Clearly, I’m way late on the bandwagon of discussing indigenous issues; I tend to start fifty articles at once and every so often one pops up after the item of interest has come and gone. However, it is still an issue of interest worthy of discussion at this point.
This is a big issue. Child abuse is widely recognised as being more common in Aboriginal Communities than in the wider Australian community. It’s easy to simply go ‘bloody Abos’ and think no more of it. But let’s face it – we’ve been doing that for long enough – what we need is an understanding, and a movement in the right direction.
Pain?
There is nothing to suggest that, pre-invasion, there was a high incidence of child abuse by Indigenous Australians. This suggests that something relating to changes Aboriginal Australians experienced post European settlement, was responsible for this present situation.
For me, the obvious answer is pain; pain that is not dealt with is simply mutated and passed on to others. We inflict or misery and agony onto others, sometimes with intention, sometimes not. Child abuse is, as has been acknowledged, often part of a miserable and desperate cycle of pain and through various means, we have certainly seen that the Aboriginal Australians have seen enough pain for the opening of many unfortunate cycles.
Connected to the culture?
Another thing that has come into discussion is the point that Australian Aboriginal culture, within certain groups, has an established system of ‘promised marriage’ where a girl may be promised to a man as early as pre-birth. This had, for some time been able to be used as a defense for the legal challenge of statutory rape. However this defense has since been legally disqualified in the Northern Territory, to varying support and disdain. In opposition of this move, Galarrwuy Yunipingu has made the following comments.
If there’s legislation, don’t put a marriage system into child abuse.
At all, because a marriage system involves a lot of people.
The whole community might be responsible.
The whole tribe is responsible for growing up a young woman into a marriageable stage where a man sleeps with that young woman.
Ultimately we have to recognise our duty as a society to protect children. Developing a greater understanding about the circumstances and reasons for which this appears a greater issue in Aboriginal communities may lend optimism to the idea that things are moving in the right direction.
