Sina Brown-Davis: Report back from anti-Intervention convergence, Alice Springs

16.10.08

Image via WikipediaThis report comes in from our excellent on-the-spot Aotearoa corespondent Sina Brown-Davis. IIN would have a hard time trying to do without her.

- The Angryindian

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Convergence in Alice Springs

This week a gathering of people from remote communities and town camps of the Northern Territory and interstate supporters came together in Alice Springs to meet and highlight concerns about the impact of the Northern Territory Intervention.

Around 100 people from “Prescribed Areas” traveled from as far as Lajamanu and Darwin to participate in the first ever Prescribed Area People’s Alliance meeting. Many who were unable to attend the meeting due to transport difficulties, community responsibilities or family obligations sent statements to be read out. This meeting was a chance for people to share their stories of the intervention, and to discuss the way forward for communities in fighting this legislation and demanding infrastructure and services determined and controlled by communities.

A women’s group at the meeting put out the following statement:

“We Aboriginal women from the Prescribed Area People’s Alliance meeting yesterday, September 29 2008, met to talk on issues that affect us the most out of this intervention. We have made a statement. We don’t want the intervention. We want to manage our communities the proper way, the way we want it, this is our community, we are the ones that live there, listen to us and our cultural ways.

Racism
The intervention law is racist and we want protection under the Racial Discrimination Act 1975.

Rights
Intervention has taken away our people’s rights.

Law
There is one law and that’s our law. Our laws don’t change. White people are changing their law all the time.

Culture
We have been practicing our culture for thousands and thousands of generations. We want to strongly maintain and practice our culture. We want to stay in our communities and pass on traditional knowledge to the future generations.
Governments
Governments don’t listen to us. We want another government who is good, honest and respectful, with good people working for us. White men are trying to put us back, they like to be in the front. They’re always taking over. Stay with Aboriginal law. Government people bringing in new ways are destroying our way.

Consultation
We want more consultation and communication. We want consultation in our languages. We want to work together. Intervention workers come in, they don’t know our community and what we need, they don’t work with us. Government Business Managers are not working properly for our community needs. Community management belongs to us. Government works 9 - 5, community is 24/7.

Police
Police can do what they like, get away with anything since the intervention started. We’d like them to ask us how we’d like to deal with community issues. We’d like to work in partnership to deal with community problems.

Income Management
There’s no financial programs to support our people. A blanket approach to Income Management is the wrong way. Income management is bringing everyone into town. People don’t want to have to come into town. They want to stay in their own communities.

Nothing has improved
There’s no new houses, schools or anything for communities. They’ve only built new houses for the new intervention staff. We had programs created by the community for our community. We wanted more support for them. Community programs have been taken away. They’ve taken away our night patrols, community buses and women’s centres.

Going backwards
For old people the intervention is bringing up bad memories of the past, the old days, the ration days, the dog tag days and the mission days.

Health
We want permanent doctors and nurses in our communities that we can trust, not the fly in fly out, one-day or one week intervention doctors. Give our people the opportunity to be health workers in our communities.
Education
We want to our young people to stay on land and learn culture. We want to see kids going to school and getting a proper education in a school that’s on Aboriginal land, not to have to send them away.

Elders
Our old people are our government. We listen to them. We want to employ our own people, young people, to care for families. Elders want “Return to Country” programs and aged care facilities in their communities. We listen to our old people, government should listen to them.

Calls to action:
1. We call on Quentin Bryce, the Governor General, to come and meet with us women.
2. We call on Jenny Macklin to have proper consultation with us women.
3. Stop the intervention. We want to manage our communities the proper way, the way we want it, this is our community, we are the ones that live there, listen to us and our cultural ways.”

On Tuesday the 30th of September, over 300 Prescribed Area people and interstate supporters staged a rally on the Courthouse lawns calling for the repeal of the intervention legislation and for community control of community affairs. The gathering then walked a 3km march through the Gap, where demonstrators unveiled a banner reading “Close the Gap – Stop the Intervention”, a play on the Rudd Government’s rhetoric around closing the gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous health standards.
“Yesterday we marched united through “The Gap”. This is a historic step to close the gap that the Howard government created between Aboriginal communities in the NT and urban Australia. The intervention has demonised Aboriginal people, said all our men are paedophiles, and we are all alcoholics and child abusers. Now people have come from around the country to see for themselves that we are suffering under this intervention,” said Barbara Shaw, the Mt Nancy resident who hosted visitors to camp on her property.
“People have travelled so far to show their support for our strong stand against these policies. Word will go out across the Territory that we have support in the cities,” continued Barbara.

The protest condemned the delay of the release of the NTER review findings.
“We don’t need a review to gauge the failure of the Intervention. Listening to elders describe the humiliation and pain of welfare quarantines, store cards, and forced leasing of their homelands is enough,” said Lauren Mellor from Brisbane.
“The delay in release the Review findings, announced just one day before the deadline, is an outrage. Every week now Jenny Macklin is increasing pressure on communities to sign leases, and the government has spent millions to roll out a “smart card” to entrench the welfare quarantine. But submissions to the Review have slammed the paternalism at the heart of the Intervention. It’s no wonder the review board is in crisis and unable to release its findings,” continued Lauren.

“They can pass legislation to impose on us in one night, but with three months they still can’t assess the damage they’ve done”, said Barbara Shaw from Mt Nancy town Camp.
The following day, interstate visitors participated in a Listening Tour to town camps around Alice Springs, and to Yuendumu, a community about three hours drive north west of Alice.
“We are conducting a people’s review of the Intervention. People are telling us that the intervention has taken them backwards, for example to the days of the “dog-tag system” an rations. This return to the policies of assimilation shames us all. It exposes the lie in the Prime Minister’s vow in February to never return to the policies of the past,” said Monique Wiseman from Sydney.

Report Back: Yuendumu Listening Tour (October 2, 2008)

Twenty nine people visiting the Northern Territory on a listening tour have just returned from an over night visit to the Yuendumu community. We were given permission to share the stories of the people we met there as far as we could, to counter what community residents said were lies about their community and their feelings towards the intervention.

‘Our stories are a firestick,’ Ned Hargreaves told us. ‘We light the fire, and we pass it to you. You take it to other people, and they pass it on again.’

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Visitors from Perth, Sydney, Adelaide, Newcastle, Melbourne, Alice Springs and Brisbane were invited by Ned Hargreaves, Valerie Martin and Harry Nelson to visit the community to learn first hand about the impacts of the Intervention on the Yuendumu community. Harry and Valerie were not able to attend the listening tour, but Mr Hargreaves escorted the group and introduced them to many prominent community members, women and men, who spoke about the impacts of the intervention and answered the many questions posed by the group.

The visitors made it to town on sunset and went on an ‘inaugural intervention tour,’ hosted by the local shop keeper, Frank Baarda. We visited what is locally known as the ‘nest’; the Government Business Manager’s residence. The Government Business Manager (or ‘Ginger Bread Man’ as he is sometimes called) is on a salary of $180,000 per year and is flown to his family interstate every 3 weeks. Community members said that they have very little contact with the business manager, so he is known as the ‘invisible man’. He was not on site to talk to the visitors - this seems to be the usual state of affairs. Frank told the group that in Yuendumu, the Ginger Bread Man is also known as an ‘egg’ – he sits in his nest, well looked after, but does pretty much nothing. The complex was surrounded by cyclone fence and barbed wire, to keep out the “sacred children“, perhaps. A family with a new born child were moved on from the site where they were living in a humpy so that the complex could be constructed, Frank informed the visitors.

As the sun set over the rocky hills, we drove on to site two, the local rubbish tip. A cyclone fence has been constructed around the tip, at a cost of $200,000. As there is no local rubbish collection service, let alone recycling, the fence serves next to no practical purpose as rubbish blows around town in the desert winds. There was no consultation about whether this was a community necessity or priority, how it should be constructed, or by whom. It was explained that if the money had instead been given to local organization Yuendumu Mining, with this amount of funds they could have purchased a bulldozer for the community work crew so that they could not only have a fence, if the community had so decided, but could engage in long term community works and maintenance.

After the tour there was a BBQ and community speak out about the intervention at the local basket ball court. The visitors to the community listened for hours while many Yuendumu community people shared with the visitors their experiences under the intervention. People spoke out about the racist nature of the intervention policy. The total lack of community consultation during the implementation of the intervention and during all stages of the intervention to date. There has been no consultation in the building of infrastructure, community programs or in community response to the intervention to date. There has been hundreds of thousands of dollars spent on infrastructure that is not used by the community. The intervention sponsored men’s shelter, that the Yuendumu community has been asking for for many years, looks like a prison cell, grey portable blocks surrounded by barbed wire fences. There was no consultation with the community about where it should be placed or what kind of structure it would be before being built, and as such, so far it has not been used for any programs or services for men. It seems that the only infrastructure or service intervention workers think that Yuendumu men need is more jail cells.

People are so angry that the intervention has been forced on them. The Yuendumu community are speaking up loudly that this intervention is not what the community wants or needs. The intervention funds, apparently close to a billion dollars to date, could be used to fund already successful community programs, such the very successful community designed and controlled Mt Theo youth program for rehabilitation from substance abuse, training and youth development programs, and the only domestic violence program in Central Australia, a successful program heavily involving a wide range of community members and elders, which has discontinued after the only worker took maternity leave, because, although funding has been secured for a 3 year contract for the position, no housing was made available for a worker. It is quite clear that the real motives of this intervention have nothing to do with children, or supporting communities and residents, when a house for a white man from Perth to sit around in, with extraordinary powers of control over the community, can be erected in 5 days, yet no housing can be provided for someone to continue a program successfully addressing domestic violence in the community.

The group slept under the desert night sky bright with stars that night, having been invited to stay at the property of Francis Kelly, who stars in TV program ‘Bush Mechanics.’

The following day we continued the intervention tour. We were taken to the government-sponsored ‘Outback Store’, opened after the two previously existing stores refused to sign on to the welfare quarantining system. Because community residents are now forced to spend their money at this new store under the quarantining system, the pre-existing stores are now fast losing money. Contrary to the government’s stated reasons for the ‘Outback Store’ model, food is no cheaper, nor is there any greater range or quality of products in this store.

The group also visited local community initiatives, such as Warlukurlangu the local arts centre, which brings a sizable income to the town and provides a living for the many talented artists in the community. We also visited the Mt Theo program office, and spoke about the youth programs and their successes. It is evident that programs such as this are most successful because of the involvement of the community, elders and young people, in the conception and running of this program. This encourages community members to engage with and become involved in the program, ensures the programs is culturally and linguistically relevant, and empowers people to remain in their community working on projects for the benefit of their communities and future generations.

“It is very evident that the community of Yuendumu is a vibrant and exciting place to live. The local people have great initiative to provide for their community. If these programs and initiatives could be supported, and if the community was in control of the funds that have been allocated by the federal government for the intervention, the community would be able to improve housing and provide much needed services,’ said Fern York from Newcastle.

Despite the existence and success of such programs, workers are not being consulted about what they have found to be effective in working with Walpiri people in Yuendumu. There have been no new programs or initiatives designed to engage children, provide families with support, or promote self-sustainability in communities. On the contrary, a sign in the Yuendumu store said that the pre-school was offering reduced hours this year due to funding cuts. A woman at the Mt Theo office showed us well-researched plans for bi-lingual, culturally relevant curriculum for Warlpiri kids in schools, and yet this has not been put into place. Despite being a community of 800 people, there is no high school in Yuendumu, though we heard a rumour of an NGO possibly funding a Walpiri high school for kids from Yuendumu, Lajamanu, Papunya, and surrounding areas – areas covering some XXXXXXX area and with XXXX population.

Another sign in the store advertised a meeting in Yuendumu for CLC officials to explain a government proposal to the community – it said that the government would build new houses and infrastructure in Yuendumu, but only if the community signed a 40 or 80 year lease (depending on the terms of

The intervention, together with the new shire council system, which amalgamates 61 community councils into 11 local government shires, each with a government appointed CEO with whom final decisions rest, seem more to be about assimilation and increased control over Aboriginal communities and lands than anything else. If the government was serious about addressing social problems, lack of resources, poverty and nutrition in communities, it would be consulting genuinely with all members of every community, listening to community needs, learning from community members where to direct funds and resources, and supporting programs that lead to community controlled, culturally relevant service delivery and infrastructure, rather than promoting systems that treat all communities the same, despite extreme diversity in culture, language, resources, and social issues, that push people into towns and major centres, and that further take power and control away from elders and communities.

Yuendumu, however, is staying strong. They want the GBM to leave. They want the government to listen, to stop punishing them and start fulfilling their demands. And they are prepared to fight for it.

Labels: Alice Springs Northern Territory, Indigenous Australians