Turning back the clock for AboriginesSydney Morning HeraldApril 11 2005Proposed changes to the Land Rights Act attack the basis of Aboriginal culture, writes Galarrwuy Yunupingu.
In the early 1960s, as a young man, I saw bulldozers rip through our Gumatj country in north-east Arnhem Land to mine bauxite at Gove. I watched my father try to stop them clearing sacred trees and saw him chase away drivers with an axe. I watched him cry when our sacred waterhole was bulldozed. It was one of our Dreamings and a source of water.
The great struggles of that time, including the bark petitions, Wave Hill walk-off, and the 1971 Gove land rights case, led to the Commonwealth's 1976 Land Rights Act. The act means that 44 per cent of the Northern Territory is now Aboriginal land, and it established the Aboriginal-controlled Northern and Central land councils. This paved the way for the High Court's recognition of communal native title in Mabo and the 1993 Native Title Act.
This legal recognition of rights, together with basic but relatively adequate education, health and housing provided by Government and missions into the 1970s, led to a great flowering of Aboriginal culture throughout Australia and the world. Aboriginal culture and rights are a bedrock of the tourist industry, as icons such as Uluru, Kakadu and Nitmiluk show. Aboriginal art and music are world renowned and bring income to remote communities.
Although much Aboriginal land has limited economic viability, there have been many commercial developments, including leases for mining, the Alice Springs-to-Darwin railway, wharves, defence, housing, utilities, stores, pastoralism, safari hunting, tourism, horticulture, pearling, fishing, aquaculture and crabbing. The Northern Land Council approved 44 such agreements at its last meeting in October 2004. Negotiations are advanced for a 940-kilometre gas pipeline across Aboriginal land from Wadeye to Alcan's alumina refinery at Gove.
Now, 40 years later, a new threat to Aboriginal rights seems to be forming. With Coalition control of the Senate from July 1, two recent papers call for substantial amendments to the Land Rights Act, and attack the very basis of Aboriginal culture - communal title.
Both papers, prepared by the Centre for Independent Studies for the National Indigenous Council, dismiss communal title as a cultural relic, said to stultify development and prosperity. They say it should instead be converted to individual ownership in the form of 99-year leases of Aboriginal land - a device whereby traditional owners' rights would be cancelled for generations.
These simplistic and disingenuous claims are a Trojan Horse to attack Aboriginal rights and land councils. They derive from an academic ideology that seeks to blame the victim, and which has no appreciation of the values and customs by which Aboriginal people live their lives. The true cause of impoverishment in remote communities, whether or not on Aboriginal land, is long-term government neglect in providing education, health and housing - especially since Northern Territory self-government in 1978. The Minister for Indigenous Affairs, Amanda Vanstone, need go no further to appreciate why Aboriginal people in the Northern Territory are "land rich, dirt poor".
Take housing. In Wadeye and other major communities there is an occupancy rate of about 17 people per house, nearly five per bedroom.
Take education. It was a condition of self-government that the Northern Territory fund former mission schools (for example, Wadeye) at the same level as government schools. However, a 2005 report for the Council of Australian Governments by the ANU Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research concludes that for every education dollar spent on an average child in the Northern Territory, only 26 cents is spent on an Aboriginal child in Wadeye.
Take health. The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare estimates that indigenous life expectancy is 19 years lower than for other Australians, with the infant mortality rate in the Northern Territory, Western Australia and South Australia being 2.5 times greater than for non-indigenous people. Despite a much poorer health status, on average three times worse than for other Australians, total expenditures per indigenous person are not much higher (a ratio of 1.22:1).
These figures are a national disgrace for which the Northern Territory and Federal governments bear responsibility. Without proper education, health and housing no child, community or people, will prosper.
But neither will a people whose communal rights and ancient culture are dismissed as irrelevant to the modern world and blamed for third-world disadvantage. It is wrong to claim that only individual owners will develop land and that traditional owning groups will not. At Gove the Gumatj and Rirratjingu have initiated housing and other commercial developments on Aboriginal land, as have the Larrakia in Darwin, Jawoyn at Nitmiluk, and groups in Kakadu. The sloppy and ideological thinking in the Centre for Independent Studies and for the National Indigenous Council papers is a return to the past that would breach the Racial Discrimination Act and be a recipe for litigation and international outcry. The true challenge is to embrace the successes of Aboriginal culture and communal rights by assisting traditional owners to develop their land for the benefit of all, combined with a comprehensive and long-term plan to deliver education, health and housing to remote communities.
By establishing a high-level ministerial taskforce, the Prime Minister, John Howard, has shown he is committed to ending indigenous disadvantage. This important initiative, and the recent service delivery agreement with the Northern Territory Government, must be backed by sufficient funding for pragmatic long-term programs that focus on education, health and housing in remote communities. Comparable countries, including Canada, the United States, New Zealand and Norway, have taken this course and greatly improved indigenous life expectancy and health. In the 21st century, Australia must not remain the odd one out.
Galarrwuy Yunupingu retired as chairman of the Northern Land Council in October last year, but not from public life, to pursue business and family interests.
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