This dispatch was first published on 28 Oct 2010.  Today we publish the first part, part two  next week.

“The road to hell is paved with good intentions”

Bore da fy ffrindiau,

Eduardo Galeano in “El Fútbol (A Sol y Sombra)” quotes historian Arnold Toynbee: “La más consistente característica de las civilizaciones en decadencia es la tendencia a la estandarización y la uniformidad”.(“The most consistent characteristic of civilisations in decay, is a tendency towards standardisation and uniformity”). Galeano was writing about football (or as it is known in Australia: soccer), football as metaphor.

Many years ago some of Yuendumu’s streets were sealed. Many Yuendumu residents (including myself) liked to walk around barefoot, and still do.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QK6HA6_0uMI

Bitumen roads and gravel paths are therefore no great source of delight to many of us, but we have far more important axes to grind to let it upset us unduly.

All the same I recall asking one of the Alice Springs based “service providers” who was purchasing diesel from us what he thought of our new bitumen roads. His answer: “A bloody waste of taxpayer’s money”. Now this was a man who earned a living by going to remote communities doing something- I can’t recall exactly what, but it must have been important- that the road sealing crew (also Alice Springs based non-Warlpiri) would probably regard as a “A bloody waste of taxpayer’s money”.

All of these Alice Springs based people and the Darwin and Canberra people they are answerable to, have bitumen roads in front of their houses. There are bitumen roads in front of the Canberra porn shops. The police stations, court houses and gaols all have bitumen roads in front of them. The Centrelink offices have bitumen in front of them. The Yuendumu GBM (Government Business Manager or Ginger Bread Man, in case you’ve forgotten) has a sealed road in front of it AND a coarse gravel driveway. I’ve been there twice, I drove on both occasions.

Never have I heard anyone say that all these bitumen roads are “A bloody waste of taxpayer’s money”. Like so much in the western world, they’ve been elevated to a taken for grant human right.

Over the years the sealed roads were maintained by Yuendumu Community Council in conjunction with CDEP (“Community Development Employment Program”) an innovative  form of workfare that preceded “work for the dole” that kept local people usefully occupied and involved.  CDEP has been closed down in urban and regional Australia and in Yuendumu will finish in June 2012. Since CDEP was “reformed” last year more and more participants are on Income Management (whereby 50% of their Income is quarantined and subjected to a bureaucratic quagmire). A myth is being created that such programmes as CDEP are being replaced with what Mal Brough following Noel Pearson called “real jobs” when he sprung the Intervention on us. In reality locals are increasingly rendered irrelevant, things are done for them and to them but not by them. Another myth is the farcical so called “community consultation/engagement” initiative that gives the imprimatur for all ethnocentric assimilationist activities.

Recently some contractors came to Yuendumu and re-sealed the sealed roads. Bitumen on bitumen. A fresh stratum of sealing aggregate and bitumen was put there for archaeologists of the future to date. The roads are now much darker, and thus absorb heat more efficiently. The surface is rougher thus increasing traction. Except for some seriously damaged corners (which have been left seriously damaged- Heritage Corners?) the potholes have now been filled and resealed, thus relieving the CDEP gang of getting involved probably for as long as the gang’s existence.

Us barefoot walkers are overjoyed.