Predictably the Bolter has picked this up and Australia’s blog with the most hits, and perhaps the least sense, has attracted the usual raft of ill-informed comments.

The Northern Myth isn’t familiar with the work of Mark Hughes, but Helen Hughes is a familiar conservative commentator with an interesting twist on matters indigenous and who has recently turned her attention to remote Aboriginal education in the NT.

And not without some controversy.

As reported by the National Indigenous Times in April 2008, Hughes wrote an opinion piece, published in The Australian, that drew on examples from one small north-east Arnhem Land homeland, drawing the following very general analysis from that meagre dataset:

“There are about 10,000 of these illiterate non-numerate teenagers who have been going to school … What is the government of the NT going to do about these 10,000 children?”

But [then] NT Deputy Chief Minister Marion Scrymgour has dismissed her findings and says the claims are “absolutely insulting and offensive”.

“I just find it astounding that she bases a report and a generalisation across the Northern Territory Aboriginal communities based on one small homeland centre that she has visited,” she said. Ms Scrymgour said Prof Hughes had left out “some fundamental pieces of information” and denied the government was providing misleading figures on education standards in the bush.

Nadine Williams, NT president of the Australian Education Union, said Prof Hughes needed to “stop generalising”.

“It would be helpful if Helen Hughes had ever been to some of the places she’s talking about,” she said.

Anyway, now it seems that Hughes and her research assistants are at it again.

In their opinion piece of last Friday, the Hughes’ say that, due to the NT Education Department’s training requirements for remote-based teachers:

Homeland Learning Centres lose eight weeks – almost 25 per cent of the school year – while their staff attend courses for the first and last weeks of each term.

Taking that statement on face value you would think that in each of the hundreds of small homeland schools across the NT students spend two months of each school year sitting in classrooms without teachers.

Fortunately for the students the Hughes’s version of events is at some considerable distance from reality.

It is true that at the top and tail of each term that a bunch of teachers from all over the NT – from homeland and “mainstream” schools – go off for professional development training.

But not all teachers go for that training at the same time. Depending on demand, individual needs or other factors some go several times a year, some perhaps once or twice.

And relief teachers and local Aboriginal team teachers are rostered on to fill the gaps.

How do I know this?

I asked a couple of the teachers here at Yirrkala where I’m staying with family while working on my Aboriginal bird knowledge book project.

The second line of attack that the Hughes’ make – on remote community festivals – suffers the same problem – a few facts and a dose of reality mug their story of apparent bureaucratic indulgence and neglect of the best interests of remote students.

The Hughes’s say that:

The limited school year is further eroded by cultural festivals and sports events regularly scheduled during school hours.

The commonwealth government is a serious offender with its Community Festivals for Education Engagement program. Under this program, 13 indigenous festivals are being held this year…all are held during term time rather than during school holidays.
…
As in previous years, the successful Garma Festival ran this year during the school term in August. Many children lost up to two weeks’ schooling. It would take little effort to reschedule next year’s Garma dates to the July school holidays. Financial sponsors of the festival, including the commonwealth and Northern Territory governments and high-profile private companies, should ensure this change is made.

Being in Yirrkala, just down the road from the Garma festival site at Gulkula, I was curious about the reference to the “many children” that apparently lost up to a fortnight of valuable schooling because of their attendance at Garma.

As the very informative Garma Festival website notes, the festival ran from 7 to 11 August this year – that is Friday through Tuesday.

I asked the organisers of the Garma Festival, the Yothu Yindi Foundation, about the Hughes’ claims.

The CEO of the Yothu Yindi Foundation, Alan James, told me that:

Garma formally starts at 4pm on Friday afternoon. The forums all finish by 4pm Monday afternoon – resulting in one school day “lost”.

Garma is not part of the Federal Government’s “Community Festivals for Education Engagement” program.

The music and multimedia training programs are integral parts of Garma and these operate in consultation and engagement with schools and other educational institutions and provides credits towards VET accreditation, so it is very much a part of formal schooling.

And in relation to the Hughes’ demand that Garma be moved to the June school holidays, Alan James said that:

Garma is strategically linked to a number of other events that are held in the Top End of the NT in and around August. Cooperation between Garma and the organisers of other large events is essential to ensure that logistical bottlenecks – on a national and local scale – are avoided where possible.

August kicks off with the week-long Darwin Cup Festival, then the three core days of Garma (with an extra couple of days for the tourists) the next weekend, followed by the Telstra National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Awards in Darwin the following week. The fortnight of the Darwin Festival follows.

The other important consideration – bearing in mind that the more than 2,500 people attending Garma are camping in tents – is that August is the driest time of year – the last thing we want is for Garma to be rained out.

As the Hughes’ should know – but apparently didn’t bother to find out for themselves – one of the most successful events at Garma is the Garma Miwatj Youth Forum, a cooperative venture with Anglicare NT.

As Ann Buxton, Executive Manager for the Youth, Family and Remote area programs at Anglicare NT, told the Senate Select Committee on Regional and Remote Indigenous Communities Inquiry at Hearings in Darwin in May this year:

Over the past four years Anglicare, in conjunction with the Yothu Yindi Foundation, started the Garma Miwatj Youth Forum, which runs parallel to the annual Garma Festival.

We bring together about 250 young people from communities in the regions and it has become a key event.

We promote youth leadership, do a lot of skills development work, and look at issues that young people are experiencing.
Garma has become an important event. It is a little event compared with the overall festival but it helps to give young people in that region a role.

For some time many elders have been interested in supporting young people, getting them engaged in processes, and putting some positive energy into some of the issues that they are dealing with. This forum, which has become important, also brings together about 40 organisations from around that region to help get it off the ground.

It is a great event.

A great event indeed – a bit of training, mentoring, skills development, community support and engagement and lots of positive energy and maybe a fair bit of fun.

Perhaps that is what so bothers the Hughes’ – the idea that a few kids might “lose” a day of school while they do the hard yards at Garma and have some fun while they are at it.

But in the apparently joyless world of the Hughes’ vision of remote education that would represent an abject failure by governments of their core responsibilities to school-children.

There is more – much more – that I could say about the Hughes’ opinion piece – including that their comments about the Central Desert Shire’s policy of only supporting cultural and sporting events held during school holidays was old news and the quotes attributed to the Shire CEO, Rowan Foley and the Shire President, Norbert Patrick, are cast in the present tense.

If the Hughes’ had done some basic research- like having a look at the Council Minutes for the Meeting of 30 September or reading this ABC News report – they would have found out that Foley was stood down as CEO at that meeting.

“Motion 3 was amended to the following: “Whereas the Central Desert Shire has recently suffered the resignation and loss of key personnel attributable to the management style of the CEO, and there have been various complaints lodged relating to the conduct of the CEO and Council management, the Council resolves to direct that the CEO step down on pay for the time being and that LGANT be approached for assistance in resolving the crisis that has developed”. Moved: Councillor Bruce Finter. Seconded: Councillor Ned Hargreaves.”

Sounds to me very much like a Council in crisis management mode.

Makes the Hughes’ call of “Three cheers for the Central Desert Shire!” sound just a bit hollow – particularly when you consider that one of the two organisations to be funded by the Commonwealth’s Community Festivals for Education Engagement 2009 – the Ti-Tree school, according to the information on the Commonwealth website, held it’s festival from Tuesday October 13 to Thursday October 15.

In term time.

And the local governing authority with responsibility for municipal services at Ti-Tree is…you guessed it, the Central Desert Shire.

“Rust In Peace‘ is scrawled on the side of the sorry remains of this poor little Jayco pop-top caravan abandoned about 50 metres off the Central Arnhem Road 460 kilometres ir so from the Stuart Highway.

The poor thing had obviously had a hard life and, having just dragged my vehicle up the same road, I know that it would have been having a very hard time of it – at least my vehicle is built to take these roads – this poor thing was built for freeways and suburban roads. That it lasted the best part of 30 years is some kind of testament to either the people that built it or the care of the drivers that owned it.

And the owners obviously got their moneys worth – as the shot below indicates, they had been dragging it around the countryside for the best part of 30 years until it finally expired on a dusty, corrugated stretch of road in the centre of Arnhem Land sometime earlier this year.

And as the good people at the East Arnhem Land Tourist Association reckon, there are at least two good reasons why dragging a caravan up the Central Arnhem Road is not recommended:

The Central Arnhem Road is not recommended for caravans, only sturdy off-road camper trailers. The Northern Land Council will not approve a permit to tow a caravan into East Arnhem Land and Dhimurru Land Management Aboriginal Corporation will not issue a Visitor Recreation Permit to anyone with a caravan.

]]> http://blogs.crikey.com.au/northern/2009/10/13/roadkill-of-the-week-jayco-poptop-caravan-central-arnhem-road/feed/ 6 http://blogs.crikey.com.au/northern/2009/10/05/the-weekend-australian-nicolas-rothwell-and-the-art-of-fantastic-journalism/ http://blogs.crikey.com.au/northern/2009/10/05/the-weekend-australian-nicolas-rothwell-and-the-art-of-fantastic-journalism/#comments Mon, 05 Oct 2009 01:28:57 +0000 Bob Gosford http://blogs.crikey.com.au/northern/?p=1903

Wadeye township

I’ve written here recently about the fantastic (in the original sense of that word) approach that The Australian and its dwindling number of northern correspondents take to just about anything to do with Aboriginal affairs here in the NT.

This past weekend The Weekend Australian continued this dubious tradition when it ran this piece from its northern correspondent, Nicolas Rothwell.

Rothwell examines apparently new economic and governance developments at the troubled remote township of Wadeye, in the west of the NT’s Top End.

And Rothwell, after many years in the NT, has apparently finally realised what anyone with any experience in remote Australia would have found out a long time ago – that Wadeye, like most small townships in the NT, and elsewhere – is a town that is “mostly ordered and peaceful”.

If you take the assertions in Rothwells piece at face value you would think that the good citizens of Wadeye had turned their backs on all forms of Australian mainstream governance and were boldly charting a course of their own, free from the controls imposed by Australian governments at all levels.

As Rothwell says:

“…what bureaucracy gives, it can also take away. Not only did the federal intervention of mid-2007 sweep through Wadeye; the Thamarrurr local council was wound up as the Northern Territory unveiled its new regional shires. The council, though, gave birth to a new Thamarrurr Development Corporation, which was bolstered by strong support from the Rudd government. The upshot of this administrative upheaval was a deepened desire among the Wadeye leadership group to pursue their own path.
…
“The idea aims to assert control over their own region and in time to supplant the long-established Northern Land Council, which is widely seen as a moribund arm of the Territory Labor Party. “We will set up our own council,” Nganbe says bluntly. TDC’s Berto says: “There’s a lot of people here not happy with the NLC and its complete lack of service, and its standing in the way of progress. We want to set the political agenda from the ground.”

And notwithstanding the brief reference to “strong support” from the Rudd government, Rothwell reckons that the people of Wadeye:

“…don’t like the deal on offer from mainstream Australia’s authorities. They want to keep their own culture, they want economic development and they want it on their own terms, under their control.”

What Rothwell is of course talking about here is localised Aboriginal self-determination, an aspiration that he has frequently, and as recently as six weeks ago, condemned to the dustbin of Australian political history:

“For some time it has been clear Aboriginal self-determination has had its day.”

Due credit should be given to the good citizens of Wadeye for getting their act together in what are incredibly difficult circumstances. By all accounts they have established a range of business enterprises that will provide real jobs and offer economic opportunities to locals.

Rothwell implies that the people of Wadeye have achieved these successes in spite of the bureaucratic and administrative barriers set up by governments at every turn. But it may be that a few inconvenient facts – for Rothwell’s thesis at least – might explain a somewhat different basis for some of Wadeye’s recent successes.

The bureaucracies that Rothwell says have taken so much from the people of Wadeye with one hand have been very busy giving bucketloads of money to the recently-established Thamarrurr Development Corporation Ltd (the TDC) with the other.

The TDC is a non-profit commercial operation limited by guarantee with no shareholders – just members that represent the 20 clan groups of the Wadeye region.

In the 2008/2009 round of funding for the Indigenous Heritage Program announced on 7 July 2008, the TDC was given two grants to a total of $62,704 for “the investigation and management of cultural heritage” of the Thamarrurr region.

On 8 October 2008 Federal Indigenous Affairs Minister Jenny Macklin announced that TDC would receive $500,000 as “an establishment grant to deliver a range of business services” to the Wadeye region.

At it’s meeting of 10 February 2009, the Victoria Daly Shire Council (the Council), the local government body that replaced Thamarrurr’s predessor, the Thamarrurr Regional Council, passed the following Motion:

“That Council agrees to lease for one dollar ($1.00) to Thamarrurr Development Corporation for the period from the 10th of February 2009 to the 7th of December 2009 all non – fixed assets.”

At the following meeting on 7 April 2009, the Council, in the course of the Confirmation of the Minutes of the previous meeting, amended that Motion:

“The minutes of the ordinary meeting, item (8) TDC were amended with a further dot point
added, saying that if all the above conditions were met the vehicles would then be sold to the TDC for the sum of $1.00. The minutes were  then taken as read and accepted as a true record of the Meeting.”

The value of the assets leased to the TDC for $1, according to the Report provided to Council, was $760,073.

According to the same report, the insured value of the vehicles to be sold to Tharmarrurr upon it meeting Council’s conditions was $482,273.

You can read the Minutes of Council meetings and the Report from Council staff for yourself here.

On 4 March 2009, by joint press release Minister Macklin and Member for Lingiari, Warren Snowdon announced that TDC would receive a total of $650,000 to provide painting services and the purchase of civil construction machinery.

On 11 June 2009, in another joint press release, Snowdon and Macklin announced that TDC would receive a total of $1.422 million to purchase a mobile concrete batching plant and to provide accommodation for “key staff” at Wadeye.

As the ABC reported last month, the Thamarrurr Association, (also based at Wadeye but a separate entity to the TDC) following representations from then NT Indigenous Policy Minister Alison Anderson, received a $250,000 grant from the NT government in circumstances yet to be fully explained:

“Ms Anderson secured $250,000 of taxpayer funds for a corporation run by the powerful Yunupingu family in Arnhem Land, including Galarrwuy Yunupingu. The only other organisation to get $250,000 for community consultation is the Thamarrur Association at Wadeye, which has never declared an income before. The Government has not announced the payments and is yet to explain how the companies were selected. It says the money will pay for consultation on the Working Futures policy to help the Government get its service delivery right.”

I’ve not yet been able establish any direct connection between the TDC and the Thamarrurr Association – other than that they both do the same kind of business in the same small town.

On my back-of the-envelope reckoning the TDC has received control over $760,000 worth of assets for the bargain basement price of a single dollar from their local Council and, including the grant to the Thamarrurr Association, close enough to $3.5 million from the NT and Federal governments.

Not bad for a group that Rothwell says, “…don’t like the deal on offer from mainstream Australia.”

And what of the assertions in Rothwell’s article by TDC’s John Berto of the Northern Land Council’s “…complete lack of service, and its standing in the way of progress” at Wadeye?

John Berto should know all about the NLC and service delivery at Wadeye. After all, he had been a long-term employee of the NLC and for a period up to late 2006 he was the NLC’s Deputy CEO.

But Rothwell and Berto would also be aware of the benefits to the Traditional Owners of the Wadeye region (and beyond) resulting from the NLC’s negotiations on their behalf over the Blacktip gas plant and pipeline.

The deal negotiated by the NLC has given, and will provide into the future, significant economic and social benefits to the traditional owners and residents of the Wadeye region.

Indeed, there is every appearance that Rothwell consciously excluded these well-known and readily available facts from his piece because they did not support his oft-repeated spurious claims about the NLC. I found all of the material noted above after about ten minutes of searching on the web and a bit of scurrying about in the backblocks of various websites.

Rothwell ends his piece with a dubious comparison between Longreach in far-western Queensland and Wadeye, implying that Wadeye should be accorded the same services, government support and facilities as Longreach.

Longreach is a service centre in a region with a long history of extensive & highly productive mining, pastoral and agricultural activity. It is also has roads that lead from somewhere to somewhere else.

Wadeye services only itself and a few small homelands. It is at the wrong end of a long and rough road in a region with no history of pastoral, agricultural or any other significant development – apart from the above-mentioned Blacktip gas project.

Pity about those annoying facts getting in the way of a fantastic story.

Declaration: Bob Gosford has worked for the Northern Land Council as a legal advisor, most recently in 2008. He had no involvement in matters at Wadeye apart from a single meeting with an early version of the Thamarrurr council in about 2000.

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.

Enjoy – and of course, your comments please!!

Marion Scrymgour was Australia’s most powerful elected black politician — that is until illness got the better of her and forced her resignation from her several Ministries back in February this year and that mantle was handed to her arch-political rival and enemy — Labor member of Macdonnell, Alison Anderson.

Since then Scrymgour has undergone treatment in Adelaide. The accepted wisdom was that she would sit quietly on the backbenches until August this year when her parliamentary pension matured and would then retire.

But it seems that sometime during her treatment and recovery that she has had a Damascene conversion that recent NT government policies on blackfellas have been built on lies and deception.

As the ABC News website reports, “I feel strongly because we have lied to Aboriginal people,” she said. “We have said we would go back and talk to them before we made that policy.”

“That policy” is the recently announced “Working Futures” policy that will withdraw essential services from the many small homeland communities across the NT and force residents to move or travel to larger “hub” communities to receive those services.

And it seems that Scrymgour has also changed her mind about her own rushed and fundamentally flawed policy that would gut the remnants of the once proud bilingual education system in the NT, a policy that Scrymgour saw fit to vigorously defend here at Crikey from the views of a “cabal of self-important whitefellas“.

Working Future dates back to the decision in September 2007 by former Federal Indigenous Affairs Minister Mal Brough to hand responsibility for homeland policy and funding to the NT Government.

Scrymgour was responsible for developing the NT government policy on homelands and remote community development and commissioned a discussion paper and a team, led by Pat Dodson, to take submissions and conduct community consultation.

Dodson’s “Community Engagement Report” was given to the NT government in January and was publicly released late last month.

Following Scrymgour’s sudden resignation in February, Alison Anderson inherited the Indigenous Affairs Ministry.

On 20 May Anderson released a policy, a ghost-written op-ed piece in her favourite paper, The Australian and a bare-bones website.

The recommendations in Dodson’s report have been effectively ignored and the promises of a further consultative process with affected Aboriginal people living in remote towns in the NT, following the development of a draft policy, have been abandoned.

If Working Future is ever implemented, as Lindsay Murdoch reported in The Age it will mean that:

Thousands of Aborigines living on their remote Northern Territory homelands will be forced to move to larger communities to receive key government services in a radical shake-up of indigenous policy. The NT Government is set to announce that 20 communities will be developed into regional economic hubs with a wide range of government services such as housing, schools and clinics.

But about 580 smaller communities will be deprived of many government services, threatening the fruits of what became known in the 1970s as the homelands movement when thousands of Aboriginal people moved back to their ancestral lands.

Scrymgour’s electorate of Arafura contains a large number of homeland communities — small hamlets deep in the heart of traditional Aboriginal lands occupied by family and clan groups that have chosen to live a simpler, safer and healthier life away from the babylonian chaos that typifies many of the larger Aboriginal townships scattered across the NT.

Now, as Murray McLaughlin reported on The 7.30 Report last night:

Marion Scrymgour has thrown the Territory Labor government into crisis over her complaint that the outstations policy was announced prematurely ignoring the process that she had laid out when she was Indigenous Affairs Minister. Marion Scrymgour has told Chief Minister Paul Henderson that she’s prepared to go to the cross-benches over the issue.

Scrymgour: I’m not discounting anything but I’m saying very clearly that I will do everything in my power as a member of the government to make sure that government meets its responsibilities to Aboriginal people.

As Crikey noted back in February:

There is a long history of mutual antipathy between Scrymgour and Anderson, including a stoush in late 2007 that followed Scrymgour’s description of the Howard/Brough NT Intervention as a ‘black Tampa’ motivated by naked political opportunism.

And, as Henderson well knows, it is Anderson and Scrymgour who may well hold the fate of his “crumbling”, one-seat majority government in their hands.

Anderson, who, as evidenced by her vocal support for the Brough/Howard Intervention and outspokenness on matters sensitive to government, is widely regarded as a loose cannon perhaps more closely aligned to the CLP Opposition than to the centre and left of NT Labor. While she may be happy with her Ministerial appointments for now, there is the very real threat that she could jump ship, either as an independent or to surface as a member of the CLP, and force a change of government.

Crikey understands that Scrymgour warned Henderson of her concerns with Anderson’s policy soon after it emerged but that he chose to ignore her.

Since Henderson’s Labor government was re-elected with a single seat majority in August of last year an informal book has been running on just how long his government will last — the best money was that he might be lucky, very lucky, to make it to August — when a number of Labor members are eligible for their generous super payouts.

But this latest fight changes the odds substantially — Crikey reckons you’d be lucky to get much better than evens on Henderson’s government surviving the month.

Henderson’s failures are all his own doing, led by a poor set of polices that attack his electoral heartland and a supine surrender to the Federal government’s directions — but he hasn’t been helped by the loose cannons rolling around the deck of what passes for the sinking ship of state in the NT.

For those who know her I don’t need to tell you that she is a careful and impassioned thinker on contemporary life and politics in the NT and beyond. For those that don’t know her, all I can say is the you are the poorer for not having the privelige of doing so.

Sometimes her clear thinking and forthright statements rub up what passes for the ‘great and the good‘ in the Northern Territory the wrong way. More power to her I say!

This piece is an excerpt from Sue’s essay, Letter from Darwin, that was published in the latest edition of borderlands, which is:

…a refereed international journal that aims to promote transdisciplinary work across the humanities, work which might also intersect with diverse practices and sites in culture, policy and everyday life. Although our beginnings are modest, we hope that over time you will be able to view writings cutting across and between politics, media, literature, history, law, science, medicine, philosophy, economics, music, film and more, along with incisive debate about contemporary culture.

Sue’s essay in borderlands examines the condition of Aboriginal people affected by the NT Intervention and analyses the ongoing implementation of the Intervention and its related spin-off projects in an all-too-rare historical context.

Letter from Darwin begins with:

The Rex Wild and Pat Anderson 2007 report Little Children are Sacred provided the first chapter of the series in this modern adaptation of a 220 year old classic that might aptly be titled ‘The Native Tribes of Australia.’ The 21st century version provides for an update of characters as well as a generous documentation on sexual abuse and women’s violence as opening scenes and pivotal parts for special task force, police, troops, medical teams, “Aboriginal experts”-both non-Aboriginal and Aboriginal, but mostly non-Aboriginal. The new version of the old history of women’s violence and overall denial, indeed abuse of basic human rights is now contained in 500 pages under a misleading title termed “special measures”. The very latest and up-to-date manual on “Aboriginal legislation.”

The ultimate result has been the injection of enormous amounts of money into addressing the problems and issues that were interpreted as requiring urgent attention. This latest tilt at moral balance, after 220 years of colonisation, denial of rights and the absence of justice is just not convincing. Just as current Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s symbolic rhetoric and well-rehearsed performance of apology to Stolen Generations offers promises of new beginnings and directions,
Aboriginal people, especially those at the lower end of the economic, and the rights scales, should remain highly suspicious and extremely cautious.

Sue notes at the conclusion of her essay:

Colonialism has an insatiable appetite – it is forever hungry, it can never be satisfied, and it recruits both unwitting as well as willing emissaries from the vast ranks and ever-growing number of colonised Aboriginal people. Sadly, there are those Aboriginal people who assist in the colonising of their own people as they have reconciled themselves to new arrangements and happily accept the status quo.

Perhaps Uncle Chicka Dixon was right when he named the 1970s wave of compliant natives “bourgeois blacks” and perhaps that name fits many today. While we cannot be guaranteed that central powers, at both national and state levels will not manipulate individuals or a national Aboriginal coalition of leaders, we must try something drastic if we are to survive as a People beyond the 21st century.

You can read the other contributions to the most recent volume of borderlands here and the rest of Sue Stanton’s Letter from Darwin here.

Other contributions from the current edition of borderlands, with the theme of “Acting Sovereign: Interventions in a Politics of Gendered Protectionism” include Goldi Osuri, Tanja Dreher & Elaine Laforteza ‘Acting sovereign’ in the face of gendered protectionism‘,  Nicole Watson ‘Of course it wouldn’t be done in Dickson! Why Howard’s Battlers Disengaged from the Northern Territory Emergency Response‘, Irene Watson ‘Aboriginality and the Violence of Colonialism‘, Goldie Osuri ‘(Im)possible Co-existence: notes from a bordered, sovereign present‘, Shakira Hussein & Alia Imtoual ‘A fraught search for common political ground: Muslim communities & alliance-building in post-9/11 Australia’.

Essays include Tanja Dreher,  ‘Eavesdropping with permission: the politics of listening for safer speaking spaces‘, Elaine Laforteza, ‘Speaking into safety: Orientalism in the classroom‘, Paula Abood ‘Race and the City: Series One‘

And finally the Interview with Sue Stanton, Shakira Hussein, Alia Imtoual, Nicole Watson & Goldie Osuri
‘Reflections and Insights: The Gender, Violence and Protection Workshops and Forum‘.

Enjoy!

Peggy Nampijinpa Brown & Jenny Macklin

“I’ve found a friend!” Federal Indigenous Affairs Minister Jenny Macklin tells Crikey as she walks arm-in-arm across the dusty main street of Yuendumu with Peggy Nampijinpa Brown.

Jenny and Nampijinpa have just been to visit the several hundred people who have come down from their sorry business at West Camp where they are mourning the recent loss of a young man who had lost his long and brave battle with serious illness this past Saturday night. On hearing of his passing the first reaction for the planners of the Yuendumu Pool project was to cancel the grand opening scheduled for the following Monday.

After long consideration by his family it was decided that the opening proceed and that he be given his substantial due for the important contribution he had made in his short life to the sporting and youth culture at Yuendumu and to the valuable work he did at the Jaru Pirrjirdi youth leadership program, a unit of the Mt Theo program, which provides much-needed youth support and diversionary programs at Yuendumu and throughout the central desert region.

Peggy Nampijinpa Brown knows a lot about dealing with politicians, and, as Crikey reported 14 months ago, she is still waiting for an apology from Senator Bill Heffernan for an unfounded and egregious verbal assault he made on the Mt Theo program from the protection of Parliament House in Canberra. Nampijinpa and her husband, Johnny ‘Hooker Creek’ Japangardi Miller officially started the petrol sniffer rehabilitation project at their outstation, Mt Theo, in 1994, but they’d been providing informal support services for many years. Last year they were both rewarded for these efforts by being awarded the Order of Australia by the then NT Administrator, Ted Egan.

“I can look after anyone – the one’s who nobody looks after. I like the petrol sniffers. I care about for petrol sniffers, they are my family. I worry you know, because I love, I love them, I can make them really good, really better. We are trying to help people”

-Peggy Nampijinpa Brown

Jenny Macklin flew into town in a plane pushed by the same hot and dry easterly tailwind that brought a stinging dust storm to town – when first I looked out my kitchen window at dawn yesterday I could hardly see fifty metres for the dust and throughout the morning the stinging, dermabrasive dust stung skin and pricked eyes among the gathered locals, Federal, Territory and local politicians, media and curious onlookers brave or foolish enough to fly or drive along the worst road in Australia to attend the opening of a swimming pool. After a long series of speeches from the Minister and local worthies on an unrelated employment program (why travel all this way if you can’t get at least two bangs for your buck!) minds and dusty, sweaty bodies turned to the real business of the day.

30 or 40 little tackers from the Kurdu-Kurdu Kurlangu childcare centre, about which Crikey wrote recently and the future of which is still in some doubt, screamed in – a cloud of yellow shirts and open-mouthed awe at the sight of so many kardia in one place at one time. Then up marched the serried ranks of primary and pre-secondary school students – long-skirted teachers vainly shooshing them to be quiet. Fat chance of that – this was the biggest day in Yuendumu in their short memories – big mob of kardiya, boring speeches, free hats from the Central Land Council and from inside the pool that peculiar chlorinated water smell and the I-can-almost-taste-it promise of barbecued meat and onions for a free lunch

The speechers droned on and on – all of them worthy but it was getting a little too hot and far too dusty for such serious business. Especially for the kids clustered restlessly in what little shade was available. Finally they got their turn – Jenny Macklin and a half-dozen others lined up to cut the black and white ribbons (Yuendumu Magpies – carna ‘Piiies!!)­, the big black doors swung open and a riot of little legs and bodies raced into the pool area, barely controlled by the calls to “Shower first!!…shower first!!” made by the local Lifeguards.

Vicki Nungarrayi Sims and Sheryelle Nungarrayi Young

And for the lifeguards the opening of the pool is the end of the beginning of a long story – one that was almost broken a few months ago when, while staying at budget accommodation in Alice Springs en-route to Sydney for training with the Royal Life Savers, they were allegedly ejected from their accommodation for scaring the Japanese tourists. For mine the only thing scary about these young men and women is their dogged determination to succeed.

The pool was opened, sweaty, dusty bodies soaked, splashed and screamed and posed for photos and the politicians and worthies deservedly congratulated each other on a job-well-done.

And, it should be noted that while the mainstream media – notably Russell Skelton in today’s Sydney Morning Herald and Natasha Robinson in The Australian are trumpeting the pool opening as a triumph for the Macklin/Brough/Howard NT Intervention, in reality it has nothing to do with that most ham-fisted experiment in Australian social engineering.

The Yuendumu Pool project is solely the result of hard work by a small group of committed locals and their supporters – the family of Tom Jampijinpa Kantor, who had worked at Warlpiri Media in it’s early days, Christine Godden, an arts consultant based in Alice Springs, the tireless local workers like Peggy Nampijinpa Brown and her husband and their co-workers at Mt Theo, the Warlukurlangu Arts Centre and the Yuendumu Mining Company. The Federal Government’s contribution was made a long time before the intervention was even a twinkle in young Mal Brough’s eye.

An the local Council’s contribution? Well many people on the day remembered the words of a previous Yuendumu Council staffer who said that the Yuendumu Pool would be built “over his dead body”…there were a lot of comments on the day that were blaming a large part of the dust being pushed around, and into, the pool by the stern easterly came from the bare ground around the pool – apparently the previous council had reluctantly committed to doing the landscaping around the pool but the new Central Desert Shire has reneged on that agreement. I haven’t been able to confirm that so far but just about everyone around here blames just about everything that goes wrong on the new Shire…

There are few enough success stories here in the desert, but surely the Kurdu-Kurdu Kurlangu Childcare Centre at Yuendumu must qualify as one of the best. It provides real jobs, and real, accredited national-standard, training, to 14 local women. But maybe not for much longer – it appears that those jobs are at real risk of disappearing into thin air in two weeks, like paper bags swept up in the Yunparlara (willy-willys) that stalk the Tanami desert country at this time of year.

So much for the ‘real jobs’ rhetoric spouted by the intervention’s chief spinner, Jenny Macklin, her predecessor Mal Brough and just about every politician hungry for a column inch and a photo-opportunity that has come within a bull’s roar of the intervention.

Kurdu-Kurdu is a Warlpiri word that, according to Kirrkirr, the Warlpiri interactive dictionary, means:

Mangkurdu kujaka nguna, ngulangkaju ka kurdu-kurdu-rlangu kurdu-kurdu-pinyi, ngapangkuju; kurdu-kurdu ka pinyi, warrikirdikirdi-rlangu ka kurdulyurrulyurru-pakarni, manu katumparra-rlangu ka kurdulyurrulyurru-pakarni, ka kijirni, katumparra. Ngulajangkaju ka muku jinta-jarrimilki kurdu-kurduju ngapaju – muku ka jinta-jarri – ngulajangkaju ngapalku ka pata-karrimi – ngurrju-mani ka katumparra-juku ngapaku-ngarnti pata-karrinjaku-ngarnti.

When there are clouds, then the moisture forms many low clouds. It makes low clouds. All around it gives rise to low clouds which form all over the sky, which are made overhead. Then the ‘baby’ clouds all come together, all form a single one, and then the rain falls – the rain forms up in the sky before it actually falls down.

Kurdu-kurdu is where all the baby clouds come together.

And every working day from 8am onwards the women and the 50 to 60 baby clouds in their care gather at Kurdu-kurdu for a day of pure, inspired chaos – but that’s what childcare at Yuendumu, and just about everywhere else, is all about – organised chaos, cognitive and physical development, socialisation, regular, well-prepared food, safety, and fun…all those things that children need – every day. And the kids have been getting that in spades for the last 3 years.

Kurdu-kurdu started in 2005 at the local school as a play-centre for pre-school children. Soon, with the sponsorship of the then local community government council, the Yuendumu-Willowra CGC, it took over an empty house and has gone from strength to strength. It is now a well-resourced and staffed comprehensive child-care centre, much like those common in cities and towns across the rest of Australia.

It has developed into a ‘best-practice’ model for child-care in remote Aboriginal communities, so much so that in the 2007-2008 Reconciliation Action Plan Report, issued by Jenny Macklin’s Department of Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs, Yuendumu was selected as the site for the “establishment of [an] innovative Childcare Service Hub”. That program has been transferred to the Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations and DEEWR advises that over $21 million has been set aside in the current Federal budget to establish 20 child-care hubs in indigenous communities like Yuendumu. The Hubs will:

“…provide child care and a quality early learning program as the core, but will also link with other local early childhood services…Access to childcare…is particularly important for Indigenous children who experience poorer life outcomes than non-Indigenous children. Indigenous early childhood development is one of three priority areas identified by the Ministerial Taskforce on Indigenous Affairs.”

But it now looks like Kurdu-kurdu may have to close its doors in two weeks – why? – well, it is a bit hard to tell at the moment, and Crikey smells the dead rat of bureaucratic blame-shifting.

Following the implementation of the NT Government’s Local Government Reforms on 1 July this year, the new Central Desert Shire took over responsibility for the administration of Kurdu-kurdu. Crikey understands that before July 1, the 14 workers at Kurdu-kurdu had been paid their wages by the local CDEP, with top-up funding allowing the workers up to 8 hours a day. This was apparently maintained by the Central Desert Shire when it took over, with the promise that Kurdu-kurdu staff would move to real jobs, and real training.

All was good – the 14 workers at Kurdu-kurdu would get some certainty in their lives and some much-needed training and support. The community would continue to get a valuable and valued service – up to the standard taken for granted elsewhere in the country.

In late August the 14 workers, and nine children, set off from Yuendumu on a professional development trip to Victoria. As the Central Desert Shire’s CEO, Rowan Foley said in a press release:

“It’s a great opportunity for our staff to experience new ideas and different ways of working with young children and to spread their own, very successful approach. The training does not only benefit the workers, it also helps with getting our youngsters ready for school and a better start in life.” Mr Foley said the Yuendumu Child Care Centre, widely regarded as a model for other Aboriginal communities, was also showing the way for Aboriginal employment in the Central Desert Shire. “We’re about growing our own Aboriginal workforce and supporting our employees with meaningful training.”

The Kurdu-kurdu workers returned from their trip full of enthusiasm and ideas that soon turned into real changes – they got a fish tank for the kids, they re-organised the building, the kids painted the walls and windows, all the workers signed up for nationally-accredited training and they had the promise of real jobs.

But this soon turned sour. On 1 October the Central Desert Shire issued a notice that was posted across Yuendumu. Out of the blue the workers and the community were told that Kurdu-kurdu would have to cut back its hours from 8 to 3 hours a day, and it is all the fault of the Federal Government. The Kurdyu-kurdu workers wouldn’t be getting their promised real jobs and faced an uncertain future on CDEP.

The next day Cecilia Alfonso, a client of the Kurdu-kurdu and the manager of one of the other real success stories from Yuendumu, Warlukurlangu Artists fired off an urgent email to CEO Foley at the Central Desert Shire, local MP Karl Hampton, and Noel Mason, the Australian Government Business Manager at Yuendumu:

“[Kurdu-kurdu] is actually doing what the intervention claims its intention is: To protect children and keep them safe…You should be celebrating its success, not tearing it down.

What happened to real pay for real jobs? All of the bloodsucking hangers on associated with the intervention who do nothing and are on crazy pay, bonuses etc…and this program has done more for the future of the children in Yuendumu than all of those people combined”

Central Desert Shire CEO Foley replied a few hours later, saying that Kurdu-kurdu:

“…operates extremely well and has the full support of the…Shire. We met with [the] DEEWR Regional Manager and her management team…We are going to continue to push for the childcare centre at Yuendumu to be adequately funded to operate Monday-Friday as it does a great job supporting the children and families.”

But Cecilia isn’t one to take such bureaucratic niceties lying down and replied:

“I am aware of the impact [this decision to reduce the hours of operation of Kurdu-kurdu] will have across the community and to the morale of the Aboriginal people who have been working there. It is like a slap in the face for all the effort they have put in, particularly after all the brouhaha about ‘real pay for real work’ No wonder the conditions out here continue to be so dismal when such inept decisions are made over and over…There seems to be plenty of money for lots of other projects which have no positive outcome.”

Kurdu-kurdu’s fate will be decided in the next few weeks – that decision will be made a long way from here – thousands of kilometres away in Canberra or 300 kilometres away in the Central Desert Shire’s base in Alice Springs. But the effect of that decision – whichever way it goes, will be felt here in Yuendumu – and if Kurdu-kurdu closes then the promises of real jobs will be just that – promises – sucked away by a Yunparlara.

Pre-July 2008 local government in the NT

Local Government elections will be held in the NT on 25 October 2008 for the ten new Councils incorporated following the implementation of the recent Local Government Reforms in the NT. Further information is available at the NT Electoral Commission website. Nominations and ballot paper positions have been settled and are available here.

As I wrote in Crikey over a year ago:

“Local Government in the NT has been in a mess for decades and Howard and Brough’s intervention is about to make it a lot worse. The six “municipal” councils of Darwin, Palmerston, Litchfield, Alice Springs, Tennant Creek and Katherine are the subject of separate parts of the Local Government Act 1993 to the 57 or so other small remote Councils. These small Councils are mostly on Aboriginal land and vary from well-run and effective local administrators to grossly dysfunctional centres of corruption, nepotism and benign neglect and it is they that are in the sites of Howard and Brough’s intervention.”

“Clare Martin’s Labor administration inherited the legacy of poorly-run local government from the 26 year reign of the Country Liberal Party. To her credit she has decided to bite the bullet and implement long-overdue reform of the sector. Whether Martin’s reform proposals are appropriate or not will be left for another day.”

That other day is now here – Clare Martin and her Local Government minister responsible for these changes, Elliot McAdam, have gone, but the reforms came into force on 1 July this year. Now, instead of living in the Yuendumu-Willowra Community Government Council area (the Y-WCG Council had been in administration for some years so didn’t really function other than on paper…), we live in the Central Desert Shire with an area of 282,000 square kilometres, close to the land area of the state of Victoria. The Central Desert Shire has a population of about 4,500 people. Do the maths…about 62 and a half square k’s for each resident of the shire!!

The new shire boundaries

According to the NT Electoral Commission, voting for the Central Desert Shire will be held only Alice Springs and “may” by available by remote mobile polling elsewhere – though no details are provided at this stage.

There are, at least, two major concerns with the new arrangements for local governance in the region.  Firstly, while Alice Springs isn’t in either the Central Desert Shire or the neighboring MacDonnell Shire, it will be the administrative base for both – the Alice Springs council will be a classic ‘donut’ council – surrounded by the regions that must use it as an administrative and resource centre. There are very real concerns that decision-making will devolve away from the regional centres (like Yuendumu, Ti-Tree, Hermannsburg etc) to Alice Springs – where all of the major administrative decision-makers, i.e. the staff, will be based.

The other major concern is that representation will also be substantially diminished. This is a very real concern – while the previous Yuendumu-Willowra CGC had 12 elected members for a relatively small area that only contained the townships of Yuendumu & Willowra, the residents of Yuendumu, the largest Aboriginal township in central Australia, will share 4 members for the Southern Tanami Ward of the Central Desert Shire with the residents of the townships of Willowra, Nyirripi, Yuelamu and the residents of the several pastoral properties within the Ward boundaries. Similar concerns about diminished representation have been expressed by residents in other central Australian shires.

I’ll keep a close eye on the electoral processes over the next few weeks leading up to the election on 25 October. I’ll also post separately on the changes to residential tenancy and land-rating arrangements throughout the NT – both of which are closely related to the recent changes and are expected to be among the few sources of income for the new Shire.

I’ll particularly keep an eye on the interpretation of s. 144 of the Local Government Act 2008, which provides that, relation to land in the Shire, certain land is:

144 Exempt land

(1) The following land is exempt from rates.

…

(k) Land owned by a Land Trust or an Aboriginal community living area accociation, except:

(i) and designated in the regulations as rateable; or

(ii) land subject to lease or licence conferring a right of occupancy; or

(iii) land used for a commercial purpose.

I welcome any views or personal perspectives that you might have about any issues related to the upcoming elections or any information you might have that is relevant to residential tenancy or the levying of rates – either on or off Aboriginal land.