Homelands: The “art + soul” of the outback, nsw, Amnesty International Australia

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Homelands: The “art + soul” of the outback

Published on 28/11/2011

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© April Pyle/AI

Written by Tom McMahon

Hetti Perkins, senior curator of Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander art from the Art Gallery of NSW, takes us across Australia to share her knowledge and passion for Indigenous artists in the documentary series art +soul.

“Art for me is a way for our people to share stories and allow a wider community to understand our history and us as a people,” says Perkins.

In the series, Perkins presents a travelogue of some of the landmarks of Aboriginal artistic life, crossing the great expanses of outback to the homeland communities, revealing them as natural springs where the landscape finds unique expression.

Perkins and director/cinematographer Warwick Thornton (director of the award-winning “Samson and Delilah” – also available from the AIA video library) are invited into sacred galleries where history is preserved by the elder custodians through the restoration of ancient ochre, clays and charcoal in sandstone alcoves and recounting ancestral lore in ceremony, song and art.

The first stop in this journey is Kintore, a remote settlement in the Northern Territory, home to the Papunya Tula Artists collective. The movement began in Papunya in the early 1970s when school teacher, Geoffrey Bardon, encouraged his young students to paint a mural using traditional symbols from ceremonial art. Because of the sacred significance of the symbols, depicting kinship totems and Dreamtime creation stories, the children were not permitted by traditional law to reproduce them. As custodians for the Tjukurrpa (ancestral stories), the elder men created the Honey Ant Mural, depicting the creation story from which the town and the subsequent art movement derive their names.

Although whitewashed by the school administrators soon after it was made, the mural influenced other men to transcribe traditional styles of body markings and sand drawings into paintings, giving rise to the 'dot and circle' style. The Papunya Tula art movement has since seen some of its most acclaimed artists, such as Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri and Michael Nelson Jagamara (commissioned to design the forecourt mosaic at Parliament House), exhibited internationally, initiating an industry for indigenous art that now generates around $200 million a year nationally.

Speaking with local artist Bobby West, Perkins explains that the artist collective is about more than just making money, with proceeds from sales of their paintings being re-invested into Kintore, funding community initiatives such as the swimming pool and the dialysis clinic. Quoting her father, the late Aboriginal activist Charlie Perkins, she reflects that “such initiatives don’t just save lives, they save a way of life”.

The theme of cultural sustainability in the face of urbanisation and assimilation is the subject of a new report by Amnesty International Australia. Developed for over three years in partnership with Alyawarr and Anmatyerr communities of the Utopia homelands, the report entitled "'The land holds us’: Aboriginal Peoples' right to traditional homelands in the Northern Territory" documents the benefits of these remote communities to the quality of life of Indigenous Northern Territorians.

As a case example, the residents of the 16 communities that make up the Utopia homelands, lying 260 km northeast of Alice Springs, have inhibited such health problems as obesity, diabetes and smoking to such a degree that adult mortality rates from all causes have been consistently 40% lower in Utopia than among Aboriginal peoples elsewhere in the NT. In particular, deaths from cardiovascular disease in Utopia are 50% lower.

Read more about how homelands are closing the gap on health in the NT.

This trend should be of interest to the Commonwealth and NT governments as it concerns the core of the Closing the Gap campaign - closing the life-expectancy gap within a generation – a goal described by PM Gillard earlier this year as “extremely challenging” and one that she doesn’t expect to be achieved sooner than the 30 year target date.

Since 2007, however, considerable changes to law and policy in the NT have been enacted without the participation of these communities in the planning of their future. In the latest report, Amnesty International Australia documents how the allocation of public funding by the NT government undermines the ability for people to continue living on homelands.

Uncertain future for homelands

In 2009, the same year that the Commonwealth Government endorsed the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (‘the Declaration’), the Working Future policy was adopted in the NT. The policy, however, fails to meet the standards provided by the Declaration to ensure Indigenous peoples’ right to participate fully in Australia’s democracy and, in the words of the Commonwealth Minister for Indigenous Affairs, to protect them from “forced assimilation or destruction of their culture.”

Charged with the responsibility of implementing a share of the significant national budget dedicated to addressing Indigenous disadvantage ($8.2 billion in Indigenous-specific National Partnership Agreements since 2008), the NT government introduced Working Future through which the campaign objectives would be administered at Territory level.

One of the biggest impacts of Working Future on homelands is through public housing. Under the National Partnership Agreement on Remote Indigenous Housing, to which all States and Territories are parties, the aims are clear:

(a) significantly reducing severe overcrowding in remote Indigenous communities;

(b) increasing the supply of new houses and improving the condition of existing houses in remote Indigenous communities; and

Under the administration of the NT government, however, the outcomes for homelands are unclear due to the selective designation of public funding. Despite government media releases describing the state of remote Indigenous housing as “the most visible and enduring evidence of the failure of Governments, over decades, to address Indigenous disadvantage,” small-to-medium sized homeland communities have been excluded from the Strategic Indigenous Housing and Infrastructure Program (SIHIP), described as the largest Indigenous housing program undertaken by the Commonwealth and NT Governments.

Under Working Future, the $672 million in funding (over 5 years) that this represents is being focused on 21 Territory Growth Towns (TGTs) that, in the words of then NT Minister for Indigenous Policy Alison Anderson, are “strategically placed” to be “the service delivery centres for the vast majority of Aboriginal people living in the bush.” According to Amnesty International Australia, however, the populations of TGTs account for just 24% of the total Indigenous population in the NT compared with 35% living in homeland communities.

The controversy over access to these services is described in a paper entitled, "Working Future: A Critique of Policy by Numbers" published in 2010 by the Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research (CAEPR). Using statistics from the 2006 Census, the paper describes the distribution of the rural population across the NT – constituted by mostly Indigenous Australians – relative to the locations of the TGTs selected by the Commonwealth and NT governments as “economic and service delivery centres for their regions.”

In the north-eastern region of Nhulunbuy, where remote communities are more densely populated, 7 TGTs represent close to 80% of the total rural population (of whom 92.4% are Indigenous Australians) as either residents “within or [that have] reasonable access to a proposed TGT from their usual place of residence.”

The author, Will Sanders, however, questions the so-called ‘strategic placement’ of TGTs when, in fact, the majority of people living remotely in the expansive central and southern regions of Katherine, Tennant Creek and Apatula are practically isolated from these so-called ‘hubs’.

In contrast to the Nhulunbuy region, the proportion of the population with a direct-to-reasonable level of access to TGTs in the central and southern regions account for no more than 45% of their respective rural populations. In the southern-most region of Apatula, with a total rural population of 9, 124 (of whom 88% are Indigenous Australians), no more than 21.3% have access to the region’s 3 designated TGTs.

Due to the sparse distribution of remote Indigenous communities in these regions - generally living in smaller, less populous settlements than those in the north – Sanders explains that homeland residents have come to rely on nearby ‘open towns’ for services and facilities such as schools, health clinics, police stations, roadhouses and stores.

‘Open towns’ are distinct from homelands in that land can be bought and sold privately. This is an essential requirement for major government investment as indicated by Anderson’s characterisation of TGTs as “proper towns with town plans, secure land tenure, private investment, integrated transport links, high schools, police stations, hospitals, cafes and recreation facilities.”

With 3 TGTs – in the Katherine and Tennant Creek regions – being towns of this sort, Sanders questions why more ‘open towns’ haven’t been included under Working Future to make up for the significant gaps in accessibility and thus allow for a more equal distribution of government support.

Indigenous rights & evidence-based, accountable and transparent policy

“Various policies now collude to move homeland residents into large townships. Health, housing and education services to homeland communities are now being severely restricted. This means that people will have to live in townships if they want their children to receive a school education or if they want access to housing.” – Mick Gooda, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commission

Considering the implications presented by the funneling of resources into targeted areas beyond the reach of most of the remote Indigenous population, Working Future directly affects the human rights of homeland residents.

Developed over a period of 20 years in partnership with Indigenous peoples around the world, the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples applies the basic principles of existing international human rights – non-discrimination and self-determination - to the experience of Indigenous peoples, in terms of their distinct cultural identity and the legacy of dispossession and racial discrimination.

The values espoused in the Declaration include the right to be actively involved in determining and developing economic and social programmes affecting them (e.g., health and housing) (Article 23), the practice and revitalisation of their cultural traditions and customs (Article 11) and the right to use, develop and control traditional land (Article 26).

The central principle of self-determination can be realised only through the prevention of any action which has either the aim or effect of violating these rights and can be legitimated only by the “free, prior and informed consent” of Indigenous peoples, in relation to legislative or administrative measures that may affect them.

However, according to Amnesty International Australia, “[t]he decision to establish growth towns was made with minimal Aboriginal involvement.”

Although consultations were held prior to the finalisation of Working Future, Amnesty International Australia reports that only 17 of the 500 homeland communities were approached; a fact that NT government consultant Patrick Dodson acknowledged at the time as a "clear fault in the process".

After two weeks of community engagement sessions, the “Our Home, Our Homeland” report was submitted to the NT government in the beginning of 2009. Intended to “provide early direction to the NTG on the development and implementation of future policy”, the report findings were not released publicly until almost half a year later with the launch of Working Future.

During the consultation process, participating homeland residents and representatives proposed a variety of initiatives towards developing the viability of homelands; the authors noting that “the future history of homelands lies in their successful innovation and utilisation of emerging economic opportunities and technologies”, including participation in eco-tourism and land management, the emerging industry of carbon abatement and the use of IT solutions such as virtual schooling.

The report recommended that the NT government conduct an audit for all homelands on the integrity of housing and infrastructure, road networks, communications and all other major services. The report also insisted on a skills audit of residents and an evaluation of business activity and economic opportunities on homelands.

The purpose of this was meant to provide the basis for a more comprehensive approach to maximising the use of limited funding resources in these communities, a fundamental issue underlying Closing the Gap efforts around the country. With the availability of such data, a cost/benefit analysis could be created regarding “the effects to the Territory and National economies of continuing to invest or not invest in homelands.” These would include costs relating to the migration of approximately 10,000 homeland residents to larger communities, towns and cities where there are greater risks of health and social problems, and the concurrent loss of those “significant contributions”, unique to homeland living, that their residents make to “the cultural, social, health, environmental, economic and security values enjoyed by all Territorians and all Australians.”

Read more of the little-known facts about homelands.

The authors of the report also stressed the importance of such a research base to a transparent, collaborative process between the NT government, service delivery agencies and homeland communities in “model[ing] cost-effective regional solutions to meet the diverse reality of homelands within the Territory context,” even recommending that future consultations be delayed until such information was made available.

The second round of consultations, however, were cancelled and according to Amnesty International Australia the Working Future headline policy statement “bears no clear link to either the Outstation Policy Discussion Paper or to the 20 recommendations emerging from the community engagement report.”

According to a report entitled “The Future of Homelands/Outstations”, published by CAEPR and cited frequently in the Amnesty International Australia report, Working Future not only indicates the NT government’s lack of commitment to genuine community input but shows it “to be acting counter to available evidence - scant as it may be - and so both jeopardises opportunities to Close the Gap and increases the risk that gaps will actually increase.”

This represents persisting shortfalls in transparency and accountability with regards to the performance and effectiveness of the implementation of National Partnership Agreements across the country, an issue continually highlighted by the COAG Reform Council since the inaugural year of the Closing the Gap campaign.

The founding rhetoric of the Closing the Gap era – that of building “a new partnership between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians” based on active engagement with the community by government – undoubtedly sets the 2007 Intervention as its antithesis, described by Marion Scrymgour as “ a process that was just imposed, without any consultation or involvement by Aboriginal people”.

However, Scrymgour, former Minister for Indigenous Policy in the NT, rejected Working Future on the same principle and subsequently quit the Labor Party in June 2009, stating that: “[W]e have lied to Aboriginal people... We have said we would go back and talk to them before we made that policy."

Speaking in support of Scrymgour, Patrick Dodson, co-author of the “Our Home, Our Homelands” report, said that Aboriginal people "would feel terribly cheated and terribly offended" by the NT government's level of commitment to community participation.

Referring to the NT government’s failure to thoroughly assess the unique benefits and potential of homelands, Dodson said: "To ignore that, in a manner to force people, ultimately, to come to these designated major centres, is really, slowly but surely, a way of killing people's culture and extinguishing the strength of Aboriginal life.”

With the Strategic Review of Indigenous Expenditure (released under the Freedom of Information Act in July this year) adding to a chorus of independent reviews calling for new approaches - rather than increased funding - to implement and deliver existing resources more effectively, the NT government’s engagement with homeland communities can be seen to demonstrate not so much the challenges faced by policymakers as the challenges not faced.

“All of the components of our identity hangs on the land. There’s the land in a circle. There’s the language from that land. In this region it’s the Alyawarr and Anmatyerr language. It incorporates family lineage, family groups. It incorporates our sacred lands. It incorporates our law. The law is L‐A‐W as well as L‐O‐R‐E. Break any one of those arms and sever it from the land, you are committing the death of a race of people. It is so vitally important for our identity and the continuation of that, one of the oldest races in the world, that government are mindful not to sever, not to kill.” - Rosalie Kunoth‐Monks, Alywarr and Amnatyerr elder from Utopia homelands and President of Barkly Shire Council.

The significance of homelands to Indigenous peoples can be understood in the context of assimilation policies enacted across the country between the late 1930s and the late 1960s. The migration of Indigenous people into designated settlements and mission stations during this time - either through forcible removal, the promise of modern convenience or in response to adversities such as disease and the impact of cattle grazing on their usual food and water sources – coincided with an attempt to re-condition behaviour based in remote, nomadic and traditionally-orientated life.

Apart from the discrimination faced from the non-Indigenous community, the concentration of Indigenous peoples from different clans and tribal groups into large settlements created a stressful, “pressure cooker” environment characterised by “over‐crowding, conflict, violence, family breakdown, deteriorating health, substance abuse and loss of morale.”

Remote settlements like Kintore, featured in the art + soul series, and the Utopia homelands were founded when small Indigenous groups, often families or other closely‐related people living in major non-Indigenous settlements, sought to re-establish their cultural identity on traditional land.

As explained in the “Return to Country” report, quoted above, the preferred term homeland reflects how “Aboriginal people have moved to the communities to be as close as possible to the land for which they hold spiritual responsibility”, as opposed to the term ‘outstation’ which suggests “a population group physically and socially on the periphery.”

With the enactment of the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act in 1976, homelands represent landmarks in the progression of Indigenous rights. The ownership and control of land also represents control over their history which is codified in the land.

However, with the allocation of funding from the Closing the Gap budget being contingent upon leasing Indigenous-owned land to the government, Amnesty International Australia explains that, by exercising the right to own and control their traditional land – essential to fulfilling a broad range of human rights for Indigenous Peoples – homeland communities are being placed at the bottom of a “tiered system of disadvantage”.

Join Amnesty International Australia in solidarity with homeland communities and voice your concerns to the Minister for Indigenous Affairs

Disclaimer: This blog entry does not necessarily represent the position or opinion of Amnesty International Australia.