The crisis in Australian indigenous communities

It’s nice to read something less terse about this subject. However, i don’t think the subject can go discussed without mentioning the “save the children” aspect which had perpetually been used to hide all kinds of colonial, racist, and paternalist policies throughout the world.

The title of the report that was used to justify this new move was called “Little Children are Sacred.”(!) I’m reminded immediately of the policy in the United States and Canada of taking away the children of First Nations families, a sort of redundancy insofar as western policy towards natives has always treated them as children (when not seen as a terrorist threat). Protection of children provides a ready justification for all kinds of statist interventions, and even the american attorney general falls back upon his record of “protecting children” in response to entirely unrelated allegations of tyranny. All you really need to do to get the public to let you do whatever you want to a minority group is hold up a toddler and mention that if you don’t do whatever horrible thing you’re about to do, the little tot will die.
Further, Native activists of all lands rightly point out that the problems of alchohol abuse (how puritan!), unemployment, and all those other liberal concerns among their communities have roots much deeper than any government policy, short of reparations and self-rule, could begin to address. even attempting to frame a defense against policies such as that liberal (civil rights) terms only perpetuates the same conditions which ensure such problems will continue (and always beg some sort of paternalistic intervention).

“People who’ve been permanently excluded from the labour force”

Is “excluded” the right word here?

In a sufficiently remote area, the cost of transport and communication might be so high that the total cost of doing business there will always be higher than the production you can expect from there.

“…the problems of alchohol abuse (how puritan!)”

Good grief, rhyd. It’s “puritan” (meaning, I suspect, smarmy, pharisaical, mean-spirited, paranoid, etc.?) to be worried about alcohol abuse? Amongst communities where sometimes as many as 4 out of 5 children under the age of 12 regularly drink? Where deaths from chronic liver disease and cirrhosis are about 4 times higher than the surrounding averages? Where adult alcoholism rates sometimes reach 75%? And that doesn’t even get into those situations amongst certain populations where violence, drug abuse, gas-sniffing, and more have built upon widespread alcohol abuse to create conditions of almost total hopelessness.

Perhaps you will see the above as another example of someone “hold[ing] up a [minority] toddler and mention[ing] that if you don’t do whatever horrible thing you’re about to do, the little tot will die.” I am not an apologist for drastic, “must-do-something” interventions, primarily because they usually ignore the sort of deeper issues you rightly point to (besides the fact that they are usually unfairly enforced to boot). I am not opposed to reparations, even massive ones, if it could mean tribal self-rule and development really meaning something (which tragically it may not, given the structural and environmental limits which many reservations and indigenous communities have historically been forced to operate within). But in any case, to argue for more and wiser aid to native peoples while dismissing all concerns over lifestyle and cultural issues as a bunch of “puritan,” paternalistic, possibly fascist nonsense, strikes me as at best a rather blase attitude towards the reality that some children are in impossibly worse situations than others.

Sorry if this comes off as intemperate; I’m no expert here. But labeling a desire to do something about a source of genuine and deep harm as “puritan” simply because the sort of people we all apparently know seem to have a handle on it really sticks in my craw.

“People who’ve been permanently excluded from the labour force can’t be made job-ready in short order.”

Most likely they will never be made job-ready because its to late to train them. If they weren’t trained and instilled in their youth with the work ethic, it is to late. The window of opportunity is gone. It could also be a culture deficiency that they can not work in modern society.

“Is ‘excluded’ the right word here?”

Well, excluded in the sense that they were overlooked, not trained and not encouraged to work. They have been discriminated against and ignored, thus excluded.

The current policy debate in Australia is similar to American debates about drugs and crime in poor, mostly minority, urban neighborhoods. In America, three kinds of policy show promise. First, more police out in the field, particularly perhaps, where they can establish strong ongoing ties to local communities. Second, employment and education programs (training, job readiness, and supported work). Young idle men pose real risks to public safety so these programs are partly conceived to reduce idleness as well as to develop skills. Third, early child programs, in part to support pretty unstable family situations and partly to promote child development, and improved school achievement through adolescence.

There aren’t good examples where all three measures were attempted in an integrated way. Still, program evaluations suggest you wouldn’t make things worse with this approach. (The same cannot be said of a grog ban in isolation.)

I don’t want to overdraw the parallels between the American ghetto and indigenous communities in rural Australia. Still, the problems seem similar enough to take an approach that spans the life course and combines crime control with employment-linked social supports.

America also provides cautionary lessons. Prohibition by itself is not effective, and neither is exclusive reliance on punitive policing and incarceration. The American mistake was to use police and prisons to try and solve what were essentially social policy problems.

One of the tragedies of the modern world is the toll that alcohol takes on so many indigenous peoples: e.g., American Indians, Eskimos, and Australian Aborigines. Even the reasonably successful Maoris of New Zealand suffer terribly from drink and its accompanying problems such as wife-beating and child abuse.

It’s always seemed to me that this is clearly in part a genetic difference caused by Darwinian selection responding to cultural differences. Peoples who ancestors have had ample access to alcohol for the most generations have the fewest problems with it. Here in the U.S., Jews have the lowest alcoholism rates, followed by Italians, which parallels the spread of winemaking from the Fertile Crescent to the Mediterranean during the Neolithic. Presumably, they went through alcohol-related problems long ago (e.g., as in the Biblical story of Noah getting falling down drunk), and the people whose genomes were least resistant to drink died before mating or couldn’t get spouses.

The farther north you go in Europe, the worse drinking problems get. The Scandinavian states, for example, have all sorts of restrictions on liquor sales, which the European Union, dominated by countries less damaged by binge drinking, is trying to get rid of.

Finally, the peoples who didn’t have any experience with alcohol until Europeans brought it to them post-1492, seem to be hit the hardest of all, as you would expect because they have had the fewest number of generations to evolve defenses.

There’s a weird elision that takes place where the problem’s seen purely as economic and purely as lack of integration into the present economy, blocked by the sadly unable semi-innocent quasi-helpless indigenous to prevent themselves from succumbing to the cheap seductions their somewhat stronger white counterparts are more able to resist – so they need “help”.

I have not checked it out, so take it with a grain of salt, but some people say, when supporting the idea that alcoholism is a disease, that the genetic descendants of those people who have been around alcohol the longest (Mediterranean groups with wine) have far lower rates of alcoholism than those whose experience is more recent (Northern Europeans with beer) and then those whose experience is most recent (Native Americans, Aborigines, etc). If true, this supports that humans are evolving to cope with a lifestyle disease and that it is not that, say, Greeks have a stronger moral fibre than Aborigines, rather that if you have Greek ancestry your liver is more likely to handle alcohol in a way that reduces long-term addiction than Aborigines because of your genes (with, say, Danes somewhere in the middle).

Aborigines died at a great rate from the introduction of European diseases such as smallpox which Europeans had relatively more immunity to. If the theory about a genetic basis is right, then Aborigines are going through the same adaption process for alcohol as they had to for smallpox. Moral fiber has very little to do with avoiding smallpox infection, and little to do with avoiding alcoholism in a society where alcohol is present.
This theory has the implication that if we wait for a few thousand years alcoholism won’t be a significant problem for Aborigines or Northern Europeans. The downside is the suffering in the meantime.

Also, noticeably, there have been many prohibition movements in European history. Women’s suffrage in NZ started out of the temperance movement, led to a great deal by Pakeha women, we know that the USA in the 1920s managed to pass a constitutional prohibition against alcohol that was intended to apply as much to whites as to any other race, this indicates that the concern about alcoholism is not racist. (Though the experience of the American prohibition movement does raise some doubts about how effective any Australian ban would be – no matter how non-racist an idea it is in conception).

Post 18 is a quote from Steve Sailer. It looks like the link was cut, I repost it here.

http://www.isteve.com/Web_Exclusives_Archive-Dec2003.htm

matt weiner: As a complete outsider on this issue, what does pornography have to do with anything? I suppose the pornography ban is supposed to combat the child sexual abuse, but is there any evidence of a link?

There’s arguably evidence that increased access to pornography leads to decreases in rape and other forms of sexual assault (e.g., this study looking at Japan, or this study looking at the US; both studies have discussions of past research on the subject). A more conservative analysis would be that pornography is, at worst, irrelevant to the occurence of rape.

Sexual abuse of children is not as well studied, though the first study I linked to notes a decrease in Japan at the same time as pornography became more widespread, and it references studies finding similar decreases in Denmark and Germany following the legalization of pornography there.

A few quick comments to give some context:

Porn connection
– The report “Little Children are Sacred” on which some of the policy is purported to be based, noted that there is a very high level of x-rated pornographic material in the communities shown by adults TO children and also in some cases by principals at schools. In addition it was found that the children regularly act out scenes from the porn films, such that sexual acts between adults and children are somewhat ‘normalized’. Hence the ‘porn’ connection. For more read the report or see the thread at Larvatusprodeo. (Where much of my info is from.)

on employment possibilities:

– the shear remoteness of these communities cannot be overlooked. the Northern Territory (NT) is one of the most sparsely populated regions in Australia (its capital is 100,000, 2nd biggest city ~ 30,000). i’m not sure what sort of companies/businesses the various commenters had in mind that would be feasible in this sort of region, but beyond minimum wage considerations its just not practical. For example, the Wadeye community (admittedly one with a relative lack of the problems mentioned) is inaccessible by road for 4-6 months of the year due to wet season. obviously the situation of the each community is very different, something the Howard policy seems to miss.

m

Last year, on account of random surfing occasioned by various Aussie bloggers I read, I came across some harrowing stories about the condition of the social fabric in tribal communities around Darwin. Taking away abusable entertainments seems at best a half-measure or an attack on symptoms rather than causes. Was there no sex among the aboriginals before colonization? What were the native industries and pastimes that they cannot or will not pursue any more, i.e. for what is the drinking a poor substitute? Violent video games might be next on Howards list?

THe aboriginal situation is very different from the black ghettoes in the U.S. that Bruce Western discusses. The level of physical remoteness and cultural isolation is far greater, and educational attainment is less.

I’d be interested to know how big the gap is. Just thinking about the young men in the US prison system, they average a 10th grade education, and a seventh grade reading level. How much different is the situation of young men in indigenous communities in NT or FNQ?

Anyway, my point was not that poor urban communities in the US are generally similar to indigenous communities in rural Australia. Rather, I’m thinking that the several respects in which they are similar (high crime and unemployment) suggest that a combination of policing, employment, and early child programs would help in Australia. Why would the US-Australia differences rule out these measures? And if not measures like these, then what?

BW: I’m familiar both with head start programs (my mother worked for one and both my sisters benefited from them) and community policing (I sat on a Community Policing board for two years). I have nothing favorable to say about the latter. The point is, though, that urban policies are never limited to these, and child-removal rates in minority neighbourhoods are very, very real.

But again, why not draw the parallel instead between indigenous peoples on different continents, victims of the same processes? Why avoid this much more obvious parallel?

When First Nations have been given back full control of their lands, cultures, and government, the results have been incredibly positive. I’m not just talking about Casinos, either.

Let them have their sacred places back. Don’t force them to accept anglo-capitalist models. Instead of putting them on the dole, give them the entire sum owed to them by governments and corporations who have taken their land. Include interest. Allow them to make their own decisions, even (especially) if this includes sovereignty and statehood. respect that any resources on those lands belong to them, not to the state. Let them develop treaties with other nations (other indigenous groups or other nation-states). Don’t sabotage their attempts to regain their culture and political voice (i refer particularly to the FBI/ATF in the states, though Canada is just as guilty;i know nothing of Australian covert political manipulations, but the anglo-model is well know, so i doubt Howard hasn’t been tempted).

Presumably an interest in pornography so intense that it gets in the way of actually having sex or raising kids would be evolutionarily disadvantageous. This does not seem to be a problem in Aborigine communities judging by the number of children. Can you please explain why you think an extreme interest in porn would be evolved out of Europeans?

I’m not arguing for any such thing, but actually asking you how your theory includes and justifies the pornography ban. The ban is not just on alchohol, and a significant aspect of the study concerns pornography in aboriginal communities. If alchoholism is something such groups haven’t evolved a tolerance to, than is that the justification also for the porn ban?

Look, my point about misusing evolutionary theory is not whether a genetic predisposition can be found, it is that it has dangerous consequences for public policy and tends to get used as a posteriori explanations and defenses for policies that derive from entirely different bases.

I don’t know if Arendt is okay to mention in these kinds of discussions, but her analysis of the development of race theory as a posteriori defense for practices of subjugation (eg. slavery) (Burden of our Times) seems very relevant.

Do we not see the same sort of thing happening with evolutionary theory? Its (mis?)uses in the realm of indigenous relations seems exactly the kind of thing we ought to concern ourselves with.
Sometimes, one suspects that it isn’t mis-use at all and is instead–at least from a historical perspective–a natural outgrowth of “the white man’s burden.”

One thing that strikes me is that most of the posters don’t know just how big Australia is, and I include Australians in that remark, all this talk of employment and social reform, do people actually know just how isolated most of these communities are? Howard has been flying over them on his way to ponce on the worlds stage without a bloody thought, sipping on his tax payer wine he’s so fond of , and now “Eureka” it’s an election and I need a “war” or any crisis to find some votes. So, here we go.
There is no “employment” locally in most of these remote areas, there are no medical centers, no librarys , no shops, no nothing in some cases within a ten or fifteen hour drive to a large centre. If Howard brings in the Army, and that looks likely, what, helicopters? , planes?,nice little two or three hour flying trip,fly in medical and boffin head scratchers, fly out again?,now that’s how to show your sincere to the isolated, ignored (well not now ,psst”ELECTION” ),and all this for one mans ego. Why do you ‘recon that these people live where they live, mostly because thats where they have always lived, sad for them that us whitey’s know better and have decimated and destroyed their culture over the past two hundred years, but wait, there’s hope, Howard has ‘discovered’ another whitey cure, ban the grog, porn, incest, bludging,handouts, that these people we afflicted with, send in the heavy artillery. Did I mention it’s an election year?.
They got along without us very well for some thousands of years, then we came along and put ’em on the right track, now thank heavens , as they have strayed, Howard is going to fix ’em up. Sweet. Did I mention it’s an, Oh yes!.

BW: where would such govt jobs be predominately located? wouldn’t they need to be in the cities? or do you think there would perhaps education/health opportunities in the more remote communities? say for example (pulling out of a hat here…) providing training for locals to become nurses and conduct the medical exams howard’s now forced on every kid?

and re: “what is drinking a poor substitute for” – (no expert here) but perhaps a loss of sacred sites and traditional land, younger generations lack of education/awareness in traditional ways, fundamental breakdown in communities through white man’s presence and ‘good intentions’ (stolen children), and perhaps a general feeling that no one really cares all that much about your histories….

This thread would probably be more useful if folks went and read what Aborigine activist Noel Pearson has to say about this. Here’s a good start.

I’m not arguing for any such thing, but actually asking you how your theory includes and justifies the pornography ban.

I don’t think my theory includes or justifies the pornography ban. I was merely commenting on alcoholism.

If alchoholism is something such groups haven’t evolved a tolerance to, than is that the justification also for the porn ban?

I don’t know. I don’t know of any evidence that the consumption of pornography in extreme amounts is correlated with a family genetic history of consumption of pornography in extreme amounts. Nor do I know of any evidence that it doesn’t.

Plus, as I said before, I am skeptical about how effective any alcohol ban would be in practice, given US experience of their Prohibition.

Look, my point about misusing evolutionary theory is not whether a genetic predisposition can be found, it is that it has dangerous consequences for public policy and tends to get used as a posteriori explanations and defenses for policies that derive from entirely different bases.

Can you name a scientific theory that has policy implications that has’t been misused?

People make bad arguments for policy all the time. And there’s pretty much always two reasons people have for advocating a policy – the reason they state and their actual reason. There’s nothing special about misuse of evolutionary theory.

Discussion of employment for Indigenous people when they don’t have access to housing, running water, medical care or decent transport is just stupid. There is no business on earth that can function in many of these remote communities, and if Aboriginal people in the outback were paid wages which industry could afford in the circumstances, they would be paid tobacco and sugar (which is how they were paid during earlier years). Those of you who don’t live in Australia need to understand – most of these communities are several hours’ drive on unsealed roads from tiny towns, which themselves straddle a road linking a town of 300,000 people to a town of a million people on a 24 hour journey through nowhere.

Instead of thinking of these communities as the “rural fringe” they need to be thought of more as camps for displaced persons. They are Australia’s internally displaced by genocidal design, and their conditions today match that situation. They live in overcrowded houses or humpies, often without sewage or running water, suffering diseases of overcrowding (like glue ear) which have been eliminated in the rest of Australia. Some of these places have so few decent homes that people are living a family a room, and the “communities” themselves have a large transient population. Everyone knows that these kinds of situations breed child abuse, violence and drug dependence; the environment needs to be repaired before interventions can be successful. The Herald pointed out in an article yesterday that when the “much-needed” police turn up to these communities they will have to camp by the river beds and cook over fires because there is no accomodation. Where will they hold people they arrest, living 6 or 8 hours’ drive from the nearest police station? The same Herald article also pointed out that an estimated 1.4 billion dollars is needed to provide sufficient housing to reduce overcrowding. Howard has had 11 years to provide that money as part of his much-vaunted “practical reconciliation” program. Why now?

The reason for “why now”, and the reason that this response is going to do more harm than good, is that it has nothing to do with Aboriginal kiddies. Howard has blown his dog whistle. Recently the tory working class who voted him in in 2001 have returned to the labour opposition. Howard wants to remind them that it is him, and only him, who speaks their hidden racist language. His response to this “emergency” is couched in the doublespeak of dog whistle politics. When Howard speaks this way, it is not because he believes the “tough love” politics of Noel Pearson – he doesn’t, because Noel Pearson is black and therefore hated – but because contained in it is the hidden message to the racist Aussie horde. He is reminding them that labour is the party of “special interests” and self-determination, which they hate, and he will destroy it. To analyse his response as if it has any value is to fall for his trap. Argue on his terms, and the racist underclass will be more strongly reminded that only Howard can “protect” them from the “privileged” Aborigine, so long given “special treatment” by “do-gooders” instead of being treated how the urban fringe wants – ignored, abandoned and preferably eliminated, or at best assimilated.

This response will do more harm for Aboriginal people than good. It is the concentration camp trap. Take decent people, take away their rights and their ability to look after themselves, and then when they turn into savages say “see, they can’t be treated the same as us, they’re savages.” This is how the “rural fringe” views Aborigines, and John Howard wants to blame the Aborigines for the savagery which we witness. No response based on this will do anything but hasten their descent. And in fact unless John Howard is blowing his dog whistle, he never has anything to say about Aboriginal issues – to him and his kind they don’t and shouldn’t exist.