Che amigos,

Publishing matter likely to prejudice a fair trial.

From the time somebody is arrested, charged or a warrant is issued, up to the moment when the court finishes dealing with it, the case is said to be sub judice. This is a Latin phrase meaning “under judgement”.
Regarding the highly publicised event at Yuendumu you will hear from me no further. Let me turn to other matters.

Two months ago on 17^th September 2019 an Indigenous woman died after being shot by police at a home in Geraldton, Western Australia. A newspaper stated “ Twenty-nine-year-old shot at home as WA police attend ‘an incident at the address’”

Yesterday there was a Yuendumu instigated rally in Alice Springs. Looming over D. D. Smith Park where the rally took place is Alice Springs’ biggestbuilding: The four stories high Supreme Court Building. On the Tripadvisor website a visitor posted: “Must have been recently built. Seems like a large building but obviously needed” At the rally a man holding the microphone pointed at the ‘obviously needed’ building “you know how Captain Cook arrived in Australia on a ship? Well that is our ship right there” Masters of metaphor are Central Australian Aborigines.

Today a large number of Yuendumu people will not yet be returning home.  They’ll be attending a funeral for a young man.  Today is also the date on which in Geraldton the victim of ‘an incident at the address’ will be buried.
Elton John- Funeral for a Friend-Love Lies Bleeding
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z314pQhLb2Q 

A significant number of people have cancelled their planned trips to Yuendumu. Reports talk of ‘rising tensions’ at Yuendumu and Government Departments have ‘evacuated’ some of their personnel. A lot of fear and loathing is happening, more than usual.  It is somehow widelybelieved that we white-fellas are in imminent danger of attack and that we are very brave to be prepared to face likely retribution from the wild out of control Warlpiri tribe.  Well let me assure all of you who are concerned about our safety that we kardiya are less likely to be attacked, imprisoned or have our children taken from us here in Yuendumu than we would in Alice Springs or Melbourne or if we were black. Our feeling of safety is in no way due to the police vehicles which keep cruising up and down Yuendumu streets.
At the public meeting the other day one of the most significant statements made was when Napaljarri asked “When are the police going to tell Government Departments that it is safe to come here to Yuendumu?” I can now answer that at the time unanswered questionon behalf of the police: “Not yet”.

I hope you will have seen through the barrage of misinformation, inaccuracies and the trolls on Facebook and discerned Warlpiri dignity and strength. To the Warlpiri these manifestations of unwarranted paranoia are highly offensive and insulting.  The Warlpiri are the friendliest people I have ever come across. The people of Kerala come second.

Bruce Pascoe in his book ‘Dark Emu’: “…then all of us must be alert to that greatest of all
limitations to wisdom:- The Assumption…”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xH4JN5K6hE4

Que te ha pasado justicia (what happened to you?- Justice)- Carlos Ramon Fernandez

…Y al policia que era amigo- Ahora lo tengo por rival…

(And the police who was a friend, is now my foe)

Chau, hasta la proxima

Franklin

Shalom Aleichem…. (שלום עליכם Peace be upon you- Hebrew)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=trUaSv1-jIk

Yesterday (Monday 12 November 2019 ed) hundreds of Yuendumu residents marched on the Yuendumu police station. The police station was going to be opened to allow the station to be swept. Sweeping is a ritual whereby after a death the areas the dead person had frequented are swept using eucalyptus branches. I will not claim to fully understand its significance, all I can say is that it is a sombre emotional and cathartic event.

The march seemed carefully choreographed. At the vanguard a group of placard carrying children who on arrival lined up and repeatedly chanted “Justice for Walker” and who much later briefly chanted “Peace”. Behind the children a very large group of black clad women with white ochre smeared foreheads followed carrying branches. Sporadic wailing would emanate from this group as we walked the considerable distance from the basketball court to the police station. Then followed the men and white-fellows and a miscellaneous assortment of visitors including journalists. As the slow process of first women then men then young people entering the station a few at a time to sweep was happening, the chanting children suddenly broke ranks and covered the police station walls with blood red paint hand prints. The march had been filmed by the ABC. Overshadowed by the NSW and Queensland fires our march appeared at the tail end of the news. Missing from the coverage were the chanting children. “Tensions are rising at the community of Yuendumu” the voice over proclaimed.

Not long before we arrived in Mexico City on our way back to Australia from Canada, a massacre of students had occurred. That was in 1971 and I recall seeing a police riot squad seated in a long side-less bus driving past. The Mexican police were dressed in black and heavily armed. Never again was I to see such a sinister sight, until yesterday.

“ …They do not know, that a subtle but effective system of terrorism, together with an organized display of force on the one hand, and the deprivation of all powers of retaliation or self-defence on the other, has emasculated the people and induced in them the habit of simulation …. This awful habit has added to the ignorance and self deception of the administrators”

Mahatma Ghandi at his 1922 Sedition trial

Yesterday we witnessed an organised display of force. At the public meeting at the basketball court I counted five police vehicles including one labelled ‘Major Crash Investigation Unit’. At the airstrip there was another police vehicle. Parked on the apron there were two Pilatus PC-12 aircraft, one belonging to the Royal Flying Doctor Service and another to the NT Police. I’d been told that earlier on, a contingent of police bristling with weapons had arrived on the police plane. A friendly policeman at the airstrip asked me what I was up to and told me that “The airport is closed off to the public for security reasons”.
Opposite the police station at the other side of town in the shade of a lone tree there were four armed policemen dressed in military camouflage.

At the public meeting it seemed to me that the only unarmed policeman was a senior ranking officer who has a long association with Yuendumu and has many friends here and is well respected in the community.

Yesterday I witnessed the largest concentration of armed police I have ever seen since 1971 in Mexico.

Why the overt display of weaponry? Was it out of unwarranted fear? Or was it an insensitive display resulting from ignorance or arrogance or both?

So now once again and for the wrong reasons Yuendumu finds itself in the headlines.  Bureaucrats politicians and the media are complicit in spreading misinformation which is once again portraying Yuendumu as this incredibly unsafe and dangerous place where ‘tensions are rising’.

A question asked at the public meeting was “ Why haven’t the police told all government departments that it is safe to come here?” No answer was forthcoming.

The NT Police motto is Working in partnership with the community to ensure a safe and resilient Northern Territory.

If what they’re doing in Yuendumu is their idea of living up to their motto. they’re no better than Centrelink whose motto is Giving you Options.

On an ABC website the following appeared a few days ago:

“At approximately 7:00pm last night a member of the Northern Territory Police was involved in an incident where a 19-year-old man in Yuendumu was shot Deputy Commissioner White said.”

An ‘incident’? It has now been declared a ‘death in custody’  Incidentally almost invariably in Australia when someone gets shot and killed if the person who pulled the trigger is known such a person is arrested and charged with murder and guilt or otherwise is determined by the courts.

اَلسَّلَا عَلَيْكُمْ‎•(as-salāmu ʿalaykum)- (May peace be upon you-Arabic)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-MCIF4IVjcM

Louis Armstrong- Give Peace a Chance….(English with the application of African polyrhythm)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r6p5P2X8cbA

Frank

(Since this Dispatch was written a NT Police Officer has been charged with Murder in relation to the killing of Mr Walker)

G’day mates,

I repeat myself- the largest amount of money ever spent on Yuendumu is $7.6M to build a Police Complex a few years ago. This amount remains the record, and says much about how these remote communities are being governed.

For a while the police presence in Yuendumu was ubiquitous. Police with dangling fire arms in black Ninja uniforms walking through Sports Weekend crowds or helping to goal umpire footie matches with dangling fire arms and cruising in in your face police vehicles forever keeping Yuendumu safer from goodness knows what. Definitely a feeling of being under occupation.
Eventually a formal complaint was lodged by a group of residents which found its way to those in charge and it is evident that the local constabulary was told to pull their heads in and adopted a more subtle below the radar approach to community policing. Shuffling of personnel was another tack taken by the top brass and on occasions we got some much firm but fair friendlier fuzz. The one constant has been our one local ACPO (Aboriginal Community Police Officer) who in his own diplomatic way has been a moderating influence on both sides of the tightrope he is walking.

Thus I had a most pleasant visit from some friends who got pulled up on the Tanami Road before entering Yuendumu. Three Yuendumu police told my friends that their vehicle would be searched and asked if they carried any alcohol. My friends owned up to having six cans of beer which the police seized thereby averting one of those drinking binges which remote Aboriginal communities are notorious for. My kardiya friends didn’t think the whole confrontation was all too friendly, but what did they expect? One of my friends asked the officers who were only doing their job if they spoke Warlpiri. What sort of question is that?

The portrayal of remote Aboriginal Australia in the media leaves much to be desired and often ranges from plain stupid and wrong to offensive or patronising and seriously cringe worthy. So when something turns up that ticks all the boxes and hits lots of nails on the head we out here pay attention and enjoy it. Such a gem was the TV series ‘Mystery Road’ directed and produced by Rachel Perkins. Whilst the likelihood of an Indigenous person rising to become an outback detective is far removed from the Yuendumu reality, all the characters including the detective were very realistically portrayed. The setting, dialogue and ‘feel’ of the series and how the characters interacted with each other, we could relate to without cringing.

Tonight at 8:30 PM (Sunday 13^th October) the new series ‘Total Control’ is premiering on ABC TV.  It is also directed and produced by Rachel Perkins.

‘Total Control’ is what the authorities have almost achieved on communities like Yuendumu, thus the title of the series resonates with us.
If the series is half as good as Mystery Road it will be worth watching.

Here’s crossing the fingers

Cheers

Frank
PS yesterday (12 Oct.) was the 527^th anniversary of Cristobal Colon’s mob first sighting land after crossing the Atlantic Ocean. I had always thought this was on the Island of Hispaniola. Haiti is on the western side of the island so that is my excuse to regale you with some Haitian music.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vwg7YX7u1QM

I was wrong, it was actually the Bahamas.

Which gives me an excuse to put on some Bahamian music (Wilfried Salomon and the Magnetics)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pnO9hs71EHw

Very addictive is Youtube- can’t resist sharing this one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qZQT23SMqM4

The bedbug song – last heard it as a teenager when my musician brother used to perform it. 

Groetjes vrienden,

My mother used to feed a family of magpies in her backyard in Nunawading.  Like clockwork a monogamous pair of magpies used to promptly present themselves early in the morning to partake in a breakfast of kitchen scraps.  In Spring they’d bring their children along to join in the feast.

The magpies would reward my mother with a sonorous improvised concert.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYEYc8Ge3nw

Looking out her kitchen window at the ample leafy backyard she would proclaim:

‘Australië is het beste land in de wereld/Australia is the best country in the world

Maar/BUT: There are some people in Canberra who are doing their level best to spoil it!’

…looking out my kitchen window…. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hE2NH4W-M9w

Now, I don’t blame the people of Canberra any more for the mean-spirited avaricious policies emanating from there than I blame the people of Snowtown for the bodies in the barrel nor the people of Moe for the murder of a toddler, but I do despise the conga line of leaders and cronies who are spoiling my adopted country.

Our present Prime Minister Scott Morrison elicited my displeasure from the outset. Yesterday for the first time in his incumbency he sprouted something I agree with:
To send in the army to assist with drought relief would deny locals the jobs to do this themselves.

In 2007 the Intervention was foisted on NT Aboriginal communities.  A plank of the Intervention was the compulsory medical checks of children aimed at detecting evidence of alleged sexual abuse.  Because of a civil libertarian outcry the medical checks were made voluntary.

Wendy was told by someone who’d worked in Yuendumu clinic during the preceding seven years that not a single case of a sexually transmitted infection had been detected in Yuendumu for children under the age of thirteen.

The army was called in and ‘volunteer’ doctors with no experience in remote Australia turned up at a rumoured salary of $5,000 per week.  The doctors were billeted in tents and catered for by military personnel.  Years of available data of medical checks carried out by Yuendumu organisations were ignored.  The military caterers did not buy their supplies from Yuendumu shops.  Millions were spent on this initiative, very little trickled down to the Yuendumu economy.

So, good on ya Scott Morrison, credit where it is due, you miserable bastard.

Tot de volgende keer.

Frenk

PS- a song from my childhood…. Añoranzas…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYei_BKOOGE

Not to mention Oscar Alemán….

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTQiVVt7yvE