Hunter, Ernest --- "Images of Violence in Aboriginal Australia" [1990] AboriginalLawB 42; (1990) 1(46) Aboriginal Law Bulletin 12

• Images Of Violence In Aboriginal Australia
• References

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Images of Violence in Aboriginal Australia

by Ernest Hunter

“Halls Creek a town of fear” reads the banner headline to The Kimberley Echo of December 19, 1988. The story opened:

"Blacks from Balgo Hills Mission Station, approximately 300 kms south of Halls Creek, having forced all administrative staff off, have turned their attention to the township. On `sit-down money' pay days, Halls Creek residents, including aborigines, live in fear of the groups of drunken desert blacks who roam the town and frequent the local hotel."

Peter Davies report is accompanied by a photograph of a blood splattered policeman. The following page one article, `Good Samaritans Bashed', describes the assault of two Europeans travelling on the Tanami highway who had stopped to render aid to an injured Aborigine (who it turns out they had themselves hit). Similar stories are found throughout the paper, with descriptions of `riots' in Port Keats and various court cases involving violent Aborigines. In an unrelated and rather bizarre editorial critical of random breath testing (and suggesting to the citizenry that, as it is Christmas, it might be appropriate to "stay out of our vehicles when slightly or fully pissed") the editor offers a gratuitous racist analogy, suggesting that trying to enforce a lower speed limit, "like taking grog away from Aboriginals, is out of the question". The tone of the paper as a whole is captured in the letter of ME Scott of Broome, who wrote:

"Sir, How much longer will the Police force allow themselves to be the targets of systematic bashings by gangs of blacks? These bashings are obviously a well orchestrated assault on the police. It's time our guardians of the law adopted South African tactics and started using dogs and riot guns. That would put a stop to this ridiculous situation."

One could perhaps dismiss this as a provincial racist tabloid of little consequence on the national stage, however, it's vision is clearly representative of at least a significant minority, if not more, of the Kimberley non-Aboriginal population. The racism evident in The Kimberley Echo is articulated through the presentation of stereotypes of Aborigines as alcohol dependent, welfare manipulating, and violent. Such portrayals are not unique to remote Australia. The headline to Helen Winterton's page one/page two article in The West Australian of February 28, 1990 ran under the headline 'Aboriginal gangs terrorise suburbs'.

While both papers are from Western Australia, these are not isolated instances of such depictions of Aboriginal violence. Apparently sympathetic investigations of disadvantage among Aborigines of, for instance, Alice Springs (Ben Hills, Agony of the Alice, Sydney Morning Herald, Saturday June 2 (Spectrum), 1990: 71) or North Queensland (Bradbury's film State of Shock) were presented against a backdrop of community violence.

Implicit in many such constructions are comparisons to either Arcadian images of non-violent traditional Aboriginal societies, or paternalistic reflections on a more recent era of `quiet' in Aboriginal Australia. This latter image reflects the `cult of forgetfulness' (Stanner, 1979: 214) in the wider Australian consciousness regarding Aborigines, that was associated with a protracted period of institutional violence in which Aboriginal lives were bureaucratically contained and controlled on stations, missions and government settlements. The violence that has emerged in Aboriginal Australia over the last two decades received little attention, as it remained largely intra-culturally contained (blacks killing/ injuring blacks). Aboriginal violence as a media issue at least in part reflects concerns that it now threatens non-Aborigines (primarily their property or peace). Given an apparent hardening of attitudes as the bonhomie accompanying the Bicentennial settles, does this reporting reflect `blaming the victim' (Ryan, 1971) reactionary rhetoric, or a real increase in Aboriginal violence - or both?

That the current level of violence in Aboriginal communities is high, and unacceptable, has been acknowledged by those who are the most frequent victims of such inter-personal violence, Aboriginal women (Atkinson, 1990). Evidence of the excess mortality of Aborigines from inter-personal violence and other non-natural causes is available, including from the Northern Territory (Devanesen et al 1986) and western New South Wales (Gray & Hogg, 1989). However, does this represent a long standing pattern or a recent increase?

A historical analysis of Kimberley Aboriginal mortality over the 30 year period 1957-1986 demonstrated that the proportion of Aboriginal deaths over one year of age due to `external causes' (motor vehicle accidents, other accidents, homicide and suicide) remained steady during the first fifteen years at between 4.2% and 6.8% of deaths of male Aborigines and 2.3% and 5.3% of female Aborigines. In the following fifteen years there was a sustained increase in this proportion, reaching 22.6% of male, and 15.2% of female deaths for the period 1982-1986 (Hunter, 1989). The mid-point of this study, 1971, was the year restrictions on the sale of alcohol to Aborigines were lifted in the Kimberley. While it is perhaps tempting to ascribe these changes to drinking, it is important to recognise that alcohol arrived in this part of remote Australia during a period of unprecedented demographic and social change. However while the increase in deaths from external causes generally was regular, the pattern of changing mortality from specific causes was not. Soon after 1971 there was an increase in the proportion of male deaths due to motor vehicle accidents and other accidents, with an increase in female deaths due to homicide. In the mid-1980s there was a further increase in the proportion of female deaths due to homicide and of male deaths resulting from suicide. These patterns are consistent with alcohol affected male behaviour, with those involved in the increases of the 1980s (young adult men dying by suicide, similarly aged women dying as a result of homicide) being among the first generation to have grown up in environments of normative heavy drinking and its consequences (Hunter, 1990a).

A graphic description of these normative experiences is presented in a recent report for the Tangentyere Council of Alice Springs (Lyons, 1990). Lyons indicates that half of town camp deaths during the period 1974 to 1988 were alcohol related. Sixteen per cent of deaths were due to fights and murders, with women (23%) having nearly double the proportion of deaths due to homicide than men. In this setting:

"domestic violence, like excessive drinking, has also become a `normal' part of town camp life, although it is not something that is much talked about. Women are bashed by husbands and, increasingly, sons and grandsons as means of extorting money for alcohol and are the victims of alcohol-induced rages"
(Lyons, 1990: 41).

Increases in alcohol related violence and the particular vulnerability of women is also reported by Brady from a Pitjantjatjara community (1990). Over ten years the proportion of deaths that were alcohol related was 30%. Comparing information obtained in surveys in 1982 and 1987 it emerged that the proportion of women with alcohol injuries was increasing, and that the nature of their injuries were both different (head injuries constituted 25% of female injuries compared to 7% for males) and thus more dangerous than among men. These findings are not confined to remote areas. In an Adelaide Aboriginal heads of household survey 53% of female and 44% of male respondents reported that they had been bashed or assaulted, two-thirds indicating this had occurred on more than one occasion (Radford, et al 1990).

Thus violence appears to be common in heavy drinking communities, with the consequences spreading widely beyond the drinking circle. Furthermore from the limited material available, this violence does appear to be increasing. However other than crimes against property and the public order, which may themselves be statements of "Aboriginal non-compliance with the Australian state's efforts to impose order" (Sackett, 1988: 73), and regardless of images conveyed by the media, this violence has remained largely intra-culturally contained. However it cannot be understood without recourse to the inter-cultural context, which itself must be historicised (Hunter, 1990b). Such an analysis must address the particular stresses that affect those at risk of violent behaviour to themselves or others, young adult males.

Aboriginal society has been transformed in the last three decades by social and economic forces. As a result Aborigines are increasingly oriented towards an urban, welfare based economy. Regardless of the political rhetoric of opportunity, Aborigines remain subject to cultural exclusion. In the Kimberley, for example, not only has Aboriginal participation in the cattle industry been compromised, but there is minimal involvement of Aborigines in the dramatic regional economic developments that have occurred in mining, tourism and horticulture.

From a random sample study of 516 Aborigines from across the region interviewed in 1988 and 1989, the employment profile was characterised by late entry into the workforce, menial and limited employment (the only group with a substantial proportion employed were males in their third decade where a third had jobs), chronic unemployment and early exit from the workforce, with the proportion employed falling to 5% after 50 years of age (Hunter, hall & Sparago, 1990).

In this setting traditional and transitional male roles have been compromised, with the domestic economy `privileging' women who more easily conform to an ideal welfare identity (Collmann, 1979; 1988). However, in the economically liminal setting of camp life, such advantage may contribute to vulnerability as a result of competition for limited resources. With limited capacities to constructively negotiate their grievances with the majority society, Aboriginal males may find that inebriation lessens the resultant experience of powerlessness in the inter-cultural domain (Collmann, 1988; Hazelhurst, 1986). Furthermore, in the disinhibited `time out' (Marshall,1983) of intoxication, internalized controls are abandoned. The `drunken comportment' (McAndrew & Edgerton, 1969) of many Aboriginal drinkers includes an expectation of violent behaviour (Brady, 1990) which allows the displacement of frustration and conflict from the inter-cultural to the inter-sexual domain. Needless to say, the nexus of alcohol, 'power and violence is not unique to Aboriginal groups (Tomsen, 1990), being equally applicable to other structurally disadvantaged groups. However the over representation of Aborigines among the disadvantaged, the absence of culturally informed controls over intoxicated behaviour, and the functional unavailability of formal controls in remote settings, may combine to increase both the prevalence and severity of violence in Aboriginal communities.

`Domestic' violence (an unfortunate term that minimizes the seriousness of assault in a setting where there is usually a clear asymmetry of physical power) is thus a result of conflicts compounded and often precipitated by drinking, rather than caused by alcohol per se. Alcohol also serves to perpetuate these patterns of behaviour through `deviance disavowal' (Collins, 1988), a form of denial which allows personal responsibility for behaviour occurring while intoxicated to be attributed to the alcohol itself. Inconsistencies in the responses of courts, and appeals for mitigation in cases of spousal assault, based on arguments of custom and customary law, may further support the denial, and thus the violence (Brady, 1990: Lyon, 1990).

Violence in Aboriginal Australia does appear to be widespread, and increasing. However non-Aboriginal media coverage, while hardly `sensationalist' given the seriousness of the issue, does smack of voyeurism. The alarmist tone alludes (with little support) to potential inter-racial confrontations, thus contributing to reactionary rhetoric and the hardening of attitudes towards Aborigines.

To date the most impressive and encouraging initiatives have come from Aborigines. It is perhaps too easy for non-Aborigines to applaud these efforts and step back. However to construct this as an `Aboriginal problem', or to simply incriminate alcohol, denies the history of overt white violence to Aborigines and the contemporary covert violence of cultural exclusion and institutional control. As in particle physics, to observe is to be involved. Constructive involvement by non-Aborigines requires clarity and honesty. It demands that the problem not be minimized in the service of `protecting' Aboriginal (or non-Aboriginal) sensitivities or defending particular images of Aborigines. It is also imperative that attention be directed to the broader social issues. To not do so risks being seduced by politically expedient short term solutions. While Aborigines deserve at least equal access to services such as alcohol rehabilitation facilities and safe houses, by themselves these are unlikely to have a substantial impact on alcohol abuse or family violence. In the short term it is essential to confront the climate of pessimism suggested by certain media constructions of Aboriginal drinking, violence, or other `problems'. However, for Aborigines and non-Aborigines committed to change, ultimately enduring solutions lie in the long term.

References

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