what now?

February the 2nd was the tenth anniversary of my initiation into the Public Service.  I was going to blog about this on the actual date itself but 2 February 2008 was one of those days that was lost in the ether of international travel.  I'm not sure whether I was on a plane, in an airport or whether it actually existed for me.

Anyway, 2 February 1998 is one of those dates etched in my memory, partly because I routinely put it down on forms along with my APS number, but moreover because it marked a transition in my life of working in Indigenous affairs, an area with which I've been connected one way or another ever since.  I've often wondered if there'll be a transition out of this area, sometimes if I'll ever get away. I feel privileged to have seen -- and to have been burdened by -- the underbelly of Indigenous affairs.  Things are a lot more messy than the Manichean battle with ideological light sabres often depicted in the media.  I've been to some places that most people don't get to see, and I've met and worked with some remarkable people.  But still...there's an uneasy sense of das unheimliche about it all for me.  The unhomeliness of home or the unhoming of home.

Which brings me to my next subject -- the apology.

I've felt a sense of flatness and suspicion about the apology, at best a cautious optimism. It's not that I don't agree with an apology, but rather than a grand gesture, it seems like a perfunctory one, something that should have been done years ago. I remember all the drama around 1998-99, the Prime Minister's intransigence about the apology, the sabotaging of reconciliation and so many other aspects of the Indigenous struggle.  The candles on the lawn outside Parliament House last night were eerily reminiscent of the Sea of Hands and some of the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation's previous gestures. But into what era are we moving?  What is possible? 

I'm sure the apology will mean a lot to the Stolen Generations and to Aboriginal people more generally.  Unlike the outcome of one poll I read, I genuinely believe that the acknowledgement of past wrongs can make a psychological difference.  All the same, the Government's non-committal stance on the rest of the Bringing Them Home package makes it none too clear what will come next (though it would hardly be tactical to commit too much too soon).  So much of my time in Indigenous affairs has been spent in obscure and deadening administration.  Successive attempts to re-cast Indigenous affairs have often seemed merely to succeed in swaddling Aboriginal people in further bureaucracy.  What now?

To me, there's a whole sense of disjuncture between a national, Canberra-given apology and the everyday life of Aboriginal people.  It seems terribly abstract. Here in central Australia, there's a real sense of division between the population, as if there are two tiers of existence between those who walk the same streets in town. The work situation here is often somewhat different to an East Coast or even a Darwin one, where you might have Aboriginal colleagues and socialise with them. Symbolically, I suspect it's a truer representation of the relationship between black and white Australians. The fact that a white person wouldn't talk, let alone socialise, with an Aboriginal person in central Australia, unless facilitated by a work pretext or without passing through a series of culturally-sensitive protocols or a gatekeeper organisation, strikes me as very odd.  There's so little normality in any of our relations with Aboriginal people, it's hard to believe that we know anything of their everyday realities.

Coda: Being the kind of misanthropic nay-sayer and late-riser that I am, I watched the apology from the couch with Otty and Lulu at 7.25 am CST, rather than going into any of the potential sorry breakfasts in town.  As I pulled up outside work just before 9 am, I could the itinerants stirring where they slept on bits of tarp and garbage bag under the saltbushes in the strip of land between the railway line and my institution.  I wondered if they knew what had happened in Canberra today.

I went and spoke to these people the other day.  Actually, they flagged me down, and tried to cadge money off me.  I gave them some fruit from my bag instead.  I asked them where they were from.  They told me Hermannsburg (or Ntaria, where Strehlow set up the mission associated with Namatjira). Then I asked how long they'd been living in town.  One of them said, 'Nineteen ninety-four.'

They've been camping under trees in town since 1994?  I suspect they're fairly peripatetic and visit other locations such as Ntaria.  But still...

Comments

[M-H]

Can you clarify? Why can people not socialise across the race 'borders' if they choose to? What stops them, in either direction?

[elsewhere]

I don't want to sound melodramatic but it's simply the case that there's a stand-off here between the two populations. White people generally interact with black people via professional contexts, and that's about it. If ever I've tried to talk to an Aboriginal person in the street, it's clear from their response (awkwardness, wariness etc) that it's unusual.

I don't know why this is. I suspect history has something to do with it.

Mary Ellen Jordan mentions something similar in Balanda -- how she imagined she'd be inviting Aboriginal people into her home in Maningrida for cups of tea but it never happened, because the two populations don't socialise in that way.

[suzoz]

History, yes, has everything to do with it. I'm very interested in this silent stand-off too.

[elsewhere]

The other day when I was checking out of the IGA, there was a pre-apology current affair item about some rifts in a country town on the TV behind the counter. Bundjalung people were involved so it must have been NSW.

Anyway, as I was walking out the door, I heard the man behind the counter yell at the television screen, 'It's not about colour, you fucken pricks!'

If you were Aboriginal in a town like Alice, you might not know what reception to expect from white people...

[dirt]

Apologies of this sort confuse me since the person doing the apologizing is rarely actually the one who committed the original offense. That's not to say there shouldn't be an apology, there should be for sure, but I wonder what an apology is worth since it can't undo the damage, and even trying to return people to their homes creates a strange tension (or can) because now the person doesn't know which "world" he belongs to: the world of the people who tried to educate and mold him into one of them or the world of his family and past. The US has had a lot of that kind of problem, and I tend to think it's best if we make peace with the past and try to move forward with as much of a clean slate as possible. I'm not saying anything useful, of course. You know more about it than I do, but I think that cautious optimism of yours is the best thing.

[seepi]

Well the apology was a major thing in Canberra yesterday. And it seems that thousands stood and watched on big screens in other capital cities- in Sydney they stood thru the rain to watch it.

I think perhaps an unintended consequence of the apology will be a feeling of co-operation and goodwill coming from white people who havne't given much thought to the issues.

So with any luck when Kevin announces major funding for Indig affairs, there will be support, instead of whinging.

It seemed to have a real sense of hope from here.

[elsewhere]

There were some breakfasts here, including at Link-Up, celebrating the apology, but there'd be a lot of community people who wouldn't know about it or possibly wouldn't think it was that important to them (as those who hadn't been removed from their families and who still had culture).

Kevin's new vision was pretty vague and sketchy. It'd better be good, that's all I can say.

[TPS]

Hmmmm, the apology. It finally appears - and as you say Elsewhere, so long overdue. I can see (esp from your persepctive) the basis for your 'cautious optimism', and how Kevin's vision is vague and sketchy.

I, for one, feel more optimism than this though - I really felt genuinely moved by all the turnout and tears around the country, which, of course, was viewed mainly by white people and aboriginal people more connected to the urban Australia. But Kevin did a great job - he was absolute, he gave more than he 'had' too, and it really did feel historic (despite overdue). Also, I think that the bipartisan nature was quite powerful, despite Nelson's blunders in the speech etc.

The moment was exciting and timely. The thing I dont get though, is this tension between the people who say it is important, and the people who say it is symbolic and nothing will change. Why can't we have the apology and renewed momentum (and money and resources)??? Why does it have to be one or the other? No-one has ever said that making an apology means that nothing else has to be done - but it seems to me that nothing can be really done without it.

I do wonder too about what people in Central Aust think - as per your conversation, Elsewhere, with some people around town here in Alice. I was in Yuendamu for court day yesterday (300kms NW of Alice). We arrived in the community around mid morning, wondering who had been listening. It seemed that the people in the community didnt actually listen, but they did know about it. They asked us what Kevin said. I thought it strange that there was no collective radio or TV on, but, things just move along at their own pace, and Canberra is pretty far away.

Because, despite the apology and the nation applauding itself, the monthly court still takes place with school desks in the community hall, we still see our clients and workers sitting in the dust outside in the heat and flies, and there's still only a couple of small stores where a drink costs more than anywhere on the east coast. There is still rubbish and grog.

But - despite this, I feel pleased that the people still knew about it and wanted information. It didnt change their day but it must mean something positive. And I would think that now it's done, it's time for more action.

[M-H]

dirt - the point is that it was govt policy that caused this pain, so the govt needed to apologise. Of course the people who were apologising weren't in the govt when the events occurred, but it was an official recognition that the policies of past govts were inhuman, and that today's govt is sorry that this has happened to its citizens. I don't have any problem with that.

Like TPS I have found the whole thing moving and I feel hopeful - so hopeful that I will now begin to take out Aus citizenship after 10 years of squatting here.