An Indigenous chicken and egg conundrum
Author: Margaret Clark
On 24 May 2011 Lindsay Murdoch wrote an article titled, "Crisis warning on Aboriginal growth town strategy", which argued that in spite of the fact that coordinated and significant investment had at last commenced in a meaningful and materially significant way in Wadeye (the largest discrete Indigenous community in the NT, made famous by the violent gang warfare between the Judas Priests and the Evil Warriors), the town is poorly placed to benefit from the economic opportunities. This is because the vast bulk of the working age population does not have the minimum literacy level standards essential for work.
The article quotes the studies undertake by John Taylor at the CAEPR Institute at ANU. He notes that the challenges for Wadeye and the NT can only increase, because the population is expected to increase by 63% to over 4000 in the next few years, and barely 20% of the current school age population attends school with any regularity. They will join the adults currently in the age group below the mission schooled (educated) population - a rapidly increasing rump of adults with limited literacy, few skills and no sense that work is what adults do. He concluded that this community is not in any position to take advantage of any development that comes along through the NT 20 Growth Towns Strategy.
As the mission generated older age population gradually pass away the outlook for the community could be bleak indeed.
Is education the highest priority?
When one asks the many remote based non Indigenous and Indigenous skilled workforce who run the health services, Centrelink offices, council offices, infrastructure and housing services "what is the most important priority", they almost always answer "education - getting children to attend and able to read" and I can see their point.
But do housing and other issues act as a barrier to education?
On the other hand when one speaks to remote teachers, they are more likely to say "fix up the housing overcrowding, manage the alcohol, make the town safe, stop interclan feuding, establish economic investment and business opportunities, change community attitudes and so on. They might well point out that you can't expect kids to come to school when: it is viewed as white man's business, when sorry business over many days is more important, when no one assumes adults need to work, where no one hears English spoken except in school, and where kids are tired and it is hard to get ready in the morning.
Wadeye and many, many communities have a ratio of people to bedrooms (not homes) of over 3 and sometimes up to 6 persons per room - but mainly around the 4 persons per bedroom level. And these bedrooms are not like the main bedrooms of new homes of today.
I have experienced a temporary situation of many people camped in my house - and it is utter chaos. I have never had a ratio of over 4 persons per bedroom for over more than a couple of nights. And I don't have a small three bedroom house that is in urgent need of repairs.
The whole-of-community joined-up service delivery model implied by the Territory 20 Growth Towns Strategy is clearly the only model with any potential to address this chicken and egg conundrum. Progress on housing may improve living and sleeping conditions for children, food sovereignty strategies may provide more fresh food to households, locally developed and managed safe community and alcohol management strategies may improve parenting and child development and local employment may start to "normalize" to concept of working for adults.
At the same time better school graduates may eventually lead to more work ready adults. In other words, with the complexity of problems confronting very remote communities, the only possible way forward is through a comprehensive coordinated place based approach.
However we need to be careful not to over-claim what might be achieved through such an approach. After all, with the community of Wadeye, governments have been down this path before and in my assessment it did not work.
A three year Commonwealth of Australian Governments (COAG) funded trial of joined-up Government intensive service delivery in Wadeye was assessed as failing to deliver on all counts because (as the evaluation concluded) of the intractability of Government departments (both state and federal governments) that focused on their own turf, funding streams and outcomes. The evaluation also noted that at the start of the trial there was an average of 17 people per (3 bedroom) house and that over the three years of the trial a total of 4 new houses were built, 15 houses became uninhabitable and 200 babies were born.
Professor Altman also agues that there should be more honesty about what is possible for people in the bush and they need real choices.
"We also need to change our thinking to focus far more on livelihood and lifestyle diversity."
In Wadeye, for example, the most active organisation in the community is the Ranger Program funded out of the Sustainability, Environment, Water Population and Communities (SEWPAC) Working on Country program. This draws on Indigenous knowledge and passion for country but also funds Indigenous peoples to be the eyes, ears, manpower and local expertise for huge tracts of country that would otherwise be vulnerable to invasive species, weeds, and fires. Now that the Commonwealth government has also announced new funding for a junior ranger program in remote Indigenous schools there is an opportunity to connect education, to activity that is meaningful and engaging to the adult community.