The Bob Hawke Prime Ministerial Centre
Thursday 9 September 2004
Presentation by Ms Kerrynne Liddle, Journalist and Chair of Tandanya
Aboriginal Arts Centre
I would like to pay my respects to the Kaurna peoples, special guests,
my indigenous sisters and everyone here today. I was fortunate to hear
the speech of Ms Irene Kahn last night, and thought it was particularly
skilful in raising the plight of indigenous Australians in a way that
did not see people, as unfortunately we often see, switch off. She
talked about being safe and about fairness.
I support the view of Professor Lowitja O'Donohue that we must
understand our history in order to understand why we are at the point we
are today, and we also have to understand history in order to deal with
whose responsibility it is to make it better. I think it can be argued
that Aboriginal people have never been particularly safe in this
country. There was colonisation, and we all know that story. There was
also assimilation and the dreadful policies that removed Aboriginal
children from their families, from their very rocks.
Today we continue to fear Government policy, and, although there are
many doing good work, we continue to still fear police, and we see the
outcome of that in our gaols. We also see grandparents who fear the
future for their grandchildren and for their grandchildren's
grandchildren. Linda Matthews comments about covert racism that affects
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women. We don't need statistics to
tell us that is still happening: we actually experience it every day.
There are Aboriginal women who have pioneered a number of firsts.
Lowitja O'Donohue, the first Aboriginal nurse to be trained at the Royal
Adelaide Hospital, which in those days had a policy of not allowing or
not accepting indigenous nurses. My younger sister was South Australia's
first Aboriginal female police officer and was there for a decade. The
discrimination and harassment she endured led her to eventually leave
the police force. She was devastated that she could no longer be a
police officer.
She went on to study parks and wildlife management, and now has a law
degree. She thought originally that she would eventually go into
criminal law, because she thought that was the best way to contribute to
Aboriginal communities. But she has since told me that is not the case.
She sees that the biggest issue for us now will be through the Family
Courts. It is there where she believes she can be the most useful to our
people.
When you know that we are disadvantaged across every social indicator,
then her predictions make a whole lot of sense. Domestic violence is a
symptom of a whole lot of things. While we need to respond to that by
immediate strategies that provide safe homes and havens for our women
and families, it is equally important to also look at the cause.
My area of particular interest is in the role of the media. The
Australian media often supports the notion that the situation is
hopeless and that violence is part of Aboriginal communities. It has no
place in aboriginal communities and never has: it is a consequence of
the history and experience of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander
peoples. As a journalist, who is also indigenous, earlier this year I
was involved in writing a feature story in an indigenous newspaper about
domestic violence and the effect on our children.
It was not an easy task to get the information. Although it was for an
indigenous newspaper, people were not comfortable providing information
or about raising the issue in the media. But, because it was an
indigenous newspaper, they were a little more comfortable with talking
about it. But they wanted it done in such a way that didn't portray them
as victims, and they wanted to instead not talk about statistics and
have them reeled off (I mean, they are appalling, but we've seen them
time and time again), they wanted to talk more about solutions.
What was also apparent was the impact of violence on children. What
those people who work in the area of domestic violence were seeing was
the impact on children who were not directly affected by physical
violence, but who actually observed physical violence in their
communities. They talked about children being numb to the fact that this
was unacceptable and it wasn't part of a normal relationship, and they
feared the consequences of those exposures on future generations. And
that should alarm everyone.
The State Government is to be applauded for it approach or its attention
to the APY lands, but it must recognise also that the problem has been
boiling away for many, many years. This is not a recent problem.
Aboriginal women still say that it is they who are not being listened to
by Governments in working through solutions. Instead, they are still
having solutions imposed on them, and that approach, I believe, will
surely fail.
I just want to tell you a story about my grandmother, who has now passed
away. She was a linguist, a diplomat and a scientist. Although she had
very little education, she could speak three languages. She was a
diplomat in that she faced racism constantly, and she worked through it.
As a scientist, I remember as children - and my grandmother had 11
children so there were lots and lots of grandchildren - we used to all
pile into a car every single weekend and we would go bush.
Every weekend we would go off to a dry creek bed; we would go miles and
miles, we would drive for hours. And every time we went bush, she would
make us dig a hole in a dry creek bed and make her a bath. As kids, we
used to actually say, "Oh, Nana's coming. We've got to go with her and
dig a bath," and we would tease each other on the way about who actually
had to start digging.
In a completely dry creek bed, she would make us dig a bath, and every
single time we would find water. She would sit in that hole in the
ground and have a bath, with her towel and her soap right next to her.
At the time we used to growl and whinge about it, but when I actually
look back, what she was actually doing was teaching us about topography,
she was teaching us about where to find water, she was teaching us about
respect for other people regardless of how you felt about the situation.
I did learn a lot from her - I think she was an extraordinary woman -
and she did so in a way that never growled when we did things that were
wrong, in a way that we always felt frightened to get back into the car
and go again with her. So she had a particular skill at having to work
with people and do so with respect, and I think that is a very important
lesson for us all.
Aboriginal people are tired of seeing report after report and
recommendation after recommendation. They know the problems, and they
want to be part of the solution. Why I spoke about my grandmother is
that they have the skill and they have the experience to be part of the
solution. They shouldn't be on the outside and just be delivered what
other people think are the answers. We must respect their right to be
part of the answer, and to do that in partnerships with Governments at
all levels.
Thank you
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