The Sydney Morning Herald [Print Edition]
May 1, 1999
Dignity confronts whitefellas
by Alan Ramsey
BILLY Bunter, the glutton from Greyfriars, is the most famous schoolboy in
English children's fiction, a 1908 creation of the boys' paper the Magnet.
More recently, our pudgy Foreign Minister carried the nickname politically for
years. But there is another Billy Bunter, a black one. He walked into
Kalkarindji, on the edge of the Tanami Desert in North Australia, the
offensiveness of his "white-fella name" seemingly lost on the parliamentary
committee he'd come to talk to about land rights.
His "skin" name is Jampijinpa of the Warlpiri people. He is a man somewhere
in his 50s, and in the mid-1960s he was one of those who challenged the giant
British pastoral company Vesteys - first, in the historic Aboriginal walk-off
from Vesteys' Wave Hill station, the world's largest cattle property, in revolt
against black stock-men's appalling wages and conditions, then when the
dispute with Vesteys escalated into an even more bitter struggle for the return
of tribal lands.
Eight years after the walk-off, on August 16, 1975, Gough Whitlam, as Prime
Minister, would fly north and, in a solemn ceremony at the remote fastness of
a place called Wattie Creek, 1,000 kilometres south of Darwin, he would
formally hand over, to the Gurindji nation, ownership "forever" of a small
part of what had been Wave Hill land for more than a century (see panel).
Another 23 years on and the 1976 legislation that now underpins tribal land
ownership in the Northern Territory is itself under challenge in a highly
contentious 617-page document known as the Reeves Report, commissioned
18 months ago by the Howard Government. It is this report that a
parliamentary committee of 10 white politicians has been taking soundings on,
at hearings in Canberra and across the Northern Territory, since March 3.
The other week, seven committee members arrived by special flight in
Kalkarindji. The 21 Aborigines who'd come the 40 kilometres from
Daguragu, formerly Wattie Creek, to rail against the Reeves Report were
listened to for exactly one hour. Then the MPs adjourned for a cup of tea and
a look around, and then they flew away again. It was during this hour that we
learned about Billy Bunter, along with Banjo, Ida Peanut and Stanley Sambo,
among others.
We know this because the Hansard record of the meeting became available
this week, and these are the names it identifies them by in the official list of
"participants". The "names", of course, are not their tribal names, or their
hereditary "skin" names. They are their "whitefella" names, originating from
mission stations or most often with earlier generations of white pastoralists,
particularly the more offensive names.
There aren't so many Chocolates or Darkies these days, but Stanley Sambo's
name, for instance, comes from Stanley, son of Sambo, just as Ida, the wife
of Peanut, is identified as Ida Peanut, even though her "skin" name is
Nampiyin of the Gurindji. You don't need to work out how Billy Bunter got
his "name" a generation ago, but you are entitled to wonder why the official
record of the national Parliament still perpetuates the crude indignity of it at
the end of the 20th century.
Yet when the committee's chair, the Liberals' Lou Lieberman, of Victoria,
opened the meeting at Kalkarindji, he was seemingly oblivious to the
incongruity of tribal Aborigines giving evidence, through two interpreters, in
their own language, under the sad travesty of "whitefella" circus names like
Billy Bunter and Ida Peanut.
There was, however, no mistaking the force and dignity of what they had to
say. The pity is there were only seven backbenchers to hear them, and not
John Howard or John Herron (invisible as Aboriginal Affairs Minister since
the election, perhaps because he spends his time these days writing a book) or
Tim Fischer or any other minister.
The transcript is illuminating. Mick Raugiari, a tribal elder, speaking to his
people: "Give this mob your name, who you are. You might as well talk.
That is why they brought them up. Talk to the gentlemen here. They are
recording everything."
Jeannie Herbert: "I am Jeannie Jungarri Herbert. It is really important that I
say this. I know the Government doesn't come and talk to us, the Aboriginal
people. It does not matter where we are, in remote areas and all that, they do
not come and talk to us. The only time they come out is at election time, or
something to do with them ...
"I say this to the parliamentary committee: we do not want our rights taken
away. We do not want to be controlled by the Government, who does not
listen to us and who always wants to control us. Let us manage our own lives
... I know you people do not understand the Dreamings and all that, but it is
really important to us. We care from the heart. Do not control our lives. That
is for us. Leave us alone. We can make ourselves better. Let us make our
own mistakes. Let us control our own lives, our own money from our land
..."
Billy Bunter: "I have been a spokesman since the land rights began 30 years
ago. I walked up from the Wave Hill station. I feel unhappy about the way
the Government is trying to change our lives. Why is the Government trying
to take our rights away? We fought for our rights, and now the Government
is trying to take our rights for the second time ...
"Aboriginal people do not change the law. We would never change the law
until the world ends. Every Aboriginal person, whatever tribe they are, we do
not change the law. We have walked away from the darkness; we walked
into the light. We have looked for our rights, and John Reeves is deducting
our rights. Whatever is written in John Reeves's book is not concerning us.
We feel like we want to burn that book, and it will go into the fire."
Victor Simon Jupurrarla: "I was born in the desert, just like a dingo, but I can
talk your talk. This book here [the 1976 Land Rights Act] is enough, but not
this John Reeves one. We want the law we have got now. When we black
people look back, most of our people have been sitting in the dark from the
time when James Cook came and walked and took our rights away. So from
the dark this book brought us back to stand on our feet so we can talk face to
face. We can understand your talk, but you cannot understand my talk. You
sit in the Parliament, but we cannot sit with you and understand your way of
life. Our lives are different.
"In this book we believe is our life. In our life we look across the land to our
motherland. We believe in the Dreaming we had when James Cook came.
We were left alone in the dark. We believe we own our life now. We want to
walk with the law we have got now. We don't want to go back ..."
Jeannie Herbert: "We do not tell politicians and all those in Darwin and
Canberra, in Parliament House or in their own houses, how to spend their
money and how to live their lives. But they are really good at telling us how;
to run our lives. How dare they!"
Stanley Sambo: "We walked off the Wave Hill station. This land is our
strength. We walked off and the Government will never take it away. We are
now sitting on our land and we are really strong."
Jimmy Kelly: "We have one law. Our law is still the same. Government,
when you have elections every few years, you change the laws. Our law is
still the same since time began. We are not going to lose our grandfathers'
Dreaming, our fathers' Dreaming, our mothers' Dreaming. It is there forever,
it never changes. You cannot take that away from us."
Ida Peanut: "I came walking from Wave Hill, carrying swag, to here. This is
my father's country, my grandfather's country - that hill over there, and the
riverbed here, and the permanent waterhole. When we came across, I came
across walking, carrying swag, with my son and my husband. We followed
our father, who took us out from Wave Hill station and led us to Daguragu,
Wattie Creek. All my family, we do not want any law changed. We want that
law strong, the same way that we walked off for ..."
Henry Anderson: "We want only one law. The law is through the Land Rights
Act. When Gough Whitlam handed soil to the Gurindji people, it started oft a
new movement for all of us. We are going to hang on to that. No-one is going
to change it for us ..."
Doug Johnson: "Good morning, parliamentary members. Welcome to my
land. I am from Lajamanu. I would like to talk about our land rights. I will tell
you a bit of a story. In the past we had this welfare system and that was not
good. We have been through that before and it was not good. We like our
Land Rights Act. It is very strong. We have recognition and our rights in that
one. Please do not step back. Consider that and look seriously, because a lot
of our rights are going to be taken away. You cannot leave us with half our
rights. We still want to go forward, not go back."
"Thank you very much."
If only John Howard could be half as eloquent.
Our Prime Minister has visited one - and only one - Aboriginal community in
at least the past 10 years, maybe the entire 25 years of his political life. Yet it
is Howard driving the Reeves Report, not his token Aboriginal Affairs
Minister, just as it is his Government's obsession to break the political power
of the NT's Central and Northern Land Councils, not least because of their
strong affiliations with the Labor Party.
As Tim Fischer asserted during the election campaign last September: "The
NLC based in Darwin and the CLC in Alice Springs have become giant
bureaucratic, bloodsucking councils which take away, from smaller
communities, resources and flexible infrastructure and leadership ... I make
no apologies for that."
Well, the people at Kalkarindji make no apologies, either.
They want no part of the Reeves proposals to break up the two big land
councils and break down the absolute authority of the 1976 Land Rights Act.
They want John Howard to honour the word of government. Yet for the
most part the the mainstream media is ignoring the committee hearings. The
voices of the Gurindji and Waripiri are being heard by nobody.
Now, at least, you know what they are saying.
* * * * *
Howard disowns the sacred soil
When Gough Whitlam handed free-
hold title of their traditional lands to
Vincent Lingiari of the Gurindji on
August 16, 1975, he made one of
those simple speeches that genuinely lift the
spirits and make you think professional politics
isn't such a festering pus-ball after all.
It had been written by "Nugget" Coombs, and
Whitlam would later recount how Coombs had
recalled to him that when, in 1834, John Batman
took possession of the site of Melbourne, a local
Aboriginal chief had symbolically picked up
some earth and poured it into Batman's hand.
Coombs suggested Whitlam do the same.
And he did, after he delivered to the Gurindji
Coombs's speech: "On this great day, I, Prime
Minister of Australia, speak to you on behalf of
all Australians who honour and love this land we
live in. For them, I want: first, to congratulate
you and those who have shared your struggle on
the victory you have won in that fight for justice
begun nine years ago when, in protest, you
walked off Wave Hill station;
"Second, to acknowledge we have still much to
do to redress the injustice and oppression that
has for so long been the lot of black Australians;
third, to promise you that this act of restitution
we perform today will not stand alone. Your fight
was not for yourselves alone, and we are
determined that Aboriginal Australians every-
where will be helped by it; fourth, to promise
that, through their Government, the people of
Australia will help you in your plans to use this
land fruitfully for the Gurindji;
"Finally, to give back to you formally, in
Aboriginal and Australian law, ownership of this
land of your fathers.
"Vincent Lingiari, I solemnly hand to you
these deeds as proof, in Australian law, that these
lands belong to the Gurindji people, and I put
into your hands this piece of the earth itself as a
sign that we restore them to you and your
children forever."
Whitlam would later write: "It was intended to
issue a postage stamp with a design of one man's
hand pouring earth into another's to commemo-
rate the grant of Aboriginal land rights. The
Fraser Government scotched the idea."
Indeed, it did.
And then, years later, just to show us we were
right all along in thinking politics really is a pus-ball,
the Hawke Government reneged on its pledge to
extend Aboriginal land rights to all States, and not
just across Commonwealth territory, and it did it in
one of those stinking deals that saw the later-
disgraced Brian Burke, then Premier of Western
Australia, persuade Canberra of the errors of its
ways "in the interests of resource development' (ie,
the interests of mining companies).
Now we have a miserable Government every bit
as intolerant of Aboriginal land "rights", a concept
it refuses to accept, just as it can't abide any official
acknowledgment that Aboriginal people might
deserve to be considered even one whit differently
from the rest of the community. Yet the
Government persists with the fiction that it
genuinely believes in reconciliation.
You only have to read the loaded terms of
reference given Reeves, in October 1997.
supposedly by Herron but, in truth, drawn up in
the Prime Minister's office. It is the objective of
this Government to shred the integrity of the
1976 Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Terri-
tory) Act, and to end the caveat that endorses
inalienable Aboriginal title "forever', as Whit-
lam first promised the Gurindji.
The Reeves proposals. which would hand
effective control of the act to the 'Northern
Territory Government, can't now achieve this,
because the numbers in the new Senate, after July
1, ensure no such amending legislative action
possible. Unless, of course, the Labor Party was to
perform another of its truly bastard acts and, for
all Gough Whitlam's 1975 legacy, support the
Government's "review" of the 1976 legislation.
Don't imagine it could never happen.
*************************************************************************
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