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The Forum > Article Comments > Are Indigenous perpetrators homogeneous? > Comments

Are Indigenous perpetrators homogeneous? : Comments

By Stephen Hagan, published 4/6/2009

It was never a cultural trait to wilfully violate the innocence of our children or brutalise our women, and it never will be.

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I never thought that I would say this, but I appreciate Stephen Hagan's personal candour and the article in general.
Posted by Leigh, Thursday, 4 June 2009 11:00:08 AM
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Both indigenous and non-indigenous perpetrators of violence against women and their children are homogeneous to the extent they seek power and control over their victims.

"It was never a cultural trait to wilfully violate the innocence of our children or brutalise our women" because women were empowered with women's business, the traditional version of women's legislatures and a women's jurisidiction at law.

Violence against women and their children was introduced into Australia by Europeans who prohibited women's business, and still do.

To "seriously consider giving up alcohol and/or drugs and/or gambling and/or their insane jealousy conspiracy theories" should reduce the incidence of violence against women and their children to the levels currently found in non-indigenous communities where one in four women is raped or sexually assaulted by the age of 18 [http://2mf.net/news158.htm ], but does not address the cause.

Violence against all Australian women and children can be eliminated with reform to the Constitution of Australia to provide for law enacted by agreement between women's legislatures and men's legislatures presided over by elders accompanied by courts of women's and men's jurisdiction.
[http://2mf.net/power_and_control:_rape_and_the_Constitution.htm ]
Posted by whistler, Thursday, 4 June 2009 11:21:46 AM
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Whistler "Violence against women and their children was introduced into Australia by Europeans who prohibited women's business"

This comment is ridiculous. You are suggesting that there was no violence against women in Australia prior to European colonization. Do you have any proof?
Posted by Stezza, Thursday, 4 June 2009 1:21:45 PM
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Stephen,
I commend you an this article and I hope other aboriginal families take your lead in protecting their kids from abuse. I fully support the NT intervention solely for the reason of protacting the women and kids. In fact I would advocate the restrictions on welfare payments to all parents where kids are not properly cared for. The incidence is a dammed discrace for all humanity.

Stezza,
Whistler cannot provide proof for his outrageous claim. He is a nutter who will use anything to push his ridiculous idea of having a seperate male and female legislature. Stupidity in the extreme.
Posted by Banjo, Thursday, 4 June 2009 1:40:03 PM
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Thank you Stephen for your honesty and willingness to deny yourself some things in order to prevent others from stumbling. Violence in the white community has and will continue to increase against women and children and the institution of marriage is devalued and mocked. Add pornography, drugs and alchohol and you are left with a perverted society where decency is hard to find. Recent football scandals are only the tip of the iceberg. Some of my closest friends are aboriginal and I long for the day when many of their family members follow your example.

I have critizised your views in the past but see from this article that you long for the best outcome for your people. Both black and white have the same desires and dreams for their kids. Child abuse and violence against woman destroy these desires.
Posted by runner, Thursday, 4 June 2009 2:16:40 PM
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You seem to be asking for the readers opinion .
I don't know exactly what the rules were regarding age of consent , if I remember correctly you would be incorrect about the girl and the adult , that he had been "Promised the Girl" is not relevant ,I'm not sure whether the girls willingness was a issue either thats what happened and where tribal law was respected ,or is respected today ; probably still happens . If this is the case I would be very reticent to proclaim guilt ; however intoxication might find me ? I think the situation changes when the Girl menstruates , I am sure thats right if my memory's right about 55 yrs hence.

I think Frank Hardy covered some of your 'Questions' in either
"Poor Fellow My Country" or "Capricornia" ; even if they don't supply answers you will appreciate the illustration of life in those times .
My apologies if I have misunderstood your expectations .
Posted by ShazBaz001, Thursday, 4 June 2009 5:50:58 PM
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Stezza, Banjo ... thank you for your irreverent comments.

can either of you nominate one instance of violence against women and their children in the multi-millennia record of indigenous Australian mythology prior to European occupation?

your evidence please.
Posted by whistler, Thursday, 4 June 2009 7:08:15 PM
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Whistler
Archaeological evidence, especially from around Lake Mungo, provides much evidence of high levels of violence against Aboriginal women over millenia, in the form of very high levels of fractures indicative of violent attack or treatment compared to those displayed on male skeletons.

Reliable journal accounts from the beginning of British settlement, especially at Port Jackson, confirm this, as does an examination of traditional family/clan behaviour and law enforcement techniques in traditionally-oriented Indigenous groups throughout Australia both at first contact and later.

Women had varying degrees of autonomous domains in many of these socities, but remained subservient to the patriarchal hierarchies, power structures and customs, and were often subject to the impacts of unmediated physical force. People lived in small bands, so where dysfunctional individuals exploited their physical strength, there was quite often very little recourse for anyone against this.

Violence, sorcery and exile were just about the only methods of sanction against anti-social, rebellious or dissenting behaviour available to the dominant individuals and groups in these Aboriginal socitieties, just as was the case throughout most of the rest of the world in pre-agrarian & pre-industrial times, because resources for more egalitarian norms, less sexist civic structures and non-violent sanctions simply weren't available on any significant level.
Dan
Posted by Dan Fitzpatrick, Thursday, 4 June 2009 10:28:11 PM
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“It was never a cultural trait to wilfully violate the innocence of our children or brutalise our women, and it never will be.”

Stephen
I don’t think that’s true, for a number of reasons.

1. Women
Last week I was reading a book on the traditional Aborigines of the Monaro. The author, an observer in the 1840s, says it is common for a woman to have five or six wounds in the head, put there by her husband with a tomahawk.

Tim Flannery’s two books ‘The Birth of Sydney’ and Explorers’ also give excerpts of 18th and 19th century records that it was obviously common for men to discipline their wives with a nulla-nulla.

Of course it wasn’t only Aboriginal society. In the same period, the English common law produced the ‘rule of thumb’, that a man can hit his wife with a stick as thick as a man’s thumb. There can be no doubt that before that the common law sanctioned rougher than that.

2. Children
I remember reading a book of black and white photographs of outback Aboriginal life, taken in the 1920s and 1930s. One of them had the caption ‘A young bride and her friend on the way to the waterhole’. This young woman was a girl with no breasts. I don’t mean small breasts. I mean no breasts, perhaps 10 to 12.

I read an anthropology in which the author compared information on marriage in traditional societies from all over Australia. The commonest age for women to marry was around puberty. And they would be given in marriage by certain older male relations, often to men who were themselves in their forties.

At common law the age of consent was not fixed, and it recognized marriages younger than nine. The age of consent in many states of the USA was ten as late as the second half of the 19th century. Mohammed of Islam married Aisha when she was six, and consummated it when she was nine.
Posted by Peter Hume, Thursday, 4 June 2009 11:07:28 PM
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Of course women being considered marriageable, starting their sex life at or around puberty, and being given in marriage by their older male relatives to men who are older, is also commonly seen as a standard in many more human societies in history than the current legal standard of an age of consent starting four years after the average age at puberty.

It is a simple fact of history that these cultural traits were widespread in human societies generally.
Posted by Peter Hume, Thursday, 4 June 2009 11:13:16 PM
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Firstly let me say Peter Hume that the so-called 'rule of thumb' you refer to:
"the English common law produced the ‘rule of thumb’, that a man can hit his wife with a stick as thick as a man’s thumb."
is a myth.
There are ample comments on this myth online and a quick google search will provide many.
There never was such a law but certainly prior to the mid-17th century or so some level of domestic chastisement does not appear to be a concern for the courts.
However, onto the article itself, I think that the author is to be applauded for entrenching personal responsibility as the bedrock of his family. I hopethat this is sufficient to protect him and his and that his children learn this lesson well. It would also be a good start for many of the writer's people and might just start to make the appreciable gains in standard of living that we have all hoped to see for so long.
Race is a peculiar tool - it can serve as both a sword and a shield. But it is best used not to bludgeon or protect but to enhance - bring all that you have which is good, leave behind all that you have that is not, and we will all be the richer for it.
Posted by J S Mill, Friday, 5 June 2009 2:25:43 PM
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Dan Fitzpatrick, to which anthropological studies do you refer?

The breaking of bones during funeral ceremonies and the outcome of women's business in periods of marginal subsistance do not constitute 'violence against Aboriginal women over millenia'.

Which Aborigines interpret their tradition as you claim?

Or is your claim, with respect, ethnocentric European speculation?

Moreover, a glance at early European depictions of Australian fauna is sufficient to indicate there are no reliable journal accounts of Aboriginal social culture from the beginning of British settlement .

Traditional communites utilised violence mostly in male initiation ceremonies to prevent anti-social behaviour under laws agreed between women's and men's legislatures presided over by elders accompanied by dispute resolution conducted in women's and men's jurisdictions, all of which has modern equivalence.

Women's business and men's business prevents dysfunctional individuals from exploiting their physical strength and provides law making and its interpretation from which recourse is comprehensive.

Neither have 'egalitarian norms, less sexist civic structures and non-violent sanctions' prevented modern Australian women and their children from experiencing horrific levels of violence.

*

Peter Hume, with respect, tomahawks, 'excerpts of 18th and 19th century records'?

The Common Law has always sanctioned violence against women and their children as it does in Australia today, because there has never been a women's jurisdiction to disempower men who seek to control women.

Moreover, projecting misogynist European models of marriage on indigenous communities is a nonsense.

Girls were not 'given in marriage by certain older male relations', what girls did was the responsibility of senior women and still is.

'It is a simple fact of history' European ethnographies are contaminated to the extent their value lies entirely with the prejudice of the observer.
Posted by whistler, Friday, 5 June 2009 7:19:56 PM
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How refreshing to read an article which calls on indigenous people to take responsibility for their own behaviour.
And then along came Whistler,
keeper of the myth of the Noble Savage forever tainted by exposure to the evil European.
You wouldn't be a racist would you Whistler?
Surely the most heinous, and possibly even the majority of, violence committed against children would be by mothers killing their children in their wombs.
Posted by KMB, Friday, 5 June 2009 9:34:48 PM
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Whistler seems to reckon that any violence to women in traditional Aboriginal societies could only have been administered by women. This absurd view would demand that we believe that the violent outcomes of women's business were ten times as damaging as those of men's.

It is a simple fact of history that Whistler's ethnographies are contaminated to the extent their value lies entirely with the prejudice of the observer
Posted by Dan Fitzpatrick, Friday, 5 June 2009 11:09:27 PM
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Dan Fitzpatrick, again, which study or studies are you citing which claim violent outcomes against women were ten times as damaging as those against men.

Please state your source, otherwise it pretty much looks like your nose is growing longer with every contribution you make to this thread.

Banjo, runner, J S Mill and KMB, are you perfectly happy with Stephen's integration solution in which, like modern Australian women, one in two Aboriginal women will be physically assaulted at some point in their lives, one in three will be sexually assaulted, and by the time an Aboriginal girl turns 18 there will be a one in four chance she will have experienced rape or another form of sexual assault?

As has been put in context, men in prison have a one in four chance of being sexually assaulted, suggesting that when it comes to rape, what Stephen and all of you appear to want young Aboriginal women to endure in their everyday lives would for men be considered prison conditions? http://2mf.net/news158.htm

Or would you prefer to eliminate male violence against women and their children altogether with provision for a women's legislature?
Posted by whistler, Saturday, 6 June 2009 5:04:10 AM
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I can only gather by your ignorance Whistler that you are either unable to face the truth that child abuse and violence against woman in aboriginal communites is much higher than in the rest of society or you are simply deceived. No amount of violence against men, women or children is acceptable. No doubt with the increase in porn (pervert industry) sexual violence has and will continue to increase. The only fools who argue against this are the same people who argued that smoking dope was harmless. Countless suicides and mental health issues later does not stop them from burying their heads in the sand.
Posted by runner, Saturday, 6 June 2009 10:35:47 AM
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runner, I have never argued child abuse and violence against woman in communities recovering from genocide is lower than in the rest of society.

I live in one of these communities.

what I argue is that assimilation into the grubby, misogynist, rape-fest comprising modern Australia is not a solution.

the provision of a women's legislature is.
Posted by whistler, Saturday, 6 June 2009 11:52:50 PM
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Stephen

Your candour and courage are to be commended. Sadly, though, none of us is surprised. The entire country has known about what is going on within aboriginal culture for years, but the (now beaten) political correctness kept us all silent co-conspirators.

But even more tragic Stephen, is that you do not even realise that as a matter of fact in 2009, sexual abuse of women and minors IS a, if not THE, defining trait of modern aboriginal culture.

I know of no other race or culture that so vigilantly keeps its own kind away from their homes.

Tragically, you are in denial.
Posted by Jock Walker, Sunday, 7 June 2009 7:03:59 PM
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And it is nothing new, especially violence against women. All the 18th and early 19th century records are filled with the most vicious violence by aboriginal men against their women and their readiness to lend them or prostitute them.
Posted by Jock Walker, Sunday, 7 June 2009 7:13:13 PM
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yes Jock Walker, genocide is a dreadful experience.
Posted by whistler, Sunday, 7 June 2009 10:53:01 PM
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Whistler,
<<Violence against women and their children was introduced into Australia by Europeans >>
<<The Common Law has always sanctioned violence against women and their children as it does in Australia today>>
<<misogynist European models of marriage>>
<<all of you appear to want young Aboriginal women to endure in their everyday lives would for men be considered prison conditions?>>
<<assimilation into the grubby, misogynist, rape-fest comprising modern Australia is not a solution.>>
You're sounding well balanced there;
like you've got a chip on each shoulder.
Posted by KMB, Monday, 8 June 2009 8:46:35 PM
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thanks KMB

two fights or reconciliation?

the first quote should refer to 'rape', thank you Dan Fitzpatrick.

'Noble Savage', earlier ... hmmmm

Lester Hiatt (1986:10)

"The disciplines imposed by Pintupi men are sustained and severe. They include tooth evulsion, nose piercing, circumcision, subincision, fire ordeals, and the removal of fingernails. Novices may be beaten for too much talking, inattention, or insolence. They may be awakened at any hour of the night and chased with bullroarers. From time to time they stand in a line with heads bowed, signifying subordination, and during ritual performances senior men shout orders and threaten them with violence."

the Pintupi live in Central Australia.
Posted by whistler, Monday, 8 June 2009 10:38:29 PM
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Are "Indigenous" perpetrators homgeneous? Certainly not. There are fantastic Aboriginal men, young and old out there in the wide brown land, and in the cities and the places in between. While I understand exactly what Stephen says about saying "no" to family and mates and wanting to make his home a safe place for his family and especially his children, not all Aboriginal folk follow the patterns of behaviour he described. I agree that domestic violence is not a cultural trait and has been used as some type of sick justification for the behaviours of the perpetrators - men and women. And I am pleased to see that Stephen refers to Sonia Smallacombe's definition of violence and that this definition includes female perpetrators. Yes, not all women are the cuddly caring earth mothers that society would like to think they are. And don't be fooled by "black sisterhood" either - the worst perpetrators of lateral violence and bullying are Aboriginal women - and the higher up the corporate or professional ladder they are the nastier they get. I hope Stephen gets around to initiating a discussion about the practice of this other type of violence soon as its practice is widespread - in fact endemic in many so-called "indigenous" work places and organisations.

I must add here for ShazBaz to note that it was Xavier Herbert and not Frank Hardy that wrote Poor Fellow My Country & Capricornia.
Posted by cici, Tuesday, 9 June 2009 6:15:42 PM
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Stephen and contributors may find the following article published in today's Australian interesting.

Violence the way of traditional life
Stephanie Jarrett | June 10, 2009

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25611112-25192,00.html
Posted by blairbar, Wednesday, 10 June 2009 8:25:14 AM
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thanks blairbar,
i read Stephanie's doctoral extract and wondered which School of Anthropology would countenance such breathtaking ethnocentricity.

a quick search revealed the Department of Politics, The University of Adelaide.

the extract is junk science,
the use of a discipline unfamiliar to the author to evidence an agenda.

that's probably what departments of politics do best.

it works better the other way round,
where scholars familiar with a discipline contribute to politics.

once the ethnocentricity is removed the discussion becomes perfectly clear.

this discussion is about whether to apply violence to prevent anti-social behaviour or to apply violence to deal with the consequences of social-behaviour.

prevention or harm minimisation.

a couple of basics.

to remove a person from society to a gaol is an act of extreme violence.
Stephanie's proposal that 'in contemporary liberal democracies, violence is forbidden' is a nonsense.

secondly,
women are perfectly capable of inflicting violence upon themselves.
Stephanie presents no evidence of rape or sexual violence against women and their children.
Posted by whistler, Wednesday, 10 June 2009 6:26:19 PM
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A courageous article, Stephan Hagen, kudos.
I wonder what the average life expectancy of Aboriginals was, before the European invasion? For that matter, I doubt that European life expectancies would have been terribly high at that time, either. In a world where old age was around 40 years, 'childhood' must also have been an abbreviated state.
I seem to recall that Romeo and Juliette were considered to be only about 12, were they not?
I was I think about 17, when Gough dropped the voting age to 18. The justice of that move was that 18 year olds were being drafted, and couldn't vote against the draft. Now I have children of my own, I don't think they should be allowed to vote -or have children- until they are 25. At least.
In a world where the life expectancy is reaching 80, is an extended childhood such a bad thing?
Posted by Grim, Wednesday, 10 June 2009 8:15:30 PM
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