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Speakers
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Biographical Details Anthony Ellis is Manager, Tourism Development with the NTTC. This includes the areas of Nature-based, Indigenous, Access and Infrastructure. Prior to joining the NTTC to head up the unit he worked in the Kimberley for 10 years in regional development and tourism. He also owned and operated an award-winning tourism facility in Broome, Matso’s restaurant and art gallery and the Broome Brewery. He is currently enrolled in a Doctorate at NTU on the topic of regional development with focus on tourism. Presentation Abstract Looking Through a Shattered Windscreen: Community Visioning Processes. “Visioning” is today identified as a critical part of planning processes, vital for Government in providing direction in economic and infrastructure development. But is it simple or realistic in contemporary communities, especially those with particular geographic, cultural, historical or economic inhibitors as found throughout regional, remote Australia? Visioning, often misinterpreted to mean “branding”, is commonly lead by tourism interests that need a branding construct to sell the destination to travellers. However branding is a simplification or characterisation of a far more complex set of interactions. The tourism industry is significant because in it’s efforts to create, and sell, tourism product, it may be the “product” that drives a community to self perceptions that do not reflect a genuine self image or sense of place and purpose. Places can become what tourism marketing promotes. Hidden in the hype are lost communities, which do not share the image or Government agencies that do not support the concept. As disparities are more sharply drawn the clear vision forward can be recognised more correctly as the vision through a shattered windscreen. Processes of visioning are challenging, but vital for communities, providing the sense of place that can guide a community to shared commitment and progress or cause division to be more deeply etched. The tourism industry needs that vision more than most but must see it as a community process of self-discovery. Planners must learn that is a shared vision that engenders enthusiasm and action for creating healthy human environments. It comes from people that are idiosyncratic, unpredictable, obstructive but above all passionate about their place. It needs to be a planned process but one not driven by planners. Communities that grow organically, through processes of discussion, debate, disagreement and determination are survivors and sought by visitors. For communities to be true to themselves, healthy places there must be belief in themselves. Belief comes from the community’s interactions with itself and others but not through direction. Governments may see tourism as an opportunity for economic growth, developers see financial return, communities look for social benefits. The vision of a community, if it is to be relevant, must be its own and must flower from its own resources that represent a union of the community’s strengths and recognition of its weaknesses. Visioning in Alice Springs reflects all these features while pointing forward to emerging futures based around a new, and hopefully shared, sense of community.
Chris Healy Biographical Details Chris Healy has edited The Lifeblood of Footscray: working lives at the Angliss Meatworks and co-edited Beasts of Suburbia: reinterpreting cultures in Australian suburbs. His book, From the Ruins of Colonialism: history as social memory was shortlisted for the Gleebooks Prize in the NSW Premier's Literary Awards and he is co-editor of Cultural Studies Review www.csreview.unimelb.edu.au. His current research includes the project, Four South Pacific Museum, an edited collection on cultural studies and cultural history, and a monograph concerned with the role of history and memory in contemporary culture. He is Director of the Cultural Studies Program at the University of Melbourne. Presentation Abstract Now you see it, now you don't: remembering Aboriginality and cultural politics. How is it that Aboriginality seems to appear and disappear in public culture? One of the key ways in which this happens is through some strange and repetitive patterns of forgetting and remembering: forgetting dispossession and then recalling it much later; forgetting nuclear testing on indigenous lands and then uncovering that history; forgetting the removal of indigenous children and then remembering their stories. Such a cycle is both dishonest and destructive. Writing against these tendencies, this paper attempts to remember how the historical presence of Aboriginality has been forgotten. 
Fran Kilgariff Biographical Details Fran Kilgariff has been Mayor of Alice Springs
for three and a half years and an alderman of the Alice Springs
Town Council for six years before that. Presentation Abstract
Ted Wilkes Biographical Details Ted holds a B. Arts in Social Science and is a Fellow of Curtin University. Ted is a Nyungar Man and has been involved in Aboriginal affairs all of his working life. His professional background includes working for the Western Australia museum, the Centre for Aboriginal Studies at Curtin University and sixteen years as the Director of the Derbarl Yerrigan Health Service. Currently, he holds the position of Professorial Fellow in Aboriginal Health with the Centre for Developmental Health at Curtin University, in conjunction with the Telethon Institute for Child Health Research. As an Aboriginal leader, Ted has endeavoured to facilitate positive health and social outcomes, not only for the Aboriginal community, but also for the broader community. Presentation Abstract
Denise Haslem ASE - Producer/Editor Biographical Details Denise Haslem is a producer and editor with over twenty years experience in the film and television industry. She produced and edited the award winning Mabo - Life of an Island Man and has also produced DOC - A Portrait of Herbert Vere Evatt, A Calcutta Christmas and co-produced Risky Business and Steel City. Her editing credits include many award winning programs Custody, My Life Without Steve, Canto a la Vida, The Night Belongs To The Novelist, Six Pack, Admission Impossible, Australia Daze, For All The World To See, The Opposite Sex, Aeroplane Dance, Mystique of the Pearl, Our Park, Hatred, Tosca - a Tale of Love and Torture and Minymaku Way. In 2002, she produced, directed and edited Film Australia’s Outback DVD. Then in 2002-2003 she spent 8 months in Yirrkala, north east Arnhem Land, producing and editing Lonely Boy Richard. In 1998 - 99 she was the President of Australian Screen Editors (ASE), the guild devoted to protecting, promoting and improving the role of the editor. In 2002 she received an inaugural
ASE accreditation. Presentation Abstract LONELY BOY RICHARD; A FILM AUSTRALIA NATIONAL INTEREST PROGRAM Richard Wanambi is about to go to prison for a long time. He knows what its like. He’s been there before…In Australia’s Northern Territory three-quarters of the people behind bars are indigenous men. Lonely Boy Richard is an intimate account of one man’s journey to jail. Richard lives with his family in Yirrkala, in northeast Arnhem Land. It’s a proud Aboriginal community now experiencing serious social problems. Like elsewhere, alchohol abuse and violence are threatening to erode family and community life. Nami, the woman Richard knows as mum, lives in fear. She’s lost one son because of grog. Another is teetering on the edge. Then there’s Richard, who calls himself Lonely Boy. He’s been drinking since he was 14. Just like his dad did. Now he’s committed a terrible crime. Salvation may lie in a return to their ancestral homelands. That’s where Nami takes her family. But for Richard, temptation lies all too close in the white mining township of Nhulunbuy. Yirrkala’s night patrol team does what it can. Every night it battles on the frontline, to bring the drinkers home from Nhulunbuy and keep the grog out of their ‘dry’ community. But that’s not enough to save Richard from himself, or his community from him. Lonely Boy Richard presents
the human story behind the headlines.
Gillian Cowlishaw Biographical Details Gillian Cowlishaw has used ethnographic research methods to analyse Australian race relations. Her in-depth research reveals the intimacy and the distance between Aboriginal people and whites, and explores the way cultural practices are reproduced as racial conflict. These are themes in her Northern Territory study Rednecks, Eggheads and Blackfellas; racial power and intimacy in Australia (1999) and the just published Blackfellas Whitefellas and the hidden injuries of race (2003) which is about Bourke NSW. She has taught at Charles Sturt University, the ANU and Sydney University and is now a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Technology, Sydney. Presentation Abstract Who's upsetting who? memory, nostalgia, morality Cultural embarrassment
is a common everyday experience for those who live side by side
with people of fundamentally different histories, such as Australian
whitefellas and Australian blackfellas. I will present a series
of bizarre and painful, ludicrous and touching, old and new, encounters
between individuals, who define themselves and are depicted as
different, yet who express the same kinds of nostalgia for a better
past and worries about a worse future. Common anxieties about
present dangers - the fear of others, the shame and ignorance
- can suggest the possibility of other ways of seeing others.
Can the pervasive moralism through which such encounters are neutralised
be inverted so that difference becomes interesting, productive,
elating and a source of expanded possibilities?
Dr Gary Robinson Biographical Details Gary Robinson began ethnographic fieldwork among Tiwi youth on Bathurst and Melville Islands in 1985. He has continued his association with the Tiwi, leading the evaluation of health services and related research projects on the Islands and continuing to work with young people and their families. He currently directs the Centre for North Australian and Asian Research at Charles Darwin University in the Northern Territory. Presentation Abstract No Way to Be: Violent and Suicidal Youth This paper is partly biographical: it is about a young Tiwi man who died of ‘unknown causes’ some years ago. It is partly a statement about what is missing in discourse about indigenous issues; about whose voice is heard; about why and how we need to listen. In all the intervention talk, there is a lack of orientation to meaning, to the things that are real and meaningful influences in people’s lives. There is a lack of ability to communicate about those things to those same people. Policy makers and interventionists talk a language of empowerment, development, intervention and critique: this inevitably means, firstly, empowerment and betterment of the structures they serve. The trickle down effect in benevolent, welfare-led development proposes that we don’t need to understand what’s going on, the basic social processes and adjustments, much less what people think. The major developmental necessities are surely clear enough: consult, participate, build communities; give good governance - that’s what people need. The question of what constitutes competent intervention – or enlightened non-intervention- is not considered. The limitations of this thinking are a matter of concern. Intervention without some science of meaning is blind. Science without any capacity to hear the voice of experience is grossly inadequate. This paper looks at the life
of a young man, and his struggle to be. It tries to show where
the problems of understanding and meaning might lie.
Robert Hoogenraad - Linguist, NT DEET Biographical Details Robert Hoogenraad has worked as
a roughneck and geophysicist in remote Australia and Kalimantan
Indonesia. After training as a linguist he researched language
acquisition in Scotland and taught anthropological linguistics
at Lancaster University. Since 1983 he has worked in Central Australia,
assisting Aboriginal people to record and maintain their languages.
He joined the NT Education Department in 1989, supporting vernacular
and ESL programs in Aboriginal schools, and carrying out two large
censuses: in 1991 in the Barkly and Sandover region, and in 2002
in Warlpiri communities. He has visited every Aboriginal school
community from the Gulf of Carpentaria to the SA border. He is
fascinated by maps and country, and by statistics and 'Homo socialis'.
He believes utterly that local Aboriginal people can deliver the
best possible education for their children in true professional
partnerships with 'white fellas'. Presentation Abstract The Social face of Aboriginal Statistics in Central Australia To understand how we might shape our communities for the future we need to understand how the present has emerged from the past. In Aboriginal affairs, various kinds of statistics have been a major tool for understanding the present and past. These statistics are typically interpreted without reference to the individuals, families and social groupings that make up the populations, and they are commonly aggregated without reference to how those people organise themselves. Using the results of my 1991
Barkly and Sandover census and my 2002 Warlpiri census, population
profiles developed from health and education records, and the
work of a other researchers, I will examine a number of issues:
school enrolment and attendance, life expectancy, mobility and
levels of literacy. I will show that when statistical data are
interpreted in this richer context, drawing on information about
individual and family patterns, the resulting understandings provide
strong clues as to how we might work together in equal partnerships
with local Aboriginal people to shape solutions that work with
rather than against their preferred modes of living. Amongst other
things I will use an understanding of "mobility" to
challenge the notion of "Aboriginal community" as this
is usually understood.
Kate Finlayson Biographical Details Kate Finlayson has worked as a journalist,
researcher, producer and Kate Finlayson herself took off
on a search for Rod Ansell - and found him, Presentation Abstract Living together separately: how whitefellas live Barbara Flick Nicol Barbara Flick Nicol is an Aboriginal woman of the Yawallyi nation who has spent a lifetime working across Australia in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander organisations and now as a senior Queensland Government officer. The organisations which have gained from Barbara’s experience and which have contributed to her own journey include:
Barbara has a strong commitment to the future of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. This vision includes that all Australians live in a society that shares the riches and values the traditions and customs of all people. Barbara’s contribution to this whether in government or community comes from being an active participant in the development of opportunities to bring Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders to the same place as non-Indigenous peoples in all ways. This includes working to bring about change to the economy, education, health systems, government, society through practical but courageous policy and practice. Through her current role as
the Executive Director of Policy in the Department of Aboriginal
& Torres Strait Islander Policy Barbara is working to create
and implement strong innovative policy responses to the issues
raised by Tony Fitzgerald in the Cape York Fitzgerald Report.
Assoc
Prof Paul Memmott - Aboriginal Environments Research Centre Biographical Details Paul Memmott is a professional anthropologist and architect, as well as an academic researcher and writer. He is the Principal of a Research Consultancy Practice in Aboriginal Projects, which provides specialized services to Aboriginal organizations and government departments throughout Australia. Paul Memmott is also a part-time Associate Professor and Director of the Aboriginal Environments Research Centre in the School of Geography Planning and Architecture, University of Queensland. He supervises a group of postgraduate students studying practical problems and issues on Indigenous architecture, settlement planning, place-making, cultural heritage, and social problem analysis. Paul Memmott first visited Alice Springs in the mid-1970s as part of the Aboriginal Housing Panel. During the 1980s, he carried out Aboriginal land claims and site recording in the Northern Territory; within Alice Springs he has undertaken social planning in the Town Camps and was involved in starting Tangentyere’s social behaviour project in 1990. He conducted a survey of Todd River Campers in the early 1990s and a decade later was the principal author of the Long Grassers Strategy in Darwin. Presentation Abstract The Social face of Aboriginal Statistics in Central Australia This presentation examines internationally
significant knowledge exchanges between Central Australia and
the globe, starting in the 19th century, with an emphasis on the
exported intellectual property of the Arrernte. It then argues
that these knowledge exchanges must be evaluated in the context
of cultural values, and further, that an appreciation of these
same values should inform contemporary Alice Springs society and
its public attitude to social problems and issues, including substance
abuse, violence, unemployment, public place dwelling, poor health
and territorial separatism. Bi-cultural intellectual property
still retains its enormous wealth potential as an export commodity
in Alice Springs and Central Australia, but two distinct bodies
of social and economic capital need to be fully appreciated and
simultaneously integrated in planning for a stable and sustained
quality of lifestyle for all segments of the society, both Aboriginal
and non-Aboriginal.
Brendan
Meney RAIA: Biographical Details Brendan Meney is a local Alice Springs
Architect who has been living and working in the Central Australian
desert for over 20 years. He is a founding member to the Desert
Knowledge Consortium and assisted in the establishment of Desert
Knowledge Australia. For many years, he has worked in remote aboriginal
communities in the arid region of the Northern Territory and has
built extensively with in the urban setting of Alice Springs.
Brendan has traveled to other desert regions of the world such
as Yemen, Morocco, Egypt and southern USA studying traditional
architecture. Throughout the 80’s, he promoted the use of
earth construction in the region and has been a consistent advocate
for environmentally responsible architecture and urban design. Presentation Abstract “ Eroding economic rationalism: culture and the environment as foundations for developing shared space” In an urban environment of contested identities and cultural diversity can all of us, as the inhabitants of Alice Springs, be made to feel at home and to identify with the town, whilst at the same time contribute to the image and ambience which is presented to our visitors, tourists and investors? The development of our sense of belonging relies heavily on an inclusive civic and political culture and on people “investing” in their community both socially and economically. To achieve sustainable existence we need to move beyond just technical fixes in the design of the built environment, and refocus our attitudes and processes to how we address the needs of the whole of our community. Moderating the economist’s influence over development is important if we are to deliver tangible outcomes that are soundly based on the triple bottom line principles for survival: ecology, economics and society, inclusive of the embracing the specifics of ‘culture’. (tbl+1) Unpolluted water, clean air and solar opportunity are critical to our physical existence, just as our natural and built heritage are essential to supporting our spiritual well being. For aboriginal people particularly, as with many traditional eco-cultures, the natural and the spiritual are intimately linked to form a basic ‘charter for living’; the two are often difficult to separate analytically. The ‘fusing’ of partnership structures that embrace a ‘layered custodianship’ of the land shifts the planning paradigm. Adopting the concept of ‘cultural inclusive development’ facilitates an informed understanding of how to sustain people’s spiritual and associated physical needs. It allows built environment parameters to be realized which cater for the collective need along with the ongoing access for the community to physical sites of significance and the spiritual maintenance required as part of a holistic existence. Culture is ever changing and adapting to change is often very difficult for individuals. Urban planning practice is constantly subjected to the formation of an ongoing cultural identity, the contesting and negotiating as our community seeks to define the collective memory which sets the parameters for the development of our shared space. Collective remembering can take various institutionalised, cultural and ritualised forms. It is also constituted spatially and, therefore, has major significance to place making and the establishment of the built fabric within the natural environment. Embracing meaningful design solutions, which recognize these intrinsic cultural values and their relationship to people’s needs can add to the creation of harmony within the built environment. When used in conjunction with informed, balanced and correctly “weighted” planning directives which encourage beneficial ‘trade offs’, a foundation can be set for attitude change that supports ecologically oriented and culturally enhanced shared space. Through the clear identification
of our values and responsibilities as a collective, we can develop
a common objectives for sustaining our quality of life, maintaining
racial harmony and establishing a guarantee so that future inter-generational
equity is given every opportunity to become a reality.
Leon Morris Biographical Details Leon Morris is the Coordinator of the NT-wide "Itinerants" Strategy. He is an employee of the NT Department of Community Development Sport and Cultural Affairs, outposted to the Larrakia Nation. Lawurrpa and Garnggulkpuy are senior Yolngu researchers from the Galiwin'ku Yalu Marnggithinyaraw (Nurturing Centre). Presentation Abstract The presentation will be in two parts:
Olga Havnen Biographical Details Olga Havnen is of Western Arrernte descent and grew up in Tennant Creek in central Australia. She is now the Indigenous Programs Manager of the Fred Hollows Foundation, overseeing a range of programs in the Katherine region of the Northern Territory which are pioneering a new, holistic approach to assisting local communities to tackle a complex range of issues. These include early childhood nutrition, financial skills, support to community stores, community learning and literacy, and arts and crafts. Before joining the Foundation in 1998, Olga was Executive Officer of the National Indigenous Working Group (NIWG), a body representing all Indigenous organisations engaged in native title representation and land issues. In this role she coordinated the work of the NIWG, in particular a national public awareness campaign on the implications of proposed amendments to the Native Title Act 1993 during the period leading up to the passage of amendments in 1997-98. Olga Havnen has a longstanding and active involvement in international human rights and Indigenous rights issues. She worked with the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade as Executive Officer, Indigenous Issues in 1993 and represented the Australian Government at various international forums, including the United Nations Working Group on Indigenous Populations. In 1994 she joined the Central Land Council, based in Alice Springs, Northern Territory, as Senior Policy Officer and represented the Council at a number of national and international forums. In this role she played a key part in organising major national conferences, including the Human Rights and Indigenous Peoples Conference, held in conjunction with the Faculty of Law, University of New South Wales in 1994, and the 20th Anniversary of Land Rights Conference, in conjunction with the Northern Land Council in 1996. Olga is currently a Board Member of the Diplomacy Training Program (UNSW) which was established during the 1980s by Nobel Prize winner, Jose Ramos Horta. Presentation Abstract
Gavin Mooney Biographical Details Gavin Mooney is Professor of Health Economics at Curtin University in Perth. He has published over 200 articles on health economics and 15 books and acted as an adviser to the WHO on many occasions. He has a particular interest in equity in health care and within that in Aboriginal health. He is of the view that what is most needed to give Aboriginal people a fair go is to build a more compassionate society to replace the selfish, individualistic neo liberal Australia which this country has become. Presentation Abstract Institutionalised racism and health care This paper argues that a major barrier to improving Aboriginal health in this country is racism. It is not so much or not so directly individualistic racism that is the key problem but institutional racism. That together with middle class racist condescension and the failure to recognise these in Australian society are the major hurdles that need to be overcome. Various examples of this phenomenon will be presented. More importantly it will be suggested that first facing up to this racism and secondly addressing it are necessary to the development of successful policies to ameliorate the problems of Aboriginal health.
Stephen Jackson Biographical Details
Presentation Abstract Does the NT have the law and order problem it imagines? In order to establish a measure of the Northern Territory's law and order problem the Territory's rates of recorded crime will be compared to national benchmarks for selected headline crimes. Participation rates in the Northern Territory's criminal justice system will then be examined within a demographic context. The presentation will conclude with a review of the most recent recorded crime statistics for the Territory and their trends over the past 12 months.
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Events Officer |
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