Dillon, Hugh --- "Book Review - Black Death, White Hands" [1983] AboriginalLawB 14; (1983) 1(7) Aboriginal Law Bulletin 16

• Book Review-Black Death, White Hands

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Book Review -


Black Death, White Hands

by Paul Wilson

George Allen & Unwin, Sydney

1982 ($7.95).

Reviewed by Hugh Dillon

'In Queensland, there have been created communities in which the incidence of homicide and very serious assaults is amongst the highest that has been reached and published anywhere in the world. It is, for example, thought to be at least equivalent to that which is found in the poorest and the most violent ghettos of New York. Now, Deidre Gilbert, the deceased girl, and Alwyn Peter, the prisoner, were members of one such community, and they were shaped by it and each has been destroyed by it. Now, I should tell your Honour that to be a member of such a community one does not have to be mad or bad, but one only has to be an Aborigine ... The sad fact will emerge from all this that this young man in the dock, your Honour, has no hope and is without hope'. Thus barrister Des Sturgess opened for the defence in one of Queensland's most-publicised 1981 cases, the Alwyn Peter Case.

Paul Wilson's subject is the phenomenon of homicide, self-mutilation and alcoholism to which Sturgess referred, and the Peter Case is Wilson's springboard.

The Queensland Public Defender painstakingly constructed an argument on Peter's behalf, gathering in support a team of experts: anthropologists, trans-cultural psychiatrists, social workers, sociologists, a criminologist (Wilson) and psychologists. The argument was simply that Alwyn Peter was only partly responsible for the death of Deidre, his de facto wife, on the ground that self-destructive violence and violence towards those closest to and most loved by the assailant were not only normal in that community, but virtually inevitable in all the circumstances. Despite the Crown's objections to much of the evidence adduced (on the ground that it was irrelevant), Dunn J allowed the expert evidence in almost entirely, and was clearly impressed by it.

Wilson's strongest chapters are those dealing with the, criminological aspects of the case, especially the rates of violence in Aboriginal communities, and with Alwyn's personal history. He found that the communities most liable to violence are those in which traditional culture is not strong; where populations are relatively large and consist of mix-s tures of tribes, including displaced peoples; where alcohol is legally available; and where white influence is powerfully present. Communities with little violence have nearly the reverse pattern; most importantly, they are not receivers of people displaced from their traditional homelands.

The criminological chapters detail some of the saddest cases of violent death or injury in modern Australian history. The criminological evidence constitutes proof of the erosion of traditional Aboriginal society in most of Queensland. What is evident is that the violence is characteristically self-destructive; it takes the form of self-mutiliation (punching windows, shooting one's limbs) or an assault upon someone loved by the attacker. Frustration, low self-esteem, a sense of futility and the lack or breakdown of socially acceptable ways of dealing with stress create an explosive mixture.

Why is this so? It is here that Wilson's book loses its power. Instead of a detailed analysis of anthropological and trans-cultural psychiatric material placed before the court in the Peter Case, Wilson engages in a rather thin sociological recital of white blindness and malice towards Queensland blacks. What he says is all true no doubt, but there is a tendency towards triteness in his account. In the Peter Case, expert evidence on traditional methods' of resolving conflict, handling aggression, raising children and socialising young people, was extremely important and illuminating. Unfortunately, this evidence does not get much attention from the author. Questions one has about the impact of crowding together various tribes, the mining of traditional lands, the mixing of Christian and traditional values in the individual psyche remain frustratingly unanswered.

Nevertheless, Black Death, White Hands is important because it shows what a blunt instrument the law is. For Alwyn Peter and his people, the recognition by a judge of the blighting of their civilisation is not justice or peace, but a tiny step towards them. Land rights, human rights, self-determination, compensation, recognition as a separate people, will be the beginnings of a truly just resolution of the Alwyn Peter Case. Wilson concludes: The only course that we can take is to eliminate our paternalism ...Only then can we begin to erase from our collective conscience the guilt of all those black deaths that have, directly or indirectly, flowed from our white hands'.