Mal Brough's Aboriginal violence angle continues

[Pa-uul]

August 07, 2006

Ignorance won't make abuse go away

Representatives from the indigenous Ngaanyatjarra Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara Women's Council break their silence over domestic violence in remote communities.

 

THE NPY Women's Council is a central Australian tri-state cross-border Anangu (Aboriginal) women's organisation that has been going for 26 years. We work in the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara lands in South Australia, the Ngaanyatjarra lands in Western Australia and in southern communities of the Northern Territory: Imanpa, Docker River and Aputula. This is where we come from.

 

Mantatjara Wilson, who talked on the ABC's Lateline in June about violence and child sexual abuse, is one of the women who started this organisation. She has lived in the Mutitjulu (NT), Kalka and Ernabella (SA) area her whole life, moving between these communities.

 

We set up NPY many years ago because governments and others were listening only to the men. Nobody heard our voices. Sometimes this still happens.

 

NPY runs a lot of services in this very big region: domestic violence counselling, youth programs, child nutrition, and looking after old people and people with disabilities. A lot of our work is with both men and women, young and old, but we help many, many women who get bashed up or treated roughly and children who are abused or not looked after properly. Our domestic violence service has been going for 12 years.

 

In our communities there is a lot of petrol sniffing, illegal grog, people using marijuana and trafficking drugs and a lot of violence. There are a lot of people dying because of the violence, grog, petrol and marijuana, mental health problems and suicide.

 

There are children and young people who wander around hungry and neglected, with no one to look after them.

 

There are some men who will find weak young women and girls and give them petrol, grog or marijuana to get them to have sex with them.

 

Many of our communities have no police close by, so it is very hard to catch people who are doing the wrong thing and causing trouble. Our communities are very small and it is very hard for us to speak up about these problems because sometimes it is our family members or countrymen who are involved. Sometimes the men who are powerful on community councils are the ones doing all the talking and sometimes they are involved in making the problems. We also know that this happens in other parts of Australia, and all over the world, and that we are not the only ones with problems of domestic violence and child abuse.

 

Sometimes these people who make big trouble are born in other places or have grown up in other places, moved in to our communities, taken over jobs and taken a lot of power in the community. Often it is these people who organise local people to sell drugs or grog, and they make big money from this. This happens in many communities in our region.

 

Now we see what happens when Mantatjara Wilson and other people who know what has been going on, including our staff, speak up after years of seeing these things happening. We are very upset that after many years of worrying about these things and seeing no action, their story gets pushed away or turned into another story. Mantatjara Wilson and the other people who spoke on Lateline did not make up those stories. They are not liars or mad.

 

Our women and young people are human beings. They should be able to grow up healthy and strong and not be sold or given petrol and drugs, or be assaulted or used by adults. That is the real, true issue.

 

This should not be a political game for newspaper reporters and politicians who shut their eyes and ears to our worries and our voices.

 

When they do this, they are twisting the story. They are really supporting the ones who do the wrong thing, and pushing us and our ideas and problems away so no one hears us - again.

 

Muyuru Burton is chairwoman, Margaret Smith is vice-chairwoman and Yanyi Bandicha is director of the Ngaanyatjarra Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara Women's Council (Aboriginal Corporation).

Author: The NPY Women's Council

Date: August 07, 2006

Source: The Australian

Copyright: Copyright: News Limited © 2006

 

Now the Aboriginal people themselves are saying it. I wonder if she's payed-off? I mean, I wonder how much she got payed for each occurrence of the word marijuana? Still, it is being smoked there and so it does contribute in some way to the general environment but, the conditions of these Aboriginal settlements must be appalling. I mean to live from one pay packet to the next be on grog and weed every day and then turn to pedophilia there must be just a hopeless pit of despair and a circle of violence and lawlessness. On the dole, no jobs, not enough police with no proper land or houses of their own and apparently no future. I can agree that marijuana can be used as an enticement to lure young women to perform inappropriate sexual acts. So what if lots of people like marijuana; it’s valuable stuff.

 

The brain damage that petrol sniffing can cause is one thing. The woman is right in this regard but it isn’t the marijuana, specifically, that’s doing the damage. It’s the alcohol and tobacco use by the pregnant mothers that’s the biggest scourge. They are the biggest two threats to the health of the unborn child out of the commonly used mind-altering substances. Marijuana is just not as dangerous in this regard in my view. So, it’s funny how our parent’s generation made the first two substances legal and not marijuana. Welcome to the real danger of alcohol and tobacco drug legalisation: damaged Aboriginal babies.

 

The Australian editorship has been anti-cannabis for some time. They have previously claimed, a couple of years ago, that cannabis would be as deleterious as alcohol on Aboriginal communities in far North Queensland when they knocked the implementation of the alcohol-free policies there because "marijuana will just replace it". What idiots. What misinformed snobs. They're all in it together I reckon. It's a conspiracy.

 

By the way, a legalised hemp industry could help Aborigines grow fields of irrigated hemp in their desert land grants.

[pipeman]

the problem is drugs do destroy communities, but not all drugs are equally damaging. To group mj with petrol sniffing and drinking is obviously wrong as they are completely different types of drugs both in terms of health risks and inducing violence.

 

I think an aboriginal community with mj as its main drug of choice would be far better than the same community that drinks metho and sniffs petrol.

[WantDaChronic]

the main problems with those communities is that the residents have no pride in their town and nothing to do all day i know i would have a hard time being happy about where i was living if i lived in a 3 bedroom house with 10 or more people living in it, petrol sniffing and other drug taking being out in the open on the streets, people getting raped and killed all the time, etc.

 

imo what needs to be done is to get government funding for building materials + some highly experienced construction workers that can teach the locals how to build houses. doing so would bring the community together as they would be building their own new houses, it would bring the 10+ people living in each home down to a respectable level and the most important thing that would happen imo is keeping the drug abusers doing something usefull and constructive with their time instead of relying on their habbit

 

not only would the community take pride in itself, the amount of people of drugs would decrease as they will have learnt they can live without them, the living conditions would greatly improve, the amount of fights that break out would be far less due to less people living in cramped conditions, etc. all the government needs to do then is give companies tax deductions for moving into their communities + incentives for skilled workers to move out into the country and you'd set that aboriginal community up forever

[stonedstump]

I could not agree more wdc.

 

That's what I think too.

[didj]

Pot and violence eh

 

"I have never seen two people on pot get in a fight because it is fucking impossible. 'Hey, buddy!' 'Hey, what?' End of argument." - Bill Hicks

 

 

More mad quotes at http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Bill_Hicks.

[Budman2012]

As a common rule ... I try not to listen to any type of Authority ...

There is good and bad in all states of being ...

 

I want to keep caring , but it is hard to be motivated on BS alone ...

 

 

Dumbad ...

[mr_moppet]

Having worked as a barman up in Fitzroy crossing in northen WA I have seen the problems first hand and have gotten an understanding of the problem that most probably don't get. I saw the worst of what happens while there including one bashing that resulted in the death of one man. coupled with that was spousal abuse, child neglect and general all round violence. But are they to blame really, not in this instance.

So who is? To understand this you have to look at how thw money works there. The township is owned by the local tribes and the 2 pubs in town are half owned by them but the cycle is intensified by this. Here is how it worked. The pubs themselves would probably fail without the locals abusing alcohol so hard. the pub profits get split by the tribes and they get that dividend as well as govt assistance which all then goes back to the pub. for everydollar they spend they get about 40c back from it which they then top up to a 1$ again to spend at thye pub. It is the other half of the equation that is winning here not them. While I was a barman I was told that not understanding someone speak didn't matter as they were hard to understand at the best of times. I was also told that the hotel used mainly by the locals had the highest sales of emu export in the country and that we were to discourage the sale of all other beer to keep it that way. It seemed to me that the brewer and the other partner had just as much to do with the problem as anyone else.

So what about the supposed mj problem. I never saw or smoked with the locals but I can tell you that virtually the entire white community partook of the herb and I found most of them to be dickheads. I even got bashed by 2 of them pretty badly while there and watched as the locals dispensed their own brand of justice (I was their barman after all).

So has it changed? While I was there I met a few people in the local community trying hard for change to their people and was buoyed gby my conversations with them. In the time since then I have kept an eye out for any word of the state of things there and it seems that they are changing. More of the money is going back into the community and not the pub and the local people were trying to establish what WDC was talking about as they see that as a major issue up there, As a proud people they want some say in the way they live instead of having things foisted upon them. The town has also started a rehabilitation program as well I beleive to allow thopse who want to break their addictions the chance to do so.

 

There is hope if we worked with them and for them not outside them

[Ms Green]

the problem is drugs do destroy communities, but not all drugs are equally damaging. To group mj with petrol sniffing and drinking is obviously wrong as they are completely different types of drugs both in terms of health risks and inducing violence.

 

I think an aboriginal community with mj as its main drug of choice would be far better than the same community that drinks metho and sniffs petrol.

 

I agree pipeman especially with the community being on cannabis is a far better off choice then petrol or alcohol there both detremental.I went to the Nimbin Mardi Grass where there was an Aboriginal lady(can't remember her name sorry due to my slack ness) spokes person said that they would rather see them consuming cannabis rather then gettin involved in petrol and alcohol - I thought that was very interesting and knowing a few aboriginal people most of them smoke and not drink because they rather be in control of themselves and not bloody gettin into fights or trashing the house ( thats what they've said to me personally).