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- Chapter Three
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Aboriginal
fringe dwellers in Darwin:
cultural persistence or culture of resistance? |
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NT News editorial
(March 11, 1996) stated: ‘Pulling down of makeshift camps and moving
people on certainly doesn’t work. The itinerants just shift to another
spot in town. Disliking them and their lifestyle won’t make them go
away. Positive ideas are needed’.
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Chapter Three
Locating the fringe. In the first chapter I discussed differences between ‘cultural’ and ‘political’ approaches to Aboriginal studies. One approach emphasises a social domain which functions parallel to the wider socio-economic world, while the other emphasises the dialectic engendered when an indigenous society is encapsulated within the dominant Australian socio-economic system. While Tonkinson (1999:134) suggests that the two theoretical frameworks are ‘closely intertwined’, the differences are typified in the contrasting analyses of Aboriginal society in an urban environment by Basil Sansom (1980a) and Gillian Cowlishaw (1988). In this chapter I include
the role of the anthropologist, the selection of a study topic and
the ‘finding’ of a field site as evidence of interconnections between
fringe dwellers and the wider community. I suggest that the anthropologist
is required to be a ‘committed witness’, rather than an ‘invisible
observer’, whose ‘writing up’ of fieldwork cannot be separated from
the struggle of fringe dwellers for space. Drawing upon my past experience
in the Darwin fringe dwellers’ struggle, I trace the connections between
my primary fieldwork site at Fish Camp and the continuing struggle
for space by homeless Aboriginal campers. I examine how media representations
ended any illusion of a bounded field and confirmed the preparedness
of fringe dwellers to resist against public and political opposition.
Finally I give the example of a fringe camp where a process of ‘legitimisation’
as an Aboriginal community has led to public support in the face of
NT Government threats to ‘relocate’ the town camp.
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3.2 Fieldwork and the ‘itinerant problem’ These comments, combined with my previous
experience of conditions for homeless Aboriginal people in Darwin, confirmed
the relevance of my research topic. During my brief pre-fieldwork visit
to Darwin in February 1996, a newspaper interview situated me in an
earlier role as defender of Aboriginal rights under the heading ‘Bill
is back to tell of battle’ (NT News March 7, 1996):
A rebellious school teacher left Perth
in 1969 to become a hippy in Darwin. But on arrival Bill Day became
immersed in the lives of Aborigines and a champion for land rights...
Mr Day, 56, who lived on Lameroo Beach
for six months in 1969, returned to Darwin this week after more than
10 years in Perth to meet old friends and reminisce about a grand struggle.
(2)
By the time of my return, the renewed
campaign by the Northern Territory Government and Darwin City Council
(DCC) against ‘the itinerants’ had driven the Aboriginal camps from
the beaches and parks into hidden sites in bushland around the town
which often received early morning visits from police or council inspectors.
A petition of over 4000 signatures (Schulz 1996) had called for firmer
action against unsociable behaviour in public places. ‘Aboriginal people
are quite free to come into white communities, white people are not
allowed into black communities, that’s a very distinct form of racism’,
proclaimed the mayor, in one of his many contributions to the lively
media debate (see Ween 1997:32).
On my return to The University of Western
Australia I mailed a standard letter to all interest groups in Darwin.
My letter ended:
Perhaps your interaction with the itinerants
will provide a valuable information resource. Therefore I would like
to work with your staff who have the most knowledge of the problems,
sharing any statistics you have gathered, respecting your experience
and taking heed of any difficulties you may anticipate.
Over twenty-two replies were received,
including a helpful discussion on the telephone with the manager of
a Darwin taxi company. The NT Tourist Commission expressed interest
‘in supporting any possible solution to a problem which can have a negative
image to visitors to the Northern Territory’. An alcohol awareness organisation
wrote of ‘an abundance of opinion but little factual data in this specific
area’. The Darwin City Council replied in detail:
Together with the public places program
Council operates in co-operation with a similar NT Police program, Council
supports the recent initiative to establish a Social Issues Reference
Group comprising representatives from Aboriginal organisations and NT
and Local Governments. The initial meetings of those keen to establish
such a group saw issues underlying much of the anti-social behaviour
apparent in public places as a high priority for discussion aimed at
generating long term solutions. The organisation of this reference group
is auspiced by the NT Office of Aboriginal Development. (3)
One organisation admitted to a failing
of many other social welfare agencies in Darwin. The NT Region of the
Salvation Army (22 April, 1996) stated: ‘We do have a work with itinerants,
however we have very little to do with the indigenous population’. I
decided that I would not feel comfortable being accepted into a fringe
camp while working closely with institutions or organisations seeking
a solution to ‘the itinerant problem’. I share the doubts of Gupta and
Ferguson (1996:9) about an anthropology where: ‘the importance of particular
topics as research priorities have mostly been thinly disguised (if
that) projections of the state’s strategic and geopolitical priorities’.
In the Northern Territory, research on ‘the itinerant problem’ could
come under that category, as my replies indicated. Because of the heightened
conflict between fringe camps and authorities from early in 1996 and
my own contacts which developed as my fieldwork progressed, I did not
pursue the possibilities suggested in the replies to my letters and
in discussions during my pre-fieldwork visit to Darwin in March.
As the campaign of harassment intensified
during 1996, I anticipated that getting to know people who are being
constantly moved could be difficult. A police blitz was announced (NT
News February 20, 1996) and DCC by-law 103 making it an offence to sleep
in a public place between sunset and sunrise was enforced (NT News April
4, 1996). In the month of August 1996, when I began fieldwork, the media
later reported that 398 people were warned for sleeping in a public
place and 156 infringements for the same offence were issued (Suburban
October 9, 1996). As a sole researcher using a bicycle as transport,
I suspected that finding the shifting camps and retaining contact long
enough to build a relationship of trust in a sprawling city like Darwin
would be impossible.
Urban anthropologists recognise that
the size and complexity of urban groups and localities often limits
what can be accomplished by one fieldworker (Foster and Van Kemper 1988:96).
In my preparation for participant observation, I had internalised much
of what Gupta and Ferguson (1996:25) call ‘the hegemonic "Malinowskian"
practice of "the field"’. In this tradition, I sought a manageable field
site where I could work with a particular group of, as yet unknown,
fringe dwellers. However, as I argue in this thesis, not only is the
methodological convenience of a bounded field destabilised by the tactical
refusal of Aboriginal fringe dwellers to remain within defined borders,
but the artificial drawing of boundaries to make fieldwork manageable
potentially renders invisible many influences on fringe dwellers’ lives.
Early in his fieldwork, Sansom (1980a:9)
found that: ‘given inter-mob competition, it was not possible to run
with a variety of mobs’. I also found that without ties of kinship the
fieldworker must show a degree of commitment to a particular group before
being accepted as part of a fringe mob, although the rivalry does not
necessarily prevent some Aboriginal campers moving between groups. In
a response similar to that noted by Benn (1994:7) in Arnhem Land communities,
fringe campers appeared to take a possessive and jealous view of ‘their
balanda’ (White person) as useful resource.
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3.3 The role of the anthropologist
In this section, I defend my personal involvement in fringe dweller resistance during my fieldwork between 1996 and 1998 and suggest that my research and my thesis cannot be viewed as separate from the embattled position of fringe dwellers in Darwin. I was aware that research in an embattled environment might involve personal commitment to their cause, possible conflict with authorities and difficulties in satisfying the requirements for objectivity in research. Indeed, as I describe in this and later chapters I soon became an active participant in the fringe dwellers’ struggle for space in Darwin. However, the point of my thesis is not whether fringe dwellers will openly resist without outside help, which I have already suggested is unlikely. My point is, that fringe dwellers in the Northern Territory over a period of almost thirty years have consistently shown a political awareness and preparedness to openly protest which suggests that their oppositional role has not been adequately examined in other studies. Towards this end, I maintain that my methodology satisfies the definition of scientific and objective methodology cited by D’Andrade (1995b:433) and Harris (1995:423) as, ‘public, replicable, and testable’. Research proposals which use ‘the vocabulary
of justification’ to academically select a field solely to test ‘theoretical
problems’ are criticised by Gupta and Ferguson (1996:18). In their critique
of fieldwork practices, they claim that neutrality privileges a study
directed by ‘intellectual interest’ under the guise of ‘universal, meritocratic
norms [which support] a particular structural and ideological location’
(p.18). According to Gupta and Ferguson (p.18), the authority of ‘academic
interest’ continues to privilege the White middle-class male over others
who may have alternative reasons for working with the subaltern group.
Gupta and Ferguson (p.18) continue: ‘leaving their commitments and responsibilities
for the sake of untethered "research interests" is for many anthropologists
a Faustian bargain, a betrayal of those people whose lives are inextricably
linked to their own’.
On the other hand, Bourgois (1996:256),
who worked amongst cocaine dealers in East Harlem, suggests that the
majority of anthropologists avoid venturing into unpleasant neighborhoods
‘where they must face the underside of their class privilege’. In defence
of his own subjective approach, Bourgois (1995:13) notes that ethnographers
using methods of participant observation, ‘establish long-term, organic
relationships with the people they write about. In other words, in order
to collect "accurate data", ethnographers violate the canons of positivist
research’ (p.13). Bourgois (p.18) cites Scheper-Hughes (1992:25) and
Wolf (1990) in his conviction that ‘anthropological writing can be a
site of resistance’ (see also Scheper-Hughes 1995:420), and that social
scientists should ‘face power’. (4)
The inequalities I witnessed in the field
in 1996 caused me to agree with Nancy Scheper-Hughes (1995:410) that
the anthropologist who witnesses injustice should be critical of the
position of an ‘objective’ and ‘neutral’ observer. However, I maintain
that international treaties recognised in Australia can be accepted
as objective facts. (5) As I will explain,
the conditions in the camps breach those treaties. Therefore I suggest
that my study of homeless Aborigines in Darwin is not only ethically
committed, but also constitutes an objective view supported by internationally
accepted standards which are increasingly being applied in criticisms
of Australia’s treatment of indigenous people.
In a criticism of Scheper-Hughes (1995), Ong (1995:429) sides with D’Andrade (1995a) in warning against ethnocentrism in applying ‘Western notions of morality’, so that cultural others become ‘bit players in yet another Western debate’ (Ong 1995:429). Ong (p.430) defends ‘a mobile sensitivity to cultural difference’, in contrast to Scheper-Hughes’s argument centred on ‘human universalism’, but agrees that an ethical anthropology should defend ‘minimal modern human rights (freedom from hunger and torture and the right to survive as people)’ (p.230). In the Australian context, I agree with Rose (1986:28), who argues: ‘If we who are frequently identified as experts on Aboriginal society and culture have little to say about the power relationships in which they are embedded, we contribute to the process of masking these relationships’. According to Scheper-Hughes (1995:417),
in the so-called ‘objective’ approach to anthropology, ‘the suffering
is aestheticized, (turned into theatre, viewed as "performance") and
thereby minimized and denied’. In his defence of ‘an advocacy approach’ to anthropological research, Harries-Jones (1996:166) notes: ‘If researchers form part of the situation which they have to interpret, this conflict between participant activism and objectivity is supposed to endanger the value of their conclusions’. In response to this argument, he cites opinions that ‘all science is a process of engagement between scientists and that which they study’ (p.166). Harries-Jones adds that, in this view, it is a doubtful proposition that the researcher is independent of the world and that the world is external to the observer. Scheper-Hughes (1995:419) claims that
‘noninvolvement was, in itself, an "ethical" and moral decision’. She
advocates instead the position of a committed ‘witness’ who, unlike
the passive spectator, is ‘accountable for what they see and what they
fail to see’. Consistent with my critique of The camp at Wallaby Cross
in Chapter Four, I take the position Scheper-Hughes (p.419) describes
as a witness ‘accountable to history’, rather than the spectator ‘accountable
to "science"’. Scheper-Hughes (p.411) asks: ‘What makes anthropology
and anthropologists exempt from the human responsibility to take an
ethical (and even political) stand on the working out of historical
events as we are privileged to witness them?’ (6)
Accepting this view, I suggest that my presence in the field and my
thesis become inseparable from the object of my study.
Contrary to Marcus’s prediction that
multi-sited fieldwork could lead to ‘cross-cutting and contradictory
personal commitments’ (Marcus 1995:113), a collection of short papers
on multi-sited research in a special edition of Canberra Anthropology
shows ‘the researcher will usually have a primary emotional and political
affiliation to one particular group within the wider field’ (Bolton
2000:4). In his Afterword to a collection of essays on multi-sited ethnography,
Weiner (2000:75) states:
Certainly it was Foucault who reminded
us that power is effective to the degree that it disguises itself, and
part of how it accomplishes this is by denying the systematicity to
regimes from which power emanates. And although Marcus admits that mobile
positioning attenuates the subaltern as a locus of resistance, when
through our ethnographic work, we bring this locus into relationship
with other nodes and points of agency, I think the opposite reading
is also possible: in shedding light on power’s systematicity, one has
to necessarily bring oneself into opposition to it and hence assume
an advocacy position with respect to those who are affected by these
regimes. Bill Day’s project I think rests on this reading of the siting
of power in the contemporary indigenous world. (7)
Arguments for objectivity in the field
(D’Andrade 1995a, 1995b), often fail to critique the role of the anthropologist
in the ‘writing up’ process, on return from the field. For example,
D’Andrade (1995b:433) states: ‘What makes an observation objective
is that it describes a phenomenon that exists independent of the observer’s
feelings or thoughts about it’. However, Marcus (1995:112) observes
that in the writing up stage of a multi-sited study, ‘the privilege
and authority of the anthropologist [is] unambiguously reassumed’.
At this point, according to Appadurai (1988:37) the mobile and all-seeing
ethnographer may create what he or she calls the ‘spatially incarcerated
native’ who is restricted in what they ‘know, feel, and believe’. Bourgois (1995:11) discusses the problems
of ‘the politics of representation’. He questions whether his ethnography
will confirm negative stereotypes and worries about ‘the political implications
of exposing minute details of the poor and powerless’ (p.18). He refers
to advice from Nader (1972) not to study the poor and powerless ‘because
everything you say will be used against them’. Despite these arguments,
Bourgois reasons that his graphic descriptions of the lives and conversations
of crack dealers emphasises ‘the interface between structural opposition
and individual action’ (p.12). To avoid providing material that may
compromise the campers in the hostile environment that existed in Darwin
in the 1990s, and due to other factors discussed in Chapter Five, I
have kept my accounts of life in the camps to a minimum.
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3.4 ‘Finding’ a field site
Marcus (1986:172) asks: ‘Why precisely are you in this locale rather than another?’ Marcus (p.172) comments: One is obliged to be self-consciously
justifying (or strategic) in the placement of ethnography precisely
because of sensitivity to the broader system representation that is
at stake, foreshortened by the practical advantage of ethnography fixed
in a single locale.
The ‘rhetorical self-consciousness about
the selection and bounding of the ethnographic subject’ discussed by
Marcus (p.172) was emphasised for me by the harassment of fringe dwellers
which was occurring as I moved about Darwin looking for a fieldwork
site.
Gupta and Ferguson (1996:13) claim descriptions
of arrival into the field as ‘another world’ often minimise, if not
make invisible, ‘the multiple ways in which colonialism, imperialism,
missionization, multinational capital, global cultural flows, and travel
bind these spaces together’. In the arrival narrative, the distinction
between ‘home’ and ‘away’ is often dramatically illustrated. The narrative
of discovery emphasises the field as a place apart, distant from home,
while the ‘arrival tropes’ used in ethnography ‘mediate this contradiction
between the engagement called for in fieldwork and the self-effacement
called for in formal ethnographic description’ (Pratt 1986:33). I will
presently apply these observations to my own arrival into the field.
Trigger (1992:3) introduces Doomadgee
with the tropes of a detective novel, with the lone outsider arriving
by road to discover if descriptions given by outsiders of a closed and
divided community were correct. Burbank (1994:7) is accepted by her
Aboriginal interlocutors as ‘a different kind of Westerner ... not there
to judge or change but to accept and learn’ (see also Trigger 1992:86).
In my activist text (Day 1994), the arrival scene authorises the liberator
of the exploited victim. Coming from ‘the free world’ into the land
of the oppressed, and returning to the freedom of writing in isolation,
is a version of the entry and exit trope perhaps most applicable to
my thesis.
The entry and exit narrative emphasises
the connections between the site and the wider world, through the person
of the anthropologist. For this reason, I suggest that critically examining
the entry of the anthropologist to the field becomes an aspect of a
multi-sited ethnography. For example, the ‘discovery’ of the site for
my fieldwork in 1996 introduces issues of media representation, power
relations and the history of the Aboriginal struggle for recognition
and land in Darwin, including my earlier involvement. These are some
of the connections I now examine.
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3.5 The establishment of Fish
Camp
An Aboriginal fringe camp was established on vacant Crown land at Fish Camp by an Aboriginal activist from Queensland, Fred Fogarty, and his Malak Malak wife, Violet Adams in 1973 (see Maps 2 and 3; Plates 17 and 18)). (8) The area is amongst burnt-out monsoon forest beside the tidal and mangrove-fringed Ludmilla Creek, under the flight path of the Darwin International Airport, in Darwin’s northern suburbs. (9) It is situated between the lease held by the incorporated Bagot Community, and the sea to the east. Fish Camp is near the banks of the tidal Ludmilla Creek which now serves as the southern border of the 301 hectare Kulaluk Aboriginal lease (Map3). Prior to 1965, the extensive eucalyptus and monsoon forest, grassland and swamp surrounding the site had been a sizeable part of the Bagot Aboriginal Reserve (see Woodward 1974:55-63; Wells 1995b:221-232, 2000:73). More land was required for subdivisions as Darwin spread and the Aboriginal reserve was a prime site. In 1959 the mayor stated: ‘The way Darwin is growing, leaving Bagot where it is would be like putting it in Smith Street. What a furore that would cause. It is high time Bagot was moved’ (quoted in Bunji October 1972). The politician and activist lawyer, Dick Ward, stated in the NT Legislative Council: ‘The town of Darwin is extending and we do require places within easy access where people can live. (Hansard of NT Legislative Council, January 13, 1959). An August 28, 1964 memorandum suggests the ‘scrubland and swamps [on the reserve] provide the seclusion ideal for drinking and gambling orgies and other forms of anti-social behaviour. The very nature of the land prevents adequate supervision by authority’ (quoted in Wells 1995b:225). Perhaps referring to the initiation area,
Gunabibi site and burial grounds, which were pointed out to me by
various of my Aboriginal interlocutors during my fieldwork, Wells
(1995b:226) notes: ‘The activities which the Branch describes as "anti-social"
and for which Aborigines used the bushlands would have been portrayed
quite differently by the Aboriginal protagonists’. (10) Without any legal process to claim the land in within the pre-1964 Bagot Reserve boundaries, myself, Fogarty and others in the Gwalwa Daraniki coalition of fringe dwellers had nailed signs to trees along Bagot Road and Coconut Grove Drive stating: ‘Aboriginal land claim. Under negotiation with the Aboriginal Land Rights Commission’. (11) Meanwhile, the Bagot Aboriginal Council had failed to lodge an interest in the Ludmilla land. According to Woodward (1973:25), the only concern of ‘the regular residents of Bagot Reserve’ was to ‘obtain title to the Reserve so that they can develop it as an attractive and useful community area’. Despite the lack of interest by the Bagot Council, the Aboriginal residents continue to use the nearby creek, mangroves and vacant land for food gathering and recreation, as they had done when the area was part of the reserve. (12) In July 1973, three of the Aboriginal
residents of the Kulaluk camp were charged after a truck was firebombed
in a confrontation with surveyors. Fred Fogarty, who was charged with
malicious damage, then moved from the Kulaluk camp, with his wife, to
the site that they named Fish Camp. (13)
While his court case was pending, he began constructing houses with
building material from the Darwin City Council dump, which was located
at the end of Fitzer Drive where Minmarama Village is today (see Map
3). As the DCC filled low-lying land on the fringes of the Ludmilla
Creek mangrove system, Fogarty was able to salvage useful building materials,
tools and utensils for his house.
After the Kulaluk incident, the legal adviser to the Minister for Aboriginal Affairs, Gareth Evans, spent four days in Darwin researching a report to the minister (Henderson 1984:20-21). Evans recognised that Fish Camp and the fringe dwellers’ claim to the original Bagot area was becoming ‘another Kulaluk situation’. Evans believed that Aborigines had a strong claim to the Ludmilla Creek area around Fish Camp because it was a traditional fishing ground, had been part of the reserve and ‘there are a large number of grave sites (perhaps as many as two hundred) in the area’ (p.22). In contrast, Evans cited cynics who suggest the Kulaluk camp claim was established ‘less because it was of traditional significance than because it was a convenient staging post for both the Seabreeze Hotel in Nightcliff and the Dolphin [Hotel] in Bagot Road’ (p.21). During the ten years Fogarty lived at
Fish Camp, many people were invited to share the area and use the buildings
he had made, including myself for a short time in 1978. Fred attached
800 metres of piping to a water main at his own expense. The piping
extended from the end of Fitzer Drive to his house (see
Map 3). The shower, flushing toilets,
sinks and taps which he installed provided water and facilities for
Aboriginal people going fishing and for others camping nearby. Deep
hand-dug wells provided extra water for the Fish Camp gardens and reforestation
project (Bunji March 1978).
Fred died suddenly at his camp in 1985 (see NT News April 1, 1985). Before his burial in Queensland a work gang from the Kulaluk community demolished his house and the wreckage was left in a twisted pile (see Day 1994:132). As no move had ever been made to evict Fogarty, the motivation behind this act appeared to be to prevent other Aboriginal people using the area. (14) By the destruction of Fogarty’s house his contribution to the struggle by fringe dwellers for space in Darwin was figuratively erased and piped water supply was effectively confined to the community on the northern end of the lease. Since then, apart from my own version of events, the failure to acknowledge his contribution is a notable silence in the history of the struggle for alternative accommodation for Aboriginal people in Darwin. (15) During a quick visit in 1990 (Day 1994:135)
I photographed the scattered timber and iron of Fred’s buildings that
had been burnt by the annual uncontrolled grassfires. The ruins otherwise
lay as they had been left in 1985. Fogarty’s neatly painted sign, ‘Fish
Camp. Legally owned by Aborigines’ was still standing at the site in
1996. Several open wells and rows of trees also remained. Although Burarra
people from the Maningrida area in Arnhem Land had shared the area with
Fred in the 1980s, I saw no recent evidence of any campers in the area.
(16)
Coulehan (1995a:81) mentions the Kulaluk
lease as ‘a significant referent for Yolngu in Darwin’. She adds that
‘during the years of my fieldwork Yolngu sometimes called the place
"fish camp"’. This observation suggests a continuing connection by Arnhem
Land Aborigines to the Ludmilla Creek area. The situation had changed
since Hayward-Ryan (1980:5) reported: ‘For spiritual and a variety of
other reasons Eastern Central Arnhem Land people will not, and cannot,
camp overnight in that area triangulated by East Point, North Kulaluk
and Ludmilla [i.e. Fish Camp and environs]’. (17)
In 1989 an Aboriginal village of ten
one-bedroom houses with communal ablution blocks and ten two-bedroom
houses with showers and toilets was built on the old city council dump
site across the mangroves from the ruins of Fogarty’s camp (Map 3).
The development was named Minmarama after a Gwalwa Daraniki Association
president who died in 1986. (18) Minmarama
was an attempted resolution to an ongoing controversy over the government
policy to move ‘transients’ from the parks and beaches onto the Kulaluk
lease (NT News October 13, 14, 1981; Bunji April 1982; Day 1994:111;
Wells 1995a:75; Jackson 1996:100). In 1983, the Aboriginal manager of
the Kulaluk lease joined the media debate on the housing of ‘transients’:
‘A transient area with adequate facilities
is an absolute must for many reasons,’ Mr Baugh [the Kulaluk manager]
told The Advertiser. The lack of such a facility was largely responsible
for complaints from the general public of small temporary, some not
all that temporary, camps springing up in areas around the outskirts
of Darwin. Some temporary camps are actually set up not a great distance
from the city centre. ‘These people must have somewhere to go that is
properly organised,’ said Mr Baugh (Advertiser April 7, 1983; see also
NT News March 19, 1983, p.1).
The project was funded by the Aboriginal
Development Corporation and the Town Camp Housing and Infrastructure
Program (Wells 1995a:75). The residents pay rent to the Kulaluk management.
According to Wells (1995a:76) ‘although the houses were specifically
designed as transient accommodation they quickly became used as permanent
accommodation’.
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3.6 Fish Camp and Lee Point 1996
I arrived in Darwin on August 2, 1996, looking for a base to begin fieldwork with the homeless people. While following the ‘itinerant debate’ in back issues of the newspapers, I found an article describing the eviction of Aboriginal fringe dwellers from central Arnhem Land who had been camping in bushland on vacant Crown land at Lee Point to the east of Lee Point Road, to the north of Darwin’s northern suburbs (see Map 2). Darwin residents and tourists use the
parkland overlooking the beach at Lee Point infrequently during weekdays
until 5pm, when people arrive to walk their dogs or enjoy the sunset.
However, there had been complaints about the behaviour of Aborigines
from the camps that were hidden in the bush opposite the park’s facilities.
The NT News published an account of the eviction on July 8, 1996 under
the heading ‘Govt moves to clear Point Camps’. Photographs showed the
bags of aluminium cans at the camps, one of the tin huts, and a disabled
man being carried from the area. The man was Bob Bunduwabi, whose history
is told in Chapter Six of this thesis.
One of ‘the itinerant residents’ told
the newspaper they had cared for the area and kept it clean. ‘We were
told we had to go,’ he said (NT News July 8, 1996). A Department
spokesman said there had been complaints about the rubbish from the
campers. ‘The decision was made to ask them to leave,’ he said. The
newspaper article ended, ‘The camps are near the popular Casuarina Coastal
Reserve which includes Lee Point’. The incident was reported only because
the Keep Australia Beautiful representative had been in the vicinity
with a photographer from the NT News at the time of the forced move
(personal communication).
I had known Bob Bunduwabi in 1982 when
he was living on the narrow beach between the mangroves and the remnants
of a dense coastal monsoon forest on the Kulaluk lease. An expatient
of the East Arm Leprosarium who had lost his fingers and feet to leprosy,
as I will later recount, Bob had set up his camp beside a sewerage pumping
station, where there was a tap and private access road (Map 3). I regularly
passed that way and provided his camp with fresh fish from the fish
trap, which I had built in 1981, by constructing two-metre high fences
extending in a twenty-five-metre vee shape on the nearby mud flats that
were exposed at low tide. A brief description of the Bob’s beach camp
appears in my book:
‘Old Bob’, as I knew him, lived in pitiful
conditions under shades of plastic and cardboard. His artificial legs
were seldom used, while his stumps of fingerless hands served him well
enough. Fortunately he was never short of helpers.
Old Bob had no intention of returning
to his birthplace near Maningrida. Instead he made Central Arnhem Landers
welcome with the conveniences of a tap, seafood, firewood and seclusion.
At night, he shared a blanket with his dog, Fifty Cents, while his visiting
countrymen hurled their [fishing] spears into the mangroves. They preferred
searching for weapons in the morning to risking an impulsive drunken
murder (Day 1994:106). (19)
The NT News (July 8, 1996) reported that the evicted Lee Point campers had moved to the Kulaluk community. Surprisingly, there had been no public indignation at the photograph of a man with no feet or fingers being carried from his makeshift home to an unknown future. However, the photograph and article gave me hope that Bob could be a personal contact that might be helpful in my search for a field site. Few people had survived in the conditions
of the Darwin camps for as long as Bob Bunduwabi. After fourteen years,
I was amazed to read he was still alive and looking so well.
(20) After moving camp at least six times
over the years, he was forcibly on the move again. A telephone call
to the Kulaluk management informed me that the Lee Point group were
now at Fish Camp, although there is no water there.
Having a fringe camp on Aboriginal land
presented several issues that complicated the position for them and
for me. Firstly, to visit the camp I needed the permission of the Kulaluk
leaseholders, the Gwalwa Daraniki Association (GDA). Secondly, the government
claimed no further responsibility for the conditions in the camp because
it was on Aboriginal-owned land. Thirdly, the landlords refused the
fringe dwellers permission to build any permanent structures or to lay
water pipes, which could have easily been done, as Fred Fogarty had
shown at the old Fish Camp twenty years earlier. The threat of eviction
also remained ever present for the campers.
Gaining authority to visit Fish Camp
could have been a problem for me because from 1982 to 1984 I had successfully
contested an eviction order against me by the GDA (Day 1994) and my
relationship with the management remained tense. Fortunately I received
verbal permission to work on the lease from a surviving Larrakia elder
who lived at Kulaluk and knew me from the 1970s. (21)
Gupta and Ferguson (1996:3) describe
the ‘lack of fit’ between a research method of participant observation
that has been developed to study small-scale societies and the realities
of ‘a mobile changing world’. However, the little community at Fish
Camp hidden from the busy city gave the appearance of a bounded and
manageable field site suited to the ‘dominant Malinowskian orthodoxy’
(Gupta and Ferguson 1996:23). Despite appearances, the media report,
which had led me to Fish Camp, was evidence that a bounded field would
not adequately explain the fringe camp’s location and purpose. Later
newspaper and television reports also ended any hopes of ‘the practical
advantages of ethnography fixed in a single locale’ (see Marcus 1986:172).
Appadurai (1991:191, cited in Gupta and
Ferguson 1996:3) asks, ‘What is the nature of locality, as a lived experience
in a globalized, deterritorialized world?’ In this thesis I have already
recounted some of the events that set the scene for Fish Camp as my
research location and as a refuge for a displaced group. They are: the
establishment of a town on Larrakia land; the revoking of a large part
of Bagot Reserve, which alienated the area set aside for Aboriginal
use; the activism of fringe dwellers and Larrakia people which reclaimed
the area; the work of Fred Fogarty and his partner who established a
recognised camp site; the 1996 campaign to drive ‘itinerants’ out of
the city which forced the Lee Point people to relocate; my past involvement
and the contacts I had made; media representations which led me to the
site; the complexities of living as fringe dwellers on Aboriginal land;
the determination of one severely disabled man; contested land in a
developing city and the lack of alternative housing for Aboriginal groups.
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3.7 Making contact
The single track into Fish Camp in the dry season of 1996 wound through pandanus and paperbark from the junction of Dick Ward Drive and Totem Road in the suburb of Coconut Grove (see Map 3). The rough gravel track turned sharply left before the Aboriginal burial ground which had given Totem Road its name. Totem Road also marked the northern boundary of the old Bagot Aboriginal Reserve. Running parallel with Dick Ward Drive, the track now ran in a straight line for 800 metres across a raised bund of earth on the edge of a freshwater swamp known as the old rice field (Map3). After heavy rain this section of the track was covered by a sheet of knee-deep water. In the dry season many taxi drivers refused to negotiate the corrugations. The track crossed a culvert that was excavated to drain the freshwater wetlands and now allows high tides to inundate the reeds with seawater. The track then rose onto higher ground, winding through the remnants of coastal monsoon forest choked by tall dry grasses. Wheels spun in the dry sandy soil or sunk to the axles if the driver slowed. Gupta and Ferguson (1996:13)
criticise anthropologists who suggest by their descriptions that their
entry into the field is a journey back in time, amongst cultures apart
from the world the anthropologist has left behind. In my case, the
conditions in the camp and the access track were more reminiscent
of a past frontier era than a modern city. In my eyes, this view derived
from material conditions, rather than cultural difference. The noise
of glinting international airliners descending to land on the nearby
runway, or screaming jets circling in war games, contrasted with the
privations of the residents of the camp. Rather than exemplifying
cultural distance and establishing the anthropologist as outsider
(see Bolton 2000:3), entry to the field accented for me the relationship
between the dominant social and economic system and the marginalisation
of the fringe dwellers.
The track had been opened
to provide access to fishing spots on Ludmilla Creek that marked the
southern boundary of the Kulaluk lease. Two hundred metres before
the track terminates at the creek bank it passes a shady tamarind
tree that forms a canopy with a weeping fig and several black wattles
amongst rain trees struggling to rise above the annual grass fires.
Gusts of wind whipped up the fine brown dust around sawn bush saplings
resting on upright forked poles supporting four tarpaulin shades.
A muddy path through the mangroves led across to Minmarama Village.
In the distance, visible above the mangroves, were the golden arches
of the McDonalds restaurant which had been given an ‘anchor lease’
on the Kulaluk land by the Aboriginal leaseholders in 1993 (GDA 1995).
(22)
Bob welcomed me to his
camp as an old friend while his middle-aged niece, Dulcie, prepared
food for him, her two invalid pensioner brothers and her partner.
Her daughter lived in another low tent with her young White husband,
who did most of the heavy carrying. In a later interview Dulcie described
the camp:
That's my uncle over there.
He can't do anything. Also my brother. He's blind. We've got to go
and get the water and carry it back. I can't do anything because I'm
stuck with the old people - mainly old Bob and old Tommy. My son-in-law
has a car. He shifted all the things here. It's very hard. We need
water. We need some place to wash. We rang up city council. We asked
them to come and collect the dogs. They didn't come. We've got too
many here - nine or ten. It floods when it rains here. Big mob water
runs under the tarp but we got our beds up higher. It worries me all
the time - old people. Bob, he's all right. He goes to Danila Dilba
[Aboriginal Medical Service]. He has a shower there but the rest of
us, nothing. Our Darwin government, they welcome tourist people from
overseas but they don't welcome us because we full-blood Aboriginals.
We all belong to this land, our country, and we are full citizens.
(23)
The campers’ dogs usually
lay resting in the red dust. Their barking was a warning that someone
was approaching. Always close to Bob was his pet black hen that intimidated
the dogs or picked parasites from their skin as they rested. I was
soon feeling at home sitting in the shade of the tamarind which I
remembered planting in 1978, (although several Aboriginal people I
later met, claimed to have done so).
Bob Bunduwabi, who was
about sixty-five years old, told me he came from the Gamal clan to
the east of Blyth River (Map 1), which has close ties to the Yolgnu
people from northeastern Arnhem Land and the Burarra people to the
west (see Bagshaw 1994, cited in Sutton 1995c:122-4; Carew and Handelsmann
1996c). He claimed to be a sorcerer, and was an exceptionally determined
man. His younger brother, who also lived in Darwin, later became involved
in the struggle of the campers, but I did not meet him until the following
year.
Prior to the eviction,
Lee Point camp had been a well-established and comfortable one, as
I was to later see in a music video filmed there by a band in which
Dulcie’s son is the lead singer (NLC 1996b). Without representation
and unaware of any legal rights, the campers had hired minibus taxis
to shift their tarpaulins, bedding and utensils. They had left behind
many items they could not carry from Lee Point and all their self-made
structures supported by sawn saplings had been destroyed. The other
Lee Point residents had scattered to other sites around Darwin. Before
they had time to establish their camp on the beach beside the Kulaluk
village, the GDA had asked them to move to the old Fish Camp site
and the group shifted their tarpaulins for the second time in weeks.
They were left with few options.
Thirst compelled me to
cut short my first visit. After that, I carried water for the pensioners
and myself from my accommodation at the North Australian Research
Unit guest house in Casuarina known as ‘the Manor’. After a day at
the camp, with clothing and skin stained by the fine red soil and
soaked with perspiration after cycling the five kilometres home each
evening, I relished soaking myself in the clear water of the swimming
pool. The daily transition of my access to abundant water, to the
desperate need for a single tap at Fish Camp produced a daily ‘culture
shock’, while the persistent complaints of the Aboriginal campers
assured me that my reaction was more than an ethnocentric view of
the contrasting conditions.
Watching Bob crawl about
in the dust with nowhere to wash the clinging red dust from his clothes
and body gave a surreal effect to an already scarcely believable scene.
The pair of artificial legs he had used in the past were seldom used
and remained jammed in a tree fork beside his tent. He had no wheelchair.
Despite these deprivations, Bob and his relatives at the camp made
me feel very welcome.
Bob had told the NT News
(July 8, 1996), ‘he believed he had been living at his camp [at Lee
Point] through wet and dry seasons for seven years’. Another spokesman
had said: ‘We would like to be left here. We have been here a long
time and we are a bit worried’. When I met him two months later, Bob
still had a strong wish to return to the campsite at Lee Point where
there was water, bitumen access and a historical connection. The anger
expressed at Fish Camp over their eviction was reminiscent of the
mood in similar camps on vacant Darwin bushland in the 1970s.
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3.8 Fish Camp and
the media, 1996
With permission from the people at Fish Camp, in September 1996 I contacted the Darwin media to publicise the needs of homeless people. I noted my fears that filming the camp could be seen as voyeurism, especially if the story highlighted Bob’s disabilities. I wondered how publicity would affect the group and my fieldwork. And I suspected that the Kulaluk landowners would resent the negative publicity. However, I was concerned that authorities were using Aboriginal land as a ‘dumping ground’ for unwanted homeless Aboriginal people. Once away from public view it appeared to be a case of ‘out of sight out of mind’. At Lee Point, where there are taps and showers, the camps had caused concern to the government, but once they were hidden in the Kulaluk lease, they were of no further interest, as later statements by politicians indicated. A very sympathetic journalist
visited the camp and interviewed the people. She quoted two men by
name in her report, although I was given as the major spokesperson
under a heading, ‘People dumped in Darwin, says Bill’ (NT News, September
10, 1996). I was placed in the centre foreground of a photograph illustrating
the article. Situating a tent and anonymous Aboriginal people behind
me appeared to signify the mediating role of the anthropologist. Presumably,
the involvement of an anthropologist gave the story an added authority.
Rebecca Whitfield wrote:
Anthropologist Bill Day
said the [city] council was creating South African homeland-like areas
in the city - set up for blacks only to live.
One member of the group is blind and another cannot walk after losing his arms and legs through leprosy. (24) Mr Day said: ‘The conditions
at the camp are shocking - there is no running water and cooking and
washing is difficult. They have their own tents but the area is a
dust bowl and the fine dust is already causing eye problems. The Kulaluk
lease was never meant to be used as a dumping ground for homeless
people’.
And George Banbuma, about
50, said: ‘We are thankful to the Kaluluk [sic] people for letting
us live here, but want our own land where we can speak our own language’.
He said the group did
not want to move to one of Darwin’s three established Aboriginal communities.
‘There are too many fights there,’ he said. Mr Banbuma pleaded with
ATSIC and Northern Land Council to help’.
The subsequent local radio
interview and debate between myself and the Community Services Manager
for the Darwin City Council on ABC ‘Drivetime’ (September 10, 1996)
and a local television news item on Bob’s complaint of discrimination,
described by Alison Morrow of Channel 8 ‘as a case which will test
the rights of itinerant people’ (October 18, 1996), produced no noticeable
remedial action. Later, when early storms turned the dust to mud and
wet the mattresses, I commented in a letter to the editor, ‘I cannot
believe there has been no response - no donations of beds or tents,
no offers of emergency water supply’ (NT News, October 26, 1996).
On November 13, 1996 the
NT News published my open letter to Pauline Hanson, which was later
published in the West Australian (November 16, 1996), the Koori Mail
(November 20, 1996) and Green Left Weekly (November 20, 1996). The
letter gave an alternative description of an Australian icon know
as ‘the battler’, which was championed by Hanson: (26)
If you had to cart your
daily water supply in a jerry can through mud and mangroves, would
you call that disadvantaged? If you had no sewerage, electricity,
mail delivery, telephone or garbage collection, would that be disadvantaged?
If your local government harassed you instead of representing you,
labelling you ‘itinerants’ by the colour of your skin although you
had lived in the city for more than 15 years, would that be fair?
Now imagine you have no
feet, or are blind, yet have never claimed taxi subsidy vouchers,
meals on wheels, Medicare or most of the entitlements due to a disabled
pensioner. Instead you sleep in dust or mud huddled under a leaking
tarpaulin. Nearby an ailing middle-aged niece toils as a full-time
carer, cooking on an open fire, worried that her unemployment benefit
demands she be ‘looking for work’. Please explain to her the meaning
of ‘respite leave’. Try negotiating the bureaucratic maze in a language
that is foreign to you, because this family speaks a tongue that has
grown with the continent, and that is a lot longer than 200 years.
Wouldn’t you agree, Pauline, that this family group, friends of mine
in the city of Darwin, are the real Aussie battlers?
Meanwhile, the Aboriginal
flag I had tied to a tree in the centre of the camp had become a landmark
for taxi drivers who distinguished Fish Camp from similar locations
as ‘the camp with the flag’ (Plate 3). For northeastern Arnhem Land
people, reflecting their contact with Macassan traders, flags flying
on a mast have localised ceremonial and spiritual significance that
has been integrated into the pan-Aboriginal resistance symbolised
by the Aboriginal flag. When the flag became worn, another in a succession
of Aboriginal flags was raised over the camp in emotional ceremonies
organised by the residents (see Plate 14; Simmering 1998).
In November 1996, the
issue of town camps and homelessness returned to the media. A front-page
story on Fish Camp appeared in the Suburban (November 13), a free
newspaper delivered to every home in Darwin. ‘Family’s home an "atrocious
squalor"’ was the headline above a sympathetic article:
And a Darwin anthropologist
has blamed Darwin City Council’s public place patrols for the crisis,
saying homeless people were being forced to move to unhygienic camps
to avoid fines... Seven people have been living at the site, behind
Minmarama Village housing estate off Dick Ward Drive for four months,
without any water supply or sewerage.
Mr Day said: ‘They’re
having to go back and forth with jerry cans to get water, and you
can’t do much with a jerry can of water in terms of keeping clean...
It’s discriminatory to say they have to move to Kulaluk, because Kulaluk
belongs to the Larrakia people - just because they’re Aboriginal,
they shouldn’t have to live in one designated area. These are people
from the Maningrida region, who have lived in Darwin for more than
15 years. To them this is an urgent state, a life and death issue,
not something that can just wait’.
A reader wrote to the
NT News (November 18):
Some of these people [from
Lee Point] have leprosy and as such are entitled to a disability pension
and disabled housing... If on the other hand they have rejected these
benefits, I can only say they have made their own bed so let them
lie in it.
If the attitude of the
letter writer was representative of a wide section of the Darwin public,
it was evidence that ‘the politics of embarrassment’ (see Dyck 1985:15;
Kapferer 1995:78) was no longer an effective tactic in Darwin. Local
and Territory Government wanted to appear tough on Aboriginal ‘itinerants’
and the Federal Government appeared to have little influence on local
issues. Another letter, condemning the ‘poor bugger me’ syndrome,
drew attention to the ‘four storey ATSIC palace built ... on the dearest
real estate in Darwin. Just look through the sealed windows at all
the sleek and well-paid ATSIC staff’. The writer continued:
But Bill, in this day
and age why are your friends living like this? Do they not get pensions,
or social security, or CDEP like everyone else? Do they not have relatives
other than the one niece mentioned who have money and who could help
care for them? In all the vastness of the Northern Territory surely
there are camping places more convenient? (NT News November 21, 1996)
Another letter on the
same page suggested ‘Aussie battlers’ have access to services because
they work and pay taxes. ‘Many people in Aboriginal communities don’t
work, don’t pay taxes and therefore don’t have and should not expect
those services’.
Jim Saint has been a Top
End resident for 30 years. He attacked ‘do-gooders’ like myself who:
‘appear to live in a dream world where because you may be an anthropologist,
what you write people may believe. Wake up mate, the bludgers have
lived without you for the past 11 years, they will live without you
for the next 100’ (NT News November 27, 1996). In my reply, I wondered
if there would be a place for old ‘bushies’ like Jim when Darwin became
a little Singapore, as politicians had recently proposed (NT News
December 3, 1996). Jim fired back (NT News December 6, 1996):
Is it not great Bill that
Darwin is soon to become a ‘little Singapore’? Your friends will have
to pay for their camping and their littering ... their places of abode
are still their own choice, they can walk out, catch a plane, go to
their own country, speak with their own people in their own language
tomorrow.
As I will describe, it
became evident that the negative media attention angered the Kulaluk
leaseholders. Comments by members of the public and some Aborigines
emphasised the gap between fringe dwellers and recognised Aboriginal
organisations. The campers themselves were pleased by the publicity,
without any apparent sense of it being an intrusion into a private
Aboriginal domain. Indeed, they appeared to be encouraged by the media
interest and the positive public response they received in face-to-face
contacts. Neither did the sometimes aggressively negative remarks
in letters to the editor deter them. In Chapter Eight, I discuss the
building of allegiances between fringe campers and sympathetic non-Aboriginal
groups that began during the media attention in 1996.
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3.9 Legitimisation:
the case of the Railway Dam camp
The lack of sympathy for homeless Aborigines in letters to the NT media and on talkback radio reflected the general view that fringe camps are little more than hideouts for alcoholics. In the following paragraphs I contrast such views with the public support for the Aboriginal community at Railway Dam (see Map 2) in the face of threats by the NT Minister for Lands, Planning and Environment to ‘relocate’ the town camp (NT News November 15, 16, 1996; ABC 7.30 Report, September 28, 1997). The case is an example of the process of ‘legitimisation’ of fringe camps, which Brandl (1981:98) rather hopefully saw beginning with the Woodward Commission reports (1973, 1974). That is, ‘the process of educating outsiders to sharing [the campers] views of themselves as autonomous, legitimate communities’. Brandl (1981:98) claims
‘legitimisation’ is the necessary first step towards ‘reasonable and
acceptable living facilities for their lifestyle’, adding that: ‘Long
and difficult as the process has been, most fringe-dwelling communities
are still engaged upon it’. By 1996, Railway Dam has gained a degree
of public acceptance as one of the first camps ‘legitimised’ by being
granted a lease almost twenty years earlier.
Like Fish Camp, Railway
Dam struggled to achieve the initial stage of ‘legitimisation’. In
1972 the NT News (July 13) reported:
Aboriginals camped behind
Dinah Beach ... are wondering why the community has waited so long
to establish showers and facilities in the area ... No one has ever
expressed concerns whether they have facilities or not. The camp has
no shelter, no toilet facilities and no water supply. (27)
When the 3.12-hectare
lease was finally granted to the Aboriginal Development Foundation
on behalf of the community, the Minister for Lands and Housing stated:
It will provide a permanent
place for Aboriginal people to stay when they come to Darwin. It is
best for all concerned if land is allocated and used to meet the needs
of Aborigines who wish to live as a community in the urban environs.
The people can now move to make improvements to their surroundings
confident they have secure title to the area (NT News March 26, 1979;
ADF 1997).
Railway Dam is now home
to thirty people and more who are visitors to Darwin (ADF 1997). After
the threat to transform the lease into a public park, one of several
support letters stated: ‘The people of Railway Dam belong there. They
"fit in"’ (NT News December 3, 1996). Radio talkback was strongly
in favour of keeping the town camp (NT News November 16, 1996). The
daily newspaper was also supportive:
The Railway Dam camp site
houses up to 12 Aboriginal families and also hosts remote community
visitors. It will be removed as part of plans to relocate the Frances
Bay [oil] tank farm. The picturesque and well-hidden campsite is located
off Dinah Beach Road, between Tiger Brennan Drive and Duke Street,
less than a kilometre from the city centre.
Mr Karadara, 44, who has
lived at the camp since the 1960s, said the move would uproot a community
that had never contemplated having to leave. He said: ‘We’ve never
had any trouble here and no one bothered us. This is our land. We
don’t have anywhere else to go... Why can’t they make a park somewhere
else? This is our home’ (NT News November 15, 1996). (28)
Another letter reflected a growing class-based opposition to the development of the land for the benefit of elites: We want to live in a society
where commercial development is the top priority ... don’t we? The
preposterous proposal to move the camp at One Mile Dam is in the interests
of only a minority of people. To let the camp remain would benefit
the families who live there, and serve as a valuable lesson in tolerance
(NT News November 23, 1996).
In this chapter, my introduction to the field illustrates the inadequacies of a single-sited study of a fringe camp. Instead, I have justified the need for a morally engaged, multi-sited study. My ‘finding’ of my primary field site, the history of Fish Camp and my examples of public reaction to fringe camps demonstrate that Darwin fringe camps exist in a politically charged environment. The reaction of the fringe dwellers confirms their political consciousness, preparedness to resist and suggests that theories of a closed Aboriginal domain to not apply. In the next chapter, I give evidence to support my politically engaged, multi-sited approach in a revisiting of 'The camp at Wallaby Cross'. My extensive critique of the work of Basil Sansom that follows is additional evidence suggesting that a bounded study does not adequately represent Darwin fringe dwellers. |
- End Notes -
| 3.) Letter from Community Services Manager, DCC to Bill Day, 24 April 1996. |
| 4.) Bourgois (1995:11) also notes his concerned with the 'politics of representation' whereby his graphic portrayals of the lives of drug dealers will be 'misread as negative stereotypes'. |
| 5.) See for example, The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 25:1 (United Nations 1948). |
| 6.) Tonkinson (1974), Stanton (1985) and Trigger (1992) are other examples of witnesses' accounts of Aboriginal resistance - in their cases, to fundamentalist missionary indoctrination. |
| 7.) Weiner is referring to my article, 'Forgive us our trespasses: finding space for Aboriginal fringe dwellers in Darwin' (Day 2000:62-69). |
| 8.) Violet is listed in the Malak Malak Aboriginal land claim book as 'Violet Fogarty' (Sutton and Palmer 1980:51 |
| 9.) See 'A walk through Kulaluk' in Bunji (March 1978), for a detailed description of the area. |
| 13.) See NT News July 7, 1973; Nation Review July 19, 1973; Bulletin July 21, 1973; Bunji July 1973; Buchanan 1974:17; Henderson 1984:17; Wells 1995a:71). |
| 14.) A notice in the NT News warned that "all permits to enter the reserve [Kulaluk lease] have been revoked" (Day 1994:128). |
| 15.) See Koori Mail, ‘Academic remembers "Fighter" Fogarty’, April 5, 1995, p.6. |
| 16.) After Violet’s death, Fred lived with a Burarra woman. Another Burarra woman and her white partner lived in one of Fred’s old houses. Both these women visited Fish Camp during my fieldwork. |
| 18.) See ‘Last of the Larrakias’, Midweek Territorian, March 16, 1986. |
| 19.) The spears are popular amongst Arnhem Land campers to catch stingrays, but they can be dangerous weapons if a dispute occurs when people are drinking together. |
| 20.) One of Bob’s kin suggested to me that his survival was due to regular visits by health services and his more sedentary, and safer, lifestyle. |
| 23.) From ‘ Bill Day and Sally Mitchell, Green Left Weekly November 20, 1996, p.7. |
| 25.) Pauline Hanson, the founder of the One Nation Party, had complained that Aborigines received special privileges. |
| 27.) See also NT News (February 28, July 4, 1973); Woodward (1974:54-55); Bunji (April 1978, March 1982); Aboriginal Areas Protection Authority 5368/1994: Railway Dam land claim. |