How about NITV lobbying the government to get ICTV a satellite link back to their communities again? Afterall, ICTV's pioneering development was the example cited in the development of NITV, so I think they owe them. How much does a link cost the government? Perhaps silk and leather refits to the PM's plane are more important.

ICTV's programming serves a very different purpose to the to NITV. Many of the ICTV communities are very isolated and ICTV met their specific needs by supplying essential information and cultural programs that are meaningful to them. Having to jump through the hoops of another bureaucracy is not going to help remote video makers produce television relevant to their communities. Surely programmes made by and about people living in those communities are going to serve them better. Good luck to ICTV and IRCA. Look forward to hearing remote TV is alive and well and broadcasting again soon.

hey countrymen/women
why are we fighting each other over something that we all could benefit from? I speak for people in the bush and believe that ICTV was the real deal for people in the bush and others.
For example, old people visiting towns or other communities saw their own people on ICTV - maybe dancing their own wanga(corroboree)on ICTV and you just look at their faces and you can see the pride & confidence and the change in attitude towards their young if they were a part of the Tv crew,and also the talk around town. Little comments like "hey boy you should have cooked that fish this way" or poke fun at the local star,or just maybe watched a deadly band saying i want that band to play for my 21st birthday and things like this, is happening.
Even the frail & elderly benefit. In one of many aged care facilities in our region the staff were not allowed to change the channel. ICTV ruled the whole hospital - 90percent of patients are indigenous but the non indigenous patients love ICTV as well.
In Broome non indigenous people are talking like us, kriol talk and they love it,some even go barney(goanna) hunting now, and eating it too, the germans/european tourists love the hunting and eating shows.
People want to see real aboriginal shows that are made by aboriginal people that actually walk and talk and live aboriginal way not cutting things to suit certain audiences or cut off the leg that carried not only indigenous community issues but issues that maybe the Australian government could learn from. In Aboriginal way sharing is one of our greatest assets.
ICTV was and always will be true to our people. Come on NITV - be real and true to your people, you can fool some people sometimes but you can't fool all the people all the time.
I feel sorry for NITV's blindness and selfish attitude towards our brothers and sisters out in the bush.

I fully agree with the above post. Give ICTV back their link. They serve a different purpose to NITV. The demise of ICTV would be tragic for the many communities who've had access to this essential service for many years.

In our short time operating as an Indigenous media unit and living in this 21st centry moden world we sometime forget our way in life when our minds are filled with big ideas, glossy footage and professional castings, these are important things but when we compromise our ideals to obtain these things we loss the core part of ourselves and our identiy of flesh and blood, then we become the dominators. the advocating of Indeginous people's rights across our nation becomes meaningless and dissrespectful. That which we once so proudly stood for all to share as equals is really fake and demonising to our own people.

Careless, crude and unnecessary is necessary, because the only ground breaking NITV is acheving is the ground breaking beneath ICTV.

In memory back, there seems to be a long history of well-intentioned interventions in aboriginal community. The most recent is justly motivated by an emergent circumstance but sadly seems also subject to some level of political opportunism in terms of timing.

I quote from a deceased elder whose name I cannot mention for cultural reasons. "You people are like a drugaddict for us. You can't get enough of us." This man's comment encapsulates so succintly, yet so accurately, the whole unremitting spectrum and timeline of non-aboriginal intervention in aboriginal affairs and the exploitative aspects of the caucasian-aboriginal cross-cultural experience.

It began with the expropriation of lands, then justified under a skewed mal-interpretation of the colonisers' religious ethos.

Then came palliative policies which decreed that the people and culture were fated to become extinct so needed comforture in the dying days. There were human rights abuses, massacres, slavery, round-ups and compulsory movement to reserved lands. The people soon learned to comply and keep their heads down. Those who objected were disappeared one way or another. So much for palliation and comforture.

Attributes of passive non-compliance by citizens of occupied nations, were so heroically regarded by allies in World War 2. These are not seen quite in the same light when the Australian caucasian-aboriginal interface experience is examined.

Policies were devised, which dictated the removal of children from the care of their parents, purportedly for the good of their bodies and minds if not their souls. This must have been of some concern to people of conscience because iconic Australian writer Ion E. Idriess was compelled to mention it.

CONT'D.

Children of caucasian-aboriginal parentage were subjected to state-sanctioned forced separation of parents by laws or regulation related to "cohabition", which did not easily favour successful and worthy relationships and they were more vulnerable to removal.

Over the last two generations or so, there have been innovations of encouraging and funding aboriginal initiatives in commerce, social and cultural maintenance, so long as the strings attached, remain attached.

When aboriginal people establish an intent and means of pursuing an independent and self-sustaining dream, so often that dream becomes subordinate and modified to the aspirations and needs of the non-aboriginal facilitator or go-betweens.

This is not to say aboriginal people are blameless when some programs fail or corruption and nepotism occurs. Such mishaps do not justify total curtailment of projects when looking for and empowering the quiet achievers will resolve the problem. - This is basic proven community developmental methodology employed by NGOs overseas which our own authorities seem incapable of grasping.

A more cynical person sees an agenda whereby aboriginal aspiration must not be allowed to get too much out of control, lest it become a challenge to established political ideals through becoming an independent voice.

Where does this bring ICTV into the picture?

There has occurred, "nationalisation" by networking of mainstream free-to-air broadcast television to very few main players based on the east coast and the potential and real political influence over public information and opinion that concentration offers. The local viewing audience is not really respected by commercial networks which by necessity pursue the bottom line above all else.

Commercial free-to-air broadcasters bewail their diminshing market share in face of emerging media but seem unable to grasp the once prime commercial catchcry that the customer was always right.

Local viewing audiences are being turned off by un-announced programming changes, advertorial programming and almost arrogant dilution of news content with cross-promotion. Don't get me started on reality shows and late-night "pornomercials".

More potently disturbing has been discovery of how politcally subordinate mainstream newmedia has become.

Thanks Frank for writing such a thorough letter to the Minister. Great to have the facts clarified around the history and administration of ICTV.
As a video worker / facilitator I was in a few very remote communities in the NT just last year when ICTV finally hit their screens - the impact was just amazing. I was privileged to see groups of older women rivetted to the TV watching dances from neighbouring communities. There were TV programs made by communities and broadcast in language about identifying and getting help for domestic violence. We met with and worked with young men who saw the exciting possibilities of telling stories from their experience, and assisted a respected elder to make a stunning piece about the powerful and complex basis of Warlpiri culture... I felt I was witnessing the strengthening of culture, language, personal motivation, confidence, pride, communication skills, etc etc
NITV can never replace ICTV. How much money does ICTV need to run effectively? What will happen now to film and video projects being made on remote communities without ICTV?

CONT'D.

Topics which were extensively critiqued, up to three years previously, by non-maintream internet media, were significantly "peak oil" and alternative agendas for Iraq and Afghanistan.

Mainstream news and current affairs have only recently examined these subjects seriously. One assumes that two significant national administrations look like reaching their useby dates very soon and new hedges must be built by broadcasters with likely replacement candidates of a different political persuasion.

Why should aboriginal viewers react any differently to the mainstream humble public? Okay, the ability of the traditional mob to see things outside of their own competencies might be assumed due to a more contained worldiness born out of geographical isolation. But never assume that they do not catch on eventually for their intuitiveness is keen.

The independent voice of ICTV has been made more subordinate than the original state based mainstream free-to-air providers, by simply being disappeared. The mainstream providers locally are now mere stripped out shells of their former selves and largely incapable of sustained, truly independent local content origination.

Much of what little there remains is outsourced. What centralised control cannot be achieved by corporate takeover and network integration is procured in the case of ICTV by a simple finger on a switch.

In this rather turbulent time, people with the power to cause these changes should be very careful. Aboriginal people are feeling an ongoing sense of disempowerment as never before because of social issues they were unable to prevent and the actions this has invited. Most of all, this circumstance attacks their own trust in themselves as a community.

ICTV has established a trust and faith in its credibility, significantly because the people have a say in the content. If there are flares, shaky cam or noisebars in the image, no one really cares.

CONT'D.

In this taxing time for the people, it is this very legitimate well known and trusted voice needed to help tide the people over this very challenging and emotional crisis and perhaps sow some seeds of reason in the minds of those more inclined toward ill-judged action over reason.

The people have experienced over the years, so much misinterpretation and misrepresentation by mainstream media, some genuinely innocent, some deliberate, that the new entity being thrust upon them will simply not be trusted.

It is not of them, but upon them, like every other external resource or authority that meddles in their lives and orders them about, one more mob to make satisfied. The timeframe of its implementation is so co-incident to the current crisis, that people can be expected to feel overwhelmed and distrustful as to motive. They do not need this furthur assault on their morale right now.

An independent ethos, robbed of its voice, can become crystallised into an organsed clandestine entity. It then is not so easily accessed to be subjected easily to reason, sensitive influence or controlled at all. Morevoer, a clandestine activity, by its very nature attracts into its power structure, people who have the least to lose, can become corrupted, criminalised and its objectives subverted. Do not confuse this comment as referring to people under investigation for harm to children.

Of much concern to me is the possibility of aboriginal communities or individuals becoming isolationist, cultist and compelled to go underground. Australia could then itself become the subject of interventionalist policy from our northern neighbours who historically have such connection by blood lineage and contact history with northern aboriginal culture, that a justification for intervention could be constructed.

That intervention could be as simple as allowing existing aboriginal voice to be diffused via northen neighbours' own domestic television satellite footprints. Nation Australia would become shamed. This activity would be interpreted as illegal, pirate or propaganda broadcast. The countermeasures seen to be needed, would be by their very nature necessarily oppressive.

Missing so much hearing language and language without subtitles; missing so much seeing country.

Be better if we can get the money spent providing decent internet connections and public access to everyone in all these communities.

The internet is where it is all at, both for producers and viewers.

Even more importantly with the internet, there will be a lot less control over what people as individuals decide is "culturally appropriate

OK polpak, I guess in your laissez-faire, cybertopian/libertarian universe unlimited access to porn would be what you consider culturally approriate then?

Maybe you could hang around to comfort the victims and bury the dead.

Or would you just leave that to others to do?

Cheers

Closing down ICTV is yet another management driven initiative that is unaware of the strengths and weaknesses of ICTV and either unaware or politically driven in this retrogressive initiative which will destroy a viable yet fragile network of possibility in the aboriginal community; when aboriginal communities are already faced with such an enormous struggle to improve their lives, why destroy an institution that has taken 20 years to to establish itself? This isn't rocket science its common sense.

Certainly am a bit laissez-faire, cybertopian and or libertarian.

You really will be disappointed if you believe this means unlimited access to porn.

Laissez-faire approach to culturally appropriate involves leaving decisions to the beholder to fit into how they view the world, with room for plenty of free ranging discussions.

Attempts to "culturally appropriately" filter what everyone watches on TV occur when not everyone wants watch same code of football ;-)

Personally am happy my family viewed Michaelangelo's David as well as danced naked with all the appropriate body paint... or would you class the latter as an act of porn ?

Certainly done enough comforting victims, bagging, carting and burying of dead, than ever wanted to.

Dan do feel free to do it when needs be done, or do you just leave such things for others to do ?


.

polpak

"Leaving decisions to the beholder to fit into how they view the world, with room for plenty of free ranging discussions", makes a lot more sense in modern, adult, educated, employed contexts than in uneducated, unemployed, welfare/drug/alcohol dependent unsupervised juvenile hunter-gatherer contexts. In such contexts it is a formula for disaster.

It is not a matter of 'culturally appropriate', but of simple responsibility versus irresponsibility.

It is great that you are happy for your family to view "Michaelangelo's David as well as danced naked with all the appropriate body paint", but that is worlds removed from what I am talking about.

I have witnessed small Aboriginal children being exposed to x-rated pornography, including violence, by negligent and oblivious drunken adults.

And my own Aboriginal relatives have often been the victims of high rates of violence and sexual abuse by these same drunken/stoned/disturbed Aboriginal juveniles.

Most system employ software restricting what viewed by children.

Am not foolishly thinking it blocks everything, just we do what reasonably can. Then again really do not need to, most of the kids are easily busy enough doing things which are acceptable.

Some have fixations on crudity, go searching for it. Experience shows almost all soon get bored with it, go off to other more appropriate and much more fun activities...

Much of this exploring is part of growing up as a boy, my memory was exploring the art pages in the library, later the arguements over whether what we looked at was crude or nude art ;-)

.

Polpak
I have encountered few if any remote computers with such filters, but plenty of excessive watching of online porn.

When parents have no concept of monitoring their kids' activities, your implied safeguards are useless.

Besides, you don't appear to be conversant with the recent survey of internet usage which showed that 10% of internet time overall was spent on porn, and this was almost 50 times greater than the next most common usage. Internet porn addiction is a real and problematic syndrome in mainstream society. More so in the Indigenous realm.

Agree that when parents have no concept of monitoring their kids' activities, implied safeguards are fairly useless.

Also witnessed small children bieng exposed to x-rated pornography, including violence, by negligent and or other excuses adults.

Enough of my relatives have been victims of violence and sexual abuse by such drunken / stoned / disturbed people.

Also far to familiar with how the "A" word - or other letters, get thrown in to discussions so as to make everything sound so easy to resolve... for other people.

Solutions to these problems are not related to racial identification, except in the minds of racists.

These problems are about individuals accepting their responsibilities along with their rights, about individuals being held responsible and accountable when refusing to accept these responsibilities that come with our rights... and educating people who so fail to ensure it is not ignorance causing the problem

polpak

So governments and citizens in general have no responsibilities in relation to children whose parents/families/communities are not 'educated' and who are inadvertently failing them?

We all share responsibility to educate our neighbours.

Make them aware of our laws, the legislated versions of our wider community boundaries for "civil behaviour", acceptable behaviour.

Some wish us accept boundaries within subgroups could override the boundaries of the wider community.