The myth of Indigenous ‘disadvantage’

From: mbrannan8@bigpond.com
To: mindgames@theaustralian.com.au (Soapbox)
Date: Mon, 18 Apr 2011 14:44:52 +1000

The myth of Indigenous ‘disadvantage’

I was brought up in the greater conurbation of London in the 1950’s. If we were lucky, we had a week’s holiday once a year at the seaside – this was my only significant contact with nature.  In my ‘privileged’ girl’s grammar school, the only tuition I received of the natural world came from classroom lessons in geography and biology. When I came out to Australia as a young adult, I soon discovered that, compared to any traditionally-reared Aboriginal child, I was completely ignorant of the world around me.

So when I watched a TV program on remote Aboriginal school children’s ‘disadvantage’, I was bemused by the myths the media and governments continue to promulgate.  A social worker was on a beautiful tropical beach with a dozen laughing, exuberant children running around – no doubt they spent a lot of time on the beach and in the water, learning to fish and harvest the natural resources.  Her comment was:  “These are some of the most disadvantaged children in Australia,” referring to their Western educational opportunities.  I thought of my own schooling, trapped in a musty classroom all day every day. I thought of all the children living under the massive Asian pollution cloud who have never seen a blue sky or a rainbow, and millions of others around the world in slums and tenements, in cities and suburbs who live in man-made environments and never get the opportunity to interact with nature in any meaningful way. And it became obvious to me that those happy, healthy Aboriginal kids were in fact among the most privileged on Earth.

The Prime Minister recently gave the annual ‘Closing the Gap’ speech to parliament - her key point was that ‘all Australians will have the same opportunities’. Therein lies the fundamentally false paradigm that underpins every government policy on 'Indigenous education' (itself a false appellation – what they’re talking about is Western education for Indigenous people) Whereas all Indigenous Australians have the opportunity to learn everything about their own cultures as well as the Western & Eastern world cultures, non-Indigenous Australians do not have the same opportunity to be educated in an Aboriginal knowledge system.

Clearly it is non-Indigenous people who are disadvantaged, the exact opposite of what the government would like us to believe so they can continue to disrespect and not economically value these formidable cultures that have served humanity so well for tens of thousands of years and kept Australia's ecosystems thriving – if they did, no cultural Indigenous Australian would be living in poverty.

M. Brannan, Murgon Qld

(Maureen Brannan 905 Wilsons Road CLOYNA Q 4605 ph 04 277 10523)  

(It’s a bit over 400 words – please remove the section in red if its too much)

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If governments did respect and value Aboriginal cultures, there would not be the continued entrenched poverty and despair in the homelands as there is at present, worried sick as they are that they will be forced off their lands by the government's 'hub town' policy, and there would be virtually no suicides. The intervention has been a complete disaster - the government could have intervened by providing the remote communities with solar power, with training to repair their homes like Paul Pheleros' crew, with inexpensive earth-building programs, with permaculture gardens and as a triage measure, with bunk beds to get kids off the ground and off the dirty blankets that have caused ear infection and tragic deafness in so many Aboriginal kids. But they did none of this - they just sent in the army to conduct duplicate medicals on children and introduced wellfare quarantining, the absurd and repressive 'basics card' that forces welfare recipients to shop in supermarkets hundreds of kilometers away instead of growing their own food! ...and Aboriginal children are STILL experiencing a multitude of health problems caused by over-crowing and unhygenic living conditions, and are still committing suicide, now at an unprecedented rate, and the government is culpable. In my view, the federal government should be indicted in international criminal courts for their disastrous intervention into Aboriginal societies, and specifically for continuing to allow Aboriginal children to sleep in over-crowded dwellings, sharing on-the-ground bedding with many other children and with dogs and continuing to lose their hearing from totally avoidable ear infections that cannot be rapidly treated.

I have references to support all my arguments - I am also compiling an essential reading list for all Australian governments and councils, most of whom cannot even comprehend the publically revealed first layer of these multi-dimensional knowledge streams, 60,000 years in the building and accruing with every generation of sustainable land managers keenly observing nature, now being enhanced with Western science validation and integration.

The first is:  "Yothu Yindi - Finding Balance" by Mandawuy Yunupingu.)

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(Some past emails related to this subject)

From: maureen brannan [mailto:mbrannan8@bigpond.com]
Sent: Tuesday, 18 August 2009 11:31 AM
To: NT Min for Indigenous Policy; VIC Min for Aboriginal Affairs; NSW Min for Aboriginal Affairs; LGATSIP - SMTP; WA Min for Indigenous Affairs; Malcolm Turnbull; Kevin Rudd; Federal Indigenous Affairs Minister; SA Min for Aboriginal Affairs
Cc: EducationAndArts - SMTP; National Indigenous Times; National Indigenous Human Rights Congress; Koori Mail; Drew Hutton; Black/Green Solidarity List
Subject: Baby Slim shows the way

Message to the Prime Minister and Federal & State Ministers for Aboriginal Affairs:

The photo below (from Megan Lewis' Conversations with the Mob) is of 'Baby Slim' who began intensely studying this termite mound while his parents patiently watched on after a day's hunting - eventually he pulled out a lunki grub and promptly stuffed it in his mouth. I'm not sure if he'd previously observed people finding the grubs this way or he may have used his own observations ... either way it shows wonderful survival skills inherited from hundreds of generations of professional practitioners of sustainable land management. Can you imagine any non-Indigenous baby of this age# displaying such initiative, ingenuity, patience and observational powers? Yet his talents would NOT BE VALUED in your Western educational system; his proficiency in his native language, describing all the myriad plants and animals of his country, their connections, their life-cycles, the seasonal changes in flows of water and SO much more - NOT VALUED;  his highly evolved culture, stretching back to the beginnings of humanity - NOT VALUED;  its sophisticated totemic and kinship systems that ensure each and every member of the clan is nurtured throughout their lives by multiple carers - NOT VALUED.

This child may well begin his "education" in a Western school in another three years, maybe with a basic understanding of three or more different languages, knowing more about his natural environment than most of us will ever know - and be DENIGRATED by 'teaching professionals' because he can't spell 'cat'.*  He has the human right and should have the opportunity to learn everything about his country, his language and his culture ..... just what can a Western industrialised society teach him? Forcing him to adopt (ie assimilate into) a Western lifestyle is akin to cultural genocide. In fact the only reason he should learn English, as far as I can see, is to educate Westerners about his world.

You all desperately need to get some humility, show some respect for the inherent triple-bottom-line value of Indigenous cultures, acknowledge your past profound ignorance and assist Baby Slim and his people to restore their cultures and lifestyles, without interference^ apart from facilitating access to modern technologies that might help them, such as renewable energies, earthbuilding and re-cycled water aquaponic systems. Instead of closing down 'un-economic' remote communities, introducing a cultural maintenance payment for every Indigenous person who wishes to regain their inheritance and live on their homelands would be a good start.

 #  The stark polarity of our worlds is evident, considering any non-Aboriginal toddler would need to be fully clothed from head to toe, brimmed hat, shoes & socks and factor 50 sunscreen before venturing out into the desert sun - Baby Slim is perfectly adapted to his environment.

*   Comment by a remote school teacher on ABC TV

^   Taking decision-making powers away from government and restoring them to people on-the-ground was the very wise advice of our secular saint, Fred Hollows.

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From: "Maureen Brannan"
To: editor@koorimail.com 

Cc: news@nit.com.auSubject: Open letter to Mal Brough
Date: Fri, 10 Aug 2007 05:05:39 +0000
Open letter to Mal Brough
Senior legal opinion from the Greens has determined that the current intervention laws that you are pushing through your “rubber stamp” senate, are unconstitutional. I believe they would also be found to be discriminatory and illegal under International law.

“Message Stick” covered a story on the CDEP scheme last week, some positive experiences with it, providing fulfilling and culturally appropriate work in remote communities and townships where there are no regular jobs in the mainstream workforce to be found. My own research found many positive and exceptional outcomes from the scheme. It has worked exceptionally well, so why is it being dismantled and the participants told to “find ‘real’ jobs”?  If there is a problem with corruption in administering the scheme, surely it would be best to deal with that specific problem rather than dismantle the entire scheme. The same applies to the Permit System. Your justification for abolishing it - 'because it’s not working – alcohol and drugs are getting in anyway' is utterly ridiculous. These specific problems can also be fixed with targeted changes. So now it wont be just rivers of grog, it’ll be a tsunami of grog, drugs, petrol & pedophiles running through these communities. One would be excused in thinking that this is what the government intends.  It is not just immoral and illogical, it is probably illegal to unnecessarily put these communities at so much more risk of harm.

Bush Telegraph recently covered a story about an Aboriginal woman who has been gathering bush tucker from the mangroves behind the Royal Darwin Hospital for the past 20 years (below) to help Indigenous patients recover. She collects 30-40 different bush foods - in one outing, she may collect 200 shells & 24 crabs along with whatever fruits and vegetables are in season, enough to feed the 50 patients she looks after.

Mr  Brough, would this constitute a “real job’ in your view? How many white people do you think could do this job?

Real jobs would involve re-building their culture, restoring health and happiness to their people and looking after the biodiversity of the land, as they had done so well for tens of thousands of years. Unfortunately Western agricultural practices have all but wiped out the natural bounty that had sustained them for millennia. Real jobs would involve working with environmentalists in the massive effort of land restoration and re-vegetation needed everywhere, and traditional Indigenous methods will help enormously in that endeavour.

If there’s one thing worse than child sex abuse, it would be a government who cynically uses that tragedy to implement an agenda that leads to cultural extinction.

Maureen Brannan, Murgon

PS: While I was up-dating my government mailing list, I noticed: > There are parliamentary secretaries for every main portfolio except Indigenous Affairs - does this reflect the importance that governments place on Indigenous issues?  > all the indigenous policy statements on govt websites appear to be assimilationist, none are encouraging Aboriginal people to regain their own cultures;  > the title 'Aboriginal Development' sounds slightly racist and demeaning to me - don't you think Aborigines have developed enough after 60,000 years of successful habitation of this continent? > Aboriginal Reconciliation is a misnomer – there has never been conciliation with the usurpers of their lands, so they cannot be re-conciled.

Bushtucker woman gathers for health
By Alice Plate and Michael Mackenzie

Friday, 03/08/2007
Ever tried to get your daily food from mangroves? That's what Pat Gamanangga has been doing for the past 13 years. Darwin Royal Hospital's resident bushtucker expert loves to eat as much as she can and every Thursday she collects it for Aboriginal patients.

Pat collects enough food to feed about 60 patients and she's also working to preserving her knowledge. Pat has been teaching fellow health workers and young people from remote communities about bushtucker and how to collect it.

She collects periwinkles, yams, clams, mangrove worms and mud mussels from the mangroves near the Darwin hospital.

"It's good for diarrhoea, flu, fever, itchy throat. All this bushtucker is just normal to us and it's cheaper than in the supermarket."

"The Islanders they grew up with bushtucker and when they in hospital they looking for a special natural taste. Good for their tongue and curing their bodies. Good for diabetics and kidney problems. Patients see me and they feel free from the suffering pains."

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...and finally a piece of satire (satirical because despite often mouthing platitudes about being so proud of Australia having the longest continuing cultures in the world, you are in many instances actively destroying them and otherwise complicit in state governments doing the same): 

A 'satirical' message from Julia Gillard to the Indigenous Peoples of Australia

In my government's new paradigm, we hereby make this solemn oath: We will stop telling you what to do and we will start asking you what you want and need to address your social problems and restore peace, health and harmony in your communities, as they were before Australian governments nearly destroyed your cultural structures entirely and wiped out your skillfully managed diversity of bush foods and medicines virtually everywhere by land clearing. We will listen carefully, and then we will facilitate whatever you say is required to achieve this, be it supplying remote communities with the latest renewable energy technologies, practical earth building programs or anything else at all to help with the reconstruction effort. There will be no more demeaning ‘welfare’ payments to Aboriginal people who wish to reclaim their inheritance and restore their cultures, contemporaneously or traditionally – there will now be unconditional funding of each and every person (including non-Indigenous) in any way involved in cultural restoration, in recognition that it would involve a comparatively miniscule amount of government funds. If you wish to re-establish your inter-connected grid of Songlines and migration trails (mostly still existing within the stock route system which usurped them) that can easily be arranged by according them the same legal status as the stock routes, i.e. free access to walkers and riders - if its good enough for cattle, surely it is good enough for the nation's First People! If you want to prioritise teaching your children their own languages over English, that too can be arranged through school curricula. In fact, as long as you don't break any laws, you do whatever you need to do to keep the priceless legacy of humanity's longest continual scientific and metaphysical knowledge streams safe and enduring into the future. Needless to say, all your most precious and sacred cultural places will immediately come under legal protection from harm, beginning with the Worimi's iconic Bula Dilla, currently under threat of complete desecration by unnecessary development. Keep in touch … and let me know if you would like me to sign a treaty to legitimise our pledge. I hope your new year really does bring a bran nue dae for your long-suffering peoples.

(Maureen Brannan 905 Wilsons Road CLOYNA Qld 4605 ph: 04 277 10523)