Last night I watched Media Watch on the ABC. While I want to congradulate the Media Watch team for not being too afraid to tackle a very difficult issue, it was very obvious to me, that the Media Watch show was no more adept at covering the issue than any of the media services which a complaint was made about by Mrs Peggy nampidjimba Brown OAM.

Media Watch enabled the negative implication, that because of a possibility mentioned in their report, of many of the Central Australian remote communities' women having supported income management, while many men were opposed to it, that Mrs Peggy Brown OAM might have been lying about her previous position. I myself normally receive a large quantity of information about what is happening on the ground in the Northern Territory, and there was no mention of women having supported income management in any blanket fashion. However it was one of the statistics collected as a part of the review process, that in specific communities support for income management versus opposition to income mangagement was a 50/50 situation, while all other aspects of the intervention had a vast majority in opposition.

Consider the following Australia: Why might any wife and mother have a preferance for a larger proportion of household expenditure to be funnelled into supermarket expenses? Why might most men disagree? On balance then, what will the likely outcome be, when a decision needs to be agreed upon in respect of financing supermarket shopping versus paying for expenses such as car registration? Isn't the intervention supposed to be about making sure children are arriving at school on time, and surely desert communities can use cars for collecting bush tucker, as well as going to the supermarket.

The media must learn to stop misrepresenting the worth of Aboriginal governance of Aboriginal lands!

I too watched the Media Watch program to which you're
referring.

To me the report was not quite clear cut as to what
Mrs Peggy Nampidjimba Brown really felt. The situation
appears to be a rather difficult one. Although I felt
that Media Watch did try to remain impartial, and
merely presented all the evidence that they had.
Including eyewitness accounts.

I can imagine that Mrs Brown's situation is not an easy
one, torn between what she feels and what the
community expects her to feel. Language was another
problem. Mrs Brown did not speak English. Translating
is not an easy task.

Income management is a difficult issue. Some women (as seen
on other programs) were definitely for it, saying it helped with
ensuring that children did have enough to eat. And, a well
fed child will definitely do better at school as we all know.
Whereas you can't eat a car. Getting a hungry child to
school would probably defeat the purpose, if the child can't
concentrate due to a hungry stomach.

As for interfering in Aboriginal affairs - obviously it has
to be done for the sake of future generations. Alcohol is a serious
problem. The children are the future. If income management will help save the children, surely it's worth a try...

There should be NO interfering in Aboriginal affairs, there should be NO "Aboriginal" Affairs.

The only rationale explanation for "Aboriginal" Affairs is racism and the promotion of racism as an acceptable ideology.

The same racist excuses were given previously to justify the denial of rights and/or responsibilities, or mass slaughters...

Must all victims accept those crimes which harmed them must be permitted, encouraged, to continue in the hope they might through legal lotto receive some crumbs of compensation for the harms done to them ?

Certainly these racist actions are NOT done for the sake of future generations.

.

The fact is that anybody who has little or no knowledge of the remote indigenous communities/settlements/villages/outstations where these things are happening, and little to no knowledge of the culture of Mrs Peggy nampidjimba Brown OAM, has little to no chance of being able to interpret what was being reported.

What upset me, is that there was an implication made that perhaps Mrs Brown OAM had been lying, or had changed her story, when the point she was making was that she had been lied about, and framed into seeming as though she could have been changing her story.

While the media watch team perhaps have an obligation to investigate the "frame" which Mrs Brown OAM had complained about, they did not need to succumb to it.

The difficulty is that there were very obvious signs within Aboriginal culture, within which it is undeniable that Mrs Brown OAM was telling the truth. However, in the mainstream culture, those signs might be read almost in direct opposites.

Mainstream Australian culture is today far too much fallen into Americanisations, which happen to be a difficult culture to put into collision with Aboriginal Australian. Particularly the media is full of American standards, whereas Mrs Brown OAM was using the standards by which she has always known her own culture to surivive within.

The fact that she has used repitition in what she said indicates it to be most likely true, and the fact she was holding hands with a female politican also indicates she is highly unlikely to be able to let herself ever even implicate a lie about the situation.

I remember the great impact that the
autobiography of Margaret Tucker,
"If Everyone Cared," made on me when I
read it back in the late 1970s.

I can still also recall , the
book "Why weren't We Told?," by Henry
Reynolds, and the impact it had on me back in 1999.
Shattering the myths about our
'peaceful' history.

Of course those of us from mainstream Australia cannot
fully comprehend the Indigenous Culture.
How can we, we've been taught so little of it.

Few of us have ever experienced racism, poverty,
or the hopeless task of trying to help our own
people.

My hope is that one day it will come to pass that
all Australians, black and white, will live
together in equality and harmony.

That our Indigenous People will achieve full
recognition for themselves and that their
legends and the lore of their tribal elders will
be able to be passed on down to future generations.

This can only be done through understanding,
co-operation, respect, and working together
towards this goal.

All The Best,

Thanks, Foxy, for backing up an understanding of how large a difference in our comprehension culture really is.

At this time, many people whom live within the Aboriginal cultural paradigm of the real world, are opening out parts of that comprehension for more Australians to share in, which is why Mrs Peggy nampidjimba Brown's statement needs to be taken very seriously. Australians who genuinely care well enough to listen can only benefit in the long run by realising what the cultural differences are, because those differences will be enabling of preventing the green house effect.

When I read "Why Weren't We Told", I knew the answer. I knew because I have been told, starting at the age of 18-9 in 1987, preparing for the Bicentenary, I began to listen to the Aboriginal experience. My listening is constantly rewarded by enabling me to realise how to accept my own innate Aboriginality, (from pre-federation intermarriages), and I often find that I do not even need to try to begin to want to think in the patterns of Aboriginal culture. In my mind Aboriginal culture simply expresses and explains the world more effectively and accurately, despite my having been raised in the white mainstream. Yet what I also experience is that the mainstream culture is often attempting to degrade, assimilate, and render ineffective, belief in indigenous concepts.

I understand well enough, that within mainstream culture, it is not really even possible to notice how badly that culture is set up into patterns of undermining indigenous culture, but within indigenous culture, it is only too obvious.

Why Weren't We Told? Because in our innate secretly held subconscious dreams, we already knew that knowing the truth is knowing that we need to accept an equal share of the suffering which Aboriginal Australians accept in dignity and grace.