JCU: Social Sciences Competition Prize

09/09/2020

Third Prize piece titled: "The Benefit of Sociology in Improving Outcomes for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples"

The link to the announcement on their Facebook page is here:

https://www.facebook.com/jcuCASE/photos/a.1002684936515793/3186405804810351/ 

Here is the piece:

Colonisation in Australia began in 1788, but has never ended. From the beginning, violence was the approach to quelling the culture and lifestyle of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, and this has continued to this day. Despite the notion that colonisation is over, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples continue to be discriminated against, with hundred of deaths in custody since the 1990s, the over policing of Aboriginal communities, consistently lower health and education outcomes compared to non-Indigenous Australians, and the failure of the government to even recognise them as the true owners and custodians of so called 'Australia', among many other things. One of the key factors contributing to these failures is the deliberate neglect of using culturally relative approaches to any of the issues experienced by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders.


Evan Willis' 'Sociological Imagination' is an approach that means societal issues are intentionally looked at by removing biases and approaching them from a different perspective, and a key part of this approach is the use of cultural relativism. Cultural relativism involves attempting to understand a culture by looking at it according to its own standards, by removing the biases of the analyser of the culture and instead looking at it from the perspective of the members of the culture. This is in opposition to ethnocentrism, which is the practice of evaluating other cultures on the basis of one's own culture's superiority. This means that cultural relativism is a crucial part of ensuring that any actions or solutions for various groups of people are made looking at that culture from its own view, especially for minority groups, of whom decisions made impacting them are from bodies not within that group, such as Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. It is clear, that time and time again, that the Australian government, despite claiming to be beyond colonialism and working for reconciliation, continues to make decisions for these communities without input from them, and without a culturally relative view. It is an incredibly abhorrent consistency of the government to continue implementing harmful policy against Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, noting the declaration of Terra Nullius, suppression policies, denying citizenship and the right to vote, cruel exemption certificates, the Stolen Generation, as well as the over policing of Indigenous communities. It is completely unacceptable that this process for exploiting and harming Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples is commonplace and seen as best practice for policy makers in Australia.


A contemporary example of this failure to use the sociological imagination in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples affairs would be the 2007 Northern Territory Intervention which was a $587 million dollar legislation package that made dramatic changes aimed at specific Indigenous communities in the NT. Without warning, and importantly no consultation with Aboriginal peoples, "the federal government moved swiftly to seize control of many aspects of the daily lives of residents in 73 targeted remote communities. It implemented coercive measures that would have been unthinkable in non-Indigenous communities". Whilst there have been an incredibly high number of valid criticisms of this specific intervention, what is consistent in all of them is the lack of acknowledgement of the Aboriginal people in the targeted communities as being the primary stakeholders in this situation. Not only that, but furthermore, as they were ignored as a priority in the eventual approach, this meant that they were consistently dehumanised throughout the process and the precedent that this ignorance of Aboriginal values, inputs and perspectives on this, as well as the pervasive racism and othering defined the approach. In addition to this, whilst the claims that prompted this intervention supposedly were for the betterment of these communities, despite no community members suggesting this, a journalist characterises the intervention by saying "there is no doubt that the Northern Territory Intervention has been the most damaging policy inflicted on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people[s] since the policies of the Stolen Generation. The evidence is in the increase in suicide, violence and alcohol rage after the intervention" This proves that not only was this intervention ethnocentric in nature, as it placed judgements and reponses onto these remote communities on the basis of white governance values, as well as the fact that their attempt was furthermore racist, problematic, and notably, unsuccessful. Noting that there were significantly worse outcomes for these communities post the intervention proves that this was a failure in it being ethnocentric, as well as even if that ethnocentrism was acceptable, which it is not, it still wasn't even successful at improving the quality of life in these communities.


There are a number of reasons why this intervention, as well as the cruel number of other atrocities committed against Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples are so deplorable. One thing consistent in opposition to these atrocities can suggest that if the government was able to approach the community as a whole as well as specific situations and outcomes with the sociological imagination, and cultural relativism, instead of the incessant racial violence and discrimination justified by the ethnocentrism of Australian white governance, then extreme injustices and the continuity of colonisation would not have continued. By allowing government to not be accountable to the actual needs of the actual community, as an example having an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander affairs minister not be required to be from that group, there will continue to be decisions made that inflict violence and trauma upon First Nations Australians is unacceptable. If sociology and the approaches of cultural relativism, accountability and the sociological imagination were commonplace in education and governance, the outcomes for this community would be substantially better and would truly be steps in the direction of reconciliation and reparations.


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This essay was written by a non-Indigenous person on the lands of the Wurundjeri Woiwurrung and Boon Wurrung peoples of the Kulin Nation and pays respect to their elders, past, present and emerging. It acknowledges that the land was violently stolen, and that sovereignty was never ceded. This land always was and always will be Aboriginal land.


is hay © All rights reserved 2021

I respectfully acknowledge the traditional owners and custodians of the land I live work and breathe on,
the Wurundjeri Woiwurrung people of the Kulin Nation. I pay my respects to their
elders, past, present and emerging. This land was violently stolen, sovereignty was never ceded. This
always was, and always will be Aboriginal land. 
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