MAY 9
Woke up early to drive to Blackstone. Car broken into overnight, music gear taken. Decide not to leave until we recover it. Computer lab closed until music gear returned, our boss says. Not sure how I feel about this collective punishment, but anyway. The guys who "borrowed" the instruments for an all-night jam (more of my old students!) happily return it, smiling helpfully and gesturing vaguely when we ask where they "found" it. Leave town a few hours later than planned but with instruments and music trainer in tow.
Arrive at Blackstone. A big fight, not nice to watch, starts outside the shop and moves around the community. Feels like we should just stay put at the telecentre, which is slightly larger than a toilet cubicle. Claustrophobia notwithstanding, three young women and their kids crowd in there for the afternoon, keeping tabs on the fight oustide and doing computer training while pete successfully occupies ratty children.
That's day one at Blackstone.
VEGETARIANS
MAY 10
This week we are sharing the accommodation with a music trainer. Today he offered to cook dinner.
MT: "You're vegetarian, right?" Me: "Yeah, hope that's cool."
MT: "Sure, no worries. My partner's vego so I'm cool with it. How about some pasta with mince?"
Me: "Ah, yeah. I don't eat meat, that's the thing."
MT: "Oh, ok. um... Vegie pasta?"
Me: "That sounds great!"
MT: "Maybe with some ham and bacon chucked in for flavour."
Me: "Um, there's just one thing: I'M VEGETARIAN... Happy to cook for myself though."
MT:"No, no, it's cool... um... what could I put in the pasta...?"
NO WORK NO PAY
MAY 12
Today there is nobody free/keen to do IT Training. Everybody is at a community meeting hearing about a new "no work no pay" rule. Everyone's a bit confused, not sure who made the rule. A sign went up on the office door last night stressing the importance of the meeting (the mtg happening the next morning!) and saying anybody that doesn't go to the meeting won't get paid.
Apparently if they have a good excuse not to be there, they can let the office know "ASAP". But the office is closed, on account of the meeting. And at least five people I know have been out bush since Tuesday anyway, so don't know about the meeting.
I guess they'll come home tonight to discover they're not getting paid?
So we are sitting here with nothing to do. We ain't working, but we're still getting paid.
IT TRAINING... FOR WHAT?
MAY 19
So once again, this job sends us unannounced into a community to do mainstream training nobody is interested in or needs, particularly.
Turns out I am not very good at being aimless.
Those people who say "money is being thrown at Aboriginal communities...", they're not necessarily wrong. they're just using it to push unhelpful ideologies. There is a whole lot of government money being spent on ill-planned programs that aren't driven by the grassroots, don't work, and don't help.
Unfortunately perhaps I am currently involved in one such project.
Who am I to tell adults who drop in of their own volition that they can't just spend the day looking at photos, that they have to do some "training"? Like training will lead to employment or something, out here?
The unemployment isn't because people don't know how to send emails. It's because the government doesn't invest in jobs with justice- but it's happy to spend money for people like me to travel around with thousands of dollars worth of equipment so people can spend the week playing on Facebook and looking at photos.
THE DAY'S EXCITEMENT: A TRIP TO THE STORE
JUNE 2
Tjirrkarli: Each day, we optimistically visit the tiny community store, convinced there will be something fresh, yum, exciting... something we must have missed last time we went. Some cheese maybe, fresh vegies? Juice? Yoghurt! Even a frozen chicken, damnit...!
It takes less than a minute to peruse the short aisle. Again we come away with IndoMei instant noodles, multiple cans of baked beans, tinned mushrooms, scotch finger biscuits... sigh... Baked beans with no cheese for dinner, again...
Next week we will be in Warburton, population 500 and about 50 different government service provision agencies (my god it'll be like being in Sydney after where we've been!). That means lots of whitefellas, and - as disturbing as the implications are- we're expecting that means a more well-stocked store.
PUT TO THE TEST IN TJIRRKARLI
JUNE 8
Wow our tolerance of bad food and boredom is getting seriously tested. We're at Tjirrkarli. A tiny community with baaaaad food. Meant to leave Sunday past but the radiator has given in. Expected a new radiator yesterday on the mail plane, which didn't arrive due to bad weather. Didn't land again today, and the mechanic who was hanging around to fit it for us has had to bite the bullet and take the trip he postponed on our behalf.
So we're here until at least Tuesday. We're eating baked beans and Indo Mei two minute noodles. I am seriously craving fruit or something green. Wondering just how bad the tinned peas in the shop could be (Pete assures me they could be pretty damn bad). Anyway, turns out the shop's closed for the next few days?!?! So not only do we have to continue with the indo mei and baked beans, we have to BE CAREFUL NOT TO EAT TOO MUCH OF IT!! (which won't be hard, as Pete points out.) Could I be feeling so tired because I'm not getting enough of the stuff we're meant to get from food??!!
How the hell do anangu cope? (ah. life expectancy gap. Yep, it's not so much that they "cope"... )
Meanwhile, nobody is really interested in training this week (could it be the bad food...?). There is no internet at home. We're rationing the few DVDs we have left. And the few books we have left.
So I pass the days going for walks, watching daytime TV , trying to study yolngu matha (although is it just me or does boredom and crap food do bad things to the brain/concentration/motivation?).
Meanwhile apparently all the roads to the west of here (where we're headed) are closed due to bad weather. I bloody well hope they're open by the time we get out of here...
WE ARRIVE AT COSMO NEWBERRY
JUNE 15
Last night we stayed at Tjukayirla roadhouse, owned by the papulankutja community. Best roadhouse food in Australia! (you gotta travel far to get there though...) Home cooked vegie lasagne, chicken curry, home-cooked sticky date puddings, avocado on toast.... mmmm so different to the two and a half weeks we just spent at Tjirrkarli. Still have four more weeks on the road, but am feeling very energised with good food in my belly and a good radiator under the bonnet...
Cosmo Newberry seems interesting. Unlike other communities, it is entirely Aboriginal-run. Not just in terms of what the constitution says (which in practise never means anything anyway. We can't just thrust "democratically elected community councils" onto an entirely different, ancient culture and expect them to work, can we?). In Cosmo, thhe advisor, office manager, store managers etc are all Aboriginal.
Anyway. Have to recover from 10 days of eating rubbish food, watching rubbish TV and sleeping in as an anti-boredom strategy. Back to work!
MIXED FEELINGS ABOUT TELECENTRES
The gov’t (not sure if it’s federal or state) provides an Aboriginal media organisations with a certain amount of money to set up telecentres in each community across the Ngaanyatjarra Lands, with satellite internet access etc. Connected to the telecentres is IT Training , which is what we’re meant to do.
The potential for these places is great I reckon. In theory, can access government services and online media, control their finances through internet banking, etc, all without putting pressure on the already over-worked community offices.
It’s also generating Aboriginal employment, of sorts. Each telecentre has one or two local Aboriginal workers who open the centre, supervise them etc. And they’re paid real wages, again from the government via NG Media, rather than CDEP.
In practise there are huge problems, as with most well-meaning programs out here. While we on the left call for real jobs for Aboriginal people in these places, and the government can say it is providing real jobs (in this instance), I think aspects of this program are a huge step backward in terms of empowering Aboriginal people, treating them as adults, giving communities control etc.
For example, the telecentre workers are paid for 20 hours a week. There are certain things they’re meant to do in those 20 hours. But there is no supervision, support, or training. There is no employer-type person acting like they give two hoots whether these people work on not, or supporting them one something goes wrong, or training them for the basic skills that they’d need to feel they’re doing a good job (surely our annual one-week visit isn’t adequate?!).
They are left to their own devices. Telecentre workers tend to be young people who have better English and basic computer literacy. Ie people who, according to their culture, don’t have a lot of authority or rights to tell people what to do. In a way, they are set up to fail.
The government is told of places where the job isn’t happening, where the telecentre is being used inappropriately, but doesn’t take any action because all it cares about is being able to say “look, we employed 20 Aboriginal people in IT jobs”
Effectively, the government says “you’re Aboriginal people, we have low expectations. We don’t expect you to do what we’d expect non-Aboriginal people to do. We’re going to let you do what you want, but we reserve the right to occasionally tell you off, disconnect your internet or maybe even sack you for doing the wrong thing. But this won’t happen very often because basically we’ll ignore you.”
So the telecentre workers who open the room, leave it open 24/7 while they’re away, come back to (surprisingly enough) broken computers, shitloads of downloaded porn and a very uncomfortable community, gets paid the same amount as the worker in another community who works long hours, keeps the place locked up at night, calls community meetings to develop a grassroots response to the porn issue… all in the name of “investing in jobs for Aboriginal people”.
Giving Aboriginal people “real jobs”, without training, support, consequence etc, is just as problematic as all the other paternalistic policies, I reckon, though I’m sure that’s controversial. In the end the government will no doubt say, “well look, we tried. We paid you good money. And what happened? You trashed computers, downloaded porn in front of kids, etc etc…”
And another service will be taken away, again without people really understanding why, although somehow they will understand that they have failed another mystifying whiitefella test.
Anyway that’s what I have been thinking about, during my time at Tjirrkarli.
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