The Ring of Familiarity

Aboriginal peoples the world over have been hard done by. We have ample example in Canada of the unequal struggles of our aboriginal populations' sad state; from the time when their land was wrested from them and they were given empty promises in exchange, to the current time when their land claims remain unsettled, and they live unstable lives of dysfunctional misery in their tribal ghettos.

Now a report has emerged in Australia, titled "Little Children Are Sacred", authored by a former director of public prosecutions and an Aboriginal health worker. The report sets out the conditions in which Aboriginal Australians live and the descriptions have a sordid familiarity to Canadians. It speaks of material poverty and social breakdown.

But it also delineates other conditions, most specifically and horrifically widespread child abuse and incest, the incidence of which was reflected in every Aboriginal community the authors visited in Australia's Northern Territory.

"Breakdown of families, alcoholism, drug-taking, pornography, unemployment, overcrowding, lack of discipline, children not going to school - everywhere we went, they were the running themes," Pat Anderson, one of the authors said. "Alcohol is totally destroying our communities and families. Something needs to be done to curb this river of grog [booze]."

The report responds to its own findings by recommending anti-alcohol and drug programmes, additional education resources, a special commissioner assigned to look after the problems of Aboriginal youth.

All rejected by none other than an Aboriginal activist and head of a public policy think-tank.
"You can't just educate people that a 12-year-old is not a prospective sexual partner", said Noel Pearson. His point being that the focus should be on behaviour and moral commitment. Which is a moot point, for aren't we all potentially equally endowed with a sense of morality?

Aboriginal Mr. Pearson isn't fearful of espousing tough love. His proposal is downright radical compared to the soft-touch earlier proposal. Welfare payments should be cut off to any families whose children don't regularly attend school, who are proven guilty of child abuse, who commit drug or alcohol offences, or who violent tenancy agreements for public housing.

Cut off from easy access to their addiction to welfare, the choice is there; reform or go without. And the children removed to safer hands for delinquent parents make delinquent children and the spiral of dysfunction becomes unstoppable.

Furthermore, Mr. Pearson's proposal, named "From Hand Out to Hand Up" demands an end to social separation of Aboriginals, to bring them into the mainstream economy, with the opportunity of private home ownership and entrepreneurship in the offing. "Indigenous disadvantage stems from dispossession and the historical denial of rights", wrote Mr. Pearson.

"But poverty is also behavioural. Disengagement from the economy, passivity and dysfunction are not only symptoms of oppression, they are also unnecessary behaviours that can and must be changed at the same time as we fight for our rights."

Are you listening, Phil Fontaine?