As Uluru - meaning “meeting place” - represents a symbol for aboriginals to unite under a single banner in a rural context, “the block” in Redfern has and continues to be its urban equivalent. It serves as a locus for political activism and social recognition and justice, though most significantly in the white mans domain. It was here that Aboriginals were granted for the first time an urban land title called the Block, and granted in 1972. It has created a platform to form a dialogue between black and white Australia. Indigenous and non indigenous Relations in Redfern cannot be broken down into a simple case of Black versus white. There is not a single voice in either the Black or white camps. Although the media would like us to believe otherwise, the opinions on Redfern vary as much as the spectrum of personalities and backgrounds from which they came from.
With aboriginals granted full citizenship in 1967 the population in Redfern ballooned ten fold. Aboriginals were soon active change agents in their community (epitomized at the block with the appointment of Mick Mundine as the director of the AHC). Previous to this, white colonialists had viewed them as little more than savages. The Cambridge history of theAustralian colonies of 1912 claimed that: “aborigines have had no influence on Australian history.” The 2004 Redfern riots represented a microcosm of the deteriorating relationship between black and white Australia. History shows that this was not an isolated event but a phenomenon that could have been predicted by precedents taken from the past.
When trying to find a solution to “improve” the relationship between blacks and whites in Redfern, two distinct trains of thought come to the fore. The Reactionary (i.e.Pemulway and the rioters taking the law into their own hands) and the Mediators who work within the systems already in place (i.e. Bennelong, the AHC, Politicians). While the reactionary seeks to drastically change the status quo often resorting to violence and/or extreme/ controversial policies, the mediator works through the system already in place to achieve their aims. Pemulwuy exemplifies the first organised Indigenous resistance opposing British occupation with a militia at least 100 strong, taking part in sporadic guerilla attacks around what is present day Redfern/ south Sydney.
The late 1960’s and early 1970s was characterized by heavy handed police tactics: a curfew was imposed and aboriginals were regularly arrested without cause: “any aboriginal who was on the streets in Redfern at 10:15pm was simply put in a paddy wagon and taken to the station and charged with drunkenness” and that was literally applied to every aboriginal walking down the street irrespective of any sign of drunkenness in their behavior. This only perpetuated the communities acute distrust of Police, already strongly grounded from the days of local commanders forcibly removing children during the Stolen Generation and more recently through its apparent modern day equivalent, DOCS .
The Tactical Response Group (TRG) was a policing organization which had a negative impact on the relationships between non indigenous and indigenous peoples in Redfern, due to their lack of connection and empathy towards indigenous culture and identity. The unit was characterized by an over emphasis on man power opposed to more peaceful policing practices based around mediation and arbitration. The result wasthat when “although police were originally seeking toarrest a single alleged offender the whole community became the subject of the policing operation” This was exhibited in the August 1988 riot which involved over 100 aboriginals and police in Eveliegh St. Despite the findings of the Human rights and equal opportunity Commission of TRG’s excessive use of force and discriminatory policing practices, Eveliegh Stwould explode 16 years later in one of Sydney’s most dramatic and emotion filled race riots.
In 1997 Aboriginal Community Liaison officers (ACLO) were appointed to improve relations between the non indigenous and indigenous population. Programs for Teenagers such as camps to the Snowy mountains, football games and Nippers were initiated to great effect. A “street beat” bus was established (running beteween10pm and 3am) to prevent youths at risk of becoming either victims of or participantsin anti social behavior. Despite the initial progress, police reports that came out of the 2004 riots indicated that a breakdown of communication between the police and the ACLOs directly lead to the failure in identifying the warning signs before the violence erupted. This breakdown was attributed to the return of a culture of racism amongst the rookie police coupled with heavy handed policing tactics.
One liaison officer, Paul Wilkinson claims that after local area commander, Superintendent Peter Parsons had left in 2000 “some of the bad behaviorhad come back into Redfern. He claimed that at one point he told off a police officer who, when asked about a particular driving noise, had allegedly responded: "I hope it was a coon underneath our tires."
More recently in Febuary 2006 the Minister for Redfern Waterloo, Frank Sartor, and the Western Sydney Razorbacksbeen, kickstarted the “Midnightbasketball” program under the dictum "No Workshop, No Jump Shot". It attempts to bridge a working relationship between the public sector and the younger community of Redfern. It worked to combine educational programs (including anger management, conflict resolution and sex education) with an intense physical workout. These initiativesencourage participants to participate in mainstream society and their local community, in a safe and positive environment at a time frame when they may be otherwise vulnerable to external pressures such as anti social behaviorand substance abuse. This program illustrates a more realistic approach to addressing the real issues from the ground up, rekindling the fragile relationship between the indigenous and non indigenous community in Redfern.
The Bicentenary March of 1988 was not celebrated by indigenous Australians but rather served as a catalyst for aboriginals to rethink whether Australian history was based upon co-existence oroccupation? Aboriginals used events surrounding the celebrations in order to create a platform to spread their message to the non indigenous population of the past atrocities and maltreatment towards aboriginals of Australia. Their actions resulted in a movement towards reconciliation climaxing with Prime Minister Paul Keating’s Redfern speech in 1992. “It begins, I think, with the act of recognition. Recognition that it was we who did the dispossessing. We took the traditional lands and smashed the traditional way of life. We brought the disasters. The alcohol. We committed the murders. We took the childrenfrom their mothers. We practiced discrimination and exclusion.”
Although the Public doctrine was increasingly optimistic throughout the 20th century, the initiatives and interventions failed to have a positive impact on white and black Australia. Government policy bred a climate of negativity and fear within and toward the aboriginal population. The two underlying approaches centered on assimilation and/or concentration of the aboriginal population. In 1936 the Aboriginal Welfare Board implemented an ‘Aboriginal Protection Act’ to consciously dilute aboriginal culture and assimilate them into mainstream ‘white’ society with little sensitivity towards preserving the richness of their cultural heritage. This gave the government power to remove and isolate any Aborigine or person “apparently having an admixture of Aboriginal blood” 5000 children were taken directly from their families with justifications as trivial as for simply “being aboriginal’. The Aboriginal Community Liaison Officers are also questioned on if they collaborate or communicate with the police. The actions of suchorganizations results in with an acute distrust of white establishment.
In 1978 Department of Aboriginal Affairs officially realized that the previous practices of the welfare board did not yield a positive black and white relationship and instead followed a ‘self determined’ approach where the indigenous population congregate and handle their own community affairs. This lead to the 1983 AboriginalLand rights act which acknowledged the giving back of traditional lands to the community. For Redfern this meant a financial push to the development of the block and lead to the 1986 AHC development plans which included the Murrawina pre school and a street market entitled the ‘black market’ to provide a medium of exchange between black and white society.
Both solutions failed. Deliberate or not, assimilation effectively destroyed the identity of the aboriginal while concentration polarized whole culture blocs to the extent that we now rely on simplistic yet naïve and ignorant ideologies to understand the “black” community.
When SydneyUniversity students were asked “what was the first thing that comes into your head when you heard “The block” and “Aboriginal”, the majority of responses revealed an underlying attitude centered around negativity and fear – “they’re bums. Its dangerous up there. Just look at their clothes. They are always yelling”(Tim, 20 yr old, Arts/Law). When asked if this attitude could have been the indirect result of media conditioning, he subsequently agreed.
Where once the people living in Redfern felt intrinsically connected with one another they now feel detached from not only each other in the suburb on a micro scale but also from mainstream Australian society: Leslie Townsend, a Aboriginal Community Liason officer told us “I remember when we were kids us aboriginals, Greeks, Lebanese and Italians would all play together… I don’t know what‘s happened. Our mobs now up at the block, the Lebanese live in Great Buckingham street and the Greeks live on the other side” She further went on to describe how the only time the communities congregated were in superficial situations such as fetes and street parties, void of any sincere grassroots connections.
Today the media has become the most powerful machinery that sustains a polarized relationship between the indigenous and mainstream white society on a micro and macro scale. The media emphasizes the negative, sometimes providing a blatantly false portrayal of aboriginals living in Redfern. In a 2004 report of the death of TJ Hickey and the subsequent Redfern riots, a journalist of the Chicago tribune blatantly fabricated an interview with a psychiatrists Graham thorn who claimed “The people always complain. They want it both ways-their way and our way. They want to be in our society and be respected yet they don’t work. They steal, they rob and they get drunk. And they don’t respect the laws”. He was subsequently fired.
Joyce Ingram, a community Elder on the Block said “The media misrepresents the truth. They say there was a raid on 40 houses, but it never happened. It was totally exaggerated. The police came in looking for `half a dozen criminals' and found one boy who violated parole. They assaulted him and then laid assault charges on him. When they raided another house and arrested two boys, stepping on a baby in the process, people stoned the police.”
The relationship in Redfern, between black and white Australians has hovered over the years somewhere between paternalism and self determination. To date neither has been completely effective in addressing the “black issue”in Australia or improving the relationship between indigenous and mainstream Australia. The solution is more complicated than some would like us to believe.
The interventions which seek to improve the status quo should first start at improving the image and then the relationship between indigenous and mainstream Australian society. This has been recognised at least half heartedly by subsequent government bodies. Communities are beginning to determine their own future, drawing upon resources amongst themselves in order to address the issues from the ground up. What is clear is that top down policies have reaped irreparable damage upon aboriginal communities nationwide, epitomized symbolically in the Block itself. Misguided government policies, simplistic interpretations by the media and a culture of heavy handed tactics by the policeto a sensitive issue have resulted in polarizing and stigmatizingindigenous and mainstream “white” Australia. Past and present History has shown that we must think out side the square, if we are to find a solution to mending and developing this relationship.