bess price lecture

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Te Bennelong Society

3 December 2009

Te InauguralPeter Howson Lecture

Bess Nungarrayi Price

with a Postscript by

Dave Price


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I come today to talk to you about my people,and where they are in this land we call Australia.I have come to speak today hoping that you willlisten to what I have to say.

People think Aboriginal people all think thesame. Tey are wrong. We have Aboriginalpeople who live in cities, towns and in the remoteparts o Australia and we all have dierent issues.Te issues and needs are totally dierent. Tepolitics in the bush are so dierent rom the waysouthern blackellas think. Tey, the yapa, aregullible at times and they accept anything that'sput in ront o them, without a question. Tey

are easily lead whether it's in good aith or not.Others blame colonization or the reason thatour people are the most disadvantaged group opeople. But nobody can explain why that is ...I don't see it that way. All I see is that they arehunters and gatherers and they were vulnerablethen and they are vulnerable now. Tey knownothing about how everything else operatesoutside o their communities and how they needto change in order to keep up with the rest o the

outside world. Tey need to be given the toolsand the mechanism to move orward.

We have had so many sel-appointed people,black and white, who have decided to be ourspokespeople, who know nothing about us andour issues. Tey are the people who have beenrunning the show all these years without everasking us whether it's okay or them to do so.Tey are the ones who want to keep our peoplein the dark as i we are some sort o stone age

people.

Inaugural Peter Howson Lecture

Bess Nungarrayi Price3 December 2009

I want to thank the Bennelong Society or givingme the opportunity to speak and to be able togive you an insight into how I think and eelabout how our people see themselves. Tere

are many more out there who are not givenan opportunity like this to tell their story andhow it is.

My name is Bess Nyirringali Nungarrayi Price.My rst language is Warlpiri, English is mysecond and there are ve other languages that Iunderstand. I was born under a tree at a placecalled Yuendumu, where the airstrip now is. Myather was 10 years old when he rst saw a white

man. My mother was a little bit younger. Teywere both born in the desert out o contact withthe rest o the world.

I came rom a amily o eleven. My Mum hasnow outlived 8 o her children. We have losteight, but I had a happy up bringing. I spent mychildhood living in yujuku my ather built, what

whiteellas call 'humpies'. I was always warm,dry and comortable. We ate both whiteella

ood and our own bushtucker. We camped onmy Dad's country every weekend, walking around trip o around thirty kilometres rom

Yuendumu and back, but we always got toschool. When I was too young to go my oldersister and brother rode to school on a donkey allthat way. My teachers were good, hard workingpeople. I had plenty o white riends as wellas the company o my own extended Warlpiriamily. I learnt both ways beore we had what

we now call bilingual/bicultural education at

our school. My teachers and my parents taughtme well.


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2 Inaugural Peter Howson Lecture

It had to take urgent measures by the governmentin order to help our people, for them to recognise

what was happening to them, and to dosomething for themselves before it was too late.

I am one o those people who embraced thegovernment's move, what is now called theIntervention or the NER, the Northernerritory Emergency Response. o me it meantat last somebody was acknowledging that there

was a crisis and that it needed to be addressed.For a long time our peoples' lives have been ina state o crisis, spiralling downwards, rapidly,uncontrollably.

Te protestors and the media only seem to carewhen whiteellas kill blackellas, or blackellaskill whiteellas. Tey don't seem to care whenour kids are killed by their own people or theycommit suicide.

Beore the Intervention three o my brothersdrank themselves to death on the Alice Springstown camps. wo nieces, one 21, one 26, didthe same. My granddaughter was murdered ona town camp. She died because she was stabbed

by her ex-husband, my cousin. Te ambulancewouldn't go in there without a police escortbecause the drunks attack them when they gothere to save a lie. So she died waiting or them.Tis is what the town camps have been or us,places o sickness and sel-destruction. Yet thereare those in Alice Springs who call it racism andan attack on human rights when the governmenttries to help us make the camps decent places tolive and raise kids.

I could go on all day about the violence I haveseen. It has happened to so many o my lovedones. My own body is decorated with scars. Yetthe protestors, the whiteellas in Alice Springsand those who come rom Down South, whothink they are supporting my people, havetreated me like an enemy. Tey have tried totell the world through the internet that I am adrunk and that I only support the government

because it pays me to do work or them. Teyaren't interested in the truth. Tey aren't willingto open their ears and listen.

Tey have never given me a chance to talk attheir rallies. Tey bring white students andcranky kooris and murris up rom Down South

who know nothing about us and who hatewhiteellas. Tey look or local people who think

like they do and try to keep the rest quiet andaway rom the media. When the UN's SpecialRapporteur came to Alice my people were nottold o the meetings. I was only invited theday beore. Te meetings were very careullycontrolled and orchestrated. It was a joke. Hedidn't hear rom the people with the problems,the ones living with the violence and the misery.He heard rom those with a vested interest inthe present situation.

My people, the ones with the problems thatthe Intervention is designed to address, weredeliberately excluded. hey were lining updown at the pub and the bottle shops as theydo everyday or sitting in lth in the camps

worrying about their kids and waiting or thenext round o grog uelled violence. People aregiven a airytale version o our culture by people

who don't live by our law. Tey want you tothink that it is the government that causes all

our problems. Tat is an outrageous lie. Tegovernment gets it wrong because it consults

with the wrong people. It gets it wrong becauseit cannot help people who won't, or don't knowhow, to help themselves. We want to be able tohelp ourselves.

I know plenty o Aboriginal women here whowant the Intervention because they can eedtheir kids now. Te protestors treat them like

enemies as well. Tey never support the oldwomen who come in rom bush to protestagainst the grog. Tey verbally attacked andinsulted the women at the Women's Centre at

Yuendumu when they set up their own shop.Tey took the side o the violent men and thecorrupt ones in our communities and reusedto support the women worried about theirkids, sick o being beaten up by drunks. Teyhave never even tried to talk to us. We are very

grateul to the government or keeping incomemanagement going.


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Inaugural Peter Howson Lecture 3

so they don't bother turning up and parentsdon't make sure they go and the governmenthas ignored all this. We want the best o both

world's, not the worst, and we will need thegovernment's support to get it.

Our people need to be challenged. Tere needsto be an open and honest debate betweenourselves, as people. We need to change in orderto make it better or uture or our children andour grandchildren. Tese protestors have donetheir best to stop that rom happening and yetthey call it 'solidarity'.

With all the money the government has poured

into our sel managed organisations andcommunities everything has gotten worse. Ourorganisations can put energy into campaigningagainst government policies and into getting theUN to take notice o their views but they don'tstop our men rom murdering our women, ourkids rom killing themselves. Tey don't makesure our kids get to school. Tey don't keep ourlanguages alive. All they can do is bleat or moremoney and complain every time the governmenttries to do something.

I've read the speech by Mary Victor O'Reerirom the Kimberley. Her amily's approach isexactly what is needed in our country. It wasa woman who stood up and told the truth atlast and the protestors and organisations can'tstop her. Yet my own uncle told the Wall Street

Journal that women have no power in ourculture. He is wrong. Te media should stoplistening to rubbish like that. We women are the

main ones now trying to save our kids. Tereare men trying to get things right but they arequietly working away and the media don't takeany notice o them, their voices are drowned outby protestors and their white supporters.

Mary Victor is right. We are the only oneswho can save ourselves and we don't need theprotestors rom our southern cities to tell us

what to think and say. We have the strength

ourselves i we can only be honest or once.Te Intervention started this debate. Tat isthe best thing about it. It has made us think

My people don't use money the way whitepeople do. Tey don't save, they don't budget,they can't say 'no' to relatives even when theyare drunks and addicted to gambling anddrugs. Tey need help in spending their money

wisely. We are very happy that the governmenthas decided to extend income managementto everybody. hat is what we have alwaysasked or. Don't stop doing it or us, do it toeverybody who needs it i you are worried aboutracism. Even Warren Snowdon, our ALP Federalmember admits now that it is working. Tat isa big change or Warren.

We still have a lot o other problems. Education

is one o the biggest. Education has not workedor our mob or the last thirty years. Whitepeople told us that they wanted to preserveour language so now my people can't expressthemselves to the rest o the world and rely on

white people and city blackellas, who knownothing about us, or who want to keep us inignorance to do it or them. I went to schoolbeore the bilingual program started yet I speakboth Warlpiri and English better than our kidsand our grand kids. Our young people now

need their grandparents to speak or them tothe outside world. Te old ones speak betterEnglish. Most o our kids now can't read and

write English or their own language. Tey are notlearning to speak their own languages properly.Tey are losing the best o our culture but notlearning the best o the whiteella's culture.Tey are learning the worst instead. Tey arelosing on both sides. Bilingual education is a

wonderul idea but it seems to me that it has

never been done properly. We want our kids tokeep speaking our languages but we also wantthem to be able to speak and read and writeEnglish. My people are linguistically talented.Many speak several Aboriginal languages. Ourkids are intelligent and want to learn. Why can't

whiteellas teach them English? It should be easy.

eachers have never been trained properly. Ourkids have never been taught English properly.

Our schools don't get the resources they need.he high truancy rates have been ignored.Education hasn't been compulsory or our kids


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or the rst time about what's happened to us,where we are and where we want to go. Moreand more Aboriginal people are now gettingup the courage to tell the world what is reallyhappening. More and more are willing to take

responsibility or our own problems.

Te Racial Discrimination Act was there toprotect us rom white racism and we needed thatprotection. But it has not protected our peoplerom ourselves. We need an act, we need lawsthat recognize that the problem now is blackellaskilling blackellas and killing themselves. I a lawlike the Racial Discrimination Act gets in the

way o doing that then it must be changed. We

are dierent, we are special, we have specialneeds. We are caught in a trap. Tey want us tobe citizens with the same rights but then they

want us to keep our culture with no changes.How can we do both? We need to do somespecial things to solve our problems. Now weknow that and can do something about it. Let'sroll orward instead o backwards.

We want leaders who will lead us out o ourmisery not sit around whingeing about howhard their lives are when they have the jobs andthe power. We want leaders who tell us that

we are not 'Victims' who can't do a thing orourselves but sit around dying while we waitor the government to get it right. We wantleaders who will convince our own people tostop drinking, ghting and euding, who will get

our kids into school so that we can produce ourown proessors o indigenous rights who can goto other peoples country to listen to their stories.

I am calling this a postscript because it is rightthat Bess' voice is heard rst. I can't claim tobe 'indigenous'. In my three decades o work

with indigenous students, clients and colleaguesI was constantly reminded o that act. Morethan once I have been advised to take a lookin a mirror to remind mysel that I am notblack and that thereore the right to speak outon indigenous issues was denied to me. Teproblem or me is that I have been married to

Bess or three decades. My wie, my daughter,my grandsons, in act, all o my descendantsor ever more, are and will be indigenous. Teydo have the right to speak because they, oneand all can claim the ethnic and political label'indigenous'.

I took on board this idea that I should bevoiceless and decided thereore to support Bessin her eorts to bring her people's plight to

public notice. But then it occurred to me thatmany o those out there making the loudestnoises in the public space would also ail the

PostscriptDave Price

mirror test and many who would not had noidea o my wie's people's plight. Tat has notstopped them rom shouting their ignorancerom the roo tops. For much o the last thirtyyears I have mourned the death, rape, liethreatening disease and injury, mostly entirelyavoidable, arrest and incarceration o my lovedones, the great majority indigenous. Yes theyare and were my loved ones. So I have decidedto speak or mysel, in support o my amily

and on behal o those non-indigenous spouseswho watch in agony, the destruction o theirindigenous loved ones in sel imposed silence.

We work as cross-cultural trainers. I have aphotograph o my last class at Yuendumu takenin 1979, the year I let with Bess to start a newlie. I love that photo. I wanted to use it in ourpresentation. Bess wouldn't let me. Tere weretoo many in that photo that had died. For

most o the whiteellas I talk to all o this isacademic. Tey expect me to discuss the issuesdispassionately, objectively. Tey expect me to


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Inaugural Peter Howson Lecture 5

talk about my loved ones as i they were theobjects o research that I was doing rather thanas people I love members o my species whoselives are entwined with mine.

I will now bring up an issue that my wie eelsunable to discuss publicly because she is a

woman. I will do this because I am a man and Ispeak or my amily. Last January a white, emalepolice ofcer drove on to the men's ceremonialgrounds at Lajamanu, a Warlpiri community atthe northern end o the anami desert. Tere

was outrage in response. Te old men in thecommunity and their white supporters wentto great lengths to protest what had happened

as a proound aront to their culture and law.

In an interview with Eric lozec on the ABCevening news in Darwin, Lyndsay Bookie, thechairman o the Central Land Council said theollowing, and I quote:

It's against our law or people like that

breaking the law, they shouldn't be there.

Aboriginal ladies, they're not allowed to go

anywhere near that. I they had been caught,

a woman, aboriginal lady got caught she

(would) be killed. Simple as that.

I understand that response and I have alwaysknown that this is true. I admire Lyndsay'scourage in saying in public what we all knewto be true. I also could not imagine Lyndsayhimsel killing anyone; he's just not that sort obloke. Tis is my ather-in-law's law, my wie'spromised husband's---my brother's law. Tese

are two o the men in my lie I most respect. ButI don't respect every aspect o their law. Mucho it now doesn't work. Simple as that!

What disturbed me most about this wholeaair is that there was no response whatsoeverto Lyndsay's statement. Not one human rightscampaigner, not one eminist stood up andpublicly objected to what Lyndsay had said.In a country that rejects capital punishment

in all its orms, that prides itsel on its humanrights record, on its struggle to improve therights o women, indeed on its compassionate

treatment o animals, nobody was willingto challenge the right o Aboriginal men toexecute women or cultural reasons. Even omCalma, the Aboriginal and orres Strait IslanderSocial Justice Commissioner, White Ribbon

Ambassador and sel described Kungarakan andIwaidja elder had nothing to say, no response.Perhaps he missed the news that night.

It seems that everybody is willing to sacricethe lives o women on the altar o what wecall 'culture': the etish o the age. In Australia

Aboriginal people have the human right topractice their culture. Should this include theright to execute women?

When I bring this issue up with whiteellas Iam usually met with embarrassed silence oran insistence that Aboriginal women knowenough to avoid such situations. Tere is noappeal to principles or human rights. I broughtthe issue up with a middle aged Warlpiri manin private. He is married with daughters. Heis also an evangelist and has devoted his lie toChristianity. When I quoted Lyndsay Bookie heagreed and repeated some o Lyndsay's words

"yeah, simple as that". I asked him how he eltabout that as a Christian and got no response.I then asked him i he would kill a woman inthose circumstances, he answered 'no' withouthesitation. I then asked would he deend oneo his emale loved ones i other men wanted tokill them or such a reason. Again 'yes', withouthesitation. I suggested that there should be achange to the law. He answered that he wastrying to make such changes.

For me it is personal. My own wie's lie hasbeen directly threatened several times, on eachoccasion by drunk Aboriginal men, in onecase a group armed with knives and machetesalso threatening the lives o my sons, nephewsby marriage whiteella way. Tis incident waspart o a eud that had gone on or 8 years inconormity with customary law. It began as aght between teenage girls over a boyriend. It

resulted in several cases o grievous bodily harm,several hospitalisations, several prison sentencesand the destruction o property. Although my


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in despair. He died not long aterwards. I haveseen that same look o despair in the eyes oother old men as they watch the young ones seldestruct oten taking their loved ones down withthem. Some tell us that the young men don't

understand the old law anymore and they havenot learned to respect the white man's law either.Bess' ather and her promised husband appliedto spirit rather than the letter o the law to theirown lives. Tey agreed to my marrying Bess orexample and let her o her betrothal althoughthat was at the heart o their legal system. Tey

were prepared to deend their women. Youngmen don't live long enough now to learn that

wisdom. Customary law needs some legislative

changes. We need to enter into a serious dialogueto help bring about such change.

All we want is the same protections or the mostvulnerable o our loved ones that are enjoyed bythe wider community. Tat is all we are askingor and i that means that aspects o Aboriginallaw must be challenged, as our own law iscontinually challenged, to achieve this thenor justice sake let's get on with it in a spirit omutual respect.

wie's lie was threatened by armed men inpublic only one o the participants was charged,in this case with a driving oence in relation tothe incident. Tere were no other charges laid.It was patiently explained to me that this sort

o thing is so common in Alice Springs that nocharges are laid i no blood is spilt or no-one iskilled. We live in a war zone in which women'slives are oreit.

We believe that many understand that the lawneeds to be changed. Young Aboriginal men arestill trained to believe that they have the right opateramilias in relation to their wives and thatthey have, not just the right, but the duty to

execute women who break their law. Tis causesimmense conusion when they are conrontedwith white man's law. I have no idea why thisissue is not raised when we discuss the hideouslevels o violence against women in Aboriginalcommunities and what should be done about it.It is as i it has no eect on that kind o violence.Nothing could be urther rom the truth.

My ather in law saw his eldest son die romthe grog. Ater that I believe that he gave up

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