This is what happens when you’re told you’re nobody

THE long history of Australia’s indigenous people being told they’re nothing continued this week. And here is where it ultimately ends, writes Paul Toohey.

Two girls fight in Tennant Creek. (Pic: YouTube)

WANT to see something truly off?

Go to YouTube and punch in “Tennant Creek fights”. Watch the videos of Aboriginal kids, most of them girls, bashing each other up in broad daylight in the mid-central Northern Territory town.

We talk a lot about indigenous recognition. Too much. While our leaders stall, look at the kind of recognition these children seek: to be online heroes dishing out a vicious flogging.

In the immediate instance, this is the result of poor leadership from their parents and relatives. These kids live in filthy homes and spend nights on the streets so they don’t have to lay down in squalor or listen to the adults brawling.

Detached from conventional concepts of personal worth, they see advancement as belting another person who dwells in the same lowly stratum.

These feelings become amplified when you see yourself as a nobody — a position reinforced by Malcolm Turnbull’s refusal to give indigenous people a non-binding voice in the parliament.

It was no big deal. It wasn’t a “third-chamber of parliament”. It was merely the latest version of an opportunity to get moving on things we should’ve sorted long ago.

On Turnbull’s watch, indigenous recognition has fallen off the radar. (Pic: AAP)

What about the Recognise movement to insert some harmless recognition into the Constitution’s preamble? Where’s that gone? Why is it so hard?

It is obvious, now, that it is pointless for Aborigines to expect anything from government in terms of recognition.

Yet Turnbull should be aware that his inaction may invite consequences: namely, that Aborigines withdraw further, from education and opportunity.

That has already been happening for a long time, especially in remote northern communities. Low school attendances are a sign of this withdrawal.

When the national leader not only refuses a temperate proposal but offers no alternative in its place, it must have a further dispiriting effect.

The government ought to be cautious of where this could take them. Further disengagement by indigenous people is one obvious destination. Unrest is another.

Treaties, preambles, parliamentary voices: whatever the idea, they have all retired hurt.

Instead, governments let the indigenous contribution to both codes of football be the statement on indigenous advancement they will not make.

Not every kid plays football. Some smash the hell out of each other in Tennant Creek.