NATIVE PEOPLES
AND THE FUTURE

The original impetus for this issue on indigenous peoples was the extraordinary campaign of Australian Aborigines to capture the media spotlight during this year's Bicentennial celebrations. In a brilliant bit of public relations, Aboriginal people turned the celebrations on their head, taking advantage of the glitter and self-congratulation to tell the world about their 200-year nightmare of colonial oppression.

Writers like Aboriginal poet Jack Davis have described the pain with disturbing clarity.

You propped me up with Christ, red tape,
Tobacco, grog and fears.
Then disease and lordly rape
Throughout the brutish years.
Now you primly say you're justified
And sing of a nation's glory,
But I think of a people crucified -
The real Australian story.

I went to Australia thinking I could get a clearer understanding of indigenous people. I wanted to see first hand the problems of Black Australians, get their real story and set it down on paper. It was in Alice Springs that my goal-oriented tendency to get the facts in succinct phrases and potted quotes ran headlong into 40,000 years of Aboriginal tradition.

That's where I met Freddie, an old man in a sweat-stained 'akubra' (an Australian cowboy hat) with a week's worth of grizzle. He is also, he proudly told me, an 'initiated' man and a traditional healer. In Aboriginal society that means he is respected for his tremendous spiritual power. I had arranged the interview with him through Tangentyere Council, the Aboriginal-run organization that looks after housing and community problems in Alice Springs. I wanted to get a sense of what Aboriginal people think is wrong with white society.

Freddie turned the tables on me at the council meeting by asking some hard questions. 'You tell me,' he demanded, 'how you can learn about Aboriginal people from an interview? It takes a long time to understand our culture and our people'. I explained that journalism is an imprecise tool and my visit brief, but it was still important to me.

That afternoon I accompanied Eric, a local community worker, to Little Sisters, a town camp six kilometres out of Alice. The interview began and I started into my questions. We went round and round in circles for an hour. I asked about how things had changed for Aboriginal people since his childhood. Freddie talked about how important white people think it is to go to college. I asked about wayward Aboriginal youth. Freddie told me about keeping alert when you drive a car. I was exasperated. The interview finished abruptly. I left confused.

That evening Joanne Willmot, an Aboriginal advisor to the South Australian State government, told me my whole presumption was off-base. 'It's not part of traditional culture to criticize others directly,' she told me. 'It's done instead by metaphor and example. You have to think about his stories.' Suddenly things began to make sense. Freddie hadn't been giving me the wrong answers, just ones I wasn't expecting. I hadn't listened. Now, I thought, at least I'm making some progress.

Letters
Letter from China
Update
Briefly
Endpiece: by Jo Hugh-Jones
Reviews: Film, music, books and a classic
Country profile: Djibouti

COVER PHOTO: Sandy Edwards
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