Comments on: 2022 AD – What we could hope for in Indigenous affairs, apart from the odd miracle

By: Zie

Zie — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 07:47:33 +0000

I read with interest the comments written individually by Debra and Janet Brown. Since been back from Alice Springs, I’ve reflected on most issues, positive and negative. For a first timer to Alice Springs, I was bewildered at the Aboriginals lazing around idle time away. I was told that they get the dole from Centrelink. My immediate inner thoughts was “Why can’t this be abolished? Why can’t they be trained for skills appropriately? Why take in outsiders when we can look in our own backyard?” Oh yes … I do feel very Aussie. I don’t feel Asian … although I do get “that” look. I am Aussie. I want to offer my knowledge and skills in every positive aspects to build future the Australia … a safe, comfortable, affordable, clean and harmonious one.
No, this does not dampen my spirit. I will, one day, visit Alice Springs and the surrounding areas in NT (with or without my husband).
If any of you readers need a volunteer to help make Australia a better place, I’m here.

By: Debra

Debra — Sun, 08 Jan 2012 04:03:01 +0000

Hi Bob,
I love your sincere vision and commitment to positive change in the NT and I respect your wealth of experience and understanding, and the amazing work you have done up there in Central Australia.
I don’t have the experience of having lived or worked in the NT, and I’m not sure if this will resonate with you or anyone else out there at all but I feel it’s a perspective I’d like to share.
Of all the articles I have read about indigenous affairs I find many of them inspiring but at the same time frustrating, because I truly believe that everything being done to try to create deep positive change is being thwarted due to one major problem that never ever seems to be addressed overtly and emphatically, as I believe it needs to be.
I truly believe that the absolutely fundamental problem is an energetic one, at the very foundations of the individual, and that without shifting this, we are pushing sh*t uphill. Anyone who is struggling, indigenous or non-indigenous is in that place because they are unable to find alignment with their true selves within their life.
People who find alignment, perhaps through their sport, art or music or whatever their passion is, or who are fortunate enough to be living a particular way of life that they love, will always thrive.
Those who are not thriving are those who are out of alignment. Perhaps they are unable to move past grief, trauma and shock, sometimes immobilising themselves further through drug and alcohol abuse, whilst their confusion and anxiety is being added to by a society that is trying to help by piling “solutions” on top of this deep, emotional state. Such solutions either do not offer alignment, or they are unable to strike a chord of alignment while the grief, shock and trauma are present.
When people’s lives are in alignment with who they truly are, they are happy. (I know this deeply for myself, a recent example being having just left my teaching position because I no longer wanted to be there. I had begun to feel extremely tired, uninspired, got a sore back and physical illnesses, although I’m usually always well. The moment I decided to leave my health returned.)
When people are living a life that doesn’t feel true for them, illness usually shows up. When people are struggling in life they may need support to hear their inner guidance and acknowledge who they truly are and what they want in life, and to assist them to work from that point to get it.
From a supporter’s point of view, for this to happen, the supporter (government, community worker, health worker, teacher, counsellor etc) needs also to appreciate and be in that feeling of alignment in life, and let the creation of the change, the mental and emotional shifts (a.k.a. the energetic shifts) and the action steps come from the people themselves who want their lives to change.
Offering up intelligent, thoughtful, well intended “solutions” in the form of money, great ideas for projects, public education campaigns and the like will be very unlikely to reach the places where change has to occur … those unconscious thoughts and feelings that account for over 90% of the choices we make in life. Nobody likes to follow advice that doesn’t resonate with them. When it does resonate, the change occurs effortlessly. The quickest way to come up with solutions that resonate is to find them within oneself.
If the well being of the individual, at the level of unconscious thoughts and feelings, can be made a priority for both the supported and the supporter, would it not be one thousand percent more likely that any efforts applied thereafter on the material plane will bear fruit?
Shaky foundations need attention … we could spend a lifetime building with the greatest love and care upon them and continue to feel disappointed, confused and exhausted at the instability of our structure and the need to keep changing it.
Happy New Year out there,
Cheers, Debra

By: Katherine Guinea

Katherine Guinea — Sun, 08 Jan 2012 01:13:59 +0000

Bob’s vision for NT builds on his immense experience and study gained over 30 odd years. The most astounding thing about this article is that he still has a vision about improving the life of the most impoverished and marginalised peoples in our country. He continues not only to speak up but he has never given up using the privileges of his background and education to work together “on the front line” with the First Peoples of this most wealthy nation. Social inequality and racism is rampant within Australia and this is not confined to the NT.
The situation of the majority of Aboriginal people living in rural and remote Australia is not dissimilar to that in Central Australia. This is what the “99% global social movement” is about – demanding that our political leaders and their organisations and the corporations who support them, are accountable for their decisions and take responsibility for the impact of their actions on all those, Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal, who are forced to live in appalling misery, without dignity, without hope, without the means to work out solutions to our problems.
Abbott is merely the spokesperson for the powerful elites who will do whatever it takes to strengthen the status quo. ALP is only marginally better when it comes to rebuilding a more equal, tolerant, fairer and just Australia. As Bob says without a national consensus, without a redistribution of the wealth, without the “urban haves” being prepared to give-up a some of what they have and demand that we look after our brothers and sisters who live in rural and remote regions of this resource rich country, the future is bleak. Let’s hope others dare to care as Bob does as it’s the only way to force social change.

By: Janet brown

Janet brown — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 22:57:00 +0000

Wow. Some good ideas and yet the same racist speech that has supported segregation all this time. If you want equal rights then paternalism needs to stop now. When you discuss the Centrelink issue please explain to non aboriginal welfare recipients why aboriginal people are treated to an open door on income from other avenues. I did raise this issue with our pollies and was told it just is and will not change. [Some persons] on the dole at royalties time (twice a year) pick up over $300,000 plus and still get the dole. Anyone else non aboriginal you would lose your welfare. I am not happy listening to the racist propaganda that tells part of the story and fails to address the facts as they really are. Racism will continue to exist. Money is directed to ensuring aboringals never obtain equality. And that equality comes from equality under law and living under the rules as everyone else. The beginning of that would start with the closing down of all government funded organizations that operate to promote segregation.

By: Hal Duell

Hal Duell — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 22:53:12 +0000

It’s the combination of the photograph in the third point and the text in the fourth that I find most hopeful.
The leadership thing is being addressed and nurtured through Desert Knowledge Australia’s Desert Leadership Program. With others, Alderman John Rawnsley has encouraged potential future leaders to step forward, to trust their luck and not be shy.
As a self-confessed local government tragic, I hope some of them will nominate in the coming Council elections. For the work and hours involved, the pay sucks and the exposure is daunting. It can also be a frustrating and intimidating task when, as is sometimes the case in local government, there is too much leading from the chair.
But the Alice Springs Town Council is the premier elected body in Alice, and the new single transferable vote proportional representation system (!) is designed to make the eight alderman positions more accessible to a wider variety of residents.
We need at least some young(ish) local voices on Council to help us all through the coming transformative years. We are still hunting the elusive formula that will bring the old town camps under the one municipal roof, and this is before we begin to look further afield.
We all know that necessary change is in the air, and that it can be for the better. Bob’s well considered ideas are as good a place to start as any.

By: David Chewings

David Chewings — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 06:39:04 +0000

Reply to ANON @ 1:53 pm. My position on the intervention, on the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, on CAMECO, on David Hicks, on the very fragile social fabric that is the Alice today etc etc has been known for many years.

By: childsplay

childsplay — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 04:23:21 +0000

@2
David – Bob challenged / asked anti-Interventionists to justify their statements and activities. You have not done so, merely made an assertion. How about explaining your position?

By: Terry

Terry — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 02:58:33 +0000

Talk about living in a dream world. This would have to be the closest thing to opium dreaming that I have ever read. I have been out of the Alice for thirty years now, and it is obvious that the problems of the city and its surrounds are worse now than they were back then, and they were bad enough back then, so what have Mr Durnan and his ilk been doing in those thirty years apart from demanding more and more funds to repeat the same mistakes over and over?
To suggest that the whole population of the center of Australia should suffer for his inabilities, and the inabilities of all the administrators of the affairs of the indigenous people is nothing short of plain stupidity.
It would appear to me as an outsider that a total clean out of the administration is in order, and a new team, with new ideas be elected.

By: David Chewings

David Chewings — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 01:50:14 +0000

To the misguided and far too well paid talking head Bob Durnan may I say, I am proud to be labelled as anti-interventionist by the likes of you. I will always use the freedom of expression in our country to let others know of the poisonous racism that is the fundamental bedrock of this permanent policy.
It is no more defensible than the worst of the Blair, Howard and Bush push into Iraq.
You know this Bob and you know too that we can do better.