Every year, somewhere between 150 and 200 babies are born on Cape York Peninsula. Hang on – that’s not right. They’re born into Cape York families – but those babies are born in Cairns. Queensland Health requires pregnant mothers to head to Cairns at around 36 weeks into their pregnancy – especially mothers thought to be at high risk of medical complications in the late stages of pregnancy and during birth. The current thinking is it’s better to have births at far north Queensland’s biggest hospital, eliminating the need for a late emergency medical evacuation to Cairns if things start to go wrong.
It may be sound medical reasoning, but it can be a real hardship for indigenous women. Despite support schemes and subsidies, the temporary move to Cairns can be costly, lonely, a real disconnect from the extended family support at home. And it tends to further entrench an attitude about health care – that it’s somehow separate from the daily lives of indigenous people. We understand Queensland Health is considering introducing birth facilities at one Cape York hospital, not eliminating the need to leave home but reducing the physical & cultural distance.
During pregnancy and after the birth of their child, Cape York indigenous mums are supported by services provided by various organisations, including Apunipima Cape York Health Council. http://www.apunipima.org.au/ Its teams realise that the much used “close the gap” health slogan can only have meaning if health care is present in remote indigenous communities, and is delivered in socially and culturally appropriate ways.
Rachel Sargeant leads the Apunipima Maternal & Child Health team. She works closely with her indigenous colleague, Daphne De Jersey, the Apunipima child & maternal health worker in Mapoon on north-west Cape York.There are many challenges – high rates of smoking and drinking during pregnancy, STIs, gestational diabetes, and more. But Daphne, Rachel and their colleagues are making headway. LISTEN Click on the red arrow to hear Rachel and Daphne talk about their work caring for the mums and babies of Cape York.
Comments Off on CARING FOR CAPE YORK INDIGENOUS BABIES & MUMS – AND CLOSING THE GAP
In the 1880s, moves were afoot near the then young settlement of Cairns to establish an Aboriginal mission station on land across Trinity Inlet, at what became known as Mission Bay. The proposal generated some controversy in Cairns, but it did go ahead, under the leadership of Reverend John Brown Gribble, and later, his son – Reverend Ernest Gribble.
By the early 1890s, Yarrabah was occupied by local indigenous people who had been encouraged, and some forced, to go there. Ernest Gribble spent a decade there, and went on to become the Anglican Church‘s longest serving missionary to the Aboriginal people of Australia. And Yarrabah still exists – as a largely self-governing indigenous community.
A week or so ago, a direct descendant of John and Ernest Gribble made his first visit to Yarrabah. Len Harris was on a trip to Cape York Peninsula, and decided to have a look at the community his ancestors founded more than 120 years ago.
Len wasn’t sure how he’d be received. After all, Ernest Gribble had been an authoritarian figure, and none too gentle in his spreading of the word. The role missionaries played, even inadvertently, in bringing indigenous people under white control is still much debated and highly divisive. And there’s some suggestion the removal of indigenous children from their families and communities may have taken place in those times. But Len found traces of his ancestors are still there in Yarrabah, and he went there with an open mind, and an open heart.
LISTEN Click on the red arrow to hear Len Harris talk about his ancestors, the story of the Gribble family and the earliest days of Yarrabah.
Comments Off on DESCENDANT OF YARRABAH MISSIONARIES VISITS THE INDIGENOUS COMMUNITY HIS ANCESTORS FOUNDED OVER 120 YEARS AGO
All over indigenous Australia, there are people who have returned to live on their traditional country, rather than in towns or communities to which they have no real cultural connection. And there are others working towards that goal. In the 1970s, the idea of going back to live on country began to be called the homelands movement – and one of its pioneers in far north Queensland is David Claudie.
David is chairman of the Chuulangun Aboriginal Corporation, formed in 2002 by the descendants of a Kuuku I’yu Northern Kaanju ancestor.
The Northern Kaanju people began their struggle for recognition as custodians of their Cape York country in the 1970s. In the 80s they began re-occupying their land on sand-ridge country between the Wenlock and Pascoe rivers, many hours drive from the nearest small towns.
These days David Claudie and about 25 others live on country – in a remote, modest, effective and environmentally sustainable community at Chuulangun. There’s an entrepreneurial flavour to the many projects running there – including a carbon abatement strategy, employment and training programs, and an indigenous medicine project.
David Claudie challenges many of the commonly held notions about indigenous people. He doesn’t much care for the oft-used term “traditional owner” – he says you won’t understand indigenous people from anthropology texts or the Native Title Act.
LISTEN Click on the red arrow to hear my interview with David Claudie
Many of Australia’s remote indigenous communities are in towns and centres that began as church missions or places to which governments re-located indigenous people from their traditional lands. People were encouraged, or forced, to move into those towns, which were often a long way from the country to which they belonged.
In more recent times, indigenous people have been looking for ways to return to their country, renew their spiritual connections with land, and have more control in shaping their future.
The “homelands movement” dates back to the 1970s – and there have been success stories of people returning to live some or all of the time on their traditional country. But it’s not an easy journey. It can be hard to access services, and almost impossible to make a living.
Here in far north Queensland, there are people working towards making living on country viable, affordable, even profitable.
Sam Zaro lives at Coen, a tiny town on Cape York Peninsula, but his family’s country is a few hours drive east of there – on the east coast at Nesbit River. Sam sees a time in the not too distant future when his people will live on country, paying their way with appropriate business ventures and an eco-lodge designed to represent his people’s totem.
If you can use your suburban block of land to secure finance, Sam says he should be able to do the same with his country, to make a sustainable life there for his people.
Sam says it’s beautiful country around Nesbit River – the right eco-tourism venture could attract visitors from all over the world. And the crocodiles in the area brought one famous visitor years ago – the late Steve Irwin.
LISTEN Click on the red arrow to hear Sam and his nana, Dorothy Short, who has just made her first visit to her traditional country since she was a child.
This slideshow requires JavaScript.
Pictures by Lyndal Scobell Cape York NRM and Suzie Cray ABC Open
Comments Off on WORKING TOWARDS LIVING ON OUR COUNTRY – SAM ZARO AND DOROTHY SHORT OF NESBIT RIVER COUNTRY FAR NORTH QUEENSLAND
There are many challenges for Australia’s remote indigenous communities – and one of the biggest is creating real and meaningful employment. Without it, people can’t make a living, they get caught in a downward spiral of welfare dependence, and younger people drift away to larger urban centres where their future is not always going to be brighter.
In north and western Queensland, a relatively new program has been showing very promising results. Local traditional owners are employed by local Aboriginal organisations as indigenous rangers, looking after country. They do important work, looking after indigenous land, national parks and sea country.
The indigenous rangers use their culturally informed understanding of country to monitor and preserve environments, often working with scientists to study wildlife and fauna, and deal with invasive plant and weed pest species.
So far the Queensland Government funds 53 indigenous rangers in the north and west of the state. Five of them work for the Laura Rangers, in a town with a regular population of about 100. Over the past few weeks, the population swelled to many times that, as crowds came to town for the Laura races and rodeo, and the Laura Dance Festival. LISTEN Click on the red arrow to meet the Laura Rangers and hear about the country they care for at Laura FNQ
This slideshow requires JavaScript.
My thanks to Sue Marsh at the Laura Rangers and Lyndal Scobell at Cape York N-R-M for their help in preparing that report.
Comments Off on MEET THE LAURA RANGERS – CARING FOR COUNTRY ON CAPE YORK PENINSULA FNQ
Today, a first listen to what I think will stand as one of the most memorable releases of 2013. Ngambala Wiji li-Wunungu [Together We Are Strong] is a magical mix of old and new Australian indigenous music by Shellie Morris and the Borroloola Songwomen.
This is the latest release from the Song Peoples Sessions project – a collaboration between traditional and contemporary Australian indigenous musicians that supports protection of cultural heritage and maintenance of indigenous languages & traditional song cycles. It’s looking to create new forms of musical cultural expression while maintaining ancient traditions.
Shellie Morris is best known for her work with Black Arm Band, but long before she sang rock and folk, Shellie sang opera. She’s a child of the stolen generations, raised by a white family in Sydney, where she learned opera singing. This new project sees her in the country of her grandmother, singing in Yanyuwa, the local language that now has only about ten speakers.
The result is a two-CD release of traditional songs and new compositions celebrating Yanyuwa stories, melodies and rhythms. It powerfully evokes the spirit and feel of its place, on the Northern Territory side of the Gulf of Carpentaria, and you’ll hear the same sort of emotive power present in the work of the enigmatic NT singer Gurrumul.
LISTEN Click on the red arrow to hear this week’s Tony Hillier’s World of Music
PLAY LIST
Jiwarrmanji – Shellie Morris & The Borroloola Songwomen
Rra-Wurlumandaya – The Borroloola Songwomen
Ngabujiyu Gurlia – Shellie Morris & The Borroloola Songwomen
all from the just released ABC/Universal album Ngambala Wui Li-Wunungu (Together We Are Strong)
A previous release in this project is Warren H Williams and the Warumungu Songmen: Winanjjara – Songman.
Tony Hillier is one of Australia’s leading music journalists and a musician of long standing here in far north Queensland. His informed and insightful coverage of music features in The Weekend Australian and Rhythms magazine http://rhythms.com.au/
.Tony Hillier’s World of Music is also available as a podcast. Search for Tony Hillier on your podcast app or in the iTunes store. And you can stay in touch with the FNQ music scene with Tony at http://www.entertainmentcairns.com/hilliers-hotline-archive.php
You can hear Tony on ABC Far North each Friday at 445pm.
Comments Off on OLD AND NEW INDIGENOUS MUSIC FROM SHELLIE MORRIS – TONY HILLIER’S WORLD OF MUSIC
You’ll find the town of Yarrabah about an hour’s drive south-east of Cairns – an indigenous community of about 2500 people. It was formed in the 1890s, when Anglican missionary Ernest Gribble encouraged the area’s indigenous people to move to the site of the present-day town.
By the early 1900s, Yarrabah had its own indigenous brass band, beginning a rich tradition of instrumental music in the area that thrived until the early 1970s. The Queensland Music Festival hopes to spark a revival with next month’s Yarrabah Band Festival.
The Festival is on Monday July 22, with performances by the newly-formed Yarrabah community band and indigenous school bands from across Cape York Peninsula. Kids aged six and up have been working and playing music with QMF teams at Cape York Aboriginal Australian Academy campuses in Coen, Hopevale and Aurukun in preparation for the Festival.
I got to hear two of the school bands in action on our recent Cape York road trip. At Coen, we found the kids rehearsing through their lunch break, and at Aurukun, we were there when the band played for the whole school for the first time. It was a great day for the Aurukun school community.
LISTEN Click on the red arrow to hear the Aurukun band’s first concert performance and meet their musical mentors
We heard Queensland Music Festival project coordinator Emma Kurik and Australian jazz legend John Morrison with reporter Phil Staley. The Yarrabah Band Festival begins at 4.30pm Monday 22 July at Bishop Malcolm Park Yarrabah – it’s a free event. http://www.qmf.org.au/public/public/?id=300
As part of the celebrations, visiting musicians Darren Percival (The Voice), Thelma Plum (Deadly Award Winner) and the Morrison Brothers will take to the stage before an all-in, massed-band finale.
n June of 1770, the British vessel HMS Endeavour was sailing along the far north Queensland coast. Captain James Cook and his crew had travelled far since leaving England in August 1768. Their luck was not with them this day and the Endeavour struck a reef north of Cape Tribulation. Many place names in the area derive from this story: Mount Sorrow, Endeavour Reef, and Cape Tribulation.
Cook and his crew nursed the Endeavour up the coast to an inviting river mouth and beached the ship at what is now Cooktown. Repairs were made, and then they waited for favourable weather in which to set sail for England. In all, the Englishmen stayed almost seven weeks at Cooktown. The local indigenous people, the GuuguYimithirr, had seen them coming and kept their distance, but they eventually made contact with these strange, pale visitors. There was curiosity on both sides of the encounter, conflict, and the first act of reconciliation between indigenous Australians and Europeans. And it’s the first time the word “kangaroo” entered the English language.Botanist Joseph Banks recorded it in his diary, having asked the name of a local creature that baffled the Englishmen. Gangurru is the Guugu Yimithirr word for “grey kangaroo”.
Every June since 1960, on the Queen’s Birthday weekend, the people of Cooktown re-enact the events of 1770. The Queen saw it herself in 1970, during the Cook bicentennial. The event is the centre-piece of the annual Cooktown Discovery Festivalhttp://www.cooktowndiscoveryfestival.com.au/
The Cook landing re-enactment has changed considerably in its 54 years. It’s a faithful telling of Cook’s own account, recorded in his journals, and has more recently included an indigenous perspective, drawn from Guugu Yimithirr oral history. The result is an engaging and informative spectacle, complete with costumes, musket fire and an enormous kangaroo. And it takes place right where the events depicted really occured, 243 years ago.
The first Europeans known to have walked on Australian soil were Dutch sailors. In 1605, they steered the Duyfken into the Gulf of Carpentaria and landed at Cape Keerweer on western Cape York, south of Aurukun. Their plans to build a city there did not eventuate, and the area is still much as it was all those years ago.
In 1904, the Presbyterian church established the Archer River Mission station on the western Cape, and over the next few decades, Aboriginal people were moved to the mission from a very large area of surrounding country. The mission is long gone, but the town of Aurukun remains on the site of the original mission. It’s home to about 1900 people, from five indigenous clan groups. Aurukun shire includes much of the traditional country of the Wik, Wik Way and Kugu people. The Shire was created in 1978, with the Aurukun Shire Council granted a 50-year land lease. It is stunning country, about 100 kilometres south of Weipa and about the same distance from the main Cape York Peninsula road.
Mid-way through last year, Derek Walpo became mayor of Aurukun Shire. Mr Walpo had been a health worker in the community before entering local government. He knows it will take hard work and a long-term view to put Aurukun on the road to a brighter future. There have been law and order problems in recent times, and Mr Walpo’s support for a continued ban on alcohol in the community won’t please all his constituents. Mayor Walpo believes it’s the right decision, and says people who smuggle alcohol into Aurukun face heavy penalties. He says training and job creation is crucial – real training that leads to real jobs for indigenous people. Mr Walpo is hopeful moves to develop bauxite mining will create jobs. Bauxite mining rights in the area were first granted in 1975 but have never been exercised. The Queensland Government and Aurukun Shire Council hope mining rights will be awarded by the end of this year.
AUDIO Click on the red arrow to listen to my interview with Mayor Derek Walpo.
FNQ bushfire – our fire season comes toward the end of the dry season
It surprises a lot of people from southern Australia that far north Queensland has a bushfire season. But the popular image of a lush wet tropical zone is only true for some of our region some of the time. When it rains up here, it seems like it may never stop, but when it’s dry, all the vegetation that flourished during the wet makes a dangerous fuel load waiting for a lightning strike or human intervention to trigger a major wild fire.
Our fire season comes earlier than down south — where bushfires occur during the summer months. In FNQ, fires begin towards the end of the dry season, from late September through to the beginning of the next wet season at the end of the year. The 2012 fire season was a shocker in the Gulf country, the area stretching inland from south-east and southern shores of the Gulf of Carpentaria. About 20 pastoral stations and millions of hectares were burnt in out of control fires, and the current wet season has been a non-event in the Gulf country. Cattle properties lost stock and pasture, and regrowth without good rain will be less than required.
Wild fires have been part of the seasonal cycle in far north Queensland for thousands of years, but with population growth in the past 100 years, new pressures and risk factors have developed. And there’s been growing debate about how to manage fire, how and when to conduct hazard reduction burns, and how to use fire to manage weeds and other invasive plant species. Indigenous people in FNQ have long used fire as an environmental management tool, and many argue our fire management strategies should draw on that traditional knowledge of country.
Today, new fire management guidelines were launched at Burketown that draw on indigenous local knowledge and best-practice modern science. The Gulf Savannah Fire Management Guidelines are a first, developed by the Carpentaria Land Council Aboriginal Corporation, Reef Catchments and the Rural Fire Service.
“We want to extend a hand to all other landholders in the region and say ‘Let’s work together to manage fire’ says Gangalidda Garawa senior ranger Terrence Taylor. The Gangalidda coast line is in the Southern Gulf of Carpentaria, with the main community at Doomadgee – home to about 2000 traditional people. The new guidelines provide an easy to use technical guide for all of the prescribed burning that rangers undertake in the Gulf country.
AUDIO Click on the red arrow to hear Terrence Taylor explain the new guide-lines, and how control burns should be earlier in the year. Terrence also talks about how you can tell what sort of a wet season it will be by watching where female crocodiles build their nests.
These pictures of fire damage were taken on the road to Abingdon Downs Station – 100 kms north of Georgetown – where more than 400,000 hectares of grazing land was burnt out in December (about 90 per cent of the property). Northern Gulf NRM Group has released a report on the Etheridge Shire wildfires indicating more than five million hectares were burned out, at a cost of $10 million. Many of the 20 graziers whose properties were completely or partially burnt out will be debriefing with the QFRS about the response to the fires, which challenged conventional thinking on fire as a land management tool, fire prevention, suppression and infrastructure at the 3rd Northern Gulf Graziers Forum in Mount Surprise next Tuesday. Tune in to ABC Far North then to hear Charlie McKillop reporting. 6.15 Tuesday morning.
Comments Off on TRADITIONAL KNOWLEDGE AND SCIENCE COMBINE TO MANAGE FIRE IN QUEENSLAND GULF COUNTRY
During pregnancy and after the birth of their child, Cape York indigenous mums are supported by services provided by various organisations, including Apunipima Cape York Health Council. http://www.apunipima.org.au/ Its teams realise that the much used “close the gap” health slogan can only have meaning if health care is present in remote indigenous communities, and is delivered in socially and culturally appropriate ways.
The Mojowire 