indigenous politics
13 Aug 2008
An Open Letter to Jenny Macklin
Makinti Minutjukur
Today the Indigenous Affairs Minister makes a flying first-time visit to the Pukatja Community in South Australia's APY lands. This is an open letter to the Minister from Anangu woman Makinti Minutjukur
12 August, 2008Dear Minister
We welcome you on your first visit to our community at Ernabella/Pukatja.
We are happy to hear that the Government will pay for the repair of the Ernabella Church. That church is part of our present day heritage. Our fathers and grandfathers built it with their own hands. It is a place that helped to keep our community strong.
We are also happy to hear that the Commonwealth and State Governments will help the Amata community to have a new art centre building for Tjala Arts. Community art centres are like the hub of a wheel. They are a fixed point where people work and make money to feed their families; pass on their knowledge to young people; get training in art skills and business skills; and have a quiet safe place to be where they make beautiful things that make them feel proud and happy, as well as giving pleasure to the people who buy their work.
We are also pleased to hear that both your Government and the South Australian Government will do something to help with more houses in our communities.
We appreciate the help the governments are giving with these things. We believe that you know that they are the tip of the iceberg. Hiding under the water are the same old problems - bigger than ever.
First though, step back 30 years. In those days we had a community garden supervised by Ungakini's husband, and which supplied our fresh fruit and vegetables. The community bakery run by Peter Nyaningu supplied all our bread. Rodney Brumby ran the building projects, supervising the brick making for houses and community buildings in which my father also worked, just one of several of his community jobs. My mother worked in the women's learning centre where she and other women made clothes, home furnishings, and all sorts of practical goods which people bought with the money they earned from their employment in the community.
I worked in the clinic and was trained there by Robert Stephens and others. Many Anangu received health worker training then; few do today. We had the responsibility of doing the jobs that made our community. We earned our living and we did work that was interesting and worthwhile. We were learning in a good way how to be together in one place all the time, and how to start making so many changes in our lives. All this was new, since as you know, only 30 years before that most of us were still living in the bush and living from the land.
I believe the reason why all our lives out here have become so difficult and painful over the last 30 years is that governments, who have the power over us because they have the money we need to make the changes from old ways to new ways, have stopped listening to us. Listening properly. Taking the time. Working with us. Trusting us to be responsible for our own lives - since we know them best.
It's true that many people have come from government for visits: politicians like yourself, very senior and important public servants from Canberra and Adelaide, and all sorts of other experts and advisers. That's good of course - but not one of them has ever stayed long enough, or come back often enough so that they can really understand, and so that we can help them understand what is the reality here - and the other way, so that they can help us understand what the government can do.
You know and I know what some of the problems are: not enough money for people to live and eat properly, and so an increasing health crisis because of bad diet; no proper work for most adults and so a rising sense of hopelessness from young people who can see no future; a terrifying marijuana problem (since Opal fuel it has replaced petrol as the substance abuse of choice) which is a main factor in most suicides among its many other destructive effects; many old "slum" like houses, and not enough houses anyway, so babies, children, everyone gets sick.
The strength of Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara is in our relationships with each other. That is how our society and our communities work - through our relatedness. Our communities can remain strong only as long as our relationships can be strong, instead of melting away because of no work and no meaning, sickness and sadness. We need to build up those relationships again and we need a different relationship with governments.
I want to ask you, for all Anangu: will you listen to us? As a participant in the 2020 Summit I felt very hopeful that your Government might listen to us.
I understand that governments change, that politicians come and go and so do public servants. We've been here all along, and long before that. Our lives were much better 30 years ago. In the years since there have been many changes, some big, some little. Our money has gone up but mostly down; the places we could work in the community changed, and/or disappeared - that is, they weren't funded any more (such as Wali K which only two years ago employed young men making building products). This is just one example of all the changes that are imposed on us in which we have no part, and no choice. Part of the reason is that the various groups, committees and individuals who make the decisions that affect us all are not properly representative of Anangu tjuta - all Anangu. This is a serious problem and needs urgent attention with full Anangu participation and understanding every step of the way.
Surely we can work together to understand each other properly, to make good plans together that will last, and not change every few years when governments change and officials change. I don't believe it has to be like that. We are a very patient people but none of us has much more time to wait before our communities disappear under the sea, with the rest of the iceberg.
Yours sincerely
Makinti Minutjukur
Disability Support Worker, DFS
Pukatja Community (formerly Ernabella Mission)
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The lives of Anangu at Pukatja were much better thirty or forty years ago than they are now, Ms Minutjukur suggests: under the Presbyterian missionaries, people worked, on a large vegetable garden, in a bakery, and I believe, in an orchard and chook yard as well; people made bricks, and were actively involved in making houses. And wasn’t there a bit of a cattle station as well ? And some sheep, for meat ?
It may be a bit misleading to suggest that the community got more money back then than they do now - I don’t think this would be the case at all, far more money would be coming in to the community now, from all sorts of sources. The questions is what is being done with it ?
Thirty or forty years ago, there were not many problems of drunkenness, marijuana or domestic violence or sexual abuse or neglect of children. Now Mr Mulligan says there are terrible problems. Young people seem to find money for marijuana, so there is money around. Ms Minutjukur writes of ‘old houses’: how old are they ? Ten years old ? Thirty years old ? Fifty and sixty and eighty years old, like a lot of the houses in Adelaide ? Are there any vacant houses at Pukatja, and if there are, how many houses and how many people ? Do people have to pay for damage to the houses that they live in, like down in Adelaide ? Or do they get all repairs free ?
Governments have to listen to Aboriginal community people, when the yhave something to say, but community people have to listen to governments too, and between them to negotiate what is the best way to go, how can people get jobs, andwhat sort of training do they need for those jobs - for example, can they start up a vegetable garden again, or an orchard, or chook yard, or cattle and sheep for meat ? Can they start up brick-making again ? What has CDEP been doing for thirty years ? How come CDEP started just when all those projects were stopped ? Or maybe, the projects stopped when CDEP started ?
Joe
The elderly Anangu tell us that life was much better 30 years ago when most people were expected to work. Once social security became the ‘payer’ of monies many people did not need to work.
To get people to work nowadays we need social security payments and CDEP to be strictly tied to work, but most importantly tied to real training and jobs. Doing rubbish collection or sweeping and raking are not real jobs - they are fill ins and only a few can do them in any given week.
Where are the training programs for the young ones to set up websites, run businesses, doing the office work at the school, clinic, community office or art centre, being trained as nurses, aged care assistants, in producing goods for sale etc.
What is TAFE offering - specifically in each community? What jobs will their training lead to? What about ‘work for the dole’? What is being offered? How often are the people managing this program on the APY Lands?
To make significant changes, everything and everyone needs to work together. Children need to be at school - all day, every day. Their teachers need to provide stimulating lessons and incorporate Anangu cultural activities in the curriculum.
More houses are required and they and the current ones need to be looked after. Feeding children and families needs to be a priority, not wasting money on grog, gunja, pokies or cards as is seen so often. People need to look after their health and improve their diet.
But most importantly, people need hope and a willingness to make an effort to help themselves - not to always rely on the government. This hope must come from the people themselves for they can see what 30 years of reliance of governments has led to. The increased Christian Inma this year in some parts can be seen as a way to instill more hope. Give the children hope and a way forward.
Hi JAW,
I lived in an Aboriginal community for four years in the seventies and when we first went there, almost every man was working. Ten years later, the wheat, grapes, lucerne, sheep and stone-fruit enterprises had been wound down and finished and there were about four men working, on two new and incredibly expensive projects, almonds and crayfish production. Fast forward another twenty five years and almost nobody is working. We went there fervently dedicated to self-determination, myself as a labourer, my wife to open up the pre-school. But self-determination has failed. It has failed. The people let it fail, simple as that. It didn’t have to fail, but the people made decisions that led it to fail. End of story, in more ways than one.
One of my jobs was to work on garbage collection and although there were three or four of us, twice a week, often I did the lot, driving, loading, unloading, cleaning the trailer, parking it, sometimes in two hours, twice a week, i.e. four hours’s work. The last I heard was that two guys did it full-time, i.e. two guys two days a week on CDEP, or thirty two hours’ work. I’m not a hard worker, never have been, but there you go.
One idea floating around (actually ever since the Miller report of 1985 or so) is that Aboriginal people shouldn’t have to work, ever - they should have ‘choice’ about whether to work or not. Apart from the blatant fact that ‘choice’ seems to lead to mind-numbing idleness, violence, child neglect, drug abuse and early death, one has to ask, does any group of people in Australia have the right not to work ? As a Marxist, I’m appalled by the idea, as if some elite or feudal class can live in leisure while others work, paying taxes to support them. Even Lenin said, he who does not work, shall not eat. So counter-intuitively, what good does it do anybody not to work ? i.e. for life ?
On top of that, of course, Aboriginal people in remote areas then complain about poverty. I suppose standard welfare payments, plus royalties, plus cheap or no rents, plus free breakfasts and lunches for kids, might still amount to poverty, but isn’t the broad thrust of a solution pretty obvious, that people should be required to work if they want a share in public benefits ?
I’ve knocked around Aboriginal affairs for forty five years and my wife and kids are Indigenous but I’ve never thought that Aboriginal people should have any privileges over and above what other Australians are entitled to. They are certainly entitled to no less, but not to any more. Land rights are a corollary of equal rights: if any Australian, Black or white, can demonstrate continuous association with the land for thousands of years, then they have an equal right to claim it.
So if Aboriginal people in the North-West or anywhere want the ful lrange of public services, and public beneftis, then able-bodied Aboriginal people should be required like anybody else to look for work, to train for work, and to work where they can find it. No Aboriginal community will ever be so emptied of people because of this to ever have to worry about someone taking their land - that’s a bogeyman argument: three-quarters of the adult population even now are either pensioners, single mothers, invalids or otherwise not required to work. And of course, why aren’t there enterprises on Aboriginal land, worked by Aboriginal people, like there used to be ?
I look forward to the day when the humbugging stops.
Joe
While I hear what is being said here, I can’t feel easy with it. It is true, but seems to only be part of the story.
I have been involved with the APY Lands over nearly 40 years now and have seen all the changes mentioned in Makinti’s letter and the following discussion. As a "missionaries’ kid" I relate to the missionary times as positive but paternalistic, in line with government and community philosophy of the time. I also know the hope that came with land rights and self management, now in sad disarray. In recent years I have seen the proliferation of "whitefellas" making a living from the Lands. Some of these are wonderfully dedicated and understanding people, but not all.
Makinti says that "governments… have stopped listening to us. Listen properly. Taking time. Working with us to be responsible for our own lives…". I see this as the basic flaw in all that has happened over the last 30 years. Of necessity, we "whitefellas" generally are involved directly in "the Lands" for only a few years of our lives. Some of us maintain the involvement and contact over much longer than that. Usually we are just learning to "listen properly" by the time we leave. How then can politicians and senior administrators "listen properly" in flights in and out of "the Lands" that take only a few days, or more often hours? In practice, each new round of politicians, community workers… whatever, seems to want to rediscover everything from the start, discounting the experience of those who have gone before.
John.
At best, they listen briefly, pick up some theme, then go off and try to resolve it in a "whitefella" way, which may be quite inappropriate and dis-empowering to Anangu.
Sure, Anangu have made mistakes. Some have been or become corrupt. Some have been or become lazy. But what about our own society. Some Anangu have remained committed and true to their cause. Can we listen to, trust and empower those people? Can we stop generalizing and work together with Anangu as people?
From Hobbes’ ‘Leviathan’ (1648):
‘In such condition, there is no place for industry; because the fruit thereof is uncertain: and consequently no culture of the earth; no navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by sea; no commodious building; no instruments of moving, and removing, such things as require much force; no knowledge of the face of the earth; no account of time; no arts; no letters, no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.’
Is this what we are condemning Aboriginal people in remote areas to ? Will we ourselves be condemned for our glib talk about ‘self-determination’ in another generation, when we know very well that it’s not working ?
Joe
Sorry, Hobbes (1851): Ch. 13, p. 62; in the Pelican edition, 1984, p. 186.
I guess my question is "Have we truly tried self-determination or just our version of it?" As the "missionaries’ kid" that I am, I grapple with the injustices and blame of the stolen generation, while knowing that there were those involved who acted with integrity and commitment within the mores of the day. I’m ready for the next round of criticism for being an advocate of self determination, although I’m not sure that I mean the same by that term as governments over several decades now have meant.
John.
Hi John,
Yes, I realise now that what governments (and, it has to be said, the Left as well) meant by ‘self-determination’ back in the seventies was abdication, withdrawal, drawing a line under Aboriginal policy and effectively forgetting about any responsibilities on the ground. When we went up to the Mission in 1973, we had the opposite view, that now was the time for everybody to put their shoulder to the wheel, for the long haul. And it could have worked too, if quite frankly the council had any desire to make it work, but they did seem to care for nothing much beyond getting more houses, moving the football oval from A to B, appointing more of the dominant families to management positions, and firming up control in the hands of the big men of those families. My wife had opened up the pre-school and when we left in 1978, the council pressured the young woman who took over to resign, and turned it into a Sobriety Group Centre, demonstrating their priorities: alcoholic rehab over education.
No government made them do that, the people and their elected representatives did it. With self-determination, the people gained responsibility as well as power, no two ways about it: the power to make decisions, and the responsibility for their consequences. The Council up there had a quaint rule, that nobody who was employed by the council could be elected to it (except for the most powerful people of the most powerful family), so the only people on it effectively were pensioners, who had finished their schooling back in the twenties, and who hadn’t worked for ten years, or ever. So there focus was rarely economic, usually just more housing - yet about a third of the houses were vacant, the young people having moved in with their baby-minder parents. Overcrowding and vacant houses - the two usually go together.
That’s another thing: just to remember the 1967 Referendum, Aboriginal people would have to be nearly sixty now, and there aren’t too many Aboriginal people aged sixty or more. So can people remember the colonial times ? I’m not so sure. It would have to be part of a mythical past by now, formulaic and apocryphal rather than accurate, of the ‘Captain Cook came into our country with his cattle and shot a lot of people and took many others to the Broome jail, and only Ned Kelly stood up to him’ school. History does not pass down in the blood, or genetically, it has to be learnt by each generation, painstakingly and meaningfully. Does it actually happen that way ? I don’t think so.
Love and highest regards to Uncle Bill and Val if you see then.
Cheers,
Joe
Yes, I agree with your sentiments but what are the issues affecting the APY Lands today and what are the solutions?
The area is unique in that Land Rights have been granted under the 1981 Act, the area is peculiar in that amendments have occurred to both the Act and the terms of the lease and the question of why needs to be asked.
The area is immensely rich in minerals, particularly petroleum, and several exploration licences have been granted. How has this impacted the managing council? We know Native Title has been a mess all over the country in dividing communities and resulting in the damage to the lands, how is the council managing the influx of international investment..Dominion Mining etc…all the corporations wanting to cash in on the oil reserves, how open and transparent is the council in managing the issues which are now impacting the APY Lands? Is this why there is such a sudden interest in the area your people live?
If so, thats a great challenge to construct a vision on how to manage this influx if you choose and when to decide to say "NO" simply because you may decide to use your unique position to preserve the lands for future generations or manage investment in a way which will contribute to the long term benefit of your people out there.
All the best with the challenges ahead in maintaining peace and bringing back health and optimism to your people. Its difficult when so much interference is occuring but if information is shared openly and honestly between all concerned, and a common long term vision is adopted, anything is possible.
At last..a positive discussion by people without self promoting agendas. I feel I have learned something from those with first hand experience.
Thanks Joe and others.
It always amazes me when people talk about mining and resource development on Aboriginal lands and complain about the infinite possibilities that people will get ripped off. Of course they will, if they have no expertise in any of the relevant fields. So they get the expertise, and control the whole process that much more efficiently, instead of being spectastors with their hands out.
More than seventy thousand Indigenous people have been enrolled at one time or another in university courses, morethan twenty thousand have graduated and there are currently nine thousand in the system, with that number expected to double in the next ten years. The scandal is that so few Indigenous people have graduated in any field relevant to mining and resource development - very few accountants, surveyors, geologists, mineralogists, metallurgists, mining engineers, human resource managers, as well as large machinery mechanics, landscape rehabilitation managers, etc.
Aboriginal people could tackle all of these fields if they slogged their way through secondary school like anybody else, taking the hard science and maths subjects rather than the cutlery arrangement, dance, and fooball. Those more valuable courses don’t belong to whites, in that idiotic dichotomy of white course and black courses that some people are probably still pushing somewhere.
Relevant knowledge for Indigenous people in the 21st century means rigorous knowledge of - in this case - all aspects of mining extraction, if only so that Indigenous people know what the other bastards are up to. I’m certainly not saying it would be easy or quick, but sooner or later, if Indigenous people don’t want to be spectators forever of their own fate, they will have to get those skills. If they don’t, they are finished.
Joe
Joe,
It could also be stated that if normal standards of governance and transparency were adopted by Australian politicians, none of the above would apply. Look at the situation at Mintabie in this case. It may as well be called an intervention and it may as well not be an area subject to Land Rights. What rights exist when media and government construe a reality for their convenience that is designed to enable mining and development irrespective of what qualification someone has. The same applies to the Native Title process which should be abandoned completely in favour of mining scrutiny open to all parties that have a concern, whether they be traditional owners or people who are concerned about the developments on any grounds.
The real problems facing these remote communities are invisible in any so called debate or dialogue. The real reasons for division and dis-harmony are systems put in place which have inevitable outcomes and governments and media that hide the truth of what is occuring behind the scenes, which are the real drivers behind the changes that are occuring in these places.
There would be value in aboriginal communities having more knowledge of what is going on around them, but it would be better to have honest processes and honest governments held accountable, in a broader sense, so that these hidden tensions are not allowed to exist.
Yes, you are right, Rosetta, but the bottom line is that the situation can’t stay like it is: conditions will either get worse and worse, OR the people themselves make the effort to get their kids through school, and on to university, then on to professional work experience, then if they wish make their expertise available to Anangu groups.
One disadvantage for Anangu is their small population: there is so much need for so much professional expertise, in so many fields, that a couple of thousand people are hardly ever likely to produce the vast numbers of personnel needed in the multitude of mining ventures that are likely to develop in the north and west of South Australia. Olympic Dam, for instance, will be the largest open-cut mine ever developed in the world, and on its own it could, if Anangu had the skills, employ every single professional person that they could ever produce in the next century.
The point, surely, is that professionally expert Anangu would be able to understand what the mining industries are getting up to, a bit more than if they were just spectators, sitting under a tree. There are no guarantees, of course - except ther certainty that, unless people do get a vast range of skills, then they are stuffed.
And of course they can ! By 2020, there will be a body of fifty thousand Indigenous professional people, with three thousand more each year, across every field. Anangu can stay out of it, and leave themselves totally open to exploitation, which would be great for people who only want to whinge about the evils of the world. But they could also pull themselves together, look after their kids and make sure they get a solid, rigorous, hard education, and take standard human responsibility for their future. Or they can sit back and wait for what else the world can do for them, the limitless supply of Cargo. It’s their choice.
Joe
I think the problems stem from governance and lack of in these parts. Remember 85% of SA geographically is technically ‘out-of-council’ and you would need a big team of QCs to unravel the modifications to the Land Rights Act and the subsequent lease back of land at Mintabie to the government. And even though these ‘out of council’ areas get assistance from the Outback Areas Trust, the SA constitution (1932) says that everyone has a right to local government - not that would be a total solution either.
And if there was governance and full transparency within government and the Land Councils then at least the true motives would be revealed and we would be playing with the full deck.
And as for jobs at Roxby or wherever, im reminded of the slogan on the chimmney near Spencer St Station, ‘No Jobs on a dead planet’…and Roxby and Prominent Hill certainly spells death for a lot of wildlife and habitat in the outback.
Actually, Rosetta, I would not be surprised if the cattle industry has done vastly more damage to the environment than the entire mining industry across Australia all put together. Maybe not. Either way, it would not excuse them from the damage that they HAVE done, certainly, but because it tends to intensive, at points, it is probably more remediable , more rehabitatable (?), than the damage done across vast expanses by pastoralism.
So I wouldn’t write off mining jobs, Rosetta. They may not be as glamorous as riding down wild steers, but they will be here, and in close proximity to Anangu settlements, for a long time to come. Either way, Anangu will have to get educated, so parents will have to be helped to see that their kids need to go to school. If they don’t - in this generation - then the Anangu are finished.
Joe
Pastoralism has accounted for about 1/4 of the Great Artesian drain off, but yes its damaging on other accounts, as are feral goat populations that are left unattended when they could be dealt with by bounties and such.
Mining operations like Roxby that escape EPA scrutiny (see Parnells comments) and which are closing off thousands of natural springs for wildlife are not viable fullstop, they do not make either environmental or economic sense…that make can be established through studying the water and embodied energy costs..nuclear is not a clean energy source, and neither is the process to extract it…and in fact aboriginal lore states this clearly if the elders of the Adynamathna who just signed off the Beverley expansion know.
Have to get ‘educated’! That sounds like a directive, educated in what, mining and business so they can be a part of the devastation? Hmmn…Not sure about that Joe, an education is not a heavy burden to carry but I think people need to have some choice in how their kids are educated. Maybe a Steiner school out there would’nt be a bad idea hey!
Rosetta to quote you: "There would be value in aboriginal communities having more knowledge of what is going on around them"
BUT… "Have to get ‘educated’! That sounds like a directive".
the bleeding heart dilema eh??
Hi Rosetta and Collins,
Yes, I have not the slightest hesitation in writing that Aboriginal people must - if they don’t want to be ripped off and exploited in this last generation - find ways to make sure that their kids get a good, rigorous, standard education in English and move on into secondary school, and if those kids are interested in the mining sector, which one day they may have some influence on or even run their own mining companies, to tackle the hard subjects like maths and physics and chemistry, and go on to get the university expertise in as many as possible of the fields that are relevant to mining, including logistics, accounting and human resource development, in order to understand what the hell they are up against in the mainstream with companies the size of BHP and Rio Tinto and OZ, and will be up against throughout the twenty-first century and beyond.
Hey, that’s one hell of a sentence. Not easy when you are on the turps.
The bottom line is that Indigenous people have to find ways to come out ahead of the game, to top the bastards who would otherwise rip the living shit out of them. Am I proposing something that will be easy or quick ? Fuck no !!! But in order to control the mining that might go on on their lands, they must, must, must understand it and the only way to do that is to get a hell of a lot of their young people into every aspect of expertise about the mining industry - and for Christ’s sake, why not ? Mining expertise does not belong to whites, it is not their monopoly ! Let’s not re-invent Apartheid in education all over again ! Aboriginal people, Anangu people, must get the full range of expertise about the mining industry, no ifs or buts.
Let’s for Christ’s sake bury this racist bullshit notion once and for all, that there is Black knowledge and White knowledge - there is knowledge that people have experienced and interpreted and built up, perhaps over millenia, some of which may no longer be relevant, and there is knowledge that they need to know NOW and for the future, and the two bodies of knowledge are both VITAL for Anangu. Absolutely vital. With projects like Olympic Dam, and Prominent Hill, vast projects in remote South Australia, Anangu people must, must get the knowledge to cope with, and take advantage of, these projects. So the parents must get their kids to school and must make sure that their kids do the very best they can, in this generation and, if they rise to the occasion, in all future generations of Anangu.
The Cargo paradigm has been so disastrous, the notion that people can sit under a tree and wait for bounty to drop out of the sky every fortnight, and if the Anangu people are to survive, literally survive, they must understand that this is not how it is, that the system which has kept them alive, has supported them, the welfare system, the taxation system, the factory workers busting their arses to pay taxes to support a tiny number of people out in the sticks system, is suc has to realise that life is actually a bit harder than they have fondly supposed. If the parents cannot be persuaded to realise realities, the realities of the world for their children, what is desperately relevant for their children, then the next generation is going to be destroyed, stuffed, finished.
And southern, urban Indigenous people - the 80% of Indigenous people in Australia - will get on with their lives regardless. By 2020, there will be fifty thousand Indigenous university graduates and twenty thousand tradespeople. To southern, and urban, Indigenous people, the fate of the remote Aboriginal people is at the back of their minds, but not necessarily at the centre of their radar, nor should it be. Southern people have lost their land. They have been directly exploited for 150-200 years by an alien system. They have been excluded and discriminasted against with no existential alternatives. They have busted their arses to get where they are, and getting on wit hbusiness, so why shouldn’t northern people do something similar, on their own land, people who have barely ever smacked around by white Australian racism ? Especially when the greatest economic opportunities are precisely in remote areas ? Go for it, for Christ’s sake !!!!
Joe
"must get the knowledge to cope with, and take advantage of, these projects"…sounds like missionary zeal to me, and ‘for Christs sake’…should they pray to God for direction in these strange times as well?
Joe, your approach seems to be of the school, if you cant beat em join em, which is one solution of course or we could look at the systemic issues at cause in this and other remote regions experiencing tension from economic development.
Of course education in a changing world is valuable but its not a panacea for the problems faced in remote Australia. There may well be highly educated Anangu out there stitching up better deals for the community, and hooray for that, the point is that the situation is one of manipulation and mis-representation of the facts.
The Native Title System and the revised Land Agreement is a boon for the miners and their partners SA Gov Inc…the more community division the better, enables the job of resource extraction to proceed while the media pipes out this interventionist style garbage which contributes little to the long term solutions and the problems looming, much of which is related to not so public (in terms of media) mining operations and explorations which need not just proper community scutiny, but proper scrutiny by government, both of which are lacking.
Yes, Rosetta, it’s one solution, not the very, very best, but one that is workable if people put in. My point is that sitting under a tree is not an option. The rest of the world works, and to do that, the rest of the world gets skills - and Indigenous people in the cities have shown that they can get those skills, and then get on with business, and in that way, insure themselves just that little bit more from being ripped off and exploited. But ignorance is no insurance policy - knowledge can be. And if southern and eastern Indigenous people, urban Indigenous people, have to make their way in the world, then why should Anangu get a free pass ?
People can cry ‘poor bugger me’ all they like, but unless they have done their utmost to avoid such situations, why should anybody care ?
No, Rosetta, education is no panacea or a guarantee - nothing is, absolutely nothing - there are no guarantees. But by Christ if people don’t do whatever they can to get out of the mess that they are in, no matter who caused it, then they will go down the drain. Education may, just may, provide the Anangu with the weapons to defend themselves against mining companies, against wankers who advise them not to do anything at all because it might be against their culture (as if Toyotas and free money and grog and electricity and DVDs aren’t ???), and against the lifelong emptiness that Cargo promises.
No I’m not a Christian, I’m a Marxist who believes that each of us has one short life, and it is up to each of us to do the best we can with our one life for others principally, because we are also each of us part of a common humanity, each of us with a duty to be concerned about all of our fellow humans, even if that concern may be seen as interference.
But any interference must come with the old message: first do no harm, make bloody sure that you aren’t going to do more harm than good. The Anangu people are on the edge of an abyss, and there are no guarantees that they can avoid falling into it. But certainly, if they do nothing, the people themselves, then yes, they will be gone. Yes, it’s that serious. So how can we help people to help themselves ? Paternalism ? Probably. Urgent concern ? Certainly.
Joe
But Joe, how wrong can you be, sitting under a tree is a perfect option, so well done!
I did’nt think of that so you have struck gold at last! If all concerned, sit under a tree, and talk honestly about what their aims and aspirations are, I am sure a lot would be learned and achieved.
If the shareholders of the mining companies left their padded cells in suburbia and visited these remote places and explored the wonderful outback environments and listened to people instead of their share market advisors, solutions would be close to hand.
I hope Makinti, the government and the mine proponents are listening as this may well be the very solution to the issues covered.
Sorry, Rosetta, I assumed that we were both on the same planet, or at least in the same universe. Sorry.
Joe
Rosetta,
I have nothing against people sitting under a tree, ignorant and smug and alienated from the world, as long as they do it on their own money - they are free to live on fresh air and be fed by the birds for all I care. Elsewhere, people, Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal, not on their own land, not getting royalties, will have to work. But would people be sitting under those trees if they weren’t being funded - for all they know - from the money tree in Canberra ?
And these brilliant people, sitting under their trees, illiterate, innumerate, absolutely unknowing of the outside world, have the arrogance - an innocent arrogance, if you like - to think they know how things work, that they don’t need to know anything about the factors that directly affect their lives. Meanwhile, down the road, somebody is beating up his girlfriend or wife with a brick and a star picket, and somebody else is blowing his mind on petrol and/or marijuana and/or grog, and some other poor kid is about to be sexually abused, while his auntie or grannie is on the dialysis machine, and the parents are away for weeks at yet another funeral before going on to yet more booze-ups. What an idyllic life !
So thank God for Rudd’s proposal to involve vast numbers of Aboriginal people in infrastructure projects, and do you know what, Rosetta ? My $ 100 says that the great majority of those who put themselves forward will be women. Not those wastes of space who are in and out of trouble with the law for violence and abuse, but women. Women who desperately want to get the hell away from vile situations, from lives of emptiness that they can see only too clearly threaten to blight their children and grandchildren, ad infinitum.
Down here in the south, in the real world, many Aboriginal people got away from the settlements in the forties and fifties precisely to work on infrastructure projects - railways, roadworks, forestry projects. My father-in-law started up his second family of ten kids by working his arse off away from the Mission, living in a tin shed without water or power, first on shearing and crutching and pea-picking, then on building the Myponga Dam south of Adelaide, and then on planting vast numbers of trees in the catchment area. Those mature trees are his trees, but of course, he’s gone now. If he could come back, he would be proud of his kids who have battled to find a pathway for themselves in society, since they had no land to go back to, no royalties have ever flowed to the southern people, no special benefits, not like those mobs up the north. He would be proud that three of his kids are graduates, two with post-graduate qualifications, and that so far three of his grandkids are graduates, two with Masters’. He would be able to rest now, knowing that those kids and grandkids are on their feet.
Then along come wankers who tell them ‘No, don’t worry, you’ll be okay, don’t try anything, you can sit under a tree all your life, we’ll do it all for you ….. ’ Are you South African by any chance, Rosetta ? Surprise me.
Joe
Hi Rosetta,
In addition to vast numbers of infrastructure jobs for decades, that Mr Rudd has promised in the rural areas particularly, he is now being advised to fund vast areas under carbon-trapping forests, principally mallee, which apparently are particularly good at capturing carbon dioxide.
Of course the sensible thing would be to plant species of mallee whose leaves can be harvested for eucalyptus oil, etc. And where might these vast forests of mallee be planted ? Well, what do you know, in areas not too far from remote Aboriginal communities ?
Gosh, that would mean that work would be very close to them, in either infrastructural projects or foresty projects, or both, and for the next century. In a few years, there might not be a single unemployed able-bodied Aboriginal adult in remote areas. All the able-bodied men, in particular, would have plenty of work to fund their future prosperity, their home-buying and their funding of their children’s education through to tertiary level.
Of course, this raises the problem of what to do with the army of social workers and other forms of grief counsellors. Well, luckily enough, there should be plenty of work to go around in those projects. Ah, I love work ! I could watch it all day. Particularly if it is being done by former loafers and skivers and their minders. Beooooooodiful !
Joe