Hiya,
When Nangala started work as a teacher in Yuendumu, she was initially installed into a “Health Flat” with our children. The Matron told Nangala, that she shouldn’t allow those ‘Native Children’ into the flat. Those ‘Native Children’ were her pupils and they had names and they came to play with our children whom they’d befriended at school. That was 45 years ago.
I’ve previously mentioned that Warlpiri has both inclusive and exclusive personal pronouns- such as the exclusive ‘nganimpa’ (us without you I’m speaking to) and the inclusive ‘ngalipa’ (all of us including you I’m speaking to)
Back in 1973 it was definitely not ‘ngalipa’ in that neo-colonial setting. The “them and us” paradigm slowly faded in subsequent happier times. One of the drivers of this social glue was the policy of Self Determination, since declared a failed policy by the assimilationists who were disconcerted by having their power grip on Aboriginal Australia loosened.
I never tire of quoting Kim Beazley Sr.:
“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” (my emphasis).
A March 2016 Dispatch titled ‘Magic Moments’ included:
This from a recent article by Martin Flanagan, the Melbourne Age’s Sports Writer:
“Three of the most momentous days of my life occurred in 1987 when I attended a football carnival at Yuendumu on the Warlpiri tribal lands north-west of Alice Springs. In three days, the glass tower of my preconceptions about Aboriginal Australia was shattered. I could tell a dozen stories as to why, each as important as the last…..….And I went to a party where a traditional man with initiation scars all down his chest played the electric guitar like Jimi Hendrix and a white geologist who lived in Yuendumu accompanied him like a jazzman on a trumpet. In that room, that night, Aboriginal people and white people mingled in a spirit of fraternal respect. Walking back to the car I was sleeping in, I thought there has to be some way of taking that spirit to the rest of Australia.”
‘Ngalipa’ in action. Many Magic Moments and memories.
Great Southern Land- Warren H .Williams…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tvbgTQIWw_4
Sadly that spirit was not taken to the rest of Australia, instead Remote Aboriginal Australia was and continues to be bombarded by meanspirited assumptions and policies.
Since 1973, when Nangala was told off for having ‘native children attending our home in the nurses flats’, we have come full circle. ‘Them and us’- big time.
At the Willowra (Wirliyajarrayi) shop the following notice has recently appeared: (the Image is 2-3MB so it is typed out instead- the original is in three colours so it has lost some of its impact)
ATTENTION
NON INDIGENOUS
VISITORS AND
RESIDENTS IN
WLLOWRA
It is an unsafe and inappropriate practice
for children and youths to be attending
your personal residence without an
appropriate ADULT .
Children and youths attending personal houses without
an ADULT is not an acceptable behaviour in other
communities in Australia and it is therefore not an
acceptable behaviour in Willowra
IN THE INTERESTS OF CHILD SAFETY AND YOUR
INDIVIDUAL PROTECTION
CHILDREN AND YOUTHS MUST HAVE AN
APPROPRIATE ADULT WITH THEM IF THEY COME
TO YOUR HOUSE
WILLOWRA HEALTH CENTRE
I’ll refrain from commenting on this. Suffice it to say that when the Intervention was thrust upon NT remote Aboriginal communities in 2007, based largely on alleged endemic sexual abuse of children (which app. $40M allocated to the Federal Police- failed to unearth), a Warlpiri school colleague said to Nangala: “Is that all kardiya can talk about these days?”
Shalom,
Jungarrayi
Xavier Rudd- Spirit Bird…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZK8MDyLuL4
and a bonus beautiful song from South Africa’s late Brenda Fassie…https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fECbY5Acnxo