Kimberley Appropriate Economics Interim Report - Australian ...

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After years of affirmative action campaigning to get Aboriginal people into state and federal bureaucracy, to
now see chardonnay swilling black bureaucrats assuming a mortgage on our plight and forgetting about us.
Why would you, when you wake up in an environment in Aboriginal communities where there is asbestos
housing, houses that are banned in the cities because people are getting sick from them. Yet our people are
condemned to wake up to this everyday – children and adults.
And why would you even believe in a native title system when the very system and the structures and
organisations in the Native Title Act reject and knock back divestments to Indigenous Traditional Owners,
and reject the traditional rights of Indigenous owners of these properties; your rights to enjoy the social and
economic fruits of your country.
That’s what I ask myself and I reckon Aboriginal people should be asking that too and bringing it up at this
conference. Why would you?
But as I said, Aboriginal people are supreme optimists, they’re survivors. They’re here, they’re not going to
move from the Fitzroy Valley. You’re not going to move the Miriuwung people, the Karajarri people. That’s
their country.
So we have to find a way as Aboriginal people, and non-Aboriginal people - as an Australian community - to find
ways to create what this conference is about – appropriate sustainable economies. The very word sustainable
– let’s start explaining that to Aboriginal people because I don’t think non-Aboriginal people have an idea what
sustainability is yet.
What does the word sustainability mean? Does it mean you get money every week? Does it mean we’re going to
keep this economy going? Does it mean we put your law and culture to one side for a little while but we’ll get it
back in ten years time?
And that’s what I say is one of the greatest traits of Indigenous Australians is the ability to survive, especially in
this rapidly changing world. And it’s changing around us at the moment.
Aboriginal people need to start taking control of their destinies, really talking up. I say to Aboriginal people,
‘Talk constructively, think about what you are saying, think strategically, and think long term’. And though
the transgressions of the last 200 years have created an environment of distrust and disharmony in Indigenous
communities, Aboriginal people will continue to seek partnerships and solutions to maintain that very basic
value that our old people talk about – law and culture. And any initiative has to have that basis from day one
whether tourism, even environmental protection mob who want to count how many sawfish in the river, they
have to understand that people eat that rare sawfish.
I had this British Lady ring me up wanted to make a documentary. I said ‘What’s it about?’. She said ‘We are
making a documentary about freshwater sharks of the world and we want to film the two sharks that are in the
Fitzroy River’. I said ‘that’s sounds interesting, what are you going to do?’ She said ‘We would like to catch
one’, and I said ‘That’s easy, I’ll get my two sisters, they’ll catch you one’.
‘You can only catch them at certain times of the year’. She said ‘That’s all right’. I said ‘What else you going to
do?’ ‘After filming it, we will let it go’. I said ‘You can’t do that’. She said ‘Why not?’ and I said ‘Because my
two sisters want to eat that sawfish’. She said ‘What?’ So after finishing our discussion I never heard from her
again.
So its understanding that rare things get eaten in this country but they’re not rare here; they may be in the
context of the world, but these sharks are not going to go anywhere, you only catch and eat them at one time
of the year, and only Aboriginal people are going to eat them. But Aboriginal people need to think about the
management of our catching, not only of sawfish and sharks, but dugong and turtle.
I think Aboriginal people should welcome the level of representation from ACF. I think our Aboriginal
communities should respect the commitment shown by Environs Kimberley, and definitely respect the ongoing
support from the Kimberley Land Council. And that history of ongoing relationships, not only of these
three organisations, but of Australian people to ably manage, in the context of this conference, our northern
wildernesses, rangeland management, law and culture. This conference can continue, even if it is only an inch
at a time, to build on what’s been done, to build opportunities to develop sustainable projects – but never