Page 595 - Week 03 - Tuesday, 19 May 1992
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Aboriginal customs and culture are very diverse. To impose one Aboriginal culture on another is paramount to Croatian culture being imposed on Serbs under the heading of a Yugoslav culture. That, I think, is a very good current example of what in some ways Australians perceive when they speak of Aboriginal people. Aboriginal children should be empowered through their education, rather than humiliated and ostracised. (Extension of time granted) Thank you, members. I shall try to wind up. Disenfranchisement and oppression lead to illegal and violent solutions. Race riots such as those witnessed in the United States are the ultimate expression of a people frustrated, disempowered, disconnected and embittered. The fact that these sorts of riots do not happen in Australia is really probably because there are fewer Aboriginal people and they are more scattered. Their lot, however, has been, in many ways, the same as that in the United States.
In some Australian States primary and high schools are still being placed in geographical positions requiring families to relocate to areas foreign to them and which offer no support. Their language, their customs and their land ties are very location specific in many areas. We certainly would not insist that children from our culture move to a completely foreign location for basic education yet; in many ways, that is exactly what has happened throughout Australia over the past few years, and is still happening today.
Teacher education is a very important factor. Aboriginal people need to be actively involved in teacher training and in recognising diverse and location specific cultures. Australian history must be re-examined, much like the exhumation of women's history that took place with people like Dr Anne Summers. The same re-examination of Australian history is beginning to take place now, and badly needs to take place so that we can look at Australia and our Aboriginal culture from a different perspective.
In summary, the recommendations of the report have extremely important ramifications for the ACT. The issue is not whether Aboriginal people should or should not be incarcerated or have different laws, et cetera; as the report rightfully points out, this is an indicator of the need for enormous social reform. There are some 2,500 Aboriginal and Islander people in the ACT. Many have direct and very strong links to the Ngambra region which was the forerunner of Canberra.
The Pialligo and Ngunawal tribes have deep and passionate feelings about the land in this region, and anger and resentment that many of them were systematically severed from their families and heritage. They are cynical of a government that continues to impose decisions without consultation on issues that vitally affect them. Without their stories, without their input, Australian history, and certainly the history of the ACT, will be based on the lie of omission, which is to do all of the Australian people an injustice.
MS SZUTY (9.59): It has been 12 months since the report of the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody was tabled in Federal Parliament and, from the reading of the report on the response by State and Federal governments to the recommendations, it appears that there has been considerable progress made on introducing measures which address the main problem identified by the commission - that of "the disadvantaged and unequal position
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