The Voice: Yexit or Nixit
Second nations still rule Maboriginals
By guest columnist Tess Lawrence
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised this article contains names and images of deceased people.
We are but seconds from a starless midnight when the fate of The Voice will be won or lost not in the sacred jurisdictions of the heart, justice, equity, humanity and love but in the brutalism of a body politic contaminated with powerlust and prepared to poison the common well.
Unleashing history’s perennial vectors of racism and fear upon our much-troubled society is cheap but effective weaponry. Too easy. Histrionic and dangerous social media laced with toxic rhetoric and hate mongering has accelerated towards tomorrow’s deadline for the Referendum vote.
Opposition Leader Il Duce Peter Dutton whose entire political career can be summed up in a single consonant “no,” came into his own leading the No Campaign, an awful thing to concede. It is the only political traction he’s gained since the inglorious fall of the squalid Morrison government. He spits venom on anything constructive. He’s a political destroyer by nature.
YEXIT OR NIXIT SECOND NATIONS STILL RULE MABORIGINALS
Whether Australia votes Yexit or Nixit for the Voice, we who are the sometimes lost tribes of Second Nations drawn from all parts of this paradoxical world, will still dominate First Nations peoples, Maboriginals and Torres Straits Islanders alike, through sheer force of numbers, political, judicial and social coercive control.
The Australian Bureau of Statistics tell us that as of March 31st this year our population was estimated at 26,473,055. In August, the ABS released final details from the 2021 Census determining that there were about “983,700 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders, about 3.8% of the total Australian population.”
There may be one less person to subtract from that lifeless statistic. As I write, yet another young child is in a critical condition and clinging to life in Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital after a suicide attempt in Western Australia’s notorious juvenile detention centre, Unit 18, itself incarcerated within the Casuarina prison for adults.
The 16-year-old was apparently found unresponsive in his cell.
The Australian Broadcasting Corporation reported the WA state opposition as saying:
“… it was the latest of more than 500 incidents of young people attempting suicide or self-harm in WA’s juvenile detention centre over the past two years.”
How is this tolerable? It isn’t. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, in WA campaigning in favour of the Voice again pointed out that:
“We know tragically that if you’re Indigenous, you are twice as likely to take your own life, you have an eight-year life expectancy gap, you’re more likely to go to jail than to go to university, and you are far more likely to be subject to juvenile detention.
“I know that the Cook government have indicated that the facilities there are simply not good enough and are working on that, but a Voice is needed to listen to Indigenous communities about matters that affect them.”
The Australian Institute of Criminology says there have been 555 Indigenous deaths in custody since the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody.
JOURNALIST JAN MAYMAN AND THE BALLLAD OF JOHN PAT
Here I must pay tribute to the indefatigable WA based journalist Jan Mayman, whose relentless pursuit for justice for another 16-year-old Aboriginal Jindjibandji (also spelled Yindjibarndi) boy called John Peter Pat, found dead in police custody in WA’s Roebourne Lockup in 1983.
The Ballad of John Pat is an oft repeated songline in Indigenous history’s collision within and without our police and judicial systems. Who fought for the skinny kid John Pat when he was alive? But Jan Mayman fought for him – and the truth – after she learned of the horrible circumstances of his death.
In his moving and beautiful memoir to Mayman, Inside Story’s publisher and journalistic doyen Mark Baker, also former CEO of the Melbourne Press Club, detailed the awful brutality by four off duty police officers, one of them an Indigenous police aide, that led to John Pat’s death.
Five police officers were later charged, as you will read. Baker wrote:
“John Pat had joined a drunken confrontation with four off-duty policemen outside the Victoria Hotel on the evening of 28 September 1983. According to the witnesses, he was struck in the face by one policeman and fell backwards, striking his head hard on the roadway. Another officer kicked Pat in the head before he was dragged to a waiting police van, kicked in the face, and thrown in.
Other witnesses, who had been across the street from the police station, said Pat and several other Aboriginal prisoners were beaten as they were taken from the van and, one after another, dropped on the cement path. Each was then picked up, punched to the ground, and kicked. According to one observer, none of the prisoners fought back or resisted. An hour later, when police checked on Pat in his cell, he was dead.”
MAYMAN’S EXPOSE ON JOHN PAT FORCED THE ROYAL COMMISSION INTO ABORIGINAL DEATHS IN CUSTODY
The trailblazing Jan Mayman
Baker rightly describes Jan Mayman as:
“…the most important journalist of her generation in exposing the systemic cruelty, neglect and injustice suffered by Indigenous Australians – long before most of the mainstream media were awakened to that grim and abiding reality.
A generation before the killing of George Floyd in the United States ignited the Black Lives Matter movement around the world, Jan Mayman had exposed the ugly truth of endemic racism and abuse in Australia to a largely indifferent or ignorant mainstream audience.
The royal commission triggered by her journalism promised a sea change. Its 339 recommendations lit the path to reducing deaths in custody, imprisonment rates, inequality and disadvantage. “Few Australian royal commissions have attracted stronger, more passionate media attention than the 1991 final report,” journalist Wendy Bacon would write. The failure of that promise of change broke Jan’s heart.”
I can vouch for that. Jan often stayed with me when in Melbourne. She was a beloved and supportive friend and colleague. I learned so much from her tenacity and refusal to back down in the face of corruption, powerful influences and systemic cover ups. She protected her sources and such was her manner, she was able to dismantle the code of omerta that so often is impenetrable for others.
For independent journalists it can be so difficult to find safe harbour with a mainstream publisher but thankfully Mayman found that in the form of the legendary Editor, Creighton Burns.
The Age published Mayman’s harrowing and shocking expose about John Pat on the front page. It ignited a firestorm and Mayman subsequently was to win the prestigious Gold Walkley for her courageous and painstaking endeavour. She was so utterly modest and self-effacing and I think was both shocked and embarrassed. But to see her face light up was a joy at this salute by her peers for a job well done.
MAYMAN DIDN’T DO IT FOR THE GOLD. SHE DID IT FOR JOHN PAT. SHE DID IT FOR HIS FAMILY. FOR HIS MOB
She said she was just doing her job. But so many others would not have had the will or frankly, the guts to take this story on.
She did it for John Pat. For his family. For his mob. For aboriginal children. For all of us. She bore witness. She bore the consequences of that witness. She received a number of death threats.
The Indigenous Law Resources report on the Inquest into John Pat’s death and the refusal of the police officers concerned to give evidence makes curious reading.
Crushingly, little had changed in terms of deaths in custody, despite the Royal Commission and increasing coverage of Indigenous affairs. The sustained fight against injustice towards Indigenous Australians took its toll on Jan’s health.
A regional report on individual deaths in custody for the Royal Commission confirms that John Pat had been unemployed for three years at the time he was brutalised by police.
There’s a familiar pattern in the Indigenous revolving door cycle: intoxication, disorderly conduct, aggravated assault on police, sleeping it off at the Lockup.
His mother Mavis, was 16 when she gave birth to John Pat. His father, Len Walley was about 36. The couple were married under traditional tribal law.
In the interest of readers, we enclose this link to another ILR report – an introduction to the circumstances leading up to and after John Pat’s. Be warned, it is harrowing, but it is real and such things happen still, to this very day. It is important that we share this knowledge.
Writing on the Sydney Criminal Lawyers website Paul Gregoire gives us a concise insight into the shameful John Pat scandal. John Pat was one of several Indigenous males involved in the fracas with police that night although John Pat was the only juvenile. Ashley James is one of the aboriginal men involved.
“WE’LL GET YOU, YOU BLACK CUNT”
This from Gregoire’s article:
As Ashley James went to make a purchase at the bottle shop of the Victoria Hotel in Roebourne WA on 28 September 1983, a barmaid heard one of five off-duty police officers, who’d all been drinking heavily, snarl at the young local Aboriginal man, “We’ll get you, you black cunt.”
Situated on the lands of the Ngarluma people, the Pilbara Region town was notorious for its saturation policing. And it was out the front of the town’s cultural hub, the pub, that Ashley fought back, after one officer told him to “get fucked” and assaulted him. And then all five officers set upon him.
As the story goes, several Aboriginal onlookers intervened in support of Mr James, one of which was 16-year-old John Pat. A witness saw one officer strike Mr Pat in the face. This sent the youth falling backwards and he struck his head on the road.
According to another witness, an officer went over to Pat and kicked him in the head, as he was lying on the ground. Then the Yindjibarndi youth was dragged over to the waiting police wagon, kicked in the head once more, and thrown in the back “like a dead kangaroo”.
On arrival at the Roebourne police station, people from across the road witnessed the officers drag Pat and several other Aboriginal men from the van to the pathway and systematically beat each of them. And when officers checked on Pat in the juvenile cell about an hour later, he was dead.
INJURIES ON JOHN PAT’S BODY
Curiously, links to the forensic report on injuries to John Pat’s body seem dead or removed.
Luckily, in his fine summary and article, Gregoire mentions:
A subsequent autopsy revealed Mr Pat had suffered several severe blows to the head, which caused a fractured skull, haemorrhaging and tearing of the brain. There was a large bruise at the back of his head and six on the right side of it. The young man also had a torn aorta and two broken ribs.
JOHN PAT, NOTHING TO SEE HERE? JUST FRACTURED SKULL, HAEMORRHAGE, SWELLING, TEARING OF THE BRAIN, TORN AORTA, BROKEN RIBS? THAT DO?
Wikipedia also adds to the jigsaw puzzle:
A subsequent autopsy revealed a fractured skull, haemorrhage and swelling, as well as bruising and tearing of the brain. Pat had sustained a number of massive blows to the head. One bruise at the back of his head was the size of the palm of a hand, and many other bruises were visible on his head. In addition to the head injuries, he had two broken ribs and a torn aorta, the major blood vessel leading from the heart. The autopsy also showed that the dead youth had had a blood alcohol reading of 0.222%.
Back to the Paul Gregoire article in relation to the five police officers charged over John Pat’s death:
On 30 October 1983, the inquest into John Pat’s death commenced. The five police refused to give evidence, but they submitted statements denying that they’d used excessive force on the night the incident took place.
The inquest ran for twenty one days and heard from seventy witnesses. Unsurprisingly, the official police version differed from the accounts given by others. One officer said that Pat had walked from the van to police lockup, however a medical expert said this wasn’t possible considering his injuries.
Following the inquest, the four white officers and one Aboriginal police aide stood trial charged with manslaughter in the WA Supreme Court before an all-white jury. Each of the men swore that they were innocent, and claimed that their co-accused were innocent as well.
The jury retired at 12.15 pm on 24 May 1986. And at 7.15 that evening, it returned to deliver its verdict, finding all the accused not guilty. And the five police officers were reinstated to duty following the outcome of the trial.
Sound familiar? Of course it does. Has anything changed? Of course not.
For me, the story of John Pat and Jan Mayman, his champion in his cruel death is a touchstone for why I am compelled to vote YES tomorrow.
I am also mindful of the love and respect I feel for an earlier generation that voted a unanimous YES in the May 1967 Referendum to change the Constitution to include Aboriginal and Torres Straits Islanders would be counted as part of the population and that the Commonwealth would be able to make laws for them/us.
Amidst today’s acrid environment that has polluted the Voice Referendum it is breathtaking to realise that 90.77 per cent of Australians voted Yes in 1967. The legacy of that endorsement remains a source of justifiable pride.
Our Second Nations parents gave us a gift that we are in danger of squandering tomorrow if we succumb to the weaponising of justice, equality and love.
If we choose to betray the openheartedness shown by our Second Nations forbears, we will not build on their wisdom but instead, ringbark it historically and forever with racism and hate. We will be known as the generation of hate rather than love; the generation that denied constitutional justice.
Already since Janary 1 this year, there have been 73 deaths in custody. Fifty-eight of these deaths have been of non-Indigenous people. The remaining 15 deaths are of Indigenous people. All lives matter, but it is obvious that Indigenous deaths in custody percentage wise are statistically overrepresented.
The bottom line is this. Second Nations stole Australia from our First Nations brothers and sisters. This great southern land was never terra nullius. It is preposterous First Nations people do not even have an advisory seat at the big table.
The system is broke. We’ve messed up big time. At times there’s been deliberate genocide and today there is a case to answer that we are still killing Indigenous Australians through neglect, indifference, arrogance, supremacy, racism, depriving them of water, medical facilities, medicine, housing, education, transport, food. An make no mistake, this is tantamount to genocide of another kind.
SUNDAY COULD BE BRAN NUE DAE, GOOD FELLOW MY COUNTRY
We think we have a problem with ‘our blacks.’ But no, we are the black person’s burden.
John Pat would have been 57 years old this month. It is too late to save him. But not too late to save others like him. Not too late to save ourselves from ignominy. Not too late to save ourselves from ourselves. Not too late to give First Nations a Voice
We could wake up Sunday to a bran nue dae, share a first step together and take the road less traveled by and perhaps think Good Fellow My Country!
If the content triggers any distress please call Lifeline on 131114.
© Tess Lawrence
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Tess Lawrence is Contributing editor-at-large for Independent Australia and her most recent article is The night Porter and allegation of rape.
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