UN Indigenous experts are visiting Australia while a new report warns of the risk of a new stolen generation.
Any rate above zero is devastating unless there is some very good reason to take a child from their parent.
“One out of every two Aboriginal children [in South Australia] were subject to at least one child protection notification in 2020-21, while for non-Aboriginal children, these rates decreased to just one in every 12 children,” the report found.
Sounds like a horrible community. Are we supposed to believe this is all happening for no reason?
Do you think the reason could be… racism?
Historical genocide and racism that has lead to intense trauma, substance abuse and poverty? Absolutely.
Racism from the people issuing protection orders to try and keep children safe? Ehhh maybe a little but my gut says the majority of protection orders are issued with valid reason.
It does not help at all that Aboriginal Australian children have one of the highest rates of Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder of any demographic in the world.
FASD makes kids near impossible to control, they’re often violent and this of course results in even more domestic violence…. Which leads to the next generation being abused… and the cycle repeats.
So what can we do to stop this cycle?
You can’t throw money at people deep into substance abuse. You can’t cure FASD. Telling an abuser that beating their wife and kids is bad… doesn’t really work. They know it’s bad and they don’t care, believe me I know from personal experience. You can’t magic genuine economic opportunities out of thin air and into remote communities.
If it were an easy problem to fix it probably would’ve been fixed by now.
More than a little systemic racism strengthens the cycle of abuse, even if individual protective orders can be easily justified or the person signing off on one has only the best intentions. Otherwise, I totally agree.
For what we can do now, a shiny new Royal Commission report into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of People with Disability has a bunch of specific recommendations around both the justice system and First Nation peoples with disability that would be very helpful.
Given First Nations peoples under 65 have a 35% disability rate, 3 times higher than the rest of Australia, it seems a good and timely starting point.
The reason that aboriginal families mistreat their kids at much higher rates is because of racism? That would be a very convenient excuse for them.
