The great taboo

John Hirst

Louis Nowra
Bad Dreaming: Aboriginal Men's Violence against Women and Children
Pluto Press, $17.95 pb, 102pp, 9780980292404

There has been a concerted effort in the academy over three decades to argue that Aboriginal women were not oppressed by their men. How many times have I read of the autonomy women secured by being the chief food-gatherers, both for themselves and the men? On this basis the peasants in medieval Europe were the equal of their lords. Louis Nowra’s essay on the violence of Aboriginal men to their women is not the first to break the taboo over this subject; it may be, however, that his gruesome accounts will send the taboo into its death throes. He begins with an Aboriginal man boasting of rape, and proceeds through gang rape to sticks being used to enlarge vaginas.
Nowra does more than detail the current situation. He asks himself the question whether the violence of today was part of traditional culture or is some corruption of it. In this, he is not expert, but an amateur has to step forward since on such a topic no insight will come from the academy, where the desire to serve what is taken to be the Aboriginal cause trumps truth-telling. To establish that violence towards women was endemic in traditional culture, he cites the reports of explorers and first settlers. He takes these at face value, which would be regarded as an appalling blunder in the academy, but much to be preferred to its attempt to argue these reports away by referring to the prejudice or blindness of the observers. No doubt gender relations were complex in Aboriginal society, as in all others, and the early observers missed much, but on the subject of who was hitting whom, and how often, they can be taken to be reliable.

Nowra does not trace in detail the effects on Aboriginal society of the European invasion and all the subsequent disruptions, so his conclusion about the present situation has to be taken on trust:

He is quite sure that the abuse of children had no part in traditional society, for all observers speak of children being revered if not indulged. The exception was the promising of young girls to old men as brides and their claim on them as soon as they reached puberty.

Homosexuality in Aboriginal society is rarely discussed. On this subject, Nowra relies on the classical anthropologists. He quotes Radcliffe Brown on the practices in the southern part of the Kimberley in Western Australia:

From these origins comes the present situation of Aboriginal boys being ten times more likely than others to be sexually assaulted.

Nowra is not judgmental about traditional culture, and explains its practices as an effect of the constraints and imperatives of the hunter–gatherer life. This is somewhat at odds with his broader point about misogyny, which he sees as the default position of mankind: ‘Men dislike their dependency on women, are repulsed by menstruation, and are both afraid of and fascinated by women’s sexual allure and its power over them.’ Though he does not say so, he is close to the old view that the degree of civilisation of a people can be measured by how the men treat women.
As the essay proceeds, Nowra makes recommendations about how to overcome male violence in Aboriginal society. It is useful to bring them together:

All these recommendations in law and public policy could be followed. Some of them might be less necessary if the others were implemented. Let us assume that most of the men and young people will have to leave remote settlements and townships if they are to get real jobs and end their reliance on welfare. (In my view, the plans to run enterprises in remote locations have scant chance of success and, if successful, would only employ a minority of the people.) Aboriginal land would remain as a homeland, but most of the people connected to it would not live on it permanently. They would return to it regularly. Ceremony, art and dance could continue. The settlements would be quieter places, with less money and grog; women with young children and old people would make up most of the permanent inhabitants. Then there would be less need for social workers, women’s shelters and police, and no need to overturn the right of Aborigines to prohibit outsiders from visiting.
Everyone acknowledges that most remote communities are dysfunctional. Those who envisage that all the present inhabitants will remain there recommend a programme to deal with every social problem: more police to stop violence; more nurses to improve health; more social workers to stop kids from petrol-sniffing; more assistance to start local enterprises. None of these programmes can produce what a healthy community needs: self-control, order and good morale. The longer the list of programmes, the more it presages failure. The alternative is to acknowledge that most of the remote communities can only become decent places if large numbers of their inhabitants make their living elsewhere.

One of Nowra’s recommendations is directed to Aborigines themselves:

So: bring back the missionaries, who worked exactly along these lines? Nowra does not say how this transformation is to be effected. I assume that even if Aborigines were to read this excellent pamphlet in Pluto Press’s Australia Now series, it would not be enough to make them change their attitudes. But there may be a slow, indirect way to this transformation if European society in Australia changes its attitude to Aboriginal society. Every aspect of Aboriginal society that Nowra takes to be dysfunctional has been supported, encouraged and protected by those Europeans who deal with Aborigines in some official capacity. A Toyota driven till it seizes up will be replaced; the trashing of a house does not prevent the occupant from gaining another one; children skipping school will not be pursued; the rules for the dole are relaxed so that it can be paid in perpetuity. The oppression of the Aborigines has been replaced by the indulgence of the Aborigines – and understandably so. But the consequences of the indulgence are now evident, and unless European society changes its attitude, no real change will occur in Aboriginal society. Public policy is now moving in the direction of tough love; Nowra’s other recommendations indicate that he too wants this. As Aborigines necessarily accommodate themselves to a new régime, there will be cultural change, but without the renunciations and affirmations that Nowra is looking for.

The policy of encouraging Aborigines to remain on their ancestral lands was prompted in part by the respect and admiration for the traditional culture. When all the men are drunk and the kids are sniffing petrol, traditional culture is not going to be passed on. Traditional culture now cannot be protected from outside influences. As Nowra says, Aborigines are eager devourers of Western culture: drugs, television, pornography, alcohol, junk food, cars and rap music. When the education of Aboriginal children in remote communities resumes, it should be an education into the whole of Western culture, so that they learn of its riches as well as consuming its junk, which would also assist in the transformations Nowra wishes for.

John Hirst's most recent book is Sense and Nonsense in Australian History (2006).

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