by Sally Morgan
There is also ample evidence that since the 1967 referendum, which gave Aboriginal people citizenship status and rights, millions of dollars have been spent trying to discover the cause of Aboriginal misery and pain. Governments have devised what they consider possible interventions and remedies, but forty years later, effective and sustainable solutions remain as elusive as they’ve ever been.
Australian governments began to adopt a more progressive social justice agenda following the election of the Whitlam Labor government in 1972, but generations later Aboriginal communities are still struggling to survive. Aboriginal-controlled health services, in partnership with State and Federal health authorities, try valiantly to ameliorate the general state of ill health and disease that continue to cripple most Aboriginal communities. Aboriginal legal services struggle to achieve justice for their clients amid an ever increasing rate of Aboriginal incarceration. Aboriginal Land Councils and Native Title claimants strive to promote, gain and protect land rights and other freedoms, but are forced to spend most of their time, energy and resources defending rather than celebrating their hard-won gains. Aboriginal employment opportunities, especially those outside Aboriginal affairs, are almost non-existent, while education, particularly schools, continues to fail most Aboriginal students.
Government policies of protection and integration, welfare and assimilation and, in more recent times, shared responsibility and partnership have all been adopted in efforts to address Aboriginal social and political injustice. All policy approaches have failed or at best have achieved questionable and debatable outcomes.
Addressing what he called the ‘welfare-based’ model of social justice policy, Mick Dodson, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner with the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission from 1993 – 1998, argued:
The welfare-based model relies largely on government initiatives and government discretion to identify priorities, formulate policy and deliver programs. It is essentially a model based on a benignly intentioned but destructive paternalism, which underpinned past assimilation policies. It is fundamentally antagonistic to the exercise of self-determination by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.
Dodson added:
‘The recognition that social justice is about the enjoyment and exercise of human rights establishes a framework in which indigenous peoples cannot be regarded as the passive recipients of government largess but must be seen as active participants in the formulation of policies and the delivery of programs. The rights of Aboriginal and Torres Strait peoples are at issue. We have a right to determine the manner in which they will be enjoyed.’ [94]
The spiritually debilitating impact of the individual-focused ‘welfare model’ of social policy is a sad and tragic feature of contemporary Aboriginal affairs, evidenced by the fact that many Aboriginal communities have ceased to be communities in the broader sense but have instead become ‘families’ associated with organisations. Put another way, in many Aboriginal settings the sense of community has been superseded by an affiliation to a particular organisation often run by a single or extended family. Parochial and often self-centred interests often occupy the activities of these socalled community-based Aboriginal organisations, usually at the expense of broader community interests and need. This is one of the consequences of the teachings of the majority culture and the erosion of Aboriginal cultural values and traditions.
This is not to suggest that Aboriginal community organisations do not need to be accountable and responsible. They do and, indeed, most are. In fact, Aboriginal community organisations are required to comply with public accountability measures that for the most part are not found in the non-Aboriginal community.
Disconnected voices and visions
Today, modern labour market forces, poor education and training opportunities, not to mention racism and prejudice, have seen a significant drift of Aboriginal people away from their traditional country into larger rural and urban communities.
One of the interesting, and at times disturbing, features of contemporary Aboriginal affairs is the emerging presence and growing influence of Aboriginal people whose vision and voices are informed more by heritage than any notion of cultural or community affiliation or involvement. These people can point to Aboriginal ancestors or family, but they have had little if any real contact with them. Some claims to Aboriginal ancestry are vague and tortuous, a fact which naturally engenders serious doubt and suspicion among longstanding members of the Aboriginal community. For such people, connections to country are almost always nonexistent. There are exceptions, of course, but they are few and far between.
It is argued that reconnecting through heritage or ancestry is one thing, but to understand the culture and traditions that are woven into country is something entirely different. But it isn’t just the emergence of ‘heritage-driven’ policy that should concern us because there appears to be an increasing lack of awareness of the history and the struggle for Aboriginal justice as well.
During a recent camp for Aboriginal high school boys in western Sydney, I was concerned to discover that when I showed a video and images of some of the key Aboriginal activists (Charlie Perkins, Sir Doug Nicholls, Lowitja O’Donohue, Faith Bandler, Chicka Dixon, Pat Dodson, Aiden Ridgeway, and others), none of the boys had any idea who these people were and what they were fighting for. The boys all had sporting heroes, and this is understandable given the curriculum of the schooling system and the sportmad society we’ve become. In years gone by these boys would have sat at the feet of their Elders and learnt about the world and the important people who were struggling to make it less racist and more just for them and those who come after them.
As with so many other Aboriginal students, these boys are both victims and products of Eurocentric schooling, which plays a pivotal role in disconnecting Indigenous people from country. Though many Aboriginal people excel academically in the non-Aboriginal intellectual domain, more and more people are returning to their cultural roots in search of meaning and purpose.
Voices from the past—visions of the future
Outside, the old people had gathered under the old gum trees, sitting around the circle sharing life stories as was the custom on hot summer’s nights in Walgett. The exact nature of the conversation was lost in the laughter and muffled voices that came flooding into the room. I loved these occasions, because this was when the old ones would share their stories and adventures, igniting visions of wonder and amazement that filled my youthful imagination. Many nights were spent in this fashion and, looking back, I now realise this was an important method of connecting and sustaining the small group who had gathered together because of our common heritage and ancestry. The stories from the circle were often about a place and time long ago. But there were also other stories, which connected people, animals, and all things that shared the country. These stories had their origins and were grounded in the journey of the storyteller, a ritual passed down from one generation to the next. This is how it had been for our people, for untold generations before the Wundas [95] came with their technology and teachings that changed our world forever.
Home was a shanty built on the banks of the Namoi River that meanders through the township of Walgett on its way to join the waters of the Barwon River, just a few short kilometres downstream. This was home, the centre of my universe, the place where I felt safe, comfortable and connected, the place that defined my past and was to shape my future. This was and remains country, where I had been raised in poverty but never in the absence of love.
My uncles and some other kin had built our shanty on the banks of the Namoi to house our family after my father and a sister had lost their lives in a boating accident some months earlier. The shanties of other members of our extended family and clan formed a small community that was filled with laughter and happiness.
But safe and comfortable were the last things I felt this night, because in the darkness that filled the room, I sensed the pre
sence of something gently tugging at the bedcovers. My brother Ken, who slept at my feet in my bed, stirred and told me there was something in the room.
The tugging of the covers became more intense, but I couldn’t move.
I was frozen stiff with fear and the covers were now up over my head. After what seemed a lifetime, someone was screaming and people rushed into the room carrying fire sticks and the old lamps that we used at the time.
Men and women were running all over the place, yelling and trying to understand who had screamed and why. Only after the commotion had settled down did I realise that it was in fact I who had screamed, having somehow broken the grip of fear that had paralysed me. My mother and aunties, who came into the room carrying kerosene lamps, were most upset because they couldn’t work out what was going on and I was too terrified to make them understand. Ken tried his best to tell people what had happened, but there was too much commotion.
Monty, my elder brother, who was about nineteen at the time, had been one of the first people in the room, and I recall that he chased something or someone out the back and down the path to the river’s edge. In the lamplight, someone noticed a small puddle of water at the foot of the bed and the words ‘water dog’ were soon bandied around. As a young boy I’d heard the old ones tell stories of the water dog and other mystical beings that filled the circle with both fear and wonder. According to the story, the water dog was a creature that lived in the river and occasionally climbed its banks to seek out prey. Stories like this are bountiful in Aboriginal knowledge and learning circles.
One of the most important teachers as I approached manhood was my maternal grandfather, Tom Hickey Snr. He was a mountain of a man and the leader of our extended family and clan. Amid the many special loving memories I have of him, one has remained vividly etched into my mind through the years. One of my earliest images of Grandfather was of him sitting on his favourite seat, a four-gallon drum that he had fashioned into a chair. He would sit for hours, strumming his fingers on the sides of the drum while he sang his songs. On such occasions I would sit somewhere close, silently watching him as he sang his songs, the words of which I never understood. A distant view would creep into his eyes and he would seemingly be transported to another time and place. Knowing what I know now, I realise he was connecting with his spirit world and telling those who had gone before him that he would soon join them.
Growing up surrounded by family and country, I was able to learn some of the important values that had sustained the Gumilaroi for thousands of years, but I am sad that I never had the opportunity to learn more from the teachings of my grandfather and the other old people. To be denied the fullness of their knowledge and wisdom is tantamount to cultural genocide. Government policies of protection, welfare, and, perhaps more insidiously, assimilation, prevented the teachings of the old people and so critical cultural knowledge and skills have been lost. (Image 11.2)
Image 11.2: With grandfather, Tom Hickey, Snr Courtesy Bob Morgan
Schooling and other assimilation practices of the Aboriginal Protection and Welfare Boards under which Grandfather had survived meant successive generations of his extended family were denied the teachings of their past. In many Aboriginal communities, stories exist about the brutal methods government authorities would use to prevent the spread of traditional culture knowledge and values. People who spoke in language were often punished, perhaps more than most. There are reports of government officials torturing such language speakers by burning their tongues with lit cigarettes or hot coals.
Growing up in Walgett under the oppressive policies and practices of the NSW Aborigines Welfare Board meant that life for Aboriginal people was what the AWB determined it should be. But amid this oppression and racism, the people of the Gumilaroi learnt to survive and adapt, though the teachings of our distinct culture, our worldview and the pivotal role of country were slowly eroding.
Sites of cultural and spiritual affirmation
Just as there are many sites and episodes of struggle for Indigenous people across the world, there are also an ever-increasing number of incidences of cultural affirmation and spiritual reconnection. From the mid to late 1960s, and motivated by and linked to the Civil Rights Movement in the United States, Indigenous people across the world started to organise themselves to consider ways to combat the legacies of colonisation. Of course, people had been mobilising in the 1920s and 1930s, but in the 1960s there seemed to be new hope, a sense of grand expectations that captured the hearts and minds of a younger generation. I was swept up in this vision and hope for a new deal for Aboriginal people.
Two events of cultural and spiritual affirmation were the World Indigenous People Conferences on Education (WIPCE) and the Healing Our Spirits Worldwide conference, gatherings that offered a time and place for Indigenous people to get together and celebrate what it meant to be Indigenous. A Canadian friend of mine said she looked forward to our education conferences (WIPCE) because it meant she could spend at least a week of her life mixing with and being inspired by people with a common history and experience, a sort of primacy of place and of purpose. There is increasing evidence that Indigenous people globally are beginning to seek answers to our continuing social and spiritual needs and aspirations in the teaching of our traditional knowledge.
These conferences are held every three years and provide an opportunity for sharing and celebrating Indigenous pathways to spiritual healing and wellness. Such initiatives suggest Indigenous people everywhere are tired of being defined and marginalised by members of the majority culture.
At local community levels, Indigenous peoples are rejecting the assimilation objectives of the majority culture, instead asserting their cultural and political rights and freedom. They are developing and embracing land rights, language revitalisation and other forms of traditional affirmation. And other Indigenous peoples, particularly in Canada and New Zealand, have more successfully developed education systems that reflect and celebrate their knowledge and wisdom.
My work with Aboriginal men and boys is also a feature of my personal journey of reconnecting and rediscovery. The 2006 Aboriginal men’s learning circle, which was held in country, was a success largely because it gave men and boys the opportunity to consider important issues in a setting appropriate to our ways of knowing and doing. Had it not been held in country, the outcomes would not have been achievable.
Conclusion
This short essay provides only limited opportunity to identify and consider some of the experiences, challenges and insights that have shaped and influenced my journey as a Gumilaroi man.
Of course, all cultures are dynamic, changing and ever adapting to the forces of social, political and cross-cultural interaction. But the tools we take from other cultures can never totally replace those that are at the centre of our personal and cultural stream; unless we allow it to happen. As Aboriginal people, we must be prepared to draw upon the traditions and values inherent in our past and allow them to inform and shape the future.
Reconnecting with old values and traditions is critical to the future of all Aboriginal peoples.
We must act as the nations we once were and indeed still are. Our existence as self-determining nations and the veracity of our claim to social and restorative justice are not dependent on the sanction or approval of non-Aboriginal society. Coexistence and reconciliation are possible only when there are equality and honourable reciprocity between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people. The concepts of minority and majority are loaded with negative and burdensome values and judgements that only further marginalise us. But whatever the future holds for us, country, with all its special meaning, must once again become central to our lives.
This is what I strive to achieve as I reach the fourth stage of the river’s journey. As I indicated earlier, this is a period of reflection, of rediscovery and of reconnection. It is also a period of heightened awareness and compassion, a time to counsel and protect those who are in the earlier stages of growt
h and development. Country and all it represents are pivotal to this journey.
JOAN WINCH
was born in 1935 and belongs to the Nyungar and Martujarra peoples of Western Australia. She is a well-known fighter for Aboriginal rights and was awarded the World Health Organisation’s Sasakawa Award in 1987 for creating the best Indigenous primary health care system in the world. She is writing a history of the Marr Mooditj Foundation, which she established in 1983. (Image 12.1)
Image 12.1
A Feeling of Belonging
The feeling of belonging that you, as an Aboriginal person, have to country is very strong spiritually. I have this in two ways, because my mother was a Martu woman who was born in a place called Lake Way, near the town of Wiluna, in Western Desert country in Western Australia. Her family name was Wongawol, but Mum was given the name Lily Booket by the Native Welfare Department when she was very young, because she had been taken away from her people. Wongawol though, is the true family name, and because of that it is very important to me. The Wongawol family are a very strong traditional family who belong to the Dingo Dreaming, which links them and me to many different places. My father came from a different place in country. He was Phillip Heath, a Nyungar man born in Katanning, in the south-west of the State. His own connections to country are through the Menang and Goreng peoples. Though my parents were from different areas of country, they were both strong spiritually in their own ways, and I learnt a lot from them when I was growing up. I am a strong person too. The spirits have always guided me throughout my life, so I am following in their footsteps. My mum and dad told me that even when I was a little baby the spirits worked through me.
