Media Release:   Tuesday  28/06/11

The Only Intervention Needed

“The only intervention needed in the Northern Territory is an intervention in communication” Richard Trudgen, author of Why Warriors Lie Down and Die, responds to the news that the Gillard Government will spend six weeks in talks with Indigenous leaders looking for new ideas to deal with the disadvantage that Aboriginal people in the Northern Territory experience.

“The Government needs to turn away from paternalistic programs and deliver real programs that empower the first Australians.

Right across the remote areas of Australia Aboriginal people, who speak an ‘original Australian language’ as their home language, are cut off from life saving and life changing information that other Australians receive in excess.” explains Richard.

For most of these Aboriginal people, English is still a very foreign language, which means that a visit to or from government authorities, service providers, or a trip to the doctor or hospital is a frightening and confusing experience of powerlessness. For their children, schooling is traumatic, dumbfounding and demeaning; resulting in young people having no hope for themselves in a world they cannot understand.

Even in important meetings with government or other statutory bodies, these first Australians are forced to receive information in English. This means they do not understand what is being said and due process cannot occur. They are deliberately locked out of the modern information era, leaving them to fill hospitals, jails, rehabilitation centres and unemployment queues and remain living on the fringe of Australian society, at a massive cost burden to the Australian community.

Witiyana Marika and Richard Trudgen play a Manikay (Songline) at Bridging the Gap seminars.

These Australians need news, current affairs, general and personal information in a language they can understand. Let’s level the playing field. They could receive information through language centres and radio services. Whole communities could learn to speak English through ‘learn English’ radio programs. Information programs in their language will close the gap permanently.

“How can feeding children in schools, creating a generation of super dependent young adults, ever close the gap? Let’s spend the public purse on programs that will change things for the good by giving all Australians access to good information. An intervention in communication would solve so many problems far more effectively!”

This is one of the issues that Richard Trudgen, Witiyana Marika and Dianne Gondarra address in their Bridging the Gap seminar series, held in capital cities around Australia. The next seminars will be held in Sydney, Brisbane and Darwin in October and November. See www.whywarriors.com.au to register.

For more information or interviews please ring Richard Trudgen (08) 8987 1664

• Limitations or Limit conditions:
  • Underlying conditions or sets of situations that cause or initiate the cycle of “poverty”, marginalisation oppression or dependency.
• Predatory systems:
  • These are systems that are perpetuating the oppression cycle by taking advantage of the limitations people experience. These systems need to be identified and negated to free people from the cycle.

As discussed in the previous article Cultural Spaces (An example of the Limit Conditions the people face), one of the limit conditions that create Indigenous “poverty” is that Aboriginal people must engage in foreign cultural spaces, that are controlled by the Dominant Culture.  These spaces marginalise Indigenous groups and they struggle to access the necessary information they need to make choices, find solutions, or communicate their needs.

However this does not explain the factors that keep people from conquering the strange cultural spaces of the “white man’s” world.  In the article on Indigenous poverty we called these factors predatory systems.  In this article I put forward some suggestions as to what specific predatory systems maintain this situation.  These are:

• The Convenience of Maintaining English Dominance
  • Negotiating in English controlled environments
  • Discouraging the development and use of Local Languages
• Low expectations for engaging with Indigenous knowledge and systems
• Accepting short term personnel turn over
• Lack of dependence on local Indigenous workforce
• Systematic favouring of short term outcomes over effective communication
• Reporting of false positives

Explaining myself

Now before I get to that I must point out that this is an extremely complex topic, and that it is very difficult to simplify things as I have.  The mechanisms that maintain the marginalisation of Indigenous  groups are very very complex and subtle.  While there are individuals who take advantage of people’s marginalisation consciously - the chaos of remote communities encourages corruption - most Dominant culture (DC) systems are not consciously designed to oppress people.  But, because I attempt to identify the advantages the Dominant culture might be getting from maintaining Indigenous marginalisation, what I write will be controversial to some, or many.   So please give me some credit that I am not intending to blame anyone and I know I am over simplifying.  But people have been asking for me to write about this, and I would like to start the discussion. So here are my flawed ideas of what are some of the predatory mechanisms maintaining Indigenous disadvantage (please comment on these, I would like others opinions).

I have grouped the predatory mechanism under headings describing the limit conditions they prey on.

Language barriers

The  Convenience of Maintaining English Dominance

Mechanism: English only speakers working in Indigenous communities unknowingly create an advantage to themselves by maintaining an English only environment, by using English as the dominant language or the only language in the work place and at meetings. In this way they empower themselves at the expense of the people, because they prevent people from easily getting the information they require to escape their dependency on these English first language workers.

Advantage: Why does this happen? This system of marginalisation is maintained largely because it is easier for DC workers to use their own native language “English” than working with the difficulty of learning and  utilising local languages.

Negotiating in English controlled environments

Mechanism: Similarly Government and NGOs, by ignoring Indigenous languages, are better able to control the conditions and outcomes of negotiations, surveys, consultations and even education, because in the English speaking environment they create, they limit peoples ability to compete and challenge government workers policies, views and arguments.

Advantage: Government, NGOs and other entities benefit by being able to more easily control, influence  and dominate negotiations.  They can even subconsciously utilise misinformation to get the result they want.

Discouraging the development and use of Local Languages

Mechanism:Government and NGOs working in Aboriginal remote communities, refuse to require or adequately support the training of staff in local Indigenous languages.  Everyone believes that it is too hard.  If they ensured staff developed local language skills this would make the interaction between Indigenous people and the DC an exchange of information between equal parties, rather then all the effort to overcome the language gap being forced on the Indigenous people. Furthermore, DC departments and NGOs do not encourage the production of resources, training, or even dictionaries in Indigenous languages. Their excuse for this is the that people need to just learn English. Only English cannot be learnt well (to a professional level) without utilising Indigenous languages to teach new complex ideas or without access to cross language dictionaries for professional reference. It takes many many years of effective exchange of information between two cultures to effectively chart complex terminology within each language – so that rich meanings can be exchanged. The DC refuses to start this journey in a serious way.

Advantage: The advantage for the system in doing nothing, is that Government and organisations don’t have to put in the money or the effort to change the way they do things. The short term financial gains on sticking with English only win over long term empowerment of Indigenous people.  A case in point is the NT Government’s recent introduction of an English only policy for remote community schools (2009-2010), which strips resources for local language training and utilisation out of remote schools. They did this because of a poorly researched belief that ignoring local languages will some how teach English more effectively. The international evidence shows that ESL kids who learn how to read and write in their own language first are more easily able to learn English, and learn it better than English only speakers.   But for the NT Education department system the savings in money and organisational complexity is clear, they can discard the hippy language experts and even the local Indigenous Teachers, who now have little purpose for being there. In this way the system favours the status quo, English language deficiency in Indigenous communities.

Lack of understanding about Dominant culture systems and knowledge.

Low expectations for engaging with Indigenous knowledge and systems

Mechanism: The imposition of Western culture and ways keeps Dominant Culture (DC) workers comfortable while dis-empowering local Indigenous people, because Indigenous people in remote communities have very little knowledge of how the Western world works (and vice versa). DC workers are not required to truly participate in or learn Indigenous ways of doing things. So they do not learn the difficulties Indigenous people face nor how to use local knowledge to help the people learn DC knowledge.  And the lack of engagement in understanding Indigneous systems prevents DC systems such as policing and education from fitting in with Indigenous systems that would give people more control.

Advantage: Low expectations in this area makes it easier for Government and other organisation to recruit workers even though they are less effective. By ignoring cultural issues, Indigenous understandings, and local Aboriginal systems, short term targets are sometimes met (ie you can get things done quickly), but long term achievements are undermined.

Instability of Personnel and Relationships with the non-indigenous world.

Accepting short term personnel turn over.

Mechanism: There is constant replacement and change in DC personnel in Remote Aboriginal Communities. Most stay 6 months to 2 years. Short term contracts are the accepted norm and there are few services to support personnel to stay in communities long term.  The constant change of personnel in communities undermines stability, relationships, and the creation of useful corporate knowledge/history.  The result is that organisations never learn from their mistakes and continue to push ideas that are based on old assumptions and continue to have negative impacts.

Advantage: This at first glance would not seem to benefit the Australian system because it is costly and ineffective. But it does allow feel good benefits to the Australian mainstream and the Individuals invoved.  I believe this is significant enough to maintain this kind of inefficiency. Going and working in Arnhem Land or other remote communities for a short stint, alleviates our sense of guilt about the Indigenous “problem” in Australia. This is a hard thing to say, but most if not all people (including ourselves at times) tend to feel a sense of “well I’ve done something to help the Indigenous people.” This helps us in the mainstream individually and collectively to feel good about our efforts for Indigenous people and even justifies a subtle blaming of the people themselves. The Australian Mainstream can still effectively say, “Look we are trying to help Indigenous people but its not working, they are not doing enough themselves.” So this “Instability Shark” works in this way; the DC gets the benefits of feeling like it is doing something, without the very difficult task of creating, and supporting long term stability in the remote work force (See our article on Supporting Dominant Culture Personnel to explore how this might be overcome).

Lack of dependence on local workforce.

Mechanism: Indigenous communities are driven by a false economy. Government grants, funds and welfare are the main sources of income, both personal and for businesses, in remote towns.  And alot of this money actually goes to pay income for DC personnel who have come from outside the community.  This situation never improves because the availability of  Government monies, and the tight DC time frames, make it more convenient to simply import new DC personnel when a job needs to be done, rather than train Indigenous people.  Training of local personnel is a lower priority than getting program outcomes.  This is partly because most Government departments consider it someone elses job to do the training.  But the simple fact is the DC simply does not need the local people. In a sense the locals get in the way of building infrastructure, acculturating (…oops, I mean educating), developing industries and running shire council services. This is the despite the fact that these things are suppose to be of benefit to the locals.  Contrast this with 40 years ago when the Christian missions in North East Arnhem had to run everything without masses of funding and access to fly in personnel. They, by simple need, were dependent on training Yolŋu (as there was no one else to do the work that needed to be done) and as a result by 1978 the local people were doing almost everything in the community, including teams of locals building houses, and local bookkeepers.

Advantage: There is of course a huge financial benefit for most personnel who take positions in remote Aboriginal communities, that may play some role in perpetuating the situation.  Like mine workers it is often convenient to stay a while, save your dough and take your cash back south to buy a house.  Plus it is simply easier, and it has become part of the DC way in the “Indigenous Industry”, to rely on enticing contractors and ready trained personnel, with big pay packets, than to deal with the challenges of training Indigenous people.  But the primarily benefit is that the DC (and the Government is a big part of this) is more focused on outcomes than people.  They get more done, much quicker,  if they are not dependent on local labour.  Importing workers ensures jobs get done quickly, statistics get filled, grants get acquitted, and politicians get re-elected.  The alternative, relying on the local workforce is the more difficult and slower path.  The time spent training, upskilling, and letting the people gain experience, slows progress in measurable outcomes – at first.  The hump of getting the first set of locals trained and then relying on them in their inexperience in the next round of work, with the inevitable media outrage at things undone (eg. houses un-built)  is just too much for the DC to take.

Difficulty communicating to Dominant Culture systems.

Systematic favouring of short term outcomes over effective communication.

Mechanism: The Indigenous “Industry” in the NT is a money spinner for the NT government and economy. Solving the problems through better communication might actually reduce the amount of money spent by the Federal Government on communities. While I doubt most in the NT Government actually plan to negate outcomes (some in the private sector definitely take advantage), the drive to be truly cost effective and therefore locally effective in the long term is just not there. Rather the focus seems to be on short term outcomes, or band aid measures.

Advantage: This benefits bureaucrat portfolios, while giving only lip service to long term goals. We all know of the shonky tradesmen in the private sector that will do a dodgy job to save money, well government funding budgets work the other way around. Do a job inefficiently and spend more of your budget may just get you a bigger budget next time round, resulting in more jobs for inefficient buddies (Again I’m not saying this is intentional – but correct me if I am wrong).

Reporting of false positives.

Mechanism: It is easy to create false positives by using poor communication. Even if you genuinely want to be honest, it is all too easy to use good processes and investigate clearly positive comments and communications, while paying limited attention to negative comments and results. Additionally, emphasising the outcomes one is looking for, results in a failure to communicate problems and allow reflection on how people are not being served.

Advantage: False positives (saying something had fantastic outcomes when it really did not)  when reporting on outcomes in Indigenous communities help governments, NGOS and privates businesses working in the “Indigenous industry” presents a good picture to their funders and their voters (who are usually not Indigenous).

What is poverty?

In a recent interview with Andrew Denton on the ABC TV show Elders, Muhammad Yunis, founder of the worlds first micro-credit bank, the Grameen Bank, shared his thoughts about what poverty is:

“Poverty, is almost, you can describe is a living in a box, all with the thick wall, no window, no door, no light, so you don’t know what’s coming next, you have no idea of new day starting in different way, you repeat the same thing over and over again. No hope, basically. So you try to survive the day in very uncertain conditions. So that’s poverty, you have no control over your life, that’s total, that’s it.”(Muhammad Yunis, Elders Episode 7 December 2009, transcript of interview with Andrew Denton http://www.abc.net.au/tv/elders/transcripts/s2757468.htm)

This description makes no reference to poverty being a lack of money, but refers to an experience of oppression and the deeper issue of a lack of control over your life.

This next description comes from a senior Yolŋu Elder from north east Arnhem Land. It highlights the similar experience faced by Yolŋu – a lack of control.

“What has happened to us is like riding a horse. I am on this horse and the horse is galloping. It is galloping through the forest, it has these blinkers on, it cannot see exactly where it is going, but the horse is swerving. The problem is that I do not have control of the reins; someone else is controlling it. That is what my life is like. Sometimes I am terrified that the horse is going to run into a tree and I will be knocked off by a bough but I have no control of where I am going or what I am doing.” (quoted by John Greatorex during the ‘Senate Select Committee on Indigenous and remote Communities’, 22/05/09, transcript http://culturalsurvival.org.au/mapuru.html) 

Muhammad Yunis began his work in Bangladesh, where the concept of micro credit was radical and powerful in alleviating poverty, because it gave people back control in their lives. It has now been applied more broadly in many third world countries overseas. Is it possible that a tool like micro-credit could be applied in Arnhem Land to alleviate “poverty”? I know many people who believe that approaches that work in 3rd world countries overseas can be applied in Australian Indigenous situations also, and forms of micro-credit have been attempted on several occasions. I think we need to take a bit of a closer look at why micro-credit works in the 3rd world.

When Muhammad Yunis first set out in Bangladesh to help alleviate poverty, he looked for someone in need;

“So I see a woman very poor wearing torn clothes and things and sitting in front of a terrible house, doesn’t look like a house, it’s just a shed with the broken pieces of things and she’s making bamboo stool. She has beautiful bamboo stool in front of her, so suddenly it comes to my mind, what kind of contrast between her house and her clothes and her face and this beautiful newly made bamboo stools. And she explains to me that she makes very little, she makes only two penny a day. I couldn’t believe why anybody would make two penny a day making this, and the reason she gave me because she didn’t have the money to buy the bamboo that goes into the bamboo stool. She had to borrow from the trader to buy the bamboo. So I said, “How much is the bamboo? It must be very expensive if you can’t afford to buy the bamboo”, she said, “It cost about 25 cents and I didn’t have the 25 cents so I have to borrow from the trader”. And under the terms of the loan she has to sell the products to him exclusively and accept the price that he offers, she can not compare with anybody else. So I said, my god, she has become a slave labour for him, for such a small amount of money she had to sacrifice everything.” (Muhammad Yunis, Elders Episode 7 December 2009)

So Muhammad went and talked with some of those in “poverty” and was able to identify what was the limitation to them breaking free from their “poverty”. The underlying problem was a lack of access to credit, which made people prey to “loan sharks” who were able to impose incredibly unjust terms on their loans, keeping their income so low that people were trapped, and never able to break out of this cycle. And thus the concept of micro-credit was born. By providing very small sums of money to people, with just terms, people were given the opportunity to break free from the debt cycle and have control over their income.

Does such a solution fit in Arnhem Land? I believe not. The same issue of lack of control exists in Arnhem Land, but there are no signs of predatory money lenders here that people become dependent on. While some Indigenous people can be taken advantage of in financial areas, a lack of access to credit is not a major limitation. Grants, loans and standard credit options are available. We have to look a bit deeper into the peoples real situations to determine the limitations that cause injustice in these communities.  Who/what are the “loan sharks” here that prevents people from being able to break out of cycles of “poverty”. I believe the situations for Indigenous communities are very different, but the  principals are the same … the solutions must be custom made.

The principals that I believe apply here in Arnhem Land also;

• “Poor” people have worth and ability- when Muhammad Yunis looked at that woman with her bamboo stool, he saw the conditions that she lived in, but he also saw her skills in craftsmanship. She was thus not a poor person to be pitied and rescued with handouts, she was someone with ability, who was facing specific barriers that needed to be overcome for her to succeed and achieve independence and control.
• You should not blame a poor person for their plight; “Poverty is not created by the poor people. It is not their fault that they are poor. Poverty is created by the system, imposed on good blooded human beings and we can peel it off.” (Muhammad Yunis, Elders Episode 7 December 2009)
• Limitations or Limit conditions. There are underlying conditions or sets of situations that cause or initiate the cycle of “poverty”, oppression or dependency. In the above example, a lack of income combined with a lack of availability of loans, made people prey to dodgy dealers. For Indigenous communities the limit situations they face are different. By addressing these limits we can enable people to overcome them.
• The existence of “Sharks”. The fact that people are stuck in a cycle of “poverty” means that there are “sharks” or systems that are perpetuating the oppression cycle. These systems need to be identified and negated to free people from the cycle.

If access to small loans with just terms is not the problem for remote Indigenous Australians, then micro credit is not going to overcome the causes of “poverty” in Arnhem Land. Australia is a very different country to Bangladesh. We have a welfare system providing basic income to those without work as well as grants and small business loans.

When we use the word “poverty” in relation to Indigenous people, often what people hear, is ‘lack of money’, and therefore assume the solution is to give money. Also people look at how well micro-credit works in developing nations and they consider that the money is what solved the problem. I believe what actually solved the problem, is that the specific cause of injustice in the system was targeted, and overcome in a way that gave people control back. Particularly in Indigenous communities a lack of money is not the cause of poverty, and therefore money is not the solution. We need to look more deeply to identify the limit conditions and predatory systems operating in specific regions to identify what is preventing Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island people from gaining control over their particular circumstances, rather than trying to import solutions from elsewhere.

National Indigenous Times: Indigenous poverty as
'morally outrageous' as torture: Amnesty head
19 Nov 09: "The poverty experienced by many Aboriginal
people is as morally reprehensible as torture and must be
eradicated, Amnesty International secretary-general Irene
Khan says."  http://www.nit.com.au/story.aspx?id=19020

Also see SMH

Strong words, but is such ‘advocacy’ helpful.  I argue that moralistic bites such as this are in fact dangerous.  While advocates feel that such statements point out government failures, they can actually be harmful to the people they are meant to protect .

First of all, this statement suggests there is a simple problem, “poverty”.  This is not the case. The conditions she saw were in part conditions that people were choosing to live in, because they wanted to live on their home lands (traditional estates) where there are few amenities.  And there are also many aspects of Indigenous lifestyle, such as sitting in the dirt, which are lifestyle choices but are easily interpreted as something negative and used as emotive devices (eg. The opening paragraph to Khan’s edited press speech).  This is not classic “poverty”.  Is it rather the effect of abuses of rights and the outcome of a massive cultural gap, resulting in marginalisation and poor education. Khan does go on to talk about rights and education and marginalisation, but her emotive language creates confusion rather than clarifying the issues to be tackled.  This point was very clearly and insightfully expressed by a reader on crikey (click link and scroll down to read his article)

Second, such language is usually designed to catch attention in order to say more important things.  In this case Khan used such statements to talk about the discriminatory nature of  policies such as income management.  The problem is, what sticks in the mainstreams psyche is not her sensible comments about changing policies that force people to spend hundreds of dollars to drive into disfunctional communities to use their pensions.  What sticks are those words above which label the Indigenous people as having a problem.  Like there is some sort of disease out there that only effects Australian Aboriginal people. People now even refer to the generic “Indigenous problem”.

Lets do some discourse analysis.  This statement defines the situation of Aboriginal Australian’s as:

• living in ‘poverty’.  Poverty implies a number of things, hopelessness, helplessness and a lack of resources.  This objectifies these Aborignal people as victims, suggesting that they need a humanitarian savior.  For most Indigenous people this is unfair. In remote communities they may be depressed, but they are not without hope. They are not helpless, but may feel like they cannot be heard or cannot win, yet they do keep fighting.  They have many resources, but often have difficulty using them.
• a “moral” issue.  This lays blame on everyone suggesting that  Australians are not good people. That while this Indigenous problem exists its like Australians are committing torture. This is unfair.  Many Australians react to this by blaming Indigenous people in return (eg. See comments on SHM).
• needing “eradication”.  Suggesting, that if the right resources are applied, the ‘problem’ could just be removed.  Furthermore, drawing on the ‘moral’ imperative she has established, ‘eradication’ insists that immediate and extreme action is required.

Khans statements are examples of the extreme emotive hyperbole, which is so common today when talking about the difficulties faced by Indigenous communities.  It does less to empower Indigenous people or their voice than it empowers government and other service providers to implement simplistic, rushed and broad brush solutions.  The very kind of policy most advocacy tries to disable after the fact.  It was also this kind of over the top statement that the Howard Government used to force the ‘Intervention’ through.  And it was so effective that most politicians were not even game to touch the subject and the Australian public went all bleeding heart, righteous paternalist.   Since then in the NT even the more sensible “Close the Gap” campaign, is being used widely by NT and Federal Governments as a catch cry to deny Indigenous rights and force things on communities, such as English only education and land leases, without negotiation or real consultation. Why? Because from the politicians perspective the moral imperative of the “Gap” statistics and advocacy slogans mandates Government to act quickly (and thus for some reason stupidly and abusively).  In fact the Governments in Canberra and Darwin act like if they do not force the statistics to improve before the next election, the ‘Gap’ just might be one more hole their election hopes will fall in.  The result- Indigenous people get crushed in the rush and no real solutions are established.

While we continue to advocate by labeling problems we continue to label Aboriginal people and empower the government powered steamroller to run over peoples lives, and enable racist blaming. What is needed is good debate about the real situation faced by people, the underling causes, and the complex solutions needed, rather than more denouncing of the “Indigenous problem”.  Rather than simply highlighting the problems, advocacy must start highlighting complexity, revealing local needs and enabling dialogue between diverse Indigenous and non-Indigenous voices.

Prime Minister Rudd and cabinet opposite Yolŋu leaders, before the presentation of the Petition for rights

I was in Yirrkala on the 23rd July 2008 when the Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and his cabinet visited the community. Yirrkala is an Aboriginal Community near Nhulunbuy, a mining town in north east Arnhem Land, Northern Territory, Australia. It is populated by 13 or so different Yolŋu clans from the surrounding region as well as Balanda personnel. On this day about a dozen key Yolŋu Indigenous leaders presented to the Prime Minister a petition mounted on wood and surrounded by paintings and feathers. The petition requested that the Federal Government begin the process of negotiation with Aboriginal people in order to recognise and protect Aboriginal rights in the constitution. The petition specified these rights as:

• Their right to maintain the diversity of their ‘systems of life’ (eg. linguistic, cultural and legal practices – my interpretation),
• Their property rights to land and seas,
• Their right to use all the resources on their land for their economic development
• Their right to have control over their own lives.

Although there is much that could be discussed about what these rights might be and the legitimacy of such claims, I would like to consider the Prime Ministers response to this petition. Prime Minister Rudd recognised the importance of moving toward a process to recognise Indigenous rights, but identified this process as secondary to the process that the Government has defined as ‘closing the Gap’. The Prime Minister stated that their first priorty right now was to close the gap in education and health between wider Australia and Indigneous people.  Does the Prime Minister really know better than the Yolŋu leaders what is best for their people?  This demonstrates the arrogance and distance of Government from the Indigenous peoples real experience.  The Yolŋu leaders did not ask for housing, or even better education.  Their primary concern was their peoples rights.  Yet it seems that the Government believes it has the clear view on the matter, perhaps they have an Ivory tower, while the local leaders can only see what is happening on the ground?

From this gentle act of protest  we all should ask the question.  Is ‘closing the gap’ a process that can occur seperate to the real recognition and protection of Indigenous legal and human rights?  The real recognition of such rights must be part of  this process, as dis-empowerment, the devaluing of cultural knowledge and language,  and lack of control over their social space, their economy and their land is part of the real reasons that the ‘Gap’ still exists.

I will look at this question of the role of rights in effecting underlying cause another time.