Stop tolerating tribal punishment

01dec04

Perth: An Aboriginal woman is fac= ing tribal punishment after she was given a suspended sentence for stabbing h= er cheating partner to death with a kitchen knife.
The Australian, September 2

A SMALL story tucked inside this newspaper signals why indigenous violence continues. Multiculturalism excuses it. It is hard to know what is more wrong: a society that allows a woman, who deliberately kills her husband,= to walk free because she is Aboriginal; a society that appears to treat trib= al punishment as a minor cultural blip; or a society that carries out tribal punishment.

They all point to a nation that allows tolerance of different cultures to morph into different laws for different people. And the results are horrendous. Last month the head of the new National Indigenous Council, Sue Gordon, said: "Aboriginal family violence is monstrous."

Former AFL football= er Michael Long will soon end his long walk to Canberra to highlight the plight of indigenous people. But the time for token gestures is surely over. Behind= the walks and marches and apologies lies a more fundamental issue. Just as wh= ite culture is not perfect, some aspects of Aboriginal culture are flawed. Yet saying so is deemed impolite or, worse, derided as a new form of racism. =

Meanwhile, indigeno= us people are suffering because of that reticence – a reticence coerce= d by a radical brand of multiculturalism, where all aspects of all cultures are revered as beyond reproach. This extreme brand lingers and is promoted by those who should know better.

By all accounts, De= borah Sturt is a decent person. But on September 13, 2003= , the 32-year-old Aboriginal woman from a remote community in Kununurra, Western Australia, killed her de facto husband. Both had been drinking at Halls Creek. Sturt saw her p= artner have sex with another woman. An argument followed later that day. Then Sturt went to her house, found a large knife and re= turned to stab her partner once in each thigh. Sturt claimed she was inflicting traditional punishment for infidelity. Her hus= band was so drunk, he was defenceless. He died.

It is important, sa= id WA Supreme Court Justice Michael Murray, that the court uphold the sanctity = of life and try to prevent the taking of life. Murray then gave Sturt a suspended sentence, allowing her to walk free. In sentencing Sturt, the judge considered her youth, her remorse = and the tribal punishment to be meted out to her by the Ringer Soak community= .

Murray dances around "traditi= onal punishment", "tribal punishment" and "Aboriginal law" as if the clash of cultures is too hard to address. The judge s= aid he did not condone the traditional punishment Sturt<= /span> inflicted on her husband, yet it was left to the prosecutor to point out = that this is vigilantism, making it a more egregious case. Murray said he did not condone the tr= ibal punishment that Sturt's community had planned= for her – yet, by taking it into account, is he not implicitly excusing= it?

Radical multicultur= alism is at the heart of this decision. And the message is powerful: violence is unofficially tolerated if culture permits it. Murray's decision suggests that our l= egal system will not fully punish perpetrators if tribal law imposes its own punishment. In doing so, have we not condemned indigenous people to furth= er violence?

This is not a one-o= ff case of colliding cultures. In a book published earlier this year, Joan <= span class=3DSpellE>Kimm, a postgraduate student from Monash University, traces the sorry his= tory of a legal system that has allowed, indeed encouraged, Aborigines charged with violent crimes to plead cultural defences in mitigation. A Fatal Conjunction: Two Laws, Two Cultures (The Federation Press) talks of cases where indigenous women have been stabbed or sliced = or beaten with wood or rocks or iron bars and their male perpetrators have claimed, with some success, it is merely "righteous" or "moral" violence aimed at disciplining wayward women according = to tribal law. Others say tribal law is "bullshit" law – fab= ricated to exonerate Aborigines, usually men, from their violent crimes.

In the wake of last week's riots on Palm Island, triggered by the death in custody of Cameron= Doomadgee, it is worth noting that, as in the past,= there is no hesitation in laying blame when violence can be sheeted home, even indirectly, to non-indigenous people. Kimm po= ints out that between January 1, 1980, and May 31, 1989, more indigenous women died at the hands of indigenous men than all Aboriginal deaths in custody. While deaths in custody remain a hot public issue, the reason for which t= he majority of men were incarcerated is rarely mentioned. =

Critics of multiculturalism are invariably labelled as c= ritics of tolerance. Although tolerance is a worthy goal, it is only meaningful = when tempered with moral judgments about what is right and what is wrong. Yet intelligent people have been captured by this multicultural madness where nothing is right or wrong, all cultures are equal. Never mind that some e= rode basic freedoms.

A couple of weeks a= go author Colleen McCullough said the men of Pitcairn Island were simply following their customs when they had sex with young girls. "These are indigenous customs and should not be touched," she said.

For others, it's te= mpting to sneer at Pitcairn Island as an uncivilised outpost clinging to an uncivilised culture. Yet equally abhorrent violence is happening under our own noses, with indigenous perpetrators ducking for cover under the very same safe umbrella of culture.