Probus Presentation 12 August 2010

The Changing Culture of Australia
The ideas, customs and social behavior of a particular people or society.

When I was in Australia last winter and I was hoping to discover the history of the Aborigines, my cousin, Ralph, suggested that to find more information on the history of Australia that I read Robert Hughes 'Fatal Shore'.

This is a brilliant book dealing mainly with the history of Australia from 1788 when Captain Phillips arrived with the first fleet. I will start with a little bit of history about who, when and why we the British occupied this distant land.

North America was used as a destination for transportation of convicts from the early 17th century to the American Revolution of 1776. In 1773 with the Boston Tea Party tax revolt it became clear that Britain would soon need a new land to dump her convicts.

We were told at school that during 1770 James Cook discovered Australia. What a load of rubbish mankind had live in Australia for at least 60,000 years so how did he ‘discover’ it?

French explorer, navigator, and cartographer, Guillaume Le Testu, produced the first maps of Australia in 1536 and 1542 based on his voyage in 1531. These maps had a hand in providing James Cook with information that assisted him on his latter, much more famous journey.

Hessel Gerritsz a Dutch engraver, cartographer and publisher in 1618 produced a chart of the Northwest coast of Australia.

He was followed in 1623 by Jan Carstensz who charted the Cape York Peninsula. The name "Australia" was first proposed by Matthew Flinders in the early 1800s, as part of the full name Terra Australis, meaning Southern land. The actual name "Australia" was then adopted in 1824.

The first Englishman to visit Australia was William Dampier a buccaneer, navigator and explorer in 1688 his ship Cygnet was beached on the northwest coast of Australia. While the ship was being careened Dampier made notes on the fauna and flora and the indigenous peoples he found there.

James Cook charted the eastern coast and claimed it under the name of New South Wales for the British in 1770. He declared it to be ‘terra nullius’ no man's land. Great, he had found the new land the British needed for the transportation of convicts although none took place for a further 18 years.

It would not be an exaggeration to claim that the Island continent was owned by over 500 different nations at the time of this claim by Cook.

When the first fleet arrived in Sydney Cove it is said that Captain Phillip was astounded with the theory of Cook's terra nullius, saying "Sailing up into Port Jackson, (later to be known as Sydney Cove) we could see natives lining the shore shaking spears and yelling."

After a torturous journey by eleven ships containing fifteen hundred passengers who had travelled 15,000 miles in 252 days, there was no turning back and aborting the venture.

Some of the early governors did their job for the benefit of the development of Australia, others were cruel to both the Aboriginal people and the convicts. The prisoners of Norfolk Island suffered humiliation and degradation beyond belief, a normal punishment was 250 lashes with the cat o’ nine tails leaving the back totally bare of skin.

The settlers were given freedom to shoot any "Aboriginal" that should stray onto their land. The Aboriginal population of Tasmania was wiped out within a few years of the arrival of the Europeans.

For a while many parts of the outback became quite lawless with Bush Rangers like Ned Kelly.

The mentality of the European pastoralists was “God, Sunday afternoons are so boring, lets liven things up a bit and go and shoot a few ‘abbos’ or dingos”. It was only after the Myall Creek Massacre on the 10 June 1838 that involved the killing of up to 30 unarmed Australian Aborigines by European settlers that Aboriginals were no longer fair game. After two trials, seven of the 12 settlers involved in the killings were found guilty of murder and hanged.

While reading The Fatal Shore I was left wondering about the history of the Aborigines and had to delve quite deeply to source the information that has now left me feeling that I have sufficient information to begin a discussion about their lives prior the 1788.

Australians today enjoy a standard of living that's second to none around the world yet their Aboriginal people live in Third World conditions and the situation gets worse year by year.

The White Australian civilized society is desperate to bring the Aboriginal ancient tribal culture into the 21st century, but the elders of the indigenous population cling to their ancient and very often violent rites and there is a monumental clash of cultures to be resolved, probably only in another generation or two. Child abuse, alcohol and violence are the overriding issues of today’s Australian society.

Australian public sector net debt is the lowest of all the G7 countries. It has enormous mineral assets locked away in the ground that will keep the country wealthy for many generations to come, but all the wealth in the world cannot remedy their cultural divide.

65% of white Australians say they have little knowledge of Aboriginal culture. Noel Pearson, an influential Aboriginal Australian lawyer, and land rights activist tries hard to make the country more aware and stated in a recent lecture “I contend that people, who want to be progressive today, are in fact, regressive in their thinking. This is especially and painfully obvious if you know the situation in the Aboriginal communities of this country. Petrol sniffing is in some places now so endemic that crying infants are silenced with petrol drenched rags on their faces. At 30 June 2009, there were 10,512 Aboriginal children in out-of-home care. The national rate of Indigenous children in care was just over 9 times the rate for other children.

Traditionally Aboriginal people consumed weak alcohol made from various plants. The absence of suitable containers, and climatic variations ensured there was no large-scale production of alcohol. Their problems with alcohol began with the white invasion. Contrary to public perception surveys have in fact found that proportionally fewer Aboriginal people drink alcohol than whites do.

Aboriginal alcohol use changed significantly in 1788 after white people invaded Australia. Within weeks of the arrival of the first fleet the first pubs opened, and this would shape the way Australian society developed over the next few decades.

Many Aboriginal laborers were paid in alcohol or tobacco. In the early 1800s a favorite spectator sport of white people in Sydney was to ply Aboriginal men with alcohol and encourage them to fight each other, often to the death. White settlers also gave alcohol to Aboriginal people as payment for sex.

You could call alcohol the glue that holds white Australian society together. If you want to "fit in" and if you want to be accepted you should drink alcohol with your friends and the drinking rituals they share shape them into a cohesive group. Many Aboriginal people copy white drinking behaviors hoping to be accepted into white society by doing so.

When the First Fleet arrived in January 1788, Britain took formal possession of Australia. They encountered an unfamiliar land occupied by people they didn’t understand. The British took control of Australia without consent and without negotiating with the Indigenous people.

By declaring the land to be ‘terra nullius’ the British were able to claim that they had ‘discovered’ the land and under international law ‘terra nullius’ land could be taken over by anyone who would put it to productive use.

Land was and is central to Indigenous societies, cultures and religions. This land and its environment was managed, nurtured, protected and respected by Aboriginal people in a cyclical process of birth, death and renewal. For Aboriginal Australians the land is the core of all spirituality, identity and purpose. This relationship is central to all issues that are important to Aboriginal people today.
Australia's Aborigine culture probably represents the longest surviving ancient culture in the world, with the use of stone tool technology and painting with red ochre pigment dating back over 60,000 years. Indigenous Australians never developed an "iron age", "bronze age", or a pottery age, and the terms "palaeolithic" and "neolithic" are not used in Australia, because technology did not progress in the same way as the rest of the world.

Archaeologists, anthropologists, and various academics who play the "origins of Man" game, reluctantly and only occasionally acknowledge instances where unique skeletal and cultural evidence from the prehistoric record suddenly appear long before they should -- and in places where they should not. These irritating artefacts destroy the orderly evolutionary line that academia has for so long presented to the public.

And just as scientists are adding to a growing body of evidence that humankind developed in Africa, a Hungarian excavation surrenders a Homo Sapiens skull fragment more than 600,000 years out of alignment with the accepted calendar of man's migrations across the planet. Hominid fossils are unearthed in Georgia 1.77 million years old; and hominid teeth found in Bulgaria have been dated at seven million years old.

Some people even claim there is evidence of Homo sapiens in Australia as much as 176,000 years ago.

However, for the sake of uniformity with the bulk of current thinking I will use the premise that Australian Aborigine ancestors came from South Africa.

Within the Sterkfontein Caves near Johannesburg, scientists have discovered many hominid and other animal fossils, dating back more than 4 million years, to the birth of humanity. Fossils found tell us much about the precursors of Homo sapiens. Archaeological finds include 2 million year old stone tools. There is also a collection of 270 burnt bones that reveals how our ancestors learned to master fire more than 1 million years ago – a significant development and an early technological innovation.

Humankind's most ancient stone tool technology, the percussion method of chipping away at the edge of a rock to make a sharp edge for cutting, dates back 2.5 million years, and was still practiced by Aborigines until the 1960s and later.

Homo Sapiens evolved in the Horn of Africa about 190,000 years ago, moved into the Middle East by 80,000 years ago, then into Asia, and on to Australia at least 60,000 years ago.

Although lacking a formal written language, for thousands of years Aborigines have recorded their culture as rock art. Their art shows images of the environment, such as the plants and animals, including images of animals believed to have become extinct 20,000 to 40,000 years ago. Some of the most ancient paintings, in rock shelters in Northern Australia, depict people dressed for ceremony and dancing, with similar body decoration and accoutrements to those worn in ceremonies to this day, again revealing the great age of Aboriginal culture.

We can only suppose how ancient people of the past lived and thought by what is left behind of their culture. Aborigines did not build large stone monuments, did not farm animals and did not cultivate the soil for crops. Because they did not form cities, their culture is not described as a "civilisation", yet it contains all the elements of a civilised world. The arts – great paintings and lengthy song and dances with accompanying stories that continue for days like great operas. Law and order was strict and religion was of the greatest importance.

One might think about how we define "advanced" and "primitive" when one considers that our modern cultures are only several hundreds to several thousands of years old, while Australian Aboriginal culture was 60,000 years, with a further 130,000 years of prior development in Africa and Asia. Some of the important issues facing our world today and in the future, such as maintaining social cohesion, avoiding major wars, dealing with overpopulation, preventing the degradation and destruction of our environment, and the use of non renewable resources, had been overcome by Aborigines and their ancient culture as they filled every part of the Australian continent. In these areas, perhaps we should regard Western culture as "developing" and Aboriginal culture as "advanced".

While European influence commenced in 1788 in the Sydney region of south east Australia, it did not reach central Australia until the 1880s. Many Aboriginal groups in these remoter areas were virtually unchanged by European influence until the 1940's and the last traditional nomadic families moved from the desert regions to settlements in the 1960's.

As there is no written history of the 60,000 years of Australian Aboriginal culture the only way of establishing the truth about their culture is to explore the way of life of one of the last remaining tribes that were untouched by European influence and ‘Desert People’, written by M J Meggitt first published in 1962 is a study of the Walpiri Aborigines of Central Australia. He and his wife spent 18 months with the Walpiris between 1953 and 1960.

Aboriginals believe in two forms of time; two parallel streams of activity. One is the daily objective activity, the other is an infinite spiritual cycle called the 'dreamtime', more real than reality itself. Whatever happens in the dreamtime establishes the values, symbols, and laws of Aboriginal society.

Dreaming is also often used to refer to an individual's or group's set of beliefs or spirituality. For instance, an indigenous Australian might say that he or she has Kangaroo Dreaming, or Snake Dreaming, or Honey Ant Dreaming, or any combination of Dreamings pertinent to their "country". Many Indigenous Australians also refer to the Creation time as "The Dreaming". The Dreamtime laid down the patterns of life for the Aboriginal people. The Dreaming rules were met when people live according to law, perpetuating initiations and Dreaming transmissions, singing the songs, dancing the dances, telling the stories, and body painting.

Walpiri people lived day to day in family groups, banded together as hordes, and met at times of ceremony, when one to several hundred members of a single tribe came together. Members of different tribes met together at the largest ceremonies when there might be over 1,000 people at one gathering.

A family group could be quite large, consisting of a man and his wives, the children from each wife, and sometimes his parents or in-laws. A man often had from two to four wives. The time allowed for this talk does not allow me to go into the highly complicated relationship rules. What is interesting to me is that although there are very many tribes living in distinct countries that the social patterns remain constant throughout Australia.

Aboriginal custom all over Australia banned both men and women from talking directly to their mother in law. Perhaps this rule was developed to overcome such a common cause of friction in families, when a husband or wife had to endure many years of yakity-yak from their mother in law!

Among Australian Aborigines Gadjari sacred knowledge was typically distributed among men according to their section, subsection, moiety and totemic affiliation and by locality. No one knew the ritual cycle in its entirety, but in each of the four major Walpiri countries there were men who knew the portion of the cycle pertaining to their own region. The Gadjari thus creates a set of understandings that no individual fully possesses but in which many individuals participated.

Interdependence was intrinsic to the ways in which sacred knowledge was distributed among Australian aborigines and it may be that the dependence of local groups upon each other for the performance of the rituals understood to be necessary to maintain the world, counteracts the social fragmentation likely to attend hunting and gathering in vast deserts.

The ideal marriage arrangement, and indeed the most common, was that in which a man promises his daughter, ideally, a young man was betrothed to a "m.m.b.d.d." who was born when he was about 18 years old. The public ceremony of betrothal occurred when the girl was between 6 to 18 months.
A bachelor saw little of his future wife during the seven or eight years following his betrothal, even if both were members of the same community. The girl was always in the company of her mother or her grandmother, women whom ' he had to scrupulously avoid.

When a man thought his betrothed was old enough to leave her mother that is, when she was about eight or nine years old he asked for her to be sent to his shelter. At first the girl stayed only two or three nights with her husband and then returned to live with her mother for a week or two. Gradually she spent longer periods in his camp until, within about three months, she resided there permanently.

If the couple belonged to different communities, the man usually went to the girl's country in order to marry her. The same procedure was followed and after about six months, they returned to live with the man's community.

A young novice was initiated by being taught the sacred songs and legends known only to the older men. The Walpiri considered the ceremonies connected with circumcision to be the most important event in their lives this happened at initiation rituals of males into the totemic mysteries.

A boy took his first step into this secret life when he went into seclusion preparatory to being circumcised he was unlikely to be more than age 13 or less than 11. The boy had known for some time that he must be circumcised and had acquired from older lads a knowledge of what to expect.

The ceremonies commenced with a night of singing, chanting and dancing, the men beating the ground with their oval shields, there was much yelping to keep the dancers in time. As the sun rose the women were told to go, before they left they wept over the novice and told him to be of good heart.

After the leave taking the novice set out on his grand tour. Accompanied by his guardian and older brothers he visited neighbouring Walpiri communities as well as communities of other tribes. During the tour the novice learned about the flora, fauna and topography of the tribal territory and his older brothers also told him of the totemic significance of the various localities. As they left the travellers invited their hosts to attend the novice’s circumcision ceremony. The novice’s party would wander about in this way for two or three months.

On their return and for the next few weeks there were nightly ritualistic preparations and nightly singing and dancing to instil in the novice the start of his tribal knowledge that had come down through the generations.

The night of the initiation arrived and the men of the tribe pierced their arms so that the blood spurted out on the novice and board that he would lie on for the circumcision. Several pints of blood were used in this way to ensure that the novice is imbued with the lodge patrispirit.

The betrothed bride’s father sharpened the circumcision stone and stippled the blade with blood. The men of the tribe then cut their penises so that they could splatter the novice with blood during the circumcision.

All the men of the tribe, which could be hundreds, burst into rapid kangaroo singing and furiously hammered the ground with heavy sticks. There was a cacophony of sound and decorated naked men dancing whilst the novice watched trembling with fear. A brother seized the novice and placed him face up on a mound of other tribesmen, forming a sort of altar.

Another brother straddled him and pressed his pubes against the lads face to silence his cries, whilst a third lad held his legs. Another brother held the shaft of the boys penis in order to protect the inside from injury. One of the circumcisers stretched the foreskin several inches and another cut it off with two or three quick slices. The rest of the brothers watched closely for it was their duty to kill the operator at once if he mutilated the boy. It is no wonder that some men were literally grey with anxiety when they performed their first operation.

Circumcision with its accompanying ceremonies firmly and unequivocally established a youth’s status in Walpiri society. Should he fail to pass through these rites he would not enter his father’s lodge, he would not participate in religious ceremonies, he would not acquire a marriage line, he would not legitimately obtain a wife; in short he would not become a social person.

When the youth was about age 17 the men of his patriline decided it was time he was sub incised. The betrothed bride’s father was responsible for the operation. Accompanied by loud chanting the incisor deftly sliced open the youth’s penis from the meatus to a point about an inch along the urethra. An elder brother also held the penis to ensure that the inside flesh was not cut, whilst the other brothers stood ready to kill the incisor if he bungles the task. Sometimes when a youth was sub incised other men present took the opportunity to have their own incisions enlarged; It might be progressively enlarged until it reached the scrotum.

The whole affair was somewhat perfunctory as compared to the elaborate arrangements that accompanied circumcision. Despite the limited ritual implications of the operation, all the men of the tribe were sub incised. The fact that subs incised men usually squatted to urinate made their condition apparent. The reason that Walpiri men wanted to be sub incised was that both men and women had greater enjoyment of coitus because of the marked lateral extension of the erect penis. Indeed some women said they would not consider marrying a man who was not sub incised.

The young Aboriginal men who chose to endure this custom were the only ones to learn a complex ceremonial language. In later ceremonies, repeated throughout adult life, the sub incised penis would be used as a site for ritual bloodletting.

There was no sudden or marked change in a young man’s ritual status following his sub incision for a year or two he continued to participate in the Gadjari rituals as a neophyte but could not yet act in them. Never the less the Gadjari leaders gradually divulged more religious information to him.

A couple of years after he has been sub incised the men began to regard him as an adult. Before this occured the young man’s chest was cicatrized and his nasal septum pierced. The cicatrize operator made shallow cuts across the width of the chest of about 9 or 10 inches with a sharpened stone, although little blood flowed the operation was obviously painful. The edges of the wounds were then pressed apart and the incision packed with down and sand.

All the other men complimented the patient on his improved appearance. The cuts healed in a few days forming the prominent ridges that were so desired, some stood about half an inch above the chest. At irregular intervals after this the young man may have added more cicatrices to his chest, most men were content with 8 to 10 but some had as many as 25. Other practices such as cannibalism and female circumcision did take place among certain Aboriginal tribes, but not the Walpiri Tribe who consider such practices disgusting.

The thought of adult circumcision without anaesthetic makes me go weak at the knees and appals me and I have researched the practice in our own age. Circumcision if you are a Jew is done at 8 days and 78% of Muslims are circumcised at 7 days with both religions offering parents the choice of a local anaesthetic for their son, the foreskin is tied onto a cone with a suture thread. No stitching or dressing is necessary. After five to eight days the dead foreskin tissue become detached, leaving a clean healed cut at the tie-line, phew!

The six Australian colonies became a Federation in 1901 and white Australia believed that the Aborigines were a dying race and the Constitution made only two references to them.

The 1920s and 1930s was when the Aboriginal land rights campaign started. Aboriginal groups all over Australia began campaigning for their traditional lands to be returned to them. During the period from 1950 to 1967, unions and Aboriginal organizations worked closely to build momentum towards the 1967 Referendum on Citizenship Rights.

While espousing the benefits of assimilation to Aboriginal people, the policy still denied their basic rights, even in the 1960s. It stopped them from raising their own children, stopped freedom of movement, having access to education, receiving wage awards, marrying without permission, eating in restaurants, entering a pub, swimming in a public pool or having the right to vote.

As of 1 February 2010 there are 24 million Australians 90% of European origin, 10% Asian and 2.5% Australian Aboriginal people.

I want now to tell you about the current situation in the Northern Territories of Australia and this is a newspaper report on 10 January 2010 – telling about a circumcision ceremony going horribly wrong.

Three teenage Aboriginal boys all under age 16, turned up in the grounds of the bush hospital on December 30. They stood outside with blood pouring down their legs. They were too embarrassed to go inside, fearing they would encounter a female nurse or doctor. They had just been through a circumcision ceremony in a camp outside Tennant Creek, 500km north of Alice Springs. It had gone badly wrong. The boys, who had received no anaesthetic, were left mutilated by elders who it is suspected were drinking when they performed the initiation ritual. The three boys were hospitalised for three nights before being released back into the community.

Tennant Creek, is a largely indigenous town and is awash with alcohol. There are concerns as well that young men are being snatched by elders and forced to go through the procedure against their will. One young man was seen running for his life through the streets of Tennant Creek. The boy had been picked up by elders and was in the queue for the cut. "This young fella escaped and took off and was running through town," said the witness. "This painted-up bloke was racing after him and a Toyota was cruising around looking for the boy as well. I think they grabbed him. "

On15 June 2007 The Northern Territory Government reported there was sexual abuse of children in almost every Aboriginal community in the Northern Territory, possibly in all of them, It says alcohol and pornography are fuelling the problem and there was abuse against Indigenous children as young as three. Efforts to stop it could take decades and would cost billions of dollars.The report identifies a wide range of social issues from unemployment to poor health and nutrition, overcrowded housing, substance abuse, low education rates and pornography all have a major impact on child abuse. But far and away the two biggest contributors to child abuse are alcohol and lack of education.

Six days later on 21 June 2007, the Australian Prime Minister, John Howard, announced the following measures, widespread alcohol restrictions on NT Aboriginal land, medical examinations of all Indigenous children in the NT under the age of 16 years, quarantining of 50% of the welfare payments to parents of children in the affected areas for the purchase of food and other essentials, enforcing school attendance by linking income support and family assistance payments to school attendance for all people living on Aboriginal land. Requiring an intensive clean-up of communities to make them safer and healthier, banning the possession of x-rated pornography, increasing policing levels, and making law and order a central focus.

An ABC TV program reported that in June 2008 that the NT intervention, initiated by the Howard government in June2007 was motivated by concern over the plight of Aboriginal children. Any discussion today on the streets of Alice Springs, or a short visit to one of the town camps, quickly demonstrates how useless these initiatives have been.

Income management and the destruction of the limited work opportunities is shattering remote communities, forcing growing numbers of Aboriginal residents into NT towns and cities. Police surveillance and harassment of Aboriginal people is also on the rise.

At the same time local newspapers serve up an ongoing diet of “law and order” rhetoric. The Advocate’s April 4 issue had no less than six articles, including a front-page splash, with headlines reading: “I was mugged by teeny gang,” “Lawlessness running riot”, “Lock it or lose it say police”, “Fury at vandals mayhem”, “Siege café owner fears for family” and “Shops called to turn away kids”. This material and the intervention itself have emboldened more right-wing elements who are demanding ever harsher government measures against the indigenous population.

Half of all welfare payments are now quarantined. The government has reversed a previously helpful financial measure. All purchases must now be made through government designated stores, such as K-Mart, Woolworths, Coles, via plastic store cards. Aborigines in remote communities have to travel long distances, sometimes several hundred miles, to use their store cards.

The level of poverty in the town camps we have visited is heartbreaking. One cannot but be struck by the sheer magnitude of the social problems facing Aboriginal people—the product of decades of oppression and deliberate government neglect. It is difficult to imagine how children even make it to school or why there are not more cases of child abuse and social dysfunction than there already are. The intervention is like another sort of genocide with Australian politics pushing back to the 1950s and 60s..

The government is always pointing the finger at indigenous people—like in the old days when they used to go about shooting Aboriginals. Now they are killing them with the law. An Aboriginal spokesperson said “Back in the days of our ancestors we would go hunting in the bush but now if you go hunting there are pastoralists no trespassing signs everywhere, we stand the chance of ending up in court for going onto our own land, land that was passed on to us by our ancestors.”

Large and expensive government signs proclaiming alcohol and pornography bans have been placed outside the town camps and sometimes directly next to people’s homes. These do nothing to stop alcoholism but are another humiliation, implying that Aborigines living in town camps and remote communities are serial violators of the repressive new laws. While Aboriginal people generally drink less than non-Indigenous people, those who do so are more likely to drink at hazardous levels. Unfortunately, many reports focus on these results rather than the fact that generally they drink less.

One of the darkest chapters of Australian history was the forced removal of Aboriginal children from their families. Between 1910 and 1970 up to 100,000 Aboriginal children were taken forcibly or under duress from their families by police or welfare officers. Most were under 5 years old. There was rarely any judicial process. To be Aboriginal was enough. Children as young as babies were stolen from their families to be placed in girls and boys homes, foster families or missions. At the age of 18 they were 'released' into white society, often scarred for life by their experiences.

Today these Aboriginal people are collectively known as the 'Stolen Generations' because several generations were affected. Many Aboriginal people are still searching for their fathers, mothers and siblings.

The most burning question for members of the Stolen Generations is why were aboriginal children stolen? In removing their children white people stole Aboriginal people's future. Their language, traditions, knowledge, dances and spirituality could only live if passed on to their children in a tribal environment.

Children continue to be taken from their families today. On the day of Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's apology to the Stolen Generations on February 13th, 2008 an Aboriginal newspaper reported that the NSW government created 2,500 new foster care places. There is a groundswell of opinion growing in the Northern Territories “Just let us run our own lives”.

My Rotary Club on Tormohun are supporting a charity called ‘Books in Homes’ to give children of the Luritja tribe, very close neighbours of the Warlpiri’s with the same customs, a hand up in life.

The following is an extract of correspondence I received from the Steve Nankivell Principal, of M’Bunghara school, which is 2 hours drive west of Alice Springs and deep in the heart of Luritja country. A typical day for me consists of, opening up the school, washing the student’s uniforms and towels, removing any dead animals, particularly kangaroos that have come into the school at night for water, and cleaning the toilets.

When students arrive, I check if they’ve had breakfast and feed ones that haven’t. If they need a shower, I provide towels and after they shower, I wash the clothes they came to school in. After, a nose blowing and ear cleaning program, with the students, it’s into the classroom for a 2 hour Literacy session. I teach students ranging from 5 yrs old to 12 years old. At one stage, last year, I had 15 students ranging from Pre School to Year 10 all at the same time without any assistance.

Teaching of Numeracy takes place after recess for 2 hours. I then take the students home for lunch and pick them up again when lunch is finished. Usually during my lunch break, I take uniforms and other clothes off the clothes line and fold them up and attend to any calls or faxes. The afternoon session runs for an hour. In this time, students are taught IT skills and I listen to each student read a book. The students are taken home at the end of the day and I return to school to carry out any outstanding administration.
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On Wednesday afternoons, I am required to drive a 110km round trip to Papunya to collect the school mail. Very often, I have community members in the vehicle with me so that they can attend the medical clinic at Papunya or obtain food supplies from the Papunya store, as these facilities do not exist at M’Bunghara Community.

The following, are examples of the decline I’ve seen in Indigenous culture: A lot of mothers are sending their boys away to interstate boarding schools so that the boys don’t go through initiation.

The kids here don’t even know their “skin names” or totems. Skin names are given to the people to show them how the fit into their society, who they can marry, who they need to avoid etc..... This doesn’t seem to be followed much these days.

One community of 400 Indigenous people I worked in for a year had 3 churches and it was no longer their creator ancestor, (the rainbow snake), that sang things into existence but a Christian’s God.

At this same community, I approached an 18 year old male and asked him why he didn’t sit with old Peter, the only artist left, and learn how to paint and learn the culture. He responded with, “That’s old peoples culture.” He informed me that his culture and all the young people’s culture was beer, reggae music and basketball.

Alcohol, marijuana, pornography and a welfare mentality have caused massive problems for these people. Violence against women and kids is rampant. Kids get neglected terribly. I’m in a good community at present, but have had to feed the kids on many occasions when money to buy food has been used to gamble or buy alcohol instead. Kids are usually left with grandmothers that are too old or sick to look after themselves, let alone the children, while the parents go to towns and drink excessively, get into fights and usually get locked up.

Indigenous people make up about 2.5% of Australia’s population and in the Northern Territory this number is 30%. Sadly in the NT, 95% of prison populations are Indigenous people and the majority are in for violent offences.

Diabetes, obesity and renal failure account for the majority of health issues among Indigenous Territories, with Aboriginal men having a life expectancy around 10 – 15 years less than non aboriginal men. There are many more terrible things I’ve seen in my time up here, but find some of them a bit too disturbing to talk about. I have met some good people in my time in the NT, but, unfortunately the bad outweigh the good.

The kids make it all worth it. Even though they have a really cruel life sometimes, they are generally always happy. They love to laugh and always smile. I have set up a very safe, clean, friendly and interesting environment for them and they love coming to school.