Kakariki blogs very well about an article in the Sydney Morning Herald, about the tragic loss of Aboriginal Australian languages within our lifetime, and about how to turn it around. The role of language in Maori self determination is something that is easy to overlook in New Zealand, as Te Reo is so prevalent that it’s hard to realise how different things could have been, if not for people like Syd Jackson, who died last week.

There were hundreds of different languages at the point where settlers impacted Australia, and most of these are in terminal decline, with some having only a handful of speakers.

One point that Kakariki makes is that the destruction of aboriginal culture has been so widespread and thorough, that it is hard not to qualify it as genocide.

Genocide is a very strong word to use, and brings with it significant implications. So it is worth asking: does the destruction of Aboriginal Australian cultures and peoples qualify as genocide under international law? (Not that we should international law as a final arbiter, but it does have currency in the world today)

The central relevant document is the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, which states:

In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

(a) Killing members of the group;

(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;

(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;

(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

It is hard for even the most recalcitrant of those who would seek to ignore the real experiences to deny that all of sections a.) through e.) above have been perpetrated on Aboriginal peoples on a large scale. However, the crucial part of the convention, and the point at which the Australian right* denies genocide is ‘intent’, which understandably is difficult to prove at the best of times. Intent has been very evident in a number of cases, and the ‘Stolen generation’, who were removed from their parents in order to deliberately erase their indigneous identity is just the most obvious and well known case.

Many people I’ve read or talked to seem to have a preconceived notion of genocide which is shaped by he Holocaust, or the killings in Rwanda, which understandably capture the public imagination. Yet this image, of rapid and massive destruction, causes

the neglect of those processes of destruction which, although massive, are so systematic and systemic, and that therefore appear so ‘normal’ that most individuals involved at some level of the process of destruction may never see the need to make an ethical decision or even reflect upon the consequences of their action. (link)

These people are reluctant to admit even the possibility that there may have been deliberate destruction of Australian Aboriginal peoples, and if they do, refuse to allow it categorised as genocide.

Anyhow, there are many many more books and resources on genocide, the destruction of Australian Aboriginal peoples, and the Holocaust than I can even begin to summarise, but I thought that it deserves at least a cursory investigation. The question is also relevant to my studies, as there were large killings and efforts to erase certain cultural practices in West Papua during the 1960s and 1970s. I’ve been told of whole villages containing distinct cultural and linguistic groups being wiped out by the Indonesian military. Obviously these deserve further investigation (and I have heard counter-evidence – neither is yet compelling), but if true, seem to indicate genocide.

As an interesting aside, it seems some things don’t change; responding to a 1956 report on the condition of the Aboriginal peoples of central Australia, which outlined starvation, appalling health problems, and a situation which ordinary people would find abhorrent

‘the (then) Adelaide newspaper editor Rupert Murdoch, apparently seeking no formal approval to enter these reserved lands, took it upon himself to charter a plane and inspect the situation in person. Murdoch reported back in banner headlines that the reports were “hopelessly exaggerated,” and that “these fine native people have never enjoyed better conditions” (The News, February 1, 1957; see also Daily News, February 2, 1957; The Sunday Times, February 3, 1957). The Select…’

It appears that for half a century a large proportion of the news media of Australia has been engaged in fabricating truths, and creating a picture that bears little resemblance to reality.

*It really still continues to surprise me how overwhelmingly disrespect for human rights, at least in ‘liberal democracies’, correlates with this political viewpoint.