This week, we heard yet again that First Nations deaths in custody continue at a rate not at all reduced since the Report of the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody (1991). Tahnee Jash and Stephanie Boltje addressed the issue thoroughly in a report on the ABC.
Since the Royal Commission reported, 602 First Nations people have died in custody. The graph in the ABC story shows the annual numbers have risen from less than ten in the early 1990s to 25 at the turn of the century to around 30 in the last couple of years.
'First Nations people make up nearly 20 per cent of the deaths in custody since 1991, despite making up less than 4 per cent of the Australian population', summarise Jash and Boltje. 'The last financial year recorded 34 deaths in custody, the highest record since the royal commission.'
Why? All those years ago, the Royal Commissioner, Elliott Johnson QC (1918-2011), thought history had a lot to do with it. Here is chapter 1.4 of the Royal Commission report. See also chapters 10 and 20 in Volume 2.
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NATIONAL REPORT VOLUME 1 - 1.4 THE IMPORTANCE OF HISTORY
1.4.1 I include in this report a chapter on that history. I make no apology for doing so. I do so not because the chapter adds to what is known but because what is known is known to historians and Aboriginal people; it is little known to non-Aboriginal people and it is a principal thesis of this report that it must become more known.
1.4.2 That Aboriginal people were dispossessed of their land without benefit of treaty, agreement or compensation is generally known. But I think little known is the amount of brutality and bloodshed that was involved in enforcing on the ground what was pronounced by the law. Aboriginal people were deprived of their land and if they showed resistance they were summarily dealt with. The loss of land meant the destruction of the Aboriginal economy which everywhere was based upon hunting and foraging. And the land use adopted by the settlers drastically reduced the population of animals to be hunted and plants to be foraged. And the loss of the land threatened the Aboriginal culture which all over Australia was based upon land and relationship to the land. These were the most dramatic effects of European colonisation supplemented by the decimating effects of introduced disease to which the Aboriginal people had no resistance. These matters are understood to a very imperfect degree by non-Aboriginal society.
1.4.3 But the facts of later policies and their effects are even less well known to the general population. Having reduced the original inhabitants to a condition, in many places, of abject dependency the colonial governments decided upon a policy of protection which had two main thrusts: Aboriginal people were swept up into reserves and missions where they were supervised as to every detail of their lives and there was a deliberate policy of undermining and destroying their spiritual and cultural beliefs. The other aspect of that policy as it developed was that Aboriginal children of mixed race descent--usually Aboriginal mother and non-Aboriginal father--were removed from their family and the land, placed in institutions and trained to grow up as good European labourers or domestics. Those outside the reserves were usually to be found camping on river banks or on the outskirts of country towns where they were under the eye of the non-Aboriginal police. Naturally, legislation varied from place to place and time to time but the effect was the same control over the lives of the people. A person could not live on a reserve without permission, or leave or return after leaving without permission, or have a relative to live with them without permission, or work except under supervision. The extent of control seems incredible today. It was an offence to encourage or assist an Aboriginal person to leave a reserve. There were special laws about alcohol. On the reserves and the missions the supervisors and missionaries had all power.
1.4.4 The theory was that the 'full blood' Aboriginal people would die out and they should be provided with a little care while they did so; and that the 'mixed blood' would be bred out. When these expectations proved ill founded, another policy was tried, that of assimilation. But the old supervisor remained in place; in the Northern Territory Aboriginal people remained wards of the State, in the States the Protectorate and the Boards remained in place with all their powers, children continued to be removed but the whole aim was now to assimilate the Aboriginal people by encouraging them to accept the Western culture and lifestyle, give up their culture, become culturally absorbed and indistinguishable, other than physically, from the dominant group. For a short time, integration replaced assimilation as the policy option with little change in any practical way. And that was the practice in 1967 when the Referendum was carried which gave power to the Commonwealth to make laws relating to Aboriginal people.
1.4.5 From that history many things flow which are of central importance to the issue of Aboriginal over-representation in custody.
1.4.6 The first is the deliberate and systematic disempowerment of Aboriginal people starting with dispossession from their land and proceeding to almost every aspect of their life. They were made dependent upon government or non-Aboriginal pastoralists or other employers for rations, clothing, blankets, education, living place and living conditions. Decisions were made about them and for them and imposed upon them. It was thought to be bad for an Aboriginal woman to be living with a non-Aboriginal man so that was outlawed; and when Aboriginal women disguised the fact by dressing in male costume that too was outlawed. Aboriginal people were made dependent upon non-Aboriginal people. Gradually many of them lost their capacity for independent action, and their communities likewise. With loss of independence goes a loss of self esteem.
1.4.7 Of course, I speak in general terms; in the most remote communities the society went as before and in all areas there were and are strong people, many of them, men and women, who kept alive the culture and pride in the Aboriginal society. Some of them strove to organise a better deal, to call for rights but the battle was uphill and while some slight gains were made it was a slow and painful progress. People were still not counted in the population, they were not entitled to and did not get social security benefits, mothers still gathered their children about them and ran into the bush when they heard 'the welfare' was about. The damage to Aboriginal society was devastating. In some places, it totally destroyed population. In others, dependency, despair, alcohol, total loss of heart wrought decimation of culture. So it was on the Aboriginal side.
1.4.8 There is the other side of the coin, the effects of history upon the non-Aboriginal people. Every turn in the policy of government and the practice of the non-Aboriginal community was postulated on the inferiority of the Aboriginal people; the original expropriation of their land was based on the idea that the land was not occupied and the people uncivilised; the protection policy was based on the view that Aboriginal people could not achieve a place in the non-Aboriginal society and that they must be protected against themselves while the race died out; the assimilationist policy assumed that their culture and way of life is without value and that we confer a favour on them by assimilating them into our ways; even to the point of taking their children and removing them from family.
1.4.9 Every step of the way is based upon an assumption of superiority and every new step is a further entrenchment of that assumption.
1.4.10 Non-Aboriginal Australia has developed on the racist assumption of an ingrained sense of superiority that it knows best what is good for Aboriginal people. With many people associated directly or indirectly with land settlement, the assumption was underpinned by economic interest; while with many others it was underpinned by an absolute certainty that it was essential to religious enlightenment that Aboriginal religious belief be obliterated where possible. That feeling of superiority towards Aboriginal people, which is a racist view, was very strong.
1.4.11 It was strengthened by another circumstance. For reasons not relevant to the report, Australia came to adopt as national policy, immediately after Federation, a policy of white Australia. That policy clearly strengthened concepts of white superiority in relation to Aboriginal people.
1.4.12 So that for a complex of reasons the non-Aboriginal population has, in the mass, been nurtured on active and passive ideas of racial superiority in relation to Aboriginal people and which sits well with the policies of domination and control that have been applied.
1.4.13 I do not suggest, of course, that many non-Aboriginal people have not been guided by the best of motives; and in point of fact some missions and probably some reserves offered an opportunity for some Aboriginal people to maintain their unity and a measure of cohesion at a time when this might have been threatened in the larger society. But all this was done in the sure knowledge that the people needed our superior skills and ideas.
1.4.14 The relations between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people were historically influenced by racism, often of the overt, outspoken and sanctimonious kind; but more often, particularly in later times, of the quiet assumption that scarcely recognises itself. What Aboriginal people have largely experienced is policies nakedly racially-based and in their everyday lives the constant irritation of racist attitudes. Aboriginal people were never treated as equals and certainly relations between the two groups were conducted on the basis of inequality and control.
1.4.15 But there was one aspect of the relations between Aboriginal people and non-Aboriginal people which was very important for all the others and where the relationship was at its worst; that is, the relations between Aboriginal people and the police forces of the dominant society.
1.4.16 Police officers naturally shared all the characteristics of the society from which they were recruited, including the idea of racial superiority in relation to Aboriginal people and the idea of white superiority in general; and being members of a highly disciplined centralist organisation their ideas may have been more fixed than most; but above and beyond that was the fact that police executed on the ground the policies of government and this brought them into continuous and hostile conflict with Aboriginal people. The policeman was the right hand man of the authorities, the enforcer of the policies of control and supervision, often the taker of the children, the rounder up of those accused of violating the rights of the settlers. Much police work was done on the fringes of non-Aboriginal settlement where the traditions of violence and rough practices were strongest.
1.4.17 I do not add to this here since the matter is discussed in the history chapter (Chapter 10) of the Report. It is sufficient to say that a deep animosity and often hatred developed between Aboriginal people and police.
1.4.18 What is most remarkable and what must command the respect and admiration of fair minded people is that Aboriginal society survived all of these assaults. Outstanding people amongst them campaigned for rights, for equality. Gradually, their calls were heard with more sympathy; in 1967 the Referendum was carried with the support of a majority of voters in every State. The Referendum was a watershed. The people who died in custody between 1980 and 1989 were, overwhelmingly, born before the Referendum; their parents universally so.
1.4.19 The consequence of this history is the partial destruction of Aboriginal culture and a large part of the Aboriginal population and also disadvantage and inequality of Aboriginal people in all the areas of social life where comparison is possible between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people. The other consequence is the considerable degree of breakdown of many Aboriginal communities and a consequence of that and of many other factors, the losing of their way by many Aboriginal people and with it the resort to excessive drinking, and with that violence and other evidence of the breakdown of society. As this report shows, this legacy of history goes far to explain the over-representation of Aboriginal people in custody, and thereby the death of some of them.
1.4.20 Since 1967, governments have moved in the direction of changing this position and in particular in the direction of an assault on inequality. Laws have been passed outlawing discriminatory behaviour in various fields on the basis of colour and race. Such laws reflect international conventions, to which Australia is a party, but they also reflect a genuine movement against discrimination on the ground of colour, creed, religion, race, etc. Efforts have been made by government-in many cases very strenuous efforts--but what is absolutely outstanding is the efforts which have been made by Aboriginal people, organisations and communities to grasp the opportunities which have become available and to assert their rights in the new situation. I speak of this later.
Picture credit: detail of book cover, Chris Owen, Every Mother's Son is Guilty: Policing the Kimberley Frontier of Western Australia 1882-1905 (2016).
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