We can’t continue to accept excuses for horrendous domestic violence, writes MATT CUNNINGHAM

IF WE continue to give indigenous men permission to bash their wives because they are victims of colonisation, we are not helping anyone, writes MATT CUNNINGHAM

If we continue to give indigenous men permission to bash their wives because they are victims of colonisation, we are not helping anyone, writes MATT CUNNINGHAM

IN NOVEMBER 2016, three brave Aboriginal women stood up at Canberra’s National Press Club and revealed in graphic detail the horror of domestic violence suffered by indigenous women and children.

Marcia Langton, Jacinta Price and Josephine Cashman spoke not just of atrocious acts of violence but also of the culture of silence and secrecy that surrounds them.

“In remote communities, traditional culture is shrouded in secrecy, which allows perpetrators to control their victims,” Price said.

“It is a national shame that in our recent history, Aboriginal male perpetrators have got away with their crimes based on the argument that they were operating within their culture’s confines.

Other excuses include that Aboriginal men themselves are victims of colonisation and dispossession so therefore we must empathise with them and excuse their violent behaviour.”

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Canberra’s press gallery sat in stunned silence as Price detailed how, as a nine-year-old girl, she’d witnessed a toddler being pulled up by the hair by his father and thrown around the room, before he threatened to kill the boy if his wife continued to disobey him.

The story was confronting but its telling to a national audience also gave hope that it might be the catalyst for change.

That as a nation we might finally take notice of the crisis that sees Aboriginal women more than 34 times more likely to be hospitalised as a result of domestic violence than non-indigenous women.

That we might finally stop making excuses for all men who assault women and ask them to take responsibility for their actions.

Sadly, this week we discovered that change is still a long way away.

Nothing illustrates this problem better than a resource put out on Wednesday by Our Watch, an organisation established to prevent violence against women and funded by both the Australian and Northern Territory Governments.

This organisation, which in every other instance asks men to take responsibility for their actions, to address “toxic masculinity” and to stop making excuses for men who bash their women, appears to have taken the opposite approach when the victim is an Aboriginal woman.

Its resource, titled Changing the Picture, lists three main drivers of violence against Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women: the ongoing impacts of colonisation for indigenous people, the ongoing impacts of colonisation for non-indigenous people and society, and gendered factors.

“This includes both gender and inequality in a general sense, and specific gendered drivers of violence that are a consequence of colonisation.”

It says “colonisation sets the underlying context” for high rates of violence against Aboriginal women.

I won’t bother debunking this claim here, but perhaps it could be put to the same fact checkers who felt the need to question Langton’s claim that Aboriginal women were 34-80 times more likely to be victims of domestic violence. (True, in case you were wondering.)

Not surprisingly, Langton, Cashman and Price have all criticised the document.

Langton told The Australian some of the report’s conclusions were an “outcome of white feminists ignoring the voices of Aboriginal women.”

Price was more direct. “Our Watch is helping to kill our women and children,” she said.

Cashman’s response helped explain why. She said research had consistently shown the only way male offenders could change was if they decided to take personal responsibility for their actions.

“Otherwise they just paint themselves as the victims, which completely ignores the voice of women,” she said. “Male offenders need to say, ‘I punched that woman in the face, not colonisation’.”

Our Watch says it consulted with 400 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women and men while conducting its research, and claims to have sought a “diverse” range of views. Not diverse enough, it would seem, to include three of the most prominent and courageous voices on this issue.

Perhaps Our Watch knew what it didn’t want to hear.

The resource also made the dubious claim that violence is not part of traditional Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander cultures.

It’s true that many aspects of traditional culture were respectful and supportive of women, but others were not, and the hangover of that is still felt by many Aboriginal women today.

How else do explain Coroner Greg Cavanagh’s 2016 findings into the brutal deaths of two women in Alice Springs?

Despite a decade of abuse, both had been unwilling to co-operate with police.

This was primarily due to pressure from their own families, who, rather than supporting the women, would continue to abuse them for “failing” their husbands.

Perhaps instead of funding resources like the one put out by Our Watch, our governments should direct more funding to the work of Charlie King. For more than a decade King’s No More campaign has been asking men to stand up and take responsibility for their actions. He says it’s led to a reduction in family violence of up to 70 per cent in some communities. I’ve seen its success with my own eyes.

The first time I set foot inside a prison was at Berrimah in March 1999.

My Waratahs football teammate Kevin Baxter was doing a two-week stint for assaulting his partner.

He’d be released just in time to star in the Tahs’ 1999 Premiership, but his life would soon spiral out of control, dogged by alcohol abuse and family violence that would see him spend more time behind the wire at Berrimah. I’d long thought Kevvie was beyond redemption.

But with Charlie’s help, he turned his life around.

He no longer drinks and is employed on the Tiwi Islands helping other men take responsibility and make changes to their lives.

One of the proudest days of Kevvie’s life was when he stood beside Charlie outside Parliament House in Canberra, arm-in-arm with politicians from all sides of politics, and urged others to say No More.

As Charlie wrote back in 2016; “Confronting Aboriginal men in a collective way about their behaviour and ingrained attitudes towards women is not easy, but it must happen — and it must happen urgently. The solution requires Aboriginal people being given the mandate and responsibility to take leadership in this area.”

Instead, they’ve been given an excuse to continue the horrendous violence that Aboriginal women have suffered for too long.

■ MATT CUNNINGHAM won an Our Watch Award in 2017 for his coverage of domestic violence suffered by Aboriginal women in the Northern Territory