“A Campaign for Territorial Control”? Mining and the Yirrkala Bark Petitions

Whither the Aborigine

Between 1951 and 1953, Commonwealth Minister for Territories, Paul Hasluck, oversaw the drafting of an item of Northern Territory legislation that became the Welfare Ordinance, 1953. While in many ways consistent with earlier Aboriginal legislation, in one significant respect it represented a radical innovation since it never once referred to “Aborigines” or any other racial category. This article takes the Welfare Ordinance as the starting point for an exploration of Hasluck's model of Aboriginal assimilation.

The Yolngu people of North-east Arnhem Land, Northern Territory, Australia, have lived with alcohol for just over 30 years. For some it has had devastating health, social, family and cultural impacts. This is particularly the case for a group of Yolngu people who permanently or transiently camp on the fringes of the predominately non-Indigenous township of Nhulunbuy. The Miwatj Health Aboriginal Corporation Outreach Program was a response to alcohol use by this Aboriginal community. An evaluation, in consultation with Miwatj Health, sought to examine the conception, development and success of the Outreach Program. This was a qualitative study that used: unconcealed participant observation, formal semi-structured interviews, group interviews, opportunistic impromptu discussion, and documentary/archival review. Interviews were conducted with Outreach Program staff, Yolngu community members, Aboriginal health workers, Miwatj Health doctors, Living with Alcohol representatives, the town administrator, Nhulunbuy police sergeant, the publican and local council officer. Group interviews were conducted with two groups of campers, Outreach Program workers and Aboriginal health care workers. For the Yolngu people the focus of the Outreach Program was meant to be on talking with and counselling drinkers, cultural activities, and liaising with other substance misuse programs and the police. The Outreach Program has achieved some success and helped a small number of Yolngu to limit their alcohol use and reconnect with the community. However, the Outreach Program has come to focus more and more on cleaning up litter; a key issue for the non-Indigenous community. This article focused on one key finding from the evaluation and that is the impact that funding (or lack of funding), the source of funding and the parameters imposed by funding bodies can have on the success or otherwise of a community driven program. The ability of Indigenous communities to determine appropriate program approaches and implementation is undermined when funding sources place restrictions which reflect non-Indigenous values and dominate program outcomes.

Extractivist States: Contesting and Negotiating the “Commodities Consensus” in Bolivia, Ecuador, and Across Latin America

About 300 Aboriginal languages were spoken in Australia, classified into two groups: Pama-Nyungan (PN), comprised of one language Family, and Non-Pama-Nyungan (NPN) with more than 20 language Families. The Yolngu people belong to the larger PN Family and live in Arnhem Land in northern Australia. They are surrounded by groups who speak NPN languages. This study, using nuclear genomic and mitochondrial DNA data, was undertaken to shed light on the origins of the Yolngu people and their language. The nuclear genomic sequences of Yolngu people were compared to those of other Indigenous Australians, as well as Papuan, African, East Asian, and European people. With the agreement of Indigenous participants, samples were collected from 13 Yolngu individuals and 4 people from neighboring NPN speakers, and their nuclear genomes were sequenced to a 30× coverage. Using the short-read DNA BGISEQ-500 technology, these sequences were mapped to a reference genome and identified ~24.86 million Single Nucleotide Variants (SNVs). The Yolngu SNVs were then compared to those of 36 individuals from 10 other Indigenous populations/locations across Australia and four worldwide populations using multidimensional scaling, population structure, F3 statistics, and phylogenetic analyses. Using the above methods, we infer that Yolngu speakers are closely related to neighboring NPN speakers, followed by the Weipa population. No European or East Asian admixture was detected in the genomes of the Yolngu speakers studied here, which contrasts with the genomes of many other PN speakers that have been studied. Our results show that Yolngu speakers are more closely related to other PN speakers in the northeast of Australia than to those in central and Western Australia studied here. Yolngu and the other Australian populations from this study share Papuans as an out-group. The study presented here provides an account of the nuclear and mitochondrial genomic diversity within the PN Yolngu Aboriginal population. The results show the Yolngu sample and their NPN neighbors have a strong genetic relationship. They also offer evidence of ancestral links between the Yolngu and PN-speaking populations in Cape York. From earlier fingerprint studies, consistent with the genomic results shown here, we consider a movement of people from the east into northeast Arnhem Land, associated with the flooding of the Sahul Shelf, estimated to have occurred between about 11 and 8 Kya ago. Several Yolngu myths point to such a movement. It is suggested that the spread of the PN language or its speakers may have influenced the population structure of the Yolngu. Further genomic studies, with larger samples, of populations to the east of the Yolngu around the Gulf of Carpentaria into Cape York are required to test this hypothesis. Our results imply that PN did not spread with the movement of people across the continent; rather, the PN languages diffused among the different populations. It seems clear that the languages dispersed and not the people. The low level of relatedness detected between the Yolngu people and the people of the central arid desert of Australia suggests a long period of separation with different patterns of migration. Beyond Australia, Yolngu are most closely related to the Papuan people of New Guinea.

[Extract] Stephen Gray invites us to contemplate the moral ambiguities of the protectionist policies and practices imposed upon Aboriginal people for much of the twentieth century. Combining historical narrative and biographical snippets with anecdote and personal reminiscence, he recounts the careers of three senior administrators of Aboriginal affairs in the Northern Territory (Baldwin Spencer, Cecil Cook, and Harry Giese), a Commonwealth minister (Paul Hasluck), a patrol offi cer (Colin Macleod) and several missionaries. These men, he argues, were impelled by motives both benign and malign, though the consequences of their actions were, almost without exception, disastrous for Aboriginal people. The argument is delivered in an easily accessible style, which owes more to Gray's vocation as a novelist than to his other career as a legal scholar. His book is a welcome contribution to post-Apology and post-Intervention debate over Indigenous affairs.

This article analyses the 1998/99 ‘Don’t cut off our tongues’ campaign by the Yolngu people from North-East Arnhem Land in Australia’s Northern Territory. This public sphere activity involved a sophisticated media strategy to defend the right to educate their children in Yolngu languages, as well as English. It shows that through a range of media-related practices based in their land, the Yolngu were integral in preventing the Northern Territory government from axing the bilingual education programmes that operated in their schools. This article argues that engaging with a specific indigenous knowledge system offers fresh insights into Australian indigenous public spheres and how they operate.

This chapter records a conversation with Jennifer Deger. It discusses her work as an anthropologist working in north-east Arnhem Land (Northern Territory, Australia) with the Yolngu people. The discussion ranges across her research practice that has been shaped by a commitment to creative, collaborative and contextual knowledge production – and a concern with the new forms of knowledge that can emerge through such practices. Her practice is concerned with situated forms of thinking in ways that reach beyond text, that take up the relational and aesthetic potential of the digital to bring together different configurations of voices, perspectives and disciplines to render multi-sided and multi-sited ways of seeing and knowing the world in new ways.

This thesis explores the relationships between people, water, and places in the everyday life of the Yolngu people of Yilpara in northeast Arnhem Land. In the Yolngu world, a sophisticated understanding of the fluid and dynamic relationships between fresh and saltwater is given a greater priority than the division of the coast into land and sea. These waters are continually moving and mixing, both underground and on the surface, across an area that stretches from several kilometres inland to the deep sea, and they combine with clouds, rain, tides, and seasonal patterns in a coastal water cycle. Yolngu people use their understanding of water flows as one basis for generating systems of coastal ownership, whilst water also provides a source of rich and complex metaphors in wider social life. Describing this coastal water cycle provides the basis for a critique of the way European topographic maps represent coastal space, and also for a critique of common formulations of customary marine tenure (CMT). However as a methodological tool, I use maps to provide a detailed analysis of people's connections to place and as part of a wider examination of how places are generated and sustained. In this way the thesis contributes to anthropology, marine studies, and indigenous studies as well as touching on some issues of coastal geography. The approach I adopt has a phenomenological emphasis, since it enables me to show how Yolngu concepts arise out of and articulate with their experience of living in their environment and of using knowledge in context. This perspective contributes fresh ethnographic insights to some ongoing contemporary debates about people and place. The paired tropes of flow and movement are used as a gloss throughout the work, as each chapter takes a different domain of human life at Yilpara and explores how water, place, and human movement are manifested in it. Such domains include subsistence hunting and fishing, group and gender distinctions in presence on the country, food sharing, memories of residence and travel, personal names, spirits and Dreaming figures, patterns of coastal ownership, and interactions with professional fishermen. Together, they provide an account of the different ways that people relate to water, place and country in contemporary everyday life. ‘Where the Clouds Stand’ is predominantly an ethnographically driven work from one locality, but within that approach, it also explores broader considerations of phenomenology, anthropological inquiry, and human life more generally.

Normal Homes

BackgroundRecent estimates of the global burden of rheumatic heart disease (RHD) have highlighted the paucity of reliable RHD mortality data from populations most affected by RHD.Methods and ResultsWe investigated RHD mortality rates and trends for Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians in the Northern Territory (NT) for the period 1977–2005 and seminationally (NT plus 4 other states, covering 89% of Indigenous Australians) from 1997 to 2005 using vital statistics data. All analysis was undertaken by Indigenous status, sex, and age at death. In the NT, 90% of all deaths from RHD were among Indigenous persons; however, the Indigenous population makes up only 30.4% of the NT population. The death rate ratio (Indigenous compared with non-Indigenous) was 54.80 in the NT and 12.74 in the other 4 states (estimated at the median age of 50 years). Non-Indigenous death rates were low for all age groups except ≥65 years, indicating RHD deaths in the elderly non-Indigenous population. Death rates decreased at a more rapid rate for non-Indigenous than Indigenous persons in the NT between 1997 and 2005. Indigenous persons in other parts of Australia showed lower death rates than their NT counterparts, but the death rates for Indigenous persons in all states were still much higher than rates for non-Indigenous Australians.ConclusionsIndigenous Australians are much more likely to die from RHD than other Australians. Among the Indigenous population, RHD mortality is much higher in the NT than elsewhere in Australia, exceeding levels reported in many industrialized countries more than a century ago. With the paucity of data from high-prevalence areas, these data contribute substantially to understanding the global burden of RHD mortality.

BackgroundPoorer cancer outcomes of Indigenous Australians in Australia’s Northern Territory (NT) compared with their non-Indigenous counterparts are partially due to diminished access to cancer treatment services (CTS). Accessibility of health care is a multidimensional construct, including physical, logistical, psychosocial and cultural dimensions. While previous research has identified specific areas of reduced access to CTS for Indigenous Australians, the higher burden of cancer borne by Indigenous Australians warrants a more comprehensive understanding of access to CTS in the NT. The purpose of this study was to explore and map the accessibility of CTS for Indigenous Australians in the NT and to identify key access barriers.MethodsThis predominantly qualitative study, complemented by a descriptive quantitative component, explored and mapped the accessibility of one CTS (CTS-NT) that services a large number of Indigenous Australians in the NT. Patient perspectives were obtained via secondary analysis of data from 75 face-to-face interviews with Indigenous Australian adults attending the CTS-NT. Care provider perspectives were obtained via primary analysis of data from 29 face-to-face interviews with care providers and staff working at CTS-NT. Data were analysed to identify issues of accessibility informed by Leveque and colleagues’ conceptual framework of access to health care, which comprises five dimensions of accessibility of the health service and the ability of Indigenous patients to interact with these dimensions to generate access. Applied thematic analysis was conducted on the qualitative data and descriptive analysis was conducted on the quantitative data.ResultsThe analysis of the patient and care provider reports identified multiple access barriers across all dimensions including: inadequate preparation of Indigenous patients for treatment; delayed and complicated commencement of treatment; dislocation from home; competing priorities; scarcity of Indigenous care providers and staff; lack of culturally-relevant care; challenges associated with language, accommodation, transport and finance; and disjointed and fraught relationships with care providers. These barriers posed significant challenges to Indigenous patients maintaining their engagement with treatment.ConclusionsThis study provides a valuable snapshot of the barriers facing this population across the dimensions of health care access. Urgent action in addressing these issues is required at individual, service and state levels.

BackgroundThere is an overwhelming burden of cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes and chronic kidney disease among Indigenous Australians. In this high risk population, it is vital that we are able to measure accurately kidney function. Glomerular filtration rate is the best overall marker of kidney function. However, differences in body build and body composition between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians suggest that creatinine-based estimates of glomerular filtration rate derived for European populations may not be appropriate for Indigenous Australians. The burden of kidney disease is borne disproportionately by Indigenous Australians in central and northern Australia, and there is significant heterogeneity in body build and composition within and amongst these groups. This heterogeneity might differentially affect the accuracy of estimation of glomerular filtration rate between different Indigenous groups. By assessing kidney function in Indigenous Australians from Northern Queensland, Northern Territory and Western Australia, we aim to determine a validated and practical measure of glomerular filtration rate suitable for use in all Indigenous Australians.Methods/DesignA cross-sectional study of Indigenous Australian adults (target n = 600, 50% male) across 4 sites: Top End, Northern Territory; Central Australia; Far North Queensland and Western Australia. The reference measure of glomerular filtration rate was the plasma disappearance rate of iohexol over 4 hours. We will compare the accuracy of the following glomerular filtration rate measures with the reference measure: Modification of Diet in Renal Disease 4-variable formula, Chronic Kidney Disease Epidemiology Collaboration equation, Cockcroft-Gault formula and cystatin C- derived estimates. Detailed assessment of body build and composition was performed using anthropometric measurements, skinfold thicknesses, bioelectrical impedance and a sub-study used dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry. A questionnaire was performed for socio-economic status and medical history.DiscussionWe have successfully managed several operational challenges within this multi-centre complex clinical research project performed across remote North, Western and Central Australia. It seems unlikely that a single correction factor (similar to that for African-Americans) to the equation for estimated glomerular filtration rate will prove appropriate or practical for Indigenous Australians. However, it may be that a modification of the equation in Indigenous Australians would be to include a measure of fat-free mass.

There is a paucity of data on the incidence of venous thromboembolism (VTE) in Australia, particularly amongst Indigenous Australians. We have therefore conducted a retrospective review of all cases of deep vein thrombosis and pulmonary embolism over a 24 months' period in two major hospitals of the Northern Territory (NT). A total of 429 VTE diagnoses were recorded over a 2-year period and 71 of 429 (17%) patients were Indigenous Australians. The overall incidence rate was 0.9 per 1,000 person-year for the population of the NT with a rate of 0.5 per 1,000 person-year for Indigenous Australians versus 1 per 1,000 person-year for non-Indigenous Australians. Of the 71, 39 (55%) of the VTE cases in the Indigenous group occurred in patients younger than 50 years and almost half of these (n = 18) were younger than 29 years. Hospitalization was found to be a major risk factor for VTE in 20 (38%) of the 54 Indigenous Australians of whom 10 (26%) patients were younger than 50 years. Although the rate of VTE in Indigenous Australians was low, its onset was significantly earlier in life and it was often triggered by prolonged hospitalization. VTE therefore should be added to the list of adverse outcomes of poor health and chronic diseases, which cause disproportional high rates of hospitalization amongst Indigenous Australians. The low number of VTE observed in older Indigenous patients in our study possibly reflects on the lower life expectancy and ongoing wide gap in life expectancy between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians.

ABSTRACTIn this article, we set up a dialogue between two theoretical frameworks for understanding the developing relationships between indigenous Australians and the encapsulating Australian society. We argue that the concept of “the intercultural” de‐emphasizes the agency of Aboriginal people and the durability of their social relations and value orientations. We develop the concept of relative autonomy in apposition. Our primary focus is on the Yolngu people of eastern Arnhem Land and on the impact that recent Australian government policy—in particular the Northern Territory “Intervention”—has had on the relatively autonomous trajectory of their society. The view from relative autonomy enables an understanding of the history of Yolngu interaction with outsiders and Yolngu responses to government policy. We argue that unless relative autonomy is understood and taken into account, governments will fail to develop policies that engage Yolngu in the process of regional development.