Around Oz the First Time - Chapter 74 - Ninth Week Down

Whose problem is it?

My daughter is proud of her Aboriginal heritage and likes to display it, me not so much. Perhaps it’s a lifetime of prejudice, instilled by a background of indifference. My father’s side of the family are descendants of squatters, lowland Scots having settled the Yass area after the travels of Hume and Hovell forging the way from Sydney to Melbourne. On the other hand, mum’s side of the family, from where our Aboriginal heritage flows, has only really been uncovered by us in the last few years.

The secrecy we have been told, has centred around the “stolen generation”, with my grandmother hiding her Aboriginality, to protect her children. Two generations further back there was William Ferguson. This guy was an inspirational forefather. He was instrumental in the first “sorry” day and much of the creation of the Australian Labor Party and the great shearers strike.

Jack Horner wrote a book about him and his marriage to Edith Gowans, full blood Aboriginal girl, who may or may not have been pregnant. From there, another William Ferguson was born and so the story goes on. The stolen generation was a very sorry chapter in the history of our country and apparently our mother’s family were right in the cross hairs. There is a statue to this great man in Dubbo in Central NSW.

So, our government, on behalf of the people, said “sorry”, but did anything change?

In our trips we have seen lots of Aboriginal people. We have been told that places like Halls Creek are “unsafe”, with “marauding” packs of blacks, resting valuables, car keys and the like as quick as look at you. Our time in Halls Creek saw very little unrest, we heard it, and assumed it was the “scourge” that was responsible, we didn’t stop to find out. I had been for a walk at one stage and ended up in the “black” part of town, and although apprehensive, the only conversation I had was with a man wearing a hoodie (red here anxiety plus), who explained to me it was winter and it was cold, as opposed to summer, even though the temperature was well into the thirties.

A hoodie on what was, a hot day for me, and there is the problem – perception.

Governments must be seen to be doing their jobs, so they throw lots of money at the Aboriginal “problem”, but simply fuelling a problem with more money, can lead to a fanning of the fire. By throwing money at the problem they appear to have done their bit, and it’s the problem of the Aboriginal people not wanting to assimilate into “western” society.

The Aboriginal people have been here, if you believe some research, over 65,000 and maybe 80,000 years and changing a race steeped in a millennia of history, cannot happen overnight. They are a proud, family-based society. Much more than westerners, so separating families and family ways has been fraught with potentially catastrophic consequences.

Then you have western ways, technologies, ideologies and distractions, forced upon them.

Their country, now invaded by miners, farmers and graziers, looking to winning the great white capitalistic, way. Displacement, away from the traditional ways, which may have meant perhaps meandering (or going on walkabout), without a fixed address, means we have congregations of people, forced to live in communities with “nothing to do”. They can’t allow the wanderlust of walkabout to be satisfied, the capitalists have seen to that, they are bored, because they seem not to know how to replace the walkabout pull of the country.

So, we give them the dole and tell them they must stay in houses, provided to them, because that is what we think is the way they “should” live, and wonder why there is unrest. “Idle hands are the devil’s playthings”, so how can we not expect minds to turn to things other than “the great white way”. Yet still the calling of 80,000 years, not of tradition, but of life experience, living with the land not on it, has to be curbed. And who says, the “traditional” use of the land is any worse or better than those who have tried, and many have failed, in the just over 200 years since.

So we take away their ingrained traditions, we take away their ability to satisfy their inbuilt wanderlust and we tell them they have to live like we do. Live in family groups, sure, but in houses designed for the “modern” white family, where “family” to the Aboriginal means the community. Ergo we see them congregating under trees in parks, in the shade, in “family” units, with little to do, except sit and talk and think. No wonder there are problems.

Money is not enough – they need something to do. Rural unemployment is high, very high, and the numbers on youth unemployment are even greater. Is the answer education, perhaps, but they need to want it. What good is an education if there is no work once you are trained.

Purnululu is a perfect example of what the “great white way” can offer, without thrusting the “west” down the throats of the people. This is done at a small level, and governed by the community itself, and whilst not a dry community, polices the effects of alcohol in its own way, and seems to be a success, offering the children options. Pointing towards the water without the stress of forced drinking.

Whilst the education system at Purnululu is supposed to bring education to year 6, they have gone further, and the results speak for themselves. The children are included in decisions at a community council every morning, coupling western with traditional educations, offered and shown opportunities and once they “complete” their education, can decide to move on or return to Purnululu.

Whilst I am not saying the Purnululu example is the answer, it is working in this instance. It’s a combination of the traditional and the western ideologies. Most of the western teachers there are white, but I suspect that in time, Aboriginal educators will return to home to continue the work. The most eye opening fact put to us on our visit to that settlement was the acting principal telling us the story, that she, in a do-gooder effort in her earlier years, offered to “help out” at a community in crisis, only to find she was disturbingly, way out of her depth on her arrival, indicative of the close minded attention to many problems in our world.

The those that would be heard, offering ill-informed answers to issues they know precious little about, governments entrust funding to fix problems they really want nothing to do with. Then there are those who should be heard, shouted down as activists, when words like “tradition” are mentioned. You only have to look at the furore over the use of Aboriginal stories to assist the science teachings of students. Simply because they needed to be heard, shock jocks like Tim Elliott – 3AW in Melbourne, took to the airwaves, ill-informed and outrageously incorrect, but seeking to influence listeners with his ridiculous sentiments.

We need to work “with” the Aboriginal community not “on” them. They are Australians, the very First Australians. There is much we can learn from them as much as they can potentially learn from us, but simply money in their hands is not the answer.

The word “understand” I think has been lost in the treatment of the “problem”. Until we stop and not just listen, but hear and understand, (on both sides) what is being said, there will never be an answer and that, in anyone’s terms, is a travesty.