Australian Aborigines, especially those in the north of the country, do not receive much attention outside Australia. But in many ways their situation is appalling and their future perilous.
Today there are about 225,000 people with Aboriginal status, and most of full Aboriginal descent are in the Northern Territory and the north of Queensland and Western Australia. A few, largely in the Northern Territory, continue to practice a quasi-traditional lifestyle of hunting and gathering, but even there the impact of ‘Western Civilisation’ is considerable. In most places, traditional ways of economy have been totally abandoned and people either work on cattle stations or subsist on Government ‘handouts’. Unbelievably Aborigines were not given full citizenship status until 1967, but this was a mixed blessing when it came. The higher rates of pay due to citizens led owners of cattle stations to cut their work force, thus making more people dependent upon unemployment benefits! Today the vast majority of northern Aborigines are effectively unemployed. But Government unemployment benefits are quite generous. What do you do when you have nothing to do but are given substantial amounts of money? In any society surely the answer is drink, smoke and gamble, and the daily lives of thousands of northern Aborigines are spent doing little else. Drunkenness abounds, especially in the towns, and not only afflicts men but also women, teenagers and even children. Health is inevitably poor, notwithstanding the provision of some excellent medical and health services, and mortality rates are up to four times higher than among white Australians. Stress related diseases, especially cardio-vascular disease, are particularly prevalent, and coronary heart disease is a frequent cause of death among even young adults.
What is being done? An increasing number of Aboriginal councils outside the towns are putting a ban on alcohol in their communities. This is varyingly successful, but some settlements are truly ‘dry’. However, people tend to travel a great deal and frequently visit towns where most drink heavily again. Indeed, one of the purposes of gambling is to acquire sufficient money to go to town!
But alcoholism is not a primary cause, more a symptom of society in disarray. Old traditional values and belief systems have been undermined by contact with a white society from which Aboriginals are fundamentally both alienated and excluded. Integration, even if it were desirable, seems unlikely. Some attempts are being made to return to former ways with groups leaving the towns to set up their own communities. But economic dependence largely remains, and though a few Aborigines have bought or set up their own cattle stations, this can never meet the needs of the many. There is nothing else. It is therefore hard to see a future beyond a purposeless existence on the fringe of main Australian society and solely dependent on that society’s wealth for economic ‘hand-outs’. Perhaps the establishment of self-determining homelands would help. Certainly the future of neighbouring Papua New Guineans, despite their terrible current social problems, seems much brighter, because of their rights of self-determination. But Aboriginal land rights have been a major political issue in Australia for many years, and it is hard to imagine much greater autonomy being ever granted.
The long term issue may be purely hypothetical anyway. There is a view widely held in Aboriginal health services that if, or perhaps one should say when, AIDS enters Northern Australia, it will spread like wildfire among the Aborigines, because of their mobility and sexual practices and behaviour. And then some of the nicest people on earth will have gone forever!
Geoffrey Harrison