Comments on: On questioning the “viability” of remote Aboriginal settlements

By: oie

oie — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 10:00:00 +0000

Possum said all this ages ago. You should have used his, it was better

By: Frank Baarda

Frank Baarda — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 10:00:00 +0000

Am a non-indigineous resident of a remote Aboriginal community. I take every occassion to re-iterate Kim Beazley Sr.’s words of wisdom:
“In Australia, our ways have mostly produced disaster for the Aboriginal people. I suspect that only when their right to be distinctive is accepted, will policy become creative”…
At present the authorities are pushing a ” no new houses nor repairs to existing ones unless you sign up to 60 or 80 year leases” policy. Whilst not quite as extreme as Dr.Johns’ proposals it is nonetheless coercive.
I did not hear Kevin Rudd say that his “closing the gap” was supposed to be conditional.
Myself, I think the authorities have a lot of cheek. On the one hand they have suspended the Racial Discrimination Act (on “prescribed areas” subjected to the Intervention) and thus deny remote Aboriginals full citizenship rights, and on the other they are attempting to “negotiate” (if you can call the patronising presentations that tend to end up in frustrated angry shouting matches “negotiations”) with these non-citizens for control of Aboriginal lands.
I think it behooves Aborigines to refuse to “negotiate” until they are given back their dignity and respect. Self-determination is not the lost cause that Government spin-doctors and right-wing “think tanks” would have you believe. Just because its been resisted and sabotaged doesn’t mean that it couldn’t work. I’ve seen it work albeit briefly and until funding was cut or the rug pulled from under by other means such as a moving of the goal posts. Presently they’ve gone one step further they haven’t just moved the gold posts… they’ve removed them altogether!

By: Glenn

Glenn — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 10:00:00 +0000

I read this article with interest as I had the opportunity to visit and spend some time at a remote Aboriginal community a little while ago. In order to get there I had to spend a few days in Tennant Creek. Then several hundred kilometres into the bush to visit. The differences were not necessarily great except for one stand out. Due to the ban on alcohol the overall health and feeling of the place was a vast improvement on what I perceived as a violent and dysfunctional “big” town like Tennant. Sure there were other vices eg. gambling and a lack of employment but the kids attendance at school was excellent and there seemed a sense that with some better and focused assistance the place could be a thriving community. Please don’t write off remote communities without taking a harder look.

By: jenny mac

jenny mac — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 10:00:00 +0000

This talk of the “viability” of remote communities is very worrying. As pointed out by Moran, remote Aboriginal people’s health and wellbeing is generally considerably improved by being able to live on their country. The Federal and NT government, particularly since the Intervention and the inmplementation of the new NT Shires, have consistently failed to recognise Aboriginal people’s initiative and creativity in responding to needs brought about by the collective stupidities of distant policy makers more concerned about claiming physical and ideological territory than providing services and support. Providing support - not control and ownership - for community owned - as distinct from community based - programs such as breakfasts for school kids and night patrols - is vastly preferable to the sort of prescriptive top-down management that is currently destroying Aboriginal initiatives in the bush. The concentration of remote Aboriginal populations into urban centres has largely brought nothing but grief to the urban centre, and to remote communities, as they watch their relatives lose their self respect, their health and sometimes their lives. Viable for who, one has to ask?? Administrative expediency has consistently won the day as far as remote communities go, and once again, government is moving down the well-worn track of ill-informed and autocratic policy. After all, it’s worked so well in the past, n’est-ce pas?