mightbesomewhere

Put in our place by the weather

2011-02-09T07:48:00.002+09:30

It has been a while since i have written anything on here. The last time I was really blogging regularly was back in 2007. But i was reminded by my friend Cameron, who also has a blog I have just discovered called 'Rustry Brown Dog', that it is quite a good thing to do. So here I am returning to 'Might Be somewhere' after a bit of a sabatical.

It might also be because I find myself with some time on my hand, this week anyway! Last week in Queensland they were hit with the biggest Tropical Cyclone to ever hit the Australian shores. The trail of destruction that we have seen in its wake is something to behold and I feel great empathy for those who's lives have been picked up by the force of that wind and turned upside down.

So strong was Yasi that it's effects have been felt here in the desert too. On the weekend Alice Springs braced itself for a storm and severe flooding. As it turned out the hype about the storm turned out to carry more force than the storm itself. We did indeed get quite alot of rain and other areas in the East and to the South were quite affected.

What has happened is that almost every road in and out of Alice Springs has become impassable due to flooding or water damage.

This has meant that I cant travel out to the Community where I have gone back to teaching this year. It is a strange feeling knowing that you should be somewhere else doing something else, but that you are unable to overcome whatever is preventing you.

I think my small experience here, and in a much greater sense the experience of Queenslanders over the past month, is quite a profound reminder of our complete lack of power in the face of what Mother Nature can serve up. It is hard not to be humble in the face of such a power.

Steve Jobs: How to live before you die | Video on TED.com

2010-10-01T09:08:00.000+09:30

Steve Jobs: How to live before you die | Video on TED.com

Christmas 2009 (part 3) - travel, visitors and other stuff

2009-12-21T22:58:00.006+09:30

Apart from all the driving on dusty roads, I have also been doing quite a bit of flying. Work sees me traveling to Darwin on a fairly regular basis, but i have also been traveling interstate as a National Rep for the NT Greens. I have been to National meetings in Perth, Adelaide and Melbourne. This has enabled me to catch up with some friends and family throughout the year which has been nice. Being more involved in the Greens has been really interesting too and I am impressed at what integrity exists at all levels of the Party.

I had a number of visitors during the year including two brothers and their respective partners. In July Mark and Bec drove up here for a holiday and I enjoyed going out and camping with them a bit. Pete and Sue also visited in Sept and they got to see quite a bit of country in just one week. It was nice to spend more time getting to know Sue and seeing Pete so happy after a tough couple of years.

I have made a few trips back to melbourne during the year, one of them specially to see my new little niece Clara (Dave and Fran's third and final child). It is lovely to have a niece but equally lovely to see my two nephews growing up so beautifully and playing together and being so cute with their little baby sister. I am heading down to Melbourne for Christmas and New Years and am then heading off to a conference in Hawaii to present a paper at a conference in january based on some research I am doing with a colleague in Canada.

It feels like it has been another long year and I'm not sure that I got the work/life balance right all the time, something I want to work on next year. My friend Cameron, from Perth, has been writing his Masters thesis this year and sent me a copy to read recently. It focuses on Living Simply as a way to challenge the Consumption that seems to dictate everything in our modern world. Reading it has challenged me to think about some of the choices I make and I am hoping to make some meaningful changes to my life in the light of these new thoughts.

I hope that you and those you love are able to say and show how much you mean to each other this Christmas and that you are all happy living your lives wherever you are. I hope our paths will cross in 2010.

Peace xx

Christmas 2009 (part 2) - work

2009-12-21T22:27:00.005+09:30

I have spent this year continuing the project that I started working on at the end of 2008. The name of the project is the 'Indigenous Teacher Upgrade Program' which has meant that my focus has changed from teaching children to working with indigenous teachers in remote schools around Central Australia, helping them upgrade their teaching qualifications. This has meant doing alot of travel which has meant that I have seen some pretty amazing country and experienced some great things along the way. All the travel has been very tiring though. I cant even imagine the number of kms I must have driven during the year. The work itself with the indigenous teachers was also great and I enjoyed that aspect of my job very much. Sadly I feel as though the Dept for which I work has lost it's way and is making very bad policy decisions. I am not sure how much longer I will continue to work for them. I will continue to work on this project until it's conclusion at the end of 2010, but then the path ahead is a little unknown, which is a little scary but also quite liberating.

In November I took a group of the teachers i work with down to Hobart to the National Indigenous Education conference. They presented some of the research they have been doing as part of their study and it was inspiring to hear them talk and also see how well they were received. It has not been an easy time to be indigenous in the with the continuing NT intervention and policy decisions being made that undermine indigenous language and culture. I admire these women and their resilience, but wonder how many more times they can have the rug pulled out from underneath them.

Christmas 2009 (part 1) - House and garden

2009-12-21T18:01:00.006+09:30

In january Dad and I drove back to Alice Springs together and spent the final week of my holidays building a deck in the spa area. It turned out really well and has completely transformed that area. The plants have really grown in now and in the middle of the year I emptied and renovated the spa itself. It's such a great space now, especially when the weather is hot. Dad also helped fix the verandah at the front of the house and now that the grape vines are growing big it looks great. The front yard was ablaze with Sturt Desert Pea in the middle of the year. I had always wanted to grow them, but this was beyond my wildest imaginations. They were so prolific that taxi drivers were bringing tourists past the house to see them. I had a few great crops of veggies throughout the year, particularly after I changed that garden into a raised garden in planter boxes. The citrus trees had their first fruit and the olive tree is beginning to look like it should. I also planted a banana palm which has taken off. The garden has been a really life giving and relaxing activity for me this year.My big plan for next year is to build a granny flat in the back yard.

Bilingual Education in the NT

2009-09-20T12:04:00.002+09:30

I have had a number of people ask me recently about my thoughts after the 4 Corners program on the ABC focused on Bilingual Education in the NT.

I actually missed the program itself but have recently caught up on it on the program's website. It also contains a number of extended interviews which are interesting and links to a number of reports and papers which highly encourage people to read as they give a fuller picture of what is happening.

http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/special_eds/20090914/language/

Some thoughts:
I dont teach in a bilingual school. I have never taught in a official bilingual school.
Most of the remote indigenous schools in the NT are not bilingual.

The decision to introduce mandatory first 4 hours of English at school in the NT was justified as a step to improving National Literacy and Numeracy Benchmarks for NT indigenous students.
Not just students in bilingual schools, but all schools - the majority of which were already teaching in English for the first 4 hours and still not passing benchmark.

The so called 'policy' was in fact a 'Ministerial Directive' as it was not developed by the Department and presented to the Minister as a new, recommended policy. Neither the Minister at the time, nor the current Minister hold any qualification in Education ( the former was trained in book-keeping, accounting, administration and health economics and the latter is trained as a mechanical engineer) and neither are they experts in language acquisition and the role it plays in learning.

I work with a number of indigenous teachers from bilingual schools. The fact that school leaders and Communities were not consulted about this change has left many indigenous teachers feeling undermined, undervalued and disempowered.

No one seems to be willing to have the conversation about whether the problem might be in the testing itself, or in the countless other factors that prevent indigenous students from improving in schooling overall. We have swallowed the completely political line of 'Literacy and numeracy benchmarks' hook, line and sinker and seemed blinded to the fact that these are a tool of political manipulation - a way for politicians to prove that THEY have done something to 'Close the Gap' for Indigenous people.

Research shows that in order to gain deep levels of knowledge - the kind that you need to get into University for example - you need access to your first language.

If we do not respect and embrace first language as a fundamental learning resource for indigenous children then they will be dramatically short changed in their education and no gap will ever be closed.

buried in ground that remembers you

2009-02-23T20:56:00.002+09:30

I have just been to see a beautiful film called Fugitive Pieces. It is the story of a young Jewish boy, Jakob, who is the only member of his family to escape the Nazis. He is rescued by a Greek archaeologist, Athos, who takes him in and raises him. There journey together takes them from Poland to Greece to Canada.

It is a story of grief and loss, of memories and ghosts, of generosity and love and of healing through connection.

"The mystery of wood is not that it burns, but that it floats"

"Make sure you are buried in ground that remembers you"

Language and Culture

2008-11-15T11:20:00.003+09:30

I was with a group of impressive Warlpiri women this week who have recently been told by Politicians that they are not allowed to teach their own children in their own language. They were angry and frustrated. Their culture and rituals are fundamental to them and their language is the vehicle for that. They said to each other and to the rest of us who were there "We ask the kardiya (non-indigneous people) Where is your culture? You got no culture!" It was hard to argue with them. When the only rituals I feel these days are singing Happy Birthday to someone, or reciting the Lord's Prayer at funerals I attend. I wonder what meaning these really have for me. My culture does feel empty and I once again am forced to cringe at government acting against indigenous people to diminish the things that mean the most to them.

How dare we! This and the intervention is what future generations will be saying SORRY for.

Obama

2008-11-07T19:05:00.002+09:30

It's surprising to me how invested I have been in the US election. I found myself anxiously awaiting the results on Wednesday and then feeling increasingly optimistic as the votes gradually came in. Then it became clear that Obama had won and I was overcome with excitement and relief. I think I was buoyed by the fact that for so long the USA had been stuck in lowest common denominator politics - appealing to the worst aspects of human nature - division, fear, hatred, bigotry; but here was Obama - a voice that was saying something different. A voice that appealed to what is best in human nature - hope, community, optimism, cooperation. I read something the other day which talked about the human instinct to help others. I believe this to be true and have, in the past, been made to feel abnormal because of this belief. What a watershed for millions of Americans to finally collectively say that they too believe in the same spirit. What an historical moment to witness, the moment where a majority of people in a powerful western nation say that they are more interested in the collective rather than looking out for their individual needs.
Obama might not be the Messiah that he is being heralded as in some quarters, but he has been a rallying point. A leader who has dared to suggest that we can be more than we have been in the past.
When the election result was announced a friend sent me a text message say "Phew, that feels better". That sums it up for me. The world just feels better, more possible, more whole, more communal with Obama as US President than has ever been the case in my life time. And i for one am glad to have lived in a time when it has happened.

small things

2008-10-26T13:56:00.002+09:30

I was in my front yard this morning planting up some new garden beds. A number of neighbours walked past. Many of them said hello. A father walked past with his daughter walking next to him and son riding a bike along side. They said hello. I said hello back. The daughter made a comment to her father in their language. She was looking intently at the work i was doing in my garden. About half an hour they returned from their walk to the store. The daughter was carrying a plant.

The stock market explained

2008-10-19T10:14:00.003+09:30

Once upon a time in a village, a man appeared and announced to the
villagers that he would buy monkeys for $10 each.
The villagers, seeing that there were many monkeys around, went into
the forest and started catching them. The man bought thousands at $10and, as supply started to diminish, the villagers stopped their effort.
He further announced that he would now buy monkeys at $20 for each.
This renewed the efforts of the villagers and they started catching
monkeys again. Soon the supply diminished even further and people
started going back to their farms.
The offer increased to $25 each, and
the supply of monkeys became so small that it was an effort to even
find a monkey, let alone catch it! The man now announced that he would buy monkeys at $50! However, since he had to go to the city on some business, his assistant would now buy on behalf of him.

In the absence of the man, the assistant told the villagers. 'Look at
all these monkeys in the big cage that the man has collected.
I will sell them to you at $35, and when the man returns from the
city, you can sell them to him for $50 each.'
The villagers rounded up all their savings and bought all the monkeys.
They never saw the man nor his assistant again, only monkeys everywhere!
Now you have a better understanding of how Wall Street works.

Lawn Sale

2008-10-18T16:46:00.002+09:30

I had a lawn sale this morning. For those of you who live elsewhere in Australia, that's a garage sale. For those who live in parts of the world where that is an unknown concept the idea is that you clean out your house and shed, finding items you no longer need or want, place them in your garage or on your lawn on a saturday morning and strangers come around and buy them from you.
It's a strange idea, but one that I love.
There were a few benefits to doing this for me:
I got rid of some stuff that had been hanging around since I moved into my house
I made a bit of extra cash
I got to experience the crazy world of the lawn sale
I have basically decided there are three types of lawn salers:

1. Hard core - these people have week's that revolve around their lawn sales. They read the paper with a fine tooth comb on a Friday to examine exactly how many lawn sales are on offer the following morning and they chart a course between them that will maximise the bargains they desire. They are the ones who turn up before the advertised starting time in the hope that they will beat or undercut all of the other hare core salers. They offer you advice on how a lawn sale really should be run and they spend a maximum of 5 minutes on your lawn before they are off to their next appointment. many of them carry around a tin containing a quantity of coins and small notes specifically ear marked for lawn sale purchases. I got paid $10 for something this morning all in 10c and 20c pieces!

2. The specific purpose lawn salers - these people come in search of a specific item or object. They come in and scan what's on offer. If they see the item they want they grab it, if not they ask directly. Often they will see the item they were seeking with a SOLD sign already written on it and look at you pleadingly, hoping you will go back on your agreement with the previous purchaser and do them a deal instead.The specific items asked for this morning were most furniture - shelves, chests of drawers, wardrobes, beds ad mattresses. But i also had a surprising number of requests for pot plants. I'm thinking of doing some propagating before my next lawn sale!

3. The lazy bones - these are the johnny-come-lately lawn salers who have good intentions about going lawn saling on a Saturday morning and then have a big night on Friday night and decide that a sleep in is more important than bargains. They still go out and do over the lawn sales but not until about 3 hours after everyone else has swept through. When they arrive they ask sheepishly "Is this all that's left?" "Yes" you reply and they smirk and shrug their shoulders. "It's our own fault I suppose. maybe we'll try to get up earlier next Saturday!"

Remarkable women of the desert

2008-10-13T21:33:00.003+09:30

I started a new job a few weeks ago. I couldn't be happier (well maybe that's not true, but I'm pretty happy!). In this job my role is to support indigenous teachers in their learning and training. What I really get to do is talk and spend time with a group of remarkable women (and a couple of men). Some of these women have been teaching at the school in their remote community for up to 30 years. This in a system where 'whitefellas' come and go like pieces of rubbish blowing across a dusty football field.

I asked one of them how long she had been teaching for. 28 years she replied. And how many Principals had come and gone in that time? "Oh" she laughed "too many...maybe 15 or 20, I can remember'. But I bet she does. i bet she remembers each and everyone of them. i bet she remembers the ones who gave her hope and the ones who took all her power away. I bet she remembers the ones who treated her with respect and acknowledged her wisdom and knowledge, and the ones who judged her as knowing nothing based on her broken English.

And her story is all to familiar to the rest of the women in our little group. They have seen so many Principals and Teachers come and go, come and go. But they are still there. They are still putting up their hands to do more study, to become even stronger advocates for their children's education. They are still the ones who try their best to 'orient' new whitefellas into their schools. They are the ones who talk to me now with great concern about the next generation of teachers. 'Who is gonna teach in the school when we get too old? We have to mentor those young ones'.

And hey are grateful to me for any small help I can offer them and i feel inadequate sometimes, but they are immanently gracious and i will do my best not to let them down.

Photobus & digital storytelling

2008-10-13T21:07:00.002+09:30

I recently discovered digital storytelling. I was introduced to it by a man called Daniel Meadows. He spent quite a lot of his youth driving a bus around England taking photos of people. He has a great website:

www.photobus.co.uk

On it you can also watch some of the digital stories he has created.

Digital stories have a strict format:
1. a script of no more than 250 words
2. no more than 20 images
3. no more than 2 minutes

You'd be amazed how profound a story can be when told within these boundaries.

the BBC got him to do a project in Wales called Capture Wales:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/wales/audiovideo/sites/galleries/pages/capturewales.shtml?page=1

The idea was that everyone has a story and Daniel and his team went around to towns and villages and ran workshops to help people find their story and then tell it using the digital story telling structure. The results are funny, emotional and surprising. Most of all though they are familiar.

daniel finished his presentation to the conference by saying 'By now you will have realised that this in fact is not something new. It is a new way of doing something that we have been doing since the dawn of time.'

Our humanity lies in the stories we choose to tell.

addicted to Facebook

2008-10-13T20:52:00.002+09:30

For months I haven't been focusing on my blog and I realise now that it's because I have the IT equivalent of a new man in my life - Facebook. Now, stop rolling your eyes and letting out that disapproving grunt. I've heard them all and I dont care. I love getting peoples status feeds and getting a brief sense of how they are day to day. I love playing scrabble with friends on the other side of the world. I love how quickly things get turned into groups and speed around the globe. I love discovering that a friend who i haven't spoken to for ages is online as the same time as me and having a 5 minute or two hour chat session with them.

I know all of the arguments about not everyone having access to the internet, and it replacing actually spending time with people, and that it is just another thing to create a username and password for. Yes it is all of that, but I still love it. I was at a conference a couple of months ago where I heard someone talk about the things educators feared about the internet - that students would use it to cheat on essays and tests. in fact the vast majority of people use it for social interaction.

My world is global. I have friends, great friends, who i love, who live on the other side of the world. I have family and friends who live in another state. I wish we lived closer and had the opportunity to catch up face to face more easily, more often. But until they develop teleportation, I'm going to stick with Facebook because it means that at least my Facebook friends can be part of my everyday life.

A drive in the desert

2008-08-28T12:19:00.004+09:30

I began last week with a head ache and a bad attitude. I knew I had a bush trip to do during the week and wasn't looking forward to the long drive there and back. But to my suprise a six hour drive in the desert turned out to be just what my head, heart and soul needed. By the time I drove six hours back two days later I felt calm and happy and like my head had been cleared of the fog I had been in for weeks. I listened to my favorite playlists on my iPod, sang loudly and made plans in my head. Anyone who thinks of the desert as a vast nothing has completely missed the point.

House photos

2008-07-20T23:02:00.003+09:30

For those who are interested (especially those who have asked repeatedly to see photos of the house!)

Click on the link 'my photos' on the right and choose the 'new house' album.

Taking down fences

2008-07-20T21:22:00.003+09:30

I bought a house in March this year. It's the first house I have ever owned and I suppose I dont actually own much of it yet, but for all intents and purposes it's mine. When I first looked at it it felt right. It's not a fancy house, in fact it's quite ugly in places, but it's simple and easy and it feels good. It has quirky features like a 'sewing room' off the main bedroom.
The previous owners had a 'minimalist approach to gardening - there were maybe 3 living plants on the property when i took possession. Friends would come over and look at my yard and say 'a blank canvas!'
The one the the house had in abundance was fences. There was a high green fence along the front of the property - so that no one could see in and no one could see out. It also had another fence closing in the front lawn meaning that I had to go through a gate to get from my front door to the letterbox. For the first month or so it drove me crazy. Then I realised that everything on the property was mine so if I didn't like something I could take it down, change it, put something else there that I liked better.
I took down the internal fence first and what a difference just doing that made. I could walk freely around my front yard without having to navigate fences and gates. Retrieving the mail had never been so easy!
The front fence posed more of a challenge because i was not only taking down a fence but needed to put something in it's place.
I changed my mind a few times. Finally the decision was made easier by a friend giving me a roll of fencing wire. It was simple, waist height, recycled, free - perfect!
So one weekend, not long ago, a couple of friends and I started taking down my front fence. The panels came off remarkably easily and before I knew it I had invited the world into my front yard again. Little did I know how true this would become. In the course of the weekend working on my fences in my front yard I basically met my neighborhood. First there was the woman in the 4WD who drove past and gave me a smile and a nod. Then there was the couple with the baby in the pram who walked past a number of times before the husband and I finally made eye contact and he simply said 'Nice'. Then there was Meg across the road who took the opportunity to come over and introduce herself. 'Love what you've done. I'd love to get rid of our high fences' she said. 'Oh and by the way my boys are having a party in a few weeks time. It'll be really loud. When you hear the music come over and have a beer with us'.
The next day when we got to the harder tasks of hanging and wiring the new fence in place I wondered if I had bitten off more than I could chew. But the universe sent me Alan. 'Do you ladies need a hand?' came the voice from the other side of the road. 'I know a bit about fencin'. I do alot of work out bush and I can give ya a hand if ya like'. In the blink of an eye, with Alan's expertise and a few tricks of the trade the fence was up and in place and ready to be wired. As Alan and I sat back with a beer and admired our handiwork, another voice from across the road called out "looks great". Cath, an older lady from around the corner who was out walking her dog, stopped by for a chat. 'We were all so disappointed when that big green fence went up. I mean I understand, what with the neighborhood and all, but it looks much better the way you have it now.'
Over the next couple of days I even noticed a couple of cars slowing down to have a look. People in cars continued to wave hello when they saw me in the front yard. Children riding past on their bikes called out 'hi' or 'I like your fence'.
It seems i hadn't been the only one bothered by the fences and the simple act of taking them down brought the people of my street into my life and brought me into theirs.

Coincidence? I think not...

2008-04-27T14:42:00.002+09:30

The Federal Government's NT emergency intervention became law in August 2007. This legislation included, amongst other things, amendments to the Aboriginal Land Act and the removal of the permit system which had up until then required that people who wanted to go onto Aboriginal land sought permission in the form of a permit. The justification was that the removal of this 'cumbersome' requirement would remote communities easier to police, more easily accessed by the media, and would encourage businesses to establish themselves in remote locations.

One wonders what types of businesses the Federal Goverment had in mind.

According to a website belonging to mining giant 'Deep Yellow' the following mining developments have been touted for Aboriginal Land in Central Australia:

Napperby - NW of Alice Springs, commenced drilling Sept 2007

Reynolds Range - North of Alice Springs - exploration agreement signed November 2007

Nonuouba - 70kms SW of Alice Springs - tenement granted 17 August 2007

Mt Liebig - NW of Alice Springs - negotiation of access took place 21st Nov 2007

Angela-Pamela Uranium deposit - 25kms SW of Alice Springs and with the water catchment area for the town of Alice Springs - application made late 2007, awaiting decision early 2008.

And these are only a few of the sites in central Australia. I haven't even begun looking into the Top End.

So the haste with which the legislation was introduced and passed through the two houses of Parliament in the middle of last year may have had more to do with granting mining permits than it did to do with protecting children.

Surprise! Surprise!

apmarr

2008-03-23T23:27:00.002+09:30

It is march already. I dont know where the first quarter of the year went. Actually, looking back, I do. It has been a hectic time settling back into life in Central Australia. I arrived back here at the end of January ready to begin a new job and ready to embark upon the search for a new home. The home thing happened quicker than expected and I moved into my first ever mortgaged property on the 7th March. It is lovely to be able to walk around my own place and plan things that I might do - where to hang my pictures, what to plant in the garden, how to arrange the furniture. It's also nice to feel as though i dont have to do all of this at once as I will be here a while.

The job took a little longer to work out. The problem with a newjob is that no one knows you're in it for the first 5 weeks or so so you sit around wondering what it really is that you are supposed to be doing. Then, as i discovered, things pan out and people discover you may be of use to them and things start to get busy. Despite the change in focus for me, eg. I'm no longer in a classroom, working in one particular school, but rather am working across schools in town and out bush in a curriculum development role, I think it will be a really positive move and will help me to operate within and comprehend the educational system at a different level. Plus i get to work with some really good people and build new networks.

One of my fears was that this would mean I might loose touch with the Mulga Bore mob. No danger of that!! They are very excited about my new house, in particular the 'swimming pool akwerk" (the spa!) out the back!! I have seen them on a weekly basis almost and they often drop in at home or work just to say hello or to inquire when mum and dad will be here.

Mum and Dad in fact arrived today and literally within minutes of them arriving a couple of cars pulled up and there were cries of 'atwampwe' which is the name dad is known by. After spending Christmas with them, it was lovely to have the reunion up here. They're all coming over for aBBQ tomorrow. Being back here and having them drop in all the timehas made me realise how much I missed having aboriginal people in my life last year. There is a character to life when they are around that I really treasure.

All in all it feels realy good to be back. It feels like my 'apmarr', my country, my home.

Coercive Reconciliation

2008-01-16T21:54:00.000+09:30

For anyone who is interested in reading some good analysis of the policies, agendas and politics leading up to the NT Intervention I HIGHLY recommend the collection of Essays entitled "Coercive Reconciliation" edited by Jon Altman and Melinda Hinkson. There are essays by over 30 prominent Indigenous Australians and academics, including the likes of Mick and Pat Dodson, and Rex Wild, one of the co-authors of the "Little Children are Sacred" report upon which the intervention is supposedly acting.
It is published by Arena publications and should be available in all good book stores (or give them details and they will be able to order it in for you).

Read it and make others you care about read it too!

Things I have learnt while on study leave

2007-12-15T17:52:00.000+09:30

1. A year is a long time to be away from your job
2. A lot can change during that time
3. Just becasue you live in a big city doesn't mean your social life improves
4. I dont want to live in a city unless it's New York City!
5. There are friends to be found everywhere but ultimately you should live where your heart feels at peace
6. The plans you had for the year very often dont work out
7. Having time out to think and learn is a wonderful thing

A Prime Minister called Kev

2007-12-09T09:40:00.000+09:30

In this week's Saturday Age there was a column by Warick McFadyen criticising our new Prime Minister on his name and its lack of grandeur. He suggests that while Howard bore 'a name strewn along the historical timeline' the name 'Kevin' holds 'absolutely no prominence at all'. The basic premise seems to be that the name Kevin has never been big in European historical terms. Even more the writer is disparaging about the fact that a Kevin is more likely to be a cricket or footy watcher, a tradesman or something else equally everyday and humble.

My response - it's about bloody time! What is wrong with a little humility in our leadership?

The first people I think of when I think of the name Kevin are:
1. Kev Carmondy - a true poet of Australia who writes songs of honesty and compassion. An Aboriginal man who calls for justice and understanding in a quiet voice and who has influenced many of the songwriters and artists of his generation. He has been called Australia's Bob Dylan.
2. Kev from Sea Change - by far my favorite character and the glue that holds Pearl Bay together. In fact my favorite Sea Change episode of all time is the one where all of the old people in the district start having road accidents and it turns outthey are being forced to drive becasue Kevin's van has broken down and he is the one who usually runs their errands for them. He is a man of simplicity and compassion. He cares about his family and his community and holds no delusions of grandeur.

One can only hope that the characteristics on display from these well known Australian Kevins will hold true in our new Prime Minister!

Ding dong the witch is dead!

2007-11-25T09:15:00.000+09:30

I feel like there should be singing and dancing in the streets this morning. After 11 years of Howard the voters have come out in favour of something other than the economy. Finally social policy and progressive politics have been given a voice. Before yesterday my bottom line for success was that we return some balance to the Senate. That will happen. Neither the Liberals or the ALP will be able to ram legislation through the Senate without negotiation. It will return to being a house of review. My next criteria for success was the ALP winning the Lower House. this happened in record numbers in some VERY interesting places. Analysts are saying it is the biggest swing against a sitting government in the history of Australian politics. The icing on the cake for me was the fact that it is likely that Howard will loose his own seat of Bennelong. Ultimately his arrogance and ego have been his undoing. He could have retired 18 months ago at the top of his game, but the idea of one more victory was too much for him to resist. Pride goes before the fall Mr Howard and for those of us who have been wanting your fall for some time, it is sweeter that it has happened like this. The cherry on top of the icing for me came in the defeat of Mal Brough, Minister for Indigenous Affairs. His was considered a safe seat and the voters once again proved that theory wrong. I'm quite sure that Brough saw himself as doing the 'right thing' in the NT intervention and already he has talked about his 'fears' of the ALP undoing his 'good work'. Let me remind people that while many Australians living in urban Australia might have agreed that the intervention was a good thing, for those it most affected, the Indigenous people of remote NT, it was a disaster. And it was a disaster for one main reason. It was a one size fits all solution for a complicated context. Yes changes are needed in the NT but they MUST be locally appropriate, the MUST be achieved in consultation with the local people and they SHOULD reflect a contemporary philosophy, not one that is stuck in the paradigm of 40 years ago. So I am overjoyed that Brough is gone and his style of leadership in the area of Indigenous affairs has been rejected.

Rud and the ALP government are not the silver bullet as far as I'm concerned but it feels like the straight jacket i off for the first time in 11 years and now there is at least room to move forward.

Democracy is a wonderful thing!

Election Day

2007-11-24T13:54:00.000+09:30

I hear lots of Australians grumbling about election day but I love it. I have just arrived home after a morning of handing out 'how to vote' cards for my preferred party and I have to say that it really is a great thing to be part of. After weeks of TV ads and sound bites and political pot shots and pork barrel promises today is the peoples' day. It's the day where the high powered end of the political spectrum have to hand over to the grassroots workers and volunteers. Today is about the people who for at least this one day every few year are willing to wear their political hearts on their sleeves and say 'Vote for my person because I think they are what the country needs'. It is about a person to person interaction - me offering my 'how to vote' to the average punters coming to vote at that polling place. And there were those who refused mine, those who took one of everything, those who took nothing and those who only took mine. There were reps from many of the other parties but we did not argue or sling mud. We at the grassroots level operate from the perspective of 'I may not agree with what you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it'. There were inevitably moments where I thought to myself 'I can't believe that person's vote is worth the same as mine' particularly when I overheard conversations that demonstrated a clear ignorance of the Australian democratic process. But the thing I am always reminded on on days like today is that the laws and freedoms that give them their vote also protect my vote, and ensure that everyone has an equal say in the decision making and that is surely a thing to be treasured.

Of course I am hoping for a particular outcome today and will be unbelievably saddened if Australia lets me down. But for now I am content in the knowledge that the cogs of democracy are once again turning and today is a day where hope is real and change is possible.

NT Intervention Damages Sacred Site

2007-11-12T20:51:00.000+09:30

From the Women for Wik Group. For more information click on the link on the right.

Monday, 12 November 2007

The grassroots organisation Women for Wik, which has been monitoring the Federal intervention in the Northern Territory, expressed dismay at the revelation that a pit toilet has been built on a sacred site in the Aboriginal township of Numbulwar, one of the 73 communities directly affected by the intervention.

"This has occurred despite repeated assurances by Prime Minister Howard and his Minister for Indigenous Affairs, Mal Brough, that sacred sites would be protected", said Olga Havnen, CEO of the Combined Aboriginal Organisations of the NT. "This is an example of how the whole approach to the intervention is fundamentally flawed. The desecration of sacred sites is not something that can be repaired."

In his 25 June Address to the Sydney Institute, the Prime Minister stated that 'The permit system for common areas, road corridors and airstrips for prescribed communities on Aboriginal land will be scrapped. Private residences and sacred sites will continue to be protected.'

"What a mob of idiots! Where is the consultation process?" said Eileen Cummings, former Policy Advisor to the Chief Minister of the Northern Territory. "You don't just go in and build something without talking to people. How can people know what is sacred and what isn't if they don't ask?"

"I am not surprised that this could happen, given that the Federal government is employing a deliberate policy of not consulting with Aboriginal communities. Even Telecom wouldn't put a line down without talking to the traditional owners."

"The Northern Territory has some of the most important archaeological sites in the world, and this government has put in place a process that is damaging sites, when it should be protecting them. This government is not fulfilling its duty to the Australian people, or to the international community." said Claire Smith, President of the World Archaeological Congress.

"We are now in the bizarre situation whereby sites of global significance are under threat by the actions, and inattention, of an Australian government," said Associate Professor Smith. "Independent contractors are engaged to conduct work without being given any proper cultural training or supervision. This is due a failure in oversight."

"This blatant disregard for Aboriginal women's culture shows the flaws in the heavy handed and insensitive approach taken by this intervention. Mal Brough said that sacred sites would be protected. He lied." said Larissa Behrendt, Professor of Law at the University of Technology, Sydney.

"This shows that we were justified in our concern that the abolition of the permit system would result in damage to sacred areas." said Ms Cummings, "Warren Snowdon expressed concern about this some time ago, but Mal Brough assured us that this would not happen. Well, Snowden was right, and Brough was wrong."

This government is showing a complete lack of respect. They would not dare do this with any form of property owner ion the country", said Ms Havnen. "Try telling someone else in suburban Australia that you are going to erect a shed in their backyard, or rip down their carport, or remove their clothesline. They would not tolerate it. And these are hardly sites of significance."

It's time to go John

2007-11-08T08:08:00.000+09:30

One of the highest viewed You Tube videos in Australiathis week is a song detailing 11 years of John Howard's rule, listingall of the broken promises and immoral actsduring that time. It's great! Have a look here:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=MVzO017lcA4

I hope he wasn't joking

2007-11-04T15:59:00.000+09:30

Despite my previous post, I find myself still reading and writing letters to the Age. Here's a letter I wrote in response to the Peter Garrett 'GAFFE' and the subsequent political milage seized upon by the Liberals:

I hope he wasn’t joking

The campaign shock this week, a politician indicates that decisions made once they gain office will be different than the promises they make in their campaign. Well that comes as a real surprise! Honestly, how naive do they think the voters are? After eleven years out of office, and with a right wing conservative Liberal Government to beat, the ‘me too’ campaign is, in my opinion, the only way Labor can get elected. They need to not push ‘Middle Australia’ too far, too fast and need to appeal to enough of them to get power back. But Howard and his cronies jumping on Peter Garrett this week after his supposed GAFFE just made the outgoing Government seem even more pathetic to me. You see there are quite a few voters out there, myself included, who are desperately hoping that Labor will ‘change it all’ once in power, and frankly are staking our vote on it! We have lamented life under Howard’s lack of social policy and social conscience for long enough. We want our country to be about more than interest rates and border security, white nationalism and self-interest. We want this time of unprecedented prosperity in Australia to also be a time of unprecedented hospitality, generosity, social responsibility and justice. Garrett’s comments were dismissed as a joke, but I hope he wasn’t joking. I just wish the Labor Party had enough faith in the voters to address us directly rather than through off handed comments to radio presenters.

Writing lettersto the Herald Sun

2007-10-23T09:05:00.000+09:30

My brother told me yesterday that he got a letter published in the Herald Sun. I almost choked. What the hell was he doing writing into the Herald Sun, bastion publication of right wing conservatism in Melbourne (I dont care if it does havepretty pictures!)? He informed me that he was following Kevin Rudd's suggestion.

My sister in law met Kevin Rudd acouple of months ago at a conference. Being the forthright woman that she is she approached him and asked him a few questions. He, sensing that he was in a milieu of people he judged to be 'the twopercent of the population who listen to Radio National' suggested to them that rather than ringing in to RN or writing submissions to their local member, would be better off writing letters to the Editor of the Herald Sun. That's what so called 'Middle Australia' reads and if all they arereading is right wingcinservatism with nothing there to make them questionthen that is the what the Government will be aiming for. Kevin suggested that if we offer a more balanced view, or at least voiced an alternate view in papers like the Herald Sun,those voters might actually start to change their tune.

Who knows? Might be worth a shot!

I told you so - the link between the NT intervention and Uranium

2007-10-19T16:52:00.000+09:30

I have just been advised by people know and trust that there has recently been an announcement for a Uranium mine to go ahead just outside of Alice Springs. This in addition to exploration already underway in the Napperby region, which is home to the Indigenous Community of Laramba, one of the 61 communities thave their permit revoked by the NT intervention. The exploration isbeing done by Toro Energy Limited. Their website had this to say about Uranium and the current political environment:

"In the last ten years, there have been important positive changes to Commonwealth government policies relating to the mining and export of uranium, headed by the abolishment of the "Three Mines Policy" in 1996.The current Australian Federal government's objective is to encourage the development and growth policy is to develop the export potential of Australia's uranium industry by allowing mining and export of uranium"

I was foolish enough to think that they would wait a little longer before letting the mining companies in, but I guess Howard and Brough are worried time is running out for them!

Not remiss, complicit, Mr Howard

2007-10-19T14:22:00.000+09:30

For anyone out there who thinks after John Howard's little "Reconciliation" stunt last week, that actually he's a reformed man and maybe we should give him another go, please think again.

On the Women for Wik site there is a fantastic timeline that someone has put together listing all of Howard's action in relation to Indigenous Australia. It is not the case that he has simply been remiss in not doing more for Indigenous Australians.He has in fact been the direct cause of many of the problems currently being experienced.

See the timeline here:

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

What can you do for $20 million?

2007-10-15T18:23:00.000+09:30

Experts suggest that we could eliminate trauchoma (a curable eye disease that still exists in remote Indigenous communities) from Australia for $20 million. This is about the same amount the Federal Government plans to spend on illicit drug testing for Football players.

A referendum? Don't make me laugh Johnny

2007-10-12T16:01:00.000+09:30

John Howard has perhaps reached a point of no return on the ridiculous scale of having no fucking idea about Indigenous Affairs. His latest idea - after 11 years in office he is now promising, if re-elected, to consider, after 18 months of careful deliberation, possibly holding a referndum on including acknowledgement of the Indigenous peoples of Australia in a preamble to the Australian constitution. No apology mind you, 'cos that wont help anyone!

Well I've got news for you Johnny, neither will your bloody referendum about a preamble! Aboriginal people live on average 20 years less than non-Aboriginal people, they still suffer from basic health problems such as trauchoma (the only group in the world who live in a 'western' country who still suffer from this disease), the number of Aboriginal inmates in NT jails is 3 times that of non-Aboriginal and only 40% of all Aboriginal students finish high school nationwide - much fewer if you just look at statistics for places like the NT.

For 11 years you have at best sat on your hands, and at worst, consistently removed funding that was trying to deal with these real issues. So don't even think about coming at the Australian public with a pre-election, last minute, pansy arsed, half baked, ill-conceived, useless suggestion about "Reconciliation". You're not really interested. Never have been. Move over and make room for people who want to deal with the reality of Indigenous Australia.

New Look!

2007-10-11T17:04:00.000+09:30

Don't panic! You haven't gone to the wrong page. I have wanted to overhaul the look of my blog for a while, mainly so that it reflected the desert colour more. Not sure if I have achieved that really but am all for changing things around a bit. There are a couple of new features at the bottom of the page namely a link to videos from You Tube about the NT Intervention, as well as a list of resources about indigenous Australia which I will add to over time.

Clarke and Dawe's take on the NT intervention

2007-10-07T08:59:00.000+09:30

I just watched the John Clarke and Brian Dawe skit from the 7:30 Report on the NT intervention. It's good stuff. Find it here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eapgTNkU-Vw

Go back!

2007-10-07T08:46:00.000+09:30

This article came to me via the Women for Wik movement but was recently published in the Sydney Morning Herald. It was written by an Indigenous woman who lives in a remote Indigenous Community in the NT and works at her local school.

Reading her words made me feel like any one of the women I work with would have said the same thing. Please remember that this issue is still happening, that these people will be affected for a long time by the decisions made by this Federal Government.

Go Back. You Are Intruding On Our Lives And Our Safety

Rachel Willika, Sydney Morning Herald | October 2, 2007

I live at Eva Valley in the Northern Territory. It is one of the communities affected by the Federal Government's intervention. I am a single mother. I look after my family, and I support my family. I have six children, some grown up, but we still live together in the community.

I was living at Barunga when I first heard about the intervention. I was told by mobile phone. It was on the news. When we found out, everyone was worried. The girls wanted to go to hide in the bush. When we saw the army on TV, I felt frightened. Some people, not just children, but adults, too, thought they might come with guns.

I have been thinking about those words "Little children are sacred". Who are the little children? Are they talking about all the children? Black children and white children? That's what it says to me. We should be protecting all the children. Aren't white children sacred, too?

I work at the local school, tutoring. I love the children, and teaching them to write and how to sound the alphabet and how to read books. After school, I prepare for church. Our church is a little shed on a cement slab. No power, no water. We use an extension cord from a nearby house so we can have lights and play music. We pay for our electricity with power cards. We try to make sure that there is enough money on those cards so we have electricity all the time, but when it runs out we go outside and make a fire.

When I was a young woman I used to drink. I'm a Christian person now. Christianity helps people to fight bad things, like alcohol. My belief in God gives me courage.

Eva Valley is a dry community. Before the intervention the drinking people would sit at a community place, along the road to Barunga. All the drinking people sat there together, and it was a safe place. Now, they are drinking along the highway. The roads are dangerous and I'm worried there might be an accident.

We don't know what the Government is planning to do. At Eva Valley, we have got no email, no internet, no newspapers. Most people don't have a TV or a radio, so we can't keep track of what's going on. You need a big outside antenna to get TV reception. Only four or five houses have this. We don't have mobile coverage and we have to use a pay phone - but to use the pay phone we have to drive 100 kilometres into Katherine to buy a phone card. We haven't got a bus. Our bus is too old now, so we have no transport to go into town to get food. We all put in whatever money we've got to pay for a taxi. That costs $190, one way.

The permit system made me feel safe. People could only enter the community with the permission of the traditional owners, so we knew who was coming in. Anybody can come in now. We don't like to have strangers come in. They might bring in drugs and alcohol, and we don't want that.

This Government intervention is making life harder for Aboriginal people. I am worried we might lose our land, our rights. I feel like the Government is attacking our culture, and that it wants to change everything. The Government should be helping to make families strong, but what is happening now is hurting us.

These are really serious matters, and we need to deal with them seriously. We are talking about the future of Aboriginal children. Everything needs to come out in the open. We need to be honest if we are to make better lives for our children. I want to work with Aboriginal organisations, because I feel comfortable with them. The Federal Government has lost our trust.

I am writing this because I want to stand up and protect Aboriginal children in the Northern Territory. We don't want to go back to the days when we got paid in rations, and every community had a white superintendent. We want to move ahead. We want to live and work on our own land. We're not going to let them come and run the show. We're going to stand up. We have rights.

See: Sydney Morning Herald

Bureaucratic buck-passing

2007-10-05T09:57:00.000+09:30

This is why nothing ever gets resolved...

Source: abc.net.au/news/tag/indigenous

"The push for temporary accommodation in Alice Springs has reached a new stalemate, despite one of the locations being given a sacred sites clearance.

Northern Territory Planning Minister Delia Lawrie approved a Commonwealth proposal in March to establish two demountable accommodation sites to ease overcrowding in town camps.

The Dalgetty Road site was then scrapped over a sacred sites issue, but the Aboriginal Areas Protection Authority has now given the go-ahead to the other site at Len Kittle Drive.

The Federal Government asked Ms Lawrie's Department to find a replacement site for Dalgetty Road, but she says it has been unable to find one.

"We've got no Crown land sites that would be suitable for such a purchase and that really does leave the open market for the Commonwealth to pursue," she said.

But a spokesman for Indigenous Affairs and Community Services Minister Mal Brough maintains it is up to the Territory Government to find the second site."

Meanwhile, there's still overcrowding, people still don't have accomodation, plus the sites they are talking about are on the outskirts of town creating other problems in terms of transport and accessibility of town based services. What they're proposing is a band aid for a compound fracture!

The citizenship test

2007-10-04T20:22:00.000+09:30

I was thinking it would be an interesting exercise to get a hold of the new citizenship test and do it with the students up at Utopia - you know, test out how 'Australian' they really are! I have just been looking on the website:

http://www.citizenship.gov.au/test/

Apparantly some of the key 'Australian values' are:

"Equality under the law
All Australians are equal under the law. This means that nobody should be treated differently from anybody else because of their race, ethnicity or country of origin; because of their age, gender, marital status or disability; or because of their political or religious beliefs. Government agencies and independent courts must treat eveyone fairly."

I guess this means that everybody except Aboriginal people. They can be treated differently. We recently repealled the Racial Discrimination Act to ensure that!

"Equality of Opportunity
Australians value equality of opportunity and what's often called a 'fair go'. This means that what someone achieves in life should be a product of their talents, work and effort rather than an accident of birth. No one should be disadvantaged on the basis of their country of birth, cultural heritage, political beliefs, language, gender or religious beliefs"

I guess everyone has equal opportunity but it's the kind of 'Animal farm' logic at work. All Australians have equal opportunity but some have a more equal opportunity than others. If you're white, middle class, English speaking and from an urban area, let's face it you're more likely to have access to and make the most of your 'opportunities'. Not alot of educational programs being delivered in Aboriginal languages even though the UN says children have a right to be educated in their first language!

I guess it's just as well we dont ask Indigenous people to sit the citizenship test given that it's only given in English and it's computer based. Not alot of computers in remote communities last time I checked!

Still I wonder what we would do if Indigenous people did sit the test and fail. Would we tell them to go back where they came from?

Finding silence

2007-10-04T15:41:00.000+09:30

I was woken up this morning by a semi-trailer idling below my bedroom window. This set the tone for the day. Once the truck left, the hydrolic lift being used on the renovations next door beeped its way up and down delivering noisy sheets of tin to the rooftop. All of this, combined with the usual noise of living on a main road where the trucks going by literally make the house shake, set me over the edge today. I decided to abandon the house in favour of a swim. Usually, even if I cannot find quiet and calm anywhere else, I can find it under the water while swimming laps. Usually, but not today. Today a workman decided to repair something with a hammer right next to the lane I was swimming in. Disappointing to say the least! It made me homesick for the desert, for the space and the stillness, for the silence that allows you to really hear things both around you and within.
Oscar Kawagley, my favorite Alaskan author, talked to me when I was there about how we need to make an effort every day to 'quiet the mind'. He suggested that it actually takes us about 20 minutes of silence to quiet the mind and focus on thought, to allow yourself to 'wander into the inside of ecology'. I think that's what I was doing all of those mornings and afternoons in the desert when I went walking. I think that's what happens when I swim (usually!) So on days like today when finding that silence seems impossible I feel horribly out of balance with myself and the world.

That one day in September

2007-09-29T17:07:00.000+09:30

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

2007-09-25T14:31:00.000+09:30

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

2007-09-21T21:38:00.000+09:30

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

2007-09-20T21:24:00.000+09:30

“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

2007-09-18T16:04:00.000+09:30

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

2007-09-17T09:16:00.000+09:30

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

2007-09-17T09:05:00.000+09:30

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

2007-09-16T12:31:00.000+09:30

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

2007-09-07T17:32:00.000+09:30

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

2007-09-06T17:32:00.000+09:30

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

2007-09-04T01:18:00.001+09:30

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

Something other than anger

2007-09-04T01:08:00.000+09:30

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?

Some more photos from Communities in the Centre

2007-08-19T21:10:00.000+09:30

Parting gift

2007-08-17T00:26:00.001+09:30

As Ray Jackson (from the Indigenous Social Justice Association) says, "The NT intervention is John Howard's parting gift to the Minerals Council of Australia".

Bob Brown Parliament speech

2007-08-15T16:34:00.000+09:30

"The Govern-ment has turned it back on the
indigenous people of Australia over the last 10
years. Now we have 600 pages of legis-
lation brought here and the Government says,
`We will suspend standing
orders to ram it through the Senate'.
This is government by the executive and
Parliament is being sidelined. This legislation
goes to the core of what this
nation is, how we relate to the first Australians...
"And what is the Opposition going to
do about it? Nothing. Not a thing. It is an
opposition in name only. This process is
wrong. This process is corrupting this
Parliament. This is Prime Minister
Howard corrupting proper democratic
process, which means we must be informed.
When you are dealing with
people whose lives, future, and culture
are at stake, then you must be informed."

Oxfam's verdict on the legislation

2007-08-14T17:48:00.000+09:30

07 Aug 07

Oxfam Research: Land Rights Act changes detrimental and will not reduce child sex abuse

An Oxfam Australia-commissioned assessment on the proposed amendments to the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act 1976 provides compelling evidence that the proposed changes have no connection with the incidence of child sexual abuse, are likely to jeopardize the effectiveness of the Government’s emergency response in the Northern Territory and are detrimental to the development of Aboriginal communities.

“I could find no evidence of the proposed measures being connected in any way to child sex abuse, and concluded that there may even be some risk of exacerbating the situation if the permit system is relaxed,” said the author of the report, Professor Jon Altman, from the Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research at The Australian National University.

“It is baffling to see the apparent unwillingness to subject the proposed reforms to appropriate community consultation and parliamentary review, especially given the very significant impact that these reforms will have on the human rights, well-being and day-to-day lives of Aboriginal people,” added Prof. Altman.

The report, titled ‘“National Emergency” and Land Rights Reform: Separating fact from fiction’, also concludes that two proposed land rights reform measures - the compulsory acquisition of an undefined number of prescribed communities (Measure 5) and the partial abolition of the permit system (Measure 10) are at direct loggerheads with a number of other measures and are consequently likely to jeopardize the effectiveness of the overarching National Emergency Response. It further argues that the permit abolition is based on an ideological position rather than any factual basis, given there is no evidence of child abuse being any higher in areas where the permit system exists.

“We feel that the compulsion associated with these measures will erode property rights and the economic position of an already severely marginalised community. We are in turn recommending that a Senate Inquiry should be held so that all key stakeholders can have their views heard, and that Aboriginal communities need to give their support and backing to any proposed changes”, said James Ensor, Director of Public Policy and Outreach with Oxfam Australia.

Oxfam further proposes that the first step should be to rigorously asses the workability of the land rights amendments made in 2006 before any further reforms are introduced, and if none of the steps mentioned above are taken that the proposed amendments should be vigorously opposed and not passed by the Parliament.

“It is extremely disappointing that there are very clear, inherent inconsistencies in the overall National Emergency Response. These two measures are completely incompatible with other proposed measures, and they can only add to the underlying distrust and the perception of a ‘land grab’ by some land owners – sentiments that can eventually result in diminishing the success of the actual national emergency response and subsequent reduction of child abuse,” concluded Mr Ensor.

Invited to the table

2007-08-14T17:17:00.000+09:30

During the mid 1600s the colonisation of Indigenous North Americans was in full swing. Then after about 320 years, there was a shift in paradigm, and Anglo-Americans representing their governments and institutions began to invite Indigenous people to their table; the idea being that there might be something to learn from what Indigenous people had to say. It is thus interesting to note that once invited to the table, those who made the invitation were never quite patient enough to really hear the message that was being learned.

…we are still treated as if we do not know our own business and must therefore be either led or told what to do.

On those occasions when we find ourselves at a table of our own making within Anglo created institutions, there are times when we are subjected to people coming to our table only to walk away before our story has fully been told, which many times is due to finding Indigenous paradigms too different from their own.

I would hope that those who would seek to invite indigenous people to their tables can also see merit in not interfering or becoming judgemental when Indigenous people create environments that we can see as culturally proper. I would also hope that when people are invited to come to such places of learning they will sit at our tables and be able to hear the lessons to be learned.

Stephen Greymorning
Arapaho Indian and University Professor

Fred Chaney speaks out again

2007-08-14T10:42:00.000+09:30

Fred Chaney, head of Reconciliation Australia, spoke to Fran Kelly on ABC radio this morning. He, once again, succinctly and wisely outlined the nature of the problems with the legislation that will go through the house today.

It can be found here: http://www.abc.net.au/rn/breakfast/stories/2007/2004310.htm

If you get the chance plese have a listen to what he said. Also, the ABC New pages is keeping on top of pretty much all that is being said on the issue.

Here is the link: http://www.abc.net.au/news/tag/indigenous/

For their protection

2007-08-13T15:12:00.000+09:30

The following is an excerpt from the Aboriginal Protection Act of 1869, commonly thought to be the first in a long line of poilcy documents that led to the removal of Aboriginal 'half caste' children from their families 'for their own protection'. It seems the themes haven;t changed much since 1869 - land, welfare, education and child protection.

Remind me again, how did it work out the first time?

Aboriginal Protection Act 1869 (Vic)

It shall be lawful for the Governor from time to time to make
regulations and orders for any of the purposes hereinafter mentioned, and
at any time to rescind or alter such regulations (that is to say) :—
(I.) For prescribing the place where any aboriginal or any tribe
of aborigines shall reside.
(II.) For prescribing the terms on which contracts for and on
behalf of aboriginals may be made with Europeans, and upon
which certificates may be granted to aboriginals who may be
able and willing to earn a living by their own exertions.
(III.) For apportioning amongst aboriginals the earnings of
aboriginals under any contract, or where aboriginals are located
on a reserve, the net produce of the labor of such aboriginals.
(IV.) For the distribution and expenditure of moneys granted by
Parliament for the benefit of aborigines.
(V.) For the care custody and education of the children of
aborigines.
(VI.) For prescribing the mode of transacting the business of
and the duties generally of the board or any local committee
hereinafter mentioned and of the officers appointed hereunder.

Some 'traditional' welcomes

2007-08-13T12:40:00.000+09:30

These signs have been put up at the entry points to two Central Australian Communities, Santa Teresa (South East of Alice - lots of family connections to Mulga Bore) and Willowra (North West of Alice Springs - we play against their school in our school sports).

Delegation from Central Australia

2007-08-13T11:20:00.000+09:30

Gina Smith
"We’re a group of Central Australian delegates that represent our constituents back home in the Central Area. We just wanted to say that we welcome the child abuse report and intervention of child abuse, but we don’t want our permit system removed because it means so much to our protection of our lands and sacred sites and knowing who can and can’t go there. We had to get permits to come into parliament house – we’re bound by their rules, and our permit system works the same as this. We come here, we have rules that we have to follow, they come to our country they should have to do the same."

Harry Nelson
"We came down here to lobby to the Government about our rights and we’re not too happy about what the Government has done, bamboozling us with the army and the police. People were misled in a way. The presence of the army and the police upset many of our communities and we hope that our message of the last few days that we’ve been staying here in Canberra has been heard by the bosses. Our rights were taken away."

Walter Shaw
"This year’s supposed to be a commemorative year for Aboriginal people in Australia considering the 1967 referendum and NAIDOC. We’re down here in Canberra now fighting for our future existence. We want to be the third party as an equal partner with the Federal Government and the NT Government."

Valda Shannon
"We are particularly offended by the exclusion of the Racial Discrimination Act. We do support some changes to welfare like linking payments to school attendance and child neglect, but the proposal to hold back 50% from everyone is discriminatory and doesn’t encourage positive behavior, and there’s no plan beyond quarantining.
With the permits removed there going to be a lot more problems entering into the community. Who’s going to police the law, the people wandering into the places where they’re supposed to have a permit?"

Gilbert Corbett
"I’m a delegate that will stand by my people to stay on behalf of them, talking about all regions in the Central Land Council. We came here because of the permits. We need to keep strong for ourselves and our sacred sites so we can look after our country so that we can pass everything to our children so that they can carry on."

Lindsay Bookie, Chair of Central Land Council
"With the Land Rights Act everything started, doing land claims to get our land back. We had to go to prove that Australia was our country. We had to show our sacred stories to these governments. We only show that to our young people, not to white men, white women. Now the Government’s pulling it from under our feet and taking it from us again. What are we going to do? They took it away from us in the first place, then we had to prove that it was our country. And the new laws come in, now it’s all going to be taken away from us from under our feet."

What Aboriginal Community Leaders are saying...

2007-08-13T00:50:00.000+09:30

Below is an excerpt from a speech given by Peter Garrett in Parliament House last week. He referenced comments made by Aboriginal Community Leaders from the NT. It should be noted that while at least these Community leaders were from the NT (not Cape York like Noel Pearson is) the leaders represent the Top End, not the people of Central Australia where I live and work.

Aboriginal community leaders, health professionals and other concerned Australian community leaders who met at the Garma Festival health forum at Gulkula, Arnhem Land, call on the Australian government to abandon this legislation. They point out that there has been ‘no negotiation, courtesy or respect shown to Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal community members and health professionals’. They are ‘particularly concerned that there are no evidence based reasons given for the changes to the land permit system and the Northern Territory Aboriginal land rights act’. They specifically say that the government does not have to destabilise communal rights to land to effectively address sexual abuse, social dysfunction or poverty. These Aboriginal leaders point out that the proposed measures bear no resemblance to the ‘Sacred Children’ report that the minister has referred to and that, as such, they have no confidence in their effectiveness. Finally, I note the authors of the Little children are sacred report itself said, ‘The thrust of our recommendations is for there to be consultation and ownership of the community.’ These views then are entirely understandable, given the way that this legislation has come into the House and the reaction from Aboriginal communities to such a heavy-handed process.

Beds are burning

2007-08-12T23:44:00.000+09:30

Make no mistake. We are about to witness a very dark day in the history of our Nation. Legislation is before the Senate that will effectively see Aboriginal people loose their right to control what happens on their land for the second time in history. In the name of 'saving children' Mal Brough, John Howard and tehir cronies have prepared 500 pages of legislation that make sweeping changes to the Racial Discrimination Act and the Land Rights Act. They have also proposed changes to allow Federal Police unheard of powers to act in Northern Territory Communities. All of this in response to the "National Emergency" currently being experienced in the NT. All of this in response to the "Little Children are Sacred" Report, the authors of which are now speaking out very vocally against the proposed legislation, insisting that it does not reflect ANY of the 97 recommendations in the report.

So why is the legislation being put forward. What possible motivation could there be?
1. Subterfuge - be seen to be doing SOMETHING and white middle class suburban Australians wont actually care what the something is. After all Aboriginal people are a long way away to most Australians
2. It's a foot in the door to regain control over Aboriginal Land - not really such a big deal, I mean it's not as if the story of Vincent Lingiari and countless others who fought for the right to their own land all those years ago are all that important on the greater context of our National History.Oh but wait, perhaps it was only fine to give the land back to them when we thought there was nothing to be gained economically? Perhaps now that the World is turning Nuclear again there's something to be said for controlling land rich in Uranium, or at least having access to land that can be used to dump Nuclear waste!

Maybe, just maybe John Howard and Mal Brough are not at all sure that they will have a job after November? How much do you want to bet that either or both of them turn up on the Boards of large Mining Companies with interests in teh Northern Territory?

But let's not just sling mud at John and Mal. They are easy targets. Where the hell is the so called Opposition? How can Warren Snowden, the Federal Minister for Lingiari sit idely by and watch this happen. How the hell is Peter Garratt sleeping at night - how can he sleep while his bed is burning?

The time has come to say fair's fair! This legislation is racist and opportunistic and if we as a Nation allow the Government to get away with it we will hang our heads in shame when questioned by future generations.

To know who you are

2007-08-08T17:52:00.001+09:30

To know who you are, what your place in the world is, and that you strive to seek life, is what self-awareness is all about. It is the highest level of human knowledge, to know oneself so intimately that you are not afraid to tell others of life and to help those who need help with compassion without being dragged down by the troubles of those being helped.

Angayuqaq Oscar Kawagley
Yupiaq Elder

Sorry Business

2007-08-08T17:30:00.000+09:30

I was just speaking to Rosie up at Mulga Bore. She told me there's a funeral on tomorrow. One of the old ladies from Angela's Community has passed away. I knew her pretty well. She was one of the women who first took me hunting. She was the one who put my brother and his friends to shame when it came to using an axe to get sugarbag out of a tree. She was a wise, well respected woman. She was a staunch supporter of the school and of me. She was the holder of many stories, stories that I will now no longer be able to hear her tell. I will miss her. I will notice her absence next year when i go back. I am sorry I will not be there for her funeral.

The power of story

2007-08-08T10:51:00.000+09:30

Angayuqaq Oscar Kawagley is a Yupiaq man from Alaska. He has written a great deal about the world view of the Yupiaq people and has been very influential in helping to reclaim what education means to Alaska native people. Here is what he has to say about the importance of storytelling as a teaching tool:

Mythology is an invaluable pedagogical tool which transcends time. As the storyteller talks, the Yupiaq listeners are thrust into the world of imagination. As the story unfolds, it becomes part of their present. As you imagine and visualise in the minds eye, how could you not become a part of it and it a part of you? There is no separation. The story and words contain the epistemological webbing…..to the outsider attempting to understand the meaning of the experience, it may appear to be merely a story, but to the insider it becomes reality leading to a spiritual orientation in accord with nature. This is quality knowledge whose end is happiness and long life.

Photo albums

2007-08-04T22:21:00.000+09:30

I spent alot of today putting photos of my recent overseas trip in photo albums. I find it funny that often something I didn't enjoy much at the time becomes a fond memory when I look at the photo of it. Perhaps we only remember the good bits? Perhaps the real enjoyment of an experience is in the retelling of it?

Lonely for that country

2007-07-30T16:12:00.000+09:30

I arrived back from overseas having decided at some point during those three months that I will go back to the desert next year. I thought this would free me up to enjoy my six months in Melbourne. To some extent it does. I still seem to spend a large part of everyday feeling 'lonely for that country'. Here's what I miss:
1. The quiet (that may be reflective of the fact that I am living right on Hoddle St at the moment!)
2. The stars
3. The cold nights and warm, clear days
4. The sunsets
5. Sharing a joke with the women at Mulga Bore
6. My job
7. The pattern of my days up there - a walk first thing, simple breakfast, full day of work, yoga, a walk at sunset, cooking good food for dinner and knitting in front of the TV before bed
8. Going 'out bush'
9. Sleeping in my swag
10. Talking Anmatyerr
11. Knowing where everything is in Alice and not having to spend 40 minutes in traffic to get there
12. the big sky and the perfect combination of colours
13. Not being identified as different or strange for what I do for a job - up there it's actually a common job to have!

I'm sure the next few months will pass quickly and when I'm back there I'm sure I'll have moments where I will wonder why I missed it all so much. But still, it's nice to know where home is.

Letter to the Age

2007-07-08T22:19:00.000+09:30

There was an opinion piece in the Sunday Age today written by Terry Lane. I was outraged by pretty much everything he said but in particular I was dismayed by his suggestions that "we may be as sentimental as we like about indigenous culture, but it is simply incompatible with real life and must change or be changed....Realistically there is no alternative to assimilation". I have written a response and sent it to the Age. Here's what I wrote:

The real world?

Exactly what part of the ‘real world’ does Terry Lane want Aboriginal Australians to assimilate to? The ‘real’ world where 8 people get stabbed when they go to a party? Or the ‘real’ world which is obsessed with Terrorist threats? Yes Terry, obviously the ‘practices of traditional marriage’ need to change. Better that they join the ‘real’ world where one in three marriages end in divorce. And Aboriginal parents really should join the ‘real’ world on parenting practices too. Better they get full time jobs working ridiculous hours to pay for a mortgage and lifestyle they can’t afford while their children go home to empty houses and spend their time playing computer games and injecting crystal meth.
How is it that an educated man, in the year 2007, honestly believes that ‘there is no alternative to assimilation’? I know you are trying to be controversial Terry; you’re baiting the hook. But you know what? I’m biting, because I can’t in good conscience let anyone spout such vile, poisonous statements without saying “You are wrong!” The Aboriginal people who are part of my life do not want or need to be assimilated into the ‘real’ world. They are strong, traditional people who look after their children, send them to school and think carefully about the sort of future they want. The idea that they would be better off assimilated is a lie, it is ignorance. I can’t believe The Sunday Age is giving you space to spread your ignorance as fact.

Lisa Hall
School Teacher
Remote Central Australia

Aunties are scared

2007-07-08T12:03:00.000+09:30

I spoke to some of my friends from Mulga Bore yesterday. We hadn't spoken recently because I have been overseas for 3 months, so most of the conversation was catching up with any news or gossip they had. About halfway through the conversation Tanya asked me if I had seen the newspapers or on TV? I told her yes and asked her if there was something specific that was worrying her. She said "All that stuff what John Howard is saying". I told her it was big news down here too and I asked her how her family and the Community was feeling about it. She basically told me that there was alot of confusion and misunderstanding about what was happening. She said "i try to read those newspapers and watch the TV and then explain it to people but it's little bit hard". Tanya speaks English VERY well. She has no problems expressing herself and understands everything that takes place in a normal English conversation. If SHE is having trouble understanding what is being reported, I can only imagine the fear and misunderstanding recent event have caused for others.
I tried to explain what was happening as best I could. She understood that it was about sexual abuse, but didn't understand why they were talking about welfare payments and the Army and Police coming out to Communities. I couldn't fin d a good reason either.
A little while later I asked if she and Maggie (her sister) were still planning to visit me down here in Melbourne. For ages they have been talking about coming down for a visit and going to see Collingwood play at the MCG. They have been quite excited about it. When I raised the subject Tanya said "Maggie don't want to go now". When asked why not she replied, "She's scared to leave those kids. They might get taken away when we're gone."

Someone who knows what he is talking about

2007-07-07T19:34:00.000+09:30

Taken from page 21 of the "Little Children are Sacred" report

Mr Fred Chaney, in retiring from the
National Native Title Tribunal, was asked why successive
governments have failed so comprehensively to turn the
story of Aboriginal deprivation around. He was being
interviewed on the ABC’s 7.30 Report on 19 April 2007
and replied:

And one of the things I think we should have learned by
now is that you can’t solve these things by centralised
bureaucratic direction. You can only educate children in
a school at the place where they live. You can only give
people jobs or get people into employment person by
person. And I think my own view now is that the lesson
we’ve learned is that you need locally based action, local
resourcing, local control to really make changes.
But I think governments persist in thinking you can
direct from Canberra, you can direct from Perth or
Sydney or Melbourne, that you can have programs
that run out into communities that aren’t owned by
those communities, that aren’t locally controlled and
managed, and I think surely that is a thing we should
know doesn’t work.
So I am very much in favour of a model which I suppose
builds local control in communities as the best of those
Native Title agreements do, as has been done in the
Argyle Diamond Mine Agreement, as is being done in
Kununurra. Not central bureaucracies trying to run
things in Aboriginal communities. That doesn’t work.

They’re locked into systems which require central
accounting, which require centralised rules and
regulations. They’re not locally tailored. The great thing
about working with a mining company in an
Aboriginal community is that the mining company has
the flexibility to manage towards outcomes locally with
that community.
The great thing about the education projects in which
I’m involved is that we can manage locally for the
outcomes that we want to achieve locally. Once you try
and do it by remote control, through visiting ministers
and visiting bureaucrats fly in, fly out – forget it.

What the report really says

2007-07-07T18:56:00.001+09:30

The recently published "Little Children are Sacred" report is a good document. At over 300 pages long I am not going to claim to have read the whole thing, but I have read through most of section 1 and have gone over the 97 recommendations fairly thoroughly. The only thing I can think is that the authors of this report must be wondering which report John Howard is reading because his actions and the actions of Mal Brough's Department in no way reflect the sentiments, emphasis or direct wording of the actual report.

For example no where can I find a recommendation that requests, suggests or even alludes to bringing in the Federal Police or the Army.

The report does recommend, however:

28. That the Police actively recruit more Aboriginal police
officers, Aboriginal Community Police Officers and
Police Auxiliaries and to station more female officers in
remote communities with a preference for Aboriginal
female police officers.

I wonder also about all of these Federal Police and Army personnel who are being generously donated from all the Southern States, how much cross-cultural training do you think they have received in preparation for their 'ongoing' work in remote Communities? Especially when the report specifically states:

91. That compulsory cross-cultural training for all
government personnel be introduced, with more
intensive cross-cultural capability training for those
officers who are involved in service delivery and
policy development in respect of Aboriginal people.
Specifically, government to introduce:
a. a comprehensive Aboriginal culture induction
program for all new teachers to the Territory and
for existing teachers about to take up positions in
remote schools (it is recommended this program
run for three weeks full time)
b. training in Aboriginal language concepts for
those teachers already teaching in or about to
commence at remote schools to promote an
understanding of the nuances of Aboriginal
society.

92. That government personnel who are working closely
with Aboriginal people be encouraged to undertake
relevant language training and such encouragement
should be accompanied by appropriate incentives.

I can't find the recommendation(s) in the report that in any way refer to revoking the permit system and thereby diminishing Native Title. I'm sorry John, explain to me why that is wrapped up in the issue of Child sexual abuse? (I'll try to avoid any analogies about Iraq, Oil and Weapons of Mass Destruction!)

I did however, find these recommendations related to Aboriginal law being respected and upheld, which I think hold alot of merit:

71. That, as soon as possible, the government facilitate
dialogue between the Aboriginal law-men and law-
women of the Northern Territory and senior members
of the legal profession and broader social justice
system of the Northern Territory. That such dialogue
be aimed at establishing an ongoing, patient and
committed discourse as to how Aboriginal law and
Northern Territory law can strengthen, support and
enhance one another for the benefit of the Northern
Territory and with a specific emphasis on maintaining
law and order within Aboriginal communities and the
protection of Aboriginal children from sexual abuse.

72. That, based on the dialogue described in the
recommendation above above, the government gives
consideration to recognising and incorporating into
Northern Territory law aspects of Aboriginal law that
effectively contribute to the restoration of law and
order within Aboriginal communities and in particular
effectively contribute to the protection of Aboriginal
children from sexual abuse.

73. That the government commit to the establishment
and ongoing support of Community Justice Groups
in all those Aboriginal communities which wish to
participate

No where did I see a recommendation calling for the compulsory health screening of all Indigenous Children. In fact the only reference to screening that I could find related to the screening of staff being employed to work with Indigenous Children.

No where do I see recommendations saying that welfare payments should be taken away or replaced by food vouchers. No where did I see it recommended that the Government should step in and tell Indigenous people how to spend their baby bonus, when they would not dream of doing this for a white parent!

Time and again though I saw recommendations acknowledging how under funded services to remote Communities are and requesting money to enable the continuation of programs that are already working but struggling due to bureaucratic red tape in Canberra and Darwin.

Perhaps the most important recommendation of all, I thought was:

3. That the Northern Territory and Australian
Governments develop long term funding programs
that do not depend upon election cycles nor are
limited by short-term outcomes or overly bureaucratic
reporting conditions and structures.

When will the Goverment stop making decisions that make sense in a Canberra Office, but no sense in a Community in the middle of the desert?

Really John, really Mal, which report are you working from?

Read the report for yourself: http://www.nt.gov.au/dcm/inquirysaac/pdf/bipacsa_final_report.pdf

This is no Hurricane Katrina!

2007-07-07T18:16:00.000+09:30

There has been alot of attention in the media recently directed towards remote Indigenous Communities in Central Australia. This is a subject close to my heart, as many people know. Having lived in Central Australia for 8 years and spent almost 5 of those teaching on a remote Indigenous Community, the issues, circumstances and people being focused on by the media are personal to me. I am unashamedly emotionally invested in the debate. The Aboriginal men that I know, almost as well as I know my own brothers, are not sexual abuse offenders. They are not drunks. They look after children as much as the women do. The Community where I teach is functional. The school where I teach had an average of 45 students attending each week last year. The Senior men have just negotiated an agreement to develop a fruit farm and an arts centre to provide employment for members of the Community (see Centralian Advocate, Friday March 23, 2007). But you will struggle to hear that story in the media. It's not controversial enough. But it DOES exist.
Yes, Indigenous Communities in Central Australia have problems. These Communities are located in the middle of the Australian Outback. They are remote, they have limited essential services and the services they do have are maintained by a revolving door of 'whitefella' workers who rarely stick around long enough to achieve real development or empowerment for the Community members.
The Northern Territory is a complicated place. There is a North/South Divide, and then within the South an East/West divide and a Town/Bush divide/ I have lived in the place 8 years and am only beginning to understand the complexity and how to respond to it.

Mal Brough was in Central Australia this week. He arrived on Wednesday and left on Saturday and in that time visited at least 3 seperate remote Communities. He would have spent at least half that time travelling between them! Time well spent? What makes John Howard or Mal Brough think that they can go in, or worse still send others in, for only a few days at a time and hope to come away with any kind of understanding of what is going on there?

The recently published "Little Children are Sacred" Report was researched and written over the past 8 months. During that time the Committee visited and met with an impressive list of remote Communities, people and organisations. By their own admission they did not go everywhere and they rightly make no apology for this. With their timeline it would have been a geographic impossibility. On page 38 of the report it states:

"The Inquiry made a number of visits to Alice Springs
to meet with various organisations and individuals.
Remote communities visited by the Inquiry included
Yuendumu, Papunya, Kintore, Docker River, Mutitjulu
and Hermannsburg."

Exploration the contact history of these Communities would reveal a great deal about the reasons why these types of Communities are suffering greater problems than others. (For more info read "Crossed Purposes" by Ralph Folds) The problems are not recent or new. They are the result disconnection with country and culture which is effectively disconection from yourself. Tradtional Indigneous people don't see themselves as seperate to the land but as part of it. It is something we 'whitefellas' will never fully appreciate. So when you get forcibly removed from a part of yourself, all you are left with is a painful hole and for many the best option is pain relief in whatever form is closest to hand.

No these problems are not new. This is no Hurricane Katrina! This is the 200 year drought!

Home

2007-07-02T23:24:00.000+09:30

The Age, Saturday 30th June, 2007

Well, I'm back in the country! After 20 fights, 17 cities, 6 countries and countless different beds and showers, I'm back in Melbourne and happy to finally have my own space. Agter what can only be described as a turbulent first six months of the year, i am taking pleasure in the little things - being able to hang my clothes up in a cupboard, being able to leave all of my toiletries out on the bathroom bench, being able to cook for myself, having a place of my own to come and go from. I am looking forward to being able to invite people over, and entertain. I am looking forward to having visitors to stay. In short I am looking forward to the routine and stability of having a home.

But then, I have come back to a political climate that is full of news about the place that is more my home than here. I have come back to Politicians creating 'solutions' for a situation that they cannot possibly understand in the space of their fly by night visits. i have come back to an urban population of friends and aquaintances who expect me to be able to summarise in the time it takes to eat dinner, what it has taken me 5 years to learn.

Yes I am 'home', i am back in the country, but I will not really be home for a few months yet!

Update on Sam

2007-07-02T22:58:00.000+09:30

For those of you who know Sam Charlesworth, i am happy to report that she is doing well in India. In true Sam style she has spent time discovering her favourite cafe, favourite restaurant and favourite weekend getaway town. She is universally adored by all of the Indians I met and she's made lots of friends!!! People literally run across beaches to meet her!

Seriously though, without wanting to exaggerate, she is doing really well in what is a pretty full on environment. She has learnt to haggle with Auto rickshaw drivers and shop keepers. She can reel off expressions in Tamil that impress the locals and she is well known and liked by all of the Chirch of South India staff. I for one am looking forward to the stories she will have to tell when she gets back and am gladd that i have been there to see some of the things she will be talking about.

Hidden in plain sight

2007-07-02T22:55:00.000+09:30

India seems to be a fairly conservative country in terms of male/female relationships. Arranged marriages are still occurring and public displays of affection are almost non existent – except on the beach it would seem! We walked down to Marina Beach one day to see the longest beach in Asia. We were quite conspicuous I have to say – a couple of white girls tramping along in the sand! At one point a whole family came up to us just to shake our hands! But what struck me most about the beach was that dotted all over it were couples sitting together, talking intimately, even kissing. They were there in plain sight, but because the expanse of beach is so huge it was the perfect place to ‘hide’ The following day we were driven along the road next to the beach and Rebecca, who is the Principal of the Deaf School, described it as a ‘lovers paradise’. When I asked her if she knew this from personal experience she let out a big chuckle and said “OF COURSE!”

Beep Beep

2007-06-26T09:57:00.000+09:30

Have just spent the last week in India visiting my friend Sam. Hats off to her for committing to be there for a year. I found one week exhausting enough! To say I have been in India is really overstating it. I have been to two cities in one region of the southern half of India. What that taught me was basically how huge and diverse India is and I think you would possibly need many years to say that you've 'seen India'. I can understand why people go back again and again. It can be a hard place though. In the city of Chennai the traffic is horrendous. I just kept thinking 'my Dad would HATE this!' The one road rule is that there are no road rules. One Indian woman said to me that Indian drivers are the most skillful in the world and that if you can drive in India you can drive anywhere. Frankly I'd be scared to attempt driving in India. But traffic is the order of the day in Chennai and EVERYONE uses their horns ALL THE TIME!! Mind you for al the craziness there seemed to be some order to it and people actually got where they needed to go. In fact they did so in some amazing ways. People seem to be quite skilled, for example, at riding a motorbike whilst talking on their mobile phone or even text messaging. Sam and my favorite moment was when it rained and we witnessed many people riding bikes and motorbikes while at the same time holding an umbrella to keep the rain off. The women seem to be able to elegantly ride side saddle on the backs of motorbikes in Saris. It is not uncommon to see three or four people on a single bike. I watched with horror as a father rode his motorbike with his THREE children balancing effortlessly in various positions (none of them wearing helmets!) They even posed for a photo for us. Our main means of transport during the week was the 'Auto-rickshaw'. This is a sort of 3 wheeled motorbike with a little covered bench seat at the back - just big enough for two passengers, but often chauffering more than that. By the end of the week I had decided that the way to deal with traffic in India is simply to see it as part of the fun, sit back and enjoy the ride!

Avenue Q

2007-06-13T19:00:00.000+09:30

I went to see a show on the West End the other night. Was it Chicago? Phantom of the Opera? The Lion King? No none of the classics. Nothing predictable. In fact I went and saw a puppet show. But not just any puppet show. This was Avenue Q; an incredibly funny, extremely adult spoof of Sesame Street. Honestly I saw puppets doing things I never imagined possible! But it was hilarious and I have to admit remarkably touching in places. I highly recommend it as a show to see if you are in London (or New York for that matter!)

The Toilet Museum

2007-06-09T22:47:00.000+09:30

Spent a couple of days in Manchester visiting my friend Cath. Based on her recommendation and that of her brother Cameron, I paid a visit to the Toilet Museum (AKA the Museum of Science and Industry). It is located underneath an old 1830's warehouse and comes complete with a reconstructed 1800's sewer (model rats and fake excrement included!) which pumps out appropriate odours to give you the authentic experience of the day! As if that wasn't enough, there are also working models of toilets through the ages. My personal favoite was the one pictured - the first water flushing toilet, invented in Halifax. There are other good things to see at this museum but this is definitely the best bit!

The culinary delights of Ireland

2007-06-02T05:32:00.000+09:30

Who would have thought that the culinary leg of my journey would take place in country Ireland. I have eaten the most amazing food during the course of the last week. I was treated to an absolutely gorgeous meal at the Nuremore Hotel near Carrickmacross in which the wine complimented the food more perfectly than I had ever experienced. The delight of that meal however was made more enjoyable by the fact that I was with my friends Sarah and Sarajit who have themselves opened a fantasic restaurant in nearby Ardee. Sarajit is arguably one of the best chefs in Ireland and with Sarah's expertise in food, wine, cheese and her understanding of what makes restaurants work, they have definitely got a success story on their hands. The menu is varied to suit all tastes but I find the curries to be the real highlight, aswell as the Indian bread which is out of this world. The Bailey's cheesecake is also to die for. Anyone living in or planning to visit Ireland would be well advised to make a visit to this restaurant a must. The name is The Fushia House and it is located 5 minutes from the M1 just near the Ardee by pass road. If you have to come out of your way to get here, do it! You will not regret it.

Laughing in French

2007-06-02T05:08:00.000+09:30

Anyone who has learnt another language knows that one of the true joys is when you finally get the jokes, or learn how to tell a joke in that language. There is so much comedy to be had also in the mispeaking and and the minunderstandings. The French woman who doesn't understand that the French word 'Vierge' can be interpreted in English as both 'Virgo' the astrological sign and 'Virgin' and accidentally uses the wrong one to describe herself. The Australian woman who mispornounces the word for queue and accidently says that she was making an 'arse' in the bank. If you are able to laugh at yourself then there is much fun to be had with language.
One of the things that made me sad when Jerome died was that we had so many jokes together. Jokes that only he and I laughed at most of the time. Without him those jokes died too.
But last week, staying with my friends Magalie and Arno in Normandy, I rediscovered my ability to laugh in French. We laughed alot but there was one night in particular when we were laughing so hard about the untranslatability of certain idiomatic expressions, it actually started to hurt! Side splitting laugher is such a gift and I feel as though a little piece of what i lost when Jerome died has been given back to me.

Le temps passe

2007-05-25T19:35:00.000+09:30

I can’t believe it’s been 14 year since I lived in Lyon. I stepped out of the airport shuttle and into Part Dieu station and it felt like yesterday that I was here. The smells of the boulangeries, the taste of the bread, the dog poo on the ground everywhere and the smell of cigarettes all pervading; these are the things that make Lyon feel, taste and smell like home. It’s an ugly city really, full of pollution and urban sprawl. But when I was 18 it felt like the most exotic place on earth. The old cobblestone streets of Vieux Lyon (which are still beautiful), la Place Bellecour, Cathedrale Fouviere, Parc de la Tete d'Or, and the two rivers La Saone and Le Rhone, they all bring back such memories of a magical year which, perhaps more than any other, helped shape the direction of my life. The friendships I made that year are some of the most enduring of my life. I don’t see those friends often as they are spread across the far reaches of the world, but when we do see each other the bonds that began here in Lyon hold strong. As I was taking the metro today I saw a group of 4 or 5 girls, maybe 18 or 19 years old. They were mimicking the metro announcement in French just as my friends and I used to. Then they started chatting and laughing aloud in English, just as we used to. I wonder if they will still be friends in 14 years? How will their lives have changed and what memories will they still hold dear when they return?

Jerome

2007-05-25T19:34:00.000+09:30

It’s a sunny spring afternoon and I am sitting in a familiar backyard. It is the backyard belonging to my friend Jerome, or rather his parents. It is the backyard where we swam and had BBQ’s. It is the backyard where I put Jerome to sleep with a shoulder massage. It is where he first kissed me and where I fell in love with him. It wasn’t real love I suppose. I was a wide eyed 18 year old Australian girl on her first trip overseas and he was a charming French man; of course I would think I was in love with him. No, I wasn’t in love with him, but I did love him very much. He made me laugh, he teased me, he rescued me on more than one occasion and we just loved being in each other’s company. We had our favourite tape that we would play whenever we drove somewhere and there was one song that was ours and no one knew it except him and me. It is strange to sit in his backyard and know that I wont see him. I will stay here with his mother and I’m sure we will talk about him and perhaps she will be able to shed some light on why he did it. Maybe it doesn’t matter why. He’s gone and being here is sad because of that. I wish many things – that I hadn’t left it so long before I came back, that I had told him how much he meant to me, that I had known he was unhappy. Perhaps I have come here simply to tell him goodbye.

Th...th...th...th

2007-05-22T03:11:00.000+09:30

Friends of mine recently showed me a video on You Tube. It is the very funny encounter of a 'translator' dealing with people from several different linguistic background. I highly recommend it

(here is the link: http://www.metacafe.com/watch/301400/the_translator_catherine_tate/)

Anyway, once you watch this video you will appreciate why I have been walking around Madrid and all I can think of is "th..th..th..th.." It's true my lack of Spanish has not helped the situation but I always feel that i experience a place less when I dont speak the language. I always wonder what people I may have met, what experiences I may have had, if only I had been able to communicate with people better. That said, Madrid is a beautiful city and perhaps one day, once I have taken the time to learn Spanish, I will return and discover what I missed out on during this visit!

Lanzarote

2007-05-22T02:52:00.000+09:30

I can't say that i would ever have had a notion to visit the Canary Islands if i didn't know someone who lived there. Having said that I am glad that I had the excuse as the one Canary island that i visited, Lanzarote, was fascinating and strangely beautiful. Form substantially by Lava flows throughout the last several thousand years, the island has a rugged, brittle surface to it. Most people cling to the edges and enjoy the crystal clear aquamarine waters and the volcanic sand beaches. But if you take the time to venture inland you see the artistry that a river of fire can leave in its wake. There are giant lava bubbles just below the surface of the whole island. Huge caverns of air creating elaborate and often colourful rock formations. Thanks to the genious of Lanzarote's most famous artist , Cesar Manrique, aswell as the islands most unappreciated artist, Jesus Soto (Elana would want me to mention Soto!) these lava bubbles have been transformed into restaurants and concert halls, art galleries and homes. These artisits sought to integrate Nature, art and architecture so that the natural beauty of the place was accessible, but more than this, was a part of everyday life. Cesar Manrique's own house was the perfect example of this. Built on top of a lava field containing 5 lava bubbles, the structure moves and flows in, around, through, on top of the caves and the landscape and the house meld into one integrated being. i cannot speak for the other Canaries, but this one is certainly worth a visit.

Old friends

2007-05-22T02:48:00.000+09:30

Dont you just love the kind of friends who are like an old pair of shoes. You may not have worn them for a while but they feel comfortable straight away!

Shooter

2007-05-13T23:29:00.000+09:30

For fans of Happy Gilmore, look who i bumped into in New York!

The whitest girl on the planet visits the Bronx

2007-05-11T13:02:00.000+09:30

Remember that song they used to sing on Sesame Street 'One of these things is not like the other one, one of these things just doesn't belong'? Well that was what was going through my head yesterday as I caught a subway into the Bronx Borough of New York. Tom, who I am staying with, works as a Maths Consultant for about 10 schools located in the Bronx and he had invited me to come with him and visit a school. On the ride there I became increasingly aware that I was the palest skinned, blondest person in our subway car. This became even more obvious as we left the subway and walked down Fordham Rd, the main Strret of the Bronx. I was conscius of how I looked, how I walked and how I spoke. I was accuetely aware that I had stepped out of my comfort zone. Once we got to school and made it through the metal detectors I was signed in and introduced around. Staff members were very friendly and welcoming and were happy to have me visit their classes. Inside these classes I witnessed some of the best teaching I have seen in my career. Great practictioners who have created fantastic learning environments for their students and believe me the students are rising to meet the high expectations being set. One of the campuses of the school I visited was called 'The West Bronx Academy for the Future'. What a great name for a school!
When I finally left the school and walked (by myself) back up Fordham Rd to the subway station I did not feel as awkward or out of place. I moved beyond my own sense of strangeness and instead saw this as the community of those children, the Community that they will grow up in, the community that they will help to shape in the future. Suddenly it didn't seem so foreign any more.

Interesting MoMA installation

2007-05-10T15:14:00.000+09:30

There was an interesting installation at the MoMA which involved an artist drawing directly onto one of the walls of the museum. The result was some pretty interesting socio-political graffitti. Here's a sample. More photos on the 'my photos' page.

MoMA

2007-05-10T15:06:00.000+09:30

This afternoon was magical. I spent it in the company of Van Gogh, Monet, Matisse, Kandinsky, Klimt and Picasso at the Museum of Modern Art. Up until now my favorite gallery in the world was the Musee d'Orsay in Paris but the MoMA has certainly equalled it in my mind. It is hard to express exactly what it feels like to stand in the same room as Vincent's 'Starry Night', or Monet's 'Water Lillies'. These paintings that have somehow been part of my soul for so long, standing before them and seeing the contours and the texture and the size of them, it's like walking around in heaven.

Let's Go Yankees!

2007-05-10T15:01:00.000+09:30

Yankee Stadium has got to be one of the great sporting venues of the world and despite all of the nay-sayers I really enjoyed my first baseball game. I think I would really get into it if I lived in New York. Unfortunately the Yankees lost the night I went but I got to see the A-Rod, Alex Rodriguez bat, and I saw bases loaded a couple of times and a home run (by the other team, to win them the game!) I have decided that Johnny Damon is my favorite player!

Central Park

2007-05-10T14:52:00.000+09:30

I spent a beautiful Monday afternoon wandering around Central Park. I had planned to only spend an hour or so there and then go on to do other things. The park persuaded me to stay longer and I'm glad I did. Here are a few photos from my wanderings. If you want to see more, click on the 'my photos' link on the right.

New York

2007-05-06T14:37:00.000+09:30

New York is intoxicating. It is so loud and busy and crammed with people and vehicles moving in every possible direction at every possible moment. But here's the unexpected bit. New York is full of beauty and warmth. The architecture has been thoughtfully crafted and built to endure the tests of time. City planners have taken the time to create green leafy spaces in amoungst the skyscrapers so that you can often forget you're in one of the biggest urban centres in the world. It has that 'centre of the universe' feeling to it, the sort of feeling I have only ever experienced in London. But unlike London which leans toward the more serious tones of life, New York has a casualness to it, a sense of welcome and safety that I wasn't expecting. I finished my first day in New York with a visit to the top of the Empire State Building to see new York by night. It was so peaceful up there, so quiet and calm and incredifbly beautiful.

Waterfall birthday

2007-05-04T23:29:00.000+09:30

I celebrated my 33rd birthday with a visit to one of the wonders of the world - Niagra Falls. The falls themselves were genuinely breathtaking and I can only imagaine what spiritual significance they must have had to the original inhabitants of that land. I also wonder about the experience of the Europeans exploring the area for the first time, perhaps sailing down the Niagra River as the roar of the falls became clearer and louder. I imagaine the phrase 'backpaddle' may have been used! The only disappointing thing about the experience was the township that has grown around the falls. Imagine if you will every possible tacky kind of sideshow experience and you will have the main street of Niagra Falls, ON. It's the complete opposite of the beautiful nature experience the Falls should be. Why is it we humans feel compelled to ruin what is a perfectly beautiful landscape?

Finnian

2007-05-04T23:24:00.000+09:30

I have been visiting friends Jason and Sarah in Toronto for the past week. It's such a tresure to have friends around the world who you just feel at home with. The visit was made even more special because I got to meet their beautiful son Finn. He's way too charming for his own good and is just a little bundle of wonderful. I know that the next time I see him he will be much bigger and he wont remember this visit, but I certainly will.

Finished

2007-04-29T11:51:00.000+09:30

I have finished my research. Hooray! I wok up this morning and thought to myself "Today I dont have to ask anyone anything about Education! Today I dont have to introduce myself and explain where I come from and explain how what people are doing in this place relates to what I do. Today I dont have to convince anyone to share something of themselves so that I can learn from them." Dont get me wrong. The last 5 weeks of reasearch have been amazing. I have been to some remarkable places and met great people who have actually been very generous in what they have shared with me. I feel lucky because along the way I have made new friends. But tonight I am sleeping in the house of old friends. Friends who know me and have been part of my story for a while now. I am with people who know something of what my life was like prior to coming overseas and who know the right questions to ask. And when I go to bed I can read my book without thinking that I should be reading this academic paper or that historical account. And tomorrow when I wake up I will be on holidays.

Canada

2007-04-27T03:28:00.000+09:30

I'm in Canada now. I spent a long day travelling from Alaska to Vancouver and stayed only about 4 days in British Columbia. That definitely was not long enough as it is a really beautiful area. The drive from Vancouver up to the Okanagan Valley was a real treat and at times we were driving above the tree tops.
Edmonton has been less pictoresque but the friendliness of the people here has more than made up for it. I have had some great days visiting schools and reservations and meeting people from many of the different First Nations, Metis and Inuit groups here in Western Canada.
My research finishes at the end of this week and the hoiday begins. Yay!

Leaving Alaska

2007-04-18T13:57:00.000+09:30

Alaska is an improbable place. It is vast and rugged and cold. It has unreachable mountains and frozen seas, rivers and lakes. It has a capital city which cannot be reached by road - only by air or sea. It has a temperature swing of 150 degrees (F). But still there is life here. There is amazing wild life such as I may never see again. There is a remarkable history of the first inhabitants of this place, the Inupiaqs, the Athabascans, the Yupiaq, the Aluets, and all of the other groups that make up the 20 language groups of Alaska. They showed repect and love of the land and trusted that they would be given what they needed to survive the cold hard winters. And survive them they did developing along the way an amazing collection of stories and knowledge about the cylce of life in the frozen North. Then there are those who live there now. The 'outsiders' who most often come from somewhere else but have grown to love their new home and have undertaken great feats of engineering to make the hard to reach places easier to reach. They are the ones who thought to build a tunnel directly through a mountain that takes 10 minutes to drive through. They are the ones who have built bridges so that traintracks and roads could be laid. They are the ones who have seen to the development of airports and shopping centres and oil pipelines to ensure economic 'progress' in Alaska. Rightly or wrongly they too have their place in this place.
I dont know that I could live here. It is too 'other' for me. The mountains are too high and everything is too white. The seasons are too stark and the differential between day and night, light and dark, summer and winter is too much for me to want to adjust to.
I'm sure that people would say the same about where I live. Maybe that's why I understand why, improbable a place as it is, people yearn for Alaska and call it home.

Wildlife

2007-04-18T13:45:00.000+09:30

Spent my last two days in Alaska on the Kenai Penninsula. A very differnt landscape and atmsphere there than it was in the interior. The mountains are even bigger, and I didn't think that was possible. They are majestic and awe inspiring and somehow beyond the realms of my imagination.
Once I arrived in Seward, the seaside town that was my base for the two days, the highlight was a Whale and wildlife boat cruise around Resurrection Bay. We saw a pair of Humpback whales aswell as sea otters, sea lions, bald eagles, mountain goats and all manner of sea birds. It beggars belief how they al manage to survive in that environment during the bleak winters. I think the whales have the right idea. They spend the winter in Hawaii and the summer in Alaska!
I was literally surorunded by absolute beauty for the length of the cruise and it was almost overwhelming - almost!

Howard

2007-04-12T06:47:00.000+09:30

I just got back from Howard's camp. I had to walk on water to get there! Howard Luke is an Athabaskan man who lives up river from Fairbanks about 10 miles. His camp is cut off from the mainland by the Chena river which freezes over in the winter. You can walk the half mile across the river to get to his camp when the ice is thick, or in the summer you can get across there in a boat. There's a flag you can raise at the landing to show Howard you want to come over and visit and he will come over in his boat to pick you up. Traversing the river today was touch and go as the weather is getting warmer and the ice is breaking up. Howard is a highly respected Senior Elder of the local community. One of the local schools has been named after him. He has written his own book telling his life story of growing up in the Athabaskan way and he still lives a traditional life of hunting and fishing in his camp where he lives by himself. He is a modern traditional man. He knows how to hunt moose, smoke fish, trap beaver and build a sweat lodge. He also has two snow machines, a solar powered cell phone and an outboard motor boat. He was kind enough to show me around his camp and tell me a bit about his life growing up in Alaska. What a great morning and how cool to have walked across a frozen river.

Lines of desire

2007-04-11T11:30:00.000+09:30

Apparantly those little well trodden paths that shorten the distance between A and B are called "Lines of Desire". Instead of following the designated footpath or road, people see where they want to get to and make their own way in that direction in the most direct way possible. As the snow has been melting here I have seen the evidence of lots of desire lines. Sometimes I feel like my journey through life is like a line of desire. It's as if there are these well established paths that most of the people in the world seem to be on, but my desire is leading me somewhere else. I can see where I want to go and am having to tread my own path to get there.