220 years of saving the children

Professor Larissa Behrendt sums up the essence of the general Indigenous critique when she writes: “The discourse of a national emergency also works very effectively to ground the crisis firmly in the present, severing the issue of child sexual abuse from any consideration of the quagmire of past governmental neglect.”

In addition to these national leaders, several interesting chapters (written by Aboriginal people about their local community in the Northern Territory) are included in the volume.

Coercive reconciliation accepts that child abuse, overcrowding, lack of services, alcohol misuse, domestic violence and many other problems of which Indigenous Australians are all too painfully aware, are problems on which the government should focus urgent attention. It is not a book which excuses abusive behavior, whether that abuse is perpetrated by one Indigenous person on another, or by government on the Indigenous community. On the contrary, it is a plea for far more assistance to be provided in the form of improved health, community and police services, decent jobs, better housing and revitalised economic development  - all of which should proceed on the basis of negotiation with Indigenous people in their communities.

Coercive reconciliation is a book which should be read now if people want to get an understanding of the situation confronting the Territory’s Indigenous population and an insight into the destructiveness of the Howard Government’s intervention in Aboriginal communities. And it should be read again in 18 months time to see if the Rudd Government has been able to move on from the glib Pearson/Brough clichés about “passive welfare” and the “real economy” and start to come to terms with the pressing social, housing, health and employment needs confronting remote Indigenous Australia and to start building on Indigenous enterprise and capacities.

Unlike many texts dealing with Indigenous issues, Coercive reconciliation provides an optimistic account of what Aboriginal people have achieved and can achieve in the future. It has several chapters which describe the successes of the wildlife ranger and health promotion programs.

Other chapters are more conceptual. Riamond Gaita points out “If there is no need for an apology, then there is no need for reconciliation, which is a form of political atonement … The real target of ‘practical reconciliation’ was not impractical, symbolic gestures: it was reconciliation itself.”

John Hinkson asserts that in settler-Indigenous relations, there is a denial of a shared humanity. He makes the point that “‘Innocent’ intentions have often justified what have later come to be seen as abhorrent institutional practices”, such as separating Indigenous children from their communities. Hinkson describes this process as “naïve unknowing” but accepts that others may interpret the lack of acknowledgement as having a more malign character.

An early chapter in Coercive reconciliation surprised me. It was written by a retired Chief of the Australian Army, Lieutenant-General John Sanderson, and seriously questions the way the army was used in the early stages of the intervention. The book concludes with an interesting chapter in which Jon Altman describes the existing economic system as it operates on many Indigenous communities in the Northern Territory with its mixture of government funding and Aboriginal entrepreneurial successes such as in art, tourism or seafood enterprises. He points to some interesting options for the future.

So, though you might never, never go, if you really want to know, then cough-up your $27.50 - this book is worth owning.