The failure of the Yalanji people of the Cape York region to return to their native land is symptomatic of a larger Aboriginal problem. Aboriginal people were emancipated in the 1960s, fully two generations ago. In the face of the enormous and contradictory pressures for separation or integration, many have found their emancipation to be meaningless because the choices were too stark. They were free to be separate from the dominant culture and return to their land, but not to live as they once did. They were free to integrate into the dominant culture, but feared a loss of identity. Aborigines have chosen both paths, and Aboriginal policy reflects an uncomfortable accommodation of each path.
Presently, the dominant path in policy circles is the "progressive" policy of self-determination. As far as land rights are an integral part of self-determination, it appears to be separatist. Other than for the fortunate few, the future of Aboriginal homelands is likely to be ghettoes in the wilderness. They are being established without an economic base, on a legal structure of non-traditional communal ownership, through non-traditional political processes, and following two centuries of the failure to overcome a "cargo-cult" mentality.
These are not my observations, but those of Richard Trudgen in his book, Why Warriors Lie Down and Die. He recognises the needs of the Yolnu, with whom he worked, to maintain control over their lives by maintaining their language and traditional customs. He writes, "when I left Arnhem Land in 1983, ninety-five percent of the work on Yolnu communities was carried out effectively by the people themselves. On my return in 1992, I found only a few remained involved in meaningful work". More devastating, "if you visit the Yolnu drunks in the long grass in Darwin or Nhulunbuy, you will find that a large proportion of them have had college or tertiary education". The Yolnu emancipation brought destruction.
Two stories from his book help explain what happened. The first is of an Aboriginal man who was trained as a builder. He, along with Aboriginal apprentices built 3 houses per year in their settlement. The government of the day decided there was a backlog in housing and sent in white builders to catch-up. They completed 6 houses in three months. The Yolnu community ridiculed the Yolnu builder for not keeping up with the white builders. That Yolnu man has not worked since.
Self-determination may mean lower standards of living. Will this be recognised by those clamouring for self-determination? Will policy-makers recognise that the right to control ones' life will have consequences for the achievement of an equal standard of living? Richard Trudgen may be a romantic, but he would opt for Aboriginal control over equal outcomes. The irony in self-determination may be that it would be like the old missions. It would require a band of dedicated and skilled people to act as interpreters, as a buffer between the Aborigines and the army of helpers presently moving in waves through the settlements. Such protectionism is fundamental to Noel Pearsons' model of escaping welfare. It would require a highly managed, possibly authoritarian model of community control.
The second story reveals the irony even more powerfully. It concerns a group of Yolnu schoolchildren who visited Singapore on an excursion, and within two months were found sniffing petrol. "What was meant to be an exciting and enriching educational experience had actually given the children a completely false understanding of how the world works and turned them against their own families". The children were angry with their parents for not being able to give them what others could. Trudgen reconnected the children with the adults by his understanding of the Yolnu language and custom. However, his skills could not tackle the most fundamental issue. "How do you keep 'em down on the farm?" Aboriginal children may not stay in communities where the opportunities they identify as being important, do not exist.
Why is it intelligent to persist in the policy of self-determination, where that policy means separatism? Separatism will require a devotion and intensity and experience that only missionaries had. This body of skills and devotion may no longer exist. It may also require a level of authority that few elders' possess, and it seems, few new leaders possess. At the very least, the inter-family and inter-clan fighting of "crony" pan-Aboriginal politics will continue under a separatist model of self-determinatiion.
Self-determination as integration may require resistance to the current progressive ideology, and some loss of identity, but perhaps, in the long run, a more enduring settlement between Aborigines and the rest of Australia. The Yalantji of Cape York may well have chosen the latter course.
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