Today’s dispatch is ‘Empty Horses’. Originally dispatched on 27 February 2016
Junga Yimi (‘ true story’)
In 1975 David Niven’s entertaining Hollywood reminiscences were published. A film director had shouted ‘Bring on the Empty Horses’. David Niven was so amused by this exhortation, that he chose it for the title of his book. The film director’s first language clearly wasn’t English and for those who haven’t worked it out for themselves, the horses were riderless.
Prime Minister Howard was no friend of Aboriginal Australia. A May 2000 quote illustrates his attitude: “We don’t think it’s appropriate for the current generation of Australians to apologize for the injustices committed by past generations.” We out here at the front in remote Aboriginal Australia despised the man and were ecstatic when Kevin 007 defeated him. An additional bonus from that election was that the architect of the Intervention (Mal Brough) also lost his seat.
When Kevin Rudd made his famous speech, many of us were emotionally touched. I won’t inflict on you the whole 9 pages I printed out, just some pertinent extracts:
“ The time has come for the nation to turn a new page in Australia’s history by righting the wrongs of the past…”
“ We apologize especially for the removal of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families, their communities and their country”
“ A future where this parliament resolves that the injustices of the past must never, never happen again”
“ But let us remember the fact that the forced removal of Aboriginal children was happening as late as the early 1970s”
Thus according to Kevin Rudd, forced removal had ceased around the time ‘Bring on the Empty Horses’ was published.
The 680 page report on the National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from Their Families (‘Bringing them Home’) was tabled in Federal Parliament on 26 May 1997. More than a decade was to pass before a Prime Minister apologized to the so called ‘Stolen Generations’.
“…we say sorry…” occurs three times in Kevin Rudd’s speech.
The Easybeats in their 1966 hit ‘Sorry’ easily beat that. The word “Sorry” occurs 22 times in the song….
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KEXSY-vmruI
Also in the speech: “ …sufficient flexibility not to insist on a one-size-fits-all approach for each of the hundreds of remote and regional indigenous communities across the country…”
Yet such flexibility was distinctly lacking in the Intervention which Kevin Rudd’s government appropriated from its predecessors. It was Jenny Macklin, Kevin Rudd’s Minister for Indigenous Affairs, who in due course was instrumental in extending the Intervention by a decade under the euphemistically named Stronger Futures legislation. The ‘protection of women and children’ was Macklin’s most used justification for the introduction of disempowering assimilationist paternalistic measures.
A step-grandson of mine is a relatively small person, his wife is likewise relatively short. They have two lovely small children who go to Yuendumu pre-school. The older girl when she grew up in Alice Springs was considered to be “under weight for age”. Her mother was frequently visited by “welfare ladies” who told her that she was a bad mother and that if her daughter didn’t put on weight they would take her away. It never eventuated because they couldn’t gather enough evidence to prove “child neglect”. Not through lack of trying. The two lovely children will most likely remain “under weight for age” for the rest of their lives. They are small.
Nangala told me of a recent case: a child had been removed from a young mother who’d gone off the rails and who was perpetually drunk in Alice Springs. This young mother had a large extended family in Yuendumu. When the mother eventually returned to Yuendumu, she’d sobered up and after a lengthy legal process got her child back. The reunion was traumatic. The child who couldn’t speak Warlpiri and didn’t know its mother and wasn’t used to seeing so many black faces spent hours inconsolably bawling its head off. The mother was likewise seriously distressed. So much for the protection of women and children!
In Australia there is a Welfare Industry that systematically monitors and collects evidence supposedly to “protect children” but which ultimately results in a new Stolen Generation.
“ A future where this parliament resolves that the injustices of the past must never, never happen again”
Anybody who lives on a remote community with their eyes open knows of cases of child removal, and I am not referring to the early 1970s either.
Lest I be accused of gilding the lily to prove a point, I point you to official government data.
These metrics of misery are from the ‘productivity commission report on government service delivery’ released this month, detailing the numbers of children in care on ‘census night’ June 30, 2015 by Indigenous status. In the NT there were 892 Indigenous children (0-17 years old) in out-of-home care, and 125 non-indigenous. On a per 1000 children in population, that is 33.4 Indigenous and 3.4 non-Indigenous. For those that haven’t worked it out for themselves, this means that an Indigenous child in the NT has a 10 times greater risk of being placed in out-of-home care than a non-Indigenous child. The data furthermore shows that only about 36% of Aboriginal children removed by ‘child protection’ are placed back with their own Indigenous kin. The NT has one of the lowest rates of such placement at 28.6%.
As for the June 1988 response by Prime Minister Bob Hawke to the Barunga Statement, a promise that there would be a Treaty between Indigenous Australians and the Australian Government by 1990, Yothu Yindi’s song ‘Treaty’ says it all:
Words are easy, words are cheap
Much cheaper than our priceless land
But promises can disappear
Just like writing in the sand
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7cbkxn4G8U
BRING ON THE EMPTY WORDS!
Ngula-juku,
Jungarrayi