It
is a damned and bloody work;
The
graceless action of a heavy hand.
King
John, Act four, Scene three.
Marry,
sir, they have committed false report; moreover, they have spoken
untruths; secondarily, they are slanders; sixth and lastly, they have
belied a lady; thirdly, they have verified unjust things; and, to conclude,
they are lying knaves.
Much
Ado About Nothing, Act five, Scene one.
Yesterday I
published an article on the 1975-6 Laverton Royal Commission in Inside Story
(link here)
with the title The Incident at Skull Creek. It concerned a highly publicised
event in January 1975 involving a melee between police and some thirty Aboriginal
men and boys travelling from Warburton to Wiluna in outback Western Australia for
ceremonial business. The article is quite short, so I will leave it to readers
to read for themselves. I do recommend you read it before reading further here.
Constraints on
length meant I could not include much of interest. I originally focussed on the
Royal Commission when I realised that it is fifty years since the events in
question and the subsequent Royal Commission which attracted considerable media
and political attention at the time.
As I researched
the background, I realised that Laverton itself had been a locus of numerous incidents
of concerning police/Indigenous interactions. In addition to the Skull Creek
affray, I included a description of one of these, the killing of Raymond Watson
on the Laverton Reserve in 1969 in the article. Two other incidents caught my
attention which I outline below.
Laverton was established in 1896 when gold was
discovered and thousands of miners from across Australia and beyond ventured
into the region seeking their fortunes. Located some 950 kms east northeast of
Perth on the western edge of the Great Victoria Desert, the town continues to
service nearby nickel and gold mines. The 2021 Census records the Laverton
Local Government Area, which extends from the town across to the state border
has a population of around 1300 including some 325 Indigenous people. The population
of Laverton itself was just over 400 in 2021, down from some 2500 in the period
before World War One.
In 1921, just over a hundred years ago, a group of 15 Aboriginal people
were inveigled into entering the Laverton police station yard. As wards of the
state, they were subject to the absolute control of the Protector of Aborigines
who could determine where they must reside. They were loaded by the police into
two freight rail carriages and transported over five days, with one stop, to
the notorious government operated Moore River Native Settlement 135 kms north
of Perth at Mogumber.
According to Caroline Wadley Dowley who researched and documented these
events in her 2001 book Through Silent Country, the reason for the
relocation was to send a signal to the Aboriginal groups who had taken up
residence around the township, and were considered a nuisance, to return to the
bush.
Within a reasonably short period, the group absconded and after
splitting into three separate groups, began walking the 1000 kms back to
Laverton, navigating by the stars and living off the land. Amazingly, all three
groups avoided the search parties sent after them and within months had arrived
back on their country near Laverton. While the story of this epic trek back to Laverton
entered the folklore of local communities, it is not well known. None of the
escapees were re-interned and they resumed their lives while keeping out of
sight of local police for some years.
More recently, in January 2008, an Aboriginal man from the Ngaanyatjarra
land, Ian Ward, was arrested by police in Laverton for traffic offenses and transported
by to Kalgoorlie some 360 kms away by two employees of GSL Custodial Services
Pty Ltd (GSL) in the back section of a van modified to carry prisoners. Mr Ward
died from heatstroke caused by a combination of the excessive external heat and
the even higher temperatures inside the van.
In his
subsequent report (link
here), Coroner Alistair Hope found (inter alia):
I
am satisfied that the Department [of Corrections], GSL, Mr Powell and Ms Stokoe
each failed to comply with their duty of care obligations to the deceased and
each contributed to the death. I do not repeat those reasons at this stage but
comment that there could be no excuse for those failures….
….In
summary, therefore, while the deceased suffered a terrible death which was not
only preventable but easily foreseeable, issues relating to the involvement of
the various individuals and organisations are complicated.
In 1999, an ANU anthropology doctoral thesis, Aboriginal youth and
outback justice, by Judy Putt based on extended residence in Laverton documented
the complexities cross-cultural relations in the town and the Goldfields more generally.
In a nuanced and somewhat equivocal conclusion, she states (inter alia):
In the thesis it is argued that objective
unequal social relations existed in the town, which marginalised the young,
Wongis and women. The dominant economic activity, mining, was a masculine
domain which influenced more general social tastes and practices. Historically
and into the present day, a racial divide has existed between Aboriginal and
non -Aboriginal residents. Racist beliefs, discriminatory practices, and
salient characteristics of the internal Wongi domain perpetuate the
contemporary divide. The Wongi domain was not a straightforward product of past
exclusionary practices and spatial segregation, shaped as it was by distinctive
cultural orientations and historical events.
Whether these conclusions continue into the present is difficult to say.
The world is changing rapidly, and the Goldfields and remote Australia is not
immune. It is clear however that whatever the situation is in Laverton today,
the issues of police/Indigenous relations more widely continue to resonate and
be problematic. For policymakers, who don’t have the luxury of academics such
as Dr Putt or quasi-academics such as myself to hypothesise and analyse, there
is a requirement to respond to ongoing events and circumstances. Yet this does
not mean that policy should be simplistic or not thought through.
As an erstwhile policymaker, my considered view is that there is a need
for greater transparency and more robust governance of Australian police forces.
I note in the article the widespread governance issues facing police forces across
the nation. Just today the Canberra Times is running an expose of the hidden legal
settlements that are used to hide police misfeasance here in the ACT. In the
article published yesterday, I suggest that there may be a need to consider
governance changes that constrain the apparent sense of entitlement and impunity
that at least some police clearly hold.
Across remote Australia, the unrestrained and unconstrainted access to
alcohol is also problematic (as is the access to illegal drugs) and is a
proximate cause of anti-social behaviour and excessive violence within Indigenous
communities and the nearby towns. Punitive policing doesn’t work but is
necessary when access to drugs and comparatively cheap alcohol is widespread
and increasingly ubiquitous. Australians and their governments have a choice: access
to alcohol and drugs, or secure living environments. Unfortunately, the dumbing
down of political debate means that increasingly we do not have the forums that
facilitate even a rational discussion of these choices (and other important
policy choices that extend beyond the Indigenous policy domain).
In my view the community generally and policymakers in particular need
to take greater account of history in considering the shape of the policy choices
we are making. This is the reason it is useful to remind ourselves of Laverton’s
history of police / Indigenous relations.
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