Tall Man: The Death of Doomadgee

An aboriginal Australian dies in police custody, and then the lies begin. If not lies, then deceptions, self-deceptions, propaganda, and confusions. Cameron Doomadgee was an obscure man living an obscure life, but his demise had a gravity that sucked in countless strands of modern and historical Australia. He and the policeman who booked him became the centerpieces of causes- for those seeking redress for the mistreatment of aboriginal people, and for those sympathetic to the problems of policing a violent, alcohol-ridden minority. And both are far more complicated than their public image. Ms. Hooper has done an extraordinary job of researching the men and the case, and presents everything in a mesmerizing narrative. It's probably impossible not to take sides here, and she occasionally does, but she also perseveres in presenting all aspects and interpretations of the events. I don't think a reasonable person who supported either side would feel cheated by her account. If there's a weakness to the book, and one openly acknowledged by the author, it's that any research into the case reveals ever more about the policeman, and little about the deceased. For the 'short' man in this story, almost invisible in life, he managed to cast a long shadow in death.

Chloe Hooper combines gripping narrative with harrowing reportage to convey an act of violence in a land of stunning brutality. When an Aboriginal man dies in custody on an island off Australia's Queensland coast, the event becomes national news after a pathologist renders a flippant report and the white police want to write off the event, so the locals riot. It has been a long time since a book has moved me as deeply as this book does. On Friday, November 19, 2004, Senior Sergeant Chris Hurley, at the end of his second year in the Aboriginal settlement at Palm Island, arrested Cameron Doomadgee for cursing at him and another officer. Doomadgee was drunk at ten in the morning. Forty minutes later, Doomadgee was dead, with injuries consistent with a massive car crash. Hooper tries to reconstruct those forty minutes, and the legal wrangling that lasts for nearly three years afterward. In Hooper's heartrending language, Palm Island mixes the worst aspects of an Indian reservation, a penal colony, and Hell. Though Hooper conducts her reportage with the help of Doomadgee's family, her frankness creates a world of moral compromise, stunning melding of honorable and shameful traits, and a people wracked with generations of pain and abjection. There is enough in this book to stun and appall anybody of any social or political point of view. Sergeant Hurley comes across one moment as a sterling lawman who builds bridges between white government and poor black Aborigines, then as an evasive, angry bigot. Cameron Doomadgee is a loving father and leader, and at the same time a chronic drunk with a brutal temper. The trial to see who was responsible for what drags out an entire province's buried racism as well as its higher ideals. Australian frontier justice is swift, sure, and unforgiving. The story unfolds in a way comprehensible to world audiences. Comparisons to the Wild West and the American Civil War make the story of a crime on the far side of the planet feel as close as my own history. But this very clarity is also what makes this book such an impactful read. I can imagine having a beer with Chris Hurley, or a friendly dust-up with Cameron Doomadgee; and I can imagine having to choose sides when one dies in the other's custody. Hooper unflinchingly depicts the story's participants as they are, with the glory and pain intact. In reading this, I was struck by one question: how different is this from America? Looking at suffering urban blacks or reservation Indians, and the way people who look like me deny that anguish while crushing those who dare rise up, I have to confess, maybe not much. But does that make the present culpable for the crimes of the past? I can't say. This is a very important book. People of good conscience and confident values should read it, regardless of their politics or background. It is packed with harrowing truths and hard-eyed views of the highs and lows of human nature, a story that is as moving as it

It's impossible to read this book as an American and not be drawn to the sense of parallel worlds. You can't help but recall similar issues here and the impact of well-meaning missionaries on the American Indian population, the injustice, suppression and the inhumane treatment of black slaves and their struggle for civil rights. The world of the Aborigine people of Australia unfolds in the author's tale. She came to Palm Island to document the trial surrounding the 2004 death of Cameron Doomadgee, but she found herself looking at the world of the indigenous people of the continent with new eyes. Their plight becomes a character in Hooper's book, as real and detailed as the people she is surrounded by. The pervasive alcoholism, physical abuse of women, violence, distrust of the white authorities, mysticism and racism are palpable and place the death of Doomadgee squarely in the context of the world he lived in. Like her assignment that should only have taken weeks, the actual murder was more than just about a white cop and a dead 'blackfella'. It was a symptom of a much bigger problem. One officer she interviews comments that the environment he lives in, among the indigenous people he is supposed to protect, has left him with the knowledge that he is a racist - and he knows enough to understand that his humanity has been diminished for it. The horrifying thing is that the events in Tall Man didn't occur last century, or the one before. It was five years ago. Several times while reading this book I had to remind myself that these events were shockingly recent. Several things I read with a sense of disbelief that such things were still possible in a developed country. Hooper's narrative isn't preachy, or dramatic, but understated and observant - it simply is what it is, and often it offends our sense of justice and humanity. But it seems that is exactly the target she was aiming for.

Chloe Hooper brings the news from Australia, and the news is not good: some people there, it seems, are as eager to believe any sort of ill deed and call it justice so long as it doesn't upset their idea of the social order. And other people are just as willing to tilt, Quixote-like, at the windmills of justice, and walk away all the more noble for their futility. I'm loathe to give too much away, because this is a nonfiction book that reads as briskly as a police procedural, and with the urgency of scripture. But suffice it to say that the reader will come to know the workings of Aboriginal Australia, of the police who serve and harm there, of the history that continually undercuts the people who live there. The reader will be reminded, more than once, of things North American: the Trail of Tears, the destruction of the Arawaks on Hispaniola, the tyranny of state-as-parent. In the end, the reader (this reader, anyway), will come to believe that the comparisons of Hooper's work to Truman Capote's In Cold Blood and Norman Mailer's The Executioner's Song are well-made. This is crime reporting that reads like literature, and I'm excited to know that there are more books by Chloe Hooper yet to read.

"The Tall Man" is a true crime tale of murder set in the aboriginal community in Australia. In an area that is known for racial tension, a 36 year old aboriginal man, Doomadagee, is arrested for swearing at a white police officer. Taken into police custody, he is dead 40 minutes later. The white police officer denies beating him, but a autopsy shows a ruptured liver. Murder charges follow, and then a riveting courtroom drama.... I don't want to give out additional plot spoilers here. I could not put this book down. Ms. Hooper has a writing style that is crisp and clear-every sentence she uses is informative. The pictures of the characters and the map of the area completes this well-rounded book.