Pita Pita man and Save the Children’s Domestic Campaigns Co-ordinator Peter Nathan writes, many Aboriginal organisations are raising the bar (and their voices) to ensure community-controlled services are not just a pipe dream, but rather the preferred model. This is self-determination.
No one could ignore Cape York leader Noel Pearson’s rousing speech from the homelands of Yolngu at Garma festival last week, addressing the rights of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people to control their own lives.
Mr Pearson spoke of a “bridge” – an enshrined representative body for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander People in the Constitution – taking more deliberate action toward Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples’ self-determination. But what does having self-determination mean?
Simply put, self-determination is community control.
This month marked another important date – International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples. The theme this year is Indigenous people’s migration and movement – fitting for me, an Aboriginal man who moved from regional Queensland to inner-city Melbourne to advance my career in the non-profit sector and further my skills in Aboriginal community development.
Since the move to Melbourne, my niece calls me “city-boy” – referencing my connection to single-origin coffee and vegan croissants as opposed to red dirt and spinifex. Leaving and coming back, however, also gave me the opportunity to observe things – once familiar – with fresh eyes.
Through work, I returned briefly to Mount Isa in June this year. A decade ago I could not have imagined the non-profit sector playing such a prolific role in the delivering of community service programs in Queensland’s north-west region.
The change in the community was most evident in the businesses. The buildings of the small shops and milk bars I remember now service a new kind of convenience – family support programming and job-find assistance. The location of the services ensures ease of access for the community, a depressing realisation that my childhood home requires convenience for intensive family support more than it does milk and bread.
I was told by local community leaders that about 40 service providers deliver more than 100 programs in an area four times the size of Victoria, to a population less than 1 per cent of Melbourne. Sound complicated? You bet. A region once reliant on the mining and pastoral industries now supports a new industry of programs that address abject poverty and disadvantage.
During this visit local Aboriginal service providers told me the downturn in business was due to population decline – attributed to employment for the mines being mainly fly-in-fly-out and housing prices being similar to major cities. Local Aboriginal people maintain pride in the region but are dismayed by the economic slowdown and widening of the socio-economic divide.
More heartening is seeing influence from the local Aboriginal community. Despite the challenges I’ve mentioned, there is a shift toward tangible self-determination. There has been moves from Aboriginal community leaders in Mount Isa to create new funding partnerships that call for local staff working for non-profits to have their cultural expertise recognised. They also require further training to build qualifications suitable to their role. This ideal has gone from being a ‘nice to do’, to a guaranteed requirement.
This shows that at community level, many Aboriginal organisations are raising the bar (and their voices) to ensure community-controlled services are not just a pipe dream, but rather the preferred model. This is self-determination.
The nostalgic journey home has reinforced my admiration for my family, the Aboriginal community and a region that seeks to thrive. I am proud that my generation is accepting the challenge to address the problems of our community and reclaim ownership of the solutions.
I echo the challenge Mr Pearson set in his Garma speech, for all Australians to “remember what self-determination is. It is the hard work of dialogue… so that we come to a common decision”.
While our nation’s leaders continue to grapple with how Aboriginal people may freely pursue their self-determination through economic, social and cultural development, at the ground level, I believe there are welcome steps forward in communities such as Mt Isa, through community-control of assistance programs.
Peter Nathan is a Pitta-Pitta man from North-west Queensland. He advocates for youth issues, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health equality and public education.
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