Buskers. Montpellier. May 2012

After three miserable days of cold and rain I was beginning to think that Spring had taken its leave from the south of France this year but today burst full of warm sun and smiles and restored my faith in this part of the world as just about the best place I can think of to spend a few lazy days.

These are the days that Zebda’s ”Tomber la Chemise” was written for. You can some idea of how well that song fits here, but for mine this live recording from Sala Apolo in Barcelona from 2003 says it all.

Not that my time here has been slack – I’m here to attend and present at the 13th Congress of the International Society of Ethnobiology at Montpellier. Today was that rare thing at any conference – a free day.

Rue des Augustins, Montpellier

I took myself on a field trip through the old town of Montpellier, stopping off at some music shops, a few bars, a coutellerie, buying a return ticket to Nimes on Saturday for the Feria de Pentecôte and just poking around the old part of town, which is all narrow curved streets that run up to the Prefecture in it’s centre.

Montpellier’s old town is a great place to spend a few hours – if not days. There is still a lot for me to find there yet between its walls of creamy-yellow rock.

Rue Embouque d'or, Montpellier

Eventually thirst and the need for a feed got the better of me and I settled for a late lunch and a few cold beers at Le Cafe Riche in the Place de la Comedie on one side of the large square that stands between the old town and the (relatively) new.

I was half way though my last beer when two young buskers set up in front of the cafe, he with a squeezebox and all of the brass, class and front of a seasoned performer, his younger sister hesitant and less assured.

They rattled off a few tunes for the passing parade and received a few donations.

As I finished my beer and wandered over to drop a Euro in their paper cup an old man stopped by and told them: ”Vous êtes de vrais artistes …”

Vous êtes de vrais artistes ...

Never truer words said.

Entrance to Rue Cremieux, 12 arr.

Rue Cremieux is a short street that runs off the Rue de Lyon to Rue du Bercy in the 12th arrondissement of Paris, around the corner from the hotel I stayed at for a few days before leaving for Montpellier, where I am attending and presenting at the 13th Congress of the International Society of Ethnobiology.

More on that later. First a look at the houses in rue Cremieux …

There are thirty three houses – and a hotel – in this small street that is blocked off to the traffic, a blessing on the “four-day long weekend” that Parisians were enjoying while I was there.

Rue Cremieux is lovely in the pre-dawn, and not too bad later in the day when two old men strolled along the pave playing along their trumpets … looking for well-earned tips for their Saturday tipple.

Vingt-deux

Vingt-quatre

Dix-sept

Vingt-et-un

Vingt-trois

Douze

Hotel

Quinze

Rue Cremieux par nuit

Basil the bung-eyed camp dog. Arnhemland NT, May 2012.

I’ve seen Basil (I tried crowd-sourcing a name over Twitter & FaceBook but despite some great suggestions Basil sorta worked better) every time I have travelled to the small coastal town that he calls home over the last year and a half.

Basil’s patch is the itinerant accommodation for travelling towny bureaucrats like myself in a small sandy town perched at the mouth of one of the great northern rivers as it pours into the Gulf of Carpentaria.

The first time we met he nuzzled up against my leg one evening followed by a single-minded stare.

His intent was obvious – give me food. Now.

In the friendliest way possible of course.

Each time I’ve been there since he has met me at the back door, or if off on patrol in the sand-dunes he’d be back within five minutes.

Somewhere along the line I “gave him my sweat”. To do that you wipe the palms of both hands on your (invariably sweaty in this part of the world) armpits and then gently place both hands over the snout of the hound for a few seconds followed by a few good pats and kind words.

That dog will know you for life. And depending on how you treat him or her – will remain a loyal friend as soon as you come into sight or smell.

Always up for a pat and a scratch Basil usually has a smile on his face but a ready snarl for any unworthy local cur that wanted in on his patch without permit.

Then he can unleash with an urgently brief and violent response, as he did last week with his snap-rapid crueling of a lactating bitch that thought she could snatch a few morsels for the pups at home waiting to suck her already empty breasts dryer.

The bitch was dispatched to the other side of the fence within seconds.

Basil in repose. Alert but most def not alarmed.

Mostly Basil is a kind and attentive host, particularly when evening scraps are his due.

He might be ugly, rip-torn and have a bad case of bung-eye (I forgot to get some Golden Eye ointment for his conjunctivitis from the local clinic) that hopefully should be cleared up in a few days but he is nothing but loyal and mostly good-natured.

He isn’t riddled with ticks and is obviously reasonably healthy – in mind and body. In all he is just a normal dog – except that he is (technically) homeless.

I look forward to seeing him next time I’m in that town.

Australian Hobby, Falco longipenniss. Wartulpunyu, NT 2010

The Australian Hobby Falco longipennis, is one of my favourite raptors. I’ve written before of their exploits here and here.

And raptors are my favourite group of birds.

Last week I had the five minute pre-dawn pleasure of watching a Hobby hawking over a small grassland one small dune back from the mouth of a large river emptying into the Gulf of Carpentaria in south-eastern Arnhem Land.

My bird was a young male Hobby, all grey-black and undisguised purpose – to catch and kill grasshoppers or any other small thing that was out and about in the long course of grass that lay before me.

I first noticed the bird as I sat in rising light with a bush breakfast of coffee, a piss, a fag and farts as he swept in to roost and consume some small prey – most likely a grasshopper – on the electric wires just yards to my left. Ever intent on feeding and watching all about.

For the next five minutes I watched him dance before me, alone as the sun rose slowly behind us.

He launched into a series of long – grass seed-head-low runs south along along the football sized grassland area that ran away to my left before me.

In front of me was a dead-stop and turning point as he came back, all eyes and talons looking to kill and eat.

I’d never seen a Hobby hunt so low and to see this bird’s raw power as he swept along before me was a thing of glorious beauty.

I could almost hear the rattle of seed heads and rustle of dry grass as he passed but inches above them, gliding, then pushing himself forward with a burst of unbridled muscle and feather.

Australian Hobby "on the fist". Alice Springs Desert Park, 2008.

I went inside for another coffee and as I came out the light had changed and the falcon was gone.

A hundred birds were before me in the sky and on the ground.

Here two Whistling Kites cruised downwind effortlessly away from the risen sun, doubling back with obvious efforts to row into the freshening breeze.

Single Great Egrets pulled their unlikely selves upstream against the morning breeze, Omo-white body and neck and black legs and long bill. Torresian Crows – all beak and croaking caws – wandered in from their night roosts.

Silver Gulls cruised downwind along the shoreline and Crested and other terns cruised offshore.

There at ground level irregular ranks of Magpie Larks picked their way across the open grass in a score-strong horde, all black and white flutters and jumps as they grazed.

Where one bird had dominated the morning landscape five minutes before, now everywhere was birds.

I found the Hobby – another coffee and a half-hour later, perched atop the communications tower in the centre of town with a female bird roosted nearby. They stayed there for the next hour or so, watchful to all that passed below and perhaps – apart from me – unseen or regarded by anyone else.

These are good moments in any life.

Over at the Endangered Languages and Cultures blog my occasional linguistic acquaintance Jane Simpson has written a lovely review of the latest publication from Alice Spring’s IAD Press - the Kaytetye to English Dictionary.

I’m a little pressed for time this morning so I’ll just grab a couple of excerpts and leave the rest of exploring what looks like a great example of the genre up to you.

I know at least one of the people behind this Dictionary – Myf Turpin, with whom I have done some work on birds in the past (see this post on the posters of birds “that tell people things“ here).

The IAD Press blurb is pretty modest:

The Kaytetye to English dictionary is ideal for both beginners and advanced speakers of Kaytetye, for translators, and for anyone interested in learning more about Aboriginal languages and culture.

But Jane Simpson give more than enough reasons to go out and buy this work – here is what she said when she launched the book a few weeks back at the Aboriginal Languages Workshop at Stradbroke Island:

Things I love about this dictionary

1. it’s alkenhe (big) and contains elperterre (hard language).

2. It has lots of audiences: community members, linguists, scientists, teachers, people who want to learn the language. And the compilers, Myfany Turpin and the Kaytetye linguist, Alison Ross, have done their best to help all of these audiences. This is a dictionary that we will all learn from, not just for the encyclopaedic knowledge of Kaytetye it embodies, but also for how to present dictionary information.

3. I was trying to think of a metaphor to describe the Kaytetye Dictionary project. And I came up with the quandong tree (not a tree from Kaytetye country but not far off…).

Quandong tree: fruit

The bright red fruit looks pretty and it’s delicious.

So I dip into the Kaytetye dictionary anywhere and I find things I love, I just keep on eating.

Here are some:

Pronunciation: Arandic languages have a spelling system which takes a lot of getting used to – but the introduction to the dictionary is a real winner. It explains the system, demonstrates how sounds are made, gives respellings that will help English speakers, and even fuzzy spelling search clues. One thing I really like is the cross reference to words that sound similar arerre ‘collarbone’ and ararre ‘white bread’ are cross-referenced to help you distinguish between them.

Words: The dictionary includes not just traditional words but words for new things, words which show Kaytetye as a living language, one that a speech community uses to talk about things like batik wax, atnkere, and not-so-everyday things like guardian angels, arremparrenge. It also includes placenames, and a map with around 100 place names including country names. Yes!

 

You can read more of this fascinating story over at Jane’s wonderful Endangered Languages & Culture blog.

I’ve placed my order and look forward to spending a few hours digging through the words and culture within.

Will you?

Red moon over Warlock Ponds, Mataranka, NT

Warlock Ponds is just a few kilometres south of Mataranka and locals will tell you that on certain nights a ghost rider on a horse can be seen on the old bridge.

If ever there was a night for the ghost rider it was last night that saw a blood-orange perigee moon rising over the ponds. I didn’t see any ghosts – though I did hear the calls of more than a few night-birds.

A “perigee” moon – for those of us ignorant of astronomical terms it means a moon at it’s closest night to us – comes but once (or so) a year.

National Geographic tells me:

During this week’s perigee, the moon will be 221,801 miles (356,955 kilometers) from our planet, and that close approach will happen within minutes of the official full moon phase, which occurs at 11:35 p.m. ET.

Of course a full moon means lots of lovely light about – just the kind of light that I like to play with.

Here are some pics that I caught last night.

As the moon rose in the east the sun left this glorious painting to the west.

Looking west at Warlock Ponds

And with so much light around you can – to paraphrase Francois Truffaut - turn night for day.

The bridge over Warlock Ponds

South from Warlock Ponds

And the combination of such beautiful light, an NT highway can only mean one thing – lots of lovely triple-trailer road trains rolling up the road to Darwin.

Here are a few of my favourites from last night.

Road train light trails #1

Here is another …

Truck light trails #2

And the last …

Road train light trails #3

The loaded pan bagnat? Pic from Sandie's "Off the Beaten Path" blog

It was one of those days that stretched on forever – literally.  Today started early on Saturday morning with a very late Super Shuttle to Denver Airport from my hotel for a three hour flight to LAX, where I had a 5 hour layover until I jumped on Virgin’s excellent Boeing 777 service to Sydney.

I’d been in Denver on a quick trip to attend and present at the 35th annual meeting of the Society of Ethnobiology at the must-see-when-you-are-in-that-town Denver Botanic Gardens. You can see more on what we got up to here.

My trip home somehow became a “let’s sample croissants as and where we find ‘em” sorta day, starting off with a beautifully light, fluffy and just-so buttery sample dunked into a lovely double-shot espresso from the Dazbog Coffee shop in the Denver suburb of  Cherry Creek (Bolshevik coffee? That’s right – you can see their propaganda here).

I had another – a nice almond croissant that was a bargain at $2.00 from the chain boulangerie at the top of the stairs in the Tom Bradley International Terminal at LAX that was chased down with a good double-shot.

It is good to see that Americans are finally starting to “get” real coffee – it’s been a long strange trip and they still have a long way to go but the default coffee in the States is no longer a 16 ounce ounce jug of tepid dishwater …

Fourteen hours later I landed in Sydney on a bright-cool Monday morning and shuttle-bussed through the perennial Sydney Airport traffic jam (at 7am FFS!) from the International terminal to the Virgin gates at T2.

Now it gets interesting.

Or really dumb. Take your pick.

I’m wandering around the airport-as-shopping-mall that is T2 and see a very nice looking stack of croissants in a glass display counter at a coffee shop.

What-the-hey? I’m up for a bit of comparative price & taste testing and for the third time in my day I order a nice looking croissant and a double shot back.

All up my coffee and pastry costs me twice what I paid at LAX and Dazbog in Denver but thats a story for another day.

I shuffle along to the pick up zone and do a little banter with the young woman behind the counter until I notice that my croissant is being loaded into an oven.

“Unh, I don’t want my croissant warmed up.” I say.

She tells me that they have to warm them up because all the pastries have to be refrigerated.

I shrug my shoulders in a go-figure kind of way. I’m too stuffed to argue.

“It’s terrorism.” she says. “The croissants have to be refrigerated because Sydney Airport says that if they aren’t then they could be used by terrorists. So we have to refrigerate them.”

That comment went through to the keeper until “terrorism” & “croissant” fell together in the back-blocks of my jet-lagged brain as unlikely companions.

“What did you say?”

“The croissants. We have to heat them up because Sydney Airport says so. It’s a terrorist thing.”

Now I was thinking more about the four-hour flight ahead of me to get home to Darwin and maybe that the whole conversation was a gigantic pulling-of-my-one -good-leg but … maybe there was something in it?

The java was fine. The almond croissant was a tad too big and had a little too much of the not-quite-right butter.

A 7 out of 10 at best.

And the terrorist/croissant thing?

I don’t know.

But if you know more about what is actually going on in the Croissant-Sydney Airport brouhaha please post a comment and let us all in on the story – or non-story if that is what it is …

I’m at the 35th annual Society of Ethnobiology conference at the Botanical Gardens in Denver, Colorado.

Here are the abstracts presented at a session dedicated to ethnoornithology at the meeting.

First up was Nicole Sault of the Sally Glean Center for the Avian Arts with her wonderful paper “Condor Calling: Ethno-ornithology in the Peruvian Andes.”

Throughout the Peruvian Andes condors embody key values, but they are also caught up in various conflicts that swirl through the air. While biologists and ornithologists have studied condors, their cultural meaning has not yet been fully addressed. Condors are valued but they are also controversial.

Biologists do not agree on the actual numbers of condors and what is causing populations to dwindle. Government agencies are promoting condor tourism, but interest in condors has had some unforeseen harmful consequences.

Members of indigenous communities hold condors in high regard, but do not agree on how condors should be treated, especially regarding rituals of sacrifice. Condors have also been affected by global warming and political strife. 

Based on ethno-ornithological research conducted in southern Peru, this presentation brings together the perspectives of scholars and local communities in an interdisciplinary approach that honors the role of indigenous communities in understanding these issues.

Nicole was followed by Kevin Jernigan and his paper entitled “Similarities and Differences in Aguaruna and Western Ornithological Perspectives on Amazonian Bird Ecology“. Kevin is from the University of Alaska, Fairbanks.

Research was carried out in the Peruvian Amazon in seven Aguaruna communities with 58 participants, from 2010 to 2011, focusing on knowledge of ecological interactions between local birds and other plant and animal species.

The research sites correspond to a transition zone between lowland and montane tropical evergreen forest, with very high diversity of bird and plant species. Participants described the preferred diet, ecological habitats, foraging level, nesting habits, importance in seed dispersal and other significant ecological interactions of local bird species.

Participants’ basic descriptions of avian foraging and reproductive behaviour show many parallels with western ornithological descriptions. However some important differences are noted in conceptualization of complex ecological relationships such as lekking and obligate army ant following.

Aguaruna explanations for why these relationships occur tend to draw on a very different set of cultural assumptions and concept of history and are best understood within the framework of perspectivism.

Finally, me (Bob Gosford)  presented my paper looking at some of my work on Australian Aboriginal bird knowledge: “A tale of two Goatsuckers – Nightjars in Australian Aboriginal life.”

The Spotted Nightjar Eurostopodus argus and the Australian Owlet-nightjar Aegotheles cristatus are two nocturnal birds that are rarely seen but that figure prominently in Australian Aboriginal social and religious life.

In this presentation I will discuss the role of these birds in Australian Aboriginal life and culture, exploring the depth and breadth of the occurrence of these birds in those domains.

I will present two case studies – one examining the role of the birds as complementary but very different symbols of semi-moieties in the north of western Australia, the second looking at the role of the bird in the religious life of the Warlpiri people of the central deserts.

It was a great meeting – though as I write this from the floor of the meeting it isn’t over yet. As usual we had a great time linking up with people not seen for a year or more – if not before.

A real highlight for me was catching up with Amadeo Rea, whose magistral book “Wings In The Desert ” on the ethnoornithology of the Northern Piman peoples is one of my all time favourites.

Anyway, must dash – sessions to catch!

Best,

Bob Gosford

Patrick Dodson. NT Library, March 2012.

“Bad Law of the Week” will be an (ir)regular feature looking at my choice – or your nominations – of legal measures that are but should no longer be on the statute books.

I can think of a half-dozen candidates off the top of my head. I’m sure that readers will be able to supply plenty more.

As I’ve said elsewhere, last Friday evening I joined one hundred or so locals at the Northern Territory Library in Darwin for the second biennial Tony Fitzgerald Memorial Lecture.

The main act was Paddy Dodson but in the course of an excellent introduction by senior criminal NT lawyer and President of the Criminal Lawyers Association of the Northern Territory, Russell Goldflam – for mine the undoubted leader of the Alice Springs Bar – he reminded all present of a particularly shameful blot on the Territory’s legal ledger.

Here is what Russell had to say about Fitzy and section 91 of the Commonwealth’s Northern Territory Emergency Response Act (the NTER):

I want to come back, in the tradition of former CLANT stalwart and reluctant criminal lawyer Tony Fitzgerald (who preferred negotiation to adversarial litigation), to a particular feature of the Intervention which, to a criminal lawyer, is particularly obnoxious, and particularly at a time when, as a nation, we are seriously considering the inclusion in our Constitution of a statement respecting the cultures, languages and heritage of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

I’m talking about section 91 of the Northern Territory National Emergency Response Act, which forbids a court from taking into account ‘any form of customary law or cultural practice’ when determining the seriousness of an offence for sentencing purposes.

This isn’t respect. It is disrespect.

It is discriminatory, and it is a disgrace.

At this point in our history what this country arguably needs is a good healthy dose of respect. And if there’s a man in this country who can talk us into taking our medicine, it is our speaker tonight, Professor Patrick Dodson.

Section 91, as the Explanatory Memorandum for the Act explained, ensures:

“…that no customary law or cultural practice excuses, justifies, authorises, requires, or lessens the seriousness of any criminal behaviour with which the Crimes Act is concerned.”

Section 90 – s. 91′s bastard sibling – does the same for bail conditions.

That sections 90 and 91 have been the subject of trenchant criticism from the legal profession and elsewhere is unsurprising. The following, from the National Native Title Council’s submission to the excellent – but largely ignored – Northern Territory Emergency Response Review, was a typical example:

The NNTC considers that such blanket prohibition on taking into consideration any form of customary law or cultural practice in the exercise of discretion in relation to bail applications and in determining criminal sentences is contrary to the human rights of Aboriginal people in the Northern Territory.

First, such a prohibition requires decision-makers to treat Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders as if they do not belong to a specific cultural group, and ignores the reality of customary law for many indigenous Australians. This is contrary to article 27 of the ICCPR, and many of the rights in the recently adopted United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

Second, as the Law Council of Australia submitted to the Senate Legal and Constitutional References Committee hearing in August 2007, such a prohibition will result, in practical terms, in more Aboriginal people being incarcerated, for longer periods, with fewer options for rehabilitation within their communities.

This undermines the positive achievements of Aboriginal courts, which have relied on flexible sentencing and bail options and community involvement in strengthening Aboriginal law, empowering Aboriginal leadership and, ultimately, reducing rates of recidivism.

In the NT, Justice Steven Southwood’s judgement in the 2009 case of R v Wunungmurra is the most thorough analysis of s. 91′s application.

He noted that by enacting the provisions in s. 91:

 “… the Australian Parliament intended to alter the well established sentencing principles applying in the Northern Territory accordingly. So much is irresistibly clear from the express terms of s 91 of the Emergency Response Act and the context in which the legislation came to be enacted.”

That s. 91 distorts long-established judicial practices and sentencing principles is irrelevant, the court is bound by the legislation — however:

“… unreasonable or undesirable [it may be] because it precludes a sentencing court from taking into account information highly relevant to determining the true gravity of an offence and the moral culpability of the offender, precludes an Aboriginal offender who has acted in accordance with traditional Aboriginal law or cultural practice from having his or case considered individually on the basis of all relevant facts which may be applicable to an important aspect of the sentencing process, distorts well established sentencing principle of proportionality, and may result in the imposition of what may be considered to be disproportionate sentences, provides no sufficient basis for not interpreting s 91 of the Emergency Response Act in accordance with its clear and express terms. The court’s duty is to give effect to the provision.”

Southwood J also heard the appeal to the Supreme Court from the first instance decision of NT Magistrate Michael Carey in the Numbulwar “Intervention Toilet on a Sacred Site” case, which I’ve written about here, here and here.

One truly obnoxious effect of s.91 emerged during the hearing of that appeal.

As I wrote in January 2011:

That s. 91 of the NTER Act can now be used to deny consideration of the hurt and suffering felt by the custodians of the sacred site at Numbulwar is surely a bizarre — and hopefully unintended — consequence.

As Kim Hill, the chief executive of the Northern Land Council, which is responsible for the administration of the Aboriginal Land Rights Act in the Top End of the NT, noted:

“If the desecration had occurred in relation to a Greek Orthodox Church, any Territory or Australian Court could receive and properly consider evidence about the effect of the desecration had on the Greek community, but because of s 91, no such consideration can be given to the level of cultural harm inflicted on Aboriginal peoples.

If the powers that be won’t listen to the clarion calls for the scrapping of this bad law might we not be able to learn from experience in other jurisdictions?

A few weeks ago Canada’s Supreme Court delivered it’s judgement in the matter of Manasie Ipeelee v The Queen.

Ipeelee’s case concerned two appeals by Aboriginal offenders with long and violent criminal records.

Ipeelee’s case is important – no less so in Australia than Canada – because the Court there confirmed an earlier decision but also the recognised the effect of a legislative provision that, correctly in my view, entrenches long-held-precious judicial responsibilities and principles in the sentencing process – responsibilities and principles that sections 90 an 91 of the NTER Act trash.

In Ipeelee the Court held that:

When sentencing an Aboriginal offender, a judge must consider the factors outlined in R. v. Gladue, [1999] 1 S.C.R. 688: (a) the unique systemic or background factors which may have played a part in bringing the particular Aboriginal offender before the courts; and (b) the types of sentencing procedures and sanctions which may be appropriate in the circumstances for the offender because of his or her particular Aboriginal heritage or connection. Systemic and background factors may bear on the culpability of the offender, to the extent that they shed light on his or her level of moral blameworthiness.

Failing to take these circumstances into account would violate the fundamental principle of sentencing — that the sentence must be proportionate to the gravity of the offence and the degree of responsibility of the offender.

The Gladue principles direct sentencing judges to abandon the presumption that all offenders and all communities share the same values when it comes to sentencing and to recognize that, given these fundamentally different world views, different or alternative sanctions may more effectively achieve the objectives of sentencing in a particular community.

The principles from Gladue are entirely consistent with the requirement that sentencing judges engage in an individualized assessment of all of the relevant factors and circumstances, including the status and life experiences, of the person standing before them. Gladue affirms this requirement and recognizes that, up to this point, Canadian courts have failed to take into account the unique circumstances of Aboriginal offenders that bear on the sentencing process. Section 718.2(e) is intended to remedy this failure by directing judges to craft sentences in a manner that is meaningful to Aboriginal peoples.

And I have no doubt that Tony Fitzgerald would have have more than a few words to say about Ipeelee’s case.

Here is Russell Goldflam again speaking about our friend:

Fitz was a fighter, in the best sense. It’s entirely characteristic of the man that a few short months before he passed away, he fired off a fiercely and fearlessly critical submission to the Northern Territory Emergency Response Review. Unsurprisingly, as the Territory’s Anti-Discrimination Commissioner, he particularly focussed on the Intervention’s suspension of the Racial Discrimination Act.

That has since been at least partially rectified, thank goodness.

But Fitz went a great deal further. Not only did he criticise in detail many features of the Intervention, but he left us a blueprint for a different approach to Indigenous policy, one based on long-term initiatives and constructive engagement, regional flexibility, and community partnerships. A blueprint, in other words, for reconciliation.

Sections 90 and 91 of the NTER are bad law. That they remain on the statute books is, in the words of Russell Goldflam, obnoxious, disrespectful and disgraceful.

 Got a nomination for a future “Bad law of the Week”? Write it up yourself or drop me a line here at Crikey and I’ll have a squiz!

by Chips Mackinolty.

The first that staff and Members of the Aboriginal Medical Service Alliance Northern Territory [AMSANT] heard about the Centre for Independent Studies researcher Sara Hudson was that she had written a piece on Aboriginal Health Workers [AHWs] for the ABC’s The Drum, and that she had quoted AMSANT in her research paper, Charlatan training: how Aboriginal Health Workers are being short-changed.

A large number of our Members, and others in the broader AHW community—universally astonished and offended by her piece—contacted us about the quotation: was it accurate?

Well, yes and no—but more of that in a moment.

In the short term, AMSANT issued a statement which was circulated throughout the sector, pointing out that while it was supportive of well informed discussion about AHWs, Ms Hudson had disappointingly never been in touch with AMSANT, and that there were inaccuracies in her pieces.

There was, of course, considerable anger at the insulting tone of her work. In calling AHWs “charlatans” operating in “a charlatan role” provided with “charlatan training” was clearly derogatory. Her libel of the profession was nothing if not deliberate, with the dictionary meaning of charlatan having a specific medical dimension: “someone who professes knowledge or expertise, esp in medicine, that he or she does not have; quack” . The libel, we are told, is thanks to “(a) woman I met in Western Australia”.

But the real astonishment and offense was not so much that Ms Hudson had not spoken to AMSANT, nor even the inaccuracies in her work, but was at her mendacious use of much of the material she cites.

Let’s start with her citing of AMSANT material, and in particular the organisation’s claim of a 30 per cent decline in the AHW workforce over a decade. Although it’s a figure she uses to benefit her arguments a number of times, she admonishes AMSANT for not providing “numbers to back up its claim”.

Hello? This, the only AMSANT source she quotes, was drawn from a media release—not the usual place where it is expected to footnote references. Nevertheless, a simple call would have shown her this data was drawn from the Allen and Clarke evaluation of the Intervention’s primary health programs. In fact, Allen and Clarke used the same data set Hudson herself uses—ironically she could have done the sums herself without, as it will be seen, misquoting others.

But Hudson wants to cite an Aboriginal organisation to back her argument even, if necessary, through misquoting and verballing:

The Aboriginal Medical Services Alliance Northern Territory (AMSANT) claims there is a crisis in Aboriginal health work because the number of Aboriginal people electing to become AHWs is falling [emphasis added].

In fact, AMSANT said nothing of the kind in the media release as can easily be seen. What the media release did say was something that Hudson will not admit, and which is stated quite clearly in that document, quoting AMSANT CEO John Paterson:

The number of Aboriginal Health Workers has dropped by 30 per cent in the last decade.

76 per cent of the profession is over the age of 40, and heading for retirement over the next couple of decades.

These statistics would be regarded as a scandal if it were to occur in mainstream health practices.

It is just as much a scandal in Aboriginal primary health care.

Given that all Australians know that the health outcomes of our people are so appalling, the fact that we are seeing the slow starvation of your profession makes it an even greater shame job.

But that’s because Hudson in fact wants to see the AHW profession abolished altogether: she is entirely happy that the profession is in decline. The fact that a valuable resource in Aboriginal health is being allowed to wither concerns her not at all—she reckons they are charlatans in any case.

Of course, Aboriginal people are judged responsible for the decline in numbers of AHWs through lack of interest in AHW work, according to Hudson:

The drop in the number of registered AHWs in the Northern Territory and the low numbers of AHWs completing their training are not the result of a lack of RTOs or government funding but the lack of education and interest among remote Indigenous people to become AHWs.

She produces no evidence for a lack of willingness to become AHWs, but to this end Hudson footnotes an ABC Stateline NT report, and yet again provides her own spin in the hope that no one had seen the original report—or would check it later. There is nothing in this report that evidences Hudson’s alleged “lack … of interest among remote Indigenous people to become AHWs”. The television report says it is a tough job, and not one that everyone can do—but critical nevertheless to the running of Aboriginal health services. One interview in the television segment points specifically to shortcomings in the structure of training, and another into the racially discriminatory nature of work conditions. No interviews or editorial in the yarn point to a “lack of interest”.

At times, this mendacious approach borders on dumb if not willful misinterpretation of reality. Hudson again gloats at the use of an Aboriginal newspaper source, not to mention a “real” health worker, when she claims:

Thirty years of welfare dependency has sapped the motivation to seek employment among many remote Indigenous residents. For example, one young woman had to be literally dragged off the Community Development Employment Project (CDEP) to undertake a traineeship in AHW:

“I remember when I was just turned 18, I was always very negative about things and wasn’t interested in nothing … There was this lady there who helped workers get full-time jobs. She came to me one morning saying she had a traineeship for Aboriginal health workers that I could apply for, but I said no. She still dragged me along and helped me fill out the forms and got me clothes for the interview. When she dropped me off I remember giggling the whole way. Two weeks later a man from Wurli called me and said I got the job. I remember my whole family coming and congratulating me on my job. I could see they were proud so I thought I would give it a shot.”

Aboriginal Health Worker Leitisha Jackson

For anyone who was present when Leitisha Jackson delivered that speech at the launch of the Year of the Aboriginal Health Worker nothing could be further from the truth about “sapped … motivation to seek employment”. Any decent reading of the Koori Mailarticle would see that this was the story of a wonderful young Aboriginal woman who is succeeding despite many obstacles. Hudson’s deliberate selective quotation insults Ms Jackson’s intelligence, not to mention commitment to her work, and who elsewhere in the Koori Mail article is quoted as saying:

Being an Aboriginal health worker has given me so many opportunities that I wish other young people my age can have. I had the best senior Aboriginal health workers as mentors. I feel so privileged to have worked with them.

Nor is Hudson interested, in the same Koori Mail edition, of the words of AHW stalwart with a 50 year career behind him, Jack Little, when he said that it was “good to see young health workers following in our footsteps.”

There is a simple reason for this. Hudson’s ideological position is that—despite any evidence to the contrary—the existence of AHWs is part of a “separatist” creed that is by definition doomed to fail:

Like previous research undertaken by the Indigenous Affairs program at The Centre for Independent Studies, this monograph examines the unintended consequences of having race-based policies and whether the problems faced by AHWs are symptomatic of this separatism.

Of course, according to Hudson, it is because

Among the Aboriginal health industry, there is the widespread belief that Aboriginal people feel more comfortable dealing with a health service provider who understands their culture and beliefs.

In fact, if you go back to the report she cites, the evidence led to the exact opposite of her conclusions, and ideological position. Again she seems to trust that no one will look at her sources, let alone the “evidence in private” she has apparently discovered. The Legislative Council inquiry, on the evidence they gathered, in fact recommended greater resourcing for AHWs, with increased responsibilities, training and accreditation. It specifically recommends accreditation based on the Northern Territory model of registration.

It is worth quoting the “evidence in private”—as if such mysterious evidence is especially revelatory and otherwise subject to suppression—that Hudson suggests is evidence of an “Aboriginal industry” conspiracy to maintain separatism:

You have to understand that Aboriginal people will listen to their own. They have got confidence in their own persons, in their own ranks, and they will not tell another white nurse their problems to the fullest. They will tell them the good things but they will not tell them really what is wrong with them and this is where the decline in health has deteriorated within the last 10 years because most of our health workers have gone and been replaced with more nurses.

From the same page of the Legislative Council report, Hudson conflates the commentary of the Inquiry, with that of a group giving evidence with another quotation from this separatist “industry” in discussing “culture and beliefs”, but deliberately ignores what is being presented:

There is anecdotal evidence and some qualitative research indicating significant problems with the cultural safety of many mainstream health services for Aboriginal people. At worst this can result in personal discomfort and late presentation of sick Aboriginal clients; at worst, overtly discriminatory treatment and unnecessary morbidity and mortality.

Yet again, Hudson’s willful misinterpretation is an important part of her methodology and the quotation above is a case in point. Where she argues in Charlatan Training that the AHW profession should be abolished because cultural brokering is an anachronism, Hudson happily quotes—or misquotes—material antithetical to her position, and trusts she will get away with it.

And make no mistake about it. Hudson wants rid of Aboriginal Health Workers, and claims that proponents of the profession are merely atavistic:

Those who claim there is a crisis in AHW are clinging to the past; they cannot see that change is inevitable. The future and real self-determination does not lie with the creation of yet more ‘culturally appropriate’ courses and career paths specifically for Aboriginal people but with decent schooling and education that will enable Aboriginal people to become whatever they want to be.

Just as long as you are not an Aboriginal person that wants to be an AHW!

What Hudson proposes is:

• Abolish AHWs and convert the clinical role they carry out to one of “nurse assistants”

• Convert the “community” work of AHWs to “community workers” with no clinical role at all

• Converting the cultural brokerage aspect of AHW work to that of “Aboriginal Liaison Officers” to “act as a translator for visiting health care providers. … and the role extended to cover interpreting for all non-Indigenous visitors to the community”.

This is Hudson’s solution but, like so many desktop research projects, has little to do with reality.

For a start, what is to be done with the Aboriginal health centres that are managed by senior AHWs who have current management control over nurses? Are they now to be run by “nurse assistants”? Or is it inconceivable that Aboriginal people can “manage” whitefellas, just because they are AHWs?

In this, she takes no account of the fact that, in the Northern Territory, there is a link between wage parity and qualifications with job roles and scope of practice. She doesn’t appear to realise that to become an AHW in the Northern Territory is now only possible through a Certificate IV ATSI PHC (practice) which takes up to 2.5 years and includes mixed mode delivery which means the trainee does some block intensives and then clinical practice with on the job learning back home in their community.

In any case, Enrolled Nurse training is at a much lower level of clinical competence than an AHW and not in line with the Primary Health Care practice that is imbedded within the role of the AHW.

Hudson belittles the skills base of AHWs in aid of her ideological thesis that AHWs should be wiped from the workforce. In other words, Hudson reifies the work of a non-Aboriginal work classification as being superior to an Aboriginal qualification—even if that is not true.

In general, Hudson’s position appears to be that the capacity of Aboriginal people to perform clinical work as AHWs is simply impossible—despite the fact that, in the Northern Territory, they are qualified to sign off on Medicare item numbers, and all that this implies in terms of skills and legal competencies. Her solution is to abolish AHWs in place of job classifications such as “community workers” and “Aboriginal Liaison Officers”—and mere assistants to Florence Nightingale.

Hudson is right that in saying we have a crisis in education for many Aboriginal people, and that there are significant literacy/numeracy challenges which compromise training in areas like AHW training. But it is not as if Aboriginal people—as she tangentially acknowledges—have not recognised this. . That is throwing the baby out with the bathwater. She is totally misguided in her recommendation to get rid of the AHW profession and replace it with a model of nurse assistants. This would be unacceptable to the Aboriginal community and profoundly misses the point about the skills and knowledge that AHWs bring to the health team.

Hudson is right, as well, that too much was perhaps expected of many AHWs in the 80s and 90s given the limited literacy and numeracy skills that many AHWs possessed. It was simplistic and wrong-headed, if indeed ever espoused, to think that AHWs would be able to take over health care in their own communities without the involvement of other on-site or visiting health professionals like nurses and doctors. In particular it was mistaken, if anyone actually claimed it, to think that AHWs could simply replace nurses to become the key clinicians in their communities—but that is not what has been argued by the Aboriginal community controlled health sector in the last quarter century.

What has been argued by the sector is that it is equally mistaken to propose that Aboriginal people do not have a critical role required in the primary health care team, and that AHW clinical skills not be enhanced. The notion that an endless cycle of non-Aboriginal health professionals would be sufficient to meet community needs, or even to meet the needs of the temporary nurses and doctors themselves in remote communities, would have been as ill-conceived 20 or 30 years ago as it clearly would be today. The turnover of non-Aboriginal staff in remote communities continues and may be worsening: Aboriginal health workers and other Aboriginal staff are key to ensuring high quality culturally and clinically safe service delivery.

Put simply, AHWs are the one part of the primary health care workforce that cannot be replaced by “section 457” imports—let alone FIFO locums.

What Hudson does not recognise is that—despite her regular quoting of relatively ancient documents—things are somewhat different today as we head towards national registration of AHWs, and that AHWs and Aboriginal community controlled health services are at the forefront of the debate. They, unlike Hudson, are not locked into the past, and the quotation of decades-old positions. In Charlatan training, Hudson comprehensively refuses to engage with the Aboriginal health sector’s contemporary critique of the place of AHWs—and its analysis of massive neglect of governments, particularly in the realm of literacy/numeracy.

Whereas in the distant past only limited English literacy and numeracy capacity was required for AHW training, the new Certificate IV in Aboriginal Primary Health Care [PHC] training required for registration requires a much higher standard of functional literacy. And herein lies the problem for the Aboriginal PHC sector, particularly in many remote areas of the country. Many people in remote areas simply don’t have the literacy to undertake the Certificate IV training and as a consequence the AHW profession in places like the NT has been in decline over the past decade.

Hudson is again right that English literacy and numeracy deficiencies for people living in remote communities present serious challenges for people wanting to take on a variety of occupational roles relevant to their communities—and this is hardly limited to health care.

The education system over recent decades has clearly failed Aboriginal people in many regions and this national disgrace requires serious effort and reform. Hudson rightly points out the 1976 proposal from the Institute of Aboriginal Development for on-site literacy/numeracy programs in remote communities to compensate for the lack of literacy attainment in schools. But, even though this problem was clearly recognised 35 years ago, nothing of any substance eventuated. We haven’t had effective education in schools, and we still don’t have accessible or quality literacy/numeracy programs for adults in communities. It is hardly the fault of Aboriginal people that this basic requirement was not met then, and is not being met now.

Mr Jack Little, 50 year veteran Aboriginal Health Worker

In these terms, remote Aboriginal people have been left to rot and so we arrive at the difficult circumstances of the current day. Of course, we could blame these Aboriginal people themselves for this outcome, as is clearly the bent of many of the responses to Hudson’s The Drum opinion piece. This would be fine for the Anglo-Australian tradition of blaming Aboriginal people, but not one with any merit or any solution in prospect.

The current Certificate IV in Aboriginal PHC, the certificate required to become a registered AHW in the NT (and what will be required right around the country to become nationally registered as an AHW on 1 July this year), is a tough course. It is tough because of the amount of content. Students have to do pre-requisites prior enrolling in Certificate IV PHC – which generally takes six months. Once successfully completed, they then enroll in the Certificate IV PHC but they must have a clinical placement and undertake 900 hours clinical work within the Certificate IV which they are expected to complete within 18-24 months.

But it is tougher for remote area people because of its literacy/numeracy requirement. That’s a significant reason why in the NT in 2009 only nine people graduated as AHWs in the NT, whilst another 35 dropped out of their AHW studies. Literacy/numeracy requirements are not being compromised here, but it’s still enormously problematic that too many Aboriginal people can’t meet these requirements.

And, again, it is not the fault of the many young Aboriginal Territorians who want careers in health that literacy/numeracy has not been achievable.

Clearly immediate and concerted action is required to develop and provide serious literacy/numeracy programs for remote Aboriginal adults seeking to gain qualifications to enter the workforce, not to mention for those still in schooling.

We have never genuinely tackled this problem in the NT and as a consequence large numbers of Aboriginal people have been left in no man’s land in relation to potential employment. This is not to say we should be starry-eyed about the impact of intensive literacy/numeracy work—it is very difficult to make up for deficient school education—but with appropriate assessment it should be possible to get a significant number of motivated people over the line with literacy with focused effort. This will be too difficult for some, but very possible for others.

Having said all this, there are definitely roles for Aboriginal people with limited literacy/numeracy in Aboriginal health care, but these roles are not those of the registered AHW. There are roles in community liaison, health promotion, cultural mentoring, all legitimate roles that will all add to the capacity of the comprehensive PHC team. But no one pretends that poorly literate people can gain registration as clinical practitioners.

It’s a furphy Hudson simply asserts, with no one supporting such a position in contemporary times. It is acknowledged that current AHWs seeking national registration without the Certificate IV qualification (grandfathering) should be offered focused support to improve their literacy/numeracy.

Hudson’s point that nursing qualifications offer far more work flexibility, and are transferable around the world is reasonable at one level and indeed many AHWs take up this option of nurse training after a period as AHWs. But her suggestion that we should get rid of the AHW profession and create nurse assistant roles preparatory to eventual nurse training essentially misses the point for many regions, particularly remote contexts.

And does nothing to solve the literacy problem—which she rightly identifies but offers no solution beyond the abolition of AHWs and replacement with nurse assistants, with the same presumed lack of literacy/numeracy skills.

Indeed Hudson doesn’t even make the right connections with the importance of literacy/numeracy in her over riding obsession with the elimination of a “separatist” Aboriginal job position:

Instead of pouring more money into an unfixable problem—AHW qualification and training—government should invest money in quality literacy and numeracy education for remote Indigenous residents.

The real link is literacy/numeracy for a critical employment category, Aboriginal Health Workers—which she acknowledges in her discussion of IAD’s bid for funding to carry out precisely that work—not the elimination of the job category itself. She offers no evidence that the problem is “unfixable”—merely rhetoric about a job category she finds ideologically distasteful because it has the word “Aboriginal” in front of it.

Firstly, the AHW profession, despite the challenges of training, offers people a viable entry into the health industry. Many are promoted into supervisory and management or governance roles. They can train close to home and live and work in their own communities. Entry into nurse assistant training would be less accessible or less attractive to many, although it could be an option offered to some people. Physician assistant is also a potentially developing role.

Secondly, Aboriginal people as assistants to non-Aboriginal nurses is not what is required and fails in a fundamental way to understand the different skills that nurses and AHWs bring to the PHC team. Both nurses and registered AHWs are clinicians. In some circumstances it could be considered that nurses provide higher level clinical skills than AHWs, and are relative leaders in the clinical sense. However, in most circumstance it could be considered that AHWs have far greater knowledge of community and social determinants of health, and are relative leaders in the application of health care. And this is fundamental to the success of primary and preventive health care.

These two clinical professions bring different skills, and both are required in the workplace in complementary roles. They both assist each other, but should not be considered as assistant one to the other. This dynamic would fail to recognise the different skills they bring to the table, and would not work in the socio/political context of Aboriginal health delivery.

Having temporary non-Aboriginal people in charge of services in remote area communities as a permanent way of doing business locks us into all the old social arrangements and limitations of Australia over very many decades. Indeed, given recent work on high stress levels for Remote Area Nurses, especially in the context poor orientation and of working with high turnover/short term and agency staff , the importance of strong Aboriginal Health Workers as fellow clinicians is even more critical.

Desktop commentators such as Hudson pay no attention to what is really happening on the front line of Aboriginal health. Hudson refers to what she describes as a “cultural relativism” that “has promulgated many myths, namely, that Aboriginal people are unable to cope in mainstream health positions, and that they are turning their back on Aboriginal people and traditional medicine if they become nurses and doctors”.

That “myth” is her own—and one she does not footnote. She is the one that denigrates AHWs as being inferior, for example, to Enrolled Nurses. She also denies the pride in the Aboriginal community in those that achieve the rank of AHW, or nurse, or doctor, and the status each of these roles entails.

But let a GP—the pinnacle of Hudson’s primary health care hierarchy—speak:

When my job was working almost full time as a doctor in remote Aboriginal communities, I used to say (to) people that I could not do my job competently without Aboriginal health workers. Many of our clinicians now have to try to do their job competently without Aboriginal health workers, because we do not have the workforce.

Aboriginal Health Workers as charlatans? Tell that to the AHW who administers to me—as a whitefella—and who tells me of occasions of reviewing patient files and picking up life threatening conditions that were missed by the doctor, and resulted in life saving interventions. He is the kind of health professional I feel happy to be with.

The dictionary definition of charlatan describes someone who falsely professes knowledge or expertise, especially with regard to medical matters. Come on down, Sara Hudson!

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Chips Mackinolty is a Darwin-based writer, and is currently employed by AMSANT as Manager Research Advocacy Policy.

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Want to read more views on Sara Hudson’s report – see the response from the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health Worker Association (NATSIWA) response here and this Media Release from the National Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisation (NACCHO) here.

For a copy of this paer with complete references and footnotes see the AMSANT website here.