Australian Aborigine Communities Awash With Abuse

SYDNEY, Australia, July 17, 2007 — -- The release of a landmark report detailing widespread sexual abuse, domestic violence and alcoholism in Aborigine communities has plunged Australiainto a soul-searching debate in recent weeks.

At the center of the current controversy lies a study called Little Children Are Sacred,which was released in June.

The report cites rampant alcoholism, fueled by the prevalence of home-brewed "river grog," as spawning an epidemic of violence. Investigators found that young girls are being routinely abused, often by family members, while children as young as 3 are being exposed to pornography. Teenage Aborigine girls are performing sexual favors in exchange for drugs and alcohol from predominately white miners who work the remote outback areas of the country's Northern Territory. Girls as young as 12 are becoming mothers, investigators said.

Most troubling, according to Pat Anderson, co-chair of the report, is that most of the abuse goes unreported. "Where there is unemployment, poverty, alcoholism, drug taking, overcrowding, unemployment, you can guarantee that those children are severely at risk and eventually going to be sexually abused or abused in some way," Anderson told Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) on the day the report was released.

That same day, Federal Indigenous Affairs Minister Mal Brough summarizedthe public's prevailing mood. "This is a national disgrace, it's a disaster and it is something that should never happen in this country."

First-person accounts of abuse have been riveting. Shedeena Liberty Black, from New South Wales, wrote about childhood sexual abuse in the Sydney Morning Herald.

"I'm still taunted by some of my abusers and the people who support them. They call me 'gutter trash,' 'fruitcake,' 'handicapped slut'...it is awful," Black wrote.

The Government Reacts: Is It a 'Modern-Day South Africa'?

In response to the report, the government announced it will ban alcohol, confiscate pornography and withhold welfare payments from families who fail to make sure their children attend school.

In addition the government has a controversial proposal to scrap the permit system on Aborigine land, which currently allows indigenous inhabitants to regulate who enters their land.

And in an unprecedented move, Australian federal police have been deployed to 60 Aborigine townships to help police deal with the surge in violence.

The country is deeply divided about the report and the government's response. Many have called it a knee-jerk reaction that violates the country's anti-discrimination laws.Other say the country should focus on getting Aborigine communities more jobs and housing.

Chris Graham, editor of the National Indigenous Times, rejects the government's plan out of hand. He said the abolition of the permit system is intended to limit Aborigine control over their land, not solve issues of child sexual abuse."It will irrefutably weaken the capacity of the Aboriginal people to determine what happens to their land," he told ABC News in a telephone interview."It will open up the land to white mining interests and other interests. Nowhere in the world other than Australia would you ever see the rights of indigenouspeople so assaulted. We are the modern-day South Africa," he said.

A Crisis Centuries in the Making

Like the United States, Australia has struggled to come to terms with a long history of abuse of its indigenous population. Aborigines lived in isolation for up to 60,000 years before the arrival of British settlers in 1788.

But the last two centuries of European control left the Aborigine population in tatters, and in most areas, completely displaced. The 450,000 indigenous Australians now account for roughly 2.5 percent of the population.

Political attempts to heal history's wounds have had mixed results in recent years.A Land Rights Act in the 1970s and a subsequent High Court decision in 1986 that gave birth to the permit system that gave Aborigine people significant control over large swaths of land in the country's remote north, now much sought after by mining companies.

The system somewhat resembles Native American reservations, though critics say it has brought few benefits to the communities.

A Thinly Disguised 'Land Grab'?

In justifying his plan of action, Prime Minister John Howard likened the situation to the disaster resulting from Hurricane Katrina in the United States.In a speech at the prestigious Sydney Institute, Howard explained, "Many Australians, myself included, looked aghast at the failure of the U.S. federal system of government to cope adequately with Hurricane Katrina and thehuman misery and lawlessness that engulfed New Orleans in 2005," he said."We should have been more humble. We have our Katrina."

But Howard's response raised questions about earlier inaction and racism.

"If he thinks it's an emergency, one could ask the question, why he hasn't done anything about it in the last 11 years," Alan Carpenter, premier of Western Australia, told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

Other groups accused the government of a land grab concealed behind the issue of child abuse. There is no connection between the permit system and child abuse, they argued.

"This is another attack on Aboriginal people. This is the big stick approach that they've been worrying about for some time," Charlie King of the NorthernTerritory Advisory Council on Child Protection told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

Famed Aborigine spokesman Patrick Dodson concurred. He published an angry attack on the government in the Melbourne newspaper the Age.

"The agenda is to dismantle the foundations of the Northern Territory AboriginalLand Rights Act," Dodson wrote.

Detractors of the government say their plan ignores suggestions in the study to incorporate indigenous Australians into the decision making.

By establishing what amounts to martial law and policing school attendance, critics argue that the report's calls for a dialogue are being forgotten in favor of a forcedgovernmental monologue.

It smacks of paternalism, and would never occur within the white community, they say.

The prime minister has taken great efforts to defend his actions against suchattacks. "This has nothing to do with race," he reportedly said.

"It has everything to do with recognizing a need to counter a tragicdeterioration in social norms and behavior, often aided and abetted by theworst excesses of Western culture," he said.

Skeptics Suspect Political Motives

Howard did enjoy some support from members of the indigenous community.

"I fully support the federal government's decision to act in Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory," wrote former Aborigine abuse victim Shedeena Liberty Black.

"Action to counter this epidemic has been far too slow…There's a solution now and, until someone finds a better one, I'll support the move by John Howard,"Black wrote.

With a federal election planned for the end of the year, the timing of the new policy also aroused voter skepticism. In one poll, a majority of the publicviewed the decision as an electioneering stunt.

But further polls suggest the majority of Australians nevertheless support the government's policy. A recent survey showed 61 percent of voters in favor ofthe moves.

Opposition leader Kevin Rudd of the Australian Labor Party offered to do whatever possible to assist Howard in the implementation of the government's plan.

But Chris Graham of the National Indigenous Times is not convinced.

"The thing people have got to remember is that John Howard has been a member of parliament since 1974. And he's only just discovered that there is a crisis inaboriginal Australia?" he told ABC News.

"Either he has the IQ of a house brick or he's doing this for political purposes. The guy's just looking for a wedge," he added.

The government is yet to finalize legislation covering many of the proposed changes. It has set a July 26 deadline to do so.