What is a homeland? One White insider’s view – a guest post from John Greatorex
- Share
Image from Getup
This a guest post from John Greatorex who worked as a teacher at Galiwin’ku on Elcho island off the coast of Arnhem Land for 27 years. He now is a part-time teacher of the Yolngu studies at a Darwin University.
He has now resigned from teaching to work with his Yolngu families on projects of importance to them – including the wonderful Arnhem Weavers group – you can find out more about the Arnhem Weavers and the food co-operative project they have recently started at their website.
Recently I was profoundly moved when I heard Richard Downs, an Alwayarra elder, seek refugee status for his people whose homelands are in the central east of the Northern Territory, Australia.
The Alyawarra were refusing to accept the impositions of the Federal Government through the Northern Territory Emergency Response (NTER), and as part of their action they have requested the United Nations (UN) register their people under the international refugee convention as internally displaced persons.
The ABC reported (26 August 2009):
“Mr Downs says people of the Alyawarra Nation have been left with no choice because the federal intervention in the Northern Territory has taken away their rights.” “We’ve got no say at all,” he said. “We feel like an outcast in our community, refugees in our own country.”
This was followed the next by another report on the ABC where Richard Downs said:
“We no longer have any rights to exist as humans in our own country and are outcasts in our own community”
On the 3rd September Richard Downs wrote:
“Your government’s so-called measures under the intervention go far beyond this [protecting women] to take away our dignity, our self esteem, and land control, disempowerment, human and indigenous rights.“… Your system is about creating divisions, hate and racism and control over people who are already struggling under oppression.”
When I read these statements I thought: “These people are making a stand in a climate of constant and negative stereotyping by governments and media; a difficult step for anyone.”
The Alyawarra, by refusing to be redefined, are taking active steps to take control of their lives.
Don’t we all want to be in control of our lives?
I would like to tell two stories which I hope will provide insight into why homelands are of crucial and critical importance to their traditional custodians.
The following stories attempt to represent what I have heard and learnt from Aboriginal mentors in east Arnhemland over several decades.
Not only does it make common sense, but it has been clearly demonstrated that the happiest and healthiest people in any society are those who are able to control the most important aspects of their lives.
Control over our lives is proportional to how we feel about ourselves, how society sees us, and our status within society.
In the Northern Territory the people with the least control over their lives are the First Nations peoples.
Disturbingly, recent Australian and NT Government policies, including the NTER, have further stripped away at Aboriginal people’s rights to control their lives in the Northern Territory. Traditional (nation) estates on which ‘prescribed’ communities are located have been compulsorily acquired by governments without negotiation.
Every Black Territorian living on ‘Aboriginal’ land receiving Centrelink or other welfare payments is compulsorily ‘Income-Managed’ (including old-age pensioners).
Black Territorians are negatively stereotyped as child abusers and alcoholics, poor school attendees and perpetrators of domestic violence.
Recently-announced policies now envisage forcing families off their custodial estates (away from their homes) into ‘growth towns’ for the convenience of government bureaucracies.
Public statements that redefine all Black Territorians in a negative way can only have a negative and debilitating impact. While governments, supported by the media, continue to negatively stereotype all Black Territorians, the health and well-being of these peoples will continue to decline.
In east Arnhemland where the Yolngu peoples live, and where I have spent much of the past 30 years, I can say for a fact:
“…there are homelands where school attendance is higher than anywhere else in Australia; where children are safer than in white towns and centres and where substance abuse and youth suicide are non-existent.”
So what is it that is so important and special about homelands for their traditional custodians and that underpins such successful outcomes?
The following two stories may provide some insight into these questions.
Story One.
Recently the Yolngu Studies lecturer, Yingiya Guyula, delivered the last class for the semester. He spoke about the first contact between his families and White settlers.
He told how fear of Whiteman first entered the lives of his families after his grandfather was shot by cattlemen. Before this incident his families had heard reports from further south that White men were scalping Black men; just like his families were skinning crocodiles.
Now they had to be ever vigilant and wary. They could no longer live peacefully, safely travel and hunt on their custodial estates; lands they had inhabited since the beginning of time.
Towards the end of the class a student added to Yingiya’s story.
She explained that when the Elcho Island missionaries called the twenty or so Yolngu nations to ‘the Light’, they didn’t understand. These missionaries failed to recognise the existence of strong and complex governance structures, where nation boundaries, established alliances and political structures were understood and respected.
By calling these diverse peoples into the Elcho Island mission, and onto the land of one nation, the missionaries were disempowering all the non-landowners.
She explained it like this.
“We Yolngu people are connected to our ancestral estates like a tree is rooted deeply into the soil. When the roots of a tree and the soil recognise each other, the roots will grow ever deeper and stronger, and the tree grows strong and bears good fruit.”
“The missionaries pulled us up by the roots and placed us in the mission and onto soil that was foreign. Our roots could not grow into the mission soil, that soil does not recognise us, and our roots do not recognise that soil. Our roots would only stay in the surface soil. A tree may stay alive on unfamiliar and alien soil, but it will not find nourishment, it will be stunted and will not bear good fruit. We can be only strong and independent on our homelands; not in the mission; not in the “town”.
Story Two.
In 1984, with the best of intentions, the Northern Territory Government developed a constitution for the community council on Elcho Island. The new constitution made provision for members to represent the 20 or so nations who lived on the mission (in 2009 residents still use the term mission).
An old man and I were talking one day. He had been elected chairman of the council. He described how he felt in conflict, he did not feel comfortable talking about the land where the mission stood, it wasn’t his land. He understood why some council members didn’t attend council meetings. He explained that it was disrespectful for non-landowners to discuss the mission land. So how could the council work?
I could see what he was saying. I grew up on a family owned farm. We would have been very upset if the government had decided that our neighbours had the right to make decisions about our farm.
I noticed that although he attended council meetings, he didn’t make public council announcements, he always deferred to the land owners for such matters.
When a Yolngu man or woman speaks of the critical importance of land, I now know they are not talking about land in general. They are referring to their very own homeland.
If you are motivated to do so, please have a look at the online homelands petition, and consider supporting this cause.
http://www.getup.org.au/campaign/Homelands
John Greatorex
7th September 2009
Note: The quotes in these stories are used with permission.
Please login below to comment, OR simply register here :
Thank you for registering, we have just sent you a confirmation email, which includes your new password to be entered below.
I was also involved in the system for many years and have been out of it now for a few years. Few of the issues that arise in the relationship betweenn governments and Aboriginal people are straightforward or simple but I would have thought that the relationship particularly of traditional Aboriginal people and their land would be one that should be well understood.
The 2 stories that you have set out could be added to by many, many more. Any proposition that there is a sustainable way to a better future for Aboriginal people that ignores the relationship to land is simply ignorant.
Good to hear from you David and I agree with your comment “Any proposition that there is a sustainable way to a better future for Aboriginal people that ignores the relationship to land is simply ignorant.” and would only add “doomed for failure and bound to end in tears all ’round.”
That is one element (of many) that concerned me about the Intervention from the start – why the Federal government thought that it needed to seize the land under the townships…it was always going to attract unnecessary flack and cause needless angst on the ground – and the mystery here is that the current administration persists with this view – see the Alice Springs town camps fiasco and the troubled ‘consultations’ over town leases as examples.
It will always will be the case that sitting down and talking with people – rather than at them, rushing in poorly designed legislation and poorly thought out policy – will get a better and fairer result.
And here we are, two years down the track with so little achieved and so much of what was a small stock of goodwill lost for ever.
And if you want to do a guest post with a few of your thoughts just drop me a line…
Hi,
just read the blog and am sure the NT intervention is far from perfect, but still, things like connection to the land must come a long way down stream to having a safe place to live, food on the table and an education.
In the movie Gladiator, a senator was asking the emperor for funds to stop an outbreak of disease:
Commodus: I think I understand my own people.
Gracchus: Then perhaps Caesar will be so good as to teach us, out of his own extensive experience?
Commodus: I call it love, Gracchus. The people are my children, I am their father. I shall hold them to my bosom and embrace them tightly…
Gracchus: Have you ever embraced someone dying of plague, sire?
Commodus: No, but if you interrupt me again, I assure you that you will.
Obviously the idea of feeding people, is more important than these issues at this stage. Here’s a link to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Mazlow%27s_Hierarchy_of_Needs.svg
cheers.
Alexjb – Land is safety, food and education. It is the foundation. And it seems to me that Aboriginal people are only asking for the basic right to exercise their tenure on the land with the same rights as any other land holder in this country. The seisure of Aboriginal land is obviously illegal, as demonstrated by the continued suspension of the NT Anti-discrimination Act. The military occupation of land that followed was nothing short of an invasion. Australia has engaged in an act of war without declaration or treaty, and it is discussed by some as if it were on some other continent.
If we do not listen to Aboriginal people in this country, and while we continue to impose our solutions by force, we are implicitly supporting racism and the ongoing genocide of the many original nations of this country.
I am holding my breath while the United Nations decides what to do about it. Economic sanctions might properly bring this issue to the general Australian public. But given the enormity of the ongoing deception, it might just require such a drastic step. This needs to stop now.
alexjb – yes very far from perfect, very very very very far from perfect.
Mazlow’s hierachy of needs is well known to be fundamentally flawed in its description of what a human needs to achieve fulfillment, many factors aren’t accounted for and its not a linear process. It is also based on liberal notions, which don’t apply universally.
While i obviously agree that feeding people is of extreme importance, i don’t believe that this is or should be the sole aspiration of those trying to assist Indigenous peoples in gaining equal standards of living – its not that simple – these issues must be looked at in a more holistic way, with Indigenous peoples guiding the way.
White Australia has consistently failed to empower Aboriginal peoples and very often when trying to solve problems, white people trying to understand black peoples problems, simply exacerbate the issue and cause further marginalisation. There must be more effort to gain an empathic understanding in order to provide real help, rather than perpetuating social issues through insufficient patronising and controlling policies, that are informed from a white perspective. We must recognise differences in order to manage them. We must recognise institutional racism.
Or, do you think that providing Indigenous peoples with food, education and access to their own land that they have been on for thousands of years, is just ‘letting’ Indigenous peoples have their cake and eat it too? White Australia doesn’t have the right to say what is important, what is top of Mazlow’s pyramid for Indigenous peoples, as we simply do not have the understanding necessary to determine that. Listen to them – its simple.
Maslow’s hierachy of needs may have been criticised but I would have to argue that the main idea behind it still stands: humans need food, shelter and safety to survive. I also appreciate that it is not that simple, in that often if you have some of the other cultural benefits such as learning to hunt or grow food then you may or are more likely to be able to access the basic needs of food and water.
Unfortunately I do not think that listening to Aborigines actually means anything, and if it does, how do we know that what we are hearing is actually what the majority of aboriginal people want? If listening to aborigines means giving people who are sick and being harassed or even sexually abused protection and health, then I agree, we should listen to them.
If listening means we should ask the corrupt Indigenous leaders who are actually benefitting from keeping the communities they control in a state of absolute despair, then I don’t have time to listen.
Stop thinking this is a ‘unique’ or ‘special’ problem that somehow will have a magical solution if we do research on Aboriginal culture and connection to the land. It is a familiar human problem of lack of resources, violence and oppression, with solutions that are found in providing basic services, educating and creating real jobs and economies.
There are many things that concern me about this post, the main ones being that you seem to think you have the right to decide whether Aboriginal people should be listened to. It also seems to be based on some misinformed notion that Aboriginal people are inherently corrupt, therefore allowing the right to ‘interpret’ what we are being told.
Do you seriously think this can be solved without knowledge of Aboriginal culture, which is inherently different to white Australian culture, therefore is defined by different needs? It hasn’t worked so far, some research would tell you that. Only a white person would be so dismissive of problems they clearly don’t understand. Problems that include lack of resources, violence and the oppression that you mentioned, are symptoms of marginalisation which have been CAUSED by this dismissal of Aboriginal people and continues to exacerbate their oppression.
Yes, i obviously realise that all humans need certain items to survive, a possibly blind faith in Mazlow’s pyramid, which doesn’t include the imperative importance of social connections, which is a part of Aboriginal culture that is quite different to the dynamics of western social connections (thats the benefit of research), seems to be giving you a very narrow, simplistic, view of the situation, whereby you seem to have neglected to factor in non-Indigenous Australia’s part in causing the problem in the first place.
Hi,
Please excuse my long absence.
I have been reading a book about Missionaries and Indigenous people and the successes and failures of white religion in assisting displaced and impoverished Aboriginals.
One of the things that struck me was some of the reforms that were established ahead of their time whereby indigenous communities were empowered to run their own communities (both economically and socially).
How can this be done in today’s Australia?
Tom Calma, approaches the topic from a human rights perspective which I think champions approaches that have communities at the centre and in control rather than governments.
What do you think about this approach, and how can it be fostered?
2 Trackbacks
Please login below to comment, OR simply register here :
Thank you for registering, we have just sent you a confirmation email, which includes your new password to be entered below.