A sad, hard, important book. ( )

Powerful, insightful, disturbing, depressing and just plain hopeless. What have we done to the true Australians? Chloe Hooper's account of Palm Island and the death-in-custody of Cameron Doomadgee reveals the dystopian mess of race relations in Australia. But within, there is flickering hope. A few individuals who are beaten down, but keep getting up again. Women mostly. ( )

A difficult book to read, because it is a worldwide wide not an Australian book about an Australian problem.
Before I had gone far, I knew what the outcome was going to be. Be it Australia, The United States, Africa or Europe, the problem is the same. Book needs to be read. But more importantly, people need to change. ( )

Palm Island, November 2004. A 36 year old Aboriginal man, Cameron Doomadgee, is arrested for swearing at a police officer. He is drunk, and as they arrive at the station he strikes Senior Sergeant Christopher Hurley in the face.
45 minutes later Cameron Doomadgee is dead, his liver cleaved in two as you might see after a fatal car crash. The police say he fell on a step but others disagree. A week later there is a riot during which the police station is burnt to the ground and Hurley’s residence with it. A relief team is sent in and Hurley goes into hiding. But the case doesn’t go away. An inquest is launched, then a criminal trial. It’s the first time in Australian history that a police officer has been brought before the law to answer for the death of an Aboriginal prisoner in their care. In the process the trial comes to embody all of the hurt and guilt and prejudice that underline relations between native and white Australia. ( )

This was never going to be an easy book to write. It's about black deaths in custody. Well, one particular black death in custody - Cameron Doomadgee.

And without wishing to sound facile - I think the audience will tend to see things in black and white.

Probably the "white" audience won't even read this book unless they're already "converted".

Some would say that Chloe falls into the chardonnay sipping - bleeding hearts liberal mob of thought.

I think she does her very best to avoid that stereotype. But I think she would also recognise that it will inevitably be applied.

Many of the chardonnay mob (and I include myself in that number) will "pass" on reading the book - because, honestly - do I feel any better at the end of it than I did at the beginning? Do I understand the problems better? Do I have a sense of hope? No.

Some would say that Hooper, being white, could never begin to represent blackfellas point of view properly.

You're damned if you're white - you're damned if you're black.

I choose to be white damned.

Or do I? Do we have a choice?

Here is an example of Hooper's thoughts:

"Do the things that draw a missionary to savage places also attract a cop? Does the cop get the same rush from lawlessness that missionaries get from the Godless? Wild places prove who you are, slough off every comfort of a nice house on a nice strett with a nice God-fearing family. Maybe some cops use the blue inform the way the missionary does the crucifix."

So are police the new missionaries? I don't know many cops. Do they do it from a sense of social justice? Why do they valiantly leap into territory the rest of us would fear to tread? Because what would happen if no-one picked up the chalice perhaps???

Here's another thought Chloe quotes from Orwell :

" When a white man turns tyrant it is his own freedom that he destroys. He becomes a sort of hollow, posing dummy... For it is the condition of his rule that he shall spend his life in trying to impress the "natives", and so in very crisis he has got to do what the "natives" expect of him. He wears a mask, and his face grows to it."

I don't believe that Hurley was a tyrant but perhaps he was wearing a mask i.e we're not all perfect but you have to be perfect if you're a policeman.

Hooper believes that the "war between police and Indigenous Australians is a false battleground".

I'm not quite sure what she means by this and would like to explore these thoughts further.

Does she mean that the real battleground is the family? Alcohol abuse?

It is such a complex problem.

I certainly don't have the answers but I know I don't like what I see and I am ashamed that we haven't found a solution to these problems yet.

This book doesn't give any answers - but it doesn't let me forget. Perhaps that's the best we can do in some circumstances - bear witness. ( )