THE CULTURE OF ACCEPTANCE
08.05.1999
THE 45 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women who made up the inquiry team looking into violence and alcohol abuse on indigenous communities probably did not need to conduct an outside interview. They see the problems every day. They have to live with it.
But their frustration at nobody actually doing anything was spelt out in the interim report of inquiry chair Boni Robertson, given to Queensland Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Policy Minister Judy Spence on Thursday. In the report, Robertson quoted from a 1987 Aboriginal Co-ordinating Council workshop which discussed child abuse and neglect and domestic violence. At the end of that workshop 12 years ago, Doomadgee elder Hilyer Jonny said: ``I'll go home and talk to the women and we will talk to the council and we will do something.''
When the Robertson committee met on December 16, 1998, Jonny said: ``Ever since I have been to meetings we have been talking, talking about domestic violence all the time. I would like to see action, not talking all the time. Action speaks louder than words. I have to live in the community amongst domestic violence, family violence, alcohol violence and other violence.''
The inaction or ineffectiveness of authorities _ black and white _ have fostered a belief in some that it is somehow ``culturally appropriate'' for indigenous women and children to be battered and killed. Robertson's report quotes a 1987 South Australian case where three Aboriginal police aides were charged with the rape of an Aboriginal woman in their custody. Justice Millhouse in sentencing Minkilli, Martin and Mintuma, said: ``Sergeant Berry (a white man) told me in evidence that there is no crime of rape known in your community. Forcing a woman to have sexual intercourse is not socially acceptable, but it is not regarded with the seriousness that it is by white people. Sergeant Berry said that you were a good police aide. The courts generally have taken the view, and I hold it too, that a person in your position should not be punished as severely as would a white man who did the same thing.''
The contention that it was ``culturally acceptable'' to flog black women was also put to Queensland District Court Judge Peter White in October 1994 when he was sentencing Warren Wayne Jimmy. The case of Jimmy is probably the starkest available to demonstrate how women and children suffer at the hands of men whose lives are overtaken by alcoholism and violence.
Jimmy, then 34, was charged with assaulting Marline Bush at Mornington Island; bodily harm of Bush; grievous bodily harm with intent to disfigure Bush; breaking and entering and assault. The prosecutor told the court that on December 22, 1988, Jimmy assaulted his then de facto, Gracie Holroyd, and killed her, for which he was sentenced to just six years' imprisonment.
The most recent 1994 charges considered by Judge White were committed while Jimmy was on parole for killing Holroyd.
In February 1984, Jimmy was given 12 months' probation for assaulting a woman. He had been drunk and bit her on the face and forehead. On September 9, 1985, he assaulted Elma Ball at Kowanyama. She had annoyed him so he punched her in the face and ribs, two days after he was convicted in the Kowanyama Magistrates Court for assaulting Holroyd, whom he had belted with a stick. On March 3, 1988, he again knocked Holroyd down and kicked her in the body. He had drunk two jugs of beer before that incident. Nine months later he killed her.
In July 1994 Marline Bush wanted to leave Jimmy because of his constant assaults on her so she went to the airport at Mornington Island. He pulled her from the plane and punched her in the face, an injury which required hospital treatment. He got drunk and belted her with a stick. He subsequently went to her home, knocked her to the ground and then stabbed her in the abdomen and chest with a knife. He said he wanted to disfigure her so she wouldn't be attractive to other men.
Jimmy's counsel advanced the issue of ``cultural acceptability'' of violence by black men against their community women, but Judge White would have none of it, saying he had ``never seen or heard this sort of cultural or institutionalised violence as a feature of early Aboriginal society''.
In sentencing Jimmy to eight years' imprisonment, Judge White said it was submitted that he should take into account ``that it is not uncommon in the community in which the prisoner grew up for a man to chastise a wife or a de facto wife by a beating''.
Judge White continued: ``I am prepared to accept that violence towards wives or de facto wives is not uncommon in places such as Mornington Island where these offences occurred, and Kowanyama where the prisoner grew up. During my years at the Bar and on the Bench in the far north, I have come across numerous examples for such occurrences. However, I am not satisfied at all that in 1994 any consideration can be given to such a matter.
``I have never seen any evidence that such conduct is a part of traditional Aboriginal life or culture. And since virtually always the instances of violence towards a wife or a de facto partner arise after excessive consumption of alcohol, I do not think that it is valid to place occurrences of violence within some sort of cultural framework. In my view, to give way to such a factor is to abandon Aboriginal women and to deprive them, at least partially, of the protection which our law should give to all people equally.''
Of the hundreds of cases of violent assaults, rapes and murders that come before courts in remote areas each year, only the most minute percentage do not involve alcohol. As Aboriginal leader Noel Pearson said last week, alcohol is destroying these communities. It is destroying the entire race of people. The frustration of the women who gave their time and experiences to Robertson's committee is obvious.
But nothing will change until the alcoholism is controlled. As the inquiry women asked: ``Where are the licensing authorities who gladly take the licensing fees from the grog sold on the communities? Where are they policing the licensing laws?''
Indeed, where is the Licensing Authority, which comes under the control of Tourism Minister Bob Gibbs? Would they allow this depraved conduct to go in a metropolitan hotel? Of course not. They should be pressed to explain their inaction to enforce the laws for which they are paid handsome salaries.
Why are licensees of the canteens able to serve grog to drunk people? Why aren't sly-groggers ever arrested? Why isn't the the neglect, the physical and sexual assault of children taken seriously by authorities and addressed? Why doesn't anybody care?
kocht@qnp.newsltd.com.au
