Patrons

The Hon. Justice Peter Quinlan,
Chief Justice of Western Australia

Miralarringu – 'It Becomes Visible'. Remarks at the Launch of the Aboriginal Males Healing Centre 'Our Vision' Document. 26 October 2018

It gives me great pleasure to speak here tonight at the launch of the Aboriginal Males Healing Centre's Our Vision document, Miralarringu.

Thank you Ben Cuimara for your generous welcome. I pay my respects to the elders of the land on which we meet the Whadjuk people and to all the people of the Noongar nation, past, present and emerging and acknowledge their continued stewardship of this land. And may also I acknowledge Devon Cuimara, the many board members and especially elders of the AMHC, and their particular responsibility for Martu and Nyiyarpili lore and culture, which plays such an important role in the vision of the Centre.

As you all know, Miralarringu is Martu Wankgka meaning 'it becomes visible'.

It is a very appropriate title for a document intended to spell out the vision of a Centre and a program such as the AMHC: Its vision that all Aboriginal women and children live safe and healthy lives free of family violence. I will turn to that vision of the future a little later. But before that, I wanted to explore the deeper meanings of that word Miralarringu and its translation 'it becomes visible'.

Notice what it doesn't say. It doesn't say 'it is visible'.

It becomes visible.

Something that was not visible before, is visible now, or is becoming visible. Some kind of veil has been lifted.

This is important because, the vision that we speak of is not just as vision of the future but a vision of the present. Being able to see something now which we couldn't see before, in our communities, or cultures and in ourselves.

Some of you may know the work of the French cultural anthropologist, Rene Girard, who died only a few years ago.

Girard had theory of human cultural origins that saw violence as inextricably linked to human culture; all human culture. His book, Violence and the Sacred, arguably his most famous, set out a theory of human culture as being bound up with human violence. One of Girard's particular insights, in that context, was that for violence to continue in a culture it has to be invisible. For this reason, so he suggested, much of our history, myth and ritual is designed to make us blind to the violence in the culture that forms us.

Of course, its very easy to see the violence in some other culture or other person. We as humans are very good at finding the violence in other people, an ability that can leave us feeling triumphant and superior to those others.

The one violence that we can't see is our own; in our communities, or cultures and in ourselves. Most people don't think of themselves as being violent, even when we are. As Girard once said:

To escape responsibility for violence we imagine it is enough to pledge to never be the first to do violence. But no one ever sees himself as casting the first stone. Even the most violent persons believe that they are always reacting to a violence committed in the first instance by someone else.

So violence is a cycle and it embeds itself in our history and culture without us even recognising it; or perhaps more accurately, because we don't recognise it.

So the first sense in which Miralarringu is important is that the violence itself becomes visible. This is especially so with family violence which is often hidden from our view; or shrouded in silence and shame.

As Devon Cuimara put it:

My desire to establish the Aboriginal Male’s Healing Centre comes from seeing violence in my own family and in the Aboriginal community in general. It goes back to my father and my grandfather. There were generations when police wouldn’t worry about a complaint from a woman. It was something that was seen and not heard, like we were as children.

What Devon is referring to here, of course, is intergenerational trauma and, as he says, "it goes back to my father and my grandfather". He sees the violence, which is the first step.

Of course, however, the violence goes back further. It goes back to colonization, dispossession and forced removal of children. There is violence embedded in that history too. How well do we see that violence, if at all?

And when it comes to men's violence, it is essential that men see it and see it for what it is. Men's violence is a men's issue.

The vision of the Aboriginal Male's Healing Centre takes that a step further and recognises that aboriginal men's violence must be addressed as an aboriginal men's issue. Not because aboriginal men are peculiarly prone to violence or because family violence is peculiar to Aboriginal families and communities. Those suggestions, as the document itself says, are absurd.

On the contrary, the recognition that aboriginal men's violence must be addressed as an aboriginal men's issue is important because a connection with, and participation, in Aboriginal culture must be a key component of addressing violence within Aboriginal families and communities and in finding solutions to those problems.

That is where the vision of the Aboriginal Male's Healing Centre comes in. It is the vision of a residential healing program that incorporates Western clinical care and rehabilitation underpinned by Aboriginal lore and culture lore as the key healing element.

It is an ambitious but achievable vison that has already begun to take shape. The proposed site for the healing centre has been identified on Nyiyarpili land near Newman and transferred to the Centre by the Shire of East Pilbara.

Its location on a significant dreaming path – Kangaroo Dreaming – highlights the significant role of traditional lore and culture in addressing Aboriginal men who use violence and for achieving the Centre's vision that all Aboriginal women and children live safe and healthy lives free of family violence.

I look forward now to listening to the articulation of that vision from Devon himself.

Thank you for your time.

Hon. Wayne Stewart Martin QC AC,
former Chief Justice of Western Australia

The impact of family violence is devastating on victims, their children, their families and communities. 

Although family violence occurs across cultural and socio-economic groups, the data suggests that the impact on Aboriginal Australians is significantly higher than on non-Aboriginal Australians. Dispossession and the injustices of the past have created cycles of intergenerational trauma, disadvantage and violence.

As a judge of the Supreme Court, I have travelled to regional Western Australia to preside over homicide trials involving the death of an Aboriginal person at the hands of their partner far too often. Substance abuse, especially misuse of alcohol, mental health issues and a prior history of violence are common features of such cases.

In serious instances of family violence, the courts will, and should, respond with appropriately severe sentences. However, the safety and well-being of victims is paramount, and in less serious cases the safety of victims in the medium to longer term is not always improved by a custodial sentence. Sometimes the best way to protect victims is to respond in a way which maximises the prospect of behavioural change and reduces the risk of reoffending, increasing the prospect that the family can reunite and live peacefully together.  That outcome is in the best interests of all members of the family and of the community. 

Intervention programs, like the AMHC, will enable men that use violence to live in supervised accommodation with access to rehabilitation programs. There is a body of evidence that the most effective programs are those that are culturally appropriate and are designed and delivered by Aboriginal people. The AMHC is such a program.

I am very pleased to support the AMHC and to serve as a patron.
I wish Devon and the team every success.