Jeff McMullen is one of Australia’s premier journalists.

Mr McMullen delivered a March 13 address on the Future of Families at the Families Relations Australia Conference 2013. During the address he encouraged people to think about all that is good about family and then to view this experience through the yes of an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander child.

Mr McMullen outlined a number of steps that could make a difference and subject to there being the will to undertake them. 

There are some who think the family is finished, that barely half of partnerships will survive in any form and that many children increasingly must grow up adrift from the love and the strengths of kinship.

This is such a bleak view of the human family that we should challenge the failure to celebrate what is good.

Family and community have been the eternal source of well being for all human beings and if we look at the longer timelines of history, family and community are also the key to the extraordinary resilience of the world’s oldest cultures, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

Coming to see and understand Indigenous families in this light is to experience joy, laughter and learning, as well as all of the conflicted emotions that come from so many generations of the Struggle for human rights and dignity.

This is not to underestimate the depths of the crisis that now engulfs so many Indigenous families but to question the policies of those who think that assimilation is the answer to all of the woes.

Look at the future through the eyes of an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander child in any family, urban, rural or remote community.

Can anyone say that Australia has succeeded in offering all of these children an equal chance of health, a good home, a first-rate education, life fulfilling work and happiness?

After you have answered truthfully, NO, you must surely wonder are Australian Governments indifferent or insensitive, or just plain incompetent and unaccountable?

The wellbeing of Aboriginal and Torres Strait islander families is the single most important test of whether Australia ever becomes a great society. It challenges those cherished national ideals, the way we view our selves as egalitarian, fair minded and fundamentally equal.

We seem so far from passing this wellbeing test as a nation. Yet in the 21st Century we have failed to abandon the mistaken government approaches of the 18th, 19th and 20th Centuries.

Dispossession, disempowerment and disrespect remain the major themes of a Government approach that has taken control of so much Indigenous family life. The results, we all know, are wretched.

Australian Government policy and society as a whole have failed to alter the most disturbing realities for so many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander families.

To give you some measure of the pain and loss experienced by too many Indigenous people put yourself in the shoes of a family that has lost a young person to suicide this week. This is happening at a very frightening rate.

Even just twenty years ago Indigenous suicide rates were at the same rate as for all Australians. Today Indigenous youth suicide and self-harm have reached crisis proportions in many but not all communities and we need to look closely at this pattern of why in some places there is hope and in other places despair.

In the Northern Territory for example, the percentage of all age Indigenous suicide has increased from 5% of total suicides in 1991 to 50% of the total in 2010. The most alarming increase, however, is among young Indigenous people aged 10 to 24. Indigenous youth suicide increased from 10% of the total in 1991 to 80% of the total in 2010.

None of us living anywhere in this country should stand by while so many families lose their children.

All Australians, including all Governments, should be asking themselves, why do we go on doing the same things when clearly the despair and loss of hope is growing worse in so many communities?

Mainstream approaches are not succeeding in addressing the dangerous spiral and numerous government inquiries have confirmed this. Yet we so rarely draw on the Cultural strengths, the experience and knowledge in those communities that maintain an extraordinary resilience and ability to foster wellbeing.

The truth is that still today there are many Aboriginal communities, remote, rural and urban, where there is a strong sense of Cultural identity, where school attendance and learning is so much higher, where neglect and malnutrition have improved and where there is not that endless procession of funerals.

Traditionally, of course, Culture, community and family ties maintained the balance of life and were the source of genuine wellbeing for most Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

Today these same values are the targets of a neo-liberal onslaught on Culture that undermines traditional Indigenous support structures. Controlled by new Great White Protectors, Aboriginal people are expected to sign away any real control over their destiny.

Bullying interventionist policies such as the Northern Territory Emergency Response including welfare management, punitive school attendance strategies and many other instruments of social engineering are now thinly disguised under misleading titles like STRONGER FUTURES and CLOSING THE GAPS. In truth, Australia is merely continuing that old pattern of dispossession, disempowerment and disrespect.

All of today’s social engineering is occurring while the Australian Government and both major political parties declare with studied sincerity that they seek bi-partisan agreement to improve family services.

This is an outrageous claim if we look at the hard Government evidence from the first five years of the Northern Territory Intervention.

Government measurements of family wellbeing show that suicide, self-harm, children at risk and numbers of young people going into detention have increased alarmingly during this period of sweeping disempowerment of Aboriginal communities.

It is time for governments to wake up and take stock of this crushing humiliation of Aboriginal families. I challenge every government minister and departmental head to look closely at the social damage caused by this policy and then to ask yourselves, would you subject your family to this treatment?

No matter how many Big Lies were told in the Federal Parliament about this state of emergency in 73 remote communities, no matter how often the Government dismisses the United Nations criticism that these measures are deeply discriminatory and in breech of International Covenants, this offensive social engineering was never even likely to succeed because it did not respectfully consult let alone engage Aboriginal people.

Both the Prime Minister, Julia Gillard and Opposition Leader, Tony Abbott have admitted that the top down approach was a mistake and yet this approach continues in most dealings with Indigenous families and communities.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people will work with others who offer support if Government and other organisations show enough respect and common sense to listen carefully to what is actually happening in these communities.

This has rarely happened and it has created a gulf between us historically.

Apart from youth suicide, the increasing removal of Indigenous children from their families is generating Indigenous mistrust of Australia’s entire social system.

Many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander families are truly frightened of the government family services.

Within any family and the surrounding community there is collective trauma surrounding the loss of a child removed to some other social setting. This is so profoundly disturbing not only because of the heartache every family would experience at such a time, but also because of the waves of cross-generational trauma that are still flowing from the original removal during the Stolen Generations of up to 100,000 Indigenous children.

Are most Australians aware that right now over thirteen thousand Indigenous children have been taken away by the Government and placed in out of home care? We are not talking about the madness of the past but the cruelty of today. This means Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children make up about one third of the total number of over 39,000 Australian children in out of home care.

With the same misguided logic of the Stolen Generations era these children are supposedly being removed for their wellbeing but almost half of them are also being removed from kith and kin and any of the traditional strengths of Culture.

Yes I know that all governments are supposed to have signed onto important priority principles to put such kids with Aboriginal extended families. But this isn’t happening for too many Indigenous children. In the Northern Territory some 66% of children are removed to non-Indigenous homes.

Across the country at least one third of Aboriginal kids in non-Indigenous out-of home care have revealed to government that they have very little contact with the Culture of their community, the life force that orients them towards a sense of place, a sense of identity and a sense of purpose.

We already know the pattern of misery that will flow from futile attempts to tear out the Aboriginal essence from the mind of a child. Mental illness and depression become a river of sickness flowing on to other generations.

Clearly the white fella way is incapable of managing the crisis that historically White Australia is most responsible for, despite our persistent denial or convenient amnesia.

To be blunt, it is racism in its most dangerous form to try to blame the victims, by stereotyping Indigenous families and particularly their Culture as the cause of this crisis in family life. This neo-liberal war on Culture displays a striking ignorance of the Aboriginal way of seeing and understanding how this overwhelming sadness descended over so many people.

So where is there hope?

Many elders have told me that the family counselling efforts trialled in Central Australia tap into traditional approaches for alleviating social crisis by involving members of the extended family and community services to discuss how to improve the safety and wellbeing of the child. This approach can reduce the removal of children from family and we should be supporting the local efforts vigorously.

Similarly, Aboriginal suicide prevention programs and other youth services can make a huge difference to the state of mind of these young people at risk. Yarrabah, the large and proud community near Cairns, pioneered a very successful suicide prevention program.

There are effective programs supporting Aboriginal children and families in New South Wales, Victoria and Western Australia as well and they all draw on the core strength of the local community.

Alarmingly, these exceptionally effective Aboriginal programs are the exception. And Governments show little interest in adequately funding more of them.

In the Northern Territory an official inquiry led by the Children’s Commissioner, Dr Howard Bath, Muriel Bamblett and Rob Roseby recommended major changes because the mainstream child protection system could not cope.

So what do we see?. The Northern Territory Government has slashed the budget for the community sector including for the peak Aboriginal organisation set up less than a year and a half ago, known as Strong Aboriginal Families, Together.

In Queensland, Campbell Newman’s Government has slashed hundreds of positions for people experienced in working with Indigenous young people most at risk.

The excuse always offered by Governments is that budgets must be trimmed. But even those ministers know that the guaranteed outcome of cutting the support for families is that it will eventually cost far more for children removed from homes, sent into juvenile justice or through the revolving doors of prison.

Everyone knows that prevention is a better approach to create wellbeing for children, families and communities. But Australia can never get serious when it comes to a consistent, coordinated preventative approach.

For example, Aboriginal elders plead with Government to show some genuine responsibility and improve the terrible living conditions that have such a drastic impact on any child’s wellbeing and future prospects. In my lifetime I have watched people move from smaller humpies to larger sheds, from 44 gallon drums of water to leaky toilets and sewage running across children’s play areas. I see rusted cars pulled up around tumbled down walls and old men, near blind, forced to hobble around without any real care or compassion.

For all of us, physical and mental health is largely a consequence of social determinants. At least 70% of our health is determined by the kind of home we live in, degree of education we access, nutrition and medical care we receive from birth and all of those other interconnected facets that make up home and community, especially a feeling that we belong.

All of this has been denied to so many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people across so many generations that escaping the poverty trap, the welfare trap and that great malaise is constantly defied by a system that stubbornly refuses to listen.

While the Australian public may wince at the large amounts of money invested unsuccessfully in the controlling welfare management of Indigenous families, so many Indigenous people are even more deeply disturbed that Australian can throw billions at child removal and another billion by 2014 to develop family and community support services when these Indigenous families know they are still missing out.

The parents who call me when they have to bury a child who has taken their life know that we have all been silent for way too long.

I cried with a much loved Aboriginal friend, a woman schoolteacher whose oldest son, aged 20, killed himself.

I sat with an Aboriginal elder a week ago who said to me, “When my son killed himself I could only deep into my Culture… and I said to my family, ‘I forgive you son, for the pain you are causing everyone now.”

I want you to put yourselves in the shoes of that man and woman.

As a nation we have not listened to the cries for help, we have not taken the right kind of action to prevent this totally preventable contagion of loss of life.

Here are some of the ways Aboriginal people say Australia can help to make a difference.

1. Why can’t we empty our heads of that old poison called assimilation and listen to the Aboriginal elders and organisations who can tell us what is going wrong and why the mainstream services don’t reach so many people.

2. If we were objective we would admit that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities are not truly ‘community controlled’ because they struggle with myriad agencies that still want to dispossess, disempower and disrespect them. It is time for empowerment!

3. Often government funded family support programs are positioned in direct competition, undermining the natural strengths and authority of Aboriginal groups. Let’s start respecting the rights of communities.

4. The workforce of many Government funded family services still requires a vast education and reskilling effort to help even experienced counsellors appreciate who it is they are working with and the nature of the complex causes for dysfunction.

5. It is also a major flaw in Australia’s approach to ailing communities and families that we go on unsuccessfully treating what is always characterised as ‘the Aboriginal problem” but we show great reluctance to address and alleviate the causes of this 21st century poverty and national neglect.

6. No one can claim that we don’t have the wealth to build a decent home in a reasonably serviced community for half a million Indigenous Australians. Let’s be fair Australia.

7. If we held ourselves to that same standard most Australians expect and demand for their families we would address the overcrowding, the lack of sewage, the second rate health care and education, the lack of opportunity and the refusal to engage with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people on their terms.

8. If Governments can ever admit that they don’t have the answers to the wellbeing of Indigenous families then Australia may be ready for real change.

9. It is time to empower Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander families and community organisations to swell the ranks of the hopeful.

10. Provide adequate funding for the size of the task, invest in the children and we will see a truly greater society.

Together we can get this work done.

Yes, families are hard work but for all of us they are the source of our greatest strengths and joys.

Address to Family Relations Australia Conference. Canberra. March 13th 2013.

http://thestringer.com.au/the-future-of-the-family/#.UZnDH98iPIU

Deaths from natural causes have become the most frequent cause of death in Australian prisons. In 2011 PhD researcher in Australian Deaths in Custody, Gerry Georgatos called for an independent investigation to explain the sharp rise in the number of Australian prison deaths attributed to ‘natural causes’. This year there has been a staggering wave of natural cause deaths in Victorian prisons.

Last week, Victorian Corrections Commissioner Jan Shuard said to the Public Accounts and Estimates Committee that there had been 12 prisoners who had died in prison custody since the beginning of the year. This figure is startling because in most years deaths in custody in Victorian prisons average less than this number.

Nine were described to have died of ‘natural causes’.

In 2011, Gerry Georgatos’ research underwrote the opening and closing articles of an eleven series Deaths in Custody investigation by reporter Inga Ting for Crikey.

http://www.crikey.com.au/2011/06/22/deaths-in-custody-why-are-more-prisoners-dying-from-natural-causes/

http://www.crikey.com.au/2011/04/15/deaths-in-custody-20yrs-after-a-royal-commission-why-are-fatalities-rising/

Gerry Georgatos pointed out in Ms Ting’s article that natural causes accounted for almost three in four prison custody deaths in 2008 and this statistic has continued. He also pointed out that equally disturbing are the young ages at which many of these prisoners are dying.

In the 2011 Crikey article Georgatos said, “You can’t have people dying in significant numbers at these young ages – in their 20s, 30s, and so on – and deem them as natural causes.”

“We would not, and do not, accept this elsewhere. We seek the cause of death and whatever may have contributed to premature deaths and, where possible, lay charges in pursuit of culpability and liability.”

In Ms Ting’s Crikey article Georgatos rejected the Australian Institute of Criminology’s (AIC) claim that the rise in natural cause deaths is “probably linked to an ageing prison population and a prison population with more health problems than the general population”, and said that these “assumptions” need validation.

“I have deep concerns about the attribution of manner and cause of death and therefore about the classification of deaths in custody,” said Georgatos. “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.”

At the time he called for an inquiry, and he still continues to argue that such an inquiry is needed. At the time of Georgatos’ call for the inquiry, Australian Medical Association (AMA) national vice president Dr Steve Hambleton told Ms Ting that he would support an investigation into natural cause deaths. He said that the AMA had previously campaigned on this issue.

“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.

Victoria’s spate of prisoner deaths this year should be an opportunity for Georgatos’ and Hambleton’s calls for an inquiry to be heeded.

Commissioner Shuard’s disclosure had followed silence on the issue and the Productivity Commission’s latest report which suggested there are no apparent unnatural causes of death in prison custody.

Two weeks ago a prisoner at the Melbourne Remand Centre committed suicide.

In February, a 36 year old inmate hung himself at Port Phillip Prison.

In the beginning of February a 31 year old man hung himself in his cell at the high security Barwon prison. The cell was supposed to have no hanging points.

The Barwon death was in a unit of the prison, Banksia, where prisoners were locked for 23 hours a day.

“The number of deaths in custody goes up and down. There is not a regular number, it can be as high as 14, I think, as it was in 2007-08, and this year so far there have been 12,” said Commissioner Shuard.

Human rights advocate Charandev Singh said to The Age reporter Andrea Petrie that he had never come across so many deaths in custody in such a short period.

He said to Ms Petrie that he knew of two other Victorian prisoners who were in critical condition in hospital, one from Port Phillip and another from Barwon.

“At least one of those men does not look like he is going to survive, so the figure might rise to 14,” he said to Ms Petrie.

Mr Singh said he believed the circumstances of these so-called ‘natural deaths’ were more indicative of various medical neglect and inaccessibility to appropriate health care.

The Australian prison population has more than doubled in the last twenty years from 15,000 to 31,000. Between 2000 to 2008 prison custodial deaths attributed to natural causes rose to 24.6 per cent per year nationwide. From 1990 to 1999 natural deaths had been 16.3 per cent and in the 1980s they had been at 10.6 per cent.

Georgatos has said that Australia has one of the world’s worst prison suicide rates and the classification of so many unnatural deaths should be examined. Ultimately it is the Coroner who determines whether a death is natural or otherwise but Georgatos said that firstly the criteria in determining classifications should be re-examined. Secondly, he said  an inquiry into prisoner health should be commenced.

http://thestringer.com.au/why-are-more-prisoners-dying-from-natural-causes/#.UZnCht8iPIU

OXFAM CEO, Helen Szoke said that Australian companies are circumventing the intentions of the Native Title Act and that informed consent is not being secured.

“We looked at the policies of companies specifically within the context of how they dealt with the issue of consent of Indigenous peoples to use their land,” said Ms Szoke.

“Disturbingly what we found is that the majority of companies do not have any transparent policies about how they gain that consent and how they go about negotiating with local Indigenous communities.”

“The second problem is if the negotiation process isn’t sorted out there is an enormously adverse impact on local communities.”

James Anaya – Photo, un.org

Last year the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and for Mining visited Australia while on a worldwide investigation on how the resources sector engages with Aboriginal peoples over compensation for Land Access Agreements and what mining benefits are returned to them. During much of his lengthy visit, Mr Anaya was accompanied by the National Congress’ co-chairs Les Malezer and Jody Broun. Mr Anaya visited Aboriginal Corporations, Traditional Owners and met with mining companies. He also visited the mining boom region of the Pilbara.

Mr Anaya focused his inquiries on extractive industries and to which he said that they pose “a major and immediate concern (for) Indigenous peoples all over the world.” Last year, Mr Anaya who is also a Professor of Law, announced that he would spend much of his second term prioritising the need for an international report on how extractive industries engage with Aboriginal peoples.

“The issue of extractive industries is a major and immediate concern of Indigenous people all over the world,” said Mr Anaya.

“I have seen examples of negligent projects implemented in Indigenous territories without proper guarantees and without the involvement of the peoples concerned.”

Mr Anaya had been involved in drafting the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

He argues that there is a need for Governments to ensure good practices are enabled between Aboriginal peoples and the resources sector. He argues for legal and policy reforms that ensure the rights of Aboriginal peoples are secured in terms of benefits from mining being returned to them. He argues that the whole community should benefit and not just individual operators. He has argued for substantive returns from mining to Aboriginal communities.

The Oxfam report and Mr Anaya’s arguments are timely with the annual National Native Title Conference scheduled for the first week of June – in Alice Springs. There is much wrong on the Australian landscape with Native Title, with some of the resources sector ripping off blind Aboriginal communities, with the so-called mining boom having returned contextually little to Aboriginal communities, and with huge inconsistencies in compensation payments for Traditional Owners signing Indigenous Land Use Agreements.

Recent controversies with the Western Australian Premier Colin Barnett threatening Kimberley Aboriginal peoples with compulsory acquisition of their land for a gas hub have dogged Native Title into disgrace. More importantly the Office of the Registrar of Aboriginal Corporations (ORIC) and the National Native Title Tribunal (NNTT) have demonstrated inexplicable reluctance to investigate the many alleged improprieties that dog Native Title negotiations and agreements and how allegedly the resources sector circumvents Native Title or steamrolls Aboriginal peoples into signing (for peanuts).

It is a fact of life that some resource companies do not work with Aboriginal communities in terms of informed consent, that they hoodwink them and divide them, and all just to screw them out of a few dollars that would have made a huge difference to the Traditional Owners and their communities. Considering Australian Governments have failed to reduce horrific trachoma and otitis media rates among Aboriginal peoples let alone the horrific mortality rates, the funds that these communities have been screwed out could have made a difference to Aboriginal lives. It is fair to comment therefore that some within the resources sector are indirectly responsible for the increasing Aboriginal youth suicides and the horrific Aboriginal prison incarceration rates.

Two years ago the UN Human Rights Commissioner Navi Pillay described Australia’s treatment of Aboriginal peoples as “racism”. Recently, international documentary filmmaker and legendary journalist John Pilger investigated the ‘mining boom’ and how Aboriginal peoples are being ripped off.

“The story of the first Australians is still poverty and humiliation, while their land yields the world’s biggest resources boom,” wrote Mr Pilger in The Guardian UK on April 30.

“Barely a fraction of mining, oil and gas revenue has benefited Aboriginal communities, whose poverty is an enduring shock.”

“A mature society would not accept the myths that surround Aboriginal life right here in Australia,” wrote Mr Pilger.

In 2013, the annual National Native Title Conference will be convened by the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS) and the Central Land Council (CLC) on the traditional lands of the Central Arrernte people, the Native Title holders of the Alice Springs area.

Rest assured, that there will be changes to Native Title practices end of the year but sadly they will not be favourable to Aboriginal peoples.

This year’s Conference title is “Shaping the Future” but for whom?

Themes of the Conference will include “The Native Title Act 20 years on, where to from here?” But to be honest, it should be back to the drawing board. The Native Title Act was skewed from its original moderate intentions by Prime Minister Paul Keating to a weak policy structure that allowed the resources sector and developers to steamroll Aboriginal peoples. The weakness in the Act is that negotiations between parties are to be had “in good faith.”

The Act was further watered down by Prime Minister Bob Hawke. The Native Title Act has continued on as the outrageous (racist) joke that it has been ever since cheating Aboriginal communities out of opportunity and equality and turning not only Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal peoples against each other but also Aboriginal peoples against one another.

The remaining themes of the Conference are how to manage the little returns Aboriginal Corporations secure from mining industries for their Traditional Owners – ‘development options’ and ‘Indigenous governance.’ The Conference would better serve impoverished Aboriginal peoples and Native Title holders if it instead themed Oxfam’s report – that only one of the 53 biggest miners on the Australian Securities Exchange had a public commitment to the principle of informed consent for Aboriginal peoples.

http://thestringer.com.au/oxfam-report-mocks-native-title/#.UZm8398iPIU

By Mick Estens

Today in the Northern Territory along the Roper Bar road on the Aboriginal Alawa people owned Station of Warrigundu you will find no activity. The part time Aboriginal station staff was sat down in early December last year by the lease holders of the property, the Indigenous Land Corporation (ILC). While sitting down for two or three months over a wet period is nothing new in the top end, the pay systems the Aboriginal boys operate under within the ILC is. The permanent ILC staff operates under a work agreement that gives them a 37 hour week, holiday pay, overtime rates and general benefits we all have come to enjoy in this country. The Aboriginal station workers are employed and operate under a different system that the ILC calls National Indigenous Pastoral Enterprise (NIPE). NIPE has the Aboriginal boys working a minimum 50 hour week before any benefits come their way. The boys can build up Time Off In Lieu (TOIL) up to 5 days and only more with the Managers permission, but they cannot bank more than 20 days. When you are being sat down for a wet period of 60 – 90 days it is hard to keep your family feed and the problems this causes affect the entire Aboriginal Community.

In February 2012, several Aboriginal Trainee stockmen from Minyerri signed on with the ILC to be taught a range of skills needed for working on Stations in the top end. The work contract they signed is for 12 months of real on the job training including four weeks of leave and the promise of “real jobs” at the end of their Traineeship.

These ILC Aboriginal Trainees preformed their duties to a good quality, some exceptionally well.

During the year the Trainees and I were kept busy mustering and branding the 15000 head of ILC station cattle on Warrigundu.

Unfortunately for these young fit men with dreams once they are not needed, or the Certificate 2 in Agriculture is finished, so are they. Today these Trainees are sitting in Minyerri with their families and have been doing so since 10th December last year, some a lot longer. The bulk of the trainees have had one or two weeks work in the last five months as two of the boys got to go and look at ILC operations in West Australia and because of the lack of skilled Trainee Supervisor cattlemen willing to work for the ILC, the other boys had to be sat down.

I have visited the Trainees several times this year and their family life, sanity, and belief in their futures are all vanishing fast. One girl who is a partner to a Trainee has been treated for thinking of suicide as she feels let down. These young Aboriginal men now cannot get Centrelink benefits as they need a separation form signed by the ILC to release them, but the ILC don’t release them as eventually, they will pick them up and a graduation ceremony will take place, then they will tell us and their ILC Directors what a good job ILC Training has done. The young Aboriginal boys could take action against the ILC through Industrial Relations, but they know the chances of getting employment on their own property leased by the ILC after that would be nil. One boy beat the system and has found employment with CDEP as his children were starving and he had to find work and money.

The parents and grandparents, wives and girlfriends are all looking after these virtually unemployed men caught in a catch 22. All the ILC have told them is that they have generator problems at the station and that is why they cannot be re employed. Even if this is true, apart from the fact three months is amply time to fix the problem, the Trainees live 6 kilometres from the Station and could be picked up and dropped off daily.

It is fast looking like the ILC Training Department is taking advantage of the less fortunate Aboriginal men from Minyerri. The forms of injustice put upon these young Trainees are so that in the long run the ILC Training Department can keep statistics looking good and costs down at the expense of the Aboriginal students and their families way of life.

With no large amount of employability outcomes since the inception of the ILC training Aboriginal men into station work, it is hard to see why they keep getting large amounts of money from Government to keep this Training ongoing. I doubt there would be one Aboriginal Station Manager, Overseer or Head Stockmen in employment in the country that the ILC trained and got there on their own. Where are the hundreds of ILC Certificate 2 and 3 qualified Aboriginal men now? It is time for ILC to dump the senior people within the Training Department and replace them with true believers that will get these men employed. At the least, by now in a Corporation such as the ILC, all staff in the Training Department and HR should be Aboriginal. After all, it is the Indigenous Land Corporation.

So today, while some staff of the Training Department of the ILC is sitting in Adelaide, others flying around the country, staying in great Hotels and enjoying good food and a beer, Trainees,  my young Aboriginal boys in Minyerri, are suffering family stress, hunger, a feel of desperation, and a disbelief in what ILC promised them.

http://thestringer.com.au/ilc-keeping-aboriginal-men-in-the-long-grass/#.UZm7ft8iPIU

By Lester Ranby.

Photo – treatyrepublic.net

Ear disease is ravaging the lives of a generation of Aboriginal children and destroying their chances of an education, but Australia has decided that it doesn’t want to know.

The disease strikes babies just a few weeks old. Infection and fluid builds up behind the tiny infant’s delicate eardrum, causing the membrane to bulge and eventually burst.

For these babies, it should be a period of hearing and learning, a critical time to acquire language. Instead, their world becomes deadened. Voices become indistinct, and sounds become dulled, sometimes forever.

The medical term for the condition is ‘otitis media’, which simply means middle-ear infection. But the severe form that is devastating Aboriginal communities across Australia is causing permanent hearing impairment and lifelong disadvantage for many of those it infects.

Sydney audiologist, Samantha Harkus, says that non-indigenous babies can also get infected ears, but usually in a much milder form. “It’s something that your kids get from time to time which hurts quite a lot and then it goes away,” she explained. “But in the Aboriginal community it’s not like that at all. It’s a recurrent or chronic problem that has much bigger ramifications for many parts of their lives.”

The reasons why chronic otitis media affects Aboriginal people more than the general Australian population are not fully understood. Some researchers speculate that the disease may have arisen when Aboriginal people transitioned from a nomadic lifestyle to living in settlements.

It is believed that overcrowded housing, poor access to medical care, poor nutrition and exposure to tobacco smoke are contributing factors. Infants are more likely to contract ear disease if they are not breastfed.

“They’ve been struck right from day one!” exclaims ear, nose and throat surgeon, Associate Professor Kelvin Kong. “The kids come into my office where they’ve been in trouble at school, they’ve been the naughty ones. They’ve been hanging out with the wrong people. They’re not paying attention in class, when in actual fact, they just don’t hear.”

Kong understands the challenges that Indigenous people face in Australia. He’s the only Indigenous Australian ever to become a qualified surgeon, though he likes to point out that traditional Aboriginal ‘Nunkari’ healers performed surgery in ancient times.

Based in the city of Newcastle, Kong travels to Aboriginal communities around New South Wales, treating children who have chronic otitis media. If the number of burst or perforated eardrums rises above four percent of a population, then it is classified as a “massive public health problem” requiring “urgent attention”, according to World Health Organisation guidelines. What Kong has encountered in Australia is far worse.

“In our Aboriginal population that rate is over 60 percent,” he said. “In some of the smaller communities that I visit, you’re talking about 85, 95 percent of people with perforated eardrums.”

It should be a simple, treatable disease, but for Indigenous people ear infections routinely continue through adolescence and into adulthood. Often there is permanent damage done to the structure of the ear. The effects can keep cascading until ear disease ends up destroying their lives.

“Now you can’t tell me that with the hearing loss that it doesn’t lead to a lot of the troubles that they’ve been getting in,” said Kong, “and it leads to the problems that the media think is the problem, that is alcohol and substance abuse.

“Alcohol and substance abuse are purely symptoms of the underlying social fabric that is not being developed properly. So a lot of these diseases that we’re talking about are actually diseases of social determination.”

Poor school grades caused by poor hearing can lead to unemployment, poverty and often an encounter with the criminal justice system. The number of Aboriginal people with hearing impairment who end up in prison is staggering.

There have only been three recent studies into hearing loss amongst Indigenous prisoners in Australian jails. A 2006 study in the State of Victoria found that 78 percent of Indigenous prisoners aged 17-20 years had hearing so poor it corresponded with the bottom 10 percent in society. An unpublished 2010 survey by an audiologist at Bandyup Women’s Prison in Perth revealed that 46 percent of Indigenous inmates had significant hearing loss.

In 2012, the acting superintendent of Darwin prison instigated a study of Northern Territory jails, which found an astonishing 94 percent of Aboriginal inmates suffered significant hearing loss. The report attributed this hearing loss to ear disease the prisoners had contracted as children.

Once imprisoned, Aboriginal inmates with hearing loss feel greater hardship and isolation than other prisoners. Many have difficulty hearing the instructions of correctional officers, the Darwin study found. Australia imprisons Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people at a rate 15 times the general population, yet the country has not fully investigated the reasons why.

Incredibly, most Australian states have not surveyed the extent of hearing loss amongst the Indigenous inmates in their custody. New South Wales holds the most Indigenous prisoners but doesn’t keep reliable statistics on the extent of hearing loss. The question remains, why not?

“I can’t answer that,” said New South Wales Member of Parliament, Linda Burney. “You could assume it would be very similar, in particular to the Victorian statistics.”

Burney was the first Indigenous person to become a Member of the State Parliament in New South Wales, and is now Deputy Leader of the Opposition. For twenty years she has lobbied for more action to help Indigenous people suffering the effects of otitis media.

“Obviously, the impact of it on the adult population is not something being discussed and probably not being dealt with,” she said. “In that context, the profile of it needs to be raised, particularly the implications for people as they go into adult life.”

Just how many Aboriginal people in Australia are suffering hearing loss as a result of otitis media is not known. In 2005, Darwin paediatrician Peter Morris recommended that a standardised national survey be done, but none has happened.

Morris conducted his own study of Aboriginal children across the Northern Territory, and discovered that severe otitis media was rife. He found that only 20% of the children had normal hearing. The rest required medical intervention or hearing aids. Puss was seen oozing from the ruptured eardrums of babies as young as 19 days of age.

“The first thing that needs to happen is that there be a comprehensive understanding of how deep the problem is,” said Burney. “If the statistics in the Northern Territory are replicated in other states, which we don’t know but would assume that they are, then we do have a crisis in relation to hearing for Aboriginal people.

“The issue is, where does it fit into some of the more life-threatening health issues that Aboriginal people experience? Outrageous rates compared to the rest of the population. And maybe it’s about priority. If heart disease and cancer and diabetes, which are life-threatening, are soaking up the space and the money, then you can begin to understand that.”

Some health professionals in the field are already working very hard to improve the hearing of Indigenous children. In the southern arid region of the Northern Territory, Harkus has taken her audiology clinic on the road as part of an outreach program run by Australian Hearing. She visits the remote communities of Lytentye Apurte, Aputula and Titjikala, on the edge of the Simpson Desert, to bring electronic hearing aids to children and eligible adults.

“They want to find out about amplification to make it easier for them to hear,” she said. “It’s around helping people to hear better with the hearing loss that they have.”

Some of the children are unable to have hearing aids fitted due to the fluid discharging from their infected ears. Australian Hearing’s solution is to fit electric transducers to the baseball caps the children wear. The ‘hearing hats’, as they’ve become known, send the amplified sound through the wearer’s skull bone. It’s a bit like that old thing where you bang a tuning fork against the table and place it against your head,” said Harkus. “As far as we can tell, we’re the only place in the world that does that on such a large scale. They work really well.”

It’s not just remote areas that have a problem otitis media. Two thousand kilometres away in Sydney, the city of over four million people has little awareness of the otitis media problem in its midst.

“Western Sydney has the highest Aboriginal population with incredible amounts of ear disease out there,” said Kong. “We need to get the research papers done in Western Sydney so that we can see that it’s a similar problem, to make it more available, to make sure more people get involved in there.”

The problem is exacerbated by the reluctance of many Indigenous people to attend hospitals. In Aboriginal culture there’s a belief that if you go into hospital you never come out. With little in the way of Aboriginal-friendly decorations or signage, and few Indigenous staff in attendance, the hospital system can appear intimidating, and become off-limits to Indigenous people.

“Why if I’m non-Aboriginal do I have access and ability to utilise all these resources, whereas if I’m of Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander, I don’t,” Kong questions. “Why is there that dichotomy?

“We may as well divide Australia into two and put all terrible disease and Aboriginal people and poverty onto one side and all the affluent on the other, because there’s such a distinction there, there shouldn’t be that distinction.”

The John Hunter Hospital in Newcastle had been experiencing low Indigenous attendance rates at its outpatient clinics. Kong set out to show how things could be improved, and he found a solution.

As a trial, he moved one of the clinics away from the hospital grounds, and is now holding it at the community-controlled Aboriginal Medical Centre. The move resulted in a dramatic surge in attendance

“They now have a clinic which is run by the hospital, so it’s still a hospital clinic, but it’s run in the community,” Kong said. “Now, the attendance rate is 98%. We get inundated with too many patients who actually get there now than what there are places.”

Despite pockets of improvement over the past decade, Kong feels that little progress has been made to stop the scourge of otitis media. He’s calling for a centre for Indigenous ear excellence to be established to bring together the best minds in research, clinical practice and education, with the aim of eradicating ear disease from the Indigenous population.

“I think that if you can eliminate the factors you can deal with, such as ear disease, and make that a bit more of a level playing field, then there’s no reason why we can’t have an Aboriginal prime minister,” he said.

Kong wants to raise the profile of Indigenous ear disease with the Australian public, and put it at the centre of every politician’s mind. However, with government still unaware or unwilling to investigate the social ramifications and extent of otitis media, he still has a long way to go. So far, Australia is not listening.

http://thestringer.com.au/a-nation-turns-its-back-on-its-children/#.UZm6Ut8iPIU

photo: Aboriginal Tent Embassy, Old Parliament House, October 2008 – Photo, Gerry Georgatos

“We resolve, as a nation, to do all in our power to make sure these practices are never repeated. In facing future challenges, we will remember the lessons of family separation. Our focus will be on protecting the fundamental rights of children and on the importance of the child’s right to know and be cared for by his or her parents”. said Prime Minister Julia Gillard in her recent National Apology for Forced Adoptions on Thursday 21 March 2013 http://www.pm.gov.au/press-office/national-apology-forced-adoptions

Then on Monday 13 May 2013 we witnessed ‘Adoption an option for neglected Indigenous children’ making international headlines…

Paul Bleakley reported in The Australian Times UK that the Northern Territory Chief Minister Adam Giles has announced that he will remove neglected Aboriginal children from their homes and adopt them out if necessary, claiming that fears of a return to the Stolen Generation have put Indigenous children at serious risk in recent years. See the article below in its entirety:

NORTHERN Territory Chief Minister Adam Giles has announced he will remove neglected Aboriginal children from their homes and adopt them out if necessary, claiming that fears of a return to the Stolen Generation have put Indigenous children at serious risk in recent years.

Mr Giles, who became the country’s first Indigenous state or territory leader earlier this year, said his government was committed to making parents take responsibility for their children. He said that if parents were unable to provide satisfactory conditions for their children that alternative solutions had to be considered, including putting neglected children up for adoption.

Mr Giles has told The Australian: “Whatever we do has to be about making parents take responsibility for their kids. And if they won’t, (we’re) prepared to provide alternative solutions. If that means those kids are loved and cared for by other parents, then so be it.”

The Howard Government introduced the Northern Territory National Emergency Response package in 2007, which was designed to address allegations of child abuse and neglect in the territory’s Indigenous communities. Mr Giles said despite ongoing commitment to improving quality of life for Northern Territory’s Aboriginal residents, only one Indigenous child had been removed from its home and adopted out in the past decade.

Mr Giles said: “There are situations in the Northern Territory where nobody has been prepared to support a permanent adoption of a child for fear of Stolen Generation. There is a lineup of families out there who say, ‘If you want help with children, we’ll be happy to foster a child, look after a child.’”

There are currently processes in place in the Northern Territory that allows for the adoption of a child that has been subjected to serious neglect or abuse, however Mr Giles claims that previous governments have hesitated to use adoption within Indigenous communities in an attempt to avoid comparisons with the Stolen Generation. He said that his government would not advocate a ‘mass grab’ of children, instead considering adoption as an option on a case-by-case basis.

Mr Giles said: “You mean to tell me when we’ve got all these alleged cases of chronic child sexual abuse, children running around on petrol, going on the streets at night sexualising themselves in some circumstances, and there’s only one permanent adoption, for fear of Stolen Generation? That is not standing up for kids.”

The Stolen Generation refers to the Indigenous children that were removed from their families by the Australian government between 1909 and 1969, in a policy intended to ‘civilise’ the country’s native population. There are no exact figures stating how many children were taken during this period, however it is believed that at least 100 000 Indigenous children were taken as a part of the Stolen Generation.

Mr Giles said: “If you’ve got kids who aren’t being looked after by their parents, there’s only so many times you can try and intervene to get that right. It’s not like we’re coming in to take kids, but where individual issues come up, we will take that decision. People were too scared of Stolen Generation. And I believe that’s why there’s a lot of kids out there with such social dysfunction.”

Mr Giles became Chief Minister of the Northern Territory in March after defeating fellow Country Liberal Party member Terry Mills in a leadership challenge. He is a former public housing manager for the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission, and served on the Northern Territory’s Indigenous Economic Taskforce.

http://www.australiantimes.co.uk/news/in-australia/adoption-an-option-for-neglected-indigenous-children-says-nt-chief-minister.htm

Mr Giles became Chief Minister of the Northern Territory in March 2013 after defeating fellow Country Liberal Party member Terry Mills in a leadership challenge. He is a former public housing manager for the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission, and served on the Northern Territory’s Indigenous Economic Taskforce.

Understandably some Aboriginal advocates are horrified by a Northern Territory Governments proposal to put Aboriginal children up for adoption if they are victims of neglect.

Deputy Chief Minister Dave Tollner backs the plan, saying children are often moved from one foster carer to the next without giving them the chance of living with an adoptive family.

“It’s a frustrating thing when you see parents who will never have the capacity to care for a child … for a whole range of reasons, alcohol abuse, domestic violence, all of that,” he said.

He says he has seen first-hand the concerns that stop authorities from removing a child from a family due to fears about creating another Stolen Generation.

“We seem to think it’s okay to put that child into foster care, time after time, after time, after time,” he said.

“There are decent, loving people out there who want to adopt, who will raise that child in a loving environment.”

“I think it’s a terrible blight on our society that there are these sacred cows that we can’t go near.”

“It’s a frustrating thing when you see parents who will never have the capacity to care for a child” said Mr Tollner.

Really?

“Parents who will NEVER have the capacity to care for a child” he said.

Is there so little faith in our abilities as human beings who possess the enormous capacity for survival, resilience, change and most importantly LOVE, especially when provided with culturally appropriate ‘tools’ to encourage that capacity for positive change.

Neglect is being used to sweep a lot of issues under the rug and forcibly remove children regardless, a whole gamut of reasons including alcohol abuse, domestic violence, loss of income etc.

These articles hit the International arena and it is disturbing that the full picture is never truthfully told.

What has the Australian Government endorsed in terms of Policy?

And what, if any of the outcomes, that have been purported to improve the plight of our First Nations peoples, have actually been achieved?

Speaking with Sarina Jan, Western Australian Regional Manager for the Centre for Appropriate Technology (CAT) we deliberated over these very questions.

“20 years ago approximately 250 Aboriginal Women Centres in remote Communities were defunded.” She said.

We saw the “Save the Children” Report catapult us into the current NT Intervention nightmare.

“The NT Intervention enacted for 5 years equated to an increase in police, NO rehabilitation centres, and safe houses erected in selected Aboriginal Communities.”

“The NT Intervention at the end of 2012 equated to no one, not one single person being prosecuted, and no changes whatsoever other than more houses in Communities.”

Over the next 10 years we will see the ‘Stronger Futures’ enacted which will replace the NT Intervention.

The Northern Territory Government in the change from Labor to Country Liberal saw the first Aboriginal Chief Minister come into office and the subsequent downgrades to the Department of Child Protection.

There have been downgrades and defunds aplenty, in particular to the Aboriginal Child Agency that was formed for the NT Intervention.

The Department of Youth now falls under the Department of Justice and the Department of Family and Children Services, under the Department of Education.

“Adding insult to injury the NT Stolen Generation go un-recognised with nil funding – in this, the 100 year anniversary of the Stolen Generation – to any sites in 2013.” said Ms Jan.

The Northern Territory Stolen Generations Aboriginal Corporation spokeswoman Vicki Lee Knowles is adamant that adoption should be the last resort and must be maintained within Aboriginal families and communities.

“Only where [there is] absolutely no other option, there is room for adoption [but] within an Aboriginal family because the loss of culture, land and language has a long-term impact on the social and emotional well-being of those children who are removed.”

Ms Knowles says long-term harm is caused by Aboriginal children being removed from their families.

“We are absolutely horrified that an Indigenous chief minister should start to have this conversation publicly in the way that he has and I think he’s misinformed about the consequences of the impacts of removing those children,” she said.

Northern Territory Children’s Commissioner Howard Bath says child protection in the Territory is at crisis point, but only a very small number of families would want to put their children up for adoption.

He says there needs to be an improvement in the services offered to Indigenous families.

“Why aren’t we supporting families? Why aren’t we providing the intense support for families so that the natural parents are given the skills and motivation to be able to look after and protect their own kids?” he asked.

I invited community members to comment – in their entirety to follow:

“As an Indigenous person from the Stolen Generations I have major concerns in regards to removing Indigenous children from their parents on the grounds of neglect.

In 1997, the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission published ‘Bringing them Home: Report on the National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from their Families’. This report traces the history of forcible removal of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families and documents the damaging effects forced separation and institutionalisation had, and continues to have on the well-being of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians

Removal from natural family has been associated with higher rates of emotional distress, depression, poorer physical health and higher rates of smoking and use of illicit substances. It has also been associated with lower educational and employment outcomes. These consequences of separation not only affect those who personally experience removal, but can be trans-generational, impacting on children, families and communities.

Overall, those who had been removed from their natural family were more likely to have experienced at least one stressor in the 12 months prior to interview (73% of people aged 15–39 years and 67% of adults 40 years and over who had been removed, compared with 57% and 56% of those not removed). Results from the 2008 NATSISS show that adults aged 40 years and over were around twice as likely to have experienced a mental illness or alcohol related problem (both 14%), compared with those who had not been separated (7% and 6% respectively). They were also more than twice as likely to have been treated badly or discriminated against (13% compared with 5% of those not removed) (graph 7.4).

People aged 15–39 years who had been removed from their family were more likely to have had trouble getting a job (20%, compared with 13% of those not removed) and almost four times as likely to have been treated badly or discriminated against (19% compared with 5%). They were also around twice as likely to have experienced a mental illness (15% compared with 6% of those not removed) or an alcohol related problem (11% compared with 6%) in the 12 months prior to interview (graph 7.3).

What I find myself asking is “have we not learned anything and are we to raise another generation of Indigenous people with stressors and not able to function in society?” What families need are support and services such as Well-Being Centres established that will assist the whole family in healing and supporting them. Also Children and Youth Safe Houses need to be established in order for the children to still have contact with other family members and their community, given the negative impact on an Indigenous child removed from community.

I do not support any child/children being removed on the grounds of neglect and one has to question can the NT Government respond? Given NSW re-evaluated it’s response to children at risk, perhaps the NT Government needs to look at other States responses in regards to the well-being of children.

The Federal Government should ensure that it honours it’s agreement in accepting the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous people as a framework to work upon and ensure that they do protect the rights of Indigenous people as set out in Article 7 and Indigenous specific rights under the Universal Declaration on Human Rights, ensuring that they will intervene if States and Territories are implementing laws or policies that will deny Indigenous peoples their rights as a people.

May I also suggest the recommendations from the Human Rights Commission, Preventing Crime and Promoting Rights for Indigenous Young People with Cognitive Disabilities and Mental Health Issues Part 3″, Stories from the field: A life course approach to Indigenous young people with cognitive disabilities and mental health issues, that identified participants suggested a holistic model of service to assist all Indigenous young people, including those with cognitive disabilities and/ or mental health issues. Associate Professor Helen Milroy, an Indigenous child and adolescent psychiatrist, outlined this approach, encompassing physical, psychological, social and spiritual/ cultural needs. Below is Professor Milroy’s assessment of what is particularly relevant for all Indigenous young people including those with cognitive disabilities and/or mental health problems at risk of juvenile justice involvement.

• Physical: Screening for chronic diseases such as rheumatic fever, kidney damage, anaemia, blood sugar levels. Screening and assessment of any development delay, indicating cognitive disability.
• Psychological/ Emotional: Consideration of experiences of trauma, loss, identity issues. An assessment of coping styles, autonomy and emotional regulation, as well as awareness that most young people with cognitive disabilities do not have emotional language so may be acting out to express themselves.
• Social: Understanding of family and where the young person fits in society. This requires Indigenous mentors and role models to help young people find their place in their communities. We need to help young people understand the story of Indigenous people, so that young people don’t keep thinking that the problems in communities are due to fact that they are simply ‘bad’. Instead, need to help them understand the history and turn negatives around to instil pride in their identity.
• Spiritual/ Cultural: Need to validate culture and experiences and promote connection to ancestry through healing and culture camps.

These principles should act as a checklist for all services for Indigenous young people and have guided the selection of our case studies.

Holistic service delivery for Indigenous people is not a new idea and has long been part of Indigenous health policy. However, according to Professor Milroy, there are few programs that actually meet all of these needs. Indigenous programs tend to meet social and spiritual/cultural needs well. Mainstream services deal better with physical and psychological/ emotional needs but neither seems to be able to balance all of these areas of concern.

Holistic service delivery also means an interagency, whole of government approach. The complex needs of Indigenous young people with cognitive disabilities or mental health problems means that they are likely to be involved with a range of government and non-government services. Despite a whole raft of policy documents and guidelines extolling the importance of inter-agency cooperation, our consultations found that this is rarely the case on the ground.

Appropriate Assessments

At every stage, assessment and identification of children and young people with cognitive disabilities and/or mental health issues is crucial. Without identification, children and young people are likely to have their needs ignored or misinterpreted. This in turn, leads to poor outcomes. Despite the importance of early identification of special needs, consultations suggested that for Indigenous young people with cognitive disabilities and/or mental health issues slipping through the gaps was the norm, rather than the exception.

Consistent with the literature review, there were real concerns about the cultural bias in psychological assessments for cognitive disabilities and/or mental health issues. Although there is greater validity for visual tests, according to workers from the Disability Services Commission in Western Australia, ‘you may as well throw away the tests when you are working with remote communities.’ Instead, workers ask parents or caregivers to compare the child or young person to others the same age to get a sense of appropriate development. Assessment is less clinical and ‘really a series of educated guesses’.

Low confidence in assessment tools, continuing cultural bias, low expectations of Indigenous children and low recognition amongst Indigenous families and communities about possible cognitive and mental health problems all lead to fewer assessments. Assessment is the gate keeping process so fewer assessments equal lower levels of service provision.

To be eligible for disability support services a young person must have an IQ less than 70. This knocks out a large group in the borderline intellectually disabled range. Further, there was a belief amongst those we consulted that this is an arbitrary line. Many young people with higher IQs may be functionally well below the diagnostic mark. This is because any cognitive deficits are compounded by living in disadvantaged environments.

Mental health assessments also function poorly with Indigenous young people. Mental health assessments do not contextualise behaviour and symptoms within an awareness of Indigenous history and experience. The magnitude of trauma in the Indigenous community suggests that we need to seriously consider child and adolescent behaviour in this context. Across the board, experts, workers and community members felt that trauma and pain was at the root cause of most mental health issues.

From a clinical point of view, Professor Milroy suggested that there is a gross under diagnosis of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) in Indigenous communities. PTSD is a psychological condition following exposure to a stressful or traumatic experience. It has been recognised as a particular issue for indigenous peoples around the world as:

the common experiences of childhood and adult trauma, removal of children from families, interpersonal violence, substance abuse, and early death all result in generations of people more likely to suffer from PTSD.

Most of what I have said has relied on evidence and reports that have indicated that removal of Indigenous children from their families creates long term social and emotional problems, not only on the child/children but also on the community as a whole. https://www.humanrights.gov.au/publications/preventing-crime-and-promoting-rights-indigenous-young-people-cognitive-disabilities-3#fn158

Article 7

1. Indigenous individuals have the rights to life, physical and mental integrity, liberty and security of person.

2. Indigenous peoples have the collective right to live in freedom, peace and security as distinct peoples and shall not be subjected to any act of genocide or any other act of violence, including forcibly removing children of the group to another group.

It certainly is very disappointing that an Indigenous Minister or any Minister would be advocating this kind of response. I really do wish that I had more time, given the negative implication of removing Indigenous children based on ignorance and ill-informed information.” – Cleonie Quayle

“I feel that as the Indigenous leader in the NT, he should be talking more with the community before he run off like all other bureaucrat before him, we have already had one big liar come out of the NT by a Canberra bias bureaucrat, we don’t need a NT bureaucrat doing the same.” – Pat Lock

“It demonstrates a paucity of thinking and the remnant dogmatic stereotypes that are shovelled down our throats by various origin-of-thinking that arose from within historical privilege and which has carried in effect uninterrupted contemporaneously. Yes, it is the Stolen Generations and social engineering when Adam Giles argues in the ways he has. Adam’s arguments demonstrate a lack of understanding of the psychosocial and his disregard of the volumes of evidence that bespeak the answer and remedies.

He has inadvertently manipulated symptoms as causal rather than seek out the underlying issues and the subsequent remedies where permissible.

You should never remove children from their families on the premise of neglect arising from poverty. Keeping families together should be an underlying principle wherever possible – this is redemptive, restorative and bridges humanity. The Stolen Generations is not just about the removal of children on the premise of social engineering, it is about callous ignorance. The Stolen Generations should not only be remembered as an attempt to wipe out colour but also for the evidence that removing children from their parents ensures often irreparable damage to the psyche, and damage to one’s form and content, thus hindering their development. Such damage mangles, and often renders impotent, the functions and operations of family and ones understanding of family. Removal of a child from their family predisposes situational trauma, continuing stress disorders and anxieties, and a complexity of multiple traumas that one spends a lifetime trying to disassociate or heal from – with the worst outcomes, incarceration and suicide.

Australia is one of the few nations in the world that outrageously removes children from their families because they are impoverished or perceivably neglected because of the stressors of that matter of fact poverty. If we look at our regional neighbour, Indonesia, which endures acute poverty, they do not go about removing the children from poverty stricken families whose parents have to work all day or who are not able to provide them what privileged families are able to. Similarly so with most nations. Australia has a rogue mindset borne of its maltreatment of Aboriginal peoples that it can continue on with convictions that arose in Australia’s own era of Apartheid.

Australia is the world’s 12th largest economy and it is about time its Governments prioritised the most vulnerable with the spend from the gross domestic product that they have the capacity to allocate.

Adam Giles should be focused on assisting impoverished communities, in assisting struggling and perceivably dysfunctional families, in providing to these communities and families the full suite of infrastructure and social equity which is available to most of the rest of Australia. In Western Australia, one in every 14 Aboriginal children is in the care of the State, this is a disgrace. Where Governments do not eliminate the divide between impoverished Aboriginal communities and peoples and the rest of Australia then this is actually the neglect, a criminal neglect. The neglect of these children does not emanate from the families but from the Government. This Government neglect lays on the stressors and preconditions which deny opportunity and equality from the beginning of life.

There are no ifs and buts.” – Gerry Georgatos, PhD researcher

“If you look back through the various apologies made in the Parliaments of this country a common theme was “we must never let this happen again”. Clearly Mr Giles has not read these speeches.” – Linda Burney

“This is shocking! This threatening talk goes against the current climate that is the forced adoptions apology. I must say I’m amazed by the statement that there are lots of potential foster parents out there – I was under the impression that there is a massive shortage. I guess you’ve seen the Senate Committee Report on Former forced adoption policies and practices (Feb. 2012)? The following national apology unfortunately didn’t get the media attention it should have due to the ridiculous leadership spill on the same day. Are we going to have yet again another set of rules for them and us?

The Prime Minister clearly stated in the apology that: “We resolve, as a nation, to do all in our power to make sure these practices are never repeated. In facing future challenges, we will remember the lessons of family separation. Our focus will be on protecting the fundamental rights of children and on the importance of the child’s right to know and be cared for by his or her parents.” – Name Withheld

“This is a disastrous policy change in the nurture and care of our children…again. What the Minister needs to remember is the fact that this policy choice has the hallmarks of a failure to take seriously, the high levels of poverty among our people and the lack of innovative approaches to family enhancement programs which would resolve many of the issues our families face in the NT.” – In the struggle…Pastor Ray Minniecon

“From my view point does the article in issue have some credibility as my experience shows that the press has this illogical way of embellishing their own aspect of looking at matters, and in particular the Indigenous issues in our country, especially coming from an Indigenous person who should be aware of the historical events of the past and the damage that it caused.” – Sonny Morey

“Well, well, the NT government led (for the first time ever in Australia) by a black man is proposing the adoption of indigenous children who are neglected. There is soooo much I could say about this but I will say only this ‘Stockholm Syndrome’… even if it’s only a way out for the policy makers. We mustn’t let it happen again.” – Name Withheld

“Lots of scary implications with this one. They can only carry out adoptions with the consent of the mother, but I wouldn’t put it past them to get women to sign things they don’t understand. Bush Mob would never give up their children for adoption. They have a good foster care system; they need to take better care of the foster parents.” – Name Withheld

“And which Aboriginal advocates were they? Can’t be anyone who knows what’s really going on up there. Cos the abuse & neglect isn’t just coming from home, it’s entrenched in the racist every day views of society, some aspects of the intervention & history of neglect in general. KIDS HAVE A BASIC Human RIGHT” – Name Withheld

“This is bloody scary” – Name Withheld

“History repeats itself. One must query why this solution is being presented where its known its not in the best interest of the child. At times we must realise that not every thing that seems foolish is done by mistake. At times we must not be fooled into thoughts of innocents. Those who present this proven failed policy have an agenda. One must understand & or question their agenda.” – Name Withheld

“Even after the Bringing Them Home Report, the Apology by Kevin Rudd Prime Minister of Australia and the recent review of adoption. In the last welve months thousands of Aboriginal Children in Queensland have been snatched from their parents, community and extended families, I have witnessed in the last six months just in St George, approximately ten children were ripped away from their parents, Aboriginal children who were in school were dragged out of class, a child who went down shopping for her mother could hear the crying of her little brother locked in a car at the BP station when she went to investigate she was pushed into the back seat and was taken by Queensland Children Services and Queensland Police. Yes the Police are involved to prevent the parents resisting the snatching of their children, the [four] 4 children were removed from St George that evening by the time they got to Tara 2 [and a] half hours east of St George they were ordered to return the children, around midnight the children were dumped at the front fence of their home no one escorted them in to the house or to the parent and there was no explanation given. Within a fortnight Children Services returned again to the children’s home with police and snatched them again and transported them, [the children], to Dalby [three] 3 hours east of St George and placed them with other people the children are not familiar with. During the first week the young boy about 3 years old was bitten by the people’s dog, this is an absolute disgrace, morally wrong and absolutely despicable, for they are creating another Stolen Generation and a violation of the Rights of the Child. It is also racist when another group think they know what is best and right for you, but what do they say still “WE COULDN’T BE FAIRER”, I SAY GENOCIDE IS STILL GENOCIDE AND STILL A CRIME AGAINST HUMANITY.” – Bob Weatherall

“Do not think these practices of forced adoption and permanencies planning are the way of the future. One of the most sickening sights I ever saw was in Katherine. A Jaowyn elder had invited me to the RSL for dinner with his wife. First thing I noticed was there were no other Aboriginal adults in the club. Second thing I noticed was a long table of youngish, non-Aboriginal parents all sitting up there with a mix of young non-Aboriginal children and Aboriginal babies. Each one of these adult couples had an Aboriginal baby in their care, all dressed up like Shirley Temples. There were about 10 Aboriginal babies in this group that night. I was so upset by this – it was a ‘support group’. Obviously up there it is fashionable for the non-Aboriginal middle class to have a dark-skinned, cute, accessory.” – Lynette Hughes

Taking these points of view into account it would seem the community is urging the Northern Territory Chief Minister Adam Giles to listen, listen to the communities, listen to your people, listen to your elders, support sovereignty and self-determination, and assert the solutions rather than following the assimilationist bureaucratic status quo into repeating history, to further a debilitating demise for our First Nations peoples.

Dr Brian Steels, director of the Asia Pacific Forum for Restorative Justice says “families require support to nurture them and to educate them and to be able to evidence to them that there is potential for a real future.”

http://thestringer.com.au/adopting-or-stealing-children/#.UZm4yd8iPIU

Noongar Tent Embassy members and the Last of the River People have gathered this morning in numbers alongside many of Perth’s record Aboriginal homeless to protest the State’s neglect. Only hours ago scores have begun to gather to later on today protest at Heirrison Island (Matagarup), the site where Noongar Tent Embassy had stood last year till confronted by hundreds of police officers who came to eject them.

The protest has been organised by one of the Last of the River People, Elder Herbert Bropho who is exasperated by the State Government’s out of sight out of mind attitude towards rising Aboriginal homelessness. Half of Perth’s homelessness is Aboriginal, and Perth has the highest rate of homelessness of any capital city in Australia. Mr Bropho is one of the leaders of the Swan Valley Nyungah Community (SVNC) which had its communal residences in the north-western Perth suburb of Lockridge closed down in 2003 by the then Geoff Gallop led Government.

“They made our people homeless, evicted us without notice and many of us with nowhere else to go but to finish up on the streets – many to die on the streets,” said Mr Bropho.

Tragically, Mr Bropho has lost two sisters and a brother to the streets – they died homeless on Perth’s streets.

Because of an overreaction by the State Government at the time to allegations of sexual abuse against one person from the SVNC Lockridge community the whole facility of homes was shut down, without recourse to natural justice, and everyone was made homeless. It was indeed a knee-jerk but diabolical reaction.

“Would they have done this to a non-Aboriginal community?” asked Mr Bropho.

Perth’s Aboriginal homelessness rankles in an otherwise affluent city, which beats as the cosmopolitan pulse of the mining boom State – Western Australia is the nation’s wealthiest jurisdiction proportion to population in terms of Gross State Product and in terms of having the highest median average for income per capita. Western Australia is responsible for 46 per cent of Australia’s mining exports.

Mr Bropho said he walks among the many homeless to listen to them, to let them know that at least the SVNC has not forgotten them. “I have walked alongside the homeless people and we have had enough,” he said.

Mr Bropho has just lost his 43 year old brother, burying him only days ago, May 10. The 43 year old man was made homeless with the 2003 evictions, and became ill on the streets. His passing follows the death of two sisters who in the years since the eviction were found lying dead on the cold dank streets within the loneliness of two consecutive Perth winters.

“Our family just buried our brother who was homeless since the State Government closed down the Swan Valley Nyungah Community,” said Mr Bropho.

“I will not rest until we get our community back.”

He said the homeless he has spoken to have said they have no faith in any government coming to their aid, now or in the future.

Indeed the May 14 Federal Budget has not allocated any significant or additional funding to reduce or assist with homelessness. The WA State Budgets have always consistently failed the homeless.

Mr Bropho is angered that it is not enough that the homeless have it tough and are dying on the streets but that they are also targeted, as if they are an eyesore, by police.

“Move-on-notices are only being used against black people,” said Mr Bropho. He said that WA is the backwater of racism in this nation and Aboriginal people are targeted. Indeed, Western Australia incarcerates Aboriginal adults and juveniles at the nation’s highest rates. WA Aboriginal adult males are incarcerated at the world’s highest rate. Similarly with Aboriginal juveniles.

“The Government has been ignoring our concerns about the desecration of our sacred sites (at the desolate Lockridge community) and now they are planning to desecrate Matagarup (Heirisson Island).”

The State Government has launched redevelopment works at Heirisson Island which had been where Noongar Tent Embassy had held strong for several months last year. Additionally, the former homes of the SVNC community are to be bulldozed and the area turned into a park – Reconciliation Park, but nothing is to be done for all those made homeless.

“They are already digging in the sacred Swan River on the Yagan (a 19^th century Aboriginal freedom fighter) side and they are completely disregarding our right to religion, culture and laws.”

“It is time for (Premier) Colin Barnett to come down and face us.”

“It is time the Premier listened to us, the Traditional Owners.”

He said that it was time the State Government stopped negotiating backroom deals with the South West Land and Sea Council (SWALSC) which he said is not representative or in sync with Traditional Owners. “SWALSC and the Government are selling us out.”

The beleaguered family of the Brophos has had to deal with one tragedy after another since they were tossed out of their homes by the State Government’s 2003 closure of the Lockridge community homes.

Swan Valley Elders, who are also known as the Last of the River People, Herbert and Bella Bropho hurt deeply from the loss of their two sisters to the streets and now their brother. Just before his death, after nearly a decade on the streets the brother had tried to reclaim his home and returned to Lockridge – but he was moved-on by police. The next morning he was found unconscious on a Perth street. He was taken to hospital. Less than year later he would lose his battle with life.

He had liver and kidney failure, and his only tragic respite from the streets was prison.

“He was hounded in his last days of life for low level offences.” But Mr Bropho launched an inspiring campaign to have him released from prison into the care of his family.” In January. Mr Bropho chained himself to Government House till his brother was released – and indeed this transpired when a Perth Magistrate determined that Bail should be accommodated.

“We wanted him to die among family with dignity,” said Mr Bropho.

“We wanted him near us. We wanted to say goodbye to our loved one in culturally appropriate ways.”

Noongar woman and law student Marianne Mackay said that the Bropho family has “been persecuted” because of their father, who was convicted of sexual abuse offences. “The persecution of the Bropho family is unwarranted. It is about time everyone opened up their hearts to this family who have done no-one any wrong.”

“None of this would have happened, all the homelessness and the despair – Herbert’s and Bella’s brother and sisters dying on the streets and all the other poor souls who have spent a decade homeless and in broken lives – if the heartless and hysterical (Geoff) Gallop Labor Government had not overreacted and closed down a community because of allegations against one person,” said Ms Mackay.

The community has not given up on reclaiming a piece of Country and their homes. But time is running out for them as the Government will bulldoze the site for a park. –  ”Where one supposes the homeless can sleep on the benches,” said Ms Mackay.

The Stringer is aware of six deaths on the streets of people made homeless from the 2003 closure. The Stringer has also met up with many of the homeless.

Abraham Alone (Bropho), a former Lockridge resident has been homeless for a decade.

“I have been homeless for ten years because they kicked us out of our homes. This destroyed my marriage and made my children fatherless even though I love them dearly,” he said.

“We can’t win our right to any justice because those who make injustice are more than powerful, they don’t even think we exist, to them we are not human, we do no matter.”

Damien Kickett has also been homeless for a decade.

“We live off the kindness of charities. The Government doesn’t care if we live or die.”

“Everyone must remember that it was the Government that made us homeless.”

The State Government intends to name the park “Korndin Kulluch” (Reconciliation Park).

Elder Bella Bropho said she objects to the name. She said “Korndin Kulluch” literally means “a strong home.”

“We object to the words ‘Korndin Kulluch’. How can it be a ‘strong home’ if nobody lives there, if innocent women and children that the State said they wanted to protect from sexual abuse are deprived of their home?”

“How could this possibly be called ‘reconciliation’?”

“Warra Minditch is what it should be called. ‘Genocide Park’ would be a truthful name for it, in our language and in theirs,” said Ms Bropho.

The coming weeks and months will see Noongar Tent Embassy members and SVNC’s Last of the River People highlight the plight of Aboriginal homelessness at Heirisson Island (Matagarup). In these weeks and months we will see what the Government’s response will be – will it be the framing of terms of reference and policies to address the homelessness issues their predecessors have created and which they have allowed to languish or will they send in once again a militia-like police presence as occurred last year, with mounted police, dog squads, tactical response groups and helicopters? – 150 police officers marched on Noongar Tent Embassy.

- Footnote - Western Australia Premier, Colin Barnett has done an about-face with his Government’s decision to effectively languish homelessness on many of the former SVNC community residents. His Government’s plan for the park flys in the face of what he said at the time in 2003 while in Opposition.

While in Opposition in 2003, Mr Barnett was highly critical of the Government decision to take over the land where the community residences were located and to evict the residents. But now as Premier, he intends to do what he labelled back then as a “denial of natural justice for the Swan Valley community.”

According to Hansard, the official parliamentary record of what is said in Parliament, Mr Barnett launched into a scathing attack on the Gallop Government for their actions.

“Despite all the rhetoric of the speeches that carry on about reconciliation, not one member opposite has criticised this Bill. Where is the reconciliation in this legislation? It denies Aboriginal people the right of natural justice. Where does the Premier stand on reconciliation?” Mr Barnett told Parliament.

“Why raise the Aboriginal flag outside this parliament when the Premier brings in a Bill that specifically denies Aboriginal people any right of natural justice? It is absolute garbage for the Premier to talk about reconciliation when he denies one group any right of natural justice on the basis of its race.”

Mr  Barnett told Parliament “good people” did not support the State Government action.

“What offends me about this clause is the victims are denied their rights to natural justice. Why should they be denied those rights? Some of the victims are concerned about the land, about their homes and about that place.”

“Despite the horrors and the abuse that may have happened there, as I said before, it is their only home. Yet this Bill denies them any right to pursue the matter at law. That is an extraordinary thing for a Parliament to be asked to do. I do not agree with this clause.”

But Premier Barnett version 2013 is a whole different story.

http://thestringer.com.au/homeless-protest-at-matagarup-we-will-not-be-swept-away-2/#.UZWhTt8iPIU

Homeless people and the most vulnerable missed out once again in the Federal Budget – their numbers continue to rise but little is done about it. However some groups that work with our most vulnerable found some positives in the 2013 Budget.

Mission Australia characterised the Federal Government’s Budget as one of many missed opportunities “scattered among positive initiatives.”

Mission Australia’s CEO, Toby Hall, said the Government deserved praise on the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) and what little of the Gonski education reforms were upheld.

“This has really been a budget of swings and roundabouts,” said Mr Hall.

“For every welcome initiative there is another missed opportunity.”

“We welcome the Government’s decision to encourage more people into the workforce, particularly single parents, by increasing the amount people are able to earn before their income support payments are affected.”

But single parent groups have said this will not offset the hardship for tens of thousands of single parents who were pushed off Parenting Payments earlier in the year and onto Newstart. Finding work that could compensate them for the loss of Parenting Payment in the hours available to them while children are at school is not realistic.

But Mr Hall has welcomed the nevertheless general incentive to increase income thresholds for those Centrelink recipients who are introducing themselves back into the workforce.

“We welcome the government’s decision to encourage more people into the workforce, particularly single parents, by increasing the amount people are able to earn before their income support payments are affected.”

“But it will do little for the four out of five Newstart recipients who are out of work and living in poverty.”

According to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation Development (OECD), Australia has the lowest payment of unemployment benefits of the world’s developed countries when standardised against the average earnings of a double income earning family.

Given Australia’s cost of living, Newstart recipients live below Australia’s poverty line – what is known as the Henderson Line.

The Australian Council of Social Service’s (ACOSS) 2012 Poverty in Australia report found that after housing costs were taken into account, that an estimated 2,265,000 or 13 per cent of all Australians, including 575,000 children – 17.5 per cent of all children – lived in households that are below the poverty line.

There is relative poverty and absolute poverty, with many Aboriginal peoples living in third world conditions in the world’s 12th largest economy.

Like just about everyone, Mr Hall did not expect a rise to the Newstart allowance.

“Given the financial constraints, I don’t think anyone expected the Government to deliver Newstart recipients with a $50 a week increase,” said Mr Hall.

“But we regret the Government has been unable to begin at least phasing in an increase to the dole over the next few years,” he said.

But an increase to Australia’s unemployment benefits by $50 a week would cost annually less than $2 billion per year. This is less than 0.5 per cent of the total Commonwealth Budget. It is easy to find but military hardware spending is forever prioritised.

“We think the Government’s decision to replace the Baby Bonus with a more targeted benefit through Family Tax Benefit A shows that it’s serious about tackling middle class welfare,” said Mr Hall.

“But what’s missing is a commitment to root and branch welfare reform – which is what we need.”

“For example, where are the measures to assist more Disability Support Pension (DSP) recipients, those with the capacity to work, into the job market?”

“We have allowed hundreds of thousands of people on the DSP, who, with the right level of support, have the capacity to work, to waste away outside the workforce, with no engagement. It is bad for them, their families and the entire community.”

“Why aren’t we making a greater effort at engaging these people? It makes sense economically and socially.”

“Of course, full marks to the government for its commitment to the NDIS and the Gonski reforms.”

“The one year extension of the Youth Connections program to the end of 2014 is also very welcome.”

“But it is worth placing on the record that there was nothing in this year’s budget to improve the affordability of housing or childcare,” said Mr Hall.

http://thestringer.com.au/homeless-forever-forgotten-by-the-commonwealth/#.UZWZY98iPIU