Peoples Embassy to the Arrernte

Access to Commercial and Financial Services/the cultural dimension of finance -

William Tilmouth 2002, then Executive Director of Tangentyere Council -

I am here because Neil Westbury wrote in his report for ATSIC: “Indigenous people’s access to, and understanding of, banking and other financial services lies at the heart of their ability to participate in the cash economy, thereby improving their general quality of life and, in the longer term, assisting in the reduction of welfare dependence.”

The need for Indigenous people to access banking and other financial services is acute and it is the reason that Tangentyere Council has been providing financial services to town campers for over 18 years. I have to say, I am not sure I agree with the bit about welfare dependency – surely any definition of welfare dependency applies to those who actually receive welfare – which is not the case for many Aboriginal people in Central Australia, who have no income for all or part of the year.

Let me tell you there are bloody great holes in the welfare safety net when it comes to Aboriginal people and in Central Australia about 60% of the Indigenous population have fallen through it. How come there is no outrage about this – how come I can cite these figures ad nauseam and nothing happens. How come all those journalists fascinated by violence in Aboriginal communities miss this important fact and fail to make the link between hunger and violence?

Do you realise that because of the combination of:

Difficulty accessing welfare payments;
The lack of financial services;
The high prices of goods in remote community stores;
The sheer inability of people to understand financial transactions because of language barriers; and
The rip-offs that subsequently occur.

That the majority of Aboriginal families in Central Australia enjoy one meal per day. To those Indigenous people who espouse the notion that ‘welfare dependency’ is the root of all our problems – I say look at Central Australia – we are the living example that your argument is fallacious. Certainly we want to move beyond welfare, to have real jobs that earn real money, but this is not going to be achieved simply by removing welfare benefits or making them harder to access.

People are hungry and they have no income, but they still can’t get work. They survive because in Aboriginal law our emphasis is on sharing – we all have people that we cannot deny – we share what scarce economic resources there are – it is not uncommon for elderly pensioners to support entire families on their meagre incomes.

No. Our problems arise from the combined forces of state neglect, exclusion, social bigotry, discrimination and exploitation. As you heard in the introduction I am the Executive Director for Tangentyere Council, which is the resource agency for the 18 ‘town camp’ housing associations of Alice Springs. Each town camp is autonomous, with their own governing committee, that send delegates to the Council – my governing body.

Although this means each year we organise at least 19 annual general meetings and numerous ordinary meetings – an enormous workload in anyone’s language. It adheres to the principal of autonomy and cooperation that is at the heart of our law and is embedded in the meaning of our name, Tangentyere – an Arrernte word that means "working together".

Tangentyere was formed in 1977 by the groups of people that camped in and around Alice Springs. They were considered by governments to be illegal campers, a status that justified providing no services – not even water. Alice Springs was a prohibited area for Aboriginal people between the years 1928 and 1964 – during this time there were at least four official round-ups and forced relocation of town campers. However, they persisted, primarily for three reasons:

Because the camps provided freedom from the cultural destruction programs being carried out in the missions and settlements;
Because Aboriginal traditional owners were committed to protecting their sites thatwere under threat because of the non-Indigenous development of Alice Springs; and
Because kids were being taken away and placed at the Bungalow in Alice Springs, causing concerned families to follow.
The majority of town campers are fluent in a number of the Central Australian languages of Arrernte, Warlpiri, Anmatjere, Kaytej, Pitjantjatjara, Luritja, Alyawarre and Pintubi.

As a general rule these different language groups live according to the direction of their home countries and their songlines, in accordance with Aboriginal law. The internal planning of different camps also adheres to Aboriginal culture – camp planning constraints include the need to provide discrete areas for different family groups, temporary accommodation for people who have to leave houses following a death, the need for visitor camping, ceremonial area and sacred site protection.

In essence Tangentyere provides actual and cultural space for Aboriginal people. The town camps and the resource centre itself, provides space where people can be Aboriginal. A space, where our law, culture and languages dominate. A space where they won’t face the discrimination and racism that continues to be a sad, but very real daily experience, for Indigenous language speakers in Alice Springs.

As a result of providing Aboriginal space – Tangentyere camps and services are often utilised by the continual flow of visitors from the surrounding communities – some of the 15,000-odd people for whom Alice Springs is their service centre.

At the Tangentyere Resource Centre people can access the following services:-

The housing office where people pay rent, report repairs and maintenance needs and collect their mail;
The Job Shop – which is a registered job network provider;
A Centrelink office;
Old people’s service;
Family wellbeing;
Youth services;
Financial counselling;
Emergency relief; and
Return to Country.

On the town camps we have:

Community schools;
CDEP;
Bush tucker production;
Nursery; and
Night patrol and wardens.
These services have been developed in response to the self-defined needs of our clients and they are very well utilised, as will be verified by anyone visiting our premises in Elder Street. We service huge numbers of people every day, in extremely cramped premises – however the services are achieving their objectives and we have seen the numbers of town campers not receiving income diminish, with problems more easily rectified, as a result of having a fully staffed, online Centrelink office within the grounds of Tangentyere Council. This was an acknowledgment by Centrelink of the special needs of Aboriginal language speakers and I thank Centrelink for this service.

However, they need to look at the way that they are servicing remote communities. The agency arrangements they have made with remote community councils do not meet the costs of providing such services. Many communities do not even have agency arrangements, with the result that people still have no income for all or part of the year – as I discussed earlier.

For the families concerned poverty becomes contagious as they struggle to support others from their own low incomes. FACs needs to sit down with the regional councils and communities to negotiate improved Centrelink service arrangements for remote communities. They need to do this to ensure that people actually get their welfare entitlements and also to assist in preventing Aboriginal people being trapped on the book-down merry go round.

The lack of Centrelink services in remote communities’ leaves a vacuum that stores and hawkers fill and some fill this vacuum in deliberately exploitative ways. The lack of services in remote communities of Central Australia has a direct impact on Tangentyere – because in general visitors from these communities seek our assistance when confronted by the discrimination in the mainstream of Alice – a situation that is most apparent to anybody visiting the central business district.

There are an abundance of private security guards at supermarkets, shopping centres and at the banks. These security guards can be seen questioning people, encouraging them to move on, or denying access. Those who do gain entry are routinely subject to an array of petty humiliations.

Now, banking in general is a difficult matter for most people. But for many Aboriginal people it is virtually impossible. In remote communities there are no banking services. Not because the banks closed – they never opened. In Alice Springs banking problems result from language barriers, limited financial literacy coupled with the routine discrimination referred to above.

Our financial counsellor has assisted many Aboriginal people who have problems arising from holding cheque accounts and other high fee products that mainstream bank staff have assisted them to open. These products are clearly inappropriate with the result that fees consume a large portion of meagre balances.

Because we are a grant-funded resource agency we have to spend funding we receive according to Government guidelines. Thus rental income is to be spent on repairs and maintenance to housing – but we can’t collect rents if people have no income and no access to financial services therefore we need the bank agency and so on.

Let me tell you, the worry about our annual shortfall is the reason I am grey and one of the outcomes I am seeking from participating in this conference is an increase in our agency commission. So if there is someone here from Westpac – can we talk? Because our agency does provide a valuable service and I imagine that it significantly reduces the operating costs of Westpac’s Todd Mall branch.

Our clients take approximately half an hour at the counter as they organise bill paying and food vouchers as well as normal banking transactions, and because our bank agency staff must ensure that people are informed and understand these transactions. We currently service 712 permanent accounts and assist numerous visitors that are stuck in town.

Ideally, agencies such as Centrelink, Australia Post, the Tax Office, and Banks could contribute to the recurrent costs through equitable agency arrangements with Community Councils and training plans to develop the skills of the local populations. After all, every society has required transport and communication networks to promote economic development. The mind boggles on the possibilities we would create.

Such arrangements would ensure that Aboriginal people develop financial literacy and have the capacity to save – even if the extent of savings just means that they can actually eat every day. The importance of this capacity is demonstrated by Tangentyere food voucher system. The food voucher system is the Tangentyere Executive’s response to the ‘feast and famine’ cycle experienced by welfare recipients – a poverty that results in people being captured on the book-up.

The other primary reason is that holding a food voucher instead of cash provides clients some protection from their obligations arising from family and skin relationships.

This arises primarily from the problem of an acute housing shortage for Aboriginal people on both Town Camps and in remote communities. Tangentyere has 180 houses and 70 tin sheds for a population of 1800 people. In remote communities only 35% of people are housed, with the majority residing in tin sheds or makeshift shelters.

As you can imagine – the safe storage of personal items is very difficult in such an environment.

The importance of culturally appropriate financial services, such as our bank agency and food voucher system, cannot be overstated. Our experience suggests that while electronic banking has some significant benefits it cannot replace culturally appropriate face to face service delivery. The loss of financial services, tailored to the needs of local Aboriginal people, would be a travesty.

In conclusion I want to make a genuine plea to all banks and government agencies represented here. Aboriginal people who are geographically and culturally remote need access to income and financial services. The difficulties of distance and cost can be overcome if resources are pooled in creative service delivery arrangements. And the difficulties of language and cultural barriers can be resolved if Aboriginal organisations operate the system and local people are trained to run these services.

Aboriginal people are worth the investment. Any culture that has lasted in your terms for 40,000 and in ours since the beginning of time must be a strong and resilient one.

Thank you.

Life in the Northern Territory: Past, present and future
William Tilmouth 2003 -

Today, by delineating a potted history of Aboriginal life in Central Australia I hope to make people aware of two important facts:-

That the proposition that self-determination has failed Indigenous people will actually intensify the domination of Aboriginal people thereby recreating the conditions of our dysfunctionality; and

That a flourishing Territory economy requires investment in Aboriginal people and their communities.

As for the Aboriginal leadership I tend to agree with Michael Mansell’s analysis that

“Popularity has replaced political direction. No longer is strategy based on Aboriginal rights but how to impress middle Australia. This has allowed the Aboriginal protest movement to be captured, harnessed and driven wherever public opinion takes it. Having lost all sense of political independence, we resort to blaming community people for getting the dole for free as the source of our woes.”

Since the establishment of the Telegraph Station in 1871 the primary question in the NT became who owns this land? Who owns its rivers, its plants, its animals?

From the beginning there was conflict. The hunting and gathering economy was quickly marginalised by the pastoral economy. “Buttressed by police, settlers were able to inflict serious casualties and between 500 – 1,000 Aborigines were killed during the first three decades of white settlement.” (i)

Such violence ensured compliance with government pacification and population control projects, which included food rationing at pastoral, mining and telegraph stations and relocation of Aboriginal people to reserved areas and missions. (ii)

For people relocated to reserves and missions everything had to be relearned. Every little thing, every big thing: from the types of food eaten to learning a new language. But worst of all they had to learn to be supplicants. Learn to take orders. Learn to know their place. (iii)

“From being self-sufficient and free, to being impoverished and yoked to the whims of a world you know nothing, nothing about – what do you suppose it must feel like?” (iv)

The settlements and missions were carceral regimes. The government rationalised them as training grounds that could produce westernised citizens who would aspire to urban life. In reality they were sites of cultural, social and pyschological destruction. (v)

The repercussions of this history can be seen in the fact that petrol sniffing is confined to communities that lived under these regimes.

It is also a little known fact that the South African National Party researched and used many of Australia’s policies for Indigenous people in the NT in the development of the apartheid regime.

After a brief period of rudimentary schooling these children were sent out to work, under police control, as domestics, labourers and pastoral workers. These children and the Aboriginal people living and working on the pastoral leases formed the labour force that was essential to the development of the Territory economy.

These were the days prior to the establishment of CAALAS [the Central Australian Aboriginal Legal Aid Service]. The flooding of the town’s court with people charged with drunkenness was a daily routine. Many people ended up in gaol, which was overflowing. Most Aboriginal prisoners were there for petty crimes. Unfortunately, this continues to be the case: 60% of Aboriginal prisoners are there for driving offences. It has always astounded me that the State is prepared to spend a considerable amount of money to keep people locked up for minor offences – yet are unwilling to spend anywhere near that amount on prevention. I think this has more to do with the fixed and marginal costs of running gaols, than any humane considerations. (ix)

The establishment of the Aboriginal organisations – the [Central Australian Aboriginal Congress], the Central Land Council, CAALAS and Tangentyere made significant changes to the life of Aboriginal people in Central Australia. However, many non-Indigenous people felt threatened by our ability to advance our civil and indigenous rights and resented the town’s reputation for bad race relations in the national and international media.

In 1975 community tensions had escalated to breaking point. A CAALAS lawyer recalled the fear of this time:

“We thought very seriously about arming ourselves, simply because there were vigilante squads being interviewed on the talkback radio up there about how they were arming themselves for the black invasion of Alice Springs … yes, it was a very aggressive, very nasty time when whites were being for the first time challenged by Aboriginal people who had spokespeople who were prepared to go to court and say, ‘No, this isn’t right’, and ‘No, it can be done a different way’.” (x)

I consider it a tragedy that at self-government the NT lacked leaders with a vision to create a just and tolerant society. The CLP [Country Liberal Party] was to hold onto power for 25 years by keeping the Territory divided on the issue of race. Development in the Territory came to mean Darwin, Alice Springs, Katherine, Tennant Creek, and other small non-Indigenous enclaves. The NT government only ever provided funds for a number of the larger communities. Small communities and outstations – whose establishment they vigorously opposed – were neglected on the basis that they were a Commonwealth responsibility. In the last ten years the major investment in Community infrastructure in the NT has been funded by the ATSIC [Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission] NAHS [National Aboriginal Health Strategy] program.

Indigenous-identified Commonwealth funding to the NT was squandered on fighting every single land claim – all of which the Northern Territory Government lost. Precious funds that should have been used for the development of remote Aboriginal communities.

This 25 years of neglect has left Aboriginal communities underdeveloped. The Commonwealth Grants Commission Inquiry found that Central Australia was the poorest ATSIC region in areas of infrastructure, housing, health, income and employment. The other remote regions in the NT were also near the bottom – compared with other areas of Australia. (xi)

The lack of investment in Aboriginal people and their communities is not logical when you consider the significant role that we play in the NT economy and Central Australia economy in particular. Not only do social services and other Commonwealth programs provide strongly supportive economic activity – it contributes a very substantial component of overall regional economic activity.

Indigenous people and their organisations also have a substantial business presence in Central Australia: –

Yeperenye Shopping Centre;
Milner Road Supermarket;
NT Gas
Peter Kittle;
L. J. Ho**er;
Kings Canyon Resort; (to name just a few).
Furthermore, as Howitt and others have pointed out, investment in Aboriginal people and their communities is in the economic interest of all Territorians because as the population stabilises and people spend their money locally rather than remitting savings to the southern states. (xii)

The blueprint for the future needs to include a significant investment in Aboriginal communities and people. This needs to be done in partnership with Aboriginal representative bodies. It is not good enough to continue to import expensive labour to remote communities: governments must restructure the way that programs are delivered. The employment of local Indigenous people is the key.

For a model that is working – I refer people to the construction program developed by the Central Remote Regional Council. This program has local men building quality housing whilst gaining mainstream trade qualifications and earning award wages. (xiii)

Each and every service must be restructured along these lines. Failure to do this will mean further generations of children who see no benefit or value from attending school. Consider the current reality that if you live on a remote community and attend school regularly – your post-school outcomes are no different from your friend who wagged every day. Your destination is CDEP [Community Development Employment Programs].

When counting the costs of this level of investment – it is imperative that we also count the costs doing nothing. Costs that will be paid by future generations of Indigenous and non-Indigenous Territorians.

For Aboriginal people our failure to make this change will mean a continuation of their despair. “A despair which arises from the sense that your life and the lives of those close to you count for nothing … [To quote John Berger],…there are seven levels of despair one for each day of the week:-

“The search each morning to find the scraps with which to survive another day;
The knowledge on waking that in this legal wilderness no rights exist;
The experience over the years of nothing getting better only worse;
The humiliation of being able to change almost nothing;
The listening to a thousand promises, which pass inexorably beside you and yours;
The example of those who resist being bombarded to dust;
The weight of your own dead, a weight which closes innocence for ever because there are so many.” (xiv)

We must put an end to this despair and I hope today that I have laid out some strategies on how we can achieve this. I also hope that I have convinced you that it is in the best interests of every Territorian to do so – after all we have the two commodities that are in short supply worldwide – space and authenticity.

The challenge is ours – we are the ones that must recast the Territory’s identity as a tolerant, multicultural society despite the shadows cast by our brutal beginnings.

2002
Aboriginal law is open and transparent
William Tilmouth

In the short time I have I want to give an Aboriginal perspective on some of the main law and justice issues we face in Central Australia. The right to self-determine with regard to law and justice along with all other rights that flow from sovereignty was never relinquished by Indigenous people. I want to make it clear, this is not just a political statement – it is the lived reality for the majority of Aboriginal people in the Northern Territory.

We live under two laws – a cause for both celebration and grief.

Celebration because our law – Aboriginal law has not only survived 200 odd years of oppression but is actually getting stronger.

Grief because the western legal system is still used to oppress our law and cultu While this system of “two laws” continues, without the full acknowledgment of Aboriginal customary law, our rights are denied. Customary law refers to a much broader system than the restrictive interpretation of law and order in western culture. From our point of view customary law provides the blueprint for all social, economic and political circumstances in life.

Unfortunately, much of the debate about the formal recognition of customary law is restricted to methods of incorporating it into the legal system. Aboriginal people advocate the broader interpretation – we do this by living it.

Steve Hatton – a former NT Attorney General acknowledged this when he told an Indigenous customary law conference in 1995 that “Customary law for many people in the Territory is a fact. Whether we recognise it or not, customary law exists and affects the lives of many Aboriginal people. If we do not recognise it there is the potential for injustice to occur.”

Despite this lived reality, the reference to customary law within the Aboriginal Land Rights Act and the untested potential of the Mabo judgement – the recognition of customary law continues to be ad hoc.

In the courts, there have been examples of magistrates and judges finding in favour of Indigenous defendants where customary law has been used as a defence – and notably in R v Yunupingu (1998), the Magistrate dismissed the charges against the defendant finding he had the right to enforce Yolngu law on Yolngu land.

Whilst we may applaud these individual judgements, this piecemeal approach means that Indigenous people will continue to face double jeopardy with regard to punishment.

Obviously ‘customary law’ is considered a hot potato by Australian Governments. The very fact that there has been so much fact finding, so many recommendations and so little shift in this area indicates that there continue to be significant barriers – one is of course the choice disciplinary method.

But consider the sheer barbarity of locking people into institutions where they are subjected to an array of abuses. I am quite well versed on the abuses that occur in the disciplinary institutions of the western legal system. I travelled the route from mission home to juvenile detention and beyond and there is little to distinguish between them. This is because these institutions operate in privacy – the key ingredient for abuse. Western notions of law and justice are based on secrecy – particularly the surveillance and disciplinary arms, ie prisons and police.

From our perspective the Western justice system is covert, secret and the process prolonged. In contrast Aboriginal law is open and transparent – a public ritual, thought out by the Elders in accordance with the law. People are then able to move on with their lives – all parties are satisfied.

Not only do Aboriginal people face the double jeopardy but they are also discriminated against within the western legal system. On average 75% of the prisoners in Territory jails are Aboriginal and many arrests continue to be for public order offences. The daily average cost of keeping an adult prisoner in jail is about $200 per day – a level of funding that Aboriginal organisations and communities can only dream about.

Over-policing in urban areas is the reason there are so many Aboriginal people in Territory jails. Our lives are scrutinised by a host of government agencies and our behaviour is publicly debated in the media.

The application of justice is also unfair. If you are non-Indigenous you can rip-off an entire community and walk away scot-free and the communities reward for alerting officials is to see their corporation collapse, leaving a pile of debt and human misery. I am not talking about isolated incidents here – but a pattern that has been occurring in remote Aboriginal communities, across northern Australia for years.

Consider also the injustice implicit in the lack of interpreting services. It is an indictment that it took the su***de of a young man detained under Mandatory Sentencing for the Government to fund such a service.

Little wonder that Aboriginal people question the value of western law or tablecloth law as Mr Dixon calls it; Aboriginal law is the table, the solid structure underneath. Whitefella law is like the tablecloth that covers the table, so you can’t see it, but the table is still there.

I argue we need to deal with the reality and recognise Aboriginal customary law in its entirety.

Thank you.

What is the PEOPLES EMBASSY?

During September 2016, hundreds of activists from around Australia answered a CALLOUT from the ARRERNTE TRIBE to support them in closing the AMERICAN WAR BASE situated on tribal land near PINE GAP (cf. CLOSEPINEGAP CAMPAIGN)

Much was learned during this action...

1. The BRITISH CROWN and the AUSTRALIAN GOVERNMENT have no SOVEREIGN RIGHT to this land

2. The TRIBAL PEOPLES are the SOVEREIGN HOLDERS of the land

3. We are under AMERICAN OCCUPATION

And so the PEOPLES of AUSTRALIA have by AGREEMENT with the TRIBAL PEOPLES of the ARRERNTE established an EMBASSY on TRIBAL LAND to practise cultural exchange with the Arrernte and other tribes of the central desert and beyond (PALYA).

(This EMBASSY is part of the international movement for SOVEREIGN PEOPLES CAMPS, wherein we - the PEOPLES of the world - practise living together in unity and peace free from government interference....see VIDEOS for full statements)

The way is now open for cultural exchange and understanding. Please show your support by sharing this page and following our SITUATION on the GROUND.

"WE come from American Occupation and seek REFUGE with the most peaceful culture on Earth"