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permaculture - Re: [permaculture] Waving not Drowning

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Chronological Thread  
  • From: Bob Howard <rmhoward@omninet.net.au>
  • To: "Gaden@ziplip.com" <Gaden@ziplip.com>, permaculture <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Cc:
  • Subject: Re: [permaculture] Waving not Drowning
  • Date: Mon, 14 Jul 2003 11:11:32 +0800

Gaden wrote

. Bob, it would be great to hear more about your experiences as a 'third world' nurse

my experience working with Aboriginal communities in central australia in the early 1980's  was indelibly instructive and i've continued to work with Aboriginal communities since then... even in big cities like Perth the conditions of Aboriginal people in Oz are still comparable to those in the third world. The N.T. had an infant mortality rate of around 100 during the early eighties amongst aboriginal communities although it was falling due to better use of ORS but the main reason that community health made some sort of improvement was the development of health worker programs -aboriginal health workers had been present in remote communities since the 1960's in Australia and these people had often served a vital cross cultural role between doctors and nurses and the community ( many of whom did not peak european english).

However these early health workers and health workers serving this role of translating and finding people and fitting them into the expectations of the european did not have significant effect - immunization and general improvements in economic health in rural towns between 50's and the 80's mostly contributed to improving health outcomes in the Aboriginal communities. In the poorer traditional communities attached to missions or cattle stations health remained in what was sometimes called "4th world conditions" - These Aboriginal people had the highest rates in the world at times of things like leprosy, infant mortality etc.

In 1980 the difference between the N.T.  and W.A. was the presence in the former of the Aboriginal Medical Service. The A.M.S., first started in Sydney in 1970, is now also operating in W.A. At Warburton in W.A. the health service was run behind a chain mail fence by a 'nurse' who had been a patrol officer in New Guinea. One patient was admitted at a time - in the short time i was there one murder was buried by this man and the presence of amoebic dysentery in an out station was considered unworthy of attention.

I left and traveled into the desert toward Alice Springs where I met a traditional healer and watched him heal a bad case of iritis with a panache that left a filipino faith healer to dead.

At Papunya, in the N.T the A.M.S. was providing the service - they had sent a doctor their who had come from working in the streets of Sao Paulo and who was a brilliant epidemiologist. When i got there the remaining nurse immediately resigned - there was no administrative support - the clinic had been trashed - my first job was salvaging the medicines that remained. The relationship with the N.T. Health Service was frosty - the were waiting to be asked to come back There was no cooperation so planned clinics would visit other communities controlled by them but not us (e.g. glaucoma testing etc.)

Papunya at this stage was a 20 year old refugee camp containing about 1100 people moved off their traditional lands to make way for the Woomera rocket range. We triaged and triaged and eventually i burnt out. My medical friend was amazed at how difficult it was - in Sao Paulo he had almost the same financial resources but he had a much greater ability to impact the community - cooperation was forthcoming at all levels and community involvement was high. It was not that there was a greater level of education  but the degree of social dislocation and disruption that was at work here.

Papunya had long been stripped of its trees for almost a kilometre in every direction. It was a litany of failed housing experiments. Demonstrating with rows of derelict buildings, that what people thought was needed was not what was wanted. The community was on Luritja land but the Luritja were a small minority amongst the Pintubi, Pitjatjanjarra, Walpiri etc. who were living there usually 100's of kms from their lands.

There were too obvious things that were needed - permaculture or at least some sort of environmental science - and work.

It was at the request of traditional communities that dole money 'sit down' money was converted to the CDEP 'work for the dole' scheme so that regular maintenance and rubbish collections could take place. Today the CDEP scheme has copied at large as Work for the Dole. In multicultural and rich Broome the cemetery is run by CDEP workers. Cheap work.

Also it was at this time that the Papunya Tula artists were beginning to make a name for themselves - and there began the long and torturous journey down the snake of property rights and copy rights a journey which is still unresolved today with certainly the W.A. government being quite reluctant to discuss the intellectual property of Aboriginal people especially when it comes to plants and traditional medicine.

In a way that old mabarn (magical) man curing iritis on the side of the road to Winkelijina had it right - his patient didn't need the flying doctor or all his cultural baggage in my opinion.

Things are undoubtedly improving, the Noongar community in Albany that I work with is one the wealthiest in Australia overall. But it is still the poorest its just that about 50% of the employable people have real jobs. And Albany has a long tradition of peaceable relations between the traditional owners and the wadjelas but it still is riven by petrol sniffing and crime and feuding and carpet baggers and nepotism and a white population that often sees only these things and not the revival of culture or the hard working women providing the only Aboriginal run 'Meals on Wheels' service.

I guess my point overall to this thread is that politics really does count when it comes to building communities. I'm not a relativist  - if anything i'm an old fashioned marxist crossed with a deep ecologist - but that's a view i've grown to by experience not by belief..
 
 
 
 

It is impossible in Central Australia to escape the endemic oz racism that regards Aboriginal people as 'savages' and the 'lowest of the low'. I relate this personal story although it's 20 years old  because i don't think that conditions have improved greatly.
 

Bob Howard
 
 
 
 



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