The Australians who are outcasts in their own land (fwd)

[phil cash cash]

The Australians who are outcasts in their own land

Political moves to curb alcoholism and truancy have ignited a national
debate over the heartache and squalor affecting troubled aboriginal
communities

Barbara McMahon in Wadeye, Northern Territory
Sunday June 24, 2007
The Observer
http://www.guardian.co.uk/australia/story/0,,2109980,00.html

Walk around the sprawling community of Wadeye and you will be assailed by
children, quick to spot a stranger in town. They crowd around curiously and
talk to you in broken English but chatter among themselves in Murrinh-patha,
the indigenous language of this former Catholic mission. Six other languages
are spoken here, all of them endangered, making Wadeye a laboratory for
linguists.

'Language is our identity and if we forget our identity, we are nothing,'
says Patrick Nudjulu, sheltering from the sun on the veranda of his house.
A patriarchal figure, with white beard and a leg withered by leprosy, he
points to his grandchildren playing nearby. Speaking in their mother tongue
will keep them connected to their culture, says this old man. But he
encourages the children to go to school to do their sums and to learn how
to speak in English. 'You need to be able to talk to the white fella,' he
says.

Wadeye, pronounced Wad-air, sits on the edge of the Daly River Reserve,
280km south-west of Darwin in Australia's Northern Territory. The country's
largest indigenous community, it has a population of 2,700, comprising 24
clans, seven tribes and three ceremonial groups. The ethnic mix is a
throwback to the Thirties when missionaries persuaded indigenous groups to
live together.

Cut off by road for up to five months of the rainy season, any visitors come
in by air. The flight is over forests and woodlands, towering cliffs, vast
wetlands, paperbark and mangrove swamps. It is wild and beautiful country.
The few outsiders permitted to come here arrive at the airstrip on the edge
of the township and find a settlement resembling a shantytown. At first
glance, it seems a picture of dysfunction. There is litter everywhere and
none of the niceties of life that white people in suburbs of Sydney or
Canberra take for granted, such as shops and cafes.

Many of the buildings are boarded up and covered in graffiti. A glance
inside reveals that most are largely unfurnished, apart from cookers, a few
chairs and mattresses, televisions and stereos, many of which blast out
music at all hours.

There are no well-tended gardens and people can't help but bring in mud and
dirt, especially in the wet season. Overcrowding is rife and an average of
17 people live in each house, following the Aboriginal tradition of living
in family groups. Some of the tenants, who are clearly depressed and
lethargic, do not seem to notice the squalor that they are living in or the
smells around them.

There is high unemployment in Wadeye. Most people exist on welfare payments.
There are also endemic health problems associated with overcrowding, poor
hygiene and a lack of education. Dr Pat Rebgetz, the only doctor serving
this community of 2,700 people, says health care has been under-funded for
decades and there is only so much he and his team of community nurses can
do in their 'crummy' health care centre. Residents suffer high rates of
heart disease, rheumatic fever, skin sepsis and nephritis. Some 20 to 30
per cent of children have perforated ear drums due to chronic infection.
Some children are malnourished. There are 80 births a year, some to 13- and
14-year-olds.

'This is happening because of decades of neglect,' says Dr Rebgetz. 'I feel
the politicians think these people are not worth it. They largely believe
the Aboriginal people have brought all this on themselves. There are a lot
of gentle, good people here who have just been beaten down by their living
conditions. The grandmothers are the backbone of this community. I am in
awe of how they can survive among all this dysfunction.

'Everyone knows what the problem is. It's not rocket science. If you want to
improve the health of people here, you have to improve their living
conditions. The basic problem is overcrowding and the lack of hygiene. We
all knew it 100 years ago when we were living in slums, but it's still
happening now.'

Wadeye is an alcohol-restricted community. 'There are a lot more Aboriginal
non-drinkers than there are drinkers,' says Dr Rebgetz. 'But all Aborigines
get tarred with the same brush.' He says that because alcohol is proscribed,
a lot of young men spend their dole money on ganja. 'There are a lot of
young men here in their twenties and thirties who haven't had an education.
They don't have anything to do. They don't have any responsibilities,' he
said. 'It's hard to apply western values but there's an aboriginal style of
child rearing that lets kids do what they want. There's a lot of cultural
stuff about kinship that means you are obliged to feed a family member if
he comes in and says he's hungry or give him somewhere to stay but now
that's been turned into kids hassling their grandmothers for money. It's
hard for people to stand up to that.'

Dr Rebgetz adds: 'I see 18-year-olds and if they're sent into Darwin it's
like going to the moon. They need an older person who has English to go
with them and to be their interpreter. What chance do these kids have? I
don't understand it. The government has a $13bn surplus this year but
there's a $2bn to $3bn deficit around Aboriginal communities for housing
and infrastructure. Why aren't they spending it on these people? They're
citizens of this country too.' He says Wadeye waited two years for a donga,
a portable building, to use as a men's clinic and it has only just arrived.
But when the police asked for a similar building, it arrived in three
weeks. 'I'm a total cynic but I'm not cynical about these people,' he says.

The people of Wadeye are wary of journalists because most of the headlines
about the town have been about riots that broke out in 2005 - between two
gangs called Judas Priest and Evil Warriors. Walking around town it seems
most young people belong to gangs of some kind, seemingly harmless. A group
of giggling girls say they belong to the Tina Turner gang, and apparently
there is one named after Celine Dion. At the dongas where visitors stay,
food that I had bought at Wadeye's only general store was stolen a few
hours after I arrived. Children of 12 or 13 had been hanging around but
they took crisps and biscuits, leaving a gold chain and a computer. With so
few resources here, it does not seem surprising bored young people form
gangs and that violence inevitably erupts every now and then.

Local people play down the riots of 2005, but they gave Wadeye a reputation
as a lawless place. The town now has strong leadership in the form of
Thamarrurr Council, made up of representatives from each of the clans. It
is working hard for the common good, developing ways to bring employment
such as a commercial fishing scheme and training young men to be bush
mechanics. Other projects include building houses - more than 200 are
needed urgently - developing recreation grounds, improving roads, and
installing street lighting - 95 per cent of the town is in darkness at
night.

'We're trying to normalise the town,' says spokesman John Berto. 'I think
this community is doing fantastically well. It's only 80 years since they
had contact with the white man. Of course there are a lot of problems here
but there are also good things, the culture and the language, the closeness
of families, the strength of leadership in men and women.'

A massive task is ahead of those who want to improve Wadeye but after a few
days visitors begin to look past the distressing living conditions and
discover the people of Wadeye are sustained by their culture, which is kept
alive through songs, legends and stories. Retaining their traditional
language is part of that. Murrinh-patha, the language of the Kardu Diminin
clan that owns the land on which Wadeye stands, is spoken by everyone while
the other languages, spoken by only a handful of elders, are in danger of
becoming extinct.

At Our Lady of the Sacred Heart School in Wadeye, children are taught in
Murrinh-patha and in English. 'Language is strong here and people want to
hold on to it,' says Tobias Nganbe, co-principal. 'But we also want our
children to be proficient in English so that they will be strong people on
their own lands, have similar employment opportunities to white kids and be
able to move between their own culture and mainstream Australian culture.'

The teaching staff have an uphill struggle. According to activists, one of
the reasons so many Aborigine children do not speak English competently is
a shameful lack of resources and a shortage of teachers qualified to teach
English as a second language.

Another reason is the dismal school attendance figures among Aborigine
students. At Wadeye, 600 children are enrolled at school but only 300
attend regularly. The picture is the same at other Aborigine schools and
this has prompted Prime Minister John Howard's government to float the idea
of diverting welfare payments from parents whose children do not attend.

The reasons for non-attendance are many. Some Aboriginal parents did not
have happy experiences at school and do not believe it is important to send
their children. In many communities, including Wadeye, schools have been so
under-funded that there are not enough classrooms or teachers. Inevitably,
children and their parents become disillusioned.

Last month, Wadeye lodged a landmark complaint in the Australian Human
Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission alleging that for three decades
local and federal governments deliberately discriminated against the
community by under-funding the school. The class action case, prepared by
pro bono lawyers, includes every resident of school age in Wadeye since
1979. It is based on a study that found that for every dollar spent
educating the average child in the Northern Territory only 48 cents was
spent on a child in Wadeye. The figures were said to have been calculated
by a funding formula that gauges attendance, instead of enrolment.

The same study also found that local and national governments overspent on
'negative' areas in Wadeye such as policing and criminal justice and
under-spent on 'positive' areas such as education and job creation. Wadeye
is the first Aboriginal community in Australia to launch such an action
and, if it wins, it wants compensation in the form of vocational and
remedial education for people now unemployed and on welfare.

On my last day in Wadeye, the Nudjulu family took me to their outstation at
Kuy, 40kms away. Patrick rested in the shade while his wife Mona and
grandchildren went hunting for mud-crabs in the mangrove swamp for eating
later.

Patrick, who speaks several Aborigine languages, as well as English, told me
he was educated at Wadeye in the early mission days and put up in
dormitories with other children.

'I was born here, in the bush,' he said. 'I used to run away and walk back
here.' He laughs heartily: 'I'm happy to be here still.'