By CAROL MARTIN OAM

I’ve listened quietly to all the commentary about these “Children out of control”.

And I’ve thought long and hard about stating what I see as the obvious:  That all social ills begin somewhere.

In this case it’s over two centuries of child abduction, at least five generations of government snatching children from their mother’s arms.

No thought to the damage caused to those women, families and the children.

Then for governments to state: ”it’s for their own good” and  “the Native needed to be bred out of them”, “they will be better off being trained into domestic and farm/station hands”.

Then the protector says: “No… we can’t pay them, they are wards of the State”, and the best justification of all … “they need to live like us and leave their native ways behind”.

These children were beaten for speaking their own language, and for crying for their mothers.

If you look at the deliberate government policies created to bring about the cross generational destruction of Aboriginal families, then those policies were one of their greatest successes in taming the natives, destroying their families, stealing their connections to their country, removing those children from their First Nation Spirituality and finally creating generations of damaged and traumatised women in the wake of their children being legally kidnapped.

I must ask, was this what those policies set out to do?

None the less, the outcome was that those families were destroyed, and generations of stolen children followed, generations of damaged children, abused, beaten, humiliated, alienated from their people, their place, country, family, lore and culture.

In essence taking everything away from them and their families, creating an underclass of people, who don’t see themselves as fitting in anywhere else.  Policies that provided a welfare system, that had a frightening resemblance to slavery, all work no pay.

Ask yourself this question, would you like to be treated the way we are treated?

Then ask the question, how was it that the Monarchy of the time of settlement said the colonists must treat Traditional Owners.  The colonists stated clearly that the land was uninhabited by humans therefore no treaty was warranted.

Do some homework, find out what the 1992 Mabo decision in the High Court meant by the “Myth of Terra Nullius”.

After saying this I believe that the government was responsible for the systematic destruction of our family systems to create a subservient class of Aboriginal people for the purpose of labour for the colonists, all this is documented.  Legislation caused this problem and has maintained the status quo ever since.

I suppose nobody wants to believe that this great nation was created on a series of lies and misrepresentation of its First Australians.

THE SOLUTION

Reconstruct families

Instead of victim blaming, and using our people as an industry for this Nation, industries such as:

Prisons – 30 per cent of the prison population is Indigenous, we only make up 3.3 per cent of the population in WA –  millions of dollars spent on locking them up.

Health system – Diabetes, heart conditions, birth problems and third world poverty in a first world country – millions of dollars spent on health services. What about prevention?

Mental Health – Caused by cross-generational trauma, removal from families – millions of dollars spent. A public health service that doesn’t reduce or stop the suicide rates.

Welfare systems – Through a poverty program to alleviate poverty, but doesn’t.  – millions of dollars spent investigating families without resources, instead of resourcing families.

NGO’s – Set up to make a difference but don’t – millions of dollars spent on programs that employ lots of non-indigenous people, very few of those who know the best approach to solutions.

Out of Home Care –  Once our children are removed, they are placed with strangers, who are paid to care for those kids, yet don’t always – millions of dollars paid to NGO’s to keep our kids away from us.

Stolen Generation, Redress Scheme, Stolen Wage, Closing the Gap, Native Title.  Just a few programs currently in place.

• Carol Anne Martin OAM is a former Australian politician who served as a Labor Party member of the Legislative Assembly of Western Australia between 2001 and 2013, representing the seat of Kimberley. She was the first Aboriginal woman to be elected to any Australian parliament.