Another brilliant dispatch this week, great music and some great Irish phrases. If perchance you are unfamiliar with Irish you can use Google Translate, – and it is worth it! First published 13 October 2010
Maidin mhaith mo chairde,
The GBM (bless him) has forwarded a “Last Call for Nominations” poster for CatholicCare NT’s “Strong Families Award”.
The rhetorical question is posed: “Is there a person in your community who keeps their family safe or helps other families to be safe?” So what is being implied? Can you hear the (undoubtedly unintentional) dog-whistle?
Thus are stereotypes reinforced and perpetuated.
Face the mirror for an instant… have the rhetorical question apply to your own community…. well? Is there a person in your street or suburb that keeps their family safe?…
Have you ever been asked this question? Is the question ever likely to be posed about your community?
“The winner of the Strong Families Award will receive a community grant to continue to keep their families safe.”
Safe from what? Safe from the assimilationist Intervention? Safe from Income Management? Safe from the bureaucratic assault? Safe from being patronised? Safe from a Storm?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dsyqQmnI0gc
During a “bush cabinet” meeting held in Yuendumu, the CM and the NT Minister for Sport promised that the Government would fund the grassing of the Yuendumu football oval.
At a LIP meeting it was suggested that availability of the oval should be made conditional on improved school attendance (such as the “Yes School. Yes Pool” policy). The idea was dropped when it was pointed out that none of our footballers go to school, but it is yet another example of subtle yet relentless moves at control. Social engineering without consent or conscience.
The NT Government has engaged a consultant to look into the logistics of grassing the oval. A few days ago I was invited to a meeting to discuss the grassing of the oval. I took along a Warlpiri friend who has been involved in Yuendumu football all his life. At the end of the two hour meeting when seating was discussed, my friend mentioned that the existing seats had been made by “ourselves”. The GBM seized on this, and thought that ITEC or some such organisation could run a welding course leading to certificates and full time employment (Mal Brough’s “real jobs”). Again parallel universes, or should I say a different planet?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ueUOTImKp0k
The recently released 149 page second biannual report from the Coordinator General for Remote Indigenous Services has two pages of acronyms defined (Appendix 4). For your enlightenment I have included some of them here:
BOM= Board of Management
CGBAR = Co-ordinator General’s biannual Report
CM= Chief Minister
GBM= Ginger Bread Man
ITEC= let them speak for themselves: “we have made a full and open commitment in assisting to ‘halve the gap in employment outcomes between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians within a decade’ (from their web-site)… so far as I’m aware ITEC have not “created” a single job in Yuendumu since their appointment at the beginning of the Intervention.
IUD= Intra-uterine device
LIP= Local Implementation Plan
LSP= Location Supported Playgroup (What?)
NT= Northern Territory
The other 147 pages of the report are written in English Newspeak:
Excerpt from
“The Principles of Newspeak”
An appendix to 1984
Written by : George Orwell in 1948
“Newspeak was the official language of Oceania, and had been devised to meet the ideological needs of Ingsoc, or English Socialism. In the year 1984 there was not as yet anyone who used Newspeak as his/her sole means of communication, either in speech or writing. The leading articles of the Australian were written in it, but this was a tour de force which could only be carried out by a specialist, It was expected that Newspeak would have finally superseded Oldspeak (or standard English, as we should call it) by about the year 2050…..”
George Orwell obviously had not foreseen the emergence of the likes of the Co-ordinator General (…not as yet anyone who used Newspeak as his/her sole means of communication…):
“At a strategic level, our views are further informed by participation in jurisdictional and national high level forums. I also regularly meet with stakeholders and other interested parties. Combined, this provides the platform for an informed overarching assessment of progress across all communities and all States and Territories…” Wow!
In 1963 I went to a concert in the Melbourne Town Hall: Louis Armstrong and his AllStars.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n1pdd8FPAls
I don’t like to repeat myself, but every time I see the title “Co-ordinator General” it makes me think of these old masters of co-ordination.
Some accuse me of living in the past whenever I defend self-determination or talk about things that worked or what might have been or speak up in favour of outstations or teaching in the vernacular.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZoE5kGMUpcg
I’m told to make the best of the current reality. The Intervention is here to stay I’m told. I shouldn’t be so negative and cynical.
Be a good little vegemite. Cave in.
Bhuel is féidir leat póg mo thóin go léir
Roinnt ceol deas a chríochnú le
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tt8p5AxJn18
Go dtí go gcasfar le chéile sinn arís
Francis
PS: for all of you that find all this “foreign” stuff frustrating, spare a thought for those older Warlpiri people when they attend an “engagement” meeting and are addressed in Newspeak English.
(“Google Translate” Irish to English will de-code this lot)
If you’re still with me you deserve another nice song:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r6p5P2X8cbA