There has been silence around the extent of violence against women

2 Responses to “Child abuse and indigenous Australia - part 2” Open Integral

ray harris Says: June 22nd, 2007 at 8:46 pm I’m beginning to think that cultural and moral relativism is a misnomer, it is really cultural and moral ’selectivism’, where relativism is used to justify an ideological prejudice by permitting the ’selection’ of good and bad. For example there is a modern revisionist Aboriginal ideology that ignores the cruelty of traditional Aboriginal culture.

ray harris Says: June 22nd, 2007 at 10:32 pm Should also add that part of the problem is violence against women. The reality is quite horrendous and again it is a fact of traditional society that men used violence to control women and that wife beating was acceptable. This core belief is made worse through alcohol abuse and the disempowerment of men (who then enter a cycle of rage and depression and then take it out on women).

There has been silence around the extent of violence against women. It is epidemic and serious. A few years ago some brave Aboriginal women broke the code of silence. Of course they faced condmenation from activists who wanted to maintain the idea that all was good.

The main thrust of this position was to support Aboriginal self-determination by creating a myth of a competent community. Recent events have shattered that myth and some (not all) communities have been shown to have failed self-determination. Left to govern themselves ’some’ communities have allowed serious abuse to occur unchecked.

Australia has just undergone a period of self-examination over the controversy of the ’stolen generation’. Under paternalistic and racist rule Aboriginal children (mostly half-caste) were taken from their mothers and raised in orphanages or adopted out. The program was instituted under the belief that Aborigines would not look after their children. This latest report would seem to vindicate that concern. Some Aboriginal communities are not looking after their children and some are suggesting that some children be removed as a matter of urgency.