This legislation  will  undermine the human rights of Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory until 2022  – and will renew and even expand some of the harshest measures under the Howard Government’s’ Northern Territory Emergency Response for ten more years according to ANTar.

We  join an increasing number of national  organisations and concerned individuals supporting this important Statement.

Opponents of the Bill include former PM Malcolm Fraser, Australian Bishops, Religious  and Leaders of the Congregation;  The Uniting Church of Australia;  The Archdiocese of Sydney’s Aboriginal Catholic Ministry;  The National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Catholic Council); Concerned Australians;   ANTAR; the Australian Catholic Social Justice Council;  musicians Paul Kelly, Neil Murray and Archie Roach; the  Institute of Sisters of Mercy;  ACM of Melbourne and Sydney; The Secretariat of National Aboriginal and Islander Children  and St Vincent de Paul Society National Council.

The vast majority of the 454 submissions received were against the legislation, most showing the government’s failure to show real evidence that the Stronger Futures model has or can  improve their lives,  and more than 35,000 people signed the petition opposing it.

Rosie Scott, Eva Cox, Pamela Hewitt, Cat Kutay, Christine Olsen

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Researched and written by Terry Priest with Eva Cox
for
Jumbunna Indigenous House of Learning
May 2010

“Our Generation is a very fine piece of work. It’s truthful, eloquent and, above all, it explains very clearly to first-timers and the many who need reminding why the indigenous people of Australia are once again being defrauded of their human and political rights in a country calling itself a democracy.”

JOHN PILGER

At twenty John Bradley was sent to teach Aboriginal children in a school at remote Borroloola, on the Gulf of Carpentaria in far north Australia.

But it is the teacher who is educated by the Yanyuwa elders and their families. Over three decades he learns their language and their country, becoming intimately drawn into other ways of being, both practical and spiritual. With passion and pride they teach him their songlines, relating what they know and value – ancestors, kin, allegiances; places, plants, animals; seasons, ceremonies, stories – and the spirit that sustains all.

As we follow John Bradley on his journey, we begin to see that the songlines are keys to the authority and continuity held by Aboriginal Law. We begin to understand why, when country can no longer be sung, the Yanyuwa feel it so deeply. And what such loss means to us all.

‘A rare diary of devotion .. sometimes humorous, sometimes very sad, revealing the extraordinary personal commitment needed to gain insight into Aboriginal connections to country… a moving tale of an urgent quest.’ – Professor Jon Altman, Australian National University

‘This book strikes chords with the work of William Stanner and Donald Thomson, while evoking the poetic resonance of Barry Lopez’s writing about the Inuit.’ – Dr Nonie Sharp, author of Saltwater People

‘A rare book that attunes us to ways of Yanyuwa dwelling, belonging and being in an intimate relatedness that does not separate thinking from feeling, history from experience, authority from caring, solemnity from humour, and meaning from the life in which this knowledge is embedded.’ – Dr Franca Tamisari, Ca’ Foscari University of Venice and University of Queensland

Awards
Shortlisted, 2011 Colin Roderick Award

Shortlisted, 2011 QLD Premier’s Literary Awards, Non-fiction Book Award

See the promo for the language video Wadu Matyidi:

and the traditional stories of Borroloola in the gulf country of Arnhem land:

Australian citizens living at the most remote and smallest localities, established with government support in the 1970s and 1980s, are being neglected by Canberra today in favour of bigger hub towns.

The Closing the Gap mantra targets 29 larger and more visible communities only because they are larger and more visible. Economic rationalisation is convinced that size, whether townships or shires, will deliver cost savings from economies of scale.

And so the logic goes that a large school, even if devoid of students, is more cost effective than a number of small schools where attendance might be higher.

Creative destruction
Hub and spoke models have worked well for outstation resource agencies, regional art centres and Community Development Employment Programs over the past four decades. Schooling, health services and the delivery of consumer goods to remote homelands alsohappened effectively in the 1980s.

Have we become less efficient? Has the loss of national productivity impacted disproportionately on remote Indigenous Australia? Or has there just been diminishing investment in these communities?

We are seeing the creative destruction of community-based organisations that have historically delivered to homelands. This destruction is in the name of Closing the Gap and associated imagined development for those in larger places rather than for all.

Evidence suggests that homelands might be more productive, viable and socially vibrant communities than larger places. This is not to say that all larger places are unproductive, unviable and socially dysfunctional. But that they often face more complicated political challenges than smaller more cohesive places do.

Job creation
It is of deep concern that there is no evidence of any economic growth at Territory Growth Towns, despite the massive investment by National Emergency Intervention programs and National Partnership Agreement multi-year, multi-billion dollar commitments. At least not for most black residents.

A recent report notes that jobs created by the Australian state at townships in the name of proper employment to replace state-subsidised jobs are only deemed sustainable if accompanied by continual state subsidisation. This surely gives sustainability a very new meaning.

It is of grave concern that there is no scenario planning for what is possible or desired (including by the land’s owners) at larger places targeted for growth. Or that inter-connections between larger communities (of which there are about 200) and smaller ones (of which there are about 1000) is neither recognised nor explored in any systematic way.

Australia is obliged by international human rights conventions to provide basic services to its citizens. If properly resourced, the provision of such basic services, health, housing, education and livelihood opportunity could be a mainstay of the economy of larger places.

But there are compelling Indigenous well-being and livelihood reasons to support homelands. Recent data shows that wildlife harvesting (food security) and cultural production is highest at homelands. There are statistics which suggest that subjective views of happiness and well-being might be enhanced at smaller places.

Unfortunately, report after report indicates that progress is slow or non-existent or that well-being is declining.

Alternative development
During the 1980s there was agreement by both major parties that homelands should be supported. But new political agreements in the past decade have changed the direction of indigenous policy.

The new approach is neglecting people living at homelands and service organisations that have been carefully developed over decades. We are seeing outstation people with less opportunities for education and employment and less likely to receive health and housing services on an equitable needs basis where they live.

New policies are based on a misguided belief that people will respond to the use of state power to enforce centralisation to access services at bigger places. Or that living on someone else’s country or on land now compulsorily leased or owned for between 40 and 99 years by the state will magically improve people’s quality of life.

Using spin to plaster over the emerging tragedy of homelands neglect will come to haunt the Australian nation and its dominant political parties. In the absence of national leadership in sensible outstations policy, the smallest and most politically vulnerable group of Australians is at risk.

The issue of freedom
The current national smugness is driven by resource plentitude and strategically managed by big business interests (including the compliant media) and a minerals dependent state and citizenry.

Common sense suggests that a mixed approach to development might lower risk. Policy needs to be crafted with care, without too much emphasis on statistics and numbers as if people do not matter.

Unfortunately, we as a nation do not have the strategic vision nor the common decency to recognise the value of alternative possibilities at homelands on the Indigenous estate as a livelihood option.

Professor Jon Altman will be presenting his work at the Amnesty International Australia Human Rights 2011 Conference

Click here to get a copy of this article to republish.

AUTHOR : Jon Altman
Research Professor in Anthropology at Australian National University
DISCLOSURE STATEMENT: Jon Altman receives funding from the Australian Research Council and the Sidney Myer Fund.
Australian National University is a Founding Partner of The Conversation.

LICENCE TO REPUBLISH: We license our articles under Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.

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• For information about the Government’s Income Management – Read the Fact Sheet
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• Media Release: Forty organisations oppose government’s income management in Bankstown
• A full-page open letter appeared in the Bankstown local papers on 27 July 2011, addressed to federal ministers Jenny Macklin and Tanya Plibersek, and local federal MPs for Banks, Blaxland and Watson, voicing community concerns about the impact of such an intervention on people in Bankstown and everywhere else in Australia.

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