It’s been more than a month since the apparent murder of a five-year-old Aboriginal girl in the Northern Territory and we still hearing stories about the neglect and abuse of Aboriginal children. For example, The Australian newspaper recently reported on a 12-year-old boy who ‘has been the subject of about 100 notifications relating to neglect, lack of supervision, exposure to repeated domestic violence and parental alcohol abuse’. There are many causes for why Aboriginal children are at a higher risk of neglect and abuse, and in this article, I focus on one that is rarely discussed. This cause relates to the Aboriginal Child Placement Principle (ACPP), or more correctly, the ideology underpinning the ACPP. I’ll get to that ideology shortly, but let’s first look at what the ACPP is.
The ACPP, according to SNAICC (Secretariat of National Aboriginal and Islander Child Care), is a principle that ensures ‘culture, family, community and Country are central to child protection decision-making and embeds self-determination in national child welfare law, policy, and practice’. Essentially, it is the belief that if an Aboriginal child is to be placed in out-of-home care, then other Aboriginal people are the best ones to provide such care.
I have no problem with Aboriginal kids being placed with Aboriginal carers, so long as those carers are competent, and in my opinion, competent carers come in all colours and cultures. Surely, kids just want to know they are cared for, feel safe, and know that they belong. They are generally not interested if the carer has the same cultural heritage they have.
Those of us who know what kids really need would be outraged if Aboriginal carers were told they were overlooked as carers for non-Aboriginal children in need of care because they were not ‘culturally appropriate’. It’s no different to non-Aboriginal carers being told that they are not the preferred carers of Aboriginal children because they are not ‘culturally appropriate’.
So, how did this (some may say biased) ACPP come into existence? It was done in the name of self-determination.
But surely self-determination is a good thing?
Well, it is certainly good when applied to individuals. For example, if I change my lifestyle because I value being healthy, that’s an expression of self-determination. It’s self-determination because I am deciding for myself that I want change in my life and I am prepared to play my part to bring about that change.
While self-determination is fine for individuals, it is potentially problematic when applied in a collective sense to any group of people. Consider that the Victorian Treaty Bill states that self-determination ‘encompasses the collective right of Indigenous peoples to decide their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development’. Inclusion of the word ‘collective’ is important here and suggests that it applies to Aboriginal people because they are a collective who function together as a single entity with shared goals and interests.
If Aboriginal Australians did possess a collective sense of ‘us’ and saw themselves as being very different from other Australians in terms of their needs, culture, and worldview, then the term ‘collective’ would be fine. But that claim of difference is simply not true and so ‘collective’ really doesn’t apply. And so, if Aboriginal people do not function as a collective, then the term self-determination cannot readily apply to them in the collective sense as described in the Victorian Treaty Bill.
High intermarriage rates between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal persons and low turnouts for treaty and Voice elections by Aboriginal voters provide strong support that most don’t seem themselves as being significantly different from other Australians.
In practice, self-determination for Aboriginal people typically is the belief that they are the preferred primary decision-makers and service-providers for other Aboriginal people. Hence, under the ACCP, it is assumed that Aboriginal carers will inevitably be better carers of Aboriginal children than non-Aboriginal carers. It is here, that child safety can be compromised in the name of ‘culturally appropriate’.
Many Aboriginal Australians simply see themselves as Australians. This does not necessarily mean that they do not value a form of Aboriginal culture, or do not engage in some Aboriginal festivities and celebrations. Some do partake in these, but they also see themselves as Australians with many shared values and interests. And as Australians, then they are fully entitled to all the opportunities Australia offers. But principles like the ACPP and other programs and strategies that cast Aboriginal Australians as being the only or the preferred ones to help other Aboriginal Australians, has resulted in too much suffering and early death for too many Aboriginal Australians. It is this collective self-determination mindset that has contributed to the ‘soft bigotry of low expectations’ that has plagued Aboriginal Australians for decades now.
However, there seems to be some good news. The Northern Territory government is seeking to amend the ACPP such that child safety is the primary consideration, regardless of background. I believe this change can rescue many Aboriginal children from harm and death. Now before anyone starts to claim that the NT Government’s proposed changes to the ACPP constitute genocide, oops, too late. Already, wait for it … drum roll … Senator Lidia Thorpe, was reported in The National Indigenous Times recently, as saying the NT Government ‘are robbing our children of their birthright; that is genocide’. Actually, leaving Aboriginal children in conditions that other children would not be left in, is robbing them of their birthright.
Well, we can expect more similar claptrap from the usual suspects. Those with a vested interest in the ACPP and the Aboriginal version of self-determination described is this article, will not let go easily. We must hold government and Aboriginal departments or organisations to account. Unless we do, we will lose more Aboriginal children. Let’s not be led by separatist ideology dressed up as self-determination. Let’s be led by the truth that Aboriginal children are Australian children and therefore deserve the best that Australia can provide.
