Awaken the Rainbow Serpent
Here's an interesting article about Australia and its high level of incarceration of its indigenous people, Climate of Death- Justice Denied means more will die. In this article, some startling facts emerge about Australia and its relationship to its indigenous people:
"I also found that Australia incarcerates its Aboriginal adult males at a marginally higher rate than what does the United States of America of its African-American adult males. This is a disturbing statistic because the USA is the mother of all jailers, with nearly one per cent of its population imprisoned.
Australia, the world’s twelfth largest economy, and with the highest median incomes per capita, is a society harsh on its poorest, harsh on the downtrodden and this is evidenced by our prison incarceration rates. Once again we have the world’s highest rates of incarceration of Aboriginal peoples. To achieve this Australia doubled the prison population from 15,000 to 30,000 from 1991 to 2011 in order that 8,000 Aboriginal persons shall be incarcerated at any one time, despite Aboriginal peoples making up only 2.6 per cent of the Australian population. It is fair to argue that racism drives the criminal justice system – it is fair to argue that legislators are driven in their judgments by the inter-generational stereotypes shoved down people’s throats by the simple assumptions of those past and present, but with origins-of-thinking in racism. Rocket scientists are not parliamentarians but mostly ordinary folk, many who struggle to disassociate with origins-of-thinking that is generations old. How else do you explain the doubling of the prison population? How else do you explain that 28% of the Australian prison population is comprised of Aboriginal peoples? Western Australia must be more racist than other states, challenged only by the Northern Territory – because WA imprisons Aboriginal adults and youth at rates higher than the rest of the nation. Western Australia has 14 adult jails, and 42 per cent of its prison population is comprised of Aboriginal peoples. Looking closer at this let us understand that more than 5,000 prisoners are hulked into these 14 prisons however more than 2,000 of them are Aboriginal. Let us consider that the total Aboriginal population of Western Australia is almost 80,000. Therefore one in 40 of all Aboriginal people in Western Australia will spend tonight in a cold dank prison cell. One in 14 of all Western Australian Aboriginal adult males will spend tonight in a prison cell, and for Aboriginal youth the rates are much worse. 70 per cent of WA’s juveniles are detainees. Are West Australian Aboriginal peoples this bad or is it that Western Australia is harsh, very harsh on its Aboriginal peoples? Is Western Australia the hostile racist environment that lived wild on September 28, 1983, when John Pat went to the aid of a friend, whom a police officer called a ‘little black cunt’ and swore he’d get? Or does Western Australia and its institutions continue to languish in origins-of-thinking generations old that it has not confronted, understood and packed away?"
I recommend reading the entire article. Seems people of color and the poor are being treated universally the same no matter where you go.
