Fed: ATSIC says violence borne out of colonial racism

AAP General News (Australia)
12-06-2001
Fed: ATSIC says violence borne out of colonial racism

ATSIC says violence in indigenous communities has reached plague proportions and white
Australia is to blame.

ATSIC social justice commissioner BRIAN BUTLER says violence has been bred into indigenous
communities as a result of colonial racism inflicted through assimilation and White Australia
policies.

He says the wider community does not understand the severity of the problem because
it doesn't understand why it happens in the first place.

Mr BUTLER says people have to go back to the beginning of Australia's colonisation
to understand why systemic violence exists now in indigenous communities.

His comments follow the formulation of an indigenous family violence group comprising
a host of Aboriginal leaders intent on spreading the word about the severity of the problem
and need to fix it.

AAP RTV lm/daw/pc/jh/wz/psm/

KEYWORD: VIOLENCE ATSIC (CANBERRA)

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