stillness and being

Driving to work today I noticed the world as though I was in it for the first time. Against the stillness of my seated driving position I was keenly aware of the movement and dynamism of the world around me, of the flowing thoughts and emotions that moved through me, of the flexing and relaxing of my muscles, and of the bony structure that held them up. And I noticed. The man leaning to his dog at the traffic lights, talking to him while his pooch grinned back, pink tongue lolling to the side and brown eyes gazing. I noticed the ratcheting sound of a steering wheel lock being opened and wedged in a parked car as I passed, I noticed, with pleasure, how long a traffic light stays green when you accept that it doesn’t matter if you miss it, and I noticed the agitation and aggression of a people in big cars—much like myself in unaware moments—a woman contorting her neck to check her face in her side mirror, driving with her arm hanging out of the window, or the crew-cutted ray-banned frog-man incensed that I passed him.

I imagined being merely a consciousness moving through this bustling world, an essence of stillness as the rest flashed by me. From there I could notice myself and my own neuroses and obsessions. I could notice how little things mattered and how little I was in a bigger and most amazing scheme. The drive escaped my attention completely—and all the worries I got into the car with evaporated as noticeable thoughts moving with the surrounding ebb and flow of other peoples’ and things. And for the first time in a long time, instead of a background hum of white noise, I noticed an underlying stillness that was alive and pulsing but at peace, poised but unmoving, a silence that anchored the buzzing energy. And it was, I thought, a great thing to notice on my way back to work.

Fish, Chips and the Meaning of Life

There was a pool in our town. In the middle of a drought, when the ground was brown and dusty, peppered with upright stalks clinging determined, and the wind like from an oven howled from the north, hot, dry and thirsty. When the wells ran dry and the ground springs stopped offering up clear puddles of cold, rock-cleaned water, and all the tadpoles had long since dried out like prunes in the shrinking dams. Even then, the town had a pool.

We lived out of town, so the pool was an outing. It was 20 cents and had two pools, a baby pool warm like wee, and a big one. The shop sold Samboy chips in salt and vinegar and chicken, and Wizz Fizz and White Knights that would last all day once the chocolate wore off.

The only problem was, the pool was too cold to stay in it. Even in summer, even in the drought when the roads melted in the sun so that cars going too slowly left tire prints in the tar. The shallow end was bearable if you leapt and bounced and splashed, and squealed and got straight out again. But the deep end was so cold it was dark blue. And it was so deep you could dive off the third level, the highest and the bounciest level, of the diving board and not hit the bottom.

In the deep end everyone turned blue, and a person's ears would ache and push in on soft brains and temples, peoples' skulls would contract, and shrink from the water, squeezing their brains 'til they thought it might come out of their eyes or ears. Worse than an ice-cream headache it would follow ear canals slow and creeping right into the middle of a person's brain.

Normally so out of reach, the deep end came within my reach on a single flamboyant day. The older boys who were in high school tended to own the deep water. They used to dive in and get the iron grate that lived at the bottom like they were claiming a badge of street cred. Us younger ones always waited until the burning sun was gone and the deep end was deserted before we'd sidle up on the edge of the pool, clinging like mud crabs to the rail. All the way we'd go, inch by inch, until we could look down and see our purple feet dangling uselessly over the inky depths of the deepest part of the pool. Then we'd take big hypothermic gasps of air, let go of the rails and try to sink to the bottom, to the grate.

I don't think we ever sank that far. Until I learnt to swim in a fit of determination not to be laughed at in a pool in the desert hundreds of kilometres away where they generally found excuses not to let our sort in, well, until then, it never occurred to me not to kick your arms and legs. As soon as I'd let go of the rail and start to sink my arms and legs would get active, and I'd sink a little, but then generally just bob to the surface, looking down to the depths as if looking would take me there.

The time I touched the bottom I stopped kicking and sank. Fast. And I kept sinking, with my skull shrinking and my brain screaming. Looking up at the bright sky made me feel like I was still in the shallow end where I liked to lie on the bottom on my back. This time I watched the sky recede until I felt the softest 'thunk' on my reaching pointed right toe. 'Thunk' again on the other. At my feet, something cold, and hard, and rough. The grate. I swallowed a gasp and kicked my legs and flapped my arms until I surfaced, yelling, 'I tooooooouched it!!'

No-one believed me, so I tried again. Didn't make it. I tried again. Again, I didn't make it. I kept trying, getting bluer and bluer until I turned a mottled greeny purple colour. I lost the power of speech as my lips froze the way they do when you eat ice cream. I kept trying until the pool closed.

After the pool closed my sister and I rode home on our BMXs, in the shade of the ancient old gums beside the road, dodging the long freckled shadows they cast. It was a long ride. Normally we were boiling by the time we got home again. But this time I was still cold, still blue, as we dropped our bikes and thundered in the front door. Our Mum, who was always tired, always stressed, worried and gaunt, looked rested after her kid-free day. She took one look at me and suggested a trip to town for fish and chips.

It's hard to say just how much of a rare treat this was. In our town, full of people on welfare and in varying degrees of poverty, possibly with us amongst the poorest, fish and chips was the food of the gods. All that batter and grease and salt. It put meat and blubber on the bones and probably thickened the blood for winter. We'd sit with the paper as our plate, picking out the crispiest, saltiest bits first, and drowning the rest in butter, vinegar, and lemon salt.

Mum piled us in the car with the heater on, for me. While she ordered we stared through the glass wall at all the one cent lollies, and when it was ready I got to carry the package home, warm and steaming on my legs. Unwrapped at home it sat gleaming with yellow crusts of fried golden skins and sizzled batter as we sat in a reverent semi-circle around it, eating in decadent silence.

Maybe it was my frozen state jamming up my brain, or maybe it was jsut the utter bliss of the moment, but at that time, munching on the extra potato cake that was routinely thrown in to the mix, a question occurred to me.

'Mum'.
I stated.
'Why are we here? What is it about? This? All of this?'
Mum's eyes widened then narrowed a little, the corner of her mouth turned up just ever so slightly suppressing a smile reserved inappropriate earnestness.
'Sweetie. It's the fish and chips. We're here for fish and chips'.
'Oh.'
I said in an arched tone.

And right then, with my fingers starting to thaw wrapped around a succulent salty potato cake, my big toes still tingling from where I'd touched the grate, I thought perhaps that was the most profound moment of my life.

Home Invasions

An email that was doing the rounds this week and was sent to the 7.30 Report:

Subject: NT Home Invasions

FYI- This has gone to the 7.30 report and several newspapers. please
circulate. Let me know what we can do.


Dear Kerry O'Brien and 7.30 researchers,
I have just returned from the Northern Territory. I want John Howard
to explain why house to house raids without warrants are being
conducted by the AFP in all the Alice Springs town camps.
I also want to know why at least two of the senior women who toured
major cities speaking out against a uranium waste dump on their
traditional lands have been raided by the AFP on warrants issued by a
Federal Magistrate in Canberra, their furniture slashed with knives,
belongings damages, laptops and mobile phones seized, and phones
tapped. I was told by one of the women that the warrant gave 12 hours
access to her home, and that she was told that the measures were
justified because of the security crackdown for APEC ministers. One
of those women is an elderly grandmother.
I have also been told by town camp residents that the AFP has set up
surveillance on all households in the town camps, and have
photographed without consent, every Aboriginal child in those town
camps. In the 1990s the AFP were successfully taken to court for
exactly the same violations in Redfern.
Please report on this disgraceful conduct, and pursue a full
explanation from the Howard Government.
regards,
Jennifer Martiniello
Member, Advisory Board
Australian Centre for Indigenous History,
Australian National University

Warning:
This email may contain creative spelling!

Jennifer Martiniello
e: kemarre@optusnet.com.au

--
http://www.fastmail.fm -
Faster than the air-speed velocity of an
unladen european swallow

Photos taken by the Willowra community in June

Sorry - photographer unknown.

The Northern Territory Intervention Laws and the Howard Government's Latest Land Grab.

The legislation that makes up the Federal government's 'intervention' into Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory, and which has been passed into law with both bewildering speed and almost unilateral political support, has ramifications for the future that can be viewed in the past. Northern Territory MP, and Indigenous leader, John Ah Kit, has described the legislation as genocidal, while Galarrwuy Yunupingu, Chairman of the Northern Land Council, recently described it as 'bigger, bigger than anything else that happened in the past'. Indeed, the legislation represents the most radical yet of the Howard government's reversal of the limited progress this country has made in the area of race relations for the last fifty years.

The passage of this legislation has been significantly aided yb the understandable and appropriate concern of Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples over the findings of the 'Little Children are Sacred' inquiry. But it has also been eased by an atmosphere of claims such as the Minister for Indigenous Affairs, Mal Brough's, that Indigenous communities are living in 'a fog of substance abuse'; or those by John Howard that Australia faces a national emergency in Indigenous communities equal in scale and devastation to that of Hurricane Katrina.

John Howard, who is notorious for his stone-like refusal to acknowledge any national responsibility for the aftermath of abuse of Indigenous children in State hands, has suddenly acknowledged national responsibility for the futures and conditions of the communities that Indigenous children are to grow up in. While this turnaround could be applauded, it is also the first clue that all is not well. A signal that was reflected in the initially tentative and wary, but nevertheless supportive response of Indigenous leaders.

Their wariness seems to have been well placed. The government has since shown clear indications that the fate of Indigenous children is not their prime motivation in acting. The Senate Committee drafting the legislation never called on the authors of the Sacred Children report, Pat Anderson and Rex Wild QC, to offer evidence despite the report being the catalyst for radical intervention. Moreover no use was made of their 97 recommendations, and the parliament had to vote so quickly on the 500 pages of legislation that few, including Mal Brough himself, were even able to read them in their entirity.

It is hard to see at face value how the main elements of this legislation, such as gutting the achievements of the 1975 Land Rights Act; forcing traditional owners to accept either five year leases or compensation for altered land title; and exemptions from the Racial Discrimination Act to do so, are in the long or short term interests of Indigenous children. So too, it's difficult to see how legislation based on minimal consultation with experts in the field, and no consultation with the leaders and members of the communities to be intervened upon; or the ludicrously heavy-handed use of military personnel to take over remote communities, could have any real impact on the systemic causes of abuse outlined either in the Sacred Children report, or in the countless reports that preceded it.

It is worth adding too, that an atmosphere where national leaders freely, and dishonestly, conflate hundreds of Indigenous communities into the one-brand-fits-all representation of chronic dysfunctionality; universal acceptance, acquiescence or promotion of child abuse; and constant and ubiquitous substance abuse, doesn't seem to create a very safe nation for the futures of Indigenous children.

It doesn't take a sharp political wit to come to the conclusion that the federal government's national emergency and sudden attention to Indigenous affairs serves other agendas. In election years, wedge-issues involving the hip pocket or race have had proven mileage, and when economic booms are busting, interest rates are rising, and terror is more readily recognised as being caused by 'us', the Coalition of the Willing, rather than 'them'; the race card, mixed with protecting the 'innocence of children', as Howard put it, must seem like a backable winner.

The agendas being met by this intervention legislation seem many, but the ideological undercurrent is probably more sinister. Land held under the Land Rights Act is freehold title. Like any owner of freehold title the owners of this land are able to control who gains entry to, or trespasses on, their property, a right manifested in the permit system. This right of veto, which both Indigenous community leaders and the Northern Territory police have said actually assists in the control of sexual offenders, and drug, alcohol and porn runners, is inexplicably abolished under this legislation. Interestingly, with it goes Indigenous communities' ability to veto mining exploration on their land.

In addition, traditional owners of towns and towncamps will now be forced into leasing their land to the government for five years, ostensibly to build houses, in an enactment that Howard promises is not a land grab. Any 'disturbance of title', as he so inoccuously puts it, will be justly compensated. It's difficult not to notice the coincidental twin headlines of the last week. Amidst reports of the Howard government rushing this legislation through the parliament, there was also news of the poorly safeguarded deals to sell uranium to India. In another coincidence pointed out by environmental engineer, Gavin Mudd in June this year, much of the ground covered in this legislation is either loaded up with minerals - such as uranium - or else is considered 'empty' enough to dump nuclear waste that no-one else in the world will take.

Indigenous leaders around the country have been quick to point out that snatching control over Aboriginal freehold land without the checks and balances potentially offered by the Racial Discrimination Act will be historically repetitive in limiting the extent to which communities are able to be functionally self-determining. The flow-on effect of this for cultural and social self-determination can be predicted if the past is any indication. Moreover, the increased 'micro-management' of communities and the mainstreaming of programs such as the CDEP without any apparent concern to safeguard those that have been successful (such as those supporting many artists and art centres), also seems potentially destructive and badly thought out at best.

In light of the potential that accompanies this legislative return to the heavy-handed paternalism and management of the Assimilation programs of 1930s-50s, which fit snugly into the legal definition of genocide, John Ah Kitt's description of this legislation as genocidal seems more solidly grounded in historical precedent. The waves of crocodile tears promoting protection mirrors past good-intent in ways that might have made the hardest ideologues and architects of Australia's Assimilation and child removal programs proud.

I don't think there'd be many who would dispute that the protection of children -indigenous or non-indigenous - from predatory sexual and physical assault should be a national priority. But this legislation is likely to do little to alleviate the pressures faced by remote communities, and even less to generate the kind of determined, informed, and considered response needed to raise the awareness or capacity necessary for change. Moreover, its removal of safeguards against the kind of disastrous 'management' of Indigenous peoples that plagues the past, will instead serve to intensify and perpetuate wider pressures on remote communities, only to weaken them further.

Amidst all of this, the fact that this legislation has the capacity to free up valuable land from the burden of Indigenous ownership, while enforcing the economic and social mainstreaming of remote communities shouldn't go amiss. That Howard and Brough seem to have used the most unspeakable suffering of children as a veil for pushing other agendas is cynical and morally vacuous, but historically unoriginal.

Tracey Banivanua-Mar

insomniac with jetlag #3 and a dog in a footy jumper

The elusive eight hours sleep. I got 'em. Bed at 8, up at midnight, bed again at 2, up again at 6 - for some reason I'm still on London time, but at least I'm sleeping!

Okay, that's the boring stuff out of the way. So when I woke up I went for a run with Angie-the-exceptionally-wimpy-but-cute-mut to the park full of ex-cons, mad old bastards and displaced little hello-kitty girls with their little white yappers. It's a curious place when the sun's coming up. The creek makes bubbling gurgles as it skips on its way past gangs of water birds of every kind. These fat, waddling, big-footed birds at that time of morning are surprisingly busy. Starting the day, they chatter, quack and squeak, and trip over their big water-bird feet as they head to the creek to bathe and duck below its surface leaving their tails and feet waggling in the air. I wouldn't bathe in that creek. It's grey and smells like a washing machine. So the scene at daybreak here is kind of rocky wildness and avian bliss meets storm water drain and urban decay.

On our run, Angie and I ran past a lady in a black balaclava with two big black dogs on leashes; a man with a tatooed face, a beanie with a pom-pom and a snarling, leaping, half-crazed german shepherd that he hung on to for dear life; and an old man out for a jog running so slowly he was basically going heel-to-toe, heel-to-toe. The best of the bunch tho' was a little man, shuffling through the trees in his old clapped-out bomber jacket, fusty full-of-farts tracksuit pants and old black beanie. He was running, head down and brow furrowed, his hands clutched up near his chin like the old boxer, or maybe just old fighter, that judging by his 's' shaped nose, he clearly was. You wouldn't mess with him is what I'm saying, even tho' he was in his 60s or 70s. His dog? It was a little white, curly-haired, pug-faced, toe-tapping yapper, that was skipping in circles around him in the wet grass grinning from little flapping ear to little flapping year, showing his tiny little pearly whites with the smile that dog's aren't supposed to have. The dog I should say also had a jumper on - a sleeveless, knitted western-bulldogs jumper. So, this is what the world looks like after eight hours sleep? Lovin' it!

insomniac with jetlag #2 - sleep?

I'm going to regret keeping these posts I think. So boring. It's been two weeks and three days. Still waking at 3 in the morning... maybe I always will. The night before, no sleep at all. The night before that? Five hours and twenty-three minutes. And before that, four. I could list the hours and minutes of sleep I've had every night since I got home, and I could chart the rest of my life on my receipt of hourly units of sleep - but that would be sad.

I'm beginning to lose that stiff upper lip, positive, silver-lining spotting approach to my state of sleeplessnes. It's been a long, long, long, long, long, long time since I was properly rested. And I'm not sure what's worse... not getting to sleep, or having it stolen from me. When I wake in the the night, at that second I wake up, sleep is gone, utterly and completely gone. Within a moment the deepest, longest, darkest slumber is ripped away, hauled in on some invisible pulley, by some invisible hand. And it leaves me exhausted, cheated and mournful, lying there in the dark with eyes wide open, wondering how it can be that I'm so catagorically awake. Not drowsy or groggy, no remnants of sleep to shake off or surrender to, just bright, goggle-eyed awakeness. Not bloomin fair!