Issy,

What are you disputing, the estimate of non-combatants killed, is the 1.2 million an incorrect number? First hand accounts of murders by Australian and British solderers during the Korean War was reported in 'The Australian' newspaper in 2011. I take it, its your opinion those claims are erroneous. Given there is ample evidences of war crimes being committed by all sides in all wars, the balance of probability would favour the claims to be factual. Agree?

Steele,
But they didn’t have such an appallingly high murder rate nor do their descendents.

Goebbeols,
Still just opinions, when are you going to give a reference?

Well it seems the aboriginal apologists have gone from trying to defend pre-1788 Australia as an utopian paradise for women to just saying..."hey look over there".

I fully agree that 19th century western society wasn't ideal and was tough on women (and men).

When CURRENT society tries to address DV in its mainstream community, it doesn't have the slightest compunction about recalling past attitudes to women to 'explain' current attitudes and then calling for a change to those attitudes.

But when we see vastly greater CURRENT violence in the aboriginal community, the last thing the apologist community wants to do is call attention to past cultural attitudes as a means to address CURRENT cultural attitudes.

For these people, aboriginal women being hospitalised at rates 35 times greater than the rest of society is something those women will just have to accept if the alternative is pointing out that stone age aboriginal society wasn't utopia for their womenfolk.

Dear mhaze,

Your fixation on this being a cultural issue needing addressing by Aborigines themselves is the problem.

No one is denying a serious problem exists. Yet you are determined not to look at contributing factors which don't fit your agenda.

Substance abuse is a feature of low-socioeconomic communities and a high factor in domestic violence incidents.

Ability/desire to use police to intervene is crucial in protecting families. Where trust of police and courts is low and the risk of losing children to the system is disproportionately high then domestic violence is allowed to flourish.

Much of this is laid out in the AHRC report "Ending Family Violence and Abuse in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Families".

You might find this instructive too.

"This factor is often overlooked by current policies and other intervention strategies aimed at addressing violence against women which are primarily guided and directed by a liberal feminist framework. The major criticism of western feminist based intervention strategies for dealing with violence against Indigenous women is that they have evolved from the very structures that served to subordinate and oppress Indigenous peoples. Moreover they embody white middle class women’s experiences. Indigenous women, however:

do not have a purely gendered experience of violence that renders them powerless. They, along with their men, experienced and continue to experience, the racist violence of the State. Aboriginal women do not share a common experience of sexism and patriarchal oppression, which binds them with non-Aboriginal women in a unified struggle...

The notion of patriarchy is foreign to traditional Aboriginal communities, which were relatively separate but equal in terms of male/female roles. While Aboriginal societies were gendered, women were not victims of men’s power, but assertively affirmed their place and role in the community. According to Berndt & Berndt (1964) this provided both independence yet an essential interdependence between gender groups."

mhaze,

According to Peter O'Brien writing for the Spectator:

There are three broad groups of Indigenous people, each
quite different.

There is the most populous - the urban Aboriginals who live
in large cities and towns. In the main they are virtually
indistinguishable from anyone else. They're educated and
employed. They don't live in enclaves, instead occupying
the same spaces as most Australians and other residents.

We have the groups that live in smaller towns. They socialize
among themselves. They do suffer a degree of disadvantage
and sometimes racist antipathy. They live in proper houses,
their kids go to school and they are generally healthy.
Much of their disadvantage is attributed to their low
socio-economic status not race.

It's the remote and or tribal Aboriginals living in isolated
communities in out back towns where tribalism is a major
inhibitor of progress and the "Gap" is more pronounced.
They live in communities with high level family connections
and a low standard of education. In many of these communities
disease, alcoholism and both domestic and sexual abuse are rife.

mhaze,

As stated earlier - violence against Aboriginal women in
Australia incorporates an array of factors - and the
great variety of factors complicates the analysis of
the issues because it involves an inter-play
of these factors. However all societal and economics
indicators suggest that Aborigines are the most
disadvantaged Australians.