Aboriginal tweet heard across Oz

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This article was published 06/05/2011 (5447 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

ST GEORGE, Queensland — Australia’s rising indigenous middle class and its relevance to the ongoing tragedy of the indigenous underclass has been thrown into sharp relief in the past few weeks by a simple “tweet” from an aboriginal leader.

Larissa Behrendt, an aboriginal woman, successful author, holder of Harvard Law School doctorate and inhabitant of inner-city Sydney, embodies the sort of success most mainstream Australians could never hope to attain.

During a television show featuring Bess Price, whose hometown is the depressed and often violent settlement of Yuendumu in central Australia, Behrendt tweeted that watching bestiality was preferable to watching Price.

In context, it wasn’t as bad as it sounds. Behrendt had been watching the series Deadwood, which featured a sex-with-horse segment.

Foolishly, in retrospect, she twittered what may have seemed in the privacy of her lounge room a throwaway attempt at off-colour humour:

“I watched a show where a guy had sex with a horse and I’m sure it was less offensive than Bess Price.”

The lame joke backfired. Indigenous academic Marcia Langton wrote in The Australian that she had never seen such a public lack of respect shown by a younger aboriginal woman to an older aboriginal woman.

Questions were raised not only about Behrendt’s character but also about the appropriateness of her recent appointment to head a federal review of indigenous higher education to ensure equal access to life opportunities.

Behrendt apologized to Price, saying she took full responsibility for her carelessness.

In a media environment giving stories a 48-hour lifespan, the controversy has already subsided. But that single tweet has given licence to a robust public discussion about a topic normally confined to more subtle language.

“Bush” Aborigines in Australia are likely to be the victim of cruel poverty and ignorance. In some instances, in isolated out stations, young men and women can barely communicate in the English language.

Those raised in more mainstream environments enjoying all the benefits that a First World country offers often are the ones who emerge as their political representatives.

The subtext of the Behrendt tweet was a sharp divergence in views inside aboriginal politics on how best to deal with the marginalization of aboriginal people in Australia.

Price, who has close connections to Yuendumu, strongly supports a federal government intervention which allows officials to take control of welfare payments to aboriginal people.

What happens is welfare officials monitor welfare payments and if people are spending too much on booze and not rents, they simply take control of the payments and ensure rent is paid first.

They can also link the payments to school attendance, making sure parents have sent the kids to school before handing over the welfare money.

It seems a bit tough, but many believe it is working.

Behrendt is more aligned with the view of the nation’s progressive left, which believes such moves represent a return to a form of segregation and the dark days of paternalism.

The last 10 years have seen a rapid rise of what might loosely be termed the political right in Australia’s approach to indigenous affairs.

Spearheaded by indigenous lawyer Noel Pearson and aided and strongly backed by influential figures such as the conservative federal Opposition leader Tony Abbott, the consensus is that half a century of left-wing ideology has failed hopelessly.

An emphasis on land rights, the recognition of traditional languages and the right to pursue cultural imperatives such as hunting and ceremony, all underwritten by a stream of government welfare, have created generations of marginalized people.

Many rural Aborigines have no hope of getting a reasonable paying job. Getting their hands on the real levers of economic power is for most a never-to-be-realized dream.

Pearson believes indigenous people have every right to speak traditional languages and live lives respecting their ancient culture.

But he also believes that equally important is their right to quality education and economic self-reliance.

In a recent column in The Australian, Pearson pointed out that Behrendt is a product of an education system which creates a pathway to self empowerment and material success

So, it should be said, is Pearson, who attended a quality school in Brisbane and went on to study law. But Pearson does not step back from that vast gulf separating him from the very people he seeks to assist. “Am I perpetuating victimhood?” he asked in his weekly column in The Australian.

He questioned why, unlike many other indigenous people, he felt it necessary to hold down a job, own a home, “have sensible numbers of relatives visit me at any one time and so on.” But if Pearson doubted his life’s mission, assurance was provided by Price herself. In the fallout from the Behrendt tweet, Price made a simple observation of Behrendt’s admirable achievements and worldly success. “I want what she has for my children.”

 

Michael Madigan is the Winnipeg Free Press correspondent in Australia. He writes about politics for the Brisbane-based Courier Mail.