CAUSES OF ABORIGINAL ILL-HEALTH, IN TOP END COMMUNITIES (NORTHERN TERRITORY)

N RECENT MONTHS, 19 YOUNG MEN HAVE DIED BUT GOVERNMENT REFUSED COMMUNITY REQUESTS FOR AUTOPSIES. MEANWHILE, THERE WERE NINE STILLBIRTHS, PREVIOUSLY, PERHAPS ONE PER YEAR.

“In 1975, as in earlier years, we organised four or five funerals. These increased each year. Now, in 2024, we have four or five funerals being run simultaneously. Something is wrong. Why are so many people dying? Children. Adults. Old people. We have to stop this”. From a conversation in Galiwin’ku cemetery as we tried in vain to locate the grave of a close relative. The cost of funerals is so high that there is no money for a head stone. Or for food for mourners. A new morgue had to be built because bodies were stacked to the ceiling in the Arnhem Land township of Nhulunbuy. The new morgue is now already inadequate.

SYNOPSIS

Two generations of polite questioning of Department of Health priorities has provoked little by way of serious review of sickness services, euphemistically titled “health services”. For the past three years, cause of death is medically platitudinal even though the Port Hedland Council, quoting the expert opinion of UK’s Dr Dalgleish, demanded answers from medical bureaucrats.

Fifty years of strident national concern about Aboriginal health has resulted in clinics being established in all communities and expensive professional networks being set up to administer and service these.

One regional health service, Miwatj, plays with $38 million taxpayer funding per year; is demonstrably incompetent, has reigned over plummeting Aboriginal health; uses bribery, cronyism and nepotism to create the appearance of community support; and in Nhulunbuy, unnecessarily duplicates the services of two other medical providers (East Arnhem Medical Services and Gove Hospital, all three of which cumulatively cater to just over 4000 local people and 10,000 of the broader region).

As this band-aid fiasco plays out, Aboriginal health has continued to decline and the premature death-rate has climbed alarmingly. Family integrity is collapsing because so many of the extended families, whose role is the equivalent of western parenting, are seriously depleted by death. Absent this extended-family-parenting, children grow up feral. Many lack guidance, discipline, aspirations, social skills, and, because there is nobody to ensure early bedtime, they play videogames all night and sleep through the day instead of going to school. Thus they become adult, and illiterate, and innumerate; therefore unemployable. Crime is the only path to survival.

Governments have been told this for decades but politicians simply never read the reports. Reclaiming family structure may prove difficult anyway because unsupervised young people are now parents at age fifteen and grandparents at thirty. No thirty-year-old is equipped for grandparenting.

Globally, the death rate also spirals upwards. Researchers have observed that medical intervention is the number three cause of death in the US and in Australia. Although the AMA hosed this down by rephrasing the causative element as “medical error”, it is undeniable that the death rate curve parallels increased medical intervention, sparking heated chicken and egg debates.

An empirical overview points towards another anomaly: that self-propagating medical intervention massively dwarfs effective health education. Intervention and drug prescribing just happens to be lucrative for doctors, nurses, health administrators, and the pharmaceutical industry whereas nobody much benefits from health education as this is currently delivered. In the geopolitical context, there is no incentive to turn this around. Arnhem Land is rich in minerals and it would suit mining companies if Aborigines simply died out.

Experienced, albeit understandably cynical observers believe that the ALP government appointment of an urban “Aboriginal Voice” committee would have enabled powerful interests to hasten this depopulation process, a notion certainly not discouraged by the major providers of funding and support for a “Yes” vote in the recent referendum; these being (1) the Australian Zionist Federation, (2) Riotinto, and (3) BHP, and (4) the Northern Land Council. All four are controlled by Zionists.

Had the Referendum “Yes” campaign been successful, the actual ‘voice’ would have represented the 8% national urban Aboriginal sector consisting of 1.5% actual Aborigines and the remainder whose Aboriginality is academic and even hypothetical, considering they are 75% European, with most possessing no Aboriginality at all. As Aboriginal funds are expended in a catastrophically prodigal manner, taxpayers are loud in their belief that it is time Treasury demanded DNA tests to safeguard regulatory integrity of all Aboriginal funding.

But this would be only a first step in eligibility testing. Applicants should be required to demonstrate financial need beyond that which is available for the mainstream population. In the NT and Kimberly, where language and culture mitigate any possible efficacy of pan-Australian services, there is a very convincing case for special funding. Insanely, the bulk of hitherto-provided finance has bypassed these groups and instead been squandered on population segments whose only claim is “historical justice”, an unmet disadvantage suffered by 90% of the world’s population. Justice demands that this be advanced to all such peoples or to none at all.

Finally, as a matter of egalitarian and democratic recognition of national values, no special aid can alienate the axioms of EQUAL RIGHTS and EQUAL OPPORTUNITY. These override any ephemeral concepts as historical justice, especially considering none of the victims of injustice are still alive, nor their perpetrators. One can inherit neither justice nor injustice.

Refocusing on the issue of premature death, in an attempt to hide this failure, mortality statistics are hidden behind, and diluted with, ludicrously broad racial/cultural definitions (Aboriginal AND Torres Strait Islander and both monolingual urban and remote area traditional-cultural populations); and the Department of Health refuses to permit independent examination of mortuary records, which would expose regional and culturally-pertinent statistics.

It should also be noted that Thursday Islander and Aboriginal cultures have almost nothing in common. They have been plonked together on the basis of skin colour, which is an astonishingly racist position to insert into legislation.

A year ago, when Galiwin’ku community requested autopsies on the nineteen young men who unaccountably died over a period of six months, autopsies were denied even though required by law. Clearly, unlawful behaviour by government is a contributing problem.

This outrage was enabled by the “suspension of the Australian Constitution” an impossibility under international law. The entire point of a national constitution is as a backstop to human rights. This prevents laws that exploit or discriminate from being enforceable. To suspend a national constitution is to abrogate the entire purpose of a national constitution. To amend even a single word of the Constitution requires a national referendum, which belies the legitimacy of (then) PM Morrison’s so-called “suspension”. Curiously, this was followed by a referendum on the “Voice”. Once again, no referendum enabled this.

That prominent lawyers have not condemned abuse of this most fundamental protection of the people is mute testimony of the endemic corruption of the entire legal profession. At least half of Australia now acknowledges this. But government departments are not any more virtuous. ‘Health’ bureaucrats refuse to even examine the evidence of what is obvious; that the more is spent on Aboriginal health the sicker the people become and the higher the death rate.

In a Pontius Pilate-like attempt to wash departmental hands of guilt, health services are ‘Aboriginalised’; which is a euphemism for bestowing responsibility for identifying causes of attrition onto urban Aboriginal clinicians and liaison personnel, who speak no Aboriginal languages and who have little or no knowledge of indigenous culture or the realities of daily and nightly community life. Meanwhile, hopelessly remote academics and scientists pontificate from ivory portals such as the Menzies School of Health Research, delivering papers which prove only that the dying are protected by the already cerebrally dead.

But ‘Menzies’ has an important function: It is an institution with a single imperative: don’t rock the boat. In a sea of death, Aboriginal ill-health provides lucrative employment for medical scientists, doctors, nurses, ward staff, and administration and health research public servants. Death and illness keeps their careers afloat.

This paper is a last-ditch attempt to draw attention to the real causes of poor Aboriginal health; causes which are relevant only to that area triangulated by the Red Centre, Arnhem Land and the Kimberly. We have little interest in the solutions proposed in other states, wherein the common language is mainstream English and what is claimed as culture has nothing in common with the northern reality. And let me stress the word “nothing”. The sham of pale overweight people of indeterminate genetic origin, shambling lethargically around smoking gum leaves and making meaningless noises, while impossibly gullible white Australians hand-brush the ‘sacred’ smoke into their bloodshot eyes, must be called out for the fraud that it is.

This is a farce. In the northern cultural delta, we do not care if southern Aboriginal-ish people want to make fools of themselves, or generate mental illness by basing their entire lives on fraudulent identities and histories, but this circus is used to divert scarce funds away from the people who actually need it. That is our objection.

More specifically, what differentiates northern Aboriginal communities from those of other parts of Australia are the following factors. These are listed in order of impact.

CAUSES OF ABORIGINAL ILLHEALTH AND PREMATURE DEATH

(1) Almost-exclusive NT Aboriginal reliance on indigenous languages, with English used only for the most basic of communications with non-Aborigines.

Although to address the demands of western-style analysis, these causal factors are herein artificially categorised, all seven are actively generated by an integrated government inability to comprehend the prosaic realities of daily Aboriginal life; a failure that is caused by government refusal to heed the decades-old remedial advice of cross-cultural liaison veterans.

Chronologically, the first of these relatively enlightened advisers was the anthropologist AP Elkin, who in the 1940s correctly pointed out that use of pidgin and interpreters was hopelessly inadequate and that if government officers did not learn Aboriginal languages, then all development programmes were destined to fail.

Other workers and officers (myself included) provided identical advice over the following 80 years. All were routinely ignored.

These conclusions were far from being limited to NT remote area workers.

Anthropologists around the world voiced concern that resistance in this regard appeared to be entrenched in Australia’s anthropology faculties. Finally, in 1991/92, a team of five Austrian anthropologists reluctantly conducted a three months survey of Australia. They found their worst fears realised: that refusal to learn Aboriginal languages was endemic to Australian anthropology.

Elsewhere in the world, failure to demonstrate linguistic proficiency before presenting papers and notes would automatically precipitate the stripping of degrees and even criminal prosecutions if this had contributed to misguided government or other financial activity.

It was formally concluded that Australian anthropologists had encouraged and enabled official refusal to acknowledge Aboriginal languages as the essential conduit for meaningful communication and dialogue.

It is understood that the Northern Land Council (NLC) was pivotal in repressing this inquiry; as well it might, being the worst offender. However, many skeptical Australians might quite reasonably contend that the NLC is simply not powerful enough to quash a pan-European enquiry. Technically, this is true but the NLC was recreated in 1976 by inaugural Governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia, Nugget Coombs who answered, not to the Australian Government, but to the Rothschild Bank for International Settlements (BIS), which is the world’s most powerful financial institution.

Sent on a secret mission to restructure the NLC from a consensus model to one of rigid hierarchy, not even his long-standing girlfriend was permitted to know what he was doing. So, yes, the BIS had the power to close down any inquiry, anywhere.

To counter criticism, and to create a barricade against more accurate analysis of Aboriginal culture, anthropologists effectively colonised traditional Aborigines, basically ordering all other Australians to butt out, claiming anthropologists alone possessed the legitimate expertise with which to analyse and record. That they invariably misinterpreted this culture compounded the injury. (Note: traditional Yolngu seniors and top interpreters are prepared to verify this shameful reality).

As a result, remote communities became trapped in a microcosmic world of purely local and indigenous perceptions, and were denied any understanding of wider society, government processes, political realities, economic pressures or, indeed, what is happening elsewhere in the world.

What should have been their primary medium for bridging the communication and cultural gap, the Northern Land Council (NLC), has proved to be the primary access tool of mining and mineral entities. Moreover, the NLC paved the way for installation of a US/Raytheon-LockheedMartin missile base on Aboriginal land; a future source of reprisal missile strikes and lethal rocket and missile exhausts previously banned as “too dangerous” by a 1987 Commonwealth Government of Australia study.

The NLC claimed it had explained to the Yolngu people that the facility was a civilian aerospace facility only and that it would be a source of future jobs. My own survey of people of the nearby Dhalinybuy community revealed that the thirteen hours of consultation had never occurred and that the civilian function was essentially a cover story for the Military. Not one Aboriginal person surveyed had any knowledge of the missile/rocket activity. It was clear the explanation had been presented only in English.

The application of English/pidgin causes a cascade of injuries

Even in communities where nominal English is routinely spoken (ie Ngukurr and Burunga) this is essentially pidgin, in which only one Aboriginal derivative links an average of 17 Aboriginal-pronounced English words, the meaning of which is distorted by Aboriginal cultural perceptions. Ergo, the same statement in both vernaculars has radically different meanings.

Whilst opportunistic linguists have created their own career paths by claiming NT pidgin is rightly a creole (comically rebranded Kreol) the NT variant is no such thing, especially when compared to actual US Creole, or to PNG and Thursday Island pidgins (ie one in ten words on Badu Island is of Polynesian* extraction and the remainder is the Badu dialect, with only a handful of words as English derivatives). *The British Navy intercepted a slave ship with Samoan captives, put the captives ashore on Badu, but their ship sank before being able to repatriate the passengers).

Promotion of pidgin at the expense of local languages is extremely damaging. Songlines cannot be sung in pidgin, therefore culture cannot be transmitted between generations, and the social and cultural disintegration that follows is rapid and dramatic. Languages can be irretrievably lost in a single generation. The same destruction is wrought in multi-lingual communities when bilingual education is applied. One language is promoted at the expense of all others, causing immense intergenerational dislocation and cultural collapse. All of this is encouraged by Government, especially school teachers.

The communication gap between the people of remote Aboriginal communities and the wider Australian community is enormous and is the primary cause of ignorance about measures that promote good health, and also prevent any form of education or training and, thence, employment.

In summation, it can be said that the high premature death rate of NT Indigenous is primarily[TR1] caused by government refusal to permit effective communication.

As health research activists, we have adopted the phrase: One nation; two worlds, to highlight this issue. In the northern cultural delta, technically we live within a single nation but in the real world of human interaction this is two distinct cultural and linguistic worlds.

Without communication, Indigenous people cannot learn about nutrition, food toxicity, hygiene, disease transmission, or food purchase budgeting. This is, purely and simply, genocide, inflicted with the weapons of deliberately cultivated ignorance and racism. There is no indication that government at any level has any desire to resolve this stalemate and any attempt to establish such a conversation at any level is immediately quashed.

To demonstrate any absence of exaggeration or hyperbole on my part, in the same week that I publish this document on Substack oziz4oziz, a copy will be presented to the NT Government’s Minister for Health. It will later be evident that the content is rejected or, more likely, never read in the first place. This is what passes for government in Australia of the 21^st century.

(Curiously, it does not appear to occur to government that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction, and that the projected Aboriginal reaction to 237 years of stonewalling, may prove to be more expensive for politicians than compliance with this most basic of community needs might impose. The rise of BRICS, destined to expand from Africa, through south Asia-Pacific to Latin America, will inevitably encompass Australia. When that happens, this will herald harsh reprisals on those found guilty of crimes against humanity. Readers are encouraged to read the recent speech by president Swazi of Ghana).

Meanwhile, over the timespan of three generations, all experienced personnel who imparted the advice that government must accommodate Aboriginal languages, have been castigated and vilified, and their reputations assassinated; commencing with AO Elkin. Exposing the mediocre intellects of anthropologists at large, Elkin has been accused of being assimilationist (ref Wikileaks) even though he was the only one demanding that whites learn Aboriginal languages. The hypocrisy is breathtaking.

Fundamentalist critics of traditional Indigenous claim that these languages will and should die out; that they are incompatible with technology. This is manifestly untrue. Aborigines use IT and mechanisation as efficiently as any other sector and a much greater proportion of traditional Aborigines are home mechanics than one will find in the wider community, although they have little respect for maintenance issues. But this latter is an issue emerging across generations of mainstream Australians, which points to ongoing social and cultural orientation deficiencies across the board.

In all other respects, like all ethnic groups, the NT traditional Aboriginal population prefers the Aboriginal environment so there is no compelling reason to not speak their own languages. Secondly, there are no English words for most of what they encounter in their day-to-day lives. For older Aborigines, English language is barely relevant in their lives at all.

It is oft-heard from critics of Aborigines that: “After a couple of centuries, they should have learned English by now”. Overlooking the pure colonialism and ethnocentrism of this critique, Australians need to be aware that the average timespan of a school teacher in a NT Aboriginal community is four months.

To a normal monolingual English-speaker it takes two years for their brain to process the Aboriginal words that their ear records. For most, it is another year to pronounce the words with any semblance of coherence. That is when accommodation of vocabulary becomes practical and achievable and this absorbs another couple of years. As this has never been achieved by anybody in only four months, it is a miracle that any exchange in languages has taken place.

Unsurprisingly, even when Europeans have lived in the communities for several decades, this actually multiplies the obstacles because interpreting langauges incorporates translation of cultures and this presumes both parties are able to perceive their own culture. This is true only of people who have already made the transition between two cultures because these are the only people who can see their own culture because the mirror difference is painfully obvious to them. Australia’s immigrant population understands exactly what I mean.

The cold reality is that western culture is presented to we Europeans, not in an accurate international context, but as the product of political propaganda. Thus, our earnest young school teacher explains to his Aboriginal student that in the West, we value democracy, justice, fairness, compliance with the law, family, politeness, punctuality, patriotism, and financial wisdom. Any observant person of intelligence soon realises none of this is true. Thomas Paine or Abraham Lincoln would be unable to identify a single shred of evidence that we engage any of these virtues.

Consequently, educated Aborigines; and prior to 1978, most young people in the NT communities were indeed educated to secondary school standard; became confused and were unable to understand why none of our exemplary culture was evident to them. It has been widely concluded that this gap is a secret culture that is forever invisible to outsiders (The book “Warriors Lie Down and Die” records just such a conversation, although the author shares the same confusion).

Although I am not normally given to the use of superlatives and dramatic language, in the Northern Territory and Kimberly context, it is difficult to not conclude that government and its mining allies have adopted language unilateralism as a weapon of war against the Aboriginal people.

Having identified the core issue, I will now qualify and clarify the other contributing causal factors resulting in poor Aboriginal health, although it will be immediately appreciated that these overlap, causing understandable confusion for medical observers.

(2) Zero awareness of the nutritional consequences of processed foods, take-aways, soft drinks, and food toxicity issues

In Aboriginal English, the exhortation to “eat good food” is interpreted as ‘if it tastes good, it is good, so eat it and eat more of it.’ The outcome is obesity, coronary heart disease, cancer, and diabetes.

A three-year sampling of outlooks and attitudes in North East Arnhem Land revealed that less than 1% of indigenous residents were aware that many processed foods have toxic components, are lacking in essential nutrition, cause harmful weight gain, and will otherwise injure their health.

Although the Department of Health organises promotions to address such issues, these do not work. Few people hired to communicate the necessary messages can speak indigenous languages and most are too young for any Aboriginal adults to take them seriously. Standard presentation by “Aboriginal” Miwatj proxies is free food bribery in promotional stalls, to create the illusion of public participation in health education. The irony is sublime.

Experience has taught that any health message must be in the language of the recipients, must be delivered verbally, repeatedly and for months at a time; and by a person with credibility. This never happens.

Once again, broad context is important. A survey of mainstream shoppers in the Nhulunbuy Woolworths supermarket showed that one third were similarly unaware and only 20% grasped food toxicity issues. This suggests an Australia-wide problem, a view reinforced by the 35% obesity pandemic and rampant diabetes. Critics declare that Australia provides less consumer protection in this regard than any other OECD nation except the US.

One lesson learned is that all personnel working with traditional Aboriginal people must demonstrate language and cultural proficiency BEFORE they are employed. For some 45 years, a job applicant has had merely to tick a checklist that said he or she had these skills and nobody cared a damn whether they did or didn’t because the objective of the exercise was to satisfy the department’s ethnic minority employment quotas. The main qualification is brown skin; actually, the only qualification. Quotas are extremely destructive.

(3) Poorly understood issues of disease and parasite transmission, exacerbated by housing designs that promote infection

NT Housing is designed by architects; not to suit the needs of residents but for the benefit of the construction industry. This was not always true. The 1960s and 70s Commonwealth government worker home designs were airy and cheap to keep cool. NT self-government in 1978 resulted in abandonment of healthy designs and the Country Liberal Party regime of Paul Everingham promoted profit and little else. Exasperation eventually paved the way for an ALP government, which achieved even less.

It has been noted by all Aborigines on Elcho Island following Cyclone Lam, that the missionary houses, modeled on Darwin government homes, remained standing while many of the modern homes were blown away. Clearly, health was not the only value jettisoned.

But criticism of Aboriginal housing is not new. Many community health nurses who worked in communities in the 1980s and 90s stated that the designs were “death traps”, with very little cross-ventilation and large spaces of air that were stagnant. Unaware of the health implications, residents left damp clothes and towels lying around, which were then used indiscriminately, and seldom dried out. Damp towels and clothing in 90% humidity and 33 degrees temperature, constitutes a pathogen-infused environment. This ignorance continues today and points to a lack of hygiene education.

Silly TV health promotion advertisements, featuring AFL players, sprinkled with words like ‘deadly’ and ‘mob’, communicate only with their urban audience and are an embarrassment to everybody else. Inexplicably, it appears these words are believed by urban people to be Aboriginal.

As Aboriginal housing progressed in ensuing decades, these community nurses also understood what the Menzies School of Health Research will never comprehend, that overcrowding per se was not the primary problem; that overcrowding at times of funerals, when paranoia is high and windows and doors are sealed shut on the 20 or so bereaved sharing monsoonal tropical airspace, is when most disease transmission occurs. The use of visitor tents has alleviated this pressure but in the wet season it merely disperses the problem geographically.

This phenomenon applies particularly to scabies which, left untreated, causes serious damage to organs and for many, precipitates Rheumatic Heart Disease (further reading is available from Fiji medical research facilities). It is speculated that a single Ivermectin tablet per person per week, would save thousands of lives and at a cost of $2.60 per person per year but government has banned this Nobel prize-winning miracle drug, claiming it is experimental, disregarding some 40 documented trials over as many years.

The primary shelter problem is house design. A secondary is housing cost.

The average Aboriginal-community house, regulated by the NT Department of Housing, costs between $700K and $900K to build. By comparison, an Aboriginal-designed house, with 100% cross-ventilation, with infection mitigation built in, and constructed of top-grade materials requiring no repairs or maintenance for 20 years, has a materials cost of $56K. If built DIY by the community, which is feasible, that is the total cost… $56,000. This means 14 houses can be built for the same budget NT Housing applies to one badly designed dwelling requiring heavy and expensive maintenance from day one.

That is how one ends the Aboriginal housing problem, which the NT Construction industry will never permit.

Another problem evident here is corruption which, from 1973 onwards, was rebranded with the more respectable US terminology, lobbying and private/public. And then, again, if we solved all Aboriginal problems, and we most certainly can, some 10,000 white and urban Aboriginal people would lose their lucrative NT jobs. Clearly there is no incentive to resolve issues and there are massive incentives to compound problems and embrace moral corruption.

(4) Familiarity with, and preference for, bush tucker (traditional foods), accessed normally on clan homelands; opposed in this by supermarkets, the all-powerful Grocery Council, grocery duopoly, ALPA, and heavily-lobbied governments.

Cultures tend to wrap themselves around available foods and the productivity of seasons; and so, unsurprisingly, access to what is colloquially known as “bush tucker” is enthusiastically sought; every intuition reminding people that this provided a satisfying and balanced diet for many thousands of years.

In 1975, responding to my request, Acting Director of the Department of Aboriginal Affairs, Ian Pitman, modified the conditions of finance recipiency of the Aboriginal Benefits Trust Account (ABTA) to enable Aborigines to purchase Landcruiser Troopcarriers as a means of transporting extended families to homelands and, thence, bush tucker.

It was thenceforth recognized that this was improving local nutrition levels, social cohesion, family morale, and even mental health; all of which complied with ABTA criteria. Obviously, indigenous foods close to major communities were quickly depleted, leaving homelands as the only practical source.

Consequently, with the explosion of Homeland communities, Aboriginal remote areas nutrition began to rise markedly.

In 1975, a new social worker employed by the Northern Territory Administration’s Welfare Branch, whose husband was the manager of Nightcliff Woolworths, established dialogue with the Arnhem Land Progress Association (ALPA) and its counterpart in Katherine, and promoted the idea of adopting the Woolworths supermarket model.

This effort in micro-colonialism was lucratively successful and Aboriginal community store shelves were flooded with consumer fodder; essentially processed foods, soft drinks, and sugar. The typically lean Indigenous people of yesteryear rapidly gained weight and now obesity is the norm, reflected in an epidemic of diabetes, coronary heart disease, and cancers. ALPA is oblivious to the catastrophe over which it presides and its missionary base is even more blind.

The mid-1970s enlightenment of the Department of Aboriginal Affairs appeared to wane from that time onwards; probably undermined by NT self-government and the CLP’s anti-Aboriginal attitude. The urban Aboriginal corporation ATSIC was also a factor. With two former NT Chief Minsters (Everingham and Stone) and a President (Gary Nairn) becoming influential components of the Australian Liberal National Party Coalition, the CLP antipathy quickly took hold in Canberra and was manifested in anti-homeland sentiment. As former Commonwealth Cabinet Minister Amanda Vanstone put it, Government has no intention of financing an Aboriginal diaspora dwelling in living museums (or words to that effect).

Cynically, responsibility for homelands was transferred to state and territory governments, whose enthusiasm was almost as lukewarm. A glance at North East Arnhem Land provides convenient insight: 800 residents of Galiwin’ku, which was virtually every adult on the island, signed a petition calling for the removal of Marthakal Homeland Resource Corporation’s CEO, Yvonne Sutherland.

After a brief consideration by officials, she was reinstated. So much for self-determination and democracy. Meanwhile, the residents of Muthamul Homeland, who were evacuated when Cyclone Lam of a decade ago destroyed their 27 K access road, are still living in exile, compliments of the said CEO. Both government-funded Marthakal Resource Centre and the NT Government refused to clear the road of the hundred or so fallen trees and seven year’s tropical regrowth, even though they were promised repatriation when originally evacuated.

Who are the victims? This is relevant to our subject and is most illuminating.

One of the most senior traditional elders is Timothy Buthimang Dhurrkay. In 1964, he was the first NT Aboriginal employer of Indigenous workers, who laboured on his successful Galiwin’ku market garden for 15 years, dramatically uplifting the community’s nutrition and health. Canberra’s imposition of the Community Development Employment Programme (CDEP), colloquially known as work for the dole or “sit-down money”, against the express will of an NT-surveyed majority (Dept. of Social Services), destroyed the market garden overnight.

Up until that moment, all residents of Galiwin’ku either had jobs, or were busily occupied with hunting or looking after children. The day following introduction of CDEP, this plummeted to a dozen or so.

As a former resident, Buthimang wants to establish a new garden at Muthamul, to reinforce Yolngu family values and to establish economic independence. He has the work knowledge and productivity record to back him up, yet the NT Government seems intent on preventing this. Other residents-in-exile have comparable ability. The NT ALP Senator, Malarndirri McCarthy was repeatedly requested to help but did nothing.

Finally, in 2019, in utter frustration, and although then aged 77, Buthimang’s adopted brother cleared the 27-kilometre road by hand, using hand and chain saws, towing tree trunks with his Landcruiser troopie; and then cleared the airstrip. He was initially assisted by former residents but the early onset of the Wet Season postponed community reconstruction until the 2020 Dry Season. Government refusal to repair the community bore and water tank, damaged by wildfire entirely through its own neglect, continues to prevent resident’s return.

The road needs several culverts and the bulldozing of massive fallen trees blocking a gorge road in the rainforest section of terrain, to enable all year-round development. Without minimal, albeit low-cost ($5K), government support this is impossible.

Intensely productive Aboriginal people, who possess the formula for cultural and economic reconstruction, are exiled from their homes. These are the obstacles that are invisible to whites.

Although politicians love to laud the goal of Aboriginal self-sufficiency, it is abundantly clear they have no intention of permitting this to happen. Powerful interests want all NT Aborigines locked into large-scale ghettoes of welfare dependency, despondency, and despair.

(5) Relatively high cost of western foods, in terms of price and transport costs

Remote area community shops invariably feature “high prices to cover additional transport costs”. This is exacerbated by the prohibitive cost of customers driving to the shop in the first place.

For example, the people of western North East Arnhem Land are forced to drive to Nhulunbuy Woolworths to get food and groceries but this routinely ranges in cost from $60 in fuel to $400 in bush taxi fees. Diesel, too, is expensive; 30% higher than in Katherine, which cannot be justified by the 750 K delivery distance.

In fifty years, the Northern Territory has hosted three transport cost enquiries. All results were quashed and kept secret. Evidently this reflects the power of lobbies.

Alternatively, most foods can be grown, hunted, harvested, or collected in homelands; a prospect not greeted warmly by Woolworths or Arnhem Land Progress Association (ALPA). Buffalo are a well-researched source of income and meat but government plans to shoot these out, in line with policy elsewhere in the West.

ALPA postures by charging more for unhealthy food and transfers the price to subsidise healthy food. When asked why it does not simply eliminate the unhealthy food, it responds with “If we don’t sell it, somebody else will”. In other words, what we have here is rationalisation and cynical PR.

ALPA recently chopped its funding of the Yolngu Nations Assembly Aboriginal Law Recognition Project by 50%, even though this is its most significant PR gesture. Such recognition would enable family elders to exercise control over parents and children, ensure adequate upbringing, and sever the chain that drags children into crime and imprisonment. Even that reduced funding was withdrawn.

Essentially, ALPA’s army of white administration and 100-strong Indian labour force does not want traditional Aboriginal democratic consensus to evolve because this may very well impinge on profits. It did not take ALPA long to become Woolworth’s adoring little brother. Tellingly, the current CEO of ALPA is bereft of prerequisite transcultural knowledge or skills. His executives regularly jet first class over their dying customers, touching down only to play the monthly “fact-finding” game.

(6) Laws inhibiting access to traditional foods

Most Aborigines in the NT suffer from low oxyhaemoglobin, which means energy levels are routinely very low, a problem which can be remedied with enhanced access to red meat. The price of red meat in supermarkets is prohibitive (ie $40 for a short/small leg of lamb) and is laced with hormones (rBST & rBGH for milk) and antibiotics (ie 70% of global antibiotics use is for factory and feedlot farming) and people would much prefer to hunt their own, which includes wallaby, kangaroo, cattle, emu, and buffalo.

A rifle is the only realistic method of obtaining red meat. Romantic as the notion may be, hunting meat with a spear is out of the question, the prerequisite time developing such skills has long since been reallocated to legally demanded attendance at schools.

Actual experience of the author: “With a lot of old people and children reliant on my fitness and hunting capacity, I recently requested a firearm license from the Nhulunbuy Police, paid my $219 application fee and duly satisfied stringent criteria for gun safety and storage, and duly passed the written exam, the answers for which must be 100% correct. Obviously, this is a disqualification gauntlet. Complying with stated demands, I submitted the letter from traditional owners adjacent to the region, who happily provided permission to hunt on the land. The rifle is also needed to cull feral pigs, which would otherwise raid our new gardens; and rogue bull buffalo who occasionally are a threat to people.

Police waited a couple of weeks until the 3-month application period was almost exhausted to advise me the application was “refused because the traditional owner‘s permission did not appear on a document under corporate letterhead”.

Appeal to the Minister for Police essentially produced the advice that I cannot have a rifle license because I am white.

First, it must be said that corporate letterheads have nothing to do with gun safety, possible access by terrorists, or the status of traditional owners.

Secondly, corporatisation is anathema to Aboriginal culture, the entire point being to concentrate control in a single individual (the CEO) which is a purely western concept and alien to Aboriginal Law. Traditional Indigenous decision-making is achieved by applying consensus protocols, which is why Aboriginal chiefs or kings did not ever exist.

The act of forcing Aborigines to adopt a hierarchy is pure and unadulterated colonialism. Manipulation of the people is always difficult but if they are forced into representation by a single individual, compliance is simple. Even in the West, unilateral decision-making is viewed with polarised ambiguity… described as leadership if it favours our own point of view, and dictatorship if it does not.

Moreover, unilateralism creates division and conflict, which I would have thought is the diametric opposite of what NT Police should want to achieve.

But here, once again, I am being provocatively naïve. Transparently, police raise revenues by pretending to operate a qualification mechanism when in fact they have no intention whatsoever of permitting a firearm license. That this deprives Yolngu of red meat to enhance their health is of no interest to them.

Claims that corporations are necessary for conveyance of funds are pure nonsense. This was previously achieved with Associations and Boards of Directors, and failing that there is the most successful of all organizational models, the Cooperative. This latter is actually well-suited to Aboriginal culture, is registered under the same legislation, but is actively discouraged by the NT Government.

Prior to 1975, corporations were restricted to local government, where endemic corruption was duly enhanced, which is why Australia’s founding fathers refused to incorporate local government in the Constitution. As Bob Hawke and the UN-sponsored Local Government Association discovered to their chagrin, Australians reject the implicit corruption, which was voiced in a national referendum and later LGA surveys.

In commerce, prior to 1975, we had Managing Directors and Boards of Directors. CEOs did not exist. The new structure was imposed by globalist bankers, as the world is now comprehending with rising alarm.

Outright and blatant corruption is what dominates now. One of mankind’s most basic human rights is the right to feed himself and his family. In this instance we have a supposed law that prevents this in the most fundamental way. And this is not limited to meat. In a slight-of-hand drafting of legislation, Australian government recognizes commercial fishing and recreational fishing, but not subsistence fishing, which constitutes the same basic human right.

(7) High cost of access to traditional foods

While it is accepted that this particular issue cannot be resolved locally it is, nevertheless, a significant contributing factor in Aboriginal ill-health and must be outlined for future reference.

Whether it is the high cost of outboard fuel or hunting-vehicle diesel, the cost of hunting food, is inordinately high. Actually, fuel costs are the single biggest driver of the cost of living, because they inflate every single element of production, logistics, and consumption, sometimes with multiplier effects on a single rung.

Because history is no longer a component of national education curriculum, few Australians recall why fuel is so expensive and the media blames OPEC. With life getting tougher by the day, made so by increasingly oppressive governments, readers should comprehend why fuel prices are so high when in many comparable countries the bowser price is a few cents per litre.

In 1954, PM Robert Menzies, in one of his slavish gestures to foreign powers, signed the Oil Price Parity Agreement (OPPA), which theoretically meant that we Australians pay international prices for our own oil. And, yes, dear reader, we do have our own oil (light sweet crude, on par with that of Iraq and Venezuela) and the highest quality diesel in the world. We also had ten oil distilleries, now in mothballs.

In actual practice, the oil corporations plunder our oil for free and sell us low quality fuel from Singapore. To this now-inflated price is added 38% tax, plus GST. It is time Australia abandoned both the OPPA and the fuel/GST taxes, making the bowser price 12 cents per litre, which would reduce the cost of living and industrial production immensely. Food prices also would fall dramatically. Ironically, this would also make us supremely competitive with the rest of the world, which turns the mantra supporting globalisation and free trade on its head.

It is fully appreciated that government is not about to scramble into parliament and scrap fuel taxes and eject Shell from our national oil fields, just because a bunch of blackfellas thinks it’s a good idea. However, we do want politicians to understand we comprehend the situation better then they imagine and it is better to bend a little now than provoke indigenous tribal lands declarations of national sovereignty… new Nations funded by a Singaporean style trade economy supported by sale of cheap cigarettes and biodiesel. Because that is the single remaining alternative on the negotiating table: self-funded secession.

Summation

In summation, we believe all our interests would be better served by assisting homeland communities achieve sustainability, because this will precipitate economic independence (which will please the taxpayer), and promote social and family integrity. But most of all, it will create an environment in which Aboriginal health can be improved; dramatically and measurably.

Politically, it would be advantageous to immediately assist Muthamul Homeland because it will deliver empirical evidence that supports the above assertions, which also constitute justification for homeland funding.

The Homeland communities of Gawa and Banthula are also excellent current examples. Their commitment should be taken seriously.

If Australians truly want to see an end to Aboriginal genocide (and northern Aboriginal crime), the following measures must be implemented:

· Establishment of Aboriginal language and transcultural skills colleges, with graduates assuming all government liaison roles.

· Appointment of permanent senior multilingual health education personnel in communities.

· Fund housing that addresses Aboriginal needs for shelter rather than those of the NT construction industry;

· Assist the development of Aboriginal Homelands and ameliorate transport costs;

· Fund water bores, tanks, reticulation, and fencing materials and assist Aborigines to locate and manage successful food gardens. There is a precedent as a template. Moreover, this merely emulates mainstream urban civil funding and services.

· Ensure all communities have realistic access to firearms for hunting;

· Review fuel prices in Australia to ensure rural and remote regions are not subsidising cities, as at present;

· Abandon the OPPA and sever connections with NYMEX and LPE (who are, incidentally, the actual arbiters of global fuel prices).

· Provide Recognition of Aboriginal Law in traditional communities. This was proved practical and effective in 1979 in the once-dysfunctional community of Bamyili, now recognised as the most dynamic Aboriginal community in Australia; renamed Burunga. Details are provided in the Yolngu Nations Assembly Corporation project document Recognition of Yolngu (Aboriginal) Law, currently accessible from AIATSIS, Canberra or from PO Box 40308, Casuarina, NT 0811.

This document was researched and prepared as an ongoing project from 1973 to 2025, including the decade from 1974 to 1983 as an employee of the Commonwealth and NT Governments; by

Anthony Hayward-Ryan (aka Ngulamung Dhurrkay).

Representing Muthamul Homeland Collective; NE Arnhem Land,

PO Box 40308

Casuarina NT 0811.

4/01/2025

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