To fix a problem, you first have to acknowledge, truthfully, what it is. But for all the self-serving palaver from the likes of Linda Burney, Minister for Indigenous Australians, about “truth-telling”, there’s one brutal home truth that none of them will acknowledge.
The systemic violence of Aboriginal Australian culture.
We’ve all heard the “world’s oldest living culture” boast about Aboriginal culture, ad nauseam. It’s become almost as de rigueur as the fatuous “traditional acknowledgement”. But we’re forbidden from truthfully pursuing what, exactly, that means.
If you want to know more about customary law then read Ngarra Law written by the Yolngu. In it it explains how violence against women is justified as well as traditional arranged marriage including child brides.
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This is not an outlier: virtually every early European encounter with traditional Aboriginal society, from nearly every corner of the continent, is marked by shocked observations on the brutality meted out to Aboriginal women by their men. This cannot be hand-waved away as “racism”, either: many of the European observers were highly sympathetic to Aboriginal Australians. At least one lived as one of them for decades.
This is the unpalatable truth about the “oldest living culture” that no one will talk about — even as its brutality still rages against Aboriginal women.
In parts of the Northern Territory, some of the most remote areas of the country, Aboriginal women have nowhere to run.
And alarming numbers of Aboriginal women – predominantly mothers – are being killed in domestic and family violence-related murders.
“We’re hurting, we need help,” said Connie Shaw, whose friend Ms R Rubuntja was murdered last year by her partner.
“We’re sick of crying, sick of being in pain, sick of hurting, yeah, [we have] just had enough.”
Many Aboriginal women are asking why the territory has few support services when it records one of the highest homicide rates in the world.
The question they might be better off asking is why it has one of the highest homicide rates in the world.
But don’t expect the ABC, the politicians, or the activists to mention that. Indeed, in two sprawling investigative pieces by the ABC, the word “men” is used just twice — in fleeting references to “men’s behaviour-change programs”.
This, from the same ABC which relentlessly serves up palaver about “toxic masculinity” (ten pages of results) and “patriarchy” (13 pages) in the context of sport, Christianity, Western culture… but observes near-complete radio silence when it comes to Aboriginal male violence. Other than to blame it on “white settlement”, of course.
In the meantime, violence against Aboriginal Australian women continues unabated.
In the Northern Territory, many women’s shelters are at capacity. There are just two men’s behaviour-change programs and very little early intervention work is being done to address the crisis of violence.
In Timber Creek, six hours south of Darwin, there is no women’s shelter at all.
ABC Australia
So, where are Aboriginal politicians like Linda Burney? Busy throwing everything into pushing the racially-divisive “Indigenous Voice” referendum.
Burney was certainly too busy to bother meeting a delegation of Aboriginal women who travelled to Canberra in a desperate attempt to get politicians to listen to their stories of violence and abuse. In fact, not one Labor politician turned up to talk to them. Neither did any of the Greens. The ABC were conspicuous by their absence.
The only politicians who gave them the time of day were the Liberal’s Nicolle Flint, and One Nation’s Pauline Hanson and Malcolm Roberts.
Meanwhile, the horrifying violence continues, unabated.
Certainly, targeted funding will help — but nothing will change until we have some real “truth-telling” about the world’s oldest living culture of male violence. As Aboriginal poet Yajili writes, We are dying at the hands of each other; so stop blaming our white brotha.