tag:theconversation.com,2011:/fr/topics/marcia-langton-4063/articlesMarcia Langton – The Conversation2024-02-29T00:30:44Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2245202024-02-29T00:30:44Z2024-02-29T00:30:44ZAustralian writers festivals are engulfed in controversy over the war in Gaza. How can they uphold their duty to public debate?<p>A string of controversies are engulfing Melbourne Writers’ Festival, the Perth Festival’s Writers’ Weekend, the Sydney Opera House’s All About Women and Adelaide Writers Week. There’s a high-profile resignation, calls to cancel speakers and allegations of the spread of “historically untrue” facts and of normalising violence. </p>
<p>All, in one way or another, have been generated by divisions over the war in Gaza.</p>
<p>Writers’ festivals are in a fraught position. They navigate the frontier between social media’s echo chambers of outrage and the traditional public square’s conventions, where restraint, reason and tolerance in the face of opposing views are the basis for civilised debate.</p>
<p>How is it all playing out, and what are the consequences for the public exchange of ideas?</p>
<h2>‘Historically untrue’?</h2>
<p>At <a href="https://www.theage.com.au/national/gaza-conflict-engulfs-melbourne-writers-%20festival-as-leaders-quit-over-program-row-20240222-p5f757.html">Melbourne Writers Festival</a>, the deputy chair of the board, Dr Leslie Reti, has resigned over a poetry session that will involve Aboriginal and Palestinian poets reading their work.</p>
<p>The session is guest-curated by Koori-Lebanese writer Mykaela Saunders. It is based on the proposition Aboriginal and Palestinian people have a shared experience of having been colonised, becoming victims of atrocities by the colonising power. </p>
<p>Melbourne Writers Festival artistic director Michaela McGuire has confirmed the dispute is centred on <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2024/feb/27/melbourne-writers-festival-deputy-chair-resigns-aboriginal-palestinian-solidarity-poetry-event-gaza-conflict">a line of program copy that reads</a>:</p>
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<p>Aboriginal and Palestinian solidarity has a long history, a relationship that is more vital than ever in the movement to resist colonialism and speak out against atrocities.</p>
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<p>This is a historically contentious proposition. Dr Reti, a retired Jewish clinician, said he respected McGuire’s curatorial independence, but described the material in the draft program as “historically untrue and deeply offensive”.</p>
<p>Prominent Aboriginal scholar Professor Marcia Langton, of the University of Melbourne, has also rejected proposed similarity between the experience of Aboriginal and Palestinian people, <a href="https://www.theage.com.au/national/gaza-conflict-engulfs-melbourne-writers-festival-as-leaders-quit-over-program-row-20240222-p5f757.html">saying</a>, “there is very little comparable in our respective situations, other than our humanity”.</p>
<p>Saunders was one of 132 Indigenous activists, artists and intellectuals who signed <a href="https://therednation.org/statement-of-indigenous-solidarity-with-palestine/">a petition released on October 27 last year</a> that claimed: “The past two weeks of horrific violence in Gaza resulted from 75 years of Israeli settler colonial dispossession”. </p>
<p>McGuire has defended her decision not to change the copy for Saunders’ event, titled Let it Bring Hope, saying “I completely support the right to self-determined programming”. </p>
<p>She <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/listen/programs/melbourne-mornings/melbourne-writers-festival-split-over-war-in-gaza/103512224">told ABC Radio on Monday</a>: “This entire event is about Aboriginal and Palestinian solidarity. It’s not for or about anyone who doesn’t subscribe to that, and so it doesn’t make any sense to not mention that in the event copy.”</p>
<p><a href="https://www.theage.com.au/national/gaza-conflict-engulfs-melbourne-writers-festival-as-leaders-quit-over-program-row-20240222-p5f757.html">Last year</a>, the Melbourne Writers Festival board decided “while writers should be free to express their views, the festival should not take a public position on the war”.</p>
<p>The Age <a href="https://www.theage.com.au/national/gaza-conflict-engulfs-melbourne-writers-%20festival-as-leaders-quit-over-program-row-20240222-p5f757.html">reported on Monday</a> that Fiona Menzies, the festival’s interim chief executive, also resigned over the festival’s program. But Alice Hill, chair of the board, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2024/feb/27/melbourne-writers-festival-deputy-chair-resigns-aboriginal-palestinian-solidarity-poetry-event-gaza-conflict">told the Guardian</a> that Menzies had resigned “for personal reasons, and would continue her relationship with the festival in a consultancy capacity”.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/a-palestinian-authors-award-ceremony-has-been-cancelled-at-frankfurt-book-fair-this-sends-the-wrong-signals-at-the-wrong-time-215712">A Palestinian author's award ceremony has been cancelled at Frankfurt Book Fair. This sends the wrong signals at the wrong time</a>
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<h2>Normalising violence?</h2>
<p>In Perth, the argument was over the inclusion of Jewish singer-songwriter Deborah Conway in the opening night of the Perth Festival’s Writers’ Weekend last week. In <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/listen/programs/radionational-breakfast/israel-gaza-arts-protests-deborah-conway/103231158">an interview on ABC Radio National</a>, she had questioned whether Palestinian children killed by the Israeli Defence Forces were really children. (“It depends on what you really call kids.”)</p>
<p>Conway contextualised her remarks to me this week, saying: </p>
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<p>I was trying to tell listeners, in the cut and thrust of a live interview situation, that when Hamas put guns in the hands of their adolescent sons to point at the enemy, Hamas steals their childhood, turns them into fighters & then turns them into casualty figures. It’s unbearably cruel. I wasn’t talking about babies or little children, nor was I defining what I think to be a child, it goes without saying that the deaths of innocents are always tragic.</p>
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<p>In an <a href="https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfUvUWq0GLIbhstqVzFMsxguiWjawr__aTI-CeKuZQoZUfJng/viewform">open letter to the festival</a>, more than 500 writers and arts workers said that by including Conway, the festival was putting safety at risk and giving a platform to someone whose comments on the radio “seek to normalise the ongoing genocide enacted by the state of Israel against the Palestinian people”.</p>
<p>This provoked a response from Dr Nick Dyrenfurth, executive director of the John Curtin Research Centre, a left-of-centre think tank, in which he said Conway’s “crime of being Jewish” was the reason <a href="https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/festival-slammed-for-promoting-%20deborah-conway-after-palestine-comments,18359">this attempt was being made to “deplatform” her</a>.</p>
<p>In Sydney, a petition protesting against the appointment of the feminist author Clementine Ford as a co-curator of the Opera House’s <a href="https://www.sydneyoperahouse.com/all-about-women">All About Women</a> festival has garnered about 6,700 signatures since it was started on 6 February. Ford has programmed three events at the festival.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.australianjewishnews.com/petition-against-%20opera-house-appearance/">petition alleges</a> Ford’s public communications since the attacks by Hamas on Israel on 7 October 2023 have made “a direct and harmful” contribution to the “hateful climate” that has developed in Australia since those attacks, exemplified by a <a href="https://www.news.com.au/national/australian-jews-suffer-738-per-cent-spike-in-antisemitic-abuse/news-story/33ed1f60ff568d31ce399b325bbc03a2">738% increase</a> in anti-Semitic incidents, as recorded by the Executive Council of Australian Jewry.</p>
<p>Ford has not called for violence against Jewish people.</p>
<p>The MP for the Sydney seat of Vaucluse in the New South Wales Parliament, Kellie Sloane, and some Jewish community leaders have raised their concerns about Ford’s curatorship, following her involvement in <a href="https://theconversation.com/doxing-or-in-the-public-interest-free-speech-cancelling-and-the-ethics-of-the-jewish-creatives-whatsapp-group-leak-223323">the alleged “doxing”</a> of about 600 Jewish writers, artists and academics. This involved the social media sharing of personal details, including names and professions, leaked from a WhatsApp group, without their consent.</p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/doxing-or-in-the-public-interest-free-speech-cancelling-and-the-ethics-of-the-jewish-creatives-whatsapp-group-leak-223323">Doxing or in the public interest? Free speech, 'cancelling' and the ethics of the Jewish creatives' WhatsApp group leak</a>
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<p>The president of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, Daniel Aghion, <a href="https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/political-and-jewish-leaders-raise-clementine-ford-%20curatorship-red-flag-after-creatives-doxxing/news-story/aae6e8abdd09fb3393711c3c3c9bb544">was reported as saying</a> it was “baffling” someone who had caused this kind of harm should be appearing at one of Australia’s “most prestigious forums”.</p>
<p>Some Jewish leaders, including Anti-Defamation Commission chairman, Dr Dvir Abramovich, want Ford <a href="https://www.adelaidenow.com.au/news/south-australia/jewish-leaders-have-called-for-clementine-ford-to-be-banned-%20from-adelaide-writers-week/news-story/8252b039c71c87c80afae3fe012d03f9%20So%20far,%20none%20of%20the%20protests%20have%20resulted%20in%20any%20of%20these%20people%20being%20banned.">banned from the Adelaide Festival’s Writers’ Week</a>, which starts this weekend, on 2 March.</p>
<p>Louise Adler, director of Adelaide Writers Week, <a href="https://www.adelaidenow.com.au/entertainment/adelaide-festival/adelaide-writers-week-2024-festival-hit-with-new-backlash-as-organisers-strongly-defend-program/news-story/c56fcae109190ffa206c55119d756b59">resisted calls to remove Ford</a> from the program, saying “I chose Clementine Ford because of her writing on contemporary Australian sexual politics and about her current book about marriage, which I thought was interesting.” She called her views on “other issues” on social media “immaterial”.</p>
<p>South Australian Premier Peter Malinauskas <a href="https://www.adelaidenow.com.au/news/south-australia/jewish-leaders-have-called-for-clementine-ford-to-be-banned-from-adelaide-writers-week/news-story/8252b039c71c87c80afae3fe012d03f9">declined to get involved</a>, saying he would not be a “premier that engages in censorship at arts festivals”.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/are-calls-to-cancel-two-palestinian-writers-from-adelaide-writers-week-justified-200165">Are calls to cancel two Palestinian writers from Adelaide Writers' Week justified?</a>
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<h2>Freedom of speech challenged</h2>
<p>Each of these cases presents a challenge to freedom of speech, for different reasons and in different ways.</p>
<p>Writers’ festivals are opportunities for the public to see and hear from people who are presumed to have thought deeply about complex issues, and who have written about them. They are also forums for the writers themselves to challenge and be challenged on their points of view.</p>
<p>In a world conditioned by the emotive views and intolerant habits of social media, where those who hold opposing views are often seen as irredeemable and even illegitimate, it requires a demanding intellectual effort to adjust to the world of the public square.</p>
<p>There, by convention, opposing views are tolerated, even respected, and questions are decided by reasoned argument based on evidence – rather than emotive, sometimes insulting, rhetoric.</p>
<p>The current debates around these festivals show our society is a fair way from making this adjustment.</p>
<p>In the Melbourne case, the problem arises because of a contestable claim in the draft program that “Aboriginal and Palestinian solidarity has a long history, a relationship that is more vital than ever in the movement to resist colonialism and speak out against atrocities”.</p>
<p>Whether or not there is a long history of solidarity between Aboriginal and Palestinian people – which Professor Langton, for one, rejects – might be debated. But the wording of the draft program presents the debate as already decided in the affirmative. That might represent the view of curator Mykaela Saunders and some other First Nations people, but clearly not all of them.</p>
<p>In the Perth case, Conway’s statement questioning whether the children killed by the Israel Defence Forces are really children is, for the most part, demonstrably false, as we see nightly on the television news. This does harm. A falsehood pollutes the community’s information pool. </p>
<p>In the Sydney and Adelaide cases, Ford’s participation in the Whatsapp leak is likewise harmful. The leak violated people’s privacy and put people’s safety at risk. The harm principle sets the boundary at which the individual’s right of free speech gives way to the larger public interest in harm prevention.</p>
<p>The case in principle against Ford is particularly strong because of the obvious harm caused by the public dissemination of people’s private information. The fact that she is not programmed to speak about the war in Gaza at her events – she is speaking about her anti-marriage book in both <a href="https://www.sydneyoperahouse.com/all-about-women/play-the-girl">Sydney</a> and <a href="https://www.adelaidefestival.com.au/events/2024-writers-week/i-do-i-don-t/">Adelaide</a> – makes no difference to this point of principle. In practice, however, banning her would risk making her into a martyr. </p>
<p>None of these festivals have responded to public pressure to change their programs, speakers or even the wording of their copy. Better still, rather than banning speakers or changing programs, festivals could arrange to include challenges on these controversial actions and words. For example, someone in Ford’s position could be invited to make the case for the WhatsApp leak and be challenged on its violation of privacy principles.</p>
<p>That way, the festivals would do their job of promoting debate. A festival where the outcome is a foregone conclusion, or where the openmindedness of the organisers is in question, is just another echo chamber.</p>
<p>Against that, there is the question of public safety, which has been raised by those who wanted Conway banned in Perth and Ford in Adelaide. The exact threat to public safety is not spelt out, but the debate shows we urgently need to learn to better negotiate this frontier between social media and the world of flesh and blood.</p>
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<p><em>This article has been amended to clarify the context of Deborah Conway’s remarks during her earlier radio interview.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/224520/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Denis Muller does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Writers festivals navigate the fraught frontier between social media’s echo chambers of outrage and the civilised public debate of the public square. What’s the way forward in this heated atmosphere?Denis Muller, Senior Research Fellow, Centre for Advancing Journalism, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2138582023-10-03T00:34:13Z2023-10-03T00:34:13ZThe Way of the Ancestors and how it can help us hear The Voice<p>This short, elegant book by Marcia Langton and Aaron Corn, may well be one of the most important ever published in Australia. Its timing could not be better, but that was not by design.</p>
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<p><em>Review: Law: The Way of the Ancestors – Marcia Langton and Aaron Corn (Thames and Hudson)</em></p>
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<p>The disintegration of any accord between colonised and colonising, between Indigenous Australia and the rest of us, under the barrage of resentment, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/sep/13/indigenous-voice-to-parliament-referendum-fact-check-yes-campaign-no-campaign">lies</a> and calculated incomprehension of the “No” campaign, is a consequence of the continuing ignorance on the part of the colonisers. </p>
<p>The book opens a window into the private Aboriginal world of law, justice and politics. Much remains the secret business of men and women, but we can now begin to understand the moral frameworks of human governance among our First Nations.</p>
<p>Beyond the killing, the disease, the marginalisation, the incarceration, the Aboriginal world <a href="https://capeyorkpartnership.org.au/noel-pearson-boyer-lecture-one/">is still deemed</a> by some Australians as not worthy of respect and parity. People might have heard of the Dreaming, but for many, as Langton said at a recent event, Indigenous law means spearings – which is not law, but punishment. </p>
<p>The first cultural brokers, the early anthropologists and missionaries, saw magic, myths and kinship networks, rather than grasp the complexity of knowledge and law systems. </p>
<p>Indigenous land law became part of the common law after Mabo, as have, more recently, <a href="https://www.legislation.qld.gov.au/view/pdf/bill.first/bill-2019-021">the traditional adoption laws of the Torres Strait Islanders</a>. But the thrust of The Way of the Ancestors goes deeper into the law governing human relationships, authority, justice, reconciliation, and the settling of grievances (Makarrata). Corn and Langton’s book is about the purpose of law, rather than the letter. </p>
<p>The book is a seamless collaboration between two anthropologists, part of a Thames and Hudson series on <a href="https://thamesandhudson.com.au/the-first-knowledges-series/">First Knowledges</a> predicated on the collaboration of Indigenous and non-Indigenous experts. There will be nine volumes. Already published are those on Songlines, Design, Country, Astronomy and Plants, with an edition on <a href="https://thamesandhudson.com.au/product/first-knowledges-innovation-knowledge-and-ingenuity/">Innovation</a> to be released shortly.</p>
<p>Law: the Way of the Ancestors draws deeply on Indigenous intellectuals such as Galarrwuy Yunupingu, <a href="https://indigenousknowledge.unimelb.edu.au/Research/iki-fellows/professor-brian-djangirrawuy-gumbula-garawirrtja">Brian Gumbala</a> and <a href="https://indigenousknowledge.unimelb.edu.au/Research/iki-fellows/professor-wanta-pawu">Wanta Pawu</a>, the last two currently professorial fellows in the Indigenous Knowledge Institute at the University of Melbourne, led by Aaron Corn. Here Indigenous knowledges are being brought into our universities and cultural institutions via co-design or equal partnerships in research, building a bridge between Indigenous intellectual life and the academy. </p>
<p>Historian Henry Reynolds lauds this book for achieving what no other work has done: “comprehensively explain[ing] traditional law in all its manifestations”. Indeed, for the first time the outside world is permitted to glimpse the deep concepts, practices, and emotions of a way of living that sustained 2000 generations. </p>
<h2>Building ‘moral muscle’</h2>
<p>The colonisers came from a world riven with conflict, war, intolerance, exploitation, and contempt for the poor and ordinary. Power, wealth and authority were predicated on the power to control the bodies and minds of lesser beings: slaves, serfs, peasants, wage slaves. The colonisers’ common law, while containing provisions respecting individual rights, was largely intended to protect property and good order. The constitution they constructed for Federation, explicitly excluded First Peoples, along with Chinese and other non-Europeans, from citizenship. </p>
<p>Indigenous law’s purpose is not to protect the wealth, power, and property of the leadership class. It is to ensure the evenness, stability, and balance between the community and individual flourishing. The capital of Indigenous society is intellectual and moral, not material, and the law is about proper behaviour towards other people and the natural world.</p>
<p>Indigenous Law has evolved to ensure the wellbeing of the society by building the inner wellbeing of individuals and collective wellbeing. The Yolungu see this as the building of “moral muscle”.</p>
<p>Western conservatives wax lyrical on the near sacredness of the individual person – a fixation derived from thousands of years of oppression of the many by the few. Aboriginal law invests the natural world with sacredness and insists that individuals have responsibilities – to each other and to that natural world. As Langton and Corn emphasise, responsibility and reciprocity, not self-centred individual striving, build the good life, the good society, and the good world. They write: </p>
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<p>Nature makes no concessions for human needs and wants. Both thunderstorms and saltwater crocodiles can kill you if you have not been properly taught how to live and behave around them. Showing respect for all things in nature by being observant of their workings and learning about the potential benefits and dangers they present is therefore another important way that people follow law and the proper ancestral way of doing things.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/551306/original/file-20231001-19-47zeqa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Lightening in a dark sky." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/551306/original/file-20231001-19-47zeqa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/551306/original/file-20231001-19-47zeqa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=374&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/551306/original/file-20231001-19-47zeqa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=374&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/551306/original/file-20231001-19-47zeqa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=374&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/551306/original/file-20231001-19-47zeqa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=470&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/551306/original/file-20231001-19-47zeqa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=470&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/551306/original/file-20231001-19-47zeqa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=470&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">A thunderstorm can kill you. Showing respect for all things in nature is an important part of the law.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Mikael Andreas Andersson/Shutterstock</span></span>
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<p>In Warlpiri language, as Wanta Pawa explains, this creates a state of “wala” –
“feelings of trust, ease, happiness, gladness, satisfaction and pride that flows when law is properly observed and all things in creation are moving and working in harmony.” </p>
<p>To build moral muscle, the individual must perform ceremony and progress, as far as they wish, through grades of knowledge and moral growth. Knowledge is passed from generation to generation in ceremony, practices, and art.</p>
<p>Learning to be a full human who can thrive, requires a prodigious intellectual endeavour of learning about “the way” of every element of nature and landscape. It also requires good deeds of kindness and care. Once completed, in Warlpiri, as a leader, you become a “people keeper”.</p>
<p>Transgressions and grievances are resolved by talking and by the ritualised Makarrata: complex practices of settling disputes and righting wrongs. Makarrata, as a guide to settling grievances and restoring harmony, shifts justice towards the restorative rather than the retributive, as Victoria has seen in its <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DA_Cs7BAJoo&ab_channel=WheelerCentre">Koori Courts</a>.</p>
<p>Reconciliation means peacemaking, restoring harmony. And law includes knowledge about the natural world, its properties, its needs and its behaviour. Law, for instance includes rules about how to behave around bees. Collecting honey requires an understanding of how bees create honey. If you don’t understand that, you might harvest too much and destroy that source of food.</p>
<p>Indigenous leadership is earned by elders who become in Langton’s words “good people to be around” because they are kind and strong and morally centred. The authors give the example of driving a car that passes a family walking along the road: the proper thing to do is to give them a lift and good people do that. Likewise, these good people can be relied upon for a bed and a feed, but more importantly, attract others with the aura of kindness and wisdom they possess. Indigenous leaders lead by good example, not by force.</p>
<h2>Managing emotions</h2>
<p>Central to traditional life is learning to manage emotions, feelings that can be both productive and hideously destructive. Teaching those life skills is senior women’s business, something Langton was able to disclose in this book. The <a href="https://www.npywc.org.au/">NYP Women’s Council</a> for instance, has organised their traditional work of healing, caring, teaching and the arts, into a modern co-operative. </p>
<p>One strategy is the use of Pitjantjatjara/English fridge magnets containing the words for around 50 emotions in both languages. Senior women had observed that young people, especially young males, could not express their emotions in either their own language or in English. If you don’t have the words for feelings, you are helpless. The Royal Australian College of Psychiatrists has recognised this work.</p>
<p>The Voice is a deeply Aboriginal idea with a long history, not something dreamt up last week by metropolitan academics. It is profoundly democratic in an inclusive, respectful, egalitarian way that is difficult for non-Indigenous people to grasp. It is a plea for constitutional respect that is 122 years overdue. It puts listening above telling, and embodies the respect and parity that Indigenous Australia craves. </p>
<p>The Way of the Ancestors reveals how much we can learn from 65,000 years of human experience, how we can heal as a nation and as a species by living with each other and the natural world, rather than by mutual exploitation.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/213858/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Janet McCalman AC is a member of the ALP.</span></em></p>A new book sheds light on the moral frameworks of human governance among our First Nations, showing how we can heal as a nation by living with each other and the natural world.Janet McCalman AC, Emeritus Redmond Barry Distinguished Professor, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2135412023-09-14T11:33:57Z2023-09-14T11:33:57ZGrattan on Friday: Langton and Price fight with passion and gloves off for beliefs<p>Anthony Albanese cemented victory in the 2022 election by being mostly highly cautious and having Labor run, by and large, a tight campaign. If he loses the Voice referendum, which is looking very likely, his own overreach and the “yes” campaign’s ill-discipline will carry a good deal of blame. </p>
<p>Albanese will be responsible for the former, but a victim of the latter. </p>
<p>He could have put a more modest referendum proposition, albeit one that Indigenous leaders would have condemned as not going far enough. But he could not impose order on the “yes” campaign, because he’s only in charge of the government’s part of it. </p>
<p>This has arguably been the worst, and most depressing, week for the “yes” march towards the October 14 vote. </p>
<p>By now, the accumulation of polls has put the prospect of carrying this referendum into near-miracle territory. A month of campaigning remains, so it’s not over, but it would take a great deal to turn the trend to “no” around. </p>
<p>Beyond the blame game and the political fallout, defeat would confront Albanese with an existential personal question. Did he do the Indigenous cause serious harm by embarking – with the best of intentions – on a mission possibly doomed from the start? Did ambition overcome judgment and a sense of history? </p>
<p>In the event of a defeat, it will be a legitimate question, however much condemnation rains on Peter Dutton and other “no” advocates. One of the strongest (negative) arguments for voting “yes” is what we will be left with in the event of a “no” win. </p>
<p>Trying to pick up the pieces after a failed referendum will be extremely difficult. So far, there is no evidence the government has a fallback plan. But it needs to craft one, because a void filled with little but anger or apathy or both would leave the country in the worst of places. While polling has found people want to see improvement in Indigenous lives, on the other hand we are already seeing some resistance to Welcome to Country and the like.</p>
<p>Yet what would be the nature of a post-defeat plan? Legislating a form of Voice after a referendum loss would be seen as flying in the face of the result – although a non-constitutional Voice might be acceptable to many “no” voters. Anyway, Albanese has indicated he won’t go down that path.</p>
<p>Given he was so measured in the rest of his election pledges, it was uncharacteristic of Albanese not to be more careful on this one. Perhaps he did think, as he often says, it was a modest ask. Perhaps he overestimated his own persuasive power, or underestimated the impact of the inevitable scare campaign. Perhaps he simply ignored the compelling story of past referendums. </p>
<p>To maximise the referendum’s prospects, maybe it would have been better to have held it with the next election, when there would have been a less intense spotlight on it. </p>
<p>In the referendum campaign, Albanese is seeking to make a virtue of the fact non-government campaigners are to the fore. In theory, that should be a strong point. But this week we have seen how damage can be caused by things outside the government’s control. </p>
<p>Marcia Langton is one of the biggest names in her generation of Indigenous leaders. In her early 70s and with an impressive academic career, she has been a formidable, passionate advocate over decades, a take-no-prisoners fighter for Aboriginal causes, a woman who says what she thinks, and then some. </p>
<p>Langton was co-author, with Tom Calma, of a seminal report on a Voice under the former government, and a member of the Albanese government’s working group on the referendum.</p>
<p>At a weekend meeting in Western Australia, Langton let fly about the “no” campaign. “Every time the ‘no’ case raises one of their arguments, if you start pulling it apart you get down to base racism, I’m sorry to say it but that’s where it lands. Or just sheer stupidity.” </p>
<p>That’s what she actually said. It was wrongly reported as Langton saying “no” voters were racist, which meant she had to get out the fire hose later. Even in its accurate form, however, the comment was sure to be regarded as provocative. </p>
<p>It was always going to be impossible to expect the broadly based “yes” campaign speakers would carefully watch their words (although the canny Noel Pearson has indicated he’s curbed his well-known caustic tongue and sometimes inflammatory language). But loose lips (or spontaneous frankness) will likely be costly for the “yes” side.</p>
<p>Worse was to come when various Langton comments from the past were dug up, including a derogatory one about opposition Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, the leading Indigenous woman of the “no” campaign, and her mother Bess, who was formerly in the Northern Territory parliament.</p>
<p>This Voice battle has become, in part, a black-on-black argument. That damages the “yes” side, by showing divisions among Indigenous leaders and undermining the proposition the Voice has overwhelming Indigenous support. </p>
<p>The campaign has seen the emergence of Price, aged in her early 40s and so a generation younger than Langton, as a tough, articulate and fearless political warrior. In federal parliament only since 2022, she has become the most prominent face of the “no” campaign. </p>
<p>Her consistent pitch has been that the Voice wouldn’t advance closing the gap and that the issue divides the country on racial lines. </p>
<p>Like Langton, Price gives no quarter. Appearing at the National Press Club on Thursday, she had a sledge at Langton (dating from their joint appearance there some years back), and when asked whether she believed “the history of colonisation continues to have an impact on some Indigenous Australians”, she was blunt. “No. I’ll be honest with you. No, I don’t think so,” and went on to point to positive impacts.</p>
<p>As opposition spokeswoman for Indigenous Australians, Price (who is in the Nationals) made it clear she will project her own loud voice when the Coalition puts together its post-referendum policies. Asked whether she agreed with Dutton’s policy for legislated regional and local voices, she said: “There are certainly conversations taking place and […] need to be had, within our party rooms, within shadow cabinet, to determine what it might look like to amplify and support regional and remote communities. […] And I am absolutely going to be front and centre with those discussions and those determinations.”</p>
<p>Federal parliament rose on Thursday, to the government’s relief, and won’t sit against until after the October 14 vote. The partisan battle over the Voice in question times this week was an unedifying, uninformative free-for-all. </p>
<p>Early Thursday, Albanese met former AFL star Michael Long for the final leg of his marathon walk from Melbourne in support of the Voice. It was a positive and optimistic moment for the PM in what, for him, must be an increasingly disheartening campaign that is now perhaps accompanied by some soul-searching.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/213541/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michelle Grattan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Marcia Langton is a woman who says what she thinks, and then some.
Like Langton, Price gives no quarter.Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of CanberraLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2036722023-04-12T07:34:46Z2023-04-12T07:34:46ZPolitics with Michelle Grattan: Professor Marcia Langton on the Voice’s powers and potential<p>Professor Marcia Langton holds the Foundation Chair of Australian Indigenous Studies at the University of Melbourne, and was co-author (with Professor Tom Calma) of the Indigenous Voice Co-design Process report to the Morrison government. She has been a fighter for rights and progress for Indigenous Australians for decades, and she’s one of those at the centre of the yes campaign for the Voice. Her own voice is always forthright and formidable.</p>
<p>Langton admits she isn’t “entirely confident” where the referendum stands at the moment but is more positive as the debate continues. “I’ve been gauging the response of the general public by reading a lot and having a look at the social media, and I think most people can see that this is a very simple and modest proposition and that it will make a difference. And what I’m seeing more and more is most people realising, yes, well, why don’t Indigenous people have a say about policies and the laws that affect them?</p>
<p>"They realise when they think about it that this has gone on for too long, where all of these laws and policies that seem to be universally ineffective in closing the gap, and causing more suffering, have been imposed on us by non-Indigenous people. […] I think most people are still very embarrassed about the Northern Territory intervention initiated by John Howard.”</p>
<p>While Langton admits she doesn’t agree with Julian Leeser’s preference to alter the proposed wording of the constitutional change, she believes Leeser – who has quit the opposition frontbench to campaign for the yes case – has shown “integrity and decency of the kind that most Australians aspire to. You can see from the response that he’s getting from across the political spectrum that he’s now even more respected for his stance.”</p>
<p>One key issue in the debate about the Voice is how extensive will be the issues on which it would be able to make representations. </p>
<p>Langton says a point “widely misunderstood […] is that the voice will be a statutory body. And like any other statutory body, it should be treated according to the standards of non-discrimination. If no other statutory body is restricted on the basis of race or gender or age in making representations to government, then to restrict the Voice in making such representations could be seen as racially discriminatory.” </p>
<p>A key question being asked is how people will be selected to represent their communities. Langton says: “We have to accommodate an already existing Indigenous governance landscape. So across the country we have an enormous number of existing bodies, none of which have any assured way of advising governments. None of them are provided with a formal way to advise governments. I’ll give you two examples.</p>
<p>"One is the Torres Strait Regional Authority. And the other is the ACT Indigenous elected assembly. Now, indeed, both of them can give advice to the state governments, and that’s a good thing. But they don’t sit in an integrated framework. […] We developed a set of principles for the creation of such bodies as the Indigenous voice arrangements.</p>
<p>"Those principles are:</p>
<ul>
<li>Empowerment</li>
<li>inclusive participation</li>
<li>cultural leadership</li>
<li>community-led design</li>
<li>non-duplication and links with existing bodies</li>
<li>respecting long-term partnerships</li>
<li>transparency and accountability</li>
<li>capability driven data</li>
<li>evidence based decision making. </li>
</ul>
<p>"Those are the principles, and it was our preference that those principles be legislated so that each body that is created, should we be successful, complies with those principles.”</p>
<p>A major point for debate around The Voice is whether it will deliver practical outcomes. Langton illustrates by example. </p>
<p>“As for the kinds of problems that the Voice would be able to tackle much more effectively than governments, I give you the case of the COVID-19 pandemic. The first people to respond effectively, long before governments did so, were the Indigenous health organisations […] The Indigenous community-controlled health sector leaders had dealt with two epidemics in recent history and one in particular had a very high mortality rate. So in response to that, the Indigenous health sector wrote an epidemic plan, and that was about ten years old, but it was easily revised to become the pandemic plan. So they went straight into action when we began to hear the news from overseas about COVID-19.”</p>
<p>“So who was first to close their borders? Not the states and territories. It was the Aboriginal landowners on advice from the Indigenous health sector that closed their borders to stop travel in and out of Aboriginal lands to keep their populations safe.</p>
<p>"Because the most vulnerable populations to COVID-19 were the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander populations with pre-existing health burdens such as chronic diseases, diabetes, kidney disease and so on. </p>
<p>"We expected, you know, an enormous death toll in the Indigenous community, we expected at least 3% of the indigenous population to contract the disease. 27,701 cases was the prediction.</p>
<p>"But because the Indigenous health sector rushed to implement the pandemic plan and set up a national taskforce with public health advisories that went out across our media sector, translated into at least 18 languages, we were able to stop the deaths. And so in the first year of the pandemic, I think we had one death as opposed to 27,000. And so we were the most successful group in the world, I would argue, in preventing COVID-19 from taking lives. So up until January 2021, there were only 148 cases of COVID among Indigenous people nationwide, 15% hospitalisations, one case in ICU and no deaths. And there were no deaths in remote communities and no cases associated with the Black Lives Matter marches because of our public health advisories.</p>
<p>"So I think that’s, you know, a very good example, of why Indigenous people in control of their own affairs is much more effective than governments. And we can see the terrible mistakes that governments across the country made, even though they were advised by the very best of our epidemiologists, is because they don’t have the reach into the local population that our Indigenous health sector has.”</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/203672/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michelle Grattan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>In this podcast, Michelle Grattan and Professor Marcia Langton discuss the Voice to Parliament and constitutional recognition for First Nations AustraliansMichelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of CanberraLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2024352023-03-23T04:00:11Z2023-03-23T04:00:11Z‘We’re all in’, declares an emotional Albanese as he launches the wording for the Voice referendum<p>An emotional Anthony Albanese, flanked by members of the referendum working group, has released the final proposed wording of the question to be put to Australians to incorporate an Indigenous Voice to Parliament in the Constitution. </p>
<p>Despite pressure from conservative lawyers to build in stronger protections against legal challenges under a future Voice, in particular in relation to its interaction with the public service, only tweaking has been undertaken to the original wording released by the prime minister at the Garma festival last year. </p>
<p>The question of potential legal challenge is contested by constitutional experts, with some strongly arguing there is no problem. </p>
<p>In a simply worded question, Australians will be asked to approve altering the Constitution “to recognise the First Peoples of Australia by establishing an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice”.</p>
<p>The change would be inserted into the Constitution as Chapter IX, reading:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>In recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the First Peoples of Australia</p>
<p>There shall be a body, to be called the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice</p>
<p>The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice may make representations to the Parliament and the Executive Government of the Commonwealth on matters relating to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples</p>
<p>The Parliament shall, subject to this Constitution, have power to make laws with respect to matters relating to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice, including its composition, functions, powers and procedures</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Albanese’s original wording was: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>There shall be a body, to be called the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice</p>
<p>The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice may make representations to Parliament and the Executive government on matters relating to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples</p>
<p>The Parliament shall, subject to this Constitution, have power to make laws with respect to the composition, functions, powers and procedures of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice</p>
</blockquote>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/we-now-know-exactly-what-question-the-voice-referendum-will-ask-australians-a-constitutional-law-expert-explains-202143">We now know exactly what question the Voice referendum will ask Australians. A constitutional law expert explains</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>The new version has made it clear, as was always intended, that the Voice would advise only the Commonwealth, not the states.</p>
<p>More significantly, the government has reworded the section about parliament’s power, although it has not taken up a proposal from Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus, after advice from the Solicitor-General, to add specific wording that parliament could legislate on “the legal effect of its representations”. </p>
<p>This ran into resistance among the referendum working group, which feared the potential to water down the Voice’s power. </p>
<p>Appearing at the Albanese news conference, Dreyfus said: “The process has worked exactly as it should be. I’m proud to be part of it. We have words here that put beyond doubt the power of the Australian parliament to legislate on the broad scope of the functions, powers, of the Voice to parliament.”</p>
<p>Opposition leader Peter Dutton called for the government to release the Solicitor-General’s advice. “In the absence of that advice, and in the absence of detail from the prime minister, how can the Australian public make an informed judgement about a very, very important issue?” </p>
<p>The Liberals have not stated a final position on the Voice. They supported the legislation, passed on Wednesday, for updating the referendum machinery arrangements. The Nationals oppose the Voice.</p>
<p>Conservative constitutional lawyer Greg Craven, a supporter of a Voice, criticised the failure to take up Dreyfus’s suggested change. “That in a sense is a defeat of hopes for some sort of compromise,” he said on Melbourne radio. </p>
<p>“The problem is executive government covers the whole of the decision-making of the Commonwealth government… Now, if you get into a situation where, for example, the Voice hasn’t yet made a representation on some important view and the Commonwealth has not told the Voice and given it that chance, then legally it is entirely practicable for someone to take a challenge to a court to stop that action until the Voice has made representation,” Craven said.</p>
<p>Among those on the platform with Albanese was Ken Wyatt, former minister for Indigenous Australians in the Morrison government. </p>
<p>Like the prime minister, several of the Indigenous leaders present were also emotional during the news conference. </p>
<p>Albanese will introduce legislation for the referendum question next week. It will then go to a parliamentary committee, with the government aiming to have it passed in June. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/your-questions-answered-on-the-voice-to-parliament-200818">Your questions answered on the Voice to Parliament</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>The prime minister indicated he was unlikely to be open to changes to the wording, although the Senate could force alterations. </p>
<p>Thursday’s announcement followed a meeting between Albanese and the working group on Wednesday night and federal cabinet’s tick-off of the wording on Thursday morning. </p>
<p>Albanese insisted at the news conference the form of words was “legally sound”. A legal group advised the referendum working group.</p>
<p>The PM stressed the practical value of a Voice in closing the gap of indigenous disadvantage. While this was about recognition, he said, more importantly it was about “making a practical difference, which we have a responsibility to do”. </p>
<p>He urged Australians not to miss the “opportunity to take up the generous
invitation of the Uluru Statement from the Heart”.</p>
<p>Albanese said there were no circumstances in which he would not put the referendum to a vote, because “to not put this to a vote is to concede defeat. You only win when you run on the field and engage. And let me tell you, my government is engaged. We’re all in.”</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/202435/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michelle Grattan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>In a simply worded question, Australians will be asked to approve altering the Constitution “to recognise the First Peoples of Australia by establishing an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice”.Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of CanberraLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2004422023-02-22T02:25:48Z2023-02-22T02:25:48ZPolitics with Michelle Grattan: Frank Brennan on rewording Voice question<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/511573/original/file-20230222-24-24n0wa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=6%2C0%2C4243%2C2822&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Alan Porritt/AAP</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Frank Brennan has been involved over decades in the big debates in Indigenous affairs. A Jesuit priest and an academic expert on the constitution, Brennan has advocated for recognising First Nations peoples in that document. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/511597/original/file-20230222-18-uxqf8q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/511597/original/file-20230222-18-uxqf8q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/511597/original/file-20230222-18-uxqf8q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=846&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/511597/original/file-20230222-18-uxqf8q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=846&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/511597/original/file-20230222-18-uxqf8q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=846&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/511597/original/file-20230222-18-uxqf8q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1064&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/511597/original/file-20230222-18-uxqf8q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1064&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/511597/original/file-20230222-18-uxqf8q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1064&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Supplied/Frank Brennan</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But he has concerns about the breadth of Anthony Albanese’s proposed referendum question, arguing in his new book that its reference to the Voice making representations to executive government raises the prospect of many legal challenges. This issue of the potential for legal challenges is one that divides legal experts, with a number of authorities maintaining there is no problem. </p>
<p>In this podcast, Brennan elaborates on why he believes the referendum question should be reworded and the form he thinks the question should take. </p>
<p>Anthony Albanese’s proposed wording is:</p>
<p>“There shall be a body, to be called the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice.</p>
<p>"The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice may make representations to Parliament and the Executive government on matters relating to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples.</p>
<p>"The Parliament shall, subject to this Constitution, have power to make laws with respect to the composition, functions, powers and procedures of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice.”</p>
<p>Frank Brennan’s suggested wording is: </p>
<p>“There shall be an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice with such structure and functions as the Parliament deems necessary to facilitate consultation prior to the making of special laws with respect to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, and with such other functions as the Parliament determines.”</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/200442/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michelle Grattan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>In this podcast, Brennan elaborates on why he believes the referendum question should be reworded and the form he thinks the question should takeMichelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of CanberraLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1788752022-03-29T01:23:14Z2022-03-29T01:23:14ZSupernovas, auroral sounds and hungry tides: unpacking First Nations knowledge of the skies<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/453232/original/file-20220321-23-mpekjr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Uluru by night with Milky Way, stars and galaxies. Taken at Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park in Northern Territory, Central Australia.</span> </figcaption></figure><p>Duane Hamacher’s <a href="https://www.allenandunwin.com/browse/books/academic-professional/cultural-studies/The-First-Astronomers-Duane-Hamacher-with-Elders-and-Knowledge-Holders-9781760877200">The First Astronomers</a> explores the deep and living star knowledge of First Nations people from around the world – and challenges the notion that Indigenous knowledge is not scientific.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>Review: The First Astronomers: How Indigenous Elders Read the Stars - Duane Hamacher, with Elders and Knowledge Holders (Allen & Unwin)</em></p>
<hr>
<p>This magnificent book is the latest in a growing body of work showcasing Indigenous knowledge of the natural world. </p>
<p>It follows other popular texts, including Bill Gammage’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-biggest-estate-on-earth-how-aborigines-made-australia-3787">The Biggest Estate on Earth</a> (2011), Bruce Pascoe’s widely <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-the-dark-emu-debate-limits-representation-of-aboriginal-people-in-australia-163006">debated</a> and important <a href="https://theconversation.com/book-review-farmers-or-hunter-gatherers-the-dark-emu-debate-rigorously-critiques-bruce-pascoes-argument-161877">Dark Emu</a> (2014), <a href="https://www.nla.gov.au/stories/blog/behind-the-scenes/2019/07/04/writing-australias-first-naturalists">Australia’s First Naturalists</a> (2019) by Penny Olsen and Lynette Russell, and the <a href="https://thamesandhudson.com.au/the-first-knowledges-series/">First Knowledges series</a> edited by Margo Neale. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/453233/original/file-20220321-13-aqiwfa.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/453233/original/file-20220321-13-aqiwfa.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=918&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/453233/original/file-20220321-13-aqiwfa.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=918&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/453233/original/file-20220321-13-aqiwfa.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=918&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/453233/original/file-20220321-13-aqiwfa.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1154&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/453233/original/file-20220321-13-aqiwfa.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1154&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/453233/original/file-20220321-13-aqiwfa.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1154&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p>Astrophysicist Hamacher has been guided by Elders and Knowledge Holders Ghillar Michael Anderson, <a href="https://theconversation.com/from-fireballs-in-the-sky-to-a-shark-in-the-stars-the-astronomical-artistry-of-segar-passi-157319">Segar Passi</a>, John Barsa, David Bosun, Ron Day and <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-moon-plays-an-important-role-in-indigenous-culture-and-helped-win-a-battle-over-sea-rights-119081">Alo Tapim</a>. </p>
<p>This book developed from a collaboration with Torres Strait Islander scholar <a href="https://www.arc.gov.au/news-publications/media/research-highlights/indigenous-researcher-professor-martin-nakata-improving-educational-outcomes-indigenous-higher">Professor Martin Nakata</a>, a leading authority on <a href="https://aiatsis.gov.au/publication/35550">the intersection of Indigenous and Western ways of knowing</a>.</p>
<p>It’s stunning in scope, impressive in detail and accessible in style. For readers with no background in astronomy (like me), terms are clearly explained. </p>
<p>Importantly, Hamacher reflects on what he is learning throughout, demonstrating his willingness to listen and learn. His example reminded me to reflect on my own assumptions about different ways of knowing. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/speaking-with-duane-hamacher-on-indigenous-astronomy-35671">Speaking with: Duane Hamacher on Indigenous astronomy</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Challenging Western scientific knowledge</h2>
<p>First Nations people have been observing the skies for millennia. This book recognises that Indigenous and Western ways of knowing can work together. Indigenous astronomy has often challenged Western scientific knowledge, motivating further scientific inquiry. </p>
<p>For example, auroras have long been witnessed by First Nations people, both in high latitudes near the Arctic and low latitudes in Aotearoa/New Zealand and Australia. First Nations people have reported auroras sounding like “rustling grass, or a person walking through snow”. Sámi – the indigenous people of the northernmost parts of Sweden, Finland and Norway – refer to auroras as <em>guovssahas</em>, meaning “the light you can hear”. </p>
<p>The Western scientific community was dismissive of these “auroral sounds”. But in 2016 a group of Finnish scientists, guided by Sámi and Inuit traditions, confirmed that they exist.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/453108/original/file-20220318-17-ckfm0j.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/453108/original/file-20220318-17-ckfm0j.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/453108/original/file-20220318-17-ckfm0j.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/453108/original/file-20220318-17-ckfm0j.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/453108/original/file-20220318-17-ckfm0j.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/453108/original/file-20220318-17-ckfm0j.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/453108/original/file-20220318-17-ckfm0j.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Aurora australis. Taken from the International Space Station. NASA.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/from-fireballs-in-the-sky-to-a-shark-in-the-stars-the-astronomical-artistry-of-segar-passi-157319">From fireballs in the sky to a shark in the stars: the astronomical artistry of Segar Passi</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>The movement of the planets and the twinkling of the stars</h2>
<p>Another concept that First Nations people understood early was the relative motion of the planets, including <a href="https://starchild.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/StarChild/questions/question46.html">retrograde motion</a>, when a planet appears to move backwards in the sky owing to its relative position to Earth. </p>
<p>Winifred Buck, an Ininew Elder from Manitoba, Canada, explains that retrograde motion is referred to as <em>mooswa acak</em> or “moose spirit”, because a moose is inclined to circle back when startled, in the same way that Mars appears to be circling back during retrograde motion.</p>
<p>In the most intriguing chapter, Hamacher describes how the twinkling (scintillation) of stars – a source of frustration in Western astrophysics – has been harnessed by First Nations people to understand atmospheric conditions. </p>
<p>For example, for the people of Mabuyag in the Torres Strait, stellar twinkling indicates heavy wind, temperature change and approaching rain. The Wardaman of the Northern Territory use this twinkling to predict the approach of the wet season. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/aboriginal-traditions-describe-the-complex-motions-of-planets-the-wandering-stars-of-the-sky-97938">Aboriginal traditions describe the complex motions of planets, the 'wandering stars' of the sky</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Interpreting the colonial archive</h2>
<p>Variable stars – stars that change in brightness through time – were not formally defined as a phenomenon by Western astronomers until 1836. Yet, as Hamacher reveals, First Nations people already knew about them. </p>
<p>The Irish anthropologist Daisy Bates spent nearly two decades in Kokatha Country at Ooldea Mission in the Great Victoria Desert, where she recorded local oral traditions, including star stories, which were published throughout the 1920s. Bates recorded the story of Nyeeruna (Orion), a man in the stars, who pursued the young Yugarilya sisters. </p>
<p>She struggled to explain the stars that brightened and faded in the story, wrongly attributing them to “emissions from nebulae”. Unbeknown to Bates, she was recording traditional knowledge of the variable nature of Betelgeuse and Aldebaran.</p>
<p>This raises an important point. Where specialist knowledge of First Nations people has been recorded by Western observers like Bates, early ethnographies need to be revisited and reassessed by those with relevant knowledge. This is a point that has been raised before, in books such as <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-the-dark-emu-debate-limits-representation-of-aboriginal-people-in-australia-163006">Dark Emu</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/453222/original/file-20220321-21-1xa1b3a.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/453222/original/file-20220321-21-1xa1b3a.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/453222/original/file-20220321-21-1xa1b3a.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/453222/original/file-20220321-21-1xa1b3a.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/453222/original/file-20220321-21-1xa1b3a.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/453222/original/file-20220321-21-1xa1b3a.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/453222/original/file-20220321-21-1xa1b3a.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Eta Carinae.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Similarly, traditional knowledge also recognised novas, supernovas and supernova imposters. In 1847, William Stanbridge recorded Boorong observations of what (according to Hamacher) must have been the Great Eruption of Eta Carinae, which was incorporated into pre-existing oral traditions as a female crow. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/kindred-skies-ancient-greeks-and-aboriginal-australians-saw-constellations-in-common-74850">Kindred skies: ancient Greeks and Aboriginal Australians saw constellations in common</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>The strength of oral traditions</h2>
<p>In many examples throughout the book, Hamacher shows how oral traditions have captured and transmitted Indigenous knowledge.</p>
<p>First Nations people possessed a complex understanding of positional astronomy, which was used to navigate the land and sea. They understood how cardinal points can be discerned from the stars. In the Torres Strait, the gills of the shark constellation known as <em>Beizam</em> (the Big Dipper in the northern hemisphere) are used to orient north. </p>
<p>Long-distance travel routes are also mapped via the stars, with waypoints on land committed to memory. Travellers “sing the land”, instilling a memory of the journey. Hamacher reveals that many paths and roads imposed by European colonists overlay existing Songlines and pathways: for example, the Great Western Highway through the Blue Mountains. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/453226/original/file-20220321-5945-1e7qv2v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/453226/original/file-20220321-5945-1e7qv2v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/453226/original/file-20220321-5945-1e7qv2v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/453226/original/file-20220321-5945-1e7qv2v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/453226/original/file-20220321-5945-1e7qv2v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/453226/original/file-20220321-5945-1e7qv2v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/453226/original/file-20220321-5945-1e7qv2v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Henbury Meteroite Park.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/icathing/">Bill Stillwell/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In his final chapter, “The Falling Stars”, Hamacher explores the cultural significance and memories associated with shooting stars and meteorite impacts. For many First Nations people, shooting stars are thought to mark the departure of a soul. </p>
<p>The incredible intergenerational memory associated with the formation of what are today known in Arrernte language as <em>Tatyeye Kepmwere</em> (the Henbury Craters, on the boundary of Arrernte and Luritja lands in the Northern Territory) is also detailed. </p>
<p>Aboriginal people had long known that the 15 craters were created by meteorite impact. </p>
<p>In 1921, prospector James Mitchell asked a local Aboriginal man to accompany him to the site and the man refused, explaining in Luritja language that was where “a fiery devil ran down from the Sun and made his home in the Earth”. In 1931, a geologist established the craters as a meteorite impact site. Radiometric dating has since confirmed that the craters are 4,200 years old. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/stars-that-vary-in-brightness-shine-in-the-oral-traditions-of-aboriginal-australians-85833">Stars that vary in brightness shine in the oral traditions of Aboriginal Australians</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Recognising Indigenous knowledge</h2>
<p>Hamacher closes his book by acknowledging the expanding cohort of Indigenous people currently working in astronomy. One is Dr Stacy Mader, a Gidja Man who works for the CSIRO at Parkes Observatory in New South Wales. Another is Kirsten Banks, a Wiradjuri woman, PhD Candidate in astrophysics at UNSW, and TEDx speaker. </p>
<p>Karlie Noon and Krystal Di Napoli, Gomeroi women pursuing and holding qualifications in astrophysics, have co-authored <a href="https://thamesandhudson.com.au/product/astronomy-sky-country/">Sky Country</a> (2022), a book in the First Knowledges series. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/mYr7ZCn04eA?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">65,000 yrs - the great history of Australian Aboriginal Astronomy, Kirsten Banks, TEDxYouth@Sydney.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>As an outcome of a 2016 working group, over a hundred star names from Indigenous languages were assigned to visible stars by the International Astronomical Union (IAU). In 2017, the organisation <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-01-15/star-from-the-southern-cross-now-has-aborginal-name/9331190">formally approved</a> the Wardaman name, <em>Ginan</em>, to the fifth-brightest star in the Southern Cross (Epsilon Crucis). </p>
<p>Hamacher also recognises the importance of incorporating Indigenous ways of knowing into school curricula, such as Professor Marcia Langton’s education modules for secondary schools in the areas of fire, water and <a href="https://indigenousknowledge.unimelb.edu.au/curriculum/resources/indigenous-astronomy-and-the-solar-system">astronomy</a>. </p>
<p>The First Astronomers contains three key messages. Firstly, many so-called Western scientific “discoveries” have long been known by First Nations people, a point which echoes the message of other popular <a href="https://www.nla.gov.au/stories/blog/behind-the-scenes/2019/07/04/writing-australias-first-naturalists">texts</a>. Secondly, early ethnographies which include First Nations specialist knowledge, need to be interpreted by those with relevant knowledge of the subject material. Finally, the complex, scientific and long-established knowledge of the sky held by First People is retained through the strength of oral traditions.</p>
<p>And as Hamacher states, “there is a great deal more we can learn if we simply listen”.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/178875/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mirani Litster receives funding from the Australian Research Council</span></em></p>The First Astronomers shares the extensive star knowledge of First Peoples worldwide, stretching back millennia to reclaim so-called Western discoveries and highlight the strength of oral traditions.Mirani Litster, Lecturer in Archaeology and ARC Centre of Excellence for Australian Biodiversity and Heritage, James Cook University, James Cook UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1439142020-08-05T02:03:35Z2020-08-05T02:03:35ZWhy the Black Lives Matter protests must continue: an urgent appeal by Marcia Langton<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/351194/original/file-20200805-43856-1w1c7gb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=23%2C38%2C5152%2C3305&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Glenn Hunt/AAP</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>This is an edited transcript of the 2020 Thea Astley Address delivered by Marcia Langton at the <a href="https://byronwritersfestival.com/">Byron Writers Festival</a>. It’s a longer read at 4,500 words. You can listen to the the speech <a href="http://byronwritersfestival.com/digital/byron-writers-festival-2020-thea-astley-address-marcia-langton-black-lives-matter/">here</a>.</em></p>
<p><em>Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised this article contains names and images of deceased people.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>Hello, I’m Marcia Langton and welcome to the 2020 Thea Astley Address.</p>
<p>I acknowledge the traditional owners of Bundjalung of Byron Bay Arakwal people, the Minjungbal people and the Widjabul people as Traditional Owners and custodians of their homelands in the Byron Shire. I pay my respects to their Elders, past and present. I also acknowledge the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin nations on whose lands I live and work and salute their Elders throughout the thousands of generations.</p>
<p>I hope Thea Astley in the other world has watched the last few weeks of the Black Lives Movement and pondered on the history of Palm Island. </p>
<p>When she wrote <a href="https://www.booktopia.com.au/the-multiple-effects-of-rainshadow-thea-astley/book/9781925603569.html?source=pla&gclid=CjwKCAjwjqT5BRAPEiwAJlBuBYeY0hDlO4z9GLJcIPIB4s5IEmI4U_F6_b4Tupfv8uSjyM77KmvPSRoC90gQAvD_BwE">The Multiple Effects of Rainshadow</a> published in 1996, she could not have imagined that the injustices meted out to the Palm Islanders from 1919 when the settlement was established, to 1957 when the Palm Island strike was savagely put down, would result in a telling instance of how Black Lives Matter in history, in the present, and for our future.</p>
<p>Thea Astley passed on in 2004, the same year as Mulrunji or Cameron Doomadgee, who <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-11-19/palm-island-community-still-struggling-after-death-in-custody/5901028">died in a police cell</a> on Palm Island on Friday, November 19, in an encounter with Sergeant Chris Hurley. The office of the state coroner reported on the inquest on May 14, 2010. </p>
<p>Doomadgee was a resident of Palm Island. He was found dead in a cell in the police station on Palm Island. A post-mortem examination showed that he had a cut above his right eye, four broken ribs, his portal vein had been ruptured and his liver had been almost cleaved in two.</p>
<p>The Doomadgee case tells us that there is something rotten in the state of Denmark, and leaders from every Australian government are oblivious to the stench. It is an exemplary case of the persistent habit of police forces and criminal justice systems to fail Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. At this point in time, the numbers of deaths in custody <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/jun/06/aboriginal-deaths-in-custody-434-have-died-since-1991-new-data-shows">exceed 400</a> and they’re probably closer to 500 since the <a href="https://apo.org.au/node/30017">royal commission</a> commenced in 1987.</p>
<p>The deputy state coroner, Christine Clements, had conducted an inquest into the death and stood down to avoid a perception of bias. She <a href="https://www.courts.qld.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0008/86642/cif-doomadgee-mulrunji-20060927.pdf">published her findings</a> on September 27, 2006. </p>
<p>She found </p>
<blockquote>
<p>the deceased died from intra-abdominal haemorrhage due to or as a consequence of the rupture of his liver and portal vein. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>And concluded that </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Senior Sergeant Hurley, the police officer on Palm Island at the time of the death of the deceased, caused these injuries to the deceased.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>She also found </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Senior Sergeant Hurley and the deceased fell through the doorway of the police station onto the floor and then Mr Hurley, angered by the unruly behaviour of the deceased, hit the deceased whilst he was on the floor a number of times, in a direct response to himself having been hit in the jaw and then falling to the floor.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>And lastly, she wrote </p>
<blockquote>
<p>the fatal injuries suffered by the deceased were not caused in or as a result of the fall but by Senior Sergeant Hurley punching the deceased after the fall.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>But the later inquest report which superseded the one I’ve just read from, was careful to account for what followed.</p>
<p>The then Queensland attorney-general, Kerry Shine, initiated <a href="https://www.news.com.au/national/policeman-charged-with-manslaughter/news-story/4a3e53fb24191f4bb91188a6f20fdaf5?sv=e2306db5bad364524d4c8767a8593e08">criminal proceedings</a> against Hurley for the manslaughter and the assault of Doomadgee, following the receipt by him of legal advice from former New South Wales chief justice, Laurence Street.</p>
<p>The trial was conducted in the Supreme Court in Townsville in June 2007 and the jury <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/7.30/hurley-acquitted-after-controversial-case/2679506">acquitted</a> Hurley of both charges. </p>
<p>The Doomadgee case tells us that over a period of 14 years the Queensland Police and criminal justice system denied justice to the deceased and the family. </p>
<p>Lex Wotton later took a case against the Queensland government after Peter Beattie, the premier, had sent in riot police to put down the protests of the community. The racism and the impunity of the police in their attacks ended up <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/may/01/queensland-to-pay-palm-islanders-30m-over-police-response-to-2004-riots">costing</a> the Queensland government $30 million. </p>
<p>But there are hundreds of other cases where justice has been denied. Thirteen years ago, Chris Hurley was the first policeman to stand trial for an Aboriginal death in custody. Hurley pleaded not guilty. And as you know now he was acquitted of all charges.</p>
<h2>Court finds police acted with impunity</h2>
<p>Returning to Lex Wotton: on the day of Doomadgee’s autopsy results arriving on Palm Island, Wotton read them out to a large crowd of the residents. This occurred about a week after his death. Led by Wotton, angry residents marched from the town square and burned down the police station, courthouse and police houses. Officers tried to barricade themselves as they were attacked with sticks and rocks, and told to leave the island.</p>
<p>Wotton was later <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-03-04/lex-wotton-nominee/12023890?nw=0">convicted</a> of inciting a riot and served 19 months in jail before being released on parole in 2014. </p>
<p>The Federal Court found in litigation taken by Wotton in November 2016 that police were racist in their response and ordered compensation for one family, prompting momentum for the community to take a class action. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Protestors holding a sign that reads, 'Free Lex Wotton'" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/351198/original/file-20200805-46094-1l68lac.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/351198/original/file-20200805-46094-1l68lac.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/351198/original/file-20200805-46094-1l68lac.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/351198/original/file-20200805-46094-1l68lac.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/351198/original/file-20200805-46094-1l68lac.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/351198/original/file-20200805-46094-1l68lac.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/351198/original/file-20200805-46094-1l68lac.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Protestors calling for the release of Lex Wotton in 2008.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Tony Phillips/AAP</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Federal Court Justice Debbie Mortimer <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-12-05/palm-island-riots-federal-court-upholds-discrimination-suit/8093182">found</a> police had acted with impunity. She also found the Queensland police service’s failure to suspend Hurley after Doomadgee’s death was unlawful discrimination. </p>
<p>In that case, Wotton and his family were awarded $220,000 in damages for racial discrimination in December 2016. Doomadgee’s death resonated on the island, in the Queensland government, nationally and internationally for another 14 years. </p>
<p>And despite the sadness and grief felt for his far too early death, a measure of justice was finally delivered after these years of protest and litigation, when the Queensland government settled an out-of-court class action for the egregious attacks on the residents of Palm Island by the Queensland riot police. And as I said, the class action resulted in a $30 million payout.</p>
<h2>Systemic racism that pervades the police</h2>
<p>That Hurley, like all other police involved in the long history of Aboriginal deaths in custody, was cleared of any wrongdoing, with all that the history of this case tells us about Aboriginal deaths in custody, the cynical contempt for justice demonstrated by the Queensland police and many in the judiciary, cannot be ignored. </p>
<p>And it was not ignored. The death of Doomadgee became the subject of books, documentaries and litigation, including, as I said, the successful class action. One of the outstanding books on the subject is Chloe Hooper’s <a href="https://www.penguin.com.au/books/the-tall-man-9780143010661">The Tall Man</a>. It was also made into a documentary.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, Hurley had been transferred to a police station on the Gold Coast where he was charged while serving as a police officer with assault, dangerous driving and other offences. </p>
<p>Criminal lawyers were moved to write blogs about Hurley. On July 15, 2017, Paul Gregoire and Ugur Nedim of Sydney Criminal Lawyers <a href="https://www.sydneycriminallawyers.com.au/blog/senior-sergeant-chris-hurley-a-criminal-with-a-badge/">referred to him</a> as “a criminal with a badge” on the website of their law firm, summing up for all of us the true state of affairs denied by the entire criminal justice system in Queensland. </p>
<p>They detailed his criminal activities on the Gold Coast. He was <a href="https://www.goldcoastbulletin.com.au/news/crime-court/christopher-hurley-fights-charges-after-pacific-pines-car-chase/news-story/e5390208c6480b14fa6713179d973225">found guilty</a> on two counts of dangerous driving during a high speed police pursuit in the suburb of Pacific Pines on the Gold Coast in May 2015. </p>
<p>He pleaded guilty to <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-01-24/suspended-cop-chris-hurley-fined-assault-female-police-officer/8209328">assaulting</a> a female police officer in a Gold Coast shopping centre 12 months earlier. </p>
<p>He was found guilty of <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-12-02/chris-hurley-fined-$900-assaulting-motorist/8087284">assaulting</a> Luke Cole during a roadside arrest in November 2013, when he unjustifiably put the driver in a chokehold. At the time of his hearing for that offence, Hurley was already suspended without pay due to a string of charges against him. He took medical retirement. However, the bloggers <a href="https://www.sydneycriminallawyers.com.au/blog/senior-sergeant-chris-hurley-a-criminal-with-a-badge/">write</a>, </p>
<blockquote>
<p>if one takes a closer look at Hurley’s police career, or rather, the times he’s been on the wrong side of the law, what one finds is an example of the systemic racism that pervades the Queensland police service and on a broader scale, many other Australian institutions.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Findings from Guardian investigation</h2>
<p>There is no time here to recount the many failings of the Queensland Justice System in the Doomadgee case and so many others involving Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander detainees. </p>
<p>But the findings of the <a href="https://www.naa.gov.au/explore-collection/first-australians/royal-commission-aboriginal-deaths-custody">Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody</a>, which commenced in 1987, were highly relevant to the coroner who conducted the second inquest into Doomadgee’s death, if it was totally ignored by the subsequent criminal trial of Hurley.</p>
<p>The denial of rights of, and natural justice to, the victims in the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander deaths in custody saga, the arrest and incarceration of Aboriginal adults and children, have reached the level of a national crisis. </p>
<p>This is the view of many Indigenous people, human rights advocates, many in the legal fraternity and thousands of citizens. It is not the view, however, of the political leadership in Australian governments. </p>
<p>Even the most reasonable reforms have been rejected. Those who campaigned this year to <a href="https://theconversation.com/ten-year-olds-do-not-belong-in-detention-why-australia-must-raise-the-age-of-criminal-responsibility-142483">raise the age</a> of criminal responsibility from 10 to 14 years of age are bitterly disappointed by the decision of the Council of Attorneys-General this week to <a href="https://www.als.org.au/bitter-disappointment-at-delays-in-raising-the-age-of-criminal-responsibility/">delay a decision</a> until next year, citing as the reason the risk to community safety, particularly on behalf of the Western Australian government.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/ten-year-olds-do-not-belong-in-detention-why-australia-must-raise-the-age-of-criminal-responsibility-142483">Ten-year-olds do not belong in detention. Why Australia must raise the age of criminal responsibility</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>How bad is it?</p>
<p>Throughout the first half of 2020, as people chanted “Black Lives Matter” across the world in protest of the killing of George Floyd and too many others, the Guardian Australia <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/ng-interactive/2018/aug/28/deaths-inside-indigenous-australian-deaths-in-custody">conducted a study</a> of Aboriginal deaths in custody in Australia. </p>
<p>After reading 589 coronial reports, the team at the Guardian found “a record of systemic failure and neglect” and reported on a number of key issues that are too often ignored by police and the criminal justice system. There are too many myths about trends in deaths and incarceration rates and how Aboriginal people in custody are treated, both by the police who charge them, and when they are in custody, whether in police custody or in a correctional facility. </p>
<p>So, the Guardian team write,</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The key finding of the Royal Commission was that Aboriginal people are more likely to die in custody because they are arrested and jailed at disproportionate rates.</p>
<p>That remains as true in 2020 as it was in 1991. In 1991, 14.3% of the male prison population in Australia was Indigenous. In March 2020 it was 28.6%. So, the numbers have increased dramatically but so too has the proportion.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The proportion has doubled since 1991. And,</p>
<blockquote>
<p>According to data released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics this month, 4.7% of all Indigenous men are in jail, compared with just 0.3% of all non-Indigenous men.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>And the Guardian writers continue,</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Then as now, non-Indigenous people died in greater numbers and at greater rates in custody than Indigenous people. But then as now, Indigenous people made up just 3% of the total population.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>That means more Aboriginal people are imprisoned and dying as a proportion of their total population. And they continue,</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Using the most recent census and Australian Institute of Criminology figures, to calculate a crude rate per 100,000 people, showing Indigenous people are 10 times more likely to die in prison than non-Indigenous people.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Their examination of coronial reports also showed a stark difference in the treatment of Indigenous people who died in custody compared with non-Indigenous people, and they write,</p>
<blockquote>
<p>While the most common cause of death for both Indigenous and non-Indigenous people in custody was medical issues, or what coronial reports referred to as natural causes, Indigenous people were much less likely to have been given all of the medical care they needed prior to their death.</p>
<p>Agencies such as police watch houses, prisons and hospitals failed to follow all of their own procedures in 37% of cases where Indigenous people died, compared with 21% for non-Indigenous people. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander defendants were more likely to receive a sentence of imprisonment upon conviction than non-Indigenous defendants.</p>
<p>Almost a third of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander defendants were jailed, compared to 18% of non-Indigenous defendants, despite the two groups having similar conviction rates: 85% to 81%.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>And the Guardian revealed that,</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Police in New South Wales pursued more than 80% of Indigenous people found with small amounts of cannabis through the courts while letting others off with warnings, forcing young Aboriginal people into a criminal justice system that legal experts say they will potentially never get out of.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>And the Guardian concluded that,</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Between 2013 and 2017 the police disproportionately used the justice system to prosecute Indigenous people despite the existence of a specific cautioning scheme introduced to keep minor drug offenses out of the courts.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>No justice, no prosecutions</h2>
<p>So, I ask rhetorically, where is the stench coming from?</p>
<p>I worked for the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody from 1989 to 1990. After the primary recommendation of the royal commission that incarceration or arrest and imprisonment of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people should be a last resort, the key recommendation pertained to the principle and implementation of duty of care by all involved in the criminal justice system from police to correctional services officers. </p>
<p>We can see from the evidence unearthed by the Guardian team that the failure of police and correctional service officers to exercise duty of care remains the primary contributing factor to Aboriginal deaths in custody. The Guardian team found that, for instance,</p>
<blockquote>
<p>An Aboriginal woman with a chronic injury and a tooth abscess was denied pain medication for six weeks after being transferred to Townsville Women’s Prison in 2010. Her medical records had not arrived with her and apart from issuing Panadol, authorities did not believe she was in need of pain relief. Six weeks after the transfer she took her own life. The coroner said the pain was a contributing factor in her despair during her final weeks.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In another instance,</p>
<blockquote>
<p>An Aboriginal man in the grip of cardiac arrest was made to walk to a guard station to use a portable oxygen unit before an ambulance was called. Another Aboriginal man died of heart disease lying on a concrete bench in a Darwin police watch house cell. The coroner said, a sick middle-aged Aboriginal man was treated like a criminal and incarcerated like a criminal. He died in a police cell which was built to house criminals. In my view he was entitled to die as a free man.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>And,</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The well-known case of Mr Ward, a Ngaanyatjarra elder, who the coroner found was cooked to death in a prison transport van in circumstances described as wholly unnecessary and avoidable.</p>
<p>Families of those who die experience poor treatment. Coroners have criticised unnecessary delays in notifying next-of-kin. In one case a father found out his son had died when another prisoner called him several hours after the death, long before police notified him officially. In many cases police investigating a death on behalf of the coroner failed to interview anyone other than the prison or police officers directly involved. Aboriginal witnesses were left out.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>And so, having read so much from that very important Guardian report, I want to acknowledge my gratitude to the Guardian for covering this issue of Aboriginal deaths in custody so assiduously.</p>
<p>Like hundreds of other Australians, I was distressed by the death of <a href="https://www.hrlc.org.au/news/2017/8/2/three-years-since-ms-dhus-tragic-death-in-custody-unfair-laws-remain">Ms Dhu</a> in custody in a police cell in Western Australia, and then later, the death of <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-04-09/tanya-day-coronial-finding-into-death-in-custody/12134398">Tanya Day</a> in a police cell in Victoria. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Tanya Day's children holding a picture of their mother." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/351195/original/file-20200805-5580-ha5q2k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/351195/original/file-20200805-5580-ha5q2k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=454&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/351195/original/file-20200805-5580-ha5q2k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=454&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/351195/original/file-20200805-5580-ha5q2k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=454&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/351195/original/file-20200805-5580-ha5q2k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=570&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/351195/original/file-20200805-5580-ha5q2k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=570&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/351195/original/file-20200805-5580-ha5q2k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=570&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Tanya Day’s family have been campaigning for justice after the death of the Yorta Yorta mother and grandmother.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Julian Smith/AAP</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>There are too many other cases of Aboriginal women who have died in police custody to recount here. Their lives were cut short by violence compounded by what seemed to be a contempt for Aboriginal women, that can pass for normal and acceptable across all classes and cultures in Australia. </p>
<p>There has been no justice, no prosecutions, just a cold silence from the authorities. Only their families, a few journalists and a very small number of people holding vigils, until the Black Lives Matter protesters this year have brought these matters to our attention. These deaths are the tip of the iceberg. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/aboriginal-woman-tanya-day-died-in-custody-now-an-inquest-is-investigating-if-systemic-racism-played-a-role-122471">Aboriginal woman Tanya Day died in custody. Now an inquest is investigating if systemic racism played a role</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>The death of Ms Dhu</h2>
<p>Most others have passed without any public attention or anything like justice. </p>
<p>Ms Dhu, a Yamatji woman, was 22 years old when she died in Port Hedland, Western Australia in 2014. She had been arrested for unpaid fines on August 2, then detained for three days at the South Hedland police station under a controversial policy of paying fines through jail time. She owed $3,622. </p>
<p>During those three days, she cried in agony for hours and vomited as pneumonia and septicaemia, resulting from untreated broken ribs, took her life. The police took her to the Hedland Health Campus three times while she was in custody. She was twice discharged back into police custody without treatment and clearly without any competent diagnosis. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Supporters of Ms Dhu outside a coroner's court." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/351197/original/file-20200805-5896-17suf0y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/351197/original/file-20200805-5896-17suf0y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/351197/original/file-20200805-5896-17suf0y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/351197/original/file-20200805-5896-17suf0y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/351197/original/file-20200805-5896-17suf0y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/351197/original/file-20200805-5896-17suf0y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/351197/original/file-20200805-5896-17suf0y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Ms Dhu, a Yamatji woman, died in police custody in 2014.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Richard Wainwright/AAP</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Medical personnel stated that she had behavioural issues. She continued to complain that she was unwell. In CCTV footage from her third day in custody she appeared barely conscious, prompting police to take her back to the Hedland Health Campus a third time. Shortly after her arrival she went into cardiac arrest and died. Her death and its circumstances were ignored by authorities.</p>
<p>In October 2014, Ms Dhu’s grandmother, Carol Roe, working with the Deaths in Custody Watch Committee, <a href="https://www.themonthly.com.au/issue/2016/july/1467295200/marcia-langton/two-victims-no-justice#mtr">issued</a> a public appeal for an independent investigation to be held for a series of reforms, such as stopping imprisonment for the non-payment of fines, and infringement to be implemented and for demonstrations to be held. </p>
<p>A coronial inquest commenced in Perth on November 23, 2015. The <a href="https://www.coronerscourt.wa.gov.au/I/inquest_into_the_death_of_ms_dhu.aspx">coronial inquiry</a> was an extraordinarily painful document to read. Some of it was televised and I myself cried at the appalling treatment of Ms Dhu. </p>
<p>The police and the health campus staff denied that they were in any way racist. That they seemed oblivious to their responsibilities of duty of care to Ms Dhu and performed their duties with general contempt and incompetence, as revealed in the evidence to the inquest, says otherwise.</p>
<h2>What the royal commission recommended</h2>
<p>So I ask this question again: Are the police and correctional services racist? Is there structural or systemic racism in the Australian criminal justice system?</p>
<p>The answer to these questions that emerge from the thousands of pages of evidence is a resounding yes.</p>
<p>Until measures are taken to prevent police and correctional services officers from failing in their duties to the Indigenous people they detain or any Australian they detain, and ensuring that an encounter with them is not fatal, we must say yes, and demand that all Australian governments implement the recommendations of the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody.</p>
<p>And here I want to be specific. Governments <a href="https://humanrights.gov.au/our-work/indigenous-deaths-custody-chapter-8-custodial-conditions">must ensure that</a>,</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Police services, corrective services and authorities in charge of juvenile centres recognise that they owe a legal duty of care to persons in their custody. That the standing instructions to the officers of these authorities specify that each officer involved in the arrest, incarceration or supervision of a person in custody has a legal duty of care to that person and may be held legally responsible for the death or injury of the person caused or contributed to by a breach of that duty, and that these authorities ensure that such officers are aware of their responsibilities and trained appropriately to meet them both on recruitment and during their service.</p>
<p>That these authorities ensure that such officers are aware of their responsibilities and trained appropriately to meet them. That police and corrective services establish clear policies in relation to breaches of departmental instructions. </p>
<p>Instructions relating to the care of persons in custody should be in mandatory terms and be both enforceable and enforced. Procedures should be put in place to ensure that such instructions are brought to the attention of, and are understood by, all officers and that those officers are made aware that the instructions will be enforced. Such instructions should be available to the public. </p>
<p>In all jurisdictions a screening form be introduced as a routine element in the reception of persons into police custody. That in every case of a person being taken into custody and immediately before for that person is placed in a cell, a screening form should be completed and a risk assessment made by a police officer or such other person who is trained and designated as the person responsible for the completion of such forms and the assessment of prisoners.</p>
<p>The assessment of a detainee and other procedures relating to the completion of the screening form should be completed with care and thoroughness.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Recommendations of the royal commission included not just the compulsory Custody Watch Service be implemented in every jurisdiction, but also that:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Upon initial reception at a prison all Aboriginal prisoners should be subject to a thorough medical assessment with a view to determining whether the prisoner is at risk of injury, illness or self-harm. Such assessment on initial reception should be provided wherever possible by a medical practitioner.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>And further:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>That where persons are held in police watch houses, that authorities arrange in consultation with police services for medical services, and as far as possible other services, to be provided, not less adequate than those that are provided in correctional institutions. </p>
<p>That the use of breath analysis equipment to test the blood alcohol levels at the time of reception of persons taken into custody be thoroughly evaluated by police services in consultation with Aboriginal legal services, health services, health departments and relevant agencies. </p>
<p>Protocols be established for the transfer between Police and Corrective Services of information about the physical or mental condition of an Aboriginal person which may create or increase the risks of death or injury to that person when in custody.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The hundreds of recommendations of the royal commission are very detailed, and these in particular and many more, addressed the practices of police that we now know have not changed since the royal commission report was made public, with the result that there have been hundreds more cases of Aboriginal deaths in custody. </p>
<p>These recommendations also extended to correctional services officers and likewise, they too have failed in their duty of care far too many times.</p>
<p>Another important recommendation was that,</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Police services should be immediately in negotiation with Aboriginal health services and government health and medical agencies, to examine the delivery of medical services to persons in police custody. </p>
<p>Such examinations should include, but not be limited to, the following: The introduction of a regular medical or nursing presence in all principal watch houses in capital cities, and in such other major centres as have substantial numbers detained. In other locations the establishment of arrangements to have medical practitioners or trained nurses readily available to attend police watch houses for the purpose of identifying those prisoners who are at risk.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>And, the establishment of protocols in relation to those measures:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The development of the protocols for the care and management of Aboriginal prisoners at risk with attention to be given to the specific action to be taken by officers with respect to the management of intoxicated persons, persons who are known to suffer from illnesses such as epilepsy, diabetes or heart disease or other serious medical conditions. </p>
<p>Persons who make any attempt to harm themselves or who exhibit a tendency to violent, irrational or potentially self-injurious behaviour. Persons with an impaired state of consciousness, angry aggressive or otherwise disturbed persons, persons suffering from mental illness and other serious medical conditions. Persons in possession of or requiring access to medication and other such persons as agreed.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The tragedy of this situation is that hundreds of people have died because those recommendations were not implemented fully. In fact, we can see from just the few cases I’ve mentioned today that in many parts of Australia the recommendations, if they were ever implemented, have certainly not been implemented in recent times and that in each case the responsible officers should have been held responsible for those deaths and they were not. </p>
<p>Not one of them has been convicted for the deaths of detainees in their care. They utterly failed in their duty of care and they were contemptuous of the lives that they contributed to taking.</p>
<h2>Protests must continue</h2>
<p>So, I want to conclude by pointing to the performance of the Aboriginal health sector, the Aboriginal community controlled health sector, during the COVID-19 pandemic. As a result of their excellent performance, at about midway during the pandemic, there had been only 56 positive cases amongst our population of 800,000 and no deaths. </p>
<p>More recently, in the last week, we’ve heard that there have been quite a few positive cases in Victoria of Aboriginal people. But as yet, fortunately no deaths.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-self-determination-is-vital-for-indigenous-communities-to-beat-coronavirus-137611">Why self-determination is vital for Indigenous communities to beat coronavirus</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Compared with Australia’s record and the record of many other countries, that is an outstanding outcome. And it is due to the very clear understanding in the Aboriginal community-controlled health sector that the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander population was particularly at risk and indeed probably most at risk because of pre-existing medical conditions. </p>
<p>And all of the planning and implementation of plans and measures to ensure that COVID-19 did not enter Aboriginal communities and populations were aimed at protecting the most vulnerable and the sickest people in Australia.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Protestors during a traditional smoking ceremony at a Black Lives Matter rally" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/351199/original/file-20200805-46600-1g2pnqc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/351199/original/file-20200805-46600-1g2pnqc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/351199/original/file-20200805-46600-1g2pnqc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/351199/original/file-20200805-46600-1g2pnqc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/351199/original/file-20200805-46600-1g2pnqc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/351199/original/file-20200805-46600-1g2pnqc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/351199/original/file-20200805-46600-1g2pnqc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Protests for Black Lives Matter, like this Sydney rally in July, should continue.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Joel Carrett/AAP</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This should likewise be the intention of all police and correctional services facilities in their dealings with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. Governments need to recognise that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are particularly at risk of losing their lives when they go into detention. </p>
<p>It is now too late for all of those people who’ve died in custody at the hands of careless and negligent officers, but it is not too late for the generations to come. It is a primary responsibility of the Australian government and the state and territory governments, to act immediately and responsibly to prevent further deaths in custody of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.</p>
<p>To achieve this, they must reduce the incarceration rate. They must reduce the arrest and imprisonment rates. Australians like myself expect to see the principle of Black Lives Matter implemented as soon as possible and the deaths prevented. Should we accommodate the tactics of governments who delay the implementation of these recommendations?</p>
<p>I say no.</p>
<p>I say <a href="https://theconversation.com/instead-of-demonising-black-lives-matter-protesters-leaders-must-act-on-their-calls-for-racial-justice-143269">the protests</a> must continue.</p>
<p>I say the human rights organisations, the <a href="https://changetherecord.org.au">Change the Record</a> campaign, the Black Lives Matter campaign, must turn their minds to these particular recommendations to stop further deaths in custody.</p>
<p>I thank you for listening to me.</p>
<p>Black Lives Matter.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/143914/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Professor Marcia Langton does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>It’s a tragedy that hundreds have died because the recommendations of the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody were not implemented fully.Professor Marcia Langton, Foundation Chair in Australian Indigenous Studies, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/618092016-07-04T07:44:03Z2016-07-04T07:44:03ZFactCheck Q&A: are Indigenous women 34-80 times more likely than average to experience violence?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/129148/original/image-20160704-19118-1vh1r1d.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Was Marcia Langton right about the rate of violence experienced by Indigenous women?</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Q&A</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><strong>The Conversation is fact-checking claims made on Q&A, broadcast Mondays on the ABC at 9:35pm. Thank you to everyone who sent us quotes for checking via <a href="http://www.twitter.com/conversationEDU">Twitter</a> using hashtags #FactCheck and #QandA, on <a href="http://www.facebook.com/conversationEDU">Facebook</a> or by <a href="mailto:checkit@theconversation.edu.au">email</a>.</strong></p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Excerpt from Q&A June 27, 2016 – watch from 3:30.</span></figcaption>
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<blockquote>
<p>Some proportion of that [funding] was supposed to be for preventing violence against Indigenous women, which ranges between 34 times the national figures to, you know, in the worst areas, 80 times. So … it’s a high-priority issue. <strong>– Professor Marcia Langton, <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/tv/qanda/txt/s4463066.htm">speaking on Q&A</a>, June 27, 2016.</strong></p>
</blockquote>
<p>Prominent Indigenous academic Marcia Langton told Q&A that violence against Indigenous women ranged from between 34 times the national figures to up to 80 times in the worst areas, saying funding was needed for services “to stop the violence”.</p>
<p>Is that correct?</p>
<h2>Checking the source</h2>
<p>When asked for sources to support her statement, Langton sent The Conversation a <a href="http://www.aic.gov.au/publications/current%20series/rip/21-40/rip37.html">series</a> of <a href="http://www.aihw.gov.au/WorkArea/DownloadAsset.aspx?id=6442458606">links</a> to a <a href="http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/0/A06006790A9C4474CA2577360017A885?opendocument">range</a> of <a href="http://anrows.org.au/sites/default/files/Fast-Facts---Indigenous-family-violence.pdf">articles</a>, <a href="http://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=20116&LangID=E">speeches</a> and <a href="http://www.aph.gov.au/about_parliament/parliamentary_departments/parliamentary_library/publications_archive/archive/violenceagainstwomen">reports</a> on the <a href="http://webtv.un.org/search/panel-discussion-on-violence-against-indigenous-women-10th-meeting-32nd-regular-session-of-human-rights-council/4942947545001?term=violence">issue</a>. </p>
<p>One <a href="http://www.aihw.gov.au/WorkArea/DownloadAsset.aspx?id=6442458606">report</a> she referred to, published by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare in 2006, said that:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Indigenous females and males were 35 and 22 times as likely to be hospitalised due to family violence-related assaults as other Australian females and males, respectively. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>An <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/opinion/indigenous-women-subject-to-horrifying-levels-of-violence/news-story/f0fa9afc26a618bc4bc9d6a7d6e5adc2?login=1">analysis</a> she referred to, authored by Curtin University researcher Hannah McGlade and published in The Australian newspaper in 2016, said that:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Aboriginal women here are 37 times more likely to be hospitalised than non-Aboriginal women for non-fatal family violence-related assaults. In the Northern Territory the rate of hospitalisation is up to 86 times higher for Aboriginal women. In central Australia, this figure is 95 times more likely for Aboriginal women.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Langton also referred The Conversation to figures reported by the Ngaanyatjarra, Pitjantjatjara and Yankunytjatjara Women’s Council (NPY Women’s Council) that said that its domestic and family violence service had</p>
<blockquote>
<p>a client base of 519 women, which from a total population of 6000 (accepting that at least half are men/boys and a large number of those are children), puts those at risk of domestic violence above the national average of one in three. It also means that there are very few individuals whose lives are not affected by domestic violence, either as direct victims, child witnesses of violence or as family members of victims and users of violence. NPY Women’s Council calculates that Aboriginal women in the region are around 60 times more likely to be victims of domestic homicide than are non-Aboriginal women.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>She also referred to a <a href="http://www.ntcoss.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/1Cross-Sector-Orientation-Dr-Howard-Bath-March-2014.pdf">report</a> by the Office of the Children’s Commissioner in the Northern Territory that said that Aboriginal women in the NT are 80 times more likely to be hospitalised as a result of assault.</p>
<h2>Sorting out the technical terms</h2>
<p>It’s worth noting that “domestic violence” and “family violence” are related, but different terms. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.dss.gov.au/sites/default/files/documents/06_2014/sap_updated_26june.pdf">“Domestic violence”</a> refers to acts of violence (physical, sexual, emotional and psychological) that occur between people who have, or have had, an intimate relationship. It tends to involve an ongoing pattern of behaviour aimed at controlling a partner through fear. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.dss.gov.au/sites/default/files/documents/06_2014/sap_updated_26june.pdf">“Family violence”</a> is the most widely-used term to identify the experiences of Indigenous people because it includes the broad range of marital and kinship relationships in which violence may occur, rather than just intimate relationships. In order to cover both definitions, commentators often use the expression “domestic and family violence” in Australia.</p>
<p>Langton used the broad term “violence against Indigenous women” as part of a wide-ranging discussion about funding for domestic violence services, so we have checked a range of data on both domestic and family violence. </p>
<h2>Are Indigenous women 34 to 80 times more likely to experience domestic and family violence?</h2>
<p>It is difficult to measure the full extent of domestic and family violence against women as most incidents go unreported, but we know that Indigenous women are much more likely to experience domestic and family violence than non-Indigenous Australian women.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.dss.gov.au/our-responsibilities/women/programs-services/reducing-violence/the-national-plan-to-reduce-violence-against-women-and-their-children-2010-2022">The National Plan to Reduce Violence against Women and their Children 2010 – 2022</a> quotes a figure of Indigenous females being up to 35 times more likely to experience domestic and family violence than non-Indigenous Australian women. And the Productivity Commission’s 2011 <a href="http://www.pc.gov.au/research/ongoing/overcoming-indigenous-disadvantage">Overcoming Indigenous Disadvantage</a> report says Indigenous women and girls are <a href="https://www.dss.gov.au/sites/default/files/documents/09_2014/dss012_14_book_tagged_reduced.pdf">31 times more likely</a> to be hospitalised due to domestic and family violence related assaults compared to non-Indigenous women and girls.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.dss.gov.au/sites/default/files/documents/06_2014/sap_updated_26june.pdf">The National Plan to Reduce Violence against Women and their Children 2010 – 2022</a> quotes the 2009 National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island Social Survey as finding that around a quarter of all Indigenous women have experienced physical violence in the last 12 months and that nearly all of them knew their perpetrator.</p>
<p>We also know that Indigenous people are <a href="http://www.aic.gov.au/publications/current%20series/rip/21-40/rip37.html">disproportionately victims and offenders in homicide incidents</a>, and that most of these occur between family members.</p>
<p>There is <a href="http://www.ntcoss.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/1Cross-Sector-Orientation-Dr-Howard-Bath-March-2014.pdf">evidence</a> to support the claim that Indigenous women are up to 80 times more likely to experience violence in the “worst areas”. There is also <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/opinion/indigenous-women-subject-to-horrifying-levels-of-violence/news-story/f0fa9afc26a618bc4bc9d6a7d6e5adc2?login=1">anecdotal evidence and media</a> <a href="http://www.news.com.au/national/violence-against-aboriginal-women-80-times-worse/story-e6frfkp9-1226661209335">reporting</a> to support this assertion.</p>
<p>We know that rates of domestic and family violence are higher in remote Indigenous communities, and that there are even greater barriers to reporting violence to authorities in small remote communities than there are in regional area and metropolitan centres. Anecdotal evidence from community leaders in remote communities does back up this claim.</p>
<h2>Why are Indigenous women more likely to experience domestic and family violence?</h2>
<p>There are various explanations as to why rates of domestic and family violence are more prevalent in Indigenous communities. Many accept that the impact of <a href="http://www.salvationarmy.org.au/Global/State%20pages/Tasmania/Safe%20from%20the%20start/FINAL%20REPORT%20A%20Spinney%20Oct%202013.pdf">colonisation</a>, ongoing <a href="http://www.aihw.gov.au/uploadedFiles/ClosingTheGap/Content/Publications/2013/ctg-rs21.pdf">trauma</a> from the displacement of Indigenous people from their traditional lands and kinship groups, the removal of children from their families, and the ongoing negative relationship between Indigenous people and the criminal justice system have all contributed to heightened levels of violence. </p>
<p>For others, the <a href="http://webtv.un.org/search/panel-discussion-on-violence-against-indigenous-women-10th-meeting-32nd-regular-session-of-human-rights-council/4942947545001?term=violence">low expectations</a> that mainstream society has for Indigenous Australians, the high rates of unemployment and poverty, and substance misuse are more likely explanations.</p>
<h2>Verdict</h2>
<p>The available evidence on domestic and family violence suggest Marcia Langton is broadly correct. There is <a href="http://www.ntcoss.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/1Cross-Sector-Orientation-Dr-Howard-Bath-March-2014.pdf">evidence</a> for the higher end of the claim, including anecdotal evidence and media reports.</p>
<p>Getting accurate data on the true extent of domestic and family violence is notoriously difficult. <strong>– Angela Spinney</strong></p>
<hr>
<h2>Review</h2>
<p>I agree with most of the comments made in this article, particularly that much of the domestic and/or family violence in Indigenous communities goes unreported. The reasons for this are complex. To add further weight to the article, it is useful to include the data below that confirms Marcia Langton’s assertion is broadly correct. </p>
<p>In NSW, the domestic assault rate per <a href="http://crimetool.bocsar.nsw.gov.au/bocsar/">100,000 population averaged 388.7</a> for the period April 2015 to March 2016. </p>
<p>However, there were significant fluctuations across the state. In Walgett, for example – where the population is approximately half Indigenous and half non-Indigenous – the rate was 2339.2 domestic assaults per 100,000. In Moree, where the population is approximately 25% Indigenous and 75% non-Indigenous, the rate was 1738.6 per 100,000.</p>
<p>This suggests that in NSW, the rate of domestic assaults in areas with high Indigenous populations far outstrips the state average.</p>
<p>Data <a href="http://www.pfes.nt.gov.au/Police/Community-safety/Northern-Territory-crime-statistics/Statistical-publications.aspx">reported</a> by the Northern Territory police reveal a similar dynamic at work in that state. In Tennant Creek, for example – where the population is approximately half Indigenous and half non-Indigenous – the rate of domestic violence assault was 4,451.8 per 100,000.</p>
<p>It’s not possible to drill down to the rate of domestic violence assault among Indigenous people versus non-Indigenous people using this data set. However, if we were able to separate Indigenous versus non-Indigenous Australians, my experience as a researcher in this field suggests it would be unsurprising to find the rate for Indigenous populations at levels described by Marcia Langton. <strong>– Kyllie Cripps</strong></p>
<p><em>UPDATE: This article was updated on July 5 to include more data sources that Marcia Langton sent to The Conversation. The new sources include figures from the NPY Women’s Council and the Office of the Children’s Commissioner in the Northern Territory. The sentence in the verdict that formerly read “There is less statistical evidence for the higher end of the claim, but there is anecdotal evidence that, tragically, this figure may well also be correct” now reads “There is <a href="http://www.ntcoss.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/1Cross-Sector-Orientation-Dr-Howard-Bath-March-2014.pdf">evidence</a> for the higher end of the claim, including anecdotal evidence and media reports.”</em></p>
<hr>
<p><div class="callout"> Have you ever seen a “fact” worth checking? The Conversation’s FactCheck asks academic experts to test claims and see how true they are. We then ask a second academic to review an anonymous copy of the article. You can request a check at checkit@theconversation.edu.au. Please include the statement you would like us to check, the date it was made, and a link if possible.</div></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/61809/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Angela Spinney has received funding from AHURI and ANROWS.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kyllie Cripps receives funding from the Australian Research Council.
</span></em></p>Was academic Marcia Langton right about the rate of violence against Indigenous women?Angela Spinney, Lecturer/Research Fellow in Housing and Urban Studies, Swinburne University of TechnologyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/112562012-12-11T19:17:00Z2012-12-11T19:17:00ZMarcia Langton’s ‘quiet revolution’ and what you don’t hear about James Price Point<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/18553/original/jr73qsnj-1355196962.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Successful negotiations at James Price Point have been drowned out by the voices of protest.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Cortlan Bennett</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Professor Marcia Langton opened this year’s <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/boyerlectures/">Boyer Lectures</a> with an observation that William Stanner’s 1968 Boyer Lectures had “given credence, perhaps inadvertently” to the idea that Aboriginal people could not lead a modern economic life. </p>
<p>Her central theme, that participation in the modern economy is essential to strong Indigenous communities, and that Indigenous people are riding the resource boom to the middle classes, is probably news to many people used to tales of multinational resource companies running roughshod over Indigenous groups. Langton calls it the “quiet revolution”.</p>
<p>I believe that an example of this quiet revolution can be seen taking place in northern Western Australia. But it is barely registering a whisper in the national press, drowned out by two deafening and opposing voices: the chants of a national environmental campaign versus the siren call of resource development. </p>
<p>I speak of the three <a href="http://www.dsd.wa.gov.au/8416.aspx">agreements</a> reached between the Goolarabooloo Jabirr Jabirr registered native title claimants, the state of Western Australia and Woodside Petroleum to process gas from the Browse Basin at an LNG Precinct at James Price Point. </p>
<p>The contents of these agreements have been largely unnoticed amid the clamour of the anti-gas campaign, and the intra-Indigenous dispute about whether or not to sign them. But these agreements are far better than those most Traditional Owners are negotiating in Australia, and contain better compensation than Traditional Owners are entitled to under compulsory acquisition provisions. It’s therefore worth examining them and asking how they came to be.</p>
<p>A starting point is the law governing negotiations between Traditional Owners and resource companies, widely acknowledged to create an uneven playing field. </p>
<p>First, almost no land owners in Australia own the minerals that are beneath the surface of their land, including native title holders, whose ownership of minerals <a href="http://www.atns.net.au/agreement.asp?EntityID=782">was extinguished</a> by legislation vesting mineral ownership in the Crown. In addition, no individual or community group, with perhaps the exception of those holding Aboriginal Land Rights Act land, have the legal right to stop mining activities going ahead on their land.</p>
<p>When mining or petroleum companies want to access native title land, they must follow the procedures set out in the <a href="http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/nta1993147/">Native Title Act</a>. This says that the native title party has the “right to negotiate” an agreement with the resource company. That’s not a right to stop the development, nor the right to reach an agreement, just the right to negotiate. It is better than what was there previously – limited rights under Aboriginal heritage legislation – but there is still plenty that is disempowering about these “right to negotiate” provisions.</p>
<p>So, with this legislative backdrop, how do native title parties ever get a good deal? Langton gave us some answers to this question in her lectures, including the advent of the requirement that mining companies obtain a “social licence to operate”. And yet, Traditional Owner groups all around Australia still get steamrolled, and are still forced to accept inadequate compensation. </p>
<p>As the former ATSIC deputy chair <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-08-23/indigenous-leaders-threaten-court-action-over-land-use/2851202/?site=brisbane">Ray Robinson said</a>, Indigenous landowners are sometimes still “ripped off by mining companies … [who] are getting billions and billions of dollars and they are offering Indigenous people a pittance”.</p>
<p>In contrast, and whatever you might think of the proposed LNG Precinct, the agreements are worth a lot of money. They are also comprehensive agreements, and include significant grants of freehold land, as well as employment, training, environmental and cultural protections. They contain very substantial regional benefits for all Kimberley Aboriginal people in areas such as education, health and housing. </p>
<p>Most intriguingly, they bind the state, through an Act of Parliament, not to process LNG anywhere else on the Kimberley coastline. How did this come to pass, given the sometimes skewed results of the Native Title Act, as well as the threat of compulsory acquisition?</p>
<p>Certainly, the project lent itself to a good deal: it is the first large industrial project proposed for the Kimberley coastline, and was a priority for successive state governments. It was also a project swamped in rhetorical goodwill towards Traditional Owners – for example, Don Voelte, the former CEO of Woodside, <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/content/2010/s2929919.htm">said</a> that for him: “It’s not about the dollars … the point is what are you doing to the community?”</p>
<p>But I would like to suggest another reason behind the success of the Goolarabooloo Jabirr Jabirr, and detour to Stanner’s 1968 Boyer Lectures to provide an explanation. He spoke of the effects of European colonisation on the Indigenous psyche, saying that “a long humiliation can dull the vision, narrow the spirit, and contract the heart towards new things”.</p>
<p>Certainly the history of the Kimberley is full of humiliation, and much worse, for Aboriginal people. But the Kimberley is also full of humiliation’s opposites – pride, success and dignity – and I believe that they have empowered and invigorated Kimberley Traditional Owners.</p>
<p>Kimberley successes include the fact that large areas of the Kimberley are now back in Indigenous hands. The first <a href="http://www.atns.net.au/agreement.asp?EntityID=2823">successful native title claim</a> over a town – Broome – was made in the Kimberley.</p>
<p>Culture, language and leadership are strong, held up by what are said to be the three pillars of Kimberley Indigenous life: the Kimberley Land Council, the Kimberley Aboriginal Law and Culture Centre and the Language Resource Centre. </p>
<p>The Kimberley Land Council, formed during the<a href="http://www.australiangeographic.com.au/journal/noonkanbah-the-iconic-fight-for-aboriginal-land-rights.htm"> Noonkanbah dispute</a> (also a dispute about resource extraction on Indigenous land) has been negotiating these sorts of agreements for a long time. Wayne Bergmann, its former CEO, told the National Press Club this year that he believes they are negotiating better agreements in the Kimberley than elsewhere, even without the Native Title Act’s right to negotiate.</p>
<p>Why is this so important? I turn to Stanner again, who noted “the rapidity with which peoples who but a short time ago were powerless, dependent and voiceless found power, independence and voice”. </p>
<p>I believe that the power and voice of Traditional Owners is the “quiet revolution” of the James Price Point controversy. Stanner may have wrongly implied that Indigenous people could not live a modern economic life, but the words of his Boyer Lectures, and Marcia Langton’s, are reflected in the Kimberley today. It’s time we heard more about it.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/11256/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Professor Marcia Langton is a Chief Investigator of the ATNS Project. Lily receives funding from the Australian Research Council.</span></em></p>Professor Marcia Langton opened this year’s Boyer Lectures with an observation that William Stanner’s 1968 Boyer Lectures had “given credence, perhaps inadvertently” to the idea that Aboriginal people…Lily O'Neill, PhD student and lawyer, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/100512012-10-12T03:12:20Z2012-10-12T03:12:20ZNew singers, old songs: alcohol bans in Aboriginal communities<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/16317/original/dgtp4jym-1349752880.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A sign outside an Aboriginal community near Darwin, noting the ban on consuming alcohol in the area.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Xavier La Canna</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The newly elected conservative governments in Queensland and the Northern Territory have <a href="http://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/a/-/national/15050895/nt-agrees-with-easing-grog-bans/">opened the way</a> to relaxing laws restricting access to alcohol in Aboriginal communities.</p>
<p>In Queensland, a number of observers including Aboriginal leaders Noel Pearson, Marcia Langton and Warren Mundine, have <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/indigenous/relaxed-grog-bans-to-revive-violence-aboriginal-leaders-warn/story-fn9hm1pm-1226487743699">expressed their dismay</a> and argued the case against <a href="http://www.news.com.au/national/indigenous-councils-to-rule-on-liquor-bans/story-fndo4ckr-1226486894437">plans to dismantle</a> the restrictions, pointing to the high levels of alcohol-related violence and social dysfunction prevalent prior to the restrictions being introduced from 2002 onwards, and to evidence of improvements in areas such as assaults and school attendance. </p>
<p>In order for these improvements to become embedded in sustained cultural and social change, they argue, restrictions must be retained at least for the time being.</p>
<p>Now the Northern Territory’s new Chief Minister Terry Mills has <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/indigenous/nt-joins-the-push-to-relax-bans-on-grog/story-fn9hm1pm-1226489530801">signalled his government’s intention</a> to roll back restrictions on alcohol in NT Aboriginal communities, with an argument that obfuscates the history of alcohol controls in NT Aboriginal communities.</p>
<p>Mills invokes that most sacred value of a consumerist society – “choice” – and is <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/indigenous/nt-joins-the-push-to-relax-bans-on-grog/story-fn9hm1pm-1226489530801">quoted as stating</a> that “alcohol bans and other restrictions set by outsiders were trapping indigenous people in a cycle of disempowerment and dependency”. </p>
<p>Leaving aside the question of how banning alcohol fosters dependency, a key point in his argument is his phrase “set by outsiders”.</p>
<h2>The complex history of alcohol bans</h2>
<p>Current blanket bans on consumption or possession of alcohol anywhere on any land designated under the NT Aboriginal Land Rights Act were indeed set by outsiders: specifically by Mal Brough and John Howard under the <a href="http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/num_act/ntnera2007531/">2007 NT Emergency Response</a> (NTER), in response to allegations of widespread alcohol-fuelled violence in communities in the report <a href="http://www.inquirysaac.nt.gov.au/">Little Children Are Sacred</a>. </p>
<p>Although the unilateral and blanket geographical coverage of these restrictions angered many Aboriginal (and other) people, the principle of banning alcohol was not new.</p>
<p>On the contrary, prior to the NTER, most Aboriginal communities in the NT had already banned or heavily restricted alcohol access in their communities – at their own request. They had done so under Section VIII of the <a href="http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/nt/consol_act/la107/">NT Liquor Act</a> which, from its introduction in 1979 until the Act was partially over-ridden by the NTER, empowered communities to ban or limit alcohol use in defined areas, and to have those decisions enshrined in NT law. </p>
<p>Sparse police resources in some areas, and the ingenuity of grog-runners ensured that the restrictions were more effective in some places than others, but they nonetheless represented exercises in considered decision-making on the part of Aboriginal community residents.</p>
<h2>The current situation</h2>
<p>In July this year a sunset clause written into the NTER took effect. The Gillard Government has since introduced its own legislation. Entitled <a href="http://www.fahcsia.gov.au/our-responsibilities/indigenous-australians/programs-services/stronger-futures-in-the-northern-territory/stronger-futures-in-the-northern-territory-policy-statement">Stronger Futures</a>, the new legislation retains the framework of the NTER alcohol restrictions, while seeking to return decision-making power back to individual communities by encouraging and supporting them to formulate their own alcohol management plans. </p>
<p>How this policy will work in practice, and how it will articulate with NT legislation remains to be seen, but to suggest – as Mills implies – that most residents of Aboriginal communities are chafing for greater access to alcohol is misleading.</p>
<p>Further, it is difficult to imagine that he and his government do not know this. </p>
<p>So what is really at issue here? Two factors appear relevant. The election-winning strategies of both the <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-03-09/aboriginal-leaders-welcome-review-of-grog-laws/3880160">LNP under Campbell Newman</a> and the <a href="http://www.news.com.au/national/pm-congratulates-nts-new-leader/story-fndo4eg9-1226457999565">CLP in the NT</a> involved forming alliances with individual Aboriginal leaders, some of whom are opposed to restrictions in communities. </p>
<p>Moreover, in both the NT and north Queensland, opposition to restrictions in communities stems in part from a belief that the restrictions aggravate levels of public drunkenness by Aboriginal drinkers in towns.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/16319/original/yrg6y5d6-1349753296.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/16319/original/yrg6y5d6-1349753296.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=435&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/16319/original/yrg6y5d6-1349753296.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=435&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/16319/original/yrg6y5d6-1349753296.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=435&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/16319/original/yrg6y5d6-1349753296.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=546&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/16319/original/yrg6y5d6-1349753296.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=546&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/16319/original/yrg6y5d6-1349753296.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=546&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Federal and state governments have tried to combat the problem of alcohol in remote Aboriginal communities.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Terry Trewin</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In the NT, successive governments have grappled with this by endlessly refining law enforcement measures such as the <a href="http://www.aic.gov.au/publications/previous%20series/proceedings/1-27/%7E/media/publications/proceedings/01/dabbs.pdf">Two Kilometre Law</a>, which legally bans drinking in public just about anywhere in towns. </p>
<p>But in the absence of any willingness to impose serious limitations on the retailers who profit from serving the appetites of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal drinkers alike, these measures have generally had limited effect.</p>
<p>Another favoured policy response has been to urge remote communities to establish licensed clubs (as the Bjelke-Petersen government did in Cape York in the 1980s), in the belief that communities with clubs will export fewer drinkers to towns. The limited evidence available to test this proposition does not support it, but its plausibility to urban voters is obvious. The real problem for NT governments, however, has been that most communities have repeatedly made it clear that they do not want clubs. Out of more than 100 Aboriginal communities in the NT, just seven currently operate licensed clubs, and one has a licensed store. All of these are located in the Top End. </p>
<p>A few other communities have run clubs in the past, only to abandon them as too much trouble. In two or three other communities, discussions are currently under way that may or may not lead to those communities applying to the NT Licensing Commission for club licenses.</p>
<h2>More is not less. It is more and more</h2>
<p>Aboriginal public drunkenness in towns is – at least to many non-Aboriginal people – the most visible manifestation of a complex and distressing problem that needs to be addressed at multiple levels, including law enforcement, supply reduction and the creation of opportunities and incentives for less self-destructive lifestyles.</p>
<p>To suggest that it can be addressed by opening up availability of alcohol in Aboriginal communities, particularly in communities that have indicated that they do not want alcohol, is a cruel hoax.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/10051/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Peter d'Abbs has received funding via the Menzies Institute from the Northern Territory Department of Justice to evaluate alcohol management programs.</span></em></p>The newly elected conservative governments in Queensland and the Northern Territory have opened the way to relaxing laws restricting access to alcohol in Aboriginal communities. In Queensland, a number…Peter d'Abbs, Professor of Substance Misuse Studies, Menzies School of Health Research, Menzies School of Health ResearchLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.