Jacinta Nampijinpa Price says there are no ongoing negative impacts of colonisation on Indigenous Australians. Is that correct?
RMIT ABC Fact Check
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CheckMate September 22, 2023
This week, we look at whether the lasting impact of colonisation on Indigenous Australians has been entirely positive, as claimed by a leading No campaigner in the Voice to Parliament referendum.
We also explain why social media posts about carbon emissions and "global greening" don't tell the full story.
Jacinta Price says there are 'no ongoing negative impacts' of colonisation. Here are the facts
Senator Nampijinipa Price also dismissed the notion of intergenerational trauma in her address.(AAP: Lukas Coch )
Ahead of October's Voice to Parliament referendum, Shadow Minister for Indigenous Australians Jacinta Nampijinpa Price has sparked controversy for comments made during a recent appearance
at the National Press Club.
Asked by a journalist whether she believed the history of colonisation continued "to have an impact on some Indigenous Australians", the senator responded:
"Positive impact? Absolutely. I mean, now we've got running water, we've got readily available food."
Prompted to clarify whether she believed there were negative impacts for Indigenous people, Senator Nampijinpa Price said there were "no ongoing negative impacts of colonisation".
The Nationals senator also dismissed the notion of intergenerational trauma — that is, where a person's traumatic experience
affects their children and other descendants — as a result of colonisation.
But experts disagree, and numerous scientific studies and articles contradict her comments.
In a statement drawing on research papers and government documents, researchers from the University of Western Australia's School of Indigenous Studies told CheckMate the impact of colonisation was "far more catastrophic than physically taking control of Country and its Indigenous people".
"Instead, it is the traumatic actions and events that continue long after the initial takeover of lands, like the unprecedented spread of Western diseases that caused death to many communities and/or mass killings of Indigenous peoples during the frontier wars and more," they said.
"Colonisation has a flow-on effect to everyday Australian life, such as law, systems and organisations."
The researchers pointed to a number of papers that found Indigenous Australians who had been subject to policies of colonisation such as the forced removal of children and elders from families and communities consistently suffered adverse outcomes as a result.
A
2018 report from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW), for example, found that members of the Stolen Generations were "more likely to be worse off than other Indigenous Australians of the same age on a range of health and socioeconomic outcomes".
Their descendants "were also consistently more likely to have experienced adverse outcomes over a broad range of health, socioeconomic and cultural indicators".
Another report referenced by the UWA researchers
illustrated that "children living with members from the Stolen Generations are more likely to experience poor health, experience financial disadvantage and are more likely to experience life stressors".
Dr Tracy Westerman, a clinical psychologist with 25 years of direct experience and publications in Indigenous trauma, suicide and mental health and Nyamal woman,
took to X (formerly Twitter) following Senator Nampijinpa Price's speech to share more than a dozen scientific studies and articles countering the senator's assertions.
Among those studies,
a 2020 systematic scoping review aimed at understanding the impact of historical trauma due to colonisation found that historical trauma "continues to have a profound impact on Indigenous young peoples".
Similarly, a
2016 review of scientific literature found "general consensus that the impact of colonisation on the health of Indigenous people manifests negatively … [and] is experienced intra-generationally and inter-generationally".
Elsewhere,
a 2022 report published by the AIHW stated that "colonisation has had a devastating impact on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities and culture".
"Violence and epidemic disease caused an immediate loss of life, and the occupation of land by settlers and the restriction of Aboriginal people to 'reserves' disrupted their ability to support themselves," the report, Determinants of Health for Indigenous Australians, found.
"Together with the forcible removal of Indigenous children from their families and communities, Indigenous Australians have suffered ongoing inter-generational trauma."
A
fact sheet published by the Centre of Best Practice in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Suicide Prevention concurs.
"The combined effects of colonisation and oppressive policies and practices have had a profound and enduring impact on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples' health and social and emotional wellbeing," the fact sheet states.
The negative effects of colonisation can be passed down generations, according to experts.(ABC News: James Dunlevie)
In an email, Jon Altman, an emeritus professor at the Australian National University (ANU), told CheckMate that in short, colonial legacy was "a key explanator" of the disparities between Indigenous Australians and the remaining Australian population.
Professor Altman pointed to a paper he co-authored in 1991 explaining "the exclusion of Aboriginal people from the mainstream provisions of the welfare state until the 1970s", which he said "left a deep legacy reflected in socioeconomic disparity".
This could be seen in differing outcomes for measures such as life expectancy, education and employment, said Professor Altman, who also noted the impact of other factors.
These included remoteness, ongoing neglect, demographic differences and "cultural priorities", such as a desire to stay connected to ancestral lands where governments did not provide services and where there may be no employment prospects.
"So intergenerational disparities in themselves generate poverty for many," he said.
Meanwhile, the
Central Land Council (CLC), which represents the Aboriginal peoples of the southern half of the Northern Territory, also rejected Senator Nampijinpa Price's position, describing her remarks as "hurting members of our community and homelands".
"The senator's denial of history and its ongoing impacts is disgraceful," the council said in a media statement.
As for her claims about the positive impact of colonisation in regards to the availability of running water and readily available food, the council noted: "Our families still do not all have access to affordable healthy food, drinkable water and sustainable water supplies.
"Many of our communities live with water stress, food insecurity, exorbitant costs and living conditions that would not be tolerated by any other Australians."
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