Some of you, with Pilate, wash
your hands
Showing an outward pity.
Richard II, Act Four, scene 1.
The inquest into the death of
Kumanjayi Walker in Yuendumu in November 2019 is ongoing (link here). The Wikipedia page titled Death
of Kumanjayi Walker (link here) provides a high level list of the various legal and policy issues
raised by the manner of the young man’s death. I previously discussed the case
in a post dated May 2022 titled ‘The ongoing social and governance catastrophe
in remote Australia’ (link
here).
I have not been following the
myriad issues raised by the Kumanjayi Walkers death closely, and don’t propose
to seek to comment directly on the core issues under consideration in the current
coronial inquiry. I am looking forward to reading the Coroner’s Report once
finalised.
The purpose of this post is
two-fold. The first purpose is to sharpen the focus on the links between on the
one hand what transpired in Yuendumu in November 2019 and the concomitant
political and legal ramifications and on the other hand the deeper contextual history
of colonisation and the decisions and approaches adopted by governments more
generally that shaped the social and economic environment which permeates
Central Australia to this day.
The second (related) purpose is
to provide readers with links to the insightful statements to the Coronial
Inquiry of two academic experts with long involvement in remote communities.
Those statements defy easy summary, but are worth close reading for their analysis
of the realities daily life in Yuendumu and similar communities. These analyses
flesh out the ways in which that quotidian experience is shaped and constrained
by the evolved, and in many respects entrenched relationships between the organic
cultural rules and norms governing Aboriginal life in the central desert, and
the wider imposed mainstream rules, norms and laws that ostensibly govern
Aboriginal lives, but in reality ebb and flow in short and longer term cycles.
The interplay between these two ways of living and of being ‘governed’ are in
constant tension, and as we have seen in this case, lead to unpredictable and
arguably incoherent outcomes for all involved. Intercultural relations are
ubiquitous, but they don’t always exist in parallel, or in some logical and
rational relationship, but are entwined through the lives of individuals and
families in ways which are impossible to disentangle. Moreover, as was the case in the Kumanjayi
Walker case, these intercultural tensions can and do play out with extraordinarily
unsettling consequences.
The first statement was authored
by Dr Melinda Hinkson and is available (link
here) on the Inquiry website as a
tabled document dated 8 March 2023. Dr Hinkson’s statement covers the following
issues:
Governance structures in Yuendumu over time,
specifically the 2007 Northern Territory Intervention; Impact of these
structures on Warlpiri i.e. disempowerment; Lack of infrastructure in Yuendumu
and a corresponding atrophy of skills; Contributors to youth offending in
Yuendumu; Community control over youth services; Empowerment of Warlpiri Elders
in social structures; [and the] Contrast between Warlpiri and Kardiya notions
of justice [para 1].
The statement provides a
revealing and insightful administrative and policy history of the interaction
between mainstream / colonial Australia and the Warlpiri who settled in
Yuendumu and surrounding communities and outstations. I previously posted a
review of her book See How We Roll (link here). As I said in the conclusion of that review post, Hinkson’s eloquent
articulation of the realities of life as a modern Warlpiri person, whether in Yuendumu
or Adelaide,
challenges policymakers, and the nation generally,
to look harder at the underlying constraints on Indigenous lives, and our own
responses to Indigenous life choices, and to truly ‘see’ how ‘we’ roll.
The second statement published on
the Inquiry website on 9 March 2023 is by a medical doctor and academic Simon
Quilty
(link
here). The most valuable part of
Quilty’s statement, at least from my perspective, was the detailed elaboration
of the significance of housing quality (or lack of it) for health and other social
outcomes in the lives of Warlpiri people, and by extension, the majority of
discrete community members across remote Australia. The import of these
observations arises in large part form the reality that fixing housing stress,
whether it is homelessness, or overcrowding, is in large measure a function of
adequate funding and competent administration: that is , it is a largely
technical issue.
In recent times, Quilty has been
part of a research team focussed on energy insecurity in remote communities and
houses. Their research has documented the extraordinary numbers of power
cessations in remote houses across the NT, and pointed to the potential
implications of this precariousness in the context of rising temperatures and
climate variability. He attaches a copy of an article detailing these issues to
his statement. I published a post about this article and the wider policy
implications in January last year (link here). In that post, I concluded with the following recommendations:
Over and above these substantive policy
responsibilities, the Australian Government has a national responsibility to
oversight the complex Indigenous policy domain. The fact that the current
Government resists this framing does not weaken its logical and political
force. Why else did the Australian electorate vote in 1967 to give the
Australian Government legislative responsibility for Indigenous affairs under
the constitution? Such a national perspective is important because while the
NatureEnergy article relates only to the NT, it seems likely that similar
systemic energy security issues will apply in other parts of remote Australia,
albeit perhaps with differing characteristics depending upon the extent to
which remote communities elsewhere utilise prepaid energy systems.
One obvious step would be to commission the CSIRO to
undertake a more policy oriented status report on the current state of play
nationally. Another would be to substantially increase the investment in remote
housing, including in ancillary infrastructure such as solar power systems. A
third would be to expedite the work on redesigning the remote income support
systems.
The micro story of what
transpired in Yuendumu is not unrelated to what has been occurring across the
board in remote Australia (link here), and most recently in the headlines with the events in Alice Springs (link here). Indeed, I suggest that the micro Yuendumu events are yet another
manifestation of the complex macro issues that are laying waste to the lives of
innumerable individuals and the ongoing viability of thousands of remote
community families.
Yes, at the micro level, individuals
on both sides of the cultural divide, Indigenous and non-Indigenous, have and
had agency. But they were and are operating within an overarching set of
institutional structures which have been in place for decades and were either explicitly
designed to constrain and control Aboriginal people’s lives, or reflect
longstanding and entrenched structures of underfunding that were oblivious to,
and independent of the level of need. If we wish to prevent further micro level
tragedies, we as a nation must move beyond allocating blame or responsibility
at the micro level and also address the macro level issues. Micro and macro are
both part of a single social system, one that is responsible for both extensive
social and cultural harm, and ongoing mainstream governance failure.
To its credit, the coronial
inquiry appears to at least be considering both micro and macro level issues.
Yet there is a risk that once the Coroner reports, the political process will
focus its attention on the narrow facts and causes of the tragedy, and not the
wider systemic issues. To be meaningful, policy reform (which does not need to
wait for the Coroner’s Report) must focus on removing the structural
impediments to Indigenous life-possibilities, as well as expanding the
structural opportunities available to individuals and communities in remote
communities. Anything less is merely useless hand wringing.
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