That one day in September

I'm not really into football. Never have been. I grew up following a team but went to maybe one game a year and only knew what was going on because I had brothers who liked the game. It's a long time since I've been in Melbourne for a football season. This year has been a good reminder to me that even though it's not that important to me, football is very important to some people. Before each big Collingwood match over the past month, regular as clockwork, I have received call from the Mulga Bore mob. They just want to include me in the excitement that surrounds the game for them. Then today, as I watched the Grand Final from Federation Square (hosting a Swiss friend who hadn't seen a Grand Final before) I was struck by all the people who had obviously comeover from Adelaide especially for the game. I was delighted to watch a former student of mine from Alice Springs score a Grand Final Goal, whihc I know for a fact is literally a dream come true for him. As I caught the tram home during the fourth quarter (my friend and I gave up and went for cofee at half time!) I noticed Port supporters in groups of twos and threes shuffling away from the MCG, disappointed that their team had not been able to do more on the day and I felt for them. Their hopes had been so high. But then watching images from the streets of Geelong where there was literally not a soul on the streets becasue in unison the whole town was inside watching the match, hoping to break a 44 year drought.
And the game prompted me to get in touch with a couple of friends, Cats supporters, who I had not spoken tofor a long time, and I realised how much i miss them. And then, as I walked from the tram stop to my house, the MCG behind me, I heard the cheer of 100,000 people go up as the final siren sounded and it made me smile. That was enough football for me for one year, but I do understand why it means so much to so many others and that's where the enjoyment of football exists for me.

Women for Wik

This is a site supprted by women from around Australia and around the world who are speaking up against the current intervention in the NT. If you're interested why not check it out, sign their petition and read the latest news and views.

Also look out for further information about a day of action on October 19.

http://www.womenforwik.org/index.html

Artists speak up about NT intervention

Here's a link to a short video on Youtube made by the people who work at Keringke Arts at Santa Teresa Community south of Alice. They talk about who they are what they do, their work and how the recent intervention will impacton them running their business. This is an Aboriginal owned and run Art co-op, one of very few in the NT. The sound is a little tricky but please watch it anyway. It take incredible courage and stregth for traditonal people to speak out in ENGLISH!

http://www.youtube.com/keringke

Love

“Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.”

~rumi

Generational change and chickens

I got some photos back the other day that I took during the few days I spent in Perth (or more specifically Belmont "City of Opportunity"!) My favorite photo is one of a chicken being held by a little girl. My friends the Teros, who live in Belmont (which is really close to the airport!), have chickens and ducks in their backyard, and they LOVE them. Really! Poultry is a big part of their life. In fact at a recent trivia night there was a question about Indian Runner Ducks and I lamented the fact that the Teros weren't on our team that night. I made the comment while I was there that I didn't know anyone else who took their poultry so seriously, I mean they know names and breeds and the differences in temperaments between the different breeds. They KNOW poultry! I made the mistake of making this comment in front of a friend of theirs who also had chooks and he informed me that I needed to get out more because in fact quite a lot of people (him for example) know all about the different breeds of chickens and ducks. This then made me question why i didn't know that stuff. I mean I actually have the pedigree for it, after all my grandfather ran a poultry farm. My Mum grew up surrounded by chickens most of her childhood. We had chooks in the backyeard for all of my childhood too, but I never loved those chooks the way the teros love theirs. Maybe having a poultry farmer in the family was the problem. My enduring memory is of Grandad coming around to chop the heads off the baby chickens who grew up to be roosters. I dont know that I ever associated that with him being a farmer and having the right skills. At that age he just seemed like a rough old man who knew how to wield an axe. He died when I was 19. All of my memories about him revolve around gardening - his retirement profession, or playing 500, or the tall tales he would tell from his childhood. I always knew that his side of the family were farmers and learned somewhere along the way that they didn't care too much for Aboriginal people. It strikes me as somewhat odd that I do what i do now in complete ignorance of the knowledge he had, about poultry and other things, and he lived his life in ignorance of or prejudice towards the people who I spend so much of my time working with.
Sometimes generational change seems to take forever, but in fact alot can change in just two generations.

Universal Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous peoples

Here are two of the articles in the recently adopted declaration. Howard certainly wouldn't have been able to pass his legislation if we'd been a signatory!

Article 18

Indigenous peoples have the right to participate in decision-making in matters
which would affect their rights, through representatives chosen by themselves in
accordance with their own procedures, as well as to maintain and develop their own
indigenous decision-making institutions.

Article 19

States shall consult and cooperate in good faith with the indigenous peoples
concerned through their own representative institutions in order to obtain their free,
prior and informed consent before adopting and implementing legislative or
administrative measures that may affect them.


The full document is a magnificent affirmation for Indigneous peoples the world over. Follow the link below to read the whole declaration:
http://www.ohchr.org/english/issues/indigenous/docs/draftdeclaration.pdf

The World says YES but Australia says NO

New York - September 13, 2007 - At long last, the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples is a reality. It was adopted today by the United Nations General Assembly by a vote of 143 to 4 with 11 abstentions.

The declaration spells out the fundamental rights of indigenous peoples including their right to their traditional lands and resources; their right to give their free, prior, and informed consent before governments take actions that negatively affect them; their right to be free from genocide and forced relocation; and their rights to their languages, cultures and spiritual beliefs. At long last the world's native peoples have a valuable tool for regaining some of the cultural and physical ground they have lost over the past 500 years.

"Today, by adopting the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples we are making further progress to improve the situation of indigenous peoples around the world," stated General Assembly President Haya Al Khalifa. "We are also taking another major step forward towards the promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms for all."

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon warmly welcomed the adoption, calling it "a triumph for indigenous peoples around the world." He further noted that "this marks a historic moment when UN Member States and indigenous peoples reconciled with their painful histories and resolved to move forward together on the path of human rights, justice and development for all."

Today's happy moment did not come easily. The declaration underwent a longer period of debate and negotiation--25 years all told--than any other international agreement in United Nations history. During those years, hundreds of thousands of indigenous peoples were routed from their homes, massacred in their villages, had their sacred sites defiled, and their lands and resources appropriated. Even with the declaration now adopted, many of these problems will continue unless nations live up to the principals in the document.

Unfortunately, the United States stands to be one of these problem states. It was one of the four countries (along with Canada, New Zealand, and Australia) that voted against the declaration. Its vote sends a message to Native Americans and to the world that once again the United States is not prepared to take action to support human rights, even when those rights benefit American citizens.

The four "no" votes did not dampen the enthusiasm of Indigenous Peoples for today's outcome. As Indigenous Peoples Caucus president and Cultural Survival Program Council member Les Malezer stated in his statement following the vote, "The Declaration gives [Indigenous Peoples] the platform for addressing the continuing abuses of human rights against Indigenous Peoples and for shaping a future where it can be realized that all peoples are truly equal."

Source: http://www.culturalsurvival.org

Giving in

I feel like I have been fighting off a cold for a while and last night a wise woman said to me 'Sometimes it's just better to give in to it'. It made me question why I was fighting it so hard. Why do we fight things? I guess sometimes there are good reasons we fight because we believe we should, we fight because it is important. But what about the times we fight because we're proud, or fight becasue we are scared of what will happen if we dont. Maybe we fight out of habit, or duty, or we fight without realising we are fighting. But when we stop fighting, when we give in and allow things to happen, to roll over us and run their course we discover that the thing we were resisiting isn't so bad afterall. For example giving into my cold today means that I'm sitting on the couch reading the paper and drinking a cup of tea which is actually pretty nice.

Going back

I woke up this morning with a voice in my head saying ‘you can never go back’. I’m not sure if it was part of a dream or my subconscious trying to send me a message, or maybe I was overhearing a voice outside the room!
Whatever it was that voice has been ringing in my ears all day. Partly that’s because I’m back in Alice Springs after an absence of nine months and cant get over the change that has happened in that time. Almost all of the banks have changed locations, some restaurants that have always been there have closed and others have opened in their place, there’s a Gloria Jeans coffee shop and friends tell me Target is about to open in a couple of weeks!
All in all it’s a little disorienting. What feels even worse is that the tone of the town has changed, and those who have watched it happen say that it has been in the last 6 weeks that it has been most noticeable. The town itself is noticeably quieter. Streets are empty and shops and restaurants sparsely populated. But it is a surreal quiet, a law abiding, scared quiet. A quiet that speaks of other things under the surface. For example, last night I walked to the house of some friends, and for the first time perhaps ever used the Todd River footpath at night, by myself. I knew it was OK to do this because I had been hearing loud boasts from locals about how clean and safe things are now. Before, the Todd River used to be a common place for Aboriginal people to gather and camp around fires if they had nowhere else to go. It’s fair to say that a lot of drinking also accompanied these gatherings and there was quite a lot of broken glass and rubbish left in the riverbed and on the surrounding banks. Apparently mounted police were brought down from Darwin a few weeks ago and they have been patrolling the riverbed ever since. What no one is able to tell me is what has happened to all these people. They have obviously been rounded up and moved on somewhere else and these are rumours of groups gathering at the town limits. No one seems to care too much about this though because on the surface everything is ‘better’.
The story at Utopia is no better. Finally seeing my friends for the first time yesterday gave them an opportunity to tell me about all the changes that have taken place. There are now three police officers posted out at Utopia. The local joke is ‘two Federal police and one local to make sure the other two don’t get lost!’ Apparently they have decided that their main job out there is to do licence, rego and grog checks for every car that passes. I’m sure that on the surface this seems like a reasonable use of their skills and resources. In a context like Utopia though, where the population is dispersed and the people rely on (often un-roadworthy) cars to get to the Health Clinic and the one and only Store for food, the implications are more severe.
And at the school the new Principal is jumping through the hoops being set before her by the powers on high and is step by step undoing all of the programs and routines we put in place over the course of 5 years. The Community teachers don’t know what they are supposed to be teaching and the introduction of a second Visiting teacher at Mulga Bore has only led to conflict between the two ‘whitefellas’ and absolutely no consultation with the Indigenous staff about what they want for their school.
So I end my time in Alice Springs questioning my decision to ‘go back’, knowing how much the people out there would love me to ‘go back’ but knowing that if I do I stand a good chance of ending up bitter and sad at the futility of all of my efforts.
The only thing that hold me steady is that no matter how much Indigenous people may want to ‘go back’ to a time when they were not poor and dispossessed and patronised and alienated, ‘go back’ to a time when they lived as they pleased on their own country without anyone telling them they couldn’t, no matter how much they may want that, it is not an option. They have only to move forward. My question then becomes how do I help them do that with integrity and self assured identity, without loosing myself in the process?

Graduation

Today was a proud day. I travelled back to Alice Springs to see the Mulga Bore School teachers graduate from their Certificate IV in Indigenous Education Work. I had seen them graduate from their Certificate III a couple of years ago. I remember at that time it was such a proud moment. Families had come in to see the ceremony and celebrate the very first members of the community EVER to graduate a Tertiary course. Their first question after that Graduation – what’s next? What can we do now? Certificate IV seemed the next logical step but it was with some trepidation that we enrolled them. This course would require a lot more written work and a lot more abstract thinking. It would be a much bigger challenge for a group of women who had not gone past a few months at year 9 level. I should have known better than to underestimate them! In a little less than 2 years, with lots of hard work and dedication from them, the school staff and the Batchelor Institute Staff, four teachers from Mulga Bore and one from Perrawaw (Clinic) homeland had completed all the requirements and today was the final step in their journey. To watch them in their yellow graduation gowns and sashes, process down the aisle and take their places next to all of the other proud graduants left a lump in my throat. All of the Senior students from the two schools were brought in to witness the occasion and seeing the looks of pride and hearing their clapping and cheering made me hopeful for more occasions like this in the future.
In our academic world of PhDs and Masters Degrees a Certificate IV might not sound like much of an achievement, but I know and they know what it took to get here today and I am so proud that I have been able to walk that journey with them.

Timing

Why is it that the thing you have always wanted tends to present itself at the most inconvenient time?

Something other than anger

I have just been reading back over the last dozen or so posts made during August and I realise how much anger and sadness and frustration they contain. I think those three emotions acurately descrbe my reaction to the actions of the Federal Government during that time and I know that people were asking me for my opinions on the NT intervention and writing stuff on the blog was one way to express my opinions, so i make no apology for anything I wrote. But it's exhausting carrying that kind of anger and despair around and I find now that I seemed to have moved on to something beyond anger, something positive and possible, something that looks more like hope. Surely, without it, i would not have the strength to go back and continue working where I do, knowing that the actions of Government will contradict me. Surely, without it, I would admit defeat and lament the fact that I'm just one person in the face of something daunting.
So after feeling such passionate anger in August, my question is where did this hope come from?