APY communities say "Wiya!" to income management

Vanguard September 2012 p. 8
Nick G.

With compulsory income management (CIM) now operating in Playford, Shepparton, Bankstown, Logan and Rockhampton, it’s a safe bet that the “punish the poor” brigade will be looking around for new victims.

It’s long been known that federal Minister Jenny Macklin wants the Aboriginal communities on the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yakunytjatjara (APY) Lands in the northwest of South Australia to be brought under CIM.

Whilst the communities on the Lands have said an emphatic “Wiya!” (“No!”) to CIM, Macklin’s people have been busy trying to present a picture of division by promoting this or that person as speaking for the interests of women and children, just as happened in the case of the racist Northern Territory Intervention.

Communities united against CIM

Murray George, an elder from Fregon, spoke to me about the community meetings held between May 8^th and May 17^th this year.

At those meetings were Anangu community members and representatives of various state and federal government departments including FaCHSIA, police, and Centrelink.

The first meeting was at Fregon and ran for about four hours.

“Community members stated that they were only interested to talk about Homeland and Community funding,” said Murray.

Centrelink people asked what the Community thought about going on the BasicsCard (CIM).

“We told them we do not agree with that, that we were only going to talk about community business and no other business,” he said.

As Chairman of APY Law and Culture, and an APY Executive member, Murray George also attended the other community meetings.

“We met at Mimili for three hours.  The government representatives asked about the BasicsCard, but the community responded “Wiya!”.  They told them ‘We have a lot of Anangu business here, we want self-determination and we don’t want other business here, we need the government to put funding back to Homelands and Community councils’.”

Another three hour meeting was held at Indulkana.  As in the other meetings, it was open business and everyone was invited to talk.  Once again, the community members called for funding to come back to the Homelands and Communities and no other business.

“When asked about income management community members said we know all about that, we don’t agree with it, you people (the government representatives) have to go back,” said Murray George.

“They said ‘We are only talking about community business, we say ‘Wiya’ to income management business.”

At Pipalyatjara the meeting lasted nearly five hours. The BasicsCard proponents did not attend.

“This community also said ‘Wiya!’, we do not want to talk about the BasicsCard.  Take it back. We only want to talk about our business.  The community asked ‘Where is all our funding for Homelands and Community?’  They said, ‘This is our country, we are living here for ever. We are together with all the communities’.’’

(Above: Amata artist Hector Burton with a work depicting an interpretation of country)

Murray George then referred to the four hour Amata meeting where young people were particularly strong in voicing their support for the elders, and for Anangu law and culture.

One community member said: “We have to support our old people, our country and our Tjukurpa is still alive.  We don’t want the government telling us what to do.  A lot of people outside our country lose their culture because government is controlling their life.  But we are still alive and we have to be strong.”

Young people said “We’ve got to support our old people, it’s our country and we can’t let it go.  Income management – Wiya!”

Finally Murray George reported on the Ernabella meeting.

“The community members are clear.  Income management is a power for the government.  They said ‘We are worrying for our community, we have to be strong.  We want everything to come back to Homelands and Community.  We are only talking about community business. We leave Centrelink and income management to one side’.”

Overriding the community

“We’d been developing our own model of community services,” said Murray George.  “For two years we had been negotiating an Anangu model with the community councils and service providers.  Then Jenny Macklin came in with her model and the service providers signed onto that.  She never asked about the Anangu model.”

That’s typical of the disrespect shown to Anangu communities by governments.  It’s consistent with the big blue and white “prescribed area” signs that meet travellers entering the APY Lands.  The same as the NT signs, they are offensive and humiliating to the Anangu whose communities sought and were granted alcohol-free status in the APY Land Rights Act 1981 and the Aboriginal Lands Trust Act 1996.

Fomenting division

Despite the overwhelming “Wiya!” to CIM from the community meetings, forces have been at work to foment division.

Andrea Mason, Coordinator of the Ngaanyatjarra Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara Women’s Council (NPYWC – the Ngaanyatjarra people are mainly on the WA side of the border), has been widely quoted, particularly by Murdoch scribe Sarah Martin.

(Amata women of the Tjanpi Desert Weavers group, an NPY Women's Council non-profit enterprise, with tjanpi - grass - birds destined for an exhibition in Adelaide)

Martin often puts the word “respected” in front of “Women’s Council”, an adjective which the organisation deserves for its community work, but which is designed to suggest that Mason is also a respected person.

She is certainly entitled to her point of view, which is strongly in support of CIM, but she is out of step with the APY communities and had to try to undermine their credibility in order to establish her own.

She told Sarah Martin that the community meetings on CIM had often been “ineffective…it was not the best way to get people talking or providing feedback”.

Mason, who works out of an office in Alice Springs, has been challenged by Murray George to meet face-to-face with the communities.

She is a skilful operator and wise in the ways of governments.  She worked for 15 years as a public servant in SA and Commonwealth departments.  In 2002 she became personal assistant to Andrew Evans, founder of the Family First Party and a member of the SA upper house.  In 2004 she became the party’s national leader, unsuccessfully contesting the federal elections held that year.

Evans, her mentor, had been pastor of the Assemblies of God in SA.  The Pentacostalist Church is quite wealthy, has a relatively large following, and promotes “prosperity theology” which teaches that wealth and worldly success are signs of God’s favour.

Some of this seems to have rubbed off on Mason who describes herself as a “social entrepreneur” who has “learned that hard work can provide a good reward”.  It’s not far from that to blaming people’s poverty on their innate characteristics and to supporting policies that treat them like irresponsible children.  Her support for CIM, advocated with missionary zeal courtesy of the Murdoch press, is an expression of her personal beliefs and values, and not those of the communities on which she wants to impose CIM.

(Above: girls at Indulkana)

Another advocate of CIM is prominent Aboriginal academic Prof. Marcia Langton.

She recently trekked out to the APY Lands where she described children “living in terror”.

“This is like Darfur without the guns,” she said in an interview.

Not even Ted Mullighan who reported on abuse of children in the APY Lands engaged in that level of hysteria.

“These people are telling lies and misleading people,” said Murray George.  “We teach our young people to be straight up, not to lie.”

I asked Murray about “humbugging”, the scourge of NT towns where Aborigines with drug and alcohol dependencies harass family, friends and strangers for money.

Murray had drawn a saucer-sized circle on a piece of paper, with a smaller circle inside it.

“Humbugging -  that’s out here,” he said, pointing to the outer section.  “That’s where that Queen of England sent her ships and her people, and they took away our land and our culture.  Not in here,” he said, pointing inside the smaller circle.  “Our country is still alive here, our culture is still alive, and we’re passing it on from the next one to the next one. We’ve got to stop it getting smaller.”

Humbugging is a colonially driven perversion of the old system of reciprocal relations and mutual obligations that sustained communities here for 50,000 years, but it won't be combatted through income management –it’s just an excuse to justify the punishment of people in poverty.

Neither is CIM a magic wand capable of disappearing drug and alcohol abuse or problem gambling. People with those problems just turn elsewhere for the money they need for their addictions.

Nor has it helped NT children or communities.

School attendance is down since CIM was introduced, but suicides have soared from 57 in 2007 to 261 in 2011.

(Girls at the Amata Anangu School with XO laptops used in ICT lessons)

Anaemia rates in children east of Katherine “increased significantly over the first 18 months of the NT Intervention”, according to a report prepared by the Library of the Federal Parliament, as had the rate of underweight children in the period 2008 to 2010.

Research by the Menzies School of Health found that what does improve nutrition is improving the affordability of healthy food and community-wide education, not CIM.

So without any evidence base to support CIM, and in the face of total opposition from the communities, Macklin looks certain to impose CIM on the Anangu.

The capitalist mode of production cannot be imposed on traditional Aboriginal communities without humiliating and stigmatising those who refuse to be its servants.

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Further Reading: Macklin Announces Income Management for the Lands

Reading and Listening: Click on link to hear ABC radio report following introduction of income management to Lands: local store prices include $10 for a tube of toothpaste and $6 for an apple.