...cant be nowhere! Stories from the desert and beyond
Sunday, August 19, 2007
Some more photos from Communities in the Centre
4 comments:
Anonymous
said...
Nice work Lisa. My colleague here at UNE, Judy Redman, sent me your blog address. I lived in the centre for 20 years, and have some fond memories of utopia mob; and a beautiful batik hanging in my office. Are you in touch with people at Congress? I used ot work with them on issues around adult literacy, and th elinks between education and health. For me, this is a 'threshold issue', as i said in this letter to the SMH (not published so far):
Dear Editor
The emergency in Northern Territory remote communities is real, and its causes are complex. Improvments in infant mortality since the 1970s have helped create an exponential rise in the population of young people, over a period when the mortality rates among the adults who traditionally would have been their mentors remained high. The western education system was simply not prepared for this powerful mix of rising student numbers and falling numbers of local adult mentors, and at least one, perhaps two generations have grown up with almost no education, either in tradtional ways or in western ways. For over thirty years, the economic and social development stategy for northern Australia has ignored this 'ticking bomb', a 'surplus population' growing up with few if any opportunities to benefit from the land's rich resources and their own untapped potential as human beings. At least one component of the emergency response needs to be a mass campaign to raise adult English language literacy levels, which are less than 50% in many communties. The people who must give leadership in communities in the future should at least be able to read what is being said about them and the policies describing what is being done to them. How else are they going to be able to reclaim the citizenship rights which the Commonwealth parliament seems determined to deny them?
Wow a Utopia Batik! They're pretty rare these days. Everyone paints on canvas now. Thanks for your comments. I agree with what you said in your letter, critical literacy amongst adults is key for the future of Aboriginal Communities. Some of the most important knowledge holders in my Community cannot read or write at all. In the absense of translators it is virtually impossible to hear what they have to say about important issues and they are the ones who we should be listening to. Part of the problem is, as seems to always have been, the cultural condescension that everything has to happen in English and preferably in writing. I spend so much time just reading over letter from Centrelink and trying to help people understand what they are being told. I can only imagine how much worse it is going to be now with this new legislation! Haven't had much to do with Congress. Am not really interested in working with the Church on this.
Hi Lisa, I've come here by way of Holt Press (Marcus).
I ended up reading most of your blog! Some good reading and it also inspired me to finally get around to seeing Ten Canoes. Very entertaining (probably not the right word, but hopefully you get my drift). There's a feeling of the same sense of humour in the signs on these pages. Would be funny if it wasn't so serious.
Thanks for reading. I sometimes forget that my blog has a bit of a life of it's own and that people I dont even know are reading it! I have been rather focused recently on the 'issues' raised by the legislation and so most of my posts have been fairly political. I'm certainly not apologising for that becasue I think we have to be sometimes. I hope that you got a chance to read some of the funnier, more anecdotal posts that were part of my early days of blogging. They certainly contain more of what I consider to be the heart and soul of my time at Utopia.
4 comments:
Nice work Lisa. My colleague here at UNE, Judy Redman, sent me your blog address. I lived in the centre for 20 years, and have some fond memories of utopia mob; and a beautiful batik hanging in my office.
Are you in touch with people at Congress? I used ot work with them on issues around adult literacy, and th elinks between education and health. For me, this is a 'threshold issue', as i said in this letter to the SMH (not published so far):
Dear Editor
The emergency in Northern Territory remote communities is real, and its causes are complex. Improvments in infant mortality since the 1970s have helped create an exponential rise in the population of young people, over a period when the mortality rates among the adults who traditionally would have been their mentors remained high. The western education system was simply not prepared for this powerful mix of rising student numbers and falling numbers of local adult mentors, and at least one, perhaps two generations have grown up with almost no education, either in tradtional ways or in western ways. For over thirty years, the economic and social development stategy for northern Australia has ignored this 'ticking bomb', a 'surplus population' growing up with few if any opportunities to benefit from the land's rich resources and their own untapped potential as human beings. At least one component of the emergency response needs to be a mass campaign to raise adult English language literacy levels, which are less than 50% in many communties. The people who must give leadership in communities in the future should at least be able to read what is being said about them and the policies describing what is being done to them. How else are they going to be able to reclaim the citizenship rights which the Commonwealth parliament seems determined to deny them?
Bob Boughton
Wow a Utopia Batik! They're pretty rare these days. Everyone paints on canvas now. Thanks for your comments. I agree with what you said in your letter, critical literacy amongst adults is key for the future of Aboriginal Communities. Some of the most important knowledge holders in my Community cannot read or write at all. In the absense of translators it is virtually impossible to hear what they have to say about important issues and they are the ones who we should be listening to. Part of the problem is, as seems to always have been, the cultural condescension that everything has to happen in English and preferably in writing. I spend so much time just reading over letter from Centrelink and trying to help people understand what they are being told. I can only imagine how much worse it is going to be now with this new legislation!
Haven't had much to do with Congress. Am not really interested in working with the Church on this.
Thanks for you comments
Hi Lisa, I've come here by way of Holt Press (Marcus).
I ended up reading most of your blog! Some good reading and it also inspired me to finally get around to seeing Ten Canoes. Very entertaining (probably not the right word, but hopefully you get my drift). There's a feeling of the same sense of humour in the signs on these pages. Would be funny if it wasn't so serious.
Nice to "meet" you!
Hi Peter,
Thanks for reading. I sometimes forget that my blog has a bit of a life of it's own and that people I dont even know are reading it! I have been rather focused recently on the 'issues' raised by the legislation and so most of my posts have been fairly political. I'm certainly not apologising for that becasue I think we have to be sometimes. I hope that you got a chance to read some of the funnier, more anecdotal posts that were part of my early days of blogging. They certainly contain more of what I consider to be the heart and soul of my time at Utopia.
Take care,
Lisa
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