Jawoyn People, Land and Country - Stories - People's Health Assembly - December 2000
Jawoyn People, Land and Country
Irene Fisher
Introduction
Jawayn people have occupied their lands since the Buwna – the dreaming.
Jawayn means language people and country.
Knowing our country is not a matter of drawing lines on a map.
Owning Jawoyn country is through connections to sacred sites, through Jawoyn descent and from knowledge of our lands, law and ceremony. Jawoyn- ness comes from the land to its people.
We have collective ownership of language and responsibility for country.
Since the 1980’s we have called this the “Jawoyn nation”
Representing our nation the Jawoyn Association was has established in 1985 to give us contemporary political social and economic influence over our traditional land.
Successive waves of migration to our country means Jawoyn now comprise less than a fifth of those living in Jawoyn land.
Jawoyn people traditionally occupied areas of about 34,000 square kilometers in a region called the Northern Territory of Australia. The region is sub-tropical and has two seasons – a “Wet” and “Dry”.
The monsoons come down from the North and drench the landscape in December through to March followed by six months where almost no rain falls at all. This has significant implications on the type of diseases prevalent in the area and the level and quality of health services delivered on the ground, which I will discuss in more detail later.
Before whit contact, Jawoyn people enjoyed a flourishing civilization dominated by a rich and dynamic culture. Strong ceremonial ties were maintained with surrounding Aboriginal nations – these connections continue today.
Contact by Europeans commenced sporadically in the late Nineteenth Century firstly through explorers and then by pastoralists and miners searching for riches and prosperity.
As with other areas in Northern and Central Australia, much of the early contact was characterized by brutality, including massacres and rape. This “invasion” by outsiders was accompanied by introduces diseases, to which the Jawoyn had no or little immunity to, and disruption to the local subsistence economy, particularly in pastoral areas, where Jawoyn people were forced away from traditional hunting and fishing areas.
At the same time there was a cascade of regional destruction of bush foods and environmental damage as hard-hoofed animals such as cattle and water buffaloes were introduced.
The effects on the health of our people were immediate and devastating.
From the 1930’s horticultural activities occupied the rich river flats along the Katherine region - at a time when these areas were still being used as ceremonial and burial grounds.
It was around this time that Aboriginal people were moved away from the township areas of Katherine, and the first fringe camps were established.
Mining came to the region with the Pine Creek Gold rush of late last century. It has been estimated that this alone led to a dramatic reduction in Aboriginal population of the region.
This process continued to the 1950s, and was accelerated by the events of World War II when hundreds of Aboriginal people were forced into camps by the army.
Jawoyn people, along with many other groups, worked for the army during the war. For many this was the first time people were paid money for their labour.
Again, this is all in the memory of our people living today.
In the 1950s uranium miners came into the northern areas of Jawoyn land. This not only led to severe – and continuing – damage to our country, but also led to illness among the Jawoyn community as sacred sites were disturbed and damage.
Until the 1950s Katherine was still a small town – less than 1000 people. But it was a town in which Aboriginal people were not welcome.
There was a curfew for all but a few Aboriginal people; many lived in bush camps scattered on the edge of town; many more had been herded into government settlements such as Tandangal and Beswick.
From this time, governments control over peoples’ lives was intensified.
It was from this period that utilization of bush tucker began to decline, and the dependence on introduced western foods began to intensify.
Aboriginal people had no independence – we were regarded as ’wards of the state’.
From the 1960s, legislative and social changes led to the introduction of legal drinking for Aboriginal people. Within a short period, many of our people began to adopt the binge drinking habits of white stockmen, and alcoholism began to infiltrate our communities.
All of this, as I say, is in the memories – and experience – of people alive today.
And looking around the Aboriginal communities of the region, the legacy of ill health experienced by our people is a stark reminder of a continuing history.
We have a life expectancy 20 years less than non – Indigenous Australian. Though the infant mortality rate has decline it is still 3 times the national average.
Since its formation Jawoyn Assoc found themselves increasingly at the cold face of dealing with primary health issues, social issues, chronic diseases, acute hospitalizations and youth suicides.
It has taken us 3 year to obtain any government funding for health. This has enabled us to expand our services to include more recreational activities that allow for old people to teach the young “out brush” where it should be taught.
Last year our elders participated in a major project with NLC and the Bushfires council to implement traditional fire/land management practices throughout Arnehem land.
The West Arnhem Fire Management project aims to put traditional land management practices back into action. By taking people on bush camping trips to conduct fire management, we enable people to spend time on traditional country. It also encourages knowledge of and pride in traditional ways.
Elders can teach younger people the stories and show them where the sites are. This is an important part of maintaining cultural heritage and passing on traditional ecological knowledge. The strength and pride that older people draw from being on their country and teaching other about it is inspirational.
It is not just about encouraging physical activity its about keeping our culture “alive” and maintaining our responsibility to the land.
Jawoyn/Hollows
15 months ago we began discussions with the Fred Hollows Foundation to identify a project that could improve indigenous health. From our food program we knew that there was real hunger being experienced in the communities particularly amongst the children and elderly.
We also knew that the majority of chronic diseases were related to lifestyle problems so we decided to tackle the issue of community nutrition.
Both organizations realized that if we were to make sustainable change it was going to be an enormous task that required long term commitment.
It was not enough to say okay lets employ a nutritionist and educate people about healthy foods. It would also be too simplistic to suggest that alcohol substance abuse were the sole factors.
The Jawoys over the last decade or so has been actively working to rebuild itself as a nation. In part this has been a political battle.
The Land Right Act of 1976 allowed some of our traditional lands to come back to us in 1977.
We have also engaged in an economic battle. The chronic unemployment of Aboriginal people in the region has led to our involvement with economic enterprise particularly at Nitmiluk where we have a 50% share in the boat and canoe tours as well as a share in the Nitmiuk Centre at the Gorge.
But it is also a social battle to rebuild our communities and families.
It is for this reason that health rebuilds our communities and families.
It is for this reason that health figures as a central part of the work we must do. Mortality rates are not just statistics to us they’re family.
The physical cultural and spiritual costs are enormous.
The establishment of the Nyrrany tribal health Board is part of the process by which the Jawoys Association and the communities of the region begin “rolling back” this history and take control over all aspects of what happens on our lands.
If our recent funding submission is successful the Board will take control over all the health services currently being provided to Jawoys communities by the NT government.
Successive gout run health facilities have collectively failed to provide adequate health services to aboriginal people living on Jawoyn lands.
In our proposal we will maintain the provision of acute medical services as well as providing new services directed at the management of chronic illness such as diabetes hypertension and heart disease maternal and child health will also be a priority.
Thru the development of these services it is expected that acute episodes of illness will decline resulting in fever resources necessary for acute care in the community as well as a decline in hospitalisation rates.
We suspected that the barriers to good nutrition were more than lack of nutritional knowledge or substance abuse, that there were socio-economic and cultural factors that impacted on it.
Consequently the first priority in this project was to identify those barriers, our first task was to commission a scoping study of the communities on Jawoyn land.
The purpose of the study was to identify barriers to achieve improvements in nutrition, and to assess the current capacity to monitor health impacts that may result from the implementation of our project.
As a result of the report we have implemented a number of recommendations
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The formal signing of the Memorandum of Understanding between the Fred Hollows foundation and the Jawoyn Association on May 2,000.
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Community consultation process to raise community awareness.
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Review of community store operations to look at:
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Nature and cost of infrastructure upgrade.
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Management practices.
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Training and employment strategies.
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Independent financial monitoring.
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Development of commercially sound business plans.
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Traditional Credit Union Pilot program. This is a project to provide access to electronic banking in the communities and will incorporate training in banking and budgeting skills.
In order to make sustainable changes in health it is important to address the underlying social, economic and environmental factors that impact on it.
But perhaps the most important criteria for sustained change is community control of health. It needs to be driven by the people who have the most vested interests in its success.
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