こんばんはの友人(Konbanwa no yūjin) [Good evening my friends]
This is a work of fiction. Any deliberate similarity to real people is coincidental and without prejudice. Anyway, much of it mirrors Alice in Wonderland (“things are getting curiouser and curiouser”) and the windmills are not really evil giants, just stupid ones.

At a public meeting at the beginning of the Intervention (mid-2007) Jupurrula asked:
Why is Kevin Rudd using John Howard’s shoes and piggybacking his policies?
Napaljarri and others were heard to ask Why does the Government hate us so much? What did we do to them?
Is this what we deserve?…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sRD8ofq3xUY

Jungarrayi asked at the first public meeting in Yuendumu called by the NTER (Northern Territory Emergency Response):
Why aren’t you going after the perpetrators instead of us? (Responding to the much publicised allegations of wide-spread sexual abuse of children in remote Aboriginal communities which allegations were used as a politically opportunistic trigger to declare the NTER- the so called Intervention)

To which one might add: Why couldn’t they find the alleged paedophile rings? Where are the Weapons of Mass Destruction? What happened at the Gulf of Tonkin?

Where are the Children Overboard? Where have all the flowers gone?
Oh,when will they ever learn?…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxEU-YQaqKw

An Aboriginal Health Worker (who had been employed at a remote Aboriginal community clinic for over two decades) who was getting some medicine out of the secured pharmacy room was asked by a ‘new’ kardiya (non-Aboriginal) nurse: “What are you doing in here?… you’re not supposed to be in here!”

Japaljarri had some decades ago, worked for the now defunct Yuendumu Housing Association during the height of the much maligned Self-Determination era. He’d been a plumber’s assistant.

Japaljarri’s hot water system needed a new element, so he went to the local Shire office and filled out a requisition form. Six months later a kardiya contractor turned up after having covered a distance greater than the distance between Paris and Amsterdam to fit the element. “Who fixed your hot water system?” asked the kardiya. “I don’t know” replied Japaljarri. The kardiya then drove back to Alice Springs.

At Yuendumu’s inaugural LRG (Local Reference Group) meeting (part of the Intervention) called to decide on the LIP (Local Implementation Plan), a brick wall was drawn on a whiteboard. The bricks were labelled ‘Education’ ‘Employment’ ‘Health’ ‘Law and Order’ ‘Housing’ ‘Garbage collection’ etc. No bricks were labelled ‘Ngurra’(Home/Land), ‘Kuruwarri’ (Yapa Law), ‘Purlapa’ (Dance/ceremony), ‘Jaru’(Language) or ‘Walalja’ (Family)  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iFZq7AduGrc

Jampijimpa asked: What I want to know is what is behind this wall?

 Once again one of my favourite quotations from 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”

 Jim (my first geology boss), enlisted in the Australian Army at the tail end of WWII. He was put through a crash course in Japanese and sent to Japan as an interpreter. They’d enter a village, and a meeting would be arranged with the local leaders. Jim’s commanding officer would start off: “How do you perceive the post-war relationship between Japan and Australia to evolve in the foreseeable future?” Which Jim would render as: “Tenki no yoi hi. Dono yō ni anata no inasaku wa,-jō kite iru?” (A nice day. How is your rice crop coming on?). “Arigatō. Hai, sore wa hijō ni yoi tsuitachidearu. Inasaku wa umaku yatte iru” (Thank you. Yes it is a very nice day. The rice crop is doing just fine.) came the reply, which Jim would translate into: “They say that just like a cherry tree, the relationship between Japan and Australia could blossom into a lasting friendship in the post-war era”. Jim claimed to have been the most popular interpreter with the occupation forces. He spent the rest of his life interpreting sedimentary geological structures. He was good at that too.
If only, the Australian socio/political occupation forces had used interpreters like Jim, policy may have become creative. Might the relationship between kardiya and yapa, like a cherry tree, have blossomed into a lasting friendship?

Well may we paraphrase Jupurrula:
Why is Tony Abbott using John Howard’s shoes and piggybacking his policies?

Many of these questions remain unanswered. Do I have the answers? Absolutely not (maybe just a little).

Do the assimilationists and interventionists think they have the answers?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hAg0anPwWbM

…I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible that you may be mistaken  Oliver Cromwell 1650…

How many years can some people exist before they’re allowed to be free?

How many times must a man turn his head and pretend that he just doesn’t see?

Watashi no yūjin. Kaze ga fui ni okeru kotae ga aru (My friend. The answer is blowing in the wind)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vWwgrjjIMXA

Sayonara,

Frank-san
PS-…Why do you come here?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6a8MRbHf5pA