
Issue of child abuse
Another sensitive issue is of child sexual abuse. These have an even deeper impact on the emotional instability of the victim. Imagine the trauma of being raped by someone you trusted and loved or the trauma of no longer feeling safe in your own home. These are the disturbing dynamics that increase the severity of the impact of abuse by a known person. The Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, 2012, has specifically defined the sexual offences against children and the punishments along with having child friendly procedures for reporting and trial process.
Awareness of this particular law is needed especially amongst the law enforcers so that the rights of children are protected. It is also essential that we do not shy away from discussing child abuse in a language that children understand. Crime prevention strategies have to start early. It is easy to make laws, but the real challenge always lies in effectively enforcing and implementing them. We need action, not platitudes; there is a need to create faith in the justice system to dispel the darkness surrounding the system today.
The ability of the law to produce change is probabilistic, contingent and sequential. Internalisation of values that we seek today, demands action from each of us. We also need to teach the boys to grow up as men who respect women and who learn early in life that there is no place for violence in relationships.
Upneet Lalli, the writer is the Deputy Director, Institute of Correctional Administration, Chandigarh. The views expressed are personal.
http://thestringer.com.au/teaching-girls-self-defence/#.UaXL6N8iPIV
Photo – heraldsun.com.au
Over the last week or so the statement that forms the title of this article would probably qualify as the most used phrase on talk back radio and television in Australia. Overwhelmingly and extremely depressingly, caller after caller came on air and the venom and hatred towards Adam Goodes and his handling of the racist incident in the game against Collingwood was laid bare. There is nothing to be gained from rehashing the events of the day and in deference to Adam and others I believe that it is unnecessary for us to do this.
Let us however put some perspective on the whole issue. The use by the teenager of the term in this instance is racist and unquestionably so. Even the cheats’ way of research via “Google” will take you to Wikipedia that lists the term as one of many racial slurs that can be levelled at people of dark skin. What I found intriguing is the reaction of the Australian public in this case when compared to the outpouring of anger a few years ago (2007-2008) over the incident on the cricket field in the test match between Australia and India. In that instance, Harbhajan Singh from India was accused by some Australian players chiefly Matthew Hayden of having called another Australian player, Andrew Symonds, a “monkey”. Symonds, for those not aware of it is dark skinned, being of West Indian/English heritage. He wears the dreadlocks and does not fit the stereotype of an Anglo Celtic origin Australian Cricketer. As soon as Singh is alleged to have used the term, Hayden has supposedly said to him words to the effect that “that was racist”. This matter was then referred to the relevant authorities after considerable grandstanding and theatre on the cricket pitch. At that time the media examined the alleged racist nature of the term purported to have been used by Singh. The Sydney Morning Herald then ran a headline that said Cricket’s Day of Shame” and then discussed the issue in some detail.
The overwhelming conclusion drawn by the media at the time was that the term was racist when levelled at people of dark skin. The media called unabatedly for decisive punitive action to be taken against Singh. For reasons that are not relevant to this article, the matter was quickly quelled. Part of the reason for this was the flexing by the Indian cricket authorities of what was fast developing into a substantial muscle in the cricketing world.
Contrast this with the reaction that is currently being trotted out in the popular media. Goodes is being vilified by commentator after commentator and caller after caller with suggestions that he needed to “toughen up” and that these comments were commonplace in Australian sport and therefore in some inconceivable way, justifiable!
Based on what we know of the term that was used in this incident, the only conclusion that we can draw is that Goodes’ reaction was entirely appropriate. The average mainstream Anglo Celtic member of the public has no concept of what racism and vilification Goodes has gone through his entire life. And this too in his own country! The indigenous population of Australia has undergone much more severe forms of racism than most others in the world. They have had crosses to bear since the first days of English occupation of this country. This racism continues to be perpetrated against them well over 200 years later in Australia. There are policies of government that continue to have racist edges to them and clearly disadvantage the Aboriginal population because of their culture, skin colour etc.
Goodes has consistently indicated that the comment made by the teenager took him back to his childhood and the racist bullying that he endured as a child. He has also said that he had not fought back when he was younger. However, the status he has today is that of a very high profile leader of his community. Whatever he did to combat this issue was going to be of considerable value in the battle for reconciliation that the wider Aboriginal communities are having. It has to be said that Goodes acted in a very dignified manner. Whether the police reaction and behaviour was appropriate or somewhat over- zealous is not in Goodes control. He was mindful of the fact that the perpetrator was a child and was more in need of counselling than punishment.
Goodes’ treatment of the matter was the drawing in the sand of a very substantial line. This line will hopefully never be breached again by anyone in Australia. We will now all be more mindful of our actions and words and hopefully, think through the implications of whatever we may say.
It must be said that the actions of the Collingwood President, Eddie McGuire, were reasoned and very sensible. He offered his club’s apology immediately and undertook to take whatever action was necessary to bring some closure to the sorry matter.
Finally in discussing this matter, the position that I took was one that I had alluded to in other articles I have written here. I am not the person to whom the comment was directed. It is not possible for me therefore to feel the racism that Adam Goodes felt. Therefore the only position we can take is that if Adam felt belittled and vilified by that comment then we have to provide solace and understanding to inform him that the teenager’s view is not one that is widely held. And we need to place procedures and practices in place to try and educate that child’s view. In various incidents of this nature that I have dealt with involving vilification of the Australian Aboriginal people, I have always recommended the implementation of restorative justice programs. In this particular case this would involve the teenager being required to volunteer in an Aboriginal service delivery organisation so she can attempt to understand the disadvantage this community has in their own country. Hopefully, the AFL and Collingwood football clubs can suggest this form of action.
Photo – theage.com.au
Today, the Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus welcomed the National Deaths in Custody Program Monitoring Report (NIDCP) finding that deaths in custody rates have decreased significantly in the past decade. Let us have a look if this is really the case. The reality is that Aboriginal deaths in custody are one the rise.
The report is published by the Australian Institute of Criminology (AIC).
“Twenty years after the landmark Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, the rates of deaths in custody for Indigenous and non-Indigenous prisoners, particularly suicides, are some of the lowest recorded,” said Mr Dreyfus.
The AIC report argues that between 2003 to 2011 most deaths in custody were due to natural causes. On May 20 The Stringer published Why are more prisoners dying from ‘natural causes’?
The AIC report found that Aboriginal people are now “less likely to die in prison (0.16 per 100 in 2010-11) than non-Indigenous people (0.22 per 100).”
The report found “that in the 20 years since the Royal Commission, the number of Indigenous prisoners has almost doubled.”
The report noted that between January 1, 1980 to June 30 2011 there have been 2,325 total deaths in custody across Australia and of these 450 have been Aboriginal deaths, therefore 19 per cent of the total custodial deaths. In this period, 1,397 of the deaths have been in prison custody, of which 238 have been Aboriginal, therefore 17 per cent of the total prison deaths. 905 were police custodial deaths of which 204 were Aboriginal deaths and therefore 23 per cent of the total police custodial deaths. There were 18 deaths of juveniles while in custody, of which eight were Aboriginal youth and therefore 44 per cent of the total deaths.
“Analysis of data captured by the NDICP over the last 32 years demonstrates that significant improvements have been made to prevent deaths in some areas, but that work should continue in order to reduce other forms of deaths in custody,” wrote Adam Tomison, the AIC director in the report’s foreward.
“First, it is of concern to see that the proportion of Indigenous prisoners has almost doubled over the 20 years since the RCIADC. In 1991, when the final report was handed down by the RCIADC, Indigenous people represented on in seven people in prison (14 per cent ABS, 1998) and one in seven deaths in prison custody.”
“In 2011, Indigenous people represented just over one in four people in prison and one in five deaths. Therefore, the number of Indigenous people in prison appears to have increased at a faster rate than the number of deaths of Indigenous prisoners.”
“Over the last eight years, the rate of death has been consistently lower among Indigenous prisoners than their non-Indigenous counterparts. It can be concluded that the headline finding of the RCIADC that Indigenous persons were no more likely to die in prison custody than non-Indigenous persons remains true today. At the heart of the problem is the over-representation of Indigenous persons at every stage of the criminal justice system. Any efforts to reduce the number of Indigenous deaths in custody must therefore incorporate a focus on reducing the number of Indigenous people who end up in prison.”
“A second point of concern is the relative age profile of Indigenous deaths in custody when compared with their non-Indigenous counterparts. Almost half of all Indigenous deaths (48 per cent) in prison custody were of persons aged 25 to 39 years, compared with less than two in five (38 per cent) for the equivalent non-Indigenous cohort. For deaths in police custody and custody-related operations, almost two in five (39 per cent) Indigenous deaths were of young persons under the age of 25 years, compared with just over one in four (27 per cent) for their non-Indigenous counterparts. Apart from dying at relatively younger ages than non-Indigenous persons, a greater proportion of Indigenous deaths are due to natural causes, “noted Mr Tomison.
In 2010-11 there were 85 total deaths in custody of which 21 were Aboriginal deaths and therefore 25 per cent. Therefore it appears that indeed Aboriginal deaths in custody appear on the rise rather than decreasing, and the significant reduction overall is not a significant one. The Aboriginal deaths in prison custody for the year accounted for 21 per cent of the prison population deaths, while Aboriginal deaths in police custody accounted for 26 per cent of the total police custodial deaths. Despite the disproportionate high arrest rates of Aboriginal people and the disproportionate incarceration rates of Aboriginal people these are horrific rates, both crude totals and in proportion to total numbers.
In that period there was also a death of an Aboriginal juvenile while in detention.
In terms of comparative long term trends the report noted “throughout the 1980s, the number of deaths in custody increased steadily from a low of 21 deaths in 1979-80 to a high of 83 deaths in 1989-90. During the 1990s, the number of deaths in custody continued to increase, reaching a peak in 1997-98 with 109 deaths. Since this peak, there has been a moderate decline in total deaths, reaching a 20 year low in 2005-06 of 54 deaths.
However, since this low, the number of deaths has again started to increase.”
The report noted that in the last decade “the number of deaths resulting from natural causes has surpassed self-inflicted deaths as the most prevalent type of death in prison custody.”
The number of Aboriginal “natural cause deaths in 2009-10 was the highest ever recorded and for non-Indigenous prisoners, 2009-10 was the second highest on record, with 2010-11 representing the peak in the natural cause deaths among this group.”
Medical groups and prison reform advocates have long called for an inquiry into the rise into natural cause deaths.
A few years back the Australian Medical Association (AMA) then national vice president Dr Steve Hambleton supported the call for an investigation into natural cause deaths.
“The ages of Australian prisoners dying are alarming. The differentiation between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders and other Australians makes it even more disturbing,” said Dr Hambleton.
The writer of the article, Gerry Georgatos declares an impartiality conflict of interest. He has completed two Masters which have topically included and analysed Australian Deaths in Custody and he is a PhD researcher in Australian Deaths in Custody and Australian Custodial Systems. He has written widely on deaths in custody and has called for an inquiry to better understand the rise in natural cause deaths. In Crikey, in 2011, he was quoted, “I have deep concerns about the attribution of manner and cause of death and therefore about the classification of deaths in custody. There is nothing natural about a person dying of causes that basic medical intervention could prevent. More than 50 per cent of Aboriginal folk who die in prison are classified as natural cause deaths but maybe what has occurred is that medical attention wasn’t flagged or their insulin dependency was not given proper care or they were maltreated or neglected.”
http://thestringer.com.au/report-on-deaths-in-custody-people-dying-at-high-rates/#.UZ9XOt8iPIU
Photo – AAP, Mick Tsikas
The Commonwealth Ombudsman, Colin Neave, recently released his team’s May 2013 report on ‘Suicide and Self-harm in the Immigration Detention Network’. The 165 page report opens up with, “This report contains information that some readers may find confronting or disturbing. Reader discretion is advised.”
Under the Ombudsman Act 1976 (Cth), the Commonwealth Ombudsman investigates the administrative actions of Australian Government agencies and officers.
The Ombudsman found in his report that subsequent the greater numbers of Asylum Seekers reaching Australia’s shore in recent years that despite various attributed improvements there still needs more to be done. “Overall, we believe the department (of Immigration and Citizenship) is not in a stronger position in terms of its capacity to manage the immigration detention network and associated risks and issues.”
The report noted, “There is a strong correlation between the rise in the average time in detention and the increase in self-harming behaviour during 2011.”
“Australian and international evidence supports the conclusion that immigration detention in a closed environment for a period of longer than six months has a significant, negative impact on a detainee’s mental health. The data shows that a steady increase in the average length of detention, as well as the rapid rise in the numbers of people in detention, was a precursor to the peak in the rate of self-harm in 2011.”
The report noted that between July 2010 to late April 2013 there were 11 deaths in immigration detention.
The investigation concluded many factors contributing to the self-harming by detainees and which include the personal experiences which many of the detainees had fled from, for instance torture. The factors also included widespread fears for the wellbeing of family and dependents left behind. Factors included social isolation and loneliness. Closed detention environments gave rise to disempowerment, limited privacy and overcrowding. The long delays in ‘processing’ refugee claims were major factors.
The Department of Immigration and Citizenship (DIAC) has noted that they are nearing a complete rollout of adequate psychological support programs and of a culture that will accentuate the prevention of self-harm among detainees. But when taking into consideration the reports this year alone have come out of Christmas Island, Curtin Detention Centre, Northern Immigration Detention Centre, Darwin Airport Lodge, Manus Island and Nauru these claims of rollout and the imputation of wellbeing are ludicrously way off the mark.
The report stated, “We believe the department needs to further consider the data and governance arrangements that it needs to effectively manage the risk of suicide and self-harm. The department needs to assure itself that the service providers are delivering services consistent with the contract, including providing appropriate clinical response to suicide and self-harming behaviours. “
“In our view, the department could have been more responsive to environment intelligence about the increased risk and incidence of self-harm in the immigration detention network during 2010 and 2011, such as the concerns raised by stakeholders, including this office, the Australian Human Rights Commission and the Detention Health Advisory Group, relating to the operational challenges and escalating self-harm.”
In July 2011, the Commonwealth and Immigration Ombudsman announced an own motion to investigate and “examine the incidence and nature of suicide and self-harm in the immigration detention network” and to “identify the factors contributing to suicide and self-harm.”
As at 6 February 2013, there were 24 operational immigration detention facilities including Alternative Places of Detention (APOD) “with a capacity expanded to accommodate some 7329 detainees, and a contingency capacity of 9357.”
“This investigation commenced in July 2011 in response to the deteriorating psychological health of detainees we had observed particularly on Christmas Island, and against a backdrop of several deaths and escalating self-harm in immigration detention. As the Joint Select Committee later observed in its March 2012 report, ‘An alarming number of detainees have resorted to self-harming. The Committee is not able to accurately estimate the current number or frequency of self-harm incidents, however it appears to be a regular occurrence.”
DIAC claimed it was not able to accurately estimate the incidence of self-harm because adequate data systems were not in place. In May 2012 it started producing its Monthly Self-Harm Snapshot.
The Office of the Commonwealth Ombudsman during the course of their investigation sought data from DIAC and Serco on the incidence of self-harm in closed detentions. But the report has cast doubt on the integrity of their data.
“On 15 March 2013, the department provided us with a dataset that it considered to represent an accurate picture of self-harm incidents reported to the department by Serco. While we continue to have concerns about the categorisation of incidents as reported by Serco to the department, we accept that this dataset demonstrates the general trend of self-harm incidents in immigration detention.”
“This office is concerned that self-harm by children in immigration detention facilities is an ongoing issue, notwithstanding the decrease in self-harm incidents since the peak in August 2011.”
“Prior to May 2012, reports produced by the department and Serco did not routinely and separately monitor self-harm by children. However, in October 2011 the department provided data to Parliament that demonstrated that self-harm involving children was at a concerning level, representing almost 14 per cent of self-harm incidents between 1 July 2010 and 30 June 2011.”
The United Nations High Commission on Refugees (UNHCR) published an annual report on Asylum Seekers, the demographics and the trends. The UNHCR’s 2011 statistical report noted a sharp increase in Asylum Seeker applications in the 44 industrialised countries. There were estimated 441,300 claims in 2011, that is 20 per cent more than the 368,000 applications in 2010, and the highest since 2003.
Australia received 11,510 applications which was equivalent to three per cent of the applications among the industrialised countries.
The Asia Pacific regions has at this time more than 3.6 million refugees, around 24 per cent of the world’s total refugee population. In 2011, just 22 countries resettled 79,800 refugees and Australia ranked three in admitting 9,200 refugees. The United States resettled 51,500 and Canada resettled 12,900.
The Ombudsman’s report reinforces only what most know, that studies “have indicated that people who have fled violence and disruption in their countries of origin, and who may have been subject to torture and trauma, often exhibit pre-existing mental health conditions or are vulnerable to developing a post traumatic condition.”
“People detained in an immigration detention facility in recent years may have been exposed to, or involved in, suicidal or self-harm behaviours. This is a particularly difficult issue, as detainees seeking to maintain their own stability are unable to physically dissociate themselves from their environment, and often cannot choose to associate with people with more positive modes of thinking and behaviours.”
“As explored elsewhere in this report, there is a high level of mental and psychological illness among detainees, particularly those detained for extended periods. This creates an environment where many detainees are surrounded by people in the same situation, also experiencing mental illness, frustration or distress.”
“Drawing on our discussions with detainees, we believe there may be a contagion effect that magnifies dysfunctional thinking in these circumstances. Impulsive and dysfunctional methods for problem solving and drawing attention to the perceived problems may include the behaviours seen in riots and disturbance.”
The report pointed to the obvious when suggesting that the witnessing of others self-harming can heighten the risk of “imitative behaviour or contagion and lead to broader self-harm among the detention population. We have been advised that this phenomenon, known as contagion effect, has its origins in social learning theory. The basic premise of this theory is that verbal transfer of information and observation of other people ‘acts make up the basis for the acquisition of all types of human behaviour.’ Witnessing others self-harm or suicide, for example, following the receipt of bad news which is presented as a solution or ‘way out’, may serve to model for others who have similar problems.”
The report noted that in periods where the average time of being held in detention so to were there declines in recorded incidents of self-harm.
Previous The Stringer articles:
May 20th 2013 by Dr Binoy Kampmark
Nine year old boy detained at Christmas Island after father’s death
May 7th 2013 by Gerry Georgatos
Australia’s pathway to poverty – bridging visas
30th March 2013 by The Stringer
98 bodies thrown into the sea – 32 asylum seekers rescued
21st February 2013 by The Stringer
Child suicide attempts in Darwin Immigration centre
19th February 2013 by The Stringer
5th February 2013 by Gerry Georgatos
Robert Eggington, CEO of Dumbartung
Led by the Dumbartung Aboriginal Corporation which works with many grieving families of suicide victims a Suicide Crisis Summit was held on May 21. More than 300 attended in what was both a highly emotive experience and a direct call to Governments to reduce the Aboriginal youth suicide rates in Australia.
Australia’s Aboriginal youth suicide rate is the highest in the world. – Australia’s Aboriginal children – The world’s highest suicide rate
Dumbartung CEO Robert Eggington and his grief counsellor wife Selina Eggington called for the Summit and ensured that it was well attended by Government officials.
“According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), suicides accounted for 4.2 per cent of all registered deaths of people identified as Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders in 2010, compared with 1.6 per cent for the general population of Australia,” said Mr Eggington.
“Our children are dying as young as eleven years old, from suicide.”
“This experience has caused a massive rupture of our community’s spiritual heart and it is creating a traumatic burden of pain and suffering for many of our families and people.”
The rise in Aboriginal and Aboriginal youth suicide rates are all the more startling when compared with rates two, three and four decades ago. Aboriginal peoples were not killing themselves in the numbers that they are today – and this indicts Government neglects and an increasing condition of hopelessness and dejection.
The three hour Crisis Summit finished up with a list of recommendations and outcomes which were presented to the Commissioner for Mental Health, Eddie Bartnik and to Premier Colin Barnett.
“We were encouraged by the attendance, over 300 people attended enabling the Nyoongah community to vent and express what is so often the oppressed and silenced voice of our grassroots families and people,” said Mr Eggington.
“Senior Government officials turned up, the National Congress of the First Peoples sent its representatives. It was good to see Mick Gooda (Social Justice Commissioner, Australian Human Rights Commission) turn up along with many others.”
“We need now a political reaction to the pandemic of suicides that blights our youth.”
Following the meeting we had a forty minute meeting with Premier Barnett. He met with us, twelve Nyoongah representatives which also included my brother Dennis (CEO of the Aboriginal Legal Services WA), Rex Bellotti and Dean Collard.”
They stated to the Premier that it is abhorrent that an industrialised country such as Australia, the world’s 12 largest economy, has according to the United Nations State of Indigenous Peoples report the world’s highest Aboriginal suicide rates.
“In a number of towns and Aboriginal communities in Western Australia the suicide rates amongst Aboriginal populations has reached 100 times the national average.”
“Despite all the support programs and initiatives since the Sue Gordon Report the suicide epidemic among our peoples continues to surge,” said Mr Eggington.
Dumbartung has called for a triennial funding agreement for them to continue and increase awareness of suicide prevention programs and initiatives they have developed during the last three decades.
“The programs need to be coordinated State-wide,” said Mr Eggington.
Mr Eggington called for the development and funding of special Aboriginal taskforces to work alongside the Coroner’s Office, the Health Department and directly with the State Government.
“This suicide crisis is one that both the Government and our community need to work very closely together to deter the ever increasing pain and suffering that is being experienced by many of our families and communities.”
http://thestringer.com.au/political-reaction-needed-to-end-suicides/#.UZ9WDd8iPIV
Once again the United Nations has ranked Australia second behind Norway in its annual Human Development Index – for public health, social wealth, education, even happiness. But if Aboriginal peoples go stand-alone they would not be part of that 2nd rating – they would be 122nd.
The United Nations Human Development Index is a measure of the quality of life across 187 nations.
Aboriginal peoples in various parts of Australia continue to languish in third-world conditions despite Australia powering on as the world’s thirteenth largest economy. The Northern Territory is the worst for Aboriginal peoples but Western Australia’s Kimberley, Western Deserts and the Goldfields and South Australia’s APY Lands are not far behind – and similar with a number of regions in Queensland and NSW.
NT-Utopia
The Northern Territory township of Utopia, 350 km northeast of Alice Springs, is an example of Government neglect – it is third-world and most of its 1,200 Alyawarra and Anmatjirra peoples languish in dilapidated homes and without the suite of public services that most other Australians enjoy. The United Nations Human Rights Commissioner Navi Pillay condemned the deplorable conditions and described the neglect as racism. Amnesty International’s Shalil Shetty described Utopia as third-world.
Last week the Australian Government finally meted out $4 million to Utopia for housing refurbishments and facilities – this is peanuts and let us hope that most of the $4 million is not eaten up by bureaucracy and contractor payments.
The money was secured by NT Lingiari Senator Warren Snowdon from Federal Minister for Indigenous Affairs Jenny Macklin’s $3.4 billion Stronger Futures.
“Vital community infrastructure will be upgraded in the Utopia homelands in the Northern Territory thanks to a $4.36 million investment from the Australian Government,” said Mr Snowdon.
Ms Macklin naively stands by Stronger Futures despite no evidence to prove the Intervention has improved living conditions – in fact most evidence, anecdotal and research, points to the opposite.
“Stronger Futures has a firm focus on improving living standards for Aboriginal people in the Northern Territory – in the bigger communities and also in remote homelands,” Ms Macklin said.
“The Government is providing $4 million for the Centre for Appropriate Technology to deliver a range of projects to help families in Utopia live more sustainably.”
“These will include critical work to make housing safer, helping residents to reduce their energy consumption and improving the safety and reliability of the local water supply.”
The work to improve housing in Utopia will focus on electrical and fire safety, water and waste management, and washing, cooking and food storage facilities.
Mr Snowdon said the Government will also provide funding of $360,000 over three years for a coordinator position at the Urapuntja Aboriginal Corporation so it can better represent the interests of the Utopia homelands.
“The new coordinator will play an important role in negotiating and implementing a plan with the Government to address the key areas of disadvantage in Utopia,” Mr Snowdon said.
“We will also employ two Indigenous Engagement Officers to be based in the Utopia homelands. They will be locals who understand the culture and can speak the local language.
“I’ve seen how effective Indigenous Engagement Officers can be in linking residents to important services and strengthening relationships between Government and remote communities, and I’m confident we will see the same happen in Utopia,” he said.
Photo – abc.net.au
Despite Stronger Futures, Northern Territory Aboriginal peoples – 30 per cent of the population – do not enjoy the standard of living that the United Nations Human Development Index report lauded on Australians.
The report stated Australians have the world’s fourth highest life expectancy in the world – 82 years. But this is not so for Aboriginal peoples – subtract 20 years from the Australian life expectancy average for Aboriginal peoples, and in some regions of Australia make that 30 years less off the average.
With education – in terms of number of years of schooling achieved and the standard of school performance – Australians are ranked second highest but that would not be the case for Aboriginal peoples who do not enjoy quality schooling in many semi-remote and remote communities.
Australia has the lowest suicide rate of the world’s top ten nations but Aboriginal peoples have the world’s highest youth suicide rates.
Nothing has improved since the 2011 United Nations State of the Indigenous Peoples report, “In Australia, an Indigenous child can expect to die 20 years earlier than his non-native compatriot.”
Last year a Northern Territory Select Committee on Youth Suicides reported, “The suicide rate for Indigenous Territorians is particularly disturbing, with 75 per cent of suicides of children from 2007 to 2011 in the Territory being Aboriginal.”
“For too many of our youth there is not enough hope to protect them from the impulse to end their lives.”
The suicide rate doubled for youth between ages 10 and 17 – up from 18.8 percent to 30.1 percent per 100,000 – in contrast to non-Aboriginal youth suicides which dropped from 4.1 percent to 2.6 percent.
It was only a few years ago that the West Australian town of Derby and nearby communities, such as Mowanjum, experienced nearly 30 Aboriginal youth suicides in the one year.
Mowanjum’s Community Director Eddie Bear said every loss is felt right throughout the community. “Everybody feels hurt, we all go through it.”
In NSW, with Australia’s largest Indigenous population, the youth suicide rate is one in 100,000. In the Northern Territory, the rate is 30 deaths in 100,000. In the Kimberley, with an Indigenous population at 15,000, the rate is at a rate of 1 death in 1,200, over 80 per 100,000.
And then there is homelessness – In the Northern Territory nearly 8 per cent of Aboriginal peoples are homeless. The 2012 ABS reported that one of the key three groups of homelessness in Australia remains Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders, and little has improved. The ABS reported that in 2011 alone there was a rise in the total number of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples – rising by 3 percent.
Seven percent of the Kimberley’s Aboriginal peoples are homeless – the region’s homelessness rate is at least ten times the national average. The State Government cannot even keep a promise to build a $12 million hostel in Broome and instead people sleep rough at One Mile Community, Kennedy Hill and on Broome’s sand dunes.
The United Nations Human Development Index report got this right – that there had been a global improvement in human development led by nations such as Afghanistan, Sierra Leone, East Timor, but Australia’s Aboriginal peoples in the Northern Territory and northern Western Australia remain forgotten.
