Chris Graham is an Australian journalist and editor of the National Indigenous Times (see: http://nit.com.au/blog/?author=3 ).
Chris Graham, editorial in the National Indigenous Times on horrendous Aboriginal avoidable mortality (2007): “Most Australians don't like to be termed as racist.
The word is supposed to be for South Africans two decades ago, or for Americans before the civil rights era, or even for our earlier colonial ancestors, about two hundred years ago.
But what other reason could there be for the fact Aboriginal people have the same mortality rate of sheep?
And what other word could be used to justify the fact that being an Aboriginal Australia is more dangerous in terms of annual excess mortality than that people in US-occupied Iraq?
What other word could be used to describe the fact there are 7,803 Aboriginal deaths that could have been avoided each year?
And what other word could there be for the fact that, despite such a body count, Australia continues to remain deaf to the plight of Indigenous Australians?
The Indigenous Australia avoidable body count each year is well in excess of what it should be for a first world nation.
And after 12 years, the Howard government has barely even taken the littlest tentative step forward.
Within a decade of healthy and much celebrated surpluses, you would think Peter Costello could spare a few million more.
Just last month, NIT discovered through a few calculations that the $460 million estimated Indigenous health shortfall could have been solved 188 times over already.
Institutionalised racism is obviously thriving in Australia and although there are few who actually don white hoods and burn crosses, the sad fact remains that the nation remains largely indifferent to the most disadvantaged group in Australia.
This is the awful truth that we desperately need to hear.
Now that it has become almost common knowledge that Indigenous people die 17 years younger than non-Indigenous Australians, it is time for the even more devastating statistics to come to light.
The ABS acknowledges that its annual death count for Indigenous Australia, around 2000 every year, is probably much higher.
But as high as 10,236?
We obviously have a crisis on our hands.
The fact that this is happening to the first inhabitants of this land is even more sad.
First we dispossess them of their land, then we continue to stomp over their rights, we steal their hard earned wages, we place them on the fringes of society and drive them onto reserves and then we vote for John Howard who refuses to apologise.
As Australians, we don't like to be called racist but there really is no other word to describe it.
Maybe if there was more awareness, if there was more of a concerted effort to look at what is happening instead of hiding it under our own guilt and writing it off... maybe, just maybe racism can finally be eradicated.
But first there needs to be an acknowledgement that as a nation, we are built on a racist past and still continue to regurgitate this racism not just onto our generation, but onto our future ones as well.” [1].
[1]. Chris Graham, Editor, “EDITORIAL OPINION: When racist seems to be the hardest word”, national Indigenous Times”, Issue 131, June 14, 2007: http://www.nit.com.au/opinion/story.aspx?id=11551 .