https://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2007/s1865196.htmIndigenous violence getting worse, author finds
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The World Today - Wednesday, 7 March , 2007 12:25:00
Reporter: Tanya Nolan
ELEANOR HALL: More Indigenous children are being removed from their families now than during the discredited days of the stolen children era.
That's just one of the disturbing findings made by Australian author, Louis Nowra, in his new essay on violence against women and children in Aboriginal communities.
Drawing on government reports, Mr Nowra has found that despite more public scrutiny, the problem is getting worse, not better, with Indigenous women now facing more attacks from Indigenous men and more brutal forms of violence than they were seven years ago.
Tanya Nolan has more.
TANYA NOLAN: The statistics that go with Aboriginal domestic violence and abuse are still high and still harrowing.
Aboriginal boys are eight to ten times more likely to be assaulted than non-Aboriginal boys
One third of 13-year-old girls in the Northern Territory have the venereal diseases chlamydia and gonorrhoea.
Author and playwright Louis Nowra collates and documents these facts in his book Bad Dreaming, a book born of his own experiences of domestic violence.
LOUIS NOWRA: You see, I'm a working-class boy brought up in a Housing Commission estate, so I was brought up with domestic violence.
TANYA NOLAN: His conclusions are that domestic violence and abuse against Aboriginal women and children is on the rise and has become more vicious.
LOUIS NOWRA: Since 1999, there have been about 40 reports on domestic violence and child abuse in Aboriginal communities. Each one confirms that the violence is escalating and is becoming more vicious.
TANYA NOLAN: What do you mean more vicious?
LOUIS NOWRA: Well, the instruments used in attacking the women, used to be just fists and bits of wood and now it's metal, pieces of brick, concrete and anything a guy can get his hands on, and allied to this has been the escalation of gang rape, and this has been proved.
TANYA NOLAN: The book is littered with examples.
Take Palipuaminni, a woman promised to her husband soon after she was born - she complained to health workers 29 times about her husband's violence toward her, which included whipping, kicking her while she was pregnant, stabbing her with scissors and scalding her.
The abuse lead to her death, and Palipuaminni's husband was eventually sentenced to six and a half years in jail after his charge was reduced from murder to manslaughter.
Professor of Indigenous Policy at Griffith University, Bonnie Robertson, wrote a seminal report on the state of domestic violence and abuse in Indigenous communities in 1999.
She agrees with Louis Nowra that little has changed.
BONNIE ROBERTSON: I think that there are actually tertiary consequences now. You now have situations where the mother and often the children are coping with violations that's seen, demonstrates in the behaviour of children, predominantly young boys, who have witnessed it, and some of the things that I've seen are absolutely terrifying.
TANYA NOALN: Louis Nowra states that "what is seldom publicly acknowledged is that Aboriginal children have been removed from toxic situations at alarmingly high levels".
In New South Wales in June 2000, just over a quarter of all children and young people in care were Indigenous.
LOUIS NOWRA: There are more Aboriginal children, at the moment, taken from their parents than there were at the height of assimilation, which was a government policy.
This is a bit of a secret, but this is how bad the situation has got. I quote Aboriginal people who are pleading, "please take more of our children out of these toxic situations" where there is permanently or semi-permanently forget about this notion of stolen generation.
This is about not assimilation, it is about rescuing children.
TANYA NOLAN: Wesley Aird, a member of the Prime Minister's National Indigenous Council says he knows he is at risk of being called assimilationist himself, but he agrees that children need to be removed from violent homes, as a last resort.
WESLEY AIRD: That safety should come ahead of any other notion of cultural attachment or kinship.
Kids should be removed from toxic, dangerous environments.
TYANYA NOLAN: Bad Dreaming points to the toxic influence of alcohol in Indigenous communities, highlighting it as an agent that fuels violence.
Wesley Aird says he doesn't believe just removing alcohol is the solution.
WESLEY AIRD: It's difficult to expect a community to function well if you're imposing conditions on it.
The community has to be a part of the solution.
TANYA NOLAN: What about when you have communities that are structured and governed by Aboriginal elders, who are often the perpetrators of violence and abuse against women and children?
WESLEY AIRD: That's a very unfortunate circumstance, but in a lot of cases, there's government funding providers, service providers that allow the wool to be pulled over their eyes, and they continue to fund the perpetrators.
TANYA NOLAN: Any account of Indigenous despair is complex in its layers and reasoning, but Louis Nowra is unequivocal about where the problem lies.
LOUIS NOWRA: It does need Aboriginal men to take the initiative, not women.
ELEANOR HALL: That's Louis Nowra, the author of Bad Dreaming, speaking to Tanya Nolan.
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