No investment - nor roads: No intentionality - no direction in Aboriginal Australia

Geoff Robinson, political historian and lecturer in Australian Studies and Politics at Deakin University, has chipped in at Crikey to-day with some words of wisdom. Geoff says:-
Who would be surprised by the problems in remote indigenous communities?
Back in 1970 Charles Rowley predicted the emergence of endemic pauperism if rural and regional indigenous people did not gain a foothold in the real economy.
What have Australian governments done to assist economic activity in rural and regional Australia? Plenty for white farmers; rural adjustment schemes are set to persist longer than the agrarian socialism that they were supposed to bury and we have drought relief designed to compensate for the surprising fact of drought in Australia.
According to the 2007 budget papers the Commonwealth has spent $1.4b in drought relief since 2001. For 2007-11 the adjustment scheme Agriculture Advancing Australia is planned to cost over $360m. The 2004 sugar industry support program promised $444m. What is there for the support of economic activity by indigenous people to support economic activity, as distinct from making it harder for them to access welfare in the hope this will encourage them to find jobs somewhere or somehow?

The 2007-08 budget offered $23m to apply activity tests to welfare recipients. More jobs for white public servants here. There was only $0.6m for an actual jobs program for indigenous rangers to detect illegal fishing. There is a program to build an indigenous workforce in government services delivery but it amounts only to an increased funding of $31.3m over four years and most of these will just be shifted from existing work for the dole programs.

The recent Northern Territory crisis package offers community cleanups on a work for the dole basis. Will struggling storekeepers in country towns have to sweep streets to get drought assistance? The government has established a taskforce to investigate options for irrigation agriculture in northern Australia but is it addressing indigenous employment? Isn’t it time that indigenous Australians and white farmers received equal concern?

Miss Eagle's suggestion for economic participation are:

1. All weather roads to Aboriginal communities. Without this basic lifeline of transport and communication no community, black or white, can begin to build an economy.
2. Air strips - for similar reasons.
3. Building communities which specialise in the delivery of community services. Employment classifications for Tennant Creek are dominated by the number of people employed in community services. This is duplicated across the nation in rural Australia. With investment, intentionality, mentoring and direction, Aboriginal communities - just like white communities - can build themselves up economically as a service centre. Services can be commercial, health, educational, or tourism.

Such participation should go far beyond the Work for the Dole schemes. Work for the Dole schemes should be seen as transition schemes of basic economic participation - not as ends in themselves.

Tennant Creek liquor laws half-hearted?

The Grog Book. Strengthening Indigenous Community Action on Alcohol. Revised Edition. Department of Health and Ageing, Canberra 2005. Available from http://www.alcohol.gov.au, or phone 1800 020 103 ext. 8654.

Miss Eagle has received the following comment with regard to the post on the Night Patrol at Tennant Creek:

I've driven through, and stopped overnight in, Tennant Creek in each of the last two years but wasn't aware of the night patrol. I did note that some types of alcohol, eg fortified wine, are not on sale. This seems to be a half hearted way of approaching the problem, though it's better than nothing.

Miss E started to respond in the comments but the response was a bit long and deserved a better exposure than being tucked away in the comments.

Believe Miss Eagle when she says there was nothing half-hearted in Tennant Creek's approach to the liquor problem.

Miss E can understand someone calling the respoonse half-hearted but, from her viewpoint, the only whole hearted response would be to ban liquor for blackfellas and whitefellas alike. But this would cause an uproar among the whitefellas (as the Tennant Creek laws did - an effigy in someone's front yard) and lead to an even greater outbreak of grog smuggling by both blackfella and whitefella alike.

Two things: we live in a democracy and places like Tennant Creek have to live on a daily basis with Aboriginal people and their culture. Such a situation is unknown to the majority of Australians living on the urban fringes in a white dominated culture. Aboriginal culture is not some nice abstract thing which includes eating kangaroo and doing dot paintings. Living with Aboriginal people of significant numbers (half TC's population is black and approx. half of those are traditional Aboriginal people) means that their culture impacts on whitefella culture. The two cultures have to acknowledge each other and live together on a daily basis.

One of the factors which should be acknowledged with drinking in the Aboriginal culture is that the right to drink is tied up in a very real and historic way with Aboriginal civil rights -predominantly because of the experience of Albert Namatjira.

So in Tennant Creek not only whitefellas were unimpressed with the new liquor laws. A number of Aboriginal drinkers were unimpressed as well. One Aboriginal man said to Miss Eagle that, each pay day, he gave his pay to his wife and kept out his drinking money. Why should he not be able to drink as he pleased? All Miss Eagle could say was to get together the people who thought like he did and have their say. This voice, as far as Miss E could tell, was never heard.

The publicans of Tennant Creek fought the introduction of the new liquor laws through the court in a quite protracted case. They lost. Always remember vested whitefella interest and the way it markets its product. Never forget - as whitefellas do when comdemning blackfellas for drinking - the whitefellas who will do anything to get grog to blackfellas for profit.

Miss Eagle remembers years ago the publican in Burketown in the Gulf country who was such a thoughtful person that he sold a very, very rough red to the blackfellas in plastic flagons so that they would not cut themselves. Then there was the shop in Mount Isa just around the corner from the Mount Isa High School which met customer demand in a thoughtful way as well by selling methylated spirits ready mixed with Orchy (orange juice) which could be purchased chilled straight from the refrigerator and then taken the 50 meters or so across to the bed of the Leichhardt River to drink with friends while doing a spot of gambling. Mental note: Must talk about gambling which is an even worse problem than grog and no one ever mentions it or does anything about it.

With the mention of methylated spirits, Miss Eagle must refer to the campaign conducted for many years by Tony McGrady, former Mayor of Mount Isa and Speaker of the Queensland Parliament, to have methylated spirits made unpalatable for drinking. He did succeed - eventually. Let's ask ourselves why such a simple matter took so long? How many blackfellas' brains turned to jelly while whitefellas looked the other way and could not make a simple administrative decision in a matter which did not affect their well-being or profit?

The laws that were introduced in Tennant Creek were not iron clad. How could they be? But thanks to the nous and organisation of Julalikari Council, Tennant Creek - black and white - went on a journey which no mainstream community had been on before in this nation and no one has had the guts to follow since.

Now, contrary to public opinion, the drinking blackfella has always known how to get the most alcoholic bang for his buck. That's why the popular purchase was always a five litre cask of moselle. The sale of this was banned. But, of course, there were substitutes - Fruity Lexia, port and sherry.

Another problem developed with the consumption of port and sherry: the littering of streets with broken glass. Hardly a street corner was exempt. The problem had never been quite so evident with the casks. So the Tennant Creek Town Council applied for and received funding from the Northern Territory Government to pay for a ute and two men to keep the streets clean. The Northern Territory has a wine cask levy which makes such things possible. However - and isn't there always a 'however' - TC's wily General Manager of the time used to divert the two men and the ute to other tasks so that the original purpose of the funding was frequently unfulfilled.

Get the message! We complain about blackfellas - from ATSIC to drunks on the street - but where do they learn their lessons, what examples are set for ethical behaviour in the white community?

But back to half-heartedness. There was great co-operation to make the new laws work. Antipathy to the laws - with the exception of the publicans - in a public way soon subsided. The NT Liquor Commission and the Police were on side. Pubs which did the wrong thing were shut down - albeit temporarily. The Shaft at the Tennant Creek Hotel (otherwise known as The Swan) was caught by the Liquor Commission serving grog to drunken blackfellas. The owners were taken to Court and were forced to close all their outlets for three days - including their popular Steakhouse restaurant. The Goldfields was closed on a couple of occasions because of the raucous behaviour of drunken blackfellas.

Word to Miss Eagle is that the laws have fallen into disrepair because they were constructed around Thursday as the uniform Social Security benefit pay day. The government began to stagger paydays for different benefits and Thursday - the one day when public bars and bottleshops were closed - no longer has the same significance.

Now there is one little thing the Howard Government could do, without uproar, by administrative fiat - go back to a uniform pay day and get the NT to close public bars across the NT every Thursday.

Archbishop of Melbourne, Philip Freire: on the front foot.

The 10am news on the ABC here in Melbourne has just reported that Archbishop Philip Freire, Anglican Archbishop of Melbourne, has questioned why the Federal Government has linked its intervention in Aboriginal communities to the resumption of land. One assumes this was part of the Archbishop's address last night at the University of Wollongong when he delivered the Inaugural Richard Johnson College Lecture. The Lecture was titled Public Policy and Indigenous Affairs – 40 Years on.

The Archbishop certainly displayed a magnificent, nay Providential, sense of timing. Mal Brough is reported to-day as being most dismissive of the Catholic Bishops. Apparently the Catholic Bishops don't have close and sufficient knowledge. Don't know what Brough's religious allegiance is, if any, but it is clear that he knows nothing of the Catholic bishops and how they know exactly what is going on. Brough wouldn't want to be so dismissive of Freier whose credentials include a stint as Bishop of the Northern Territory immediately prior coming to Melbourne just at the end of last year. Now, what credentials does Brough think he has....? These are his credentials on the parliamenary website. Mmmm....!

Malcom Fraser: Australians All: Justice, Security, A Fair Go

There's no doubt about Malcolm Fraser, 22nd Prime Minister of Australia. In 1975, his actions divided the nation. In 1986, a now retired Malcolm somehow managed to get drugged and lose his trousers in Memphis, Tennessee. But, for many years, Malcolm has had the status of National Treasure. Where would we be without him?

In recent times, he has gathered around him a coterie of forty distinguished Australians from all walks of life, from major faiths, from across the political spectrum. You can find them all on Malcolm's site, Australians All, which has the motto - Justice, Security, A Fair Go.

In the dark shadow cast by John Howard's Shock and Awe Campaign in Aboriginal communities, there's a lot of good writing at Australians All so please pop over and avail yourself of it, dear Reader.

Tennant Creek, Night Patrol, and Thirsty Thursday

Logo: Julalikari Council,

Tennant Creek, Northern Territory

So you, dear Reader, are a bit non-plussed about Mal Brough's apparent about face on grog access for Aboriginal communities? Get a dose of reality on the whole Shock and Awe Campaign.

Howard and Brough are strutting the national stage as if they are the only ones with ideas, the only ones to think of solutions. No, they are not. But they are part of the problem - the problem that has cut funding for Aboriginal initiatives, refused to listen to Aboriginal people making their needs known, failing to fund their reasonable and justifiable proposals.

Aboriginal people - particularly the women and, of them, the grandmothers - have strong views about alcohol and access to it. Most Aboriginal people, in spite of white views to the contrary, do not drink. Survey after survey outlines this. Some believe that alcohol and the way whitefellas make money out of blackfellas by selling it to them legally or illegally is nothing less than genocide.

This means that Aboriginal people, as a generality, are highly motivated to do something about alcohol usage and access. Tennant Creek, arguably, has been the place of the most creative attempts to combat grog and its effects. The Aboriginal community in Tennant Creek established the very first Night Patrol in Australia. The Night Patrol - largely staffed by women - drives around at night and picks up alcohol affected people. The violent, obstreperous ones are left for the police who take them to the local watch-house. The others are either taken home or to the shelter/drying out place.

Night Patrols have been established in numerous Aboriginal communities. They are a success story of Aboriginal Australia. For more information on the Night Patrol experience in Tennant Creek please read here and here.

But the Tennant Creek story does not begin and end with the Night Patrol. With the idea that was to become known as Thirsty Thursday, Julalikari Council - the energetic, creative, and involved Aboriginal organisation in Tennant Creek - suggested closing down the liquor outlets for one day to make the significant point of the impact no grog could have on Aboriginal communities. Read this description of Julalikari's radical proposal and its implementation by a former resident of Tennant Creek, Paul Cockrem.

Julalikari Council commissioned Miles Franklin Award winner, Alexis Wright, to document the history of the closure of the Tennant Creek pub's and the changes to licensing laws in Tennant published in Grog War.

It was good to hear Peter Dabbs on The World To-day this afternoon. Peter used to be in the Northern Territory with the Menzies School of Health. He was part of the team from Menzies who surveyed the residents of Tennant Creek as we tried one set of liquor laws for three months and another set of laws for another three months. Go here for a number of publications by Menzies relating to alcohol and Aboriginal communities. Peter Dabbs co-authored a report on the Tennant experience - d’Abbs P, Togni S, Crundall I. The Tennant Creek Liquor Licensing Trial, August 1995 – February 1996 : An Evaluation. Darwin: Menzies School of Health Research, 1996. Purchase price: AU$16:50 - which can be purchased from Menzies.

Iraq and oil: Brendan Nelson and Louise Barry

OIL PIPELINE FIRE — A U.S. Army soldier performs perimeter security during a reconnaissance patrol by the 66th Armor Battalion in an area where a recent insurgent attack took place on an Iraqi oil pipeline near Taji, Iraq, March 1, 2006. U.S. Navy photo by Petty Officer 1st Class Michael Larson . From Defend America.


Crikey has, this afternoon, drawn our attention to a significant opinion piece by U.S. media figure, Keith Olberman. The transcript is published by Salon.com and is available here. Some of the comment took Miss Eagle's breath away - but, in her view, it is all fair comment.


When something comes to our attention, we place it in our own context of time, place, experience. This comes to attention at a time when the Australian government is handling two negative statements in regard to Australia's participation in the Iraq war:

1. Louise Barry's advertisement supporting the concept that Australian involvement in Iraq brings terrorism to our doorstep; and


2. Ministerial comments which say aloud that the Iraq war is about oil and from which the Minister for Defence, Brendan Nelson, now resiles.

Large sections of the Australian polity have always doubted the wisdom of Australia's participation in the Iraq invasion/adventure. Hundreds of thousands of Australians took to the streets. Australians viewed UN approval as crucial to an Australian presence in the Coalition of the Willing. When this approval was not forthcoming, and Australia committed to participation, the edge went from the debate against participation in the war. Australians took on the attitude that our troops are now there, let's support them.

But the Iraq adventure has taken us beyond that. Australians want their men and women home. Australians are well aware of the idiocy and corruption of the Bush/Cheney regime. Australians have been taken into the milieu of what is arguably the most corrupt and unanswerable presidency in the history of the United States of America. We are supporting a corrupt regime in the United States and self-interested inhumanity in Iraq.

Into that context, have come the words of Keith Olberman. Olberman is not a household name in Australia but his words are currently being passed around across the continent by email and blog. Miss E received an email from a friend as she began to post on this topic.

It is time to listen: it is a matter of life and death.

Collateral damage in Aboriginal Australia

Let's start putting together what the Howard Government is saying and doing about its 'initiative' on the State of Emergency into the Aboriginal communities of this nation. Almost immediately the plan was referred to as one of Shock and Awe: a fitting reference to the U.S. military doctrine of rapid dominance written by Harlan K. Ullman and James P. Wade which was so memorably implemented in the bombing of Baghdad.

If we had not had the modern phrase Shock and Awe to fall back on we probably would have used the word the Germans used for their technique of Blitzkrieg: the purpose of which was to avoid the stagnating tit for tat attrition of trench warfare.

Trench warfare is what so many people feel they have been in with the Howard Government as they have slogged away to build a better life in Aboriginal Australia while the Howard Government snipes at them on Mabo and Native Title, on funding cuts and refusals, on the autocratic abolition of ATSIC.

Miss Eagle suggests that, from the words of Generals Howard and Brough with a few comments inserted by Brigadier Abbot, we start building a picture of Collateral Damage. This is a term for incidental damage during a military campaign. While this definition has relevance to the Howard Government's state of emergency, perhaps an even more relevant usage of the term comes from the IT community where it is used to refer to the denial of service to legitimate users when administrators take blanket preventative measures against some individuals who are abusing systems.

So let's begin the list:

• Loss of control over decision making by Aboriginal people in Aboriginal communities
• Lack of Aboriginal involvement in consultations regarding their well-being
• Loss of Aboriginal and and control over that land which has been hard won
• Invasion. How many have there been? First settlers, squatters, miners, tourists....now the military are coming
• Invasion of privacy at community and personal level

Please send your additions. Miss Eagle apologises that she won't be able to moderate comments for a few days as she goes out of blogging range to immerse herself in the matters of rural communities.

Kevin Rudd, vision and backbone

Kevin Rudd, in spite of the polls favouring his leadership and predicting his ascension to the role of Prime Minister, is still an unknown quantity in so many ways. We have not heard anything from him - at least that Miss Eagle can recall - on vision items, the big picture stuff. True, the task at hand is to get rid of John Howard and Miss Eagle is right behind that. But vision stuff is not only about painting pictures. It gives us an idea of the principles imbued in the person. The stuff that he will stand firm on. The stuff from which he will not resile. The stuff on which the nation can rely when his backbone needs to remain straight and firm and solid.

Kevin now would be a good time to display the state and quality of your backbone and the extent of your vision. There are times when agreeing with good ideas of the incumbent government is great. It reassures the electorate. Makes the opposition look as if they can rise above petty politics. But - and remember Labor and Tampa and border security - there are times when you can look to have a spine of jelly, no vision and precious little principle.

Show us your vision, Kevin, in relation to the First Nations of Australia. Show us something of your approach to meeting the needs of some of the most disadvantaged people in this nation. Or, Kevin, is all this not on your wavelength. Are you no more able to come to grips with the Aboriginal spirit of this country than John Howard has been? Silence on this issue is not golden, Kevin.

Claire Martin's leadership in this whole concern is highly questionable. The one Labor leader who has had the gumption to make a credible protest has been Alan Carpenter, the West Australian premier. Why has he been able to attack so confidently and competently? Because his government has some runs on the board - runs of the kind which fit with the Howard criteria of what should be done - and is armed with the refusal of WA requests to the Howard Government for partnership and assistance.

It is good to see Warren Snowdon up front and questioning. Warren's track record is good. As a parliamentary secretary in the Hawke-Keating governments, Warren looked after his NT electorate well. He has a ready ear and an energetic disposition. He wants to get things done and has been in there doing it for years. Trish Cross, one of NT's Senators, is in there pitching too. So there is a good distribution of opinion: Wazza from the desert and Trish from the Top End.

More power to your arms.

Life at Mutitjulu

There is a beautiful slide show by Jason South of life at Mutitjulu here. Find out more about life at Mutitjulu here.

Does Howard want the children or Uluru and Kakadu?

Why us? Why now? the people of Mutitjulu are asking.

The answer is not difficult and it comes in four parts:

1. Mutitjulu is accessible. It is close to an international airport.
2. Mutitjulu is visible. Visibile to tourists - particularly international visitors.
3. The people at Mutitjulu have the land on which Uluru is situated and a say in its management.
4. It is happening now because Howard has an excuse put in his hands.

Just as the Iraq War was planned by the neo-cons before George W Bush ever came to power but could be implemented with the excuse of 9/11, so Aboriginal control of land and, above all, Aboriginal control of Uluru and Katajuta, has been a sore point with conservative forces in this nation.

The former CLP Government in the Northern Territory resented Aboriginal ownership and control greatly. And it is not only Uluru/Katajuta that is at stake. Kakadu is as well. Whitefellas want to open Jabiluka. The Mirrar people fight against it - successfully, to date. The people at Mutitjula stop planes flying over Uluru. If they thought it possible without too much angst, they would stop people walking on it. At the moment, they just make do with advisory notices which large numbers of ignorant and arrogant whitefellas ignore.

If the Federal Government can regain control of Aboriginal land in the Northern Territory - and it can wedge its way in by taking hold of community land without compensation - it can take back control of Kakadu and Uluru/Katajuta National Parks. All in the name of child abuse. Then - after the nuclear waste dump issue is settled - the land councils will be razed. Whitefellas rule, OK!

Aboriginal insecurity: thinking on vines and fig trees. Part 4. Reality on a road trip.

Miss Eagle is publishing the following from Crikey. The Howard-Brough Shock and Awe Campaign of the past week astounds people because it bears no relation to the reality of their experience. "People" who have - unlike John Howard - acknowledged the reality of Aboriginal disadvantage, the child abuse in Aboriginal communities and have lived in the NT working side by side with Aboriginal people to get on with things and build a better life. Bob Gosford, who writes below, seems to get it. So please take a dose of reality from his road trip. Please note: The links related to the names of Aboriginal organisations mentioned were added by Miss Eagle to facilitate access to knowledge on the part of the reader.

11. Fear and loathing in the Northern Territory

Bob Gosford writing on the road from from Ti Tree, Tennant Creek, Katherine, and Darwin:

Over three days this week I drove from the deep south to the tropical north of the Northern Territory and visited families along the way to gauge early reaction to Howard and Brough's promise to their children. From what I saw parents are drawing their own lines in the sand – and that line is firmly set at their front gates.

They say that if Howard, Brough or anyone else mandated by Canberra turn up at their houses to take their children away for a compulsory examinations for signs of s-xual abuse they will resist to protect their children.

I was driving from Alice Springs to Darwin when John Howard's coup of last Thursday was announced. I spent the night in a roadhouse there and all the talk was of Howard's move. Comment varied from "well-overdue and a good thing" to "we'll be rooned". Things were little clearer the next day and I went to the local council to see if they'd heard any more.

The Anmatjere Community Government Council offices are in the centre of the five square mile special-purpose lease excised from the Aboriginal land trust that surrounds the town. Ti Tree is a small, quiet town that provides the usual services to tourists and the people living and working on the surrounding cattle stations and small Aboriginal communities.

Many of the more essential services are provided by the council. Crikey asks the council staff if they have any comment about Howard's plans but they have nothing to say -- all they know is what they have seen in Brough's four-page press release and on Sky News the night before. A few hours and 350 kilometres up the road, I pulled into the Julalikari Aboriginal Corporation's offices in Tennant Creek. Julalikari provides 'cradle-to-grave' services to town camps and small Aboriginal communities scattered across the Tennant Creek area and the Barkly Tablelands. The staff can't say much about Howard's plans and they're loath to speak until after council meets this week. Elliott is another 'open' town another 250 kilometres closer to Darwin. The local 'white' council administers part of the town, but the Aboriginal town camps and some outstations are serviced by the small and chaotic offices of the Gurungu Aboriginal Corporation.
What do these organisations have in common? They are all squarely in the sights of Howard's coup. Why does this matter? Because they all stand to have the land they and their people have fought so hard for stripped from them -- again.

There are many organisations like Anmatjere, Julalikari and Gurungu in the NT -- they are run by good people who do the hardest of jobs with little thanks or government support.
These parents don't mind their kids having general health check-ups – they think it's a great idea and this could be done at their local Aboriginal-run and owned clinics and health centres staffed by people that they and their children know and respect.

But they point out what these centres need is real and sustainable resources and a plan which includes them as part of the solution -- and not a part of some greater game.
But they are firm in saying NO to compulsory examinations by doctors that don't know their kids, that they and their kids don't know, have never seen before, and in four months time they might never see again. They worry what will happen to their kid's medical reports and most of all, they worry about their kids being subjected to these unnecessary and intrusive examinations by strangers.

Aboriginal insecurity: thinking on vines and fig trees. Part 3. Muck to Muckaty

A national speaking tour, From the Heart - For the Heartland, by Traditional Owners of the four proposed nuclear dump sites in the Northern Territory has just concluded.

The Traditional Owners represented Fishers Ridge (near Katherine), Muckaty (near Tennant Creek), Mt Everard and Harts Range (near Alice Springs)
This document comes from the Warlmanpa people, Traditional Owners of Muckaty Station. Muckaty has only recently been added to the list of proposed sites at the request of the Northern Land Council. Only one family group at Muckaty is supportive of placing a nuclear waste dump there. The majority are against the proposal and are not supported in this by the Northern Land Council. This contrasts to the support given by Central Land Council to the Traditional Owners at Mt Everard and Harts Range.

Prior to the inclusion of Muckaty, Fishers Ridge was the only proposed site within the area covered by Northern Land Council. However, heavy rainfall and floodwaters which resulted in the proposed dump site being inundated mean that, in all likelihood, Fishers Ridge is a clear non-starter. This would have left no proposed dump site in the Northern Land Council area. That would have meant that the two remaining proposed sites were both in the Central Land Council area and CLC is supporting the opposition of the Traditional Owners.

So, Miss Eagle's nose tells her that something is fishy about the Muckaty proposal.

There is an old saying which Miss Eagle (a Napanangka) is in the habit of applying to everything.

Cui Bono? Who benefits?

Who benefits, indeed?

Aside for the long-term interests of the nuclear industry, there are two beneficiaries in the short-term. Clearly the Howard Government who is doing the bidding of its constituency. But it is clear that the Northern Land Council wants to be seen as a clear player in the search for a dump. Why?

Why - when the majority of the Traditional Owners at Muckaty are against the proposal? Could it possibly be that the Northern Land Council itself would be a beneficiary of some kind if a site was chose within Northern Land Council boundaries? Would it receive brokerage fees from a proposal which could bring in to the community - so its supporters say - about $12 million? Northern Land Council has never been overwhelmingly effective in the area immediately north of Tennant Creek. The best indicator of future behaviour is past behaviour.

Miss Eagle thinks that the Muckaty proposal has not a thing to do with the views or the welfare of the Traditional Owners and the community at Muckaty. It has more to do with Northern Land Council and the King of Yirrkala, Galarrwuy Yunupingu, whose personal fiefdom the NLC has been.

The Howard Government is looking for a dump site for nuclear waste. As Dave Sweeney of the Australian Conservation Foundation has put it: the policy of the Howard Government is that Australia becomes the world's nuclear quarry and the world's nuclear waste dump. The Northern Territory Government does not support the nuclear waste dump proposal. The Port of Darwin is significant is the quarry-dump scenario since it is believed that Darwin will become the key port, the key transport hub in Australia's servicing of the world nuclear industry.

John Howard - the recovering climate change septic - is telling us ad infinitum, ad nauseam that nuclear power stations dotted the length of Australia's eastern seaboard will be the solution to carbon emissions and climate change. It will be a clean fuel. A clean fuel, eh? Compare to what? Coal. True - when thinking of air pollution, nuclear power might be preferable. But just as there is waste from coal, there is waste from the nuclear industry. The government intends to put this in drums in the ground.

The waste that will go into the dump concludes:

• approx. 50 cubic metres of highly radioactive waste produced from reprocessing more than a thousand existing and future spent reactor fuel roads from Lucas Heights in Sydney. This will be arriving over the next 40 years and it is expected that it will come through the Port of Darwin.
• approx. 130 drum per year of radioactive, compactible low-level solid waste comprising vials, gloves etc - again from Lucas Heights.
• approx. 20 drums per year of drums of solidified radioactive 'sludge' produced in the treatment of reactor wastewaters courtesy of Lucas Heights.
• Hundreds of tonnes of radioactive non-compactible contaminated items including materials from the decommissioned old Lucas Heights reactor, pipes, and machinery.
• A stockpile of over 5,000 drums of low-level radioactive waste which will be shipped from Lucas Heights.
• Over 800 drums of historical wastes including radioactive thorium, beryllium and uranium from Lucas Heights.
• Over 2000 litres of radioactive contaminated charcoal ex Lucas Heights.
• Around ten cubic metres of highly dangerous solidified molybdenum long-lived intermediate level waste produced by Lucas Heights.
• Over 2000 cubic metres of radio active contaminated soil currently stored at Woomera.
• Other Commonwealth Defence Department and CSIRO (Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation) historic radioactive waste.

So Miss Eagle smiles a wry smile. When needs must, strange bedfellows arise. The Howard Government has wanted to eliminate the land councils. Now, it may need a Land Council to get what it wants. Mmm.....

The Traditional Owners have come up with their own symbol which they are asking people to wear to protest the use and pollution of their lands.

Dianne Stokes, a Traditional Owner of Muckaty and a Warrumunga/Warlmanpa woman of the Kalumpurlpa community says:

Top to bottom we got bush tucker right through the country. Whoever is taking this waste dump into our country needs to come back and talk to the Traditional Owners. We're not happy to have all of this stuff. We don't want it, it's not our spirit. Our spirit is our country, our country where our ancestors been born. Before towns, before hospitals, before cities. We want our country to be safe.

What do Ministers in the Howard Government have to say?

• Alexander Downer, Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade, has said:

I would rather have it in the Northern Territory than in Mount Barker just down the road from my electorate office.

• Brendan Nelson, Minister for Defence and formerly Science Minister, has said:

...why on earth can't people in the middle of nowhere have low level and intermediate level waste?

• Julie Bishop, formerly Science Minister and currently Minister for Education, has said:

...all the sites in the NT are well away from houses...some distance from any form of civilization.

Miss Eagle finds it obscene that we have as Minister for Education someone who cannot even recognise or acknowledge the locale of one of the oldest - if not the oldest - cultures in the world. There are none so blind as they who will not see.

Aboriginal insecurity: thinking on vines and fig trees. Part 2. Mutitjulu and the invasion of 2007.

Bob Randall and his daughter, Dorothea, are bearing witness to the insecurity felt by Aboriginal people in one community, Mutitjulu. Bob is a well-known singer and, just twelve months ago, was touring major cities promoting his movie, Kanyini, as well as the art of his wife Hazel Mackinnon. Miss Eagle posted on their Melbourne visit here. This year, Kanyini was voted the best documentary at the Australian Film Festival in London. Bob outlines, as so many communities do, the requests for assistance which have been made to the Federal Government and how those requests have been met with silence and neglect.

John Howard has now discovered concern for Aborigines and, in particular, the abuse of Aboriginal children. John Howard has been a deny-er of Aboriginal abuse - until, it would seem, now. He denied that any abuse of Aboriginal children or people occurred in our lifetime and that, because it did not occur in our lifetime, there was no need to apologise, to say "Sorry".

Now, unless we have all gone Tardis travelling, hasn't the abuse to which he refers occurred in living memory - in the lifetime of present generations? And hasn't he been on watch (well, asleep at the wheel) for eleven years of that period?

Does John Howard not understand that the people of Australia have watched him, listened to him, and remembered every word and inaction? Now that he has discovered Aborigines (well, we hope he has) it all has to be a state of emergency and frenetic activity - like George Bush and the Coalition of the Willing (including Australia under John Howard) invading Iraq.

You may recall, dear Reader, that in Baghdad the antiquities of humanity were looted. Hospital equipment was looted. All without meaningful intervention by the invaders. Could this possibly be a parable/prophecy/metaphor for what might happen in this speedy and hastily put together invasion of Aboriginal communities - which also includes, once more with feeling, the stealing of Aboriginal land without compensation?

In the weeks ahead, what will be lost in this state of emergency? What will be trampled on and looted in the attempt to achieve an outcome as unrealistic as Bush and his neo-cons?

Howard chose not to listen to hundreds of thousands of Australians taking to the streets to voice their opposition to Australian entry into Iraq. Howard has chosen not to listen to Aboriginal people and people working side by side with them for a better life. Howard turned his back on them - and they reciprocated by turning their backs on him.

Howard is sending in the troops, police, and professionals. Funding is not clear. Delegation is not clear. Enforcement under which set of laws is not clear. Howard is after a fix by fiat. And a short term fix at that. Except for the land grab, there is nothing to indicate that Howard, Brough, et al are there for the long haul; nothing to indicate that they will stand shoulder to shoulder with Aboriginal leadership across Australia to bring lasting and intergenerational change. One Noel Pearson does not an economic revolution make.

Postscript

7.15pm

ABC TV News to-night carried a report that women at Mutitjulu had left the community and gone to the sandhills. The report did not state how many women went or how many women remained at the community. It did not state whether the women had taken their children with them. People at Mutitjulu are a long way from fig trees and vines and it sounds like they are far from security too.

7.30pm

The ABC's 7.30 Report provides a huge dose of reality into Howard's so-called State of Emergency in Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory. It has shown a National Press Club address by Mick Dodson in 2002 spelling out (well, not quite everything - the most horrifying was omitted by a clearly emotional Dodson) child abuse in Aboriginal communities. Don't you listen, John Howard. Don't you read, John Howard. You certainly did not speak out...until now. Have you been deaf, blind, and mute?

Aboriginal insecurity: thinking on vines and fig trees. Part 1

Moreton Bay Fig Tree, Queen's Gardens, Townsville

Photo by Alice at A Growing Delight

Micah, an eighth century prophet of the Tanakh/Old Testament, is a great friend of Miss Eagle. He is much quoted. One of the most frequent quotes is

and they shall beat their swords into plowshares,

and their spears into pruning hooks;

nation shall not lift up sword against nation,

neither shall they learn war any more;

Not so often heard is the next verse, Micah 4:4

but they shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig tree,

and none shall make them afraid;

for the mouth of the Lord of hosts has spoken.

This is one of Micah's latter day prophecies so, even in the 21st century - it is arguable - that we cannot expect the fulfilment of the prophecy. However, while fulfilment may be postponed, these prophecies have embedded themselves in Judaism and Christianity as ideals for which the people of God strive.

This week has been one in which, at least for Miss Eagle, the pain and insecurity of Aboriginal people has coalesced around three major issues: the nuclear industry; the legal system; the abuse of children.

Miss Eagle can never feel what Aboriginal people who exist at the margins of white settler society feel and experience. However, Miss Eagle has spent most of her life in Northern Australia - in North Queensland and the Northern Territory - the site of the manifestations of these three issues. Miss Eagle has lived amid some quite significant Aboriginal communities and populations. So while she is not affected as her Aboriginal friends are, she does experience the pain of the issues of this week in something like a reflected manner: through a glass darkly.

Bringing these major issues affecting Aboriginal people and nations into a coherent post is not easy. Thoughts could not be quickly expressed. One could not rush to verbage to express such deep pain. Miss Eagle is not sure she has found a pathway to coherence even now. So, dear Reader, Miss E begs you to indulge her patiently as we tread this pathway to a connected, coherent view of what is happening and what it really means. In treading this pathway, we will travel behind the headlines. Hopefully, we can sublimate emotions and the emotive. This will be not easy - and may well be impossible.

...to be continued

Dream

Photo Friday: Dream

Hosier Lane, Melbourne - April 2006

Nuclear waste dump for Muckaty?

Sammy Jungarayi Sambo (left) and Bindi Jakamarra Martin - a Stephen Cherry photo for The Age

The Howard Government wants to put a nuclear waste dump on Muckaty Station, north of Tennant Creek in the Northern Territory, and has done a multi-million dollar deal with the Northern Land Council and some of the traditional owners to allow it to go ahead. Not all of the traditional owners approve of the deal and many residents of nearby Tennant Creek (pop. 4,000) - where Miss Eagle also used to live - are not happy with the deal either. The member for the seat Barkly, Elliot McAdam who is the Minister for Housing in the NT Government says; "This potential facility could compromise the social, cultural and traditional ties of Aboriginal people to their country."


Traditional owners who are not in favour of the dump are in Melbourne on Monday to address public meetings on the subjects. You, dear Reader, can hear them at two venues in Melbourne:

1. "From the Heart, For the Heartland" Traditional Owner Speaking Tour. Indigenous traditional owners and community members from areas in the NT proposed for the Federal radioactive waste dump are undertaking a 2 week speaking tour of south eastern cities. They will be speaking on MONDAY JUNE 18 10.30-12noon at the Rooftop Room, Northcote Town Hall, 189 High Street, Northcote. They are asking for an rsvp for this meeting (natwasley@alec.org.au)


2. A public meeting will be held on the same day (Monday 18th June from 6.30-8.30pm at the Trades Hall, cnr Lygon and Victoria Sts., Carlton South.
   

See you there!

Queensland defeats New South Wales - 2007 State of Origin - Telstra Dome, Sydney

Queensland rejoices!

Mal Meninga - Qld coach - and Darren Lockyer - Qld captain - led the Maroons to a 2-0 victory in the 2007 State of Origin series at the Telstra Dome in Sydney to-night.

How wonderful to have Mal winning for Queensland once more.

Congratulations to Darren Lockyer!

The first captain since The King, Wally Lewis, to win back to back Origins.

And all this at Telstra Dome in Sydney which so often has seemed to work against Queensland.

Oh - what a night!

Origin 2 did not have the brilliance and lightness of the second half of Origin 1.

Origin 2 was marked by determination and doggedness on the part of both teams.

The 10-6 score said it all, really.

Queensland was out to stop Willy Mason and Brett Kimmorley.

They were assisted by the absence due to injury of Mr Everywhere, Anthony Minichiello.

Rodney Olsen interviews Jarrod McKenna: peace, non-violence and no more war

Friends of this blog will have seen posts speaking of peaceworker Jarrod McKenna. Jarrod is particularly involved with working for the liberation of the people of West Papua. Miss Eagle has been contacted by Rodney Olsen of 98.5 Sonshine FM in Western Australia.

Rodney has interviewed Jarrod and, knowing Miss E's interest, wanted to let her know how to access the interview. You, dear Reader,can hear an extended version of Rodney and Jarrod's chat by clicking here. If you'd like to save the mp3 and listen later just right click here and choose where you'd like to save the file.

Rodney says he and Jarrod covered a lot of ground and tried to look at some of the big questions. They explored whether Christianity really promotes non-violence in all situations. If we believe that to be the case how do we the reconcile that with the religious right's belief that George W. Bush is carrying out God's will by taking his nation to war?

Rodney reckons it is worth your while, dear Reader, to take time out to listen to Jarrod. Jarrod will challenge you and give you plenty to think through, he says.

Chris Hurley: on trial in Townsville

Miss Eagle has had much to say on this blog in relation to the death of Cameron Doomadgee, Mulrunji. To-day, in Townsville the trial of Chris Hurley began. Miss Eagle will not be commenting on this matter during the trial. At this stage, the fact that Chris Hurley is on trial is sufficient. Those who are interested should be able to find sufficient press coverage. Miss Eagle would only remind you, dear Reader, that if more information is needed the Coroner's report into Mulrunji's death and her recommendations can be accessed here.

Friends, Peace and Pine Gap

Miss Eagle has to-day received this letter and these photographs from Dale Hess.

______________
Friends,

I have just received these photos of the Quaker Meeting held at Pine Gap. To learn what is happening at the trial of the Pine Gap 4, click on: http://www.pinegapontrial.blogspot.com/

Best regards,
Dale
______________

From: Jessica Morrison
Sent: Monday, 11 June 2007 9:32 PM
To: Hess Dale
Subject: Quaker Meeting at the Gates of Pine Gap - was it the first?

Dear Dale

I thought Friends may be interested in this,

Jessica
________________________
On Saturday 9th June, 25 people attended a Quaker meeting for worship 20 kms outside Alice Springs. The venue was the front gates of Pine Gap, a US/Australian Joint Defence Facility (also known as a US spy base), and the site of many protests.

While this was the first meeting for worship, this group of activists were able to grasp the process quickly (apart from sitting still for so long!).

Ministry included:

• Hindu mantras;the query relating to seeds of conflict in ourselves;
• stories of civil disobedience by Quakers;
• that prophets went into the desert to find God and
• that we go into the desert to find the truth about our country;
• the nature of silence; and
• the experience to attend the base in listening, rather than broadcasting of our opinions.

We finished with the laying of a peace sign of flowers and holding hands.