Indigenous women’s rights
Brian McCoy’s review of my book, A Fatal Conjunction, (Eureka Street, December 2004) contains inaccurate and misleading assertions, which seriously misrepresent my work and my beliefs.
McCoy implies that I have been isolated from Aboriginal opinion. He ignores my statement in the preface that it was my contact with Aboriginal women which led me to write this book. McCoy implies that I have not taken account of indigenous women’s research or opinions. With one exception I refer to the work and views of all the indigenous women listed by McCoy, and also, among others, Melissa Lucashenko, Lowitja O’Donoghue and Evelyn Scott. While of course there is no one indigenous voice, I only proceeded to the publication of A Fatal Conjunction after ‘checking’ the subject matter ‘out’ with authoritative indigenous opinion which I very much respected. I do discuss, and acknowledge, women’s status and authority in traditional society, and their past and present strength.
Apparently McCoy has failed to completely understand the subject of this book. A Fatal Conjunction is about how, between the 1950s and 2003, judges gradually moved from a position of cultural relativism to one of appreciating indigenous women’s rights as victims in cases where indigenous men charged with violent crimes against indigenous women have relied on a cultural ‘defence’.
Patently, a cultural defence can only be raised if these men were, or are, living in a traditional or semi-traditional life. Hence the terms ‘promised marriages’, ‘payback’, etc., are not, as McCoy alleges, ‘locating’ indigenous people ‘within fixed social (pre-colonial) spaces’. These are current issues arising in recent Northern Territory criminal cases, for instance the 1992 authoritative case of Minor on ‘payback’, and the 2003 case of Jamilmira, which concerned men’s rights in ‘promised marriage’.
McCoy wrongly asserts that I ‘firmly locate the violence in two domains’, being only indigenous society and the Western legal system. He then implies that I separate present violence ‘from the multifaceted violence of colonial history’. In making this assertion he omits considering my chapters on the terrible devastation of Aboriginal law and lore which indigenous people have suffered, and the part played by alcohol in this devastation and violence. I also quote many judicial observations to this effect.
McCoy asserts that I present indigenous society as static. He ignores my discussion of the way indigenous culture has evolved in order to meet the dreadful challenges with which it has been confronted. Or is McCoy really