In societies where the people are exposed to relentless oppression, suicide is a normal response – the ultimate form of resistance to the prolonged violence of oppression. It is not the individual who takes her or his life who is responsible for this culmination but the act of relentless oppression that is responsible. The impacts of colonisation wherever in the world have come with dehumanisation, demonisation and repression of peoples, all in the name of justifying dispossession.I am writing this article so the discrimination and racism that does lead many to suicide can be better understood and for many others that it can be at long last acknowledged. Racism and discrimination are the direct result of the ruthless colonisation and they are impossible to separate.
Gerry Georgatos
Globally, in general, suicide takes more lives than all other forms of violence combined, including wars and civil strife. The underlying factors include a suite of psychosocial, psychological and psychiatric culminations and breakdowns, where the human will to survive and overwhelm imposts are finally whittled down to least resistance. Ultimately, it can be argued certain conditions, the relentless nature of these conditions, diminish the capacity or ability to resist. One rationalises the recourse to relief from the tumult of painful conditions – suicide.
However, the victims of colonisation and their descendants register the world’s highest suicide rates – from the Guarana peoples of the Amazon, to the Inuit and Lakota of North America, to Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander peoples of the Australian continent, and to the many other peoples right around the world. The colonisers ruthlessly exploited the planet – murdering large numbers of the rightful inhabitants of their lands, terrorising them, dispossessing them, brutally exploiting them, corralling them in apartheid, and relentlessly smashing into their historical and contemporary identities, demanding a remake of who they are and what they should be about. Assimilation is not just about social engineering madness, assimilation is more regularly a tool for exploitation. It is used by the oppressor to ensure the oppressed do not simmer resistance.
For many of the oppressed, suicide is an act of resistance. It is rationalised. It is natural to resist the impost of racism and fight daily against situational, multiple and composite traumas and the relentless impacts of colonisation. They fight against the ongoing impacts of colonisation – fight against the expectation that they should assimilate, fight against the implications of the demonisation of their identity – cultural and historical, fight against the attempts by the oppressor to make them feel lesser than, inferior and powerless.
Racism is also felt to varying extents by the waves of migrants from non-Anglocentric cultures that come to Australia. Multiculturalism, in terms of its cultural prowess and dignities, in terms of its exacting a real say, in terms of plurality, does not exist in Australia – it is a myth and secondly an indictment of the Anglocentric oppressor. Our federal parliament is comprised of 226 parliamentarians – 213 are of Anglocentric origins, with the majority with more than 100 years of colonial ‘settler’ familial history. The stranglehold by the colonial oppressor is one of stricture. It is relentless because any respite will undermine the oppressor’s power. They are tied to their origins-of-thinking, one and two centuries old and this is reflected in their expectations, in policies of assimilation, the viciously punitive controls, and in their inherent bent to exploit. But let us understand what the colonisers were predominately about – to exploit. This bent for exploitation underwrites everyday laws and policies. Therefore the oppressor/oppressed dichotomy remains and there has been little respite. There has been little progress in unfolding social justice, equality and equity.
First Peoples, right throughout the world, resist. The culmination of this resistance can be suicide – the ultimate sacrifice – the ultimate act of resistance.
The higher the cultural content of a peoples, the greater the will to resist, the more powerful the acts of resistance, the more significant the fight, the anger and the displaced anger. Peoples who have only been relatively recently impacted by the colonisers or their descendants – these days they are termed as ‘developers’ among other nom de plums – have higher rates of suicide than peoples five and ten generations removed from the original impacts of colonisation.
In my view – estimations – the Kimberley is one of the world’s worst hit regions from the impacts of colonialisation. The majority of the Kimberley’s Aboriginal peoples have only had significant contact with non-Aboriginal peoples for less than a century – they remain high cultural content peoples with the centrality of culture and identity psychosocially imperative. They have among the world’s highest suicide rates. Nearly seven per cent of the Kimberley is homeless – 638 homeless per 10,000 population. Outside natural disasters and civil strife this is one of the world’s highest homeless rates. Nearly all this homelessness is comprised of the region’s Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander peoples – and I have worked out that this translates to thereabouts 12 per cent of the Kimberley Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander peoples in some form of homelessness. The extreme poverty that many Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander peoples live in is abominable and an indictment of Australia, one of the world’s most affluent nations, the world’s 12th largest economy – a nation with the world’s highest median wages. Australia ranks 2nd for public health on the United Nations Development Program’s Human Development Index but when I standalone Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islanders their equivalent ranking on the global scale would be 132nd. In my view, the racialised economic inequalities are racism – beginning and end of story – and to this we must stay solid-in-our-thinking or we will go backwards.
The racism must be addressed – the racialised economic inequalities must be addressed – the right to land, culture and identity in the realest of rightful ways must be responded to if the suicides, the attempted suicides, the acute and chronic depressions are to be reduced at least to parity between the two populations, that of the First Peoples and the rest. Till then the acts of resistance will continue. Right through humanity’s history wherever there has been oppression, wherever there has been discrimination, consequently there is the will to resist, the acts of resistance. The ultimate act of resistance for many oppressed is that though you relentlessly punished my body you will not also take my soul.
Wherever the colonisers went in this world of ours, they sought to exploit. Wherever these exploiters found humankind was in their way they gilded a suite of justifications to underwrite the demonising and the apartheid. We are still parcelled the demonising – the racism – because it is the most powerful justification, the most powerful tool of the exploiter, the oppressor. Racism sells people as uncivilised, heathen, stone-age like, child-like, inferior, different.
Selling ideas is a dime a dozen. We are sold the idea of multiculturalism but which in Australia the multicultural heart in fact does not exist. The oppressor paints the picture of multiculturalism but does not allow multiculturalism. They control its public discourse, its messages, and they corral people with assimilation. The oppressor is bent on the selling of misoxeny. All lives should matter but do not matter to the oppressor. Power matters to the oppressor and everything that facilitates power. Assimilation is imperative. The act of resistance is treated as dangerous radicalism and portrayed as treachery.
The colonisers were vicious, ruthless and murderous despite the onus by them to sanitise the annals of history, to fill the libraries of lands they barbarically dispossessed into their custody with barest comment about the rightful inhabitants and with one-sided vainglorious tales of themselves. The oppressor continues with the bent for zombie assimilation. In 2012, Professor Paul Gilroy of Kings College, London University, referred to zombie multiculturalism – where equality and cultural plurality are promoted but not effected, where the exact opposite occurs, a lie is sold while the oppressor denies the social equity to the oppressed and therefore disavows them from the equality that is touted. This may smack of institutionalised racism but it is a different form, however I will leave this for another article. The colonisers murdered, raped and pillaged. They created underclasses of extreme poverty and they were history’s greatest slum builders.
The racism will end when all this is addressed. Till such time the prisons will be filled, the acts of resistance will continue and many of these acts will translate as suicides. It should be understood, that this sense of racism and the culmination of suicide are never directly resultant from the victim but are incurred by the oppression, the relentless oppression, by the oppressor. The oppressed are never the problem. The oppressor is the problem, always. Where suicide rates between the descendants of the dispossessed and the rest of the population are dramatically disparate then in two words it is ‘structural racism’.
When we look through the cultural lens and see that people are committing suicide ten times the rate of the rest of their region’s population then there are racial divides but built on the oppressor and oppressed dichotomy.
Oppression causes suicide and the natural human response is to resist oppression. The normal human response is not to allow oneself to be broken, beaten or dominated by oppression. The significant consideration is that if oppression causes suicide is it then in fact suicide? Or is it murder? Oppression kills. In my view it is murder and until we focus on the oppressor and urge the ways forward, address the inequalities, end the oppression, then the murders will continue, tragically at the horrific rates that have been naturalised.
The violence of ignorance will continue these narratives – this is why I write articles such as this, to take on the social and political force of these abominable narratives.
ABC NEWS 24 – Suicide, a catastrophic humanitarian crisis
CAAMA Radio – Speaking out on the suicides and on the oppressor and oppressed
– Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander peoples of the Kimberley, the Northern Territory and far north Queensland have among the world’s highest suicide rates. Their youth and children more than likely the world’s highest suicide rates.
– Nationally, nearly one in three deaths of Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander peoples aged 15 to 35 years are suicides. Suicide is this age group’s leading cause of death.
– One in ten deaths of Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander children aged 14 years and less are suicide. Suicide is this age group’s 2nd leading cause of death. Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander children aged 14 years and less suicide at 8 times the rate of non-Aboriginal children. In some regions the rate is 10, 20 and 30 times.
Other articles and media on the suicide crisis and suicide prevention by Gerry Georgatos:
It is not a competition but suicide is the leading cause of death
Do not play with peoples’ lives
Catastrophic suicide crisis will escalate “unless”…
One in ten Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders have been to jail
An eleven year old suicides – nine months later his mother takes her life
Understanding the abominable jail and suicide rates
The issue of our time – 1 in 3 deaths by suicide
When the right people lead then lives will be saved
Truth, not lies on Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander suicide prevention rates
A moral abomination – a narrative that is racialised; of human suffering and misery
Plato said engage with our politicians or risk being governed by the dumb – the suicide crises
Another misguided reductionist plan to reduce rates of suicide self-harm
The leading cause of death – for 15 to 44 year old Australians – is suicide | The Stringer
People strengthening people focus on suicide prevention
Understanding difference and unfairness is a first step in suicide prevention | The Stringer
Taboo, stigma and shame need to get out of the way for suicide prevention | The Stringer
Suicide is heading to a humanitarian crisis – it is a leading cause of death | The Stringer
Suicides are preventable – here is what we must begin to do | The Stringer
The extensiveness of Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander suicides – 1 in 20 | The Stringer
Preventing suicide – “no greater legacy” | The Stringer
Understanding Australia’s suicide crises
Shame job Australia – they came through the gate with my boy’s body
Suicides, high among overseas born and second generation Australians
Child suicidal ideation on the increase
It is racism killing our people – suicides born of racism
Kimberley suicide rate – one of the world’s highest – Yiriman is the way to go
My Country – But look how I am forced to live
What will it take to end Aboriginal disadvantage, the inequalities and the various crises?
What sort of Australia is this? Seven homeless children in an asbestos slum
Six homeless children fighting for a better tomorrow
Quality of life for Australians 2nd only to Norway but for Aboriginal Peoples 122nd
Dumbartung convenes suicide crisis summit
Suicide attempts among women on the rise
Australia’s Aboriginal children detained at the world’s highest rates
Culture should not be denied – change needs unfolding, not impost
Everyone in the Territory doing well, except for Aboriginal Peoples
Australia’s Aboriginal children, the world’s highest suicide rate
Wes Morris slams government suicide prevention programs
How many more suicides will it take? How many more deaths?
Hopelessness in suicide riddled communities
More government neglect of Aboriginal children
In identity lay the answers – ATSI suicides
$25.4 billion spent on Aboriginal disadvantage is a lie
Beagle Bay to State Parliament – Farrer speaks out on suicides
Government to address Aboriginal suicides
996 Aboriginal deaths by suicide – another shameful Australian record
996 deaths by suicide – one in 24 die by suicide
Australia’s Aboriginal suicide epidemic – whose child will be the next to die?
77 Aboriginal suicides in South Australia alone
Kimberley’s Aboriginal peoples old at 45 years
Australia, the mother of all jailers of Aboriginal people
Tumult of death – 400 suicides in last three years
30 suicides in the last three months as we wait for promises to be kept
Suicide crisis – genocidal numbers
Suicide crisis – from tragic to catastrophic
Suicide crisis needs real funding and actions
Hundreds more will suicide if we wait for 2015
Nothing will be done about suicides crisis
Elders across Australia say governments need to listen to them on how to address youth suicide
Suicides – western society and ancient cultures clash
If we are serious about suicide prevention
Australia’s suicide crisis should not be played down – the media must highlight it
From my father’s death bed to the must-do to end the suicides
Governments promise on ending suicides must come good now
More confirmation of what everyone knows, was suicide prevention inadequate
The must-do need to listen and trust if suicides crisis is to end
Working together – mental health and suicide prevention roundtable
Break the taboo around suicides, we reduce suicides
Suicide crises born of Australia’s inhumanity
Suicides crisis linked to incarceration
Wes Morris urges funding for cultural methodologies
The betrayal of our children – the Northern Territory
New project offers hope to reduce Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander suicides
Depression and suicide prevention must be top of the agenda this century
World Suicide Prevention Day – suicide takes more lives than war
Western Australia – 1 in 13 in a jail, a bullshit state of affairs
Yiriman saving lives in the midst of the Kimberley’s suicide crises
The smaller a community, the less likely a suicide
Overcoming disadvantage report shows disadvantage not overcome
600 Black deaths in custody by 2025 – jail numbers to soar
Get out of the way – Aboriginal suicide rates will drop
A nation shamed when the solution for its children is homelessness
Christmas, a period of vulnerability for many
Stop peddling lies $30 billion spent on Indigenous disadvantage is a lie
To end our trauma government must stop the assault on our people and our culture
In Australia there is the Aboriginal rights struggle
Kirstie Parker, Mick Gooda say enough of fine words – close the gap a big fat lie
Highest child removal rates in the world worse than Stolen Generations
Stop examining the oppressed – instead examine the oppressor
Other media:
Youth suicide at crisis levels among Indigenous population
A nation shamed when child sees suicide as the solution
Families urged to look after each other as suicide rates soar
Response to rash of suicides in remote WA regions
ABC 7:30 Report – Deaths in custody and jail rates
Indigenous suicide prevention ambassador
Mother takes her own life after losing beloved son
Radio:
Tiga Bayles and Gerry Georgatos discuss the suicide crises
Unpaid fines leading Indigenous over representation
Researcher says poverty is driving incarceration of Aboriginal people
One in twenty First Peoples deaths classify as suicide
CAAMA Radio – Gerry Georgatos Speaks out on Aboriginal Suicide.