Still blaming the victim

The Age - June 22, 2006

Indigenous self-determination didn't fail. It wasn't tried, writes Mick Dodson.

IT'S NOT easy to separate some reasonable messages Tony Abbott was trying to deliver yesterday without getting caught up in the "put-down" language adopted in his speech to the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare.

Nobody disputes that addressing the 17-year gap in life expectancy between indigenous and non-indigenous children is a national priority. And if Abbott is suggesting that governments should assume full responsibility for delivering essential services to Aboriginal Australians, just like other Australians, I fully agree with that too.

But why does he wrap that up in language about paternalism rather than describing it as a basic responsibility of government to the citizens of Maningrida, just as it is to the citizens of Manly?

The Health Minister's comments perpetuate a number of dangerous myths about indigenous Australia that are being promoted in slightly different ways by governments at all levels.

The first myth is that self-determination has failed.

An approach that has never been tested cannot be deemed a failure. What we've had, at best, in Australia is a kind of self-administration, where Aboriginal communities have been responsible for delivering the basic services Abbott refers to, like garbage collection.

There is a lot of misinformation perpetuated about what self-determination means. At its core, it involves people making decisions about policies and programs that directly affect their lives, and having those decisions respected and supported.

The administrative responsibilities in the hands of indigenous communities have not been self-determined, but imposed, by organisations including the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission. ATSIC was not an indigenous creation, nor did it have genuine decision-making power.

Allocation of the vast majority of the indigenous affairs budget has always been determined by senior bureaucrats and ministers.

The second myth is that lack of government spending to improve the lives of indigenous Australians is not a fundamental problem. Abbott boasts that spending on an Aboriginal person is 18 per cent higher than on non-indigenous Australians, while elsewhere in the speech he notes that health and safety outcomes for our people are several hundred per cent worse.

Associated with this myth is another one that has it that while indigenous people are without capacity, government capacity to deliver better outcomes is limitless and universal. Abbott refers in his speech to serious difficulties stemming from the present whole-of-government trials in which government dysfunction is aggravating Aboriginal suffering.

It's an important development that governments will finally admit to failure,

but when it comes to talking about what happens next, they can't seem to move beyond generalisations of Aboriginal incompetence.

Abbott looks to paternalism for the answers to violence and other problems as though we have ever moved beyond this horribly discredited approach.

Decades of research involving indigenous peoples in the United States and Canada makes it plain that communities facing serious, long-term disadvantage can and will take responsibility for sorting out problems if they are in a position to make decisions that will be respected and supported. Preliminary results from Reconciliation Australia's own indigenous community governance project in Australia are uncovering evidence about the ingredients of success.

Instead of continually promoting the view that Aboriginal people are hopeless and incapable, it's time we shaped solutions around indigenous success. There is plenty of it. This week, I am travelling around Australia judging the finalists in this year's Indigenous Governance Awards, a scheme run in partnership between Reconciliation Australia and BHP Billiton.

Located in cities, regional centres and remote communities, these organisations are an inspiration and I have to ask myself why I haven't read about every one of them instead of the constant barrage of bad news presented as the total picture of indigenous Australia.

Indigenous organisations that do get into trouble don't need a non-indigenous accountant from East Melbourne to be sent in as administrator. Organisations are closely regulated and, if necessary, administrators are appointed by the government-funded Office of the Registrar of Aboriginal Corporations.

In saying that, "Australians' sense of guilt about the past and naive idealisation of communal life may now be the biggest single obstacle to the betterment of Aboriginal people," the minister is using the language of ideology, not of evidence.

Surely, we have moved beyond the old standby of blaming the victim and can finally start being honest about our shared responsibility for failure and our joint capacity for success. Everyone agrees we need a radical shift but what the Health Minister proposes is far from that.

We won't get that shift without building trust and respect between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians that can deliver improvements and gradually move us closer towards reconciliation.

Professor Mick Dodson is director of the National Centre for Indigenous Studies at the ANU and a director of Reconciliation Australia.

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