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Indigenous policy expert Jon Altman. |
BLACK&WHITE: A future on country
ISSUE 184 - 21 Aug 2009
ISSUE 184, August 20, 2009: At Gulkula in east Arnhemland, GRAHAM RING catches up with Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research (CAEPR) Director, Professor Jon Altman, for a yarn about the future of homelands.
Jon Altman is equally familiar with the manicured lawns of Canberra and the rather more rustic surrounds of the large Arnhemland community of Maningrida and its numerous outstations.
He is an academic with a foot in the field, and a willingness to engage in the cut and thrust of public debate in forums like the National Indigenous Times and Crikey.
Altman is calling for an end to the overwhelming negativity which surrounds the discussion about the future of remote Australia.
"Recently, we have got so caught up in a narrative of failure around remote Indigenous communities that we can't see the positives and the potential of these communities to operate in ways which will be in regional, Territory and national interests as well, of course, as Indigenous interest," he laments.
Outstations policy falls significantly within the bailiwick of a Northern Territory Government currently paralysed by a constitutional crisis, but Altman isn't prepared to let the federal government entirely off the hook.
"The Commonwealth Government could show some real leadership here by doing two things," he observes.
"One is saying that the Howard Government's memorandum of understanding signed in September 2007 was signed under duress and should be revisited.
"The other is that they could resource outstations equitably, swing their phenomenal media and public relations machinery behind outstations, and tell the Australian people of the positive things that are happening on country. There is much that the Commonwealth could do to recognise the contribution that outstations make."
The NT Government's recent Growth Towns policy appears to have serious implications for the future of some homelands, however Altman cautions against attempts to pick 'winners and losers' in this area.
"Having infrastructure on country is enormously important for strategic purposes, so we shouldn't use technical methods like 'periods of residence' to try and decide which outstations to fund," he suggests.
Altman is also uncertain of the capacity of the controversial new local government arrangements in the NT to deliver the goods.
"Frankly, I think that below the level of the mega-shire we will see the re-emergence of community councils and community-based organisations, because the shires are unworkable, given the diversity of Indigenous Australia and the aspiration of Indigenous people for local and regional control."
The homelands movement dates back to the 1970s and was a creation of Aboriginal people, rather that a program spawned by the Canberra bureaucracy, a fact that Altman is keen to stress.
"This wasn't some social engineering plot by my colleague, Nugget Coombs," he says.
"It was Indigenous people going back onto country for two broad reasons:
People were pushed out of the major settlements because there was a high level of social dysfunction and political instability.
And they wanted to get back onto their own country to protect sacred sites, and to maintain customary ways of living that could only continue on country. This was the pull factor."
Altman urges governments to learn from this history, rather then be condemned to repeat its mistakes.
If there is a widely held view that that it is enormously difficult to establish an economic basis for the existence of bush communities, Altman suggests that this is, in part, borne out of a failure of the imagination.
"One of the reasons the Commonwealth supported the establishment of outstations in the first place was that they could see that when people were out bush they were much more self-sufficient than they were in the larger settlements.
"They were engaging in customary activities like hunting, fishing and gathering of foods. They were involved in artefact manufacture and the self-provisioning of services like the construction of rudimentary shelters."
Altman contrasts the vitality of outstations with the less purposeful nature of life on bigger communities.
"In some, and I stress some, of the larger communities there may be a degree of apathy, but what you see at many outstations are people leading active lives."
Greater imagination on the part of governments will further improve prosperity on outstations, says Altman.
"I think it's incumbent upon government to provide people with livelihood opportunities wherever they live. They should be building an economic base in remote locations, though that base won't look like a standard economy.
"In places where there are robust local organisations, people are getting involved in cultural tourism, in recreational fishing, in provision of environmental services and in innovative programs like carbon abatement."
There is great potential for the emergence of sunrise environmental industries in remote communities according to Altman, who cites the ground-breaking work of the West Arnhemland Fire Abatement Project (WALFA).
"Through scientific research undertaken by the Tropical Savannah Co-operative Research Centre, we were able to get a baseline over a number of years of the level of greenhouse gases emitted by uncontrolled fires in west Arnhemland," he explains.
"An alliance of 'caring for country' projects started actively engaging in fire abatement by reintroducing customary early dry-season patchwork burning. They are using western technology - helicopters, vehicles and incendiaries - to get in early to create fire breaks which considerably reduce the late dry-season fires which emit high levels of greenhouse gases."
There is a hard economic basis for this activity, says Altman.
"This saving is a 'greenhouse gas emission off-set' purchased in part by the ConocoPhillips corporation, which operates the liquefied natural gas plant in Darwin. The corporation is purchasing 100,000 tonnes of abatement from these ranger groups, at a cost of $1 million annually. That figure has the capacity to grow exponentially, with the establishment of a carbon market which could see carbon rise in price from the current level paid of $10 per tonne to $30 or $40 dollars per tonne, and be replicated across a significant proportion of the Northern Territory.
"Carbon abatement is just one of a suite of environmental services that Indigenous people can provide. We are already seeing land and sea rangers providing services to Australian Customs and to Australian Quarantine and there are further possibilities for expansion."
Altman is critical of the NT government's blinkered view of bi-lingual education, and points out that concepts in Indigenous knowledge are often embedded in the language. If the language is lost then the concepts disappear as well.
"The WALFA project is done using Indigenous classifications of where to burn, when to burn, and what to burn," says Altman.
"While we use western technology, the work is informed by senior traditional owners who are consulted about the proper processes around controlling wildfire."
The language is critical to the transmission of information notes Altman, urging policymakers to tread carefully.
"Before we recklessly implement new policies we should undertake some serious research," he says.
"There is no real evidence that bi-lingual education delivers lesser results. The mechanisms for measuring results of bi-lingual education are very much couched in terms of the values of the dominant society - the measurement mechanisms are tilted away from Indigenous values."
For all of the difficulties that beset remote Indigenous Australia, Altman remains optimistic and calls again for a greater focus on the things that are actually working.
"There are enough success stories in remote Indigenous Australia for us to look at what works and to replicate that, enable it, and resource it," he says.
"Let's flip the thing over, forget the narrative of failure and focus on the best practice examples of success and look to make that flourish. I'm positive about the future for remote Indigenous Australia because I see Indigenous people as being enormously resilient, and I think that through their agency they are able to subvert the nanny state and productively pursue their aspirations and purposes in many places."
Jon Altman is an academic with attitude.
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