Question:
Part 1 What do you like/think is good about Yuendumu?
Part 2 What don’t you like/what would you change about Yuendumu?
Warlpiri vocabulary used
Yapa = Aboriginal people
Kardiya (Kar-dee-ya) = non-Aboriginal people
Sorry, Sorry business = Are Walpiri English terms for the rituals performed when a death has occurred.
To be or to feel sorry = used to describe empathy, sympathy, worry, care or concern for another person/group.
Business = Aboriginal English term used to describe activities associated with ceremony and traditional law.
Bush camp = the place where people stay/sleep when they are participating in Business.
Louanna (25) is a Warlpiri woman who has lived in Yuendumu all her life. Louanna works as an Administrative Assistant. She has completed a Business Studies Certificate, and wants to complete her training to be a policewoman. She has a 2 year old son.
Shaurita (18) is a Warlpiri woman who has also lived in Yuendumu all her life. She is an office worker with a 19 month old daughter. She wants to start an apprenticeship next year in Business Studies.
Question 1
L: I like things that the Mt Theo youth program does here, they put discos every Thursday, Friday and Saturday and from Monday to Wednesday they do computer training. But I don’t like when people, especially young people, when they get drunk or maybe they’re trying to do a suicide for themselves, Brett from the youth program he always helps out instead of them policemen. The youth program workers … it’s like family to us because they’re really close to Yapa, Yapa people and their family… around this community. All these people know that youth workers are here.
I like to go hunting with my family, my grandmother, my mother and my grandmother’s sisters. Sometimes we go near…what’s that little outstation? Yulyupungu, it’s between Yuendumu and Mt Allan. That’s where all the people go hunting for witchetty grubs. Because I like witchetty grubs – it tastes like egg. We make a little fire and put ‘em in the hot ashes. I like kangaroo, instead of buying meat at the shop. And bush potatoes.
S: The good things here in Yuendumu is um … people that work together like Kardiya and Yapa people, sharing stuff. Kardiya people are helping a lot of Yapa people and Yapa people are also helping Kardiya people - we all work together. Sometimes Kardiya people, they feel sorry for Yapa people when they’re in Sorry and that means that they share their sorrows with us and that’s really good. And some of the Kardiya people they feel sorry for Yapa people when it comes to the permit system and all those other things. When the permit system will be taken away, other Kardiya people will come in and maybe um … maybe they’ll make a camp here or something…. anything like that. They’ll just take photos of people in their humpies or maybe bush camp or sacred sites … yeah. That’s what I’m really worried about.
There’s a program here called Mt Theo program, youth program … they share a lot of good things with youth mob … with all the kids, they put discos on and every afternoon after school around about three o’clock all games, soccer, basketball and softball … and sometimes they go hunting and swimming.
Question 2
L: I don’t like when people get drunk and smoke ganja and all that … and graffiti on the walls. Some people go to town when they get paid, they go to town and buy ganja there and grog and come back and smoke ganja here and drink grog. I’ve seen people turn to suicide after getting drunk and smoking ganja. I feel sorry for that person who died and I feel sorry for their family. It’s a lot of stress too for families when they lose loved ones. I felt like this when I saw pictures of passed away people when I was doing my police training I couldn’t eat, I couldn’t sleep, all I can think of is that person in my mind and their family.
S: The things that I don’t like here at Yuendumu is um … kids that doesn’t go to school in the morning but when it comes to night time they just turn up at discos. When we used to go to school we had really good principal and really good teachers who really cared about us. Yeah … they was really good school teachers who loved Yapa people … they even spoke a little bit of Warlpiri too. We even played with their daughters and sons, had dinner at their places. If everything turns out to be okay, maybe the kids will start attending school if they get good teachers.
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Cecil (56) is a mental health worker working for WYN Health. He was born at Mt Theo.
Question 1
I see a lot of these young people putting efforts in their jobs and they do big things and good things for this community. They work with programs like Jaru Pirrjirdi, (which means strong voices, strong Law) and with Warlpiri Media and with the Mt Theo Program. They used to be sniffing a lot and then after that that’s all changing and they’re all working … they are looking forward to work more for Aboriginal communities, for ourselves and for old people and for the babies and the mothers and grandmothers, uncles and old grandfathers. In my young days it was different to what is now. We had a hard time in our days. Now it’s been changing and changing and changing.
Question 2
In Yuendumu we really don’t get together as a family, as a Warlpiri group and start talking to ourselves. Like, especially a men’s group don’t come together, they always get out of community and go somewhere else. There’s only a few of us that get together and talk about this community and how we’re going to make it better. How we’re going to organise … y’know bring our people back to talk about the land, the tribal and to become traditional. How are we going to bring Yuendumu back? And how are we going to look after Yuendumu? How are we going to manage our young people? Trying to start teaching them and looking after them and taking care of them and teach them the both ways. They’re getting more training from Europeans and they don’t get much from their Aboriginal people, like from the cultural side. That’s more that we don’t talk to these young boys …young boys and probably young girls. The only time they get a chance is when they go out on bush trips. If Aboriginal people get together and then that might strengthen us. Get together as a whole tribe and y’know and sit out somewhere … out in the business camp or wherever and start thinking about training young boys and girls. In my days my father took me everywhere… way out. Not during the school days. He used to take me out bush maybe for one week out in the country. Some young people don’t know their grandfather’s land yet because they don’t go out much.
Frank (64) has lived in Yuendumu for nearly 35 years. He is a geologist and Manager of the Yuendumu Mining Company. He raised his children in Yuendumu and now has grandchildren growing up in the community.
Question 1
What I like about Yuendumu is that we basically are in a Warlpiri place and the language is still strong, the culture is strong and even though I’m not part of it I enjoy being amongst it. There are a number of things that have worked over the years in Yuendumu. Some of them have had their funding cut and have gone by the wayside, but basically the potential for Yuendumu to run itself successfully and to get all the things done that are done in normal towns is pretty high. It hasn’t been realised for various reasons. For example, there was a little Aboriginal housing association here a number of years ago that was the first Aboriginal organisation to have people on long service leave, in other words people who had been with them for 10 years. They used to do what they call conversions, pick up the little old tin shed houses and convert them into liveable houses at a relatively low cost with a very high component of local labour. Unfortunately the housing association was disbanded and now all the funding goes to outside contractors.
Question 2
Things that aren’t working in Yuendumu … pretty well all problems in Yuendumu are derived from a very unfortunate cycle of local participation and empowerment. We started off 30 odd years ago, everything was run by the federal government, we had a superintendent and things weren’t all that crash hot. And then we had self-determination which was rushed in and funding was gradually cut from a lot of organisations and now we’ve gone the full circle. We are back to a stage where local empowerment is virtually nil, very few decisions are made by local people and in many ways they have become irrelevant to what’s going on here. Now with this new imposition of this federal regime that’s coming, the local decision making power has been even further eroded, it’s virtually none.
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Ned (46) is a Warlpiri man and Traditional Owner. He works as a receptionist at Yuendumu Health Clinic, working at the Men's Reception Desk and also on the Men’s Night Patrol. He has lived in Yuendumu all his life and is a father to five children. Prior to his work at the Health Clinic he was a plant operator and supervisor.
Question 1
The things I like about Yuendumu is sports and the CDEP program which employs a lot of our young people and older people. And we’ve got a good Night Patrol running - man and women’s. And we’ve got a good clinic here. So those are the most important things around here I like and I like the shop and Mt Theo program.
The Mt Theo Program is running pretty good. It’s got a lot of support from a lot of individuals like me. Like we work in different organisations here but we all always help Mt Theo because we’ve got a lot of youth problems in this community. We stopped petrol sniffing. Mostly all the property damage is all going down and all the stealing mostly stopped. So if they offend here or re-offend, instead of sending them to jail, we send them out to Mt Theo for a couple of months.
Question 2
The Taskforce promised us that things will be done but nothing’s been done around here. After I’ve finished doing my job in the clinic from 8am through to 5pm I do another 3-4 hours at night on Night Patrol, this community patrol. When we get in some serious trouble and then we try and get the police, the police don’t respond and that’s really frustrating for us Night Patrol workers because we haven’t got the authority to search cars or to hold any offenders or nothing so we usually rely on them to do all that and we can’t get in touch with them most of the nights. Only when something goes really bad they come out.
Well look they spend thousands of dollars on advertising on television, y’know when woman … domestic violence, that’s what mostly happens out here and when they advertise they say you’ve got to ring 000 and you’ll be safe or something but as far as we’re concerned out here there’s no such thing. You only see ads on television but you see no action taken here. So we’re just frustrated with the police sometimes and it’s not helping us a lot out here.
They’re supposed to give us more money for more rubbish cleaning up here. Our place is a bit dirty and run down and they took most of our garbage trucks away. I don’t know why. And all our place is mostly in a mess y’know and we need a lot of machinery out here. We need a new dump to bury all the old rubbish and get rid of all the rubbish in the streets and that … y’know street sweepers. Y’know we don’t know who’s running the show out here. We don’t know who. We don’t know if it’s the CEO or this Canberra fellow or the Taskforce or John Howard or we don’t know who. As far as we’re concerned this place is just a mess at the moment.
Sherman (24) is a radio broadcaster and one of the key players in the Yuendumu Magpies AFL team. He is married with a young daughter.
Question 1
I like everything like um, listening to music, going around with Japaljarri (Brett, the youth worker), going hunting but mainly I like music. Gospel and some country and … but I don’t like listening to rap. The young fellas like going out hunting with Brett and have a joke around… we go hunting for kangaroo or anything we see on the road - we cook them and we eat them. We do footy training this afternoon and all through the week we do training and on Saturday we go to Alice Springs to play. Sometimes at night we go to the youth centre and play some soccer there. We’ve got everything. We’ve got games, kid’s activities like soccer and video games. But mainly all those young fellas they like to kick something around. I like to kick around too. Without football and soccer there’s nothing here. It’ll be boring.
Question 2
Grog sometimes gives you a hard time – like fighting and all those things, even ganja. Fighting is bad for Yuendumu. If they don’t fight this place will be good. When people drink they do suicides, silly things y’know and they fight. Sometime when they’re drink driving they have accidents and all those things. But if you make trouble in Yuendumu they might send you to Mt Theo which is good for young people to stay away from everything.