Ding the Dingo pup. Photo: Gloria Morales

This is what Gloria told me:

I don’t know too much about how this little fellow came to me but someone called from The Granites [a large gold mine 300 kilometres further up the Tanami Track from Yuendumu] about a week and a half ago saying that they have a Dingo pup that was very sick and was being sent down to me.

Later that day a bus with a group of young Aboriginal boys turn up at my house about midday.

The boys said that the little Dingo pup was very sick and had been left at the Granites Mine. They didn’t have much more information than that.

I got a box and made him a little home in our bathroom and gave him some water and food – half-cooked chicken necks are very good for small puppies.

At first he was terrified and  hid in a corner, shaking. After a while I got him out and sat him on my lap and gave him a cuddle and got the chicken neck and and put it in my hand.

He must have been a lot more relaxed being held by me because he he started eating like crazy and nearly ate my fingers as I was holding the chicken neck!

He was very skinny, with bones showing through his skin and I could count all of his ribs.

Later I talked to my friend in Alice and she helped me to find a good home for him. It was better for him to go to a new home as quickly as possible so that he could bond with the new person and create a connection with her instead of bonding with me.

I’d looked after him for two days and by the time I took him in to Alice Springs he had managed to start playing with the other puppies and had left the bathroom and gone into the bedroom and hide under the bed or under the side table.

At one time I found that he had dragged one of my pajamas under the side table and was sleeping on them.

By Saturday morning when I took him into Alice Springs he was already filling out, with not as many bones showing and he looked in much better condition and was less easily frightened than when he first came to me.

I’ll be keeping an eye on how he is doing with his new carers.

UPDATE – it seems that Ding’s first choice of carer wasn’t such a good one after all – the house he went to had a few orphaned Joeys and maybe Ding’s genetic hard-wiring kicked in and he started making very agressive moves not only at the Joeys (”lunch!!”) but also the hand that was feeding him…he is now at the RSPCA shelter in Alice Springs – I’ll keep you posted.

Another view of Ding - note the empty belly

]]> http://blogs.crikey.com.au/northern/2009/10/29/camp-dog-of-the-week-ding-the-dingo-pup/feed/ 5 http://blogs.crikey.com.au/northern/2009/09/04/life-and-art-in-the-sky-part-1-the-napaljarri-warnu-jukurrpa-of-alma-nungarrayi-granites/ http://blogs.crikey.com.au/northern/2009/09/04/life-and-art-in-the-sky-part-1-the-napaljarri-warnu-jukurrpa-of-alma-nungarrayi-granites/#comments Fri, 04 Sep 2009 08:59:48 +0000 Bob Gosford http://blogs.crikey.com.au/northern/?p=1702

Napaljarri-warnu Jukurrpa, Alma Nungarrayi Granites

This small image gives but a very limited impression of the power and majesty of the original of Alma Nungarrayi Granites’ painting of her Napaljarri-warnu Jukurrpa (Seven Sisters dreaming).

It is one of a series of large paintings by the Warlpiri artist Alma Nungarrayi Granites, who paints for Warlukurlangu Artists, the locally-owned and operated arts centre here at Yuendumu 300 kilometres or so north-west of Alice Springs in Warlpiri/Anmatyerre country on the southern fringes of the magnificent Tanami Desert.

Nungarrayi comes from a long and proud tradition of Warlpiri artists.

Her father and mother, Paddy Japaljarri Sims and Bessie Nakamarra Sims, are two of the artists that founded Warlukurlangu in the mid-eighties. Artistic talent in the Sims family runs deep and spans the generations – Nungarrayi’s parents Japaljarri and Nakamarra, as well as Nungarrayi and her brothers and sisters all paint with and sell through Warlukurlangu.

Earlier this year Nungarrayi and her daughter Sabrina joined her mother and grandmother in a unique show, entitled “Mother, daughter, granddaughter; Three generations of Yuendumu artists” at Perth’s Kingfisher Gallery . Brother Otto Sims is the chairman of Warlukurlangu.

The rights to paint and the knowledge linked to the Napaljarri-warnu Jukurrpa story have been handed down to Nungarrayi from her father, the last Japaljarri who knows all of the songs and ceremony for the Yiwarra – Milky Way Dreaming.

Nungarrayi’s paintings are powerful multi-level images that draw you in and each raise a hundred or more questions – many of which, for various reasons, will remain unanswered.

I want to take one of Nungarrayi’s Napaljarri-warnu Jukurrpa – or her other Yanjirlpirri Jukurrpa (Star dreaming) paintings out bush on one of those clear starlight-bright nights that we are so often blessed with out here and lay on my back with the painting at arms length above me and read the painting and the skies beyond together.

And Nungarrayi’s story for this particular painting – well, maybe just one of the many stories embedded in them – is that:

The Napaljarri-warnu Jukurrpa (Seven sisters Dreaming) depicts the story of the seven ancestral Napaljarri
sisters who are found in the night sky today in the cluster of seven stars in the constellation Taurus, more
commonly known as the Pleiades.

The Pleiades are seven women of the Napaljarri skin group and are often depicted in paintings of this Jukurrpa carrying the Jampijinpa man ‘Wardilyka‘ (the Bustard [Ardeotis australis]) who is in love with the Napaljarri-warnu and who represents the Orion’s Belt cluster of stars.

Jukurra- jukurra, the morning star, is a Jakamarra man who is also in love with the seven Napaljarri sisters and is often shown chasing them across the night sky. In a final attempt to escape from the Jakamarra the
Napaljarri-warnu turned themselves into fire and ascended to the heavens to become stars.

The custodians of the Napaljarri-warnu Jukurrpa are Japaljarri/Jungarrayi men and Napaljarri/Nungarrayi
women. Some parts of the Napaljarri-warnu Jukurrpa are closely associated with men’s sacred ceremonies.

I’m not quite sure if Nungarrayi will be holding any further solo exhibitions in Australia this year but her work is well represented in any number of galleries in Australia and internationally that specialise in quality Aboriginal art.

If you are in Alice Springs this weekend you can do a lot worse than go along to the Aralauen Arts Centre and catch the Desert Mob show that will be opening there Sunday.

My old mate Paul Kelly will be playing a sold-out show in the Araluen Theatre on Saturday night and on Saturday afternoon many of the locally-owned arts centres scattered throughout central Australia will be selling their wares at the Desert Mob marketplace.

This market is a great way to get hold of a range of modestly-priced works of a great variety from some of the 43 art centres that make up DesArt. I don’t know if you’ll be able to pick up any of Nungarrayi’s painting at the Warlukurlangu booth but you could certainly find out more from the Warlukurlangu staff.

The exhibition is described on the Desart website as a:

…showcase[s of] the latest works from each of the participating Art Centres and includes paintings by some of the leading artists in Australia, together with traditional artefacts, weavings, ceramics and other crafts. Each Art Centre exhibits works by some of its senior artists, together with works by emerging younger artists.

And the the marketplace is:

… a large indoor/outdoor market with stalls selling small and low-priced Aboriginal arts and crafts and related products, such as T shirts, bags, books and calendars from Desart member Art Centres. Popular with both locals and tourists, the market offers a chance of some excellent bargains to early browsers.

Me, I’ll be at home watching the football and looking after the dogs while my partner, who works at Warlukurlangu, will working hard in Alice Springs.

Then on Sunday I’m off through the Tanami Track up to the east and west Kimberleys and then on to the Pilbara to talk to people about birds.

It is really tough out here sometimes…

"Fluffy"

Someone suggested that we could call this fine specimen of a leatherback camp dog “Jenny” as a tribute to the abject failures of the Federal Indigenous Affairs Minister Jenny Macklin’s NT Intervention to do very-much-at-all-really about the parlous state of health of too many of the dogs that live in the 73 communities subject to that most flawed of recent attempts at social engineering on the grandest of scales.

But I thought it better that we give her a name that was more suited to her undoubted charm and character – so for present purposes we’ll call her “Fluffy”.

Fluffy is the best example of a leatherback camp dog that I came across during the last week or so of travelling through some remote corners of the NT.

In many of these communities the Federal government appointed “Australian Government Business Managers”, (AGBM’s) whose job it is to represent the interests of the Commonwealth there.

AGBMs live in demountable buildings or converted shipping containers in secure compounds behind tall barbed-wire fences. It is safe to say that the pay and conditions of the AGBM make the AGBM the most well-paid person in town – for an idea of their terms and conditions see this flyer from FaHCSIA.

How effective – from the perspective of local communities – those AGBM’s have been is a very open question. But it is undisputed that, like many of the measures implemented under the NT Intervention, AGBMs represent a clumsy and expensive attempt at delivering improved services to the 73 remote townships in the NT that they have effectively controlled for the last two years.

And, as one community member told me this week while we were watching Fluffy gobble a lump of meat I’d given her, if either of the NT or Federal governments allocated a mere fraction of the money they’ve wasted on the NT Intervention to looking after the health and welfare of the dogs in those communities then the Intervention might be seen as being more effective and would be more readily accepted by Aboriginal people here.

As it is now, there is no systematic approach to the health and welfare of dogs in remote townships by either the NT or Federal governments. But it is not all bad news – a number of dog health programs are supported on an ad-hoc basis and there is at least one non-government organisation that has done some great work to both raise the profile of dog health ad welfare as an issue for governments and to inform  Aboriginal people of the real benefits that can come from careful and well-planned programs of dog welfare and control.

In the past dog control in remote townships has been conducted by two main measures – either “do nothing” or to conduct unilateral control measures with minimal community engagement.

The do nothing approach is sadly typical of the approach of governments to domestic animal control generally. For many remote councils and the NT and Federal governments it has been seen as just too hard to establish and build lasting relationships with Aboriginal people to work out fair and equitable systems of animal control and welfare. Local councils were generally overwhelmed by gross under-funding, lack of administrative capacity and appreciation of alternatives. Territory and State governments appear never to have quite come to grasp the seriousness of the situation.

Too often the alternative to doing nothing was the apparently easier but far less effective option based on a unilateral decision by a local (usually white) town clerk or administrator that there were “just too many bloody dogs around town” and arranging for someone, often the local policeman, to round up the arbitrarily-selected “excess” dogs and shoot them – sometimes out of town – often in front of their owners. Sometimes the more humane, but no less traumatic for the owners of the dogs, alternative was to arrange for a vet to come out and do a mass cull.

Slowly – too slowly for many – more enlightened approaches to remote community dog management are emerging. In my home town of Yuendumu the local Warlukurlangu Artists arts centre has for several years been supporting and funding a dog welfare program.

You can see some photos of healthy Yuendumu dogs and their close involvement with Warlukurlangu’s artists at the art centre’s website here.

Warlukurlangu describes dog program as:

After several years of running an ‘unoffical’ dog program, the Art Centre Committee agreed to formalise the art centre’s commitment to improving the health of the many dogs in Yuendumu.

The management of the art centre strongly believes that ‘healthy dogs mean healthy people’. As part of this program the art centre feeds dogs, de-ticks and cares for sick and abandoned dogs as well as providing daily advice to community members on how to better take care of dogs. WAAA also helps to fund vets to come to the community and sterilise dogs and treat them for various diseases.

In November 2007 and January 2008 the art centre together with Yuendumu Council organised for the Veterinary Doctor Honey Nelson to spend several weeks in the community putting down unwanted dogs and inserting birth control implants on as many male dogs as she could.

Warlukurlangu has received some assistance from the local Council and has also recently received limited funding from FaHCSIA through the local AGBM.

Another example of a more enlightened approach to the management of dog health and welfare in remote townships is AMRRIC (Animal Management in Rural and Remote Indigenous Communities), an organisation that:

…is an independent group of Veterinarians, academics, health workers and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. We facilitate sustainable dog programmes in remote Indigenous communities to improve the health and wellbeing of the entire community.

AMRRIC receives some funding from FaHCSIA and some other government agencies and is gradually expanding its reach and programs. One important part of its work is to provide relevant and culturally appropriate training material for veterinarians.

Most recently AMRRIC has developed the first-ever manual for Veterinarians and communities undertaking dog health programs in remote Indigenous communities. Conducting Dog Health Programs in Indigenous Communities: A Veterinary Guide has been produced by Dr Samantha Phelan, a Northern Territory-based veterinarian with significant field experience in remote Indigenous communities.

AMRRIC has also recently received funding from the Australian Animal Welfare Strategy to produce a DVD based on Samantha Phelan’s Veterinary Guide.

AMRRIC Board member Dr Samantha Phelan wrote this guide for Environmental health Practitioners (EHP’s) nationally. This key resource is a reference guide for people wanting to make dogs healthier in their own communities or in communities they work in. It was written for the wide range of people who take part in Environmental Health Programs in communities, such as Indigenous Environmental Health Workers (EHW), Environmental Health Officers (EHO), Area Health Services and Health Boards, Departments of Local Government (DLG), State Government Environmental Health Units and Indigenous Land Councils, to name a few. ‘The book is written to help each of those people to do a better job’.

The AAWS Funded DVD will be a project that involves a number of key players. First of all the background will be Samantha’s AMRRIC manual information and some of its illustrations will be animated. There will be film footage taken by the Media Students from Batchelor Institute for Indigenous Studies. Our actors will be Indigenous Students from Batchelor who formed the focus groups for the development of the Manual. This education DVD will enable EHP’s to educate schools, individuals, communities and groups on issues such as Stopping Skin Sores, Stopping Ticks and fleas, the benefits of desexing dogs, Stopping dog bites and what to tell children for staying safe, Stopping Worms in dogs and stopping them getting into people and Stopping dogs getting diarrhoea and spreading germs to people. It is anticipated that the project will be completed by the end of August.

AMRRIC deserves more support from governments and the public – Fluffy looks like an absolute wreck that most people would not hesitate to put down immediately – but, as I’ve seen from personal experience – it is relatively easy to save dogs like Fluffy and restore them to the good health they deserve. All it takes is food, some treatment for mange and ticks and some loving attention.

It can be both humorous and horrible to watch a political party eat itself alive in public.

Funny because it is rare that the hubris, rank ambition, incompetence and dummy-spitting of so many are all on public display at any one time.

Horrible because, well, you just don’t really want to see human nature in such a raw state – and blood is such a hard stain to get out of your clothes.

And this thankfully all-too-rare event is being played out in the NT and you can watch and listen to it live – right now, right here in the Northern Territory – as NT Labor’s parliamentary wing munches down on each other.

I got it wrong earlier this week when I said in Crikey that you’d be lucky to get evens on a bet that the NT Labor government of Paul Henderson would make it to the end of June.

Right now his government will be lucky if it is still in power at the end of next week.

On Monday this week ex-Deputy Chief Minister Marion Scrymgour, a backbencher since stepping down because of ill health in February from her position as the most powerful elected Aboriginal politician in the country, had one foot in, the other out, of the NT government tent.

By Tuesday, after a report on Monday’s 7.30 Report by ABC Darwin reporter Murray McLaughlin, she was outside the tent pissing on it for all she was worth – accusing the government of lying to and cheating Aboriginal people.

By Wednesday’s Cabinet meeting, after applying the softest of squirrel-grips to hapless NT Chief Minister Paul Henderson, she was back in the tent.

But that all went hell-west-and-crooked yesterday after the NT News ran a story on Scrymgour’s performance at the Cabinet meeting. By late morning she’d issued a statement to her constituents that she would leave the government and see out her term on the cross-benches as an independent.

The NT News report, and some egregious editorial comments, infuriated Scrymgour – perhaps because of inaccuracies but mainly because she’d lost trust in members of the government to give effect to the deal she’d squeezed out of Henderson the day before.

This much is clear from this part of her statement released yesterday:

“I can no longer rely on all caucus colleagues to implement the concessions that I won in the caucus meeting yesterday”.

You don’t have to read too far between the lines to soon realise that here she is only talking about Henderson, Lawrie, and most particularly NT Indigenous Affairs Minister Alison Anderson, with whom Scrymgour shares little apart from her Aboriginality and femininity.

Put bluntly, Scrymgour simply did not trust Anderson to implement the concessions she’d negotiated with Henderson.

Scrymgour thinks that the leak to the NT News came from Henderson and current Deputy CM and Treasurer, Delia Lawrie. Thats more than a bit of a stretch – it is hard to see what possible value there would be in Henderson and Lawrie bringing down their own government.

Word on the streets in Darwin is that the leak came from a staffer in Henderson’s office – again it is difficult to see any valid motives or reasons for such a damaging leak other than malice or mischievousness.

Henderson, after yesterday’s dummy-spit by Scrymgour, now has two very poor choices – try to keep his failed government alive by dancing to Scrymgour’s increasingly erratic beck and call or hold a fresh election ten months after the last one and more then three years before the next one is due in 2012.

If Henderson takes the first of his choices he risks ultimate and early failure. The first item of business when the NT’s parliament sits next Tuesday 9 June will be a motion of no confidence in Henderson brought on by NT Opposition leader Terry Mills.

Scrymgour apparently has given Henderson her word that she’d support him in any no-confidence motion and that she will support the money Bills for the NT Budget. But Tuesday is a long way away and the way things are going here anything could happen in that time.

Henderson will have to rely on Scymgour or the other NT Independent Gerry Woods to pass any legislation or win motions in the Assembly – and he will still require the casting vote of the Speaker of the Legislative Assembly, Jane Aagard.

And Henderson’s second choice – call a new election – would almost certainly see him lose power and a swag of the thirteen seats Labor currently holds in the NT. Labor would be reduced to a rump – just as the CLP Opposition was before the unnecessary early election that Henderson took the NT electorate to in August 2008.

There is little doubt that Henderson and NT Labor deserve such total humiliation – the current chaos in his parliamentary party is largely a result of his ineptitude and poor political management, bad advice and the woeful performance of Labor since Henderson’s predecessor Clare Martin triumphantly led Labor to power in the NT for the first time in 2001.

While many of the failures of Labor in the NT have been felt by the wider NT electorate, it is no coincidence that Henderson’s government has been brought to its knees by an Aboriginal woman. If there is any element of its constituency that Labor in the NT has failed and taken for granted for too long, it is the Aboriginal people that make up roughly one-third of the NT’s population.

From the start Labor, rightly, saw that the keys to power lay in the white-bread northern suburbs of Darwin, and that is where it spread its largesse. But Martin, Henderson and all who advised them failed to meet even the most modest of expectations from its other power-base – the Aboriginal people in remote electorates that have remained loyal to Labor for decades. And with a number of strong Aboriginal politicians on the government benches there was at least some cause for hope that Aboriginal people in the NT would finally get a fair deal from their government.

They didn’t, and it is the supreme irony that the primary causes for the recent massive loss of the faith and trust that many Aboriginal people had in Labor have been the actions of Aboriginal parliamentarians – not least Scrymgour, and her successor as Indigenous Affairs Minister, Alison Anderson.

Scrymgour’s rushed and ill-founded decision in October 2008 to implement mandatory English for four hours every day in the eight remaining bilingual schools in the NT is seen by many Aboriginal people in remote townships as a fundamental betrayal of Aboriginal rights to language and culture.

And the announcement three weeks ago of the Working Future policy by Scrymgour’s successor as Indigenous Affairs Minister, Alison Anderson, is the latest example of the almost complete disconnect between Aboriginal people living in remote townships and NT Labor – particularly hose who loudly trumpet their care for and connections with their constituents in the remote dusty corners of the NT.

Scrymgour saw the Anderson version of the Working Future policy for what it is – a further retreat from the current parlous levels of service delivery and infrastructure provision to remote townships and a fundamental betrayal of commitments given to remote Aboriginal people by her and Pat Dodson, who led a consultation and engagement process that was quickly abandoned and ignored by Anderson.

For Scrymgour, Working Future was now a policy that had been hijacked and fundamentally changed by her arch political enemy, Alison Anderson – Scrymgour’s vision had been to fit the legitimate aspirations and needs of Aboriginal people in remote townships and homelands into the reality of Canberra’s demands for service improvement. Anderson’s version represented little more than a supine surrender to Canberra’s assimilationist directions that 10,000 people be moved away from their homelands to create new ghettos in an arbitrary selection of so-called ‘growth towns’.

I’ll have a lot more to say about this most interesting of Ministers in the near future.

And it is Alison Anderson who may well be the key to the futures of both Henderson and Opposition leader Terry Mills. There is the very real possibility that Anderson could follow Scrymgour’s lead and walk – not to the cross-benches – but across the Chamber to the CLP – gifting Government to the CLP.

And the last word goes to Terry “the man who could very soon be King” Mills.

On his Facebook page this morning he says that:

“A day is a long time in politics. Every day this week has been long! Wonder what today has in store? Former Deputy Chief Minister now independent member will make a statement today to explain her unusual actions of the past few days. With 11 Country Liberal, 11 Labor and two independents holding the balance of power democracy is getting workout in the Territory!”

Your comments please!

As Lindsay reported:

The documents show the Centrelink account balances of many residents of Yuendumu, 293 kilometres north-west of Alice Springs, whose welfare payments have been quarantined under the federal indigenous intervention.

…

The discovery is likely to increase tensions in the community of about 700 where residents whose incomes are quarantined can buy goods only in the Nguru-Walalja store, operated by Outback Stores, a government-owned but independently operated company that has 27 stores across Australia.

The ABC spoke to Yuendumu resident Valerie Napaljarri Martin shortly after she had given evidence to the House of Representatives Committee currently conducting an inquiry into the operation of remote stores:

Valerie Martin said she was shocked when she was shown her name on the list of documents given to the inquiry. “Oh my god,” she said. “Look, I just seen my name written on it now. That makes me even more angry. Who do they think they are? Coming in to our community and doing that to us.”

Now I’ve got to disclose an interest here – I was engaged by the Yuendumu Social Club Store Inc (aka ‘The Big Shop‘ or the ‘Yuendumu Store‘) as a consultant to prepare and give testimony to both the current House of Representatives Standing Committee Inquiry into community stores in remote Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities and the Senate Select Committee on Regional and Remote Indigenous Communities.

Both Committees have recently held Hearings in and around Alice Springs. I gave evidence at the House of Representatives Committee on Tuesday 28th April and met with the Senate Committee last night.

The major thrust of my submissions to the Parliamentary Committees related to the attempts, unsuccessful so far, to become licensed by FaHCSIA to accept income-managed funds and the related BasicsCard stored-value Card administered by Centrelink.

I also gave information to both Committees, including copies of Statutory Declaration detailing the events around the discovery of the documents at the Yuendumu dump and a copy of a letter given to Centrelink when the documents were provided to them.

I also have an involvement in the Centrelink documents story – earlier this month one of the managers of the Yuendumu Store, Mr Mark Vegera, contacted me and told me he had found some documents at the Yuendumu dump, a few kilometres outside of town. I later went to the dump and found some more of the same documents.

As Mark Vegera says in his Statutory Declaration in relation to the content of the material he found in a rubbish bag at the Yuendumu dump:

I noted that the papers in the rubbish bag appeared to be from the Nguru-Walalja store at Yuendumu which is operated by Outback Stores Pty Ltd. There were a number of cash register receipts, assorted facsimile pages and correspondence, and daily cash register totals sheets. Also included in the papers contained in the bag were loose copies of reports with the words “Income Management, End of Month Reconciliation”.

From my brief examination of the material in the bag it appeared that it was sensitive material, particularly in that it appeared to contain personal information of a private nature about a large number of residents of Yuendumu. I placed the material in a box and returned to the YSCS where I secured the material in the YSCS office under lock and key.

Later that week I examined the documents that I had found at the Yuendumu waste facility more closely. It soon became obvious to me that one particular group of documents appeared to contain information of a highly personal and private nature.

The front page of each group of documents that appeared to contain sensitive personal and private material had the words “Income Management End of Month Reconciliation” at the top of each page. Under them were the words “Organisation name: Nguru-Walalja Store (Country Store) Yuendumu”… . There were approximately 50 or 60 pages of this material. In the top right hand corner of the first sheet were the words “Page 1 of 8″.

The body of each sheet of paper consisted of six columns of words and figures under the column headings, reading from left to right, “Customer Details”, respectively “First name”, “Surname”, “Cust. CRN” “Credit”, “Debit” and “Balance”.

The 8 pages of each document consists of lists of named persons with their individual “Cust. CRN” listed against each name in that column. I understand the words “Cust. CRN” to be a shortened reference to “Customer Centrelink Reference Number”. Then follows the columns headed “Credit” and “Debit”, most of which have balances entered as “$0.00″. The last column on the right-hand side of each page was headed “Balance” and that column on each page had a variety of numbers entered as, for example, “$5.55″.

After I went to the Yuendumu dump and found more documents of the same kind I also prepared a Statutory Declaration, in which I detailed how the material located by me and Mark related to those people at Yuendumu who have their welfare income quarantined under the Federal Government’s Income Management scheme:

The total number of names and other material listed varies from about three hundred and seventy to about three hundred and ninety names.

I believed that the material found by Mark Vegera and myself was material that would be subject to the provisions of the Privacy Act 1998. I was uncertain as to how this material should be dealt with but believed that it would be appropriate that it be provided to Centrelink who would be able to take any further action. On Thursday 23 April I contacted the Office of the Privacy Commissioner in Canberra. An officer of the Privacy Commission advised me that it would be appropriate to return the material to Centrelink. They further advised me that it would be appropriate to retain a copy of the material so that it may be forwarded to the Privacy Commission to accompany a complaint to that body or to be forwarded so that the Commission may conduct an assessment as to whether an “own motion” inquiry by the Commission may be appropriate or in the event that any person or persons to whom the information contained in the material referred may wish to make a complaint to the Privacy Commission.

I came into Alice Springs on Monday 27th April to prepare for the House of Representatives and Senate Hearings.

On Monday afternoon I went to Centrelink and delivered the originals of the sensitive material found at the Yuendumu dump to Centrelink.

It is apparent that Centrelink views breaches of the Privacy Principles very seriously. As a Centrelink spokesperson told the ABC:

…the organisation has strict rules for stores about protecting privacy and the matter is being urgently investigated.

Indeed. In 2006 Centrelink ‘forced out’ or sacked over 100 staff who had inappropriately accessed information subject to privacy restrictions. As the Sydney Morning Herald reported at the time:

The government’s welfare agency has confirmed it uncovered almost 600 cases of staff wrongfully accessing client records during the last two years.

A total of 19 staff were sacked and 92 resigned when faced with accusations of privacy breaches.

More than 300 staff faced salary deductions or fines, another 46 were reprimanded, and the remainder were demoted or warned.

“What this demonstrates is that we exercise zero tolerance in this area,” Centrelink general manager Hank Jongen told ABC Radio.

“It shows our staff that we are absolutely serious about maintaining the privacy of our customers.”

And in relation to the security of Private Information held or generated by private operators, like the Outback Store at Yuendumu, Centrelink’s Terms and Conditions for BasicsCards Merchants import the provisions of the Privacy Act:

27. PRIVACY LAW
27.1 Privacy Obligations

The Merchant must not, and must ensure that any subcontractor does not, do an act or engage in a practice in relation to this agreement that would breach an Information Privacy Principle if done or engaged in by Centrelink.

27.2 Interpretation of Privacy obligations
Information Privacy Principle has the same meaning in clause 27.1 as it has in the Privacy Act
1988.

Time will tell how Centrelink will treat the inappropriate disposal of this material at the Yuendumu dump – certainly it appears to have a wide range of options of actions that it might take against Outback Stores.

Both of the Parliamentary Committees were very interested in how personal private information is being treated by the Government’s favoured provider of store services to remote communities in the NT.

And the Privacy Commission will be provided with a copy of the same material as provided to Centrelink and both of the Committees – it will be interesting to see whether the Privacy Commission decides to initiate an ‘own motion’ inquiry under the Privacy Act.

And of course there may be more than a few of the 400 or so Yuendumu residents whose personal information was in the documents dumped by Outback Stores who may want to make a complaint to the Privacy Commissioner as well.

Watch this space!

Individually they portray 25 or so birds found in the areas in which each language is spoken. As a set they reveal the depth of knowledge that Aboriginal people have of the birds that they hunt, share campsites and townships with and which are spiritually important or are involved in or related to traditional ceremonies and beliefs.

The homepage for the “Birds that Tell People Things” project notes that:

In many cultures birds indicate things in the environment and can be harbingers of bad news through their role in mythology. Birds can signal where water can be found, the presence of game or other food, seasonal events, as well as danger or bad news. This series of posters features birds that indicate ecological and social events in four Central Australian Aboriginal languages: Arrernte, Anmatyerr, Alyawarr and Kaytetye. Each poster includes a photograph of the bird, its Aboriginal, scientific and common name, and information about what it signifies with an English translation.

The posters are the result of collaborative work with highly-skilled Aboriginal language speakers, ornithologists and linguists. They are produced by the Cultural Signs Project, based at the School for Social Policy and Research, CDU.

The posters are the first output of the Charles Darwin University “Cultural Signs of Central Australia” project that will:

…document cultural signs in Central Australian Aboriginal languages. These are the social and environmental indicators used by Aboriginal people in Central Australia. For example there are signs that tell people when food is available, predict the weather, warn people of bad events and signal when certain kin are coming. Much of this knowledge is in danger of being lost as Aboriginal society rapidly changes. Many Aboriginal people are concerned that such knowledge should be documented and that resources should be created to assist in the teaching of this knowledge.

I was lucky enough to have a few of my bird photographs included on the posters and I’m more than pleasantly surprised by how well they came out. I’m also pleased at the quality and care taken in this project and the quantity and detail of local Aboriginal knowledge contained in each poster.

These posters deserve to be widely appreciated and used and I hope that many more will be produced – not only for other Northern Territory languages but for other languages across Australia. I think that the posters will be very useful to inform the general public of the depth and nature of traditional bird knowledge, as a tool for land management programs on country and also for use in schools.

Spinfex Pigeons at the waterhole

I’ve been looking for the Spinifex Pigeon Geophaps plumifera around my part of the world for the past couple of years and, while camping at a waterhole an hour’s drive south of Yuendumu looking for the Peregrine Falcon I wrote about here a few weeks ago, I came across a small flock coming in to water and foraging around the rocky ridges on either side of the waterhole.

Spinifex Pigeons are Australian endemics and superbly adapted to life in the Australian arid zone – they are opportunistic breeders and nestlings are able to fly and forage for themselves within a week or so of hatching. Their cryptic plumage means that they blend into the rocky ridges and red soils that are their favoured breeding and foraging habitats.

One extraordinary adaption to life in the arid zone that Spinifex Pigeons share with the much smaller Diamond Dove Geopilia cuneata is the ability to forage through the hottest part of the day – what this means is that these birds can forage while their competitors are resting from the heat – similarly, they can forage while raptors aren’t out looking to eat them.

Wikipedia tells me that there are two races of Spinifex Pigeons in Australia – the White-bellied Spinifex Pigeon, Geophaps plumifera plumifera, (seen here) which is permanently found in the arid areas of north western, northern, eastern and central Australia, and the Red-bellied Spinifex Pigeon, Geophaps plumifera ferruginea, which is permanently found in the Pilbara, Western Australia.

I’ve got some more information on local Aboriginal knowledge about these birds but unfortunately left it at home at Yuendumu and didn’t bring it with me here to New Orleans, where I’m attending the 32nd annual conference of the Society of Ethnobiology at Tulane University in New Orleans – I’ll post a few short notes about that conference over the next few days.

Sand grasshopper

This little fellow – I think it is a Urnisiella species – and it’s close cousin below (it may be what is known a different level of instar nymph according to my insect field guide) are quite common here at the moment and give the dogs no end of excitement chasing them around the scrub.

We’ve had a good season this year – the ground-water has been replenished, there is still some surface water available and the occasional storm cell that stomps around the country provides a welcome late-season top-up.

There is plenty of good grass still around and new growth on the trees so there is a good load of insects, which, as someone who likes to spend a lazy hour or ten a day watching birds, is good for me as well.

More grasshoppers and small insects, more birds – happy me!

I recently bought a butterfly net & associated kit, including a wonderful field guide to Australian Spiders, and have been paying a bit more attention to those smaller things we share our world with.

Another Sand Grasshopper

Another recent purchase is the excellent introductory Field Guide to Insects in Australia, by Paul Zborowski & Ross Storey and published Reed New Holland.

The chapter on the Order Orthoptera (Crickets & Grasshoppers), tells me that in Australia we have 14 families and over 2,800 species of crickets and grasshoppers.

One thing I was not aware of is that Orthoptera go through a range of life stages that are often dependent upon local resources for progression.

As Zborowski and Storey say about crickets and grasshoppers:

Nymphs are wingless versions of the adults, with, at first, disproportionately large heads. Many species develop wing buds in later instars. The final moult to adult is around the fourth to sixth instar in grasshoppers and up to the tenth in crickets. The whole process takes a few weeks in good conditions, to many months if food supply and weather are adverse.

I’ve not come across too much information locally about uses for grasshoppers – though I have a paper somewhere in my files that discusses insects as food among a number of language groups across central Australia – I’ll update this post when I find that paper if it is relevant.

Kirr-kirr, the Warlpiri interactive dictionary, tells me that the Warlpiri word for grasshopper is Jintilyka:

Kala jintilyka kulaka wangkalku – kala yurnungkapilyirriji ka wangkajala. Kulalpa wangkayarla – wapami, paarr-pardimimipa ka. Palkaju jiilpari-jiilpari yangka marumaru yangka wita karla nguna, pinkirrpawanarlangu – purturlurla, manu piirrpirrparlanguyijala puunpuunpa walyapiya, ngulanya jintilyka. Jintilyka, kujaka wurliya parnka, ngulaji ka parnkanjarlaju wurliya wuurr-kijirni, ngulaka yangka pirri-manilki, walyakurra.

But the grasshopper doesn’t make a sound, whereas the yurnungkapilyirri insect really makes a noise. It cannot make a sound – it moves about and it flies. Its body is speckled, with those little black spots on it, on the wings and along its back, and it has white spots on it and it is also a red-brown colour like the earth. That is the grasshopper. The grasshopper which runs along on its feet, after flying for a bit, straightens out its legs and lands on the ground.

Nyanungu jintilyka, wardilykarlunya ka ngarni. Wardilykarlu ka ngarni, wardapirlangurlu ka ngarni jintilykaji nyanunguju. Ngarni kapala – wardapirli, wardilykarlu. Kuyu kapala ngarni – warduwarduku. Munku wiri-maninjaku.

The grasshopper, it is eaten by bustards. Bustards eat them and goannas eat the grasshoppers. Goannas and bustards both eat them. They eat it as their meat to satisfy their hunger. To fill up their bellies.

Wilypirirla kaji kurdu nyina, nyanungu yangka – kankarlarrarlangu nyinami – yurdingkayijala. Kujakarla – kuyurlangu jintilyka kurduku kanyirni. Puuly-mardarninjarla. Wiringarrirliji. Yinyiyijala karla kurduku – witakuju wiringarrikiji. Kuyuju.

If the baby bird is in the hollow of a tree trunk, placed high up in a tree, then the owl brings the baby bird a grasshopper to eat. It catches it and then it gives it to the young one – to the little owl.

One other source of information that I’ve found concerning grasshoppers and Aboriginal people is a reference in Roman Black’s Old and New Australian Aboriginal Art, published by Angus and Robertson in 1964.

Between pages 63 to 70 there are a number of references to Aboriginal ceremonial boards and one image that refers to Jukurrpa beliefs about grashoppers:

Ngalia Warlpiri Grasshopper Jukurrpa

According to Black this design relates to the following events at a place called Ngapatjimbi (1), where there were a number of grasshoppers.

There they came out of the ground, and flew up, and on coming down they went into the ground again. The grasshoppers multiplied, and after the next rain they came out of the [unnamed] places marked (2).

They flew up and came down as men. These men went to Wantangara (3), and going into a cave, turned into churingas.

In this particular design the bands of parallel lines linking circles represent the paths the grasshoppers made by breaking down leaves. Pairs of lines represent their tracks.

As I said above, there are a lot of grasshoppers around at the moment – if I come across any more that will stay still enough for a photo I’ll keep you posted!

Got a grasshopper story – send a comment!

Warlukurlangu Artists

The exhibition, entitled “Desert Dreamings“, will be shown at the Open Palm Court Gallery at The India Habitat Centre on Lodhi Road in New Delhi from 6 to 12 April 2009 and will be opened by Australia’s High Commissioner to India, Mr John McCarthy. Warlukurlangu’s travel and accommodation have been assisted by Austrade.

I asked Warlukurlangu’s manager, Cecilia Alfonso, how she came to be taking Warlpiri art from central Australia all the way to India.

Cecilia explained that a few years ago she was in Canberra with a group of artists undergoing eye surgery (a great innovation of Warlukurlangu’s that I’ll discuss in a future post) when they ran into Durga Vishwanthan, a friend of Warlukurlangu’s assistant manager Gloria Morales.

As Cecilia told me:

Durga offered to help us put on an exhibition of Aboriginal art in New Delhi. She is an avid, passionate collector of Aboriginal art and I don’t think there have been many exhibitions of Aboriginal art in India.

So here we are a few years down the track.. the global economy has crashed, gloom and doom all around and we are spending a bloody fortune going half way around the world to try to flog a few pics…

We will try our hardest to sell some paintings. We are taking over a beautiful selection of affordable emerging work which, from our experience is the best way to enter a new market.

Accompanying Cecilia to India will be Warlukurlangu Artists Chair Otto Jungarrayi Sims and his wife Ormay Nangala Gallagher and while there will be a lots of work involved in setting up and running the exhibition, there will also be some time for a little sightseeing and shopping.

Cecilia says that:

We were keen to go over to India sometime and do a bit of shopping so we decided to go ahead…we also really want to see the Taj Mahal.

I’ve seen it before but it’s well worth seeing twice.

Warlukurlangu Artists has been operating since 1985 and represents over 400 central Australian artists (mainly from the Warlpiri and Anmatyerre language groups) living mainly in the townships of Yuendumu and Nyirripi, both over 300 kilometres north-west of Alice Springs.

Art from Warlukurlangu Artists has always been known for it’s strong iconography and use of a vivid palette and in recent years has become particularly sought after in the international and domestic markets.

For more information about Warlukurlangu go to their website for contact details, loads of background information and their online gallery.

For more information on other central Australian art centres go to the DESART – the Association of Central Australian Aboriginal
Art and Craft Centres.

All Desart member Art Centres are owned and managed by Aboriginal people in their own communities.

Enjoy!

I’ve written on the subject of he recent set of crises in the NT Education system, and particularly the administration of education in remote Aboriginal townships, at Crikey here and the (then) NT Education Minister Marion Scrymgour has had her say here.

Matters moved fairly slowly over the Christmas break (just about half of the NT population flees southwards from the first day of the long break in December) but it is only in the small-town politics that is the Northern Territory under Paul Henderson’s Labor government could things get this weird.

Hendo, in what may well be the lamest excuse yet for government failure and ineptitude, says that the real reason he reshuffled his hapless NT Government Ministries was because of the Global Financial Crisis.

Well, I’m sure there are some who’d believe that – but they are most likely face down in a gutter and barely breathing.

With immaculate timing – right at the start of the new school year – Hendo sacked his Education Minister Marion Scrymgour and gave her the job, among others, of Attorney-General and Minister for Justice. In her short 18 months as Education Minister about the only thing she did really well was to alienate a lot of people in what should have been, for her as the most powerful elected Aboriginal politician in the country, her natural constituency – remote Aboriginal education.

And in a sign of just how much ‘things are different’ in the NT, yesterday afternoon she was still performing Education-related duties.

Contrary to my assertion in Crikey yesterday that Hendo, as the new Education Minister, would attend at a meeting with a delegation of supporters of bilingual education in the NT, a few hours after being sacked from the job Scrymgour turned up to talk bilingual education.

Scrymgour met with a powerful delegation of Educators concerned about the fate of the NT’s bilingual programs and her hasty decision that English would be the mandated language for the first four hours of every school day across the NT.

Maybe Hendo doesn’t have much confidence in his own ability to do the hard yards required in Education.

The delegation included Mandawuy and Yalmay Yunupingu and a number of other senior Yolngu educators from north-east Arnhem Land with decades of experience in bilingual education.

Also before Scrymgour were two letters from senior Aboriginal women from the far south of the NT. Between them Jeannie Nungarrayi Egan and Cecily Napanangka Granites have been involved in bilingual education at Yuendumu and the wider Warlpiri world for over 60 years.

The messages to Scrymgour from the Aboriginal educators are clear and concise – please protect our languages.

In her letter Jeannie Nungarrayi Egan tells Scrymgour:

“All my children and grandchildren went to school every day and they all read and write English and Warlpiri…I hear the children of my relatives who live in other communities with no Two-way bilingual program talking mixed-up language and not even understanding Warlpiri properly. Language is important to think clearly and understand well.

“In our communities it is most important for government people to work together with the community people to provide what the community wants, not just for the Government to force their ideas.

“We really need to keep our Two-way programs in the Warlpiri schools going strongly. We can’t do this if the first four hours of the day have to be [taught in] English.

…

If we lose our language we will be lost people, not knowing our place in the Aboriginal world. We see other lost sad people around Australia. We don’t want our children to be lost.”

Cecily Napanangka Granites’s letter to Scrymgour contains the text of her speech to the recent World Indigenous Peoples Conference held in Melbourne in early December 2008.

“I decided to work as a teacher because I want to see our children grow up strong in Warlpiri language and culture and also learn English as a second language.

…

“Very now and then there are people in the government who don’t agree with us teaching our children in Warlpiri even though we have always taught English as well. We are having this problem right now.

…

“We will never give up because our Warlpiri language is so important to us. It’s who we are. We are Warlpiri and we are strong, proud people. We can’t let our parents and grandparents down even though they might have passed away.”

Crikey understands that the meeting involved some ‘frank discussions’, particularly about the material and data used in support of the Scrymgour’s policy of mandatory four hours of English tuition in every NT school, every day, from the commencement of the NT school year in 2010 or sooner. And Scrymgour made it clear that she was determined that the policy would proceed.

But amidst the gloom there was some there was some indication of progress for the Aboriginal delegates, with Scrymgour agreeing on a number of issues for further discussion and negotiation and for regular meetings in the future.

And according to one delegate at the meeting, Scrymgour and her Departmental advisors still fail to understand the first principle of the value of English as a Second Language (ESL) teaching.

That principle, that ESL respects knowledge gained in the learners first language as an essential tool for second-language and culture acquisition, was put to Scrymgour and the NT Education bureaucrats succinctly by Mandawuy Yunupingu.

Before he became famous as Australian of the Year for 1992 and the lead singer of Yothu Yindi, Mandawuy was a teacher for twenty years and principal of the Yirrkala School for a further five years and a visionary proponent of ‘Both-Ways’ education.

“We shouldn’t be doing anything that requires indigenous students to leave the things they already know outside of the classroom.”