the persistence of invisibility of really important aspects of indigenous reality

Summary and some thoughts about Ch 3 The Trouble with Culture of Peter Sutton's The Politics of Suffering (2009)

Where I can learn from this chapter is that Peter Sutton has a deeper and more sophisticated understanding of indigenous culture, its negatives as well as its positives, than most commentators. He also blows the whistle on the willful blindness of official government reports and some other commentators / authors, including some who are well intentioned and have done the hard yards. Nor do indigenous leaders escape from his critique although he treats them with respect. The invisibility of reality appears to operate at several levels and he goes some of the way to unmasking that.

I feel that Peter has become pessimistic about indigenous futures as a result of his life experiences but that his analysis is fundamentally correct and serves as an essential starting point for those committed to continuing to try to solve the problems that many have tried to solve without success.

Personally, I prefer pessimism that lives in the real world to the phony optimism of those who draw a veil over the truth. I prefer to face the dark side of life than to live in the false light of self deception. Can we accept the reality of the dark side and still remain optimistic and energetic about positive change for indigenous people? That is the challenge.

The radical historical shift in government approaches to dealing with indigenous affairs which occurred in the Whitlam years (1972-75) forms part of the backdrop to this analysis. As government policy became more humane, open hearted and liberal the actual on the ground situation for aboriginal people became worse. Welfare poison led to drug addiction, dysfunction and death. That is what Peter experienced and has driven him and other commentators to document, analyse and explain this seeming paradox.

“In my time with the Wik people up to 2001, out of a population of less than 1000, eight people known to me had died by their own hand, two of them women, six of them men. Five of them were young people. From the same community in the same period, thirteen people known to me had been victims of homicide, eight of them women, five of them men. Twelve others had committed homicide, nine of them men and three of them women. Most of these, also, were young people, and most of the homicides occurred in the home settlement of both assailant and victim. Of the eight spousal murders in this list, seven involved a man killing his female partner, only one a woman killing her husband. In almost all cases, assailants and victims were relatives whose families had been linked to each other for generations. They were my relative, too, in a non biological 'tribal' sense ...” (p. 2)

Remote communities are shattered. If you google Aurukun, Doomadgee, Koyanyama, Elcho Island or Wadeye and poke around you will see what I mean.

Those who have avoided foetal alcohol syndrome or arrested development through malnutrition still end up less educated (illiterate) and less socially mobile (emotionally immobile) than their grandparents who were raised on the mission. Paternalistic benevolence was more successful than self development.

Various authors, indigenous and non indigenous, have blown the whistle on this devastating reality. The cat is out of the bag but nevertheless still remains invisible to many at the official government level where policy is made.

After reviewing the evidence Peter asserts that the value and power of traditional indigenous culture as a recovery agent is over rated. He agrees with Noel Pearson that economic relations are a more effective method of driving change. (65)

For me, this is the main take away message. White people have to take indigenous culture on board – for reasons of respect and communication – but that needs to be done without romanticising or simply ignoring negative features of indigenous culture. Possibly, Martin Nakata's Cultural Interface approach provides a starting point for a solution here. Still not sure.

So, what are the problems with traditional indigenous culture which make it ineffective as a change agent? This is best summarised on page 85. I will inadequately summarise the summary.

There may be many aspect of our modern society that we dislike and we grumble about those. But we don't leave our modern society to go back to nature and live as a “noble savage” except in our green tinted glasses fantasy dreams. As we acquire real knowledge of the real conditions of traditional indigenous culture we learn about:

• power stuctures which promote dependency
• family loyalities, kinship stuctures, at the expense of the common good
• traditional medicine blocking modern medicine
• minimal hygiene / demand sharing / rejection of accumulation in keeping with a semi nomadic economy
• violence as the preferred way of resolving conflict arising from a stateless society
• fatalistic outlook, that tragedy is normal and the order of things is meant to be

As Peter points out the negative aspects of traditional indigenous culture have been exposed by many authors. He lists 12 such authors on page 72.

How then do we explain the silence, when in fact there isn't silence? The silence operates at many levels, some relatively benign, some well intentioned but blinkered, some self serving, malicious and incredibly harmful.

I loved and have been influenced by “Why Warriors Lie Down and Die” (2000). Richard Trudgen has spent many years in Arnhem Land learning from, working with and helping the Yolngu . He explains how communication between Yolngu and Balanda (whites) breaks down in three related areas (1) Language (2) World view (3) Culture and calls for more understanding and empathy about this. But his analysis is flawed in that he doesn't outline any negative aspects of Yolngu culture as part of the problem. For instance, demand pressure from relatives is a key reason why indigenous people might fail when placed in responsible positions of handling store goods or cash (refer Sutton, pp. 80-81)

We live in a modern society which provides us with a certain living standard, values and expectations. Those values include a duty of care to the vulnerable: infants, the elderly, the mentally handicapped. There is a general social acceptance that our failure with the "indigenous problem" is not acceptable. We are dealing with a hard problem, many have tried and failed, many suggestions have been tried and have worked with varying degrees of success. Programs are tried, they fail and then their failure is not analysed. But even in the rare instances when the analysis is done the problems are so embedded and chronic that their solution is not clear.

Some elements which contribute to the persistence silence include:

• White guilt / spectre of the past where indigenous people were described as primitive / avoid blaming the victim
• Euphemism in descriptive language of government reports
• Tragedy tolerance of the insiders
• Political correctness

Read Peter's book for more detail.

Is there a way forward without going backward to the bad old days?

Related:

• dysfunctional community syndrome in remote Queensland
• summary of Peter Sutton's chapter on cultural relativism
• percentage and Yolngu: a life and death issue (a limited discussion of Richard Trudgen's book)
• Martin Nakata's Disciplining the Savages Savaging the Disciplines (brief review of Martin Nakata's book)

Notes:
I've ordered a copy of Caging the Rainbow by Francesca Merlan. Peter's comments about it on p. 69 suggested to me that it anticipated Martin Nakata's Cultural Interface analysis.

remote hopelessness

I watched Remote Hope on 4 Corners. In some respects it was quite a good expose about how bad things have become but it still didn't drill down deep enough into the fundamental basis of the problem or interview those who have thought deeply about it and grappled with a solution.

Tony Abbott ("lifestyle choices") and Colin Barnett ("put yourself in my shoes") have both shot themselves in the foot and are easy targets. But what is needed is not a free kick of unpopular politicians but an honest description of the problem and some deep thought about a solution.

Some good people have thought deeply about the issue of remote indigenous community dysfunction: Peter Sutton, Noel Pearson, Marcia Langton, Bess Price and Stephanie Jarret, to name a few. They are the whistle blowers and they blew the whistle a long time ago. Noel Pearson's essay Our Right to Take Responsibility was delivered in 2000. Why didn't the ABC interview these people?

I thought some of the people interviewed were very good in describing the problem:

• the Broome mayor, Graeme Campbell 
• John Hammond, the Perth Lawyer, who supported some shut downs of dysfunctional communities 
• Anthony Watson who plans to camp on Cable Beach, inconveniencing tourists, and bringing a real problem to the attention of Australians 
• Karl O'Callaghan, the WA police commissioner, was good, pointing out facts (sex abuse 10 times higher than anywhere else), supporting closures of dysfunctional communities and even providing an emotional response, that he couldn't sleep at night, whether rhetorical or not, it was correct 
• Susan Murphy right at the end, we can't keep giving handouts 

I thought Tammy Solonec of Amnesty International was terrible, talking about human rights in the abstract, not based on any analysis of reality.

The best attempt at a solution so far is that proposed by Noel Pearson and his Family Responsibility Commission. See the article by Catherine Ford about that, Great Expectations: Inside Noel Pearson's social experiment.

Admittedly nothing about this issue is going to easy. But the problem came about due to bad policy that superficially looked like humane policy. Equal wages led to indigenous unemployment. Welfare led to alcohol and drug abuse and child abuse. The bad policy has dragged on for many years after it was pointed out. Nevertheless, bad policy can be corrected. Of course, it is too late for many but correction of bad policy offers real hope which can grow over time for some.

Kerry O'Brien said right at the end that there was no easy solution but still the puzzle is why they didn't put Noel Pearson on who has come up with a hard solution. I think the ABC is more interested in easy hits on Abbott and Barnett than proposing a real solution. See my earlier article, The closure of remote indigenous communities, for links to the ideas of Marcia Langton and Stephanie Jarret on this issue.

summary of Peter Sutton's chapter on cultural relativism

This focuses on the legal aspects of strong cultural relativism. I hope to do another piece on the identity factors, based on an essay by Noel Pearson.

Peter Sutton. Ch 6 Customs Not in Common. In: The Politics of Suffering (2009)

The strong form of cultural relativism fails because aboriginal law is not compatible with white law. The details, once known, offend our civilised sensibilities – sexual assaults on women, child mutilation and violent punishment for crimes

A robust cultural relativism requires overcoming feelings of repugnance of the practices of the other culture, or, acceptance of a sanitised or politically correct version. Sanitised versions are easily lampooned.

If you are an urban liberal living a comfortable distance from experiencing the repugnant reality of some aspects of remote indigenous lifestyle then it is possible to maintain a rose coloured idealism and see legal pluralism as an act of decolonisation. This is non indigenous self-redemptive feel-goodism.

Historically cultural relativism played a positive role in combatting ideas or ideologies such as social Darwinism, eugenics and racial / ethnic prejudice.

Today, the strong form of cultural relativism is in decline since those ideologies just listed are in decline.

Some people still promote aboriginal law as politically restorative but those views do not hold up well under close examination.

In the past some aspects of indigenous law were tolerated and supervised by police, eg. public leg spearings. But eventually other aspects such as carnal knowledge / sexual assault on underage promised wives by aboriginal men, or, subincision of males who were still legally children, were not tolerated. This led to charges of inconsistency by aboriginals.

As the intercultural / interethic shared social space increases between whites and aboriginals then tolerance of a dual legal system decreases.

Until the 1950s a blind eye was turned to black on black homicide provided traditional weapons were used (strangulation, clubbing, spearing). It was regarded as “blackfella business”. This broke down in the 1934 case of the killing of Kai-Umen because he was shot with a rifle and the bullet was still in his head.

Most modern people see some rights as universal rights and not just whitefella rights, eg. the equality of women, the protection of children

One aspect of the indigenous legal process is to restore equilibrium amongst the kinship group. For example, rather than hold a murderer responsible it may be blamed on a spirit inflicted by another tribe. This is different from our modern law with its focus on perpetrator and victim. There may be consequences of not allowing the indigenous process to happen, leading to further violence down the track.

However, the reasons for revisiting customary law as a political restorative are usually bad reasons or originate from ignorance:

• persistent idealism
• grasping at straws to solve high levels of disorder and crime in indigenous communities
• building the aboriginal industry
• legal cleanskins who are reinventing the wheel

As integration continues, which is irreversible in practice, then homogenisation increases and the hold of traditional law recedes. In modern times elders who have the knowledge of traditional law may not practice it themselves and so their advice is suspect.

The voice and language of strong cultural relativism is moralistic focusing on issues such as the evils of colonialism, Western power, racism of whites, police violence, the oppression of minorities. There is often little investigation of the on the ground realities. Also these critiques of western culture are not matched by critiques of indigenous culture.

Support for cultural relativism ebbs and flows with the NIMBY factor. When factors of repugnance, personal safety and destruction of the social fabric come to the fore then support for strong cultural relativism declines.

Peter Sutton's 2009 book launch

"There are simplistic, bourgeois ideas about what causes rage in such (remote) communities - simplistic, naive, self-serving, urban, bourgeois view(s).. The jig is up."

I'd forgotten how brilliant Peter Sutton's The Politics of Suffering book launch was. Marcia Langton is asking the questions and Peter Sutton providing the answers.

 If you haven't seen it go here. Both Part 1 and 2 of the video are excellent.

 I have read this book and have been rereading it recently. It is a hard book to read and I did stop reading in some places (first time around) because it discouraged me that anything could be achieved. Noel Pearson leaves out some of the more difficult issues and so is more encouraging. In the end I picked it up again and kept reading. Truth is a difficult word of course but insofar as there is such a thing as truth this book speaks it.

the betrayal of Papunya by Russell Skelton

The betrayal was the major lapse in oversight that occurred at Papunya - and a host of other communities - like a ghastly genetic flaw. Until the emergency intervention, self management, as Elliot McAdam has so pertinently noted, came down to leaving a bag of money at the front gate with the disclaimer attached: your community, your problem; you fix it
King Brown Country: The Betrayal of Papunya

Sit down money (welfare) plus drugs plus the kinship system together is a recipe for disaster. This has been well documented by other authors: Noel Pearson: Up From the Mission, Peter Sutton: The Politics of Suffering

Russell Skelton's book does present a compelling case for the failure of the so called "self determination" policies initiated by Gough Whitlam.

If any young or old idealist was thinking of going remote to work in indigenous communities to "make a difference" then, after reading this book, they would think again. There is no point going there to make a difference if all the cards are stacked in such a way that you won't make a difference. If it's too hard to make a difference then most will decide not to take the first step. That is why a clear analysis of the problems developed into a comprehensive plan is important.

That is why Noel Pearson is so important. He has thought through all the issues comprehensively and has gone a long way to putting in place a range of policies which do have a fighting chance of making a difference.

Some reviewers regard this book as unbalanced. See this review by Dr Lawrence Bamblett. Yet no one is seriously challenging the amazing information within it. It's a matter of interpretation. Should we try to remain positive or optimistic rather than face some awful facts? Or the real question is: How do we remain positive and optimistic once we become aware of these awful facts? This is why you should read this book.

freedom is good, control is bad; control is good, freedom is bad

The Vietnam war protest movement taught me that rebellion was good and government bad, that freedom was good and control was bad.

In applying this principle to education, the methodology of behaviourism seemed to symbolise the main thing that was wrong with School and Education. That it was BORING.

edit (23/4):
Behaviourism and / or rote learning was a sophisticated form of child abuse, a denial of freedom.


The Vietnam war had a racist element to it. Moreover racism at home directed at indigenous Australians took the form of either genocide or assimilation. Assimilation was equivalent to cultural death, a denial of indigenous culture.
/edit

Seymour Papert taught me that computers could be used in hands on personal ways that empowered naive users in deep ways, that personal learning was good and rote was bad (1).

But the experience working in a disadvantaged school taught me that behaviourist learning had its place in education too (2).

Noel Pearson taught me that the most difficult problem of social inequality, that of indigenous Australians, could be analysed and progress made (3).

Peter Sutton taught me that the indigenous question still remained an incredibly difficult problem (4).

Zig Engelmann taught me how to scale learning using behaviourist educational design (direct instruction) (5)

Hence, I have gone full cycle, returning to my starting point and seeing the same issues with new eyes. That freedom can be dangerously misguided and control can be good.

 reference:
(1) Papert's ideas: Mainly from Mindstorms
(2) The place of behaviourism in schools
(3) Radical Hope: Education and Equality in Australia
(4) The Politics of Suffering
(5) Zigsite

Sutton reviews Pearson

Here I Stand
An excellent review by Peter Sutton of Noel Pearson's book "Up from the Mission". Actually it is more a review of Pearson, the person, his gifts and incredible contribution to Australia.