Radio program connects remote Indigenous communities (fwd)

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Radio program connects remote Indigenous communities

[This is the print version of story 
http://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2004/s1058243.htm]

The World Today - Wednesday, 3 March , 2004  12:48:25
Reporter: Anne Barker

HAMISH ROBERTSON: Most of us take radio and television for granted. But 
that's not always the case in remote communities, where TV and radio 
sets are either non-existent or simply useless, because the Indigenous 
population can't speak English.

Yet efforts to set up Indigenous language broadcasts have often failed, 
leaving these small communities geographically isolated, and caught in 
an information vacuum. But a unique project in eastern Arnhem Land 
could soon bring radio to thousands of people across the Top End.

Our North Australia correspondent Anne Barker has just visited 
Nhulunbuy on the Gove Peninsula, and she took a look at new efforts to 
bring an Indigenous radio signal to every home in the region.

(Sound of Indigenous pop song)

ANNE BARKER: The Yolngu people of Eastern Arnhem Land have a rich and 
vibrant culture that goes back tens of thousands of years. Nearly 8,000 
people here still speak Yolngu Matha as their native tongue. For them, 
English is a foreign language.

But switch on the TV or radio anywhere between Kakadu National Park and 
the Gulf of Carpentaria, and English language programs are the norm. 
Yolngu Matha is almost non-existent on the air waves, meaning local 
people have limited access to mainstream news and information. It's 
something one Indigenous organisation is working hard to change.

Here, in a makeshift studio at Nhulunbuy, Richard Trudgen and his 
colleagues at ARDS, or Aboriginal Resource and Development Services are 
setting up a new educational radio station, that will broadcast in 
Yolngu Matha to five major communities, and nearly 100 smaller 
homelands right across Arnhem Land.

RICHARD TRUDGEN: What we've done is a lot of research, and we find out 
they're not listening to the current radio services, they're not even 
switched on in some cases, including the Aboriginal media services.

What we hear people listening to is their own song cycles which they've 
recorded themselves on tape recorders, and they play those tapes back 
until they wear them out. So we've said to people, what do you want to 
hear? And they say well, just like what we're hearing now, our own song 
cycles and information in language.

ANNE BARKER: So is English language radio out of Nhulunbuy, largely 
irrelevant to people in Arnhem Land?

RICHARD TRUDGEN: Most Yolngu that I've spoken to over a 30-year period 
have said that English just makes them extremely tired and they switch 
off. They say they can get some points of it and it actually frustrates 
them because they get some part of it and they don't get the crunch. So 
I believe all education at the moment aimed at Yolngu people in English 
is a waste of time.

ANNE BARKER: There are meant to be Indigenous language radio services 
right across the Top End called BRACs or Broadcasting for Remote 
Aboriginal Communities. But an ATSIC inquiry last year found most were 
completely dysfunctional, because of a lack of staff. Or, they were 
used only to retransmit English language stations like the ABC.

Richard Trudgen says local communities desperately need radio in their 
own language.

RICHARD TRUDGEN: I know that a handful of Yolngu only knew about 
customary law review, but the rest of Australia knew about it. So 
everybody else was discussing stuff that Yolngu should know about; they 
themselves don't even know about it.

To me it's almost a criminal offence these days, that we're creating on 
Yolngu because they just haven't got equal access as citizens of 
Australia to information.

ANNE BARKER: Some people might argue that all they need to do is learn 
English.

RICHARD TRUDGEN: Well, that's like saying to somebody who's drowning, 
all you need to do is get out of the water. You know, it's such a 
stupid statement because a Yugoslavian person can come to Australia and 
they immediately can move into learning English with self-learning 
tools – a thing called a dictionary.

No dictionary exists in English to Yolngu Matha. What we're doing is 
building the building blocks here for a very powerful self-teaching 
medium which people, which Yolngu can control themselves.

HAMISH ROBERTSON: That was Richard Trudgen who was speaking to Anne 
Barker in Nhulunbuy on the Gove Peninsula in eastern Arnhem Land.


  © 2003 Australian Broadcasting Corporation
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