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.

‘Do you know of any good external language courses that are available?’

There are a couple of options to begin learning Yolŋu Matha, the language of north east Arnhem Land.

1. A series of distance education courses are available through Charles Darwin University (CDU).  If you are in Darwin these can also be studied internally, which is recommended. There are several  advantages of these courses.  As it is a university course, it is structured around recommended and required study, along with regular assessment, so it keeps you working. The course teaches much about culture as well as language, which makes it much richer and gives good context. The course is run by extremely knowledgable and passionate staff, who share many personal and traditional stories. Many people struggle with the work load, which does require alot of self learning in order to keep up. The early subjects  have assessments that are very much based on written work. This means that your time can easily get consumed in writting and reading the language, which is less effective for learning to speak and hear. However, the later subjects are more focused on conversational skills (not sure if these can be done externally). The staff are really helpful and if you put the work in you will get alot out of the course.
2. There are a number of self learning courses available through ARDS.  I recommend “Gupapuyngu Alphabet & Pronunciation” followed by, or in combination with the “Gupapuyngu Conversational Course” 1&2.  (ARDS has also begun to publish an identical course in Djambarrpuŋu a sister language).  It is important to understand the alphabet and pronunciation first and try to memorise the sounds, before moving to phrases. But as you get bored with pronunciation practice go to the first of the conversational courses, which have structured lessons and drills on CD for each lesson to test yourself and practice with. The down side to these courses is that you have to be disciplined with yourself to regularly spend time working through the lessons (and repeating them) when there is no one to examine you.    If you choose to do the CDU courses the “Alphabet and Pronunciation” book will help, and you should try to work through it before the course starts as there is little time alotted for learning the alphabet and their sounds.   The advantage of these self learning materials is that they focus on speaking and hearing and you will be off to a very good start to begin learning more by practicing and conversing with Yolngu people once you do enter Arnhem Land. A Gupupuy’ŋu Grammar book is also available, but you will only need this when you get to the stage of asking, ‘Now, how would I say …..” The gramma book has no audio and is best as a reference once you start to use the language with Yolngu people, or if you find yourself exceeding the expectations of the conversational courses (this book is part of the resources for the second CDU subject).

These options and resoures are complementary, so they do work together well to expand your learning options.  However, we  would not recomend attempting to do both the converstional course and the CDU couses at the same time unless you are devoting all your time to language learning while outside Arnhem Land.  It is important to devote time to practice with a native Yolŋu Matha speaker, if possible, even at the early stages of your learning. For example, you could make arrangements to talk by phone with good aquaintences you have made in Arnhem Land.

Good luck.  And please leave a comment if you know of other resources or have some useful insights from your experience with learning Yolŋu matha.

This video was produced independent of Why Warriors Pty Ltd, and are the views of the speaker, further information may be found where this video was originally posted on YouTube. I’m sure those who created this video would appreciate if it was passed on to others especially to those in Government positions, as that is who this message was written for.