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July 16, 2007
Noel Pearson has yet another op-ed in The Australian. This one is entitled An abyss beyond the bottle and he asks: 'Why is alcohol highly problematic to Aboriginal communities?' It is an important question since alcohol has been identified as a main cause of dysfunction and crime in remote Aboriginal communities. Alcohol is the overwhelming reason indigenous people become victims of violence.
So why the alcohol? Pearson considers two explanations that can be called the symptom theory of substance abuse. First up is theory that alcohol abuse is a response to, and symptom of, personal and inherited trauma. Pearson says:
Medical anthropologist Gregory Phillips is perhaps the most well known and prolific indigenous advocate of the hypothesis that indigenous hazardous use of alcohol, and destructive and dysfunctional behaviours generally, are responses to and symptoms of personal and inherited trauma. Drawing on international experience of indigenous people's efforts to strengthen their societies, Phillips concludes that a comprehensive healing process is necessary to deal with the original trauma. I do not deny the need for healing, whether for individuals or communities, but I think the focus must be on personal trauma: namely the (chiefly intra-indigenous) violence and abuse resulting from the breakdown of social and cultural order in communities occasioned by alcohol and other addictions in recent decades. There has been a tendency on the part of those advocating "inherited trauma" to point to traumatic events throughout the entire colonial history of Aborigines as an explanation for present problems.
Pearson rejects this He says that the biggest problem for the hypothesis that indigenous people's historical trauma is the main source of the malaise is that indigenous communities that have been least affected by dispossession, decimation, removal from land, removal of children, loss of culture and so on typically have problems that are as severe as the problems of communities that have the most traumatic histories.
Another theory explains dysfunction as a symptom in terms of substance abuse being correlated with, and caused by, general socioeconomic disadvantage.
This explanation overlooks the fact that, globally, there are many societies and communities that are materially more deprived than Aboriginal communities but that are socially stronger and more functional. Another problem with this hypothesis is its corollary: namely that general socioeconomic uplift (which of course is an important goal in its own right) may be believed to be a prerequisite for solving substance abuse problems. This deterministic thinking can have a paralysing effect because the scale of the solution that apparently is needed is so vast, when in truth people in poverty can be free of substance abuse.
Pearson says that the theory that informs our practical work in Cape York Peninsula is based on our rejection of the symptom theory of substance abuse. Alcohol abuse is not just a symptom of Aboriginal disadvantage as it's a problem in its own right. You could fix unemployment, you could fix poverty in Aboriginal communities and you would still have a problem with alcohol.
He adds that inter-generational trauma is an explanation, not an excuse. I would add that neither does historical explanation necessarily suggest a solution. Auto-catalytic dysfunctional behavioural patterns and negative social norms have become problems in their own right, and the methodical rebuilding of social norms is anecessary foundation for social and economic development.
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