From missions to homelands and back to assimilation

It was a cynical public relations exercise. Western Australian Liberal premier Colin Barnett and Aboriginal affairs minister Peter Collier on 7 May issued a media release announcing that Aboriginal people would finally be “consulted” about forced homelands closures.

They explained that the proposed closures were about “the way services will be provided to Aboriginal communities to ensure better outcomes in health, education and job prospects, particularly for children”. Collier also released a series of “fact sheets”, which claimed that “there is no overall plan to close Aboriginal communities”.

But there have been numerous statements by Barnett that the WA government plans to close them down. Addressing the state parliament on 13 November, for example, he said: “There are something like 274 Aboriginal communities in Western Australia – I think 150 or so of those are in the Kimberley [in the north of the state] itself – and they are not viable. They are not viable and they are not sustainable.” The previous day, he said: “It will cause great distress to the Aboriginal people who will move.”

Up to 60 homelands in South Australia are also reportedly at risk. Barnett blamed federal government funding cuts. But two months earlier he had accepted a one-off payment of $90 million from the federal government to take over responsibility for serving the remote communities.

The shifting of responsibility is part of the Abbott government’s $500 million in budget cuts to Indigenous programs, including $160 million cut from Indigenous health programs and $9.5 million from Indigenous language support. It was as part of the “Remote Australia Strategies” stream that the funding for remote communities was shifted to the state governments.

The homelands movement

Federal funding for remote Aboriginal communities was first won in the 1980s, after decades of struggle by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples for self-determination and land rights.

In the wake of the 1967 referendum – which resulted in Aboriginal people finally being included in the census, rather than being categorised as flora and fauna – many Indigenous people began to move back to their traditional homelands.

The “homelands” or “outstations” movement gained momentum in the 1970s and 1980s. It was a political and cultural movement that clearly rejected the racist policies enacted by state and federal governments, often with the aid of the religious establishment, in the first half of the 20th century.

From the late 1930s to the late 1960s, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people had been forced into settlements, reserves and missions. The aim was assimilation, resulting in the removal of Indigenous populations from their traditional homelands either by force or through enticement. They often were told it was for their own good.

But, as a 2011 Amnesty International report, The land holds us, noted: “[Aboriginal] settlements rapidly faced serious problems of overcrowding, conflict, violence, family breakdown, deteriorating health, substance abuse and loss of morale.”

The homelands/outstations movement sought to reconnect Aboriginal peoples with their homelands and culture and reverse the ethnic cleansing that had taken place. It also sought to combat the social dysfunction and political instability experienced by Aboriginal people due to the racist policies imposed on them. More than 1,000 homelands have been established around the country, about 500 of them in the Northern Territory.

Reaction

Governments have attempted to undermine the homelands by starving the communities of funds and services – and then cynically announcing that the projects have failed. Both federal and state governments have then used these “failures” to justify stripping away Aboriginal rights.

Some communities nevertheless have thrived under the circumstances; others have struggled. Yet despite poverty, poor housing and other social problems, repeated studies have found that Aboriginal populations living on their homelands enjoy greater well-being and better health outcomes.

A 2009 study, “Healthy country, healthy people”, published in the Medical Journal of Australia, found that living on homelands and participating in “caring for country activities” resulted in “significantly better health” for Aboriginal peoples. The study noted that the pressure “to centralise remote Indigenous population and services into townships” flew in the face of evidence that suggested “this would lead to worse health outcomes”.

Such advice is ignored.

A blueprint for what the Barnett government plans to do is the remote community of Oombulgurri, which was located in the eastern Kimberley and home to around 100 of the Balanggara people. Deemed economically “unviable”, the community was forcibly closed in 2011.

Writing in the Guardian on 27 November last year, just weeks after Barnett announced the forced closure of more “unviable” communities, Amnesty International’s Indigenous peoples’ rights manager Tammy Solonec explained how the government forced the Balanggara out:

“First, the government closed the services. It closed the shop, so people could not buy food and essentials. It closed the clinic, so the sick and the elderly had to move, and the school, so families with children had to leave, or face having their children taken away from them. The police station was the last service to close, then eventually the electricity and water were turned off.”

According to Solonec, three years after the closure of Oombulgurri, its former residents are now far worse off. Many are homeless or lack appropriate housing. Children are no longer in school or are taken into protective services. Solonec went on to note: “Nearly everyone we spoke to expressed sorrow, disbelief and hopelessness. Many still can’t understand why it happened and yearn for their homeland.”

In an attempt to defuse the backlash against the planned new closures, the WA government first shifted to talking about the safety of children. It didn’t work. Now it is giving the appearance of backtracking. Barnett told the Australian on 1 May that his government was instead seeking to introduce a “hub and orbit approach [that] could lead to building up the larger communities while closing down the smallest and most under-resourced”.

This is propaganda. The approach is little different to that taken by the Rudd federal Labor government and the Northern Territory Labor government in 2008-09 in relation to 500 outstations located on Aboriginal homelands across the Northern Territory.

Just as now, health, welfare, education and child safety concerns were raised as justification for attacking the communities. The hub and orbit approach in the Northern Territory sought to concentrate the population into about 20 townships, known as “growth towns”. At the same time, both the federal and territory governments cut funding to new outstations and froze funding for existing ones.

At the time, NT Labor Indigenous affairs minister Alison Anderson justified the closures on the basis that nobody actually lives on the outstations. She told the ABC’s 7.30 Report: “Only insects crawl around inside the house and the goannas often go in the verandas, you can see it through the dust, and there’s no human footprints. And is that a good utilisation of taxpayers’ money? No. And this reform is about reforming all this, bringing it back and concentrating on building the towns.”

The policy, however, has resulted in worsening health outcomes and increasing suicide and self-harm rates for Aboriginal populations: a humanitarian failure, but precisely what was aimed for.

Shifting excuses, same agenda

In this latest push to close communities, we’ve been told different things. Initially, it was a lack of money and being economically “unviable”. Then we were told that the move is driven by concerns about Aboriginal health, well-being, education and child safety.

The real reasons have nothing to do with these excuses.

The very existence of non-assimilated Indigenous towns and communities has been too much to bear for Australian capitalism.

Sometimes that has been because “Aboriginal control of Aboriginal affairs” has impeded mining companies and pastoralists from making billions in profits from the land.

Sometimes it has been because, in the search for budget savings, governments always target those at the margins – and there aren’t many things more marginal to Australian capitalism than Aboriginal homelands.

More generally, a separate Aboriginal identity is a constant reminder of the true foundation of the Australian nation: theft and genocide.

So the claim by the Western Australian government that it is acting in the best interests of Aboriginal people is transparently false. Its latest PR blitz is an insult.

While Barnett has been forced on the back foot and has sought to sugar-coat the program, the ethnic cleansing of Aboriginal homelands is still very much the agenda.

Protests by thousands of people have clearly had an impact – that’s why the rhetoric has shifted. We need to keep up the pressure against any more closures, whether in Western Australia, South Australia, the Northern Territory or anywhere else.