So now Senator Scullion thinks Traditional Owners and consultation with community is holding us back. Last week in the National Indigenous Times we read in Geoff Bagnall’s interview with the Federal Indigenous Affairs Minister, Senator Nigel Scullion how the Federal Government is not only refusing to empower prominent organisations such as Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisations to take control of programs there was actually an extraordinary attack on Traditional Owners claiming young First Nations people do not have self-determination because they are “in thrall” to and are “being disempowered by” Traditional Owners.

The attack came after questions relating to how the Federal Government intended to continue funding strategies that would aid in fighting the suicide crisis suffered throughout our Indigenous communities.

When the Minister was asked how important he felt self-determination was in the implementation of programs to end the suicide crisis he launched a scathing attack on Traditional Owners as a reason why he would not support giving the communities control over the structure and implementation of government-funded programs.

Senator Scullion said: “I have certainly had a number of conversations and I think being re-empowered is an important matter. I have been talking to people, for example, in Western Australia, I have been speaking to people in the Northern Territory, some parts of Queensland and there’s a very difficult issue to deal with.”

“Those people I have spoken with say they live in communities where they’re in thrall to some Traditional Owners, they live in this community, in fact they might even be the sons and daughters of Traditional Owners but they say they live in a system that’s like a feudal system, it’s out of somewhere else.”

“They say to me Australia’s over there somewhere that is separate and that they can live in a community and aspire to own their own home and all this but they can’t even talk about it because it is all about the Traditional Owners owning the land. They (the Traditional Owners) make all the decisions about the future of those people and those people feel disempowered.”

The first problem with the Minister’s comment is it is based upon an incorrect assertion. There are very few places in Australia, Senator Scullion where Traditional Owners own the land. But there are plenty of Indigenous communities throughout Australia where poverty, isolation and yes suicide is occurring.

It was a sickening attack by the Minister and sadly no surprise it came just a week after Noel Pearson and Warren Mundine were applauding the extinguishing of Native Title for freehold land title and supporting a call to end continual land connection.

I ask you Mr Pearson and Mr Mundine, who can afford to buy the land in Doomadgee, Palm Island and Kowanyama? Oh, yeah, of course É you fellas can!

A number of organisations expressed surprise and concern about the Minister’s comments when contacted by the National Indigenous Times claiming they had not received any feedback such as claimed by Senator Scullion from the communities they work with. We also received a number of letters from readers. I am going to print one together with the author’s name, I don’t normally print names unless requested which is what occurred this week as an open letter to Senator Scullion:

The letter reads:
“To Senator Nigel Scullion, Federal Minister for Indigenous Affairs
Hard Copy: Tony Abbott, Prime Minister for Indigenous People
Dear Mr Scullion,
In response to your statements, reported in the National Indigenous Times 21.5.14 that Aboriginal youth are “in thrall” to and are “being disempowered by Traditional Owners” and that this is why they do not have self-determination.
I am honestly horrified that a Minister for First Nation Peoples can have such a perverse view of the current situation regarding Aboriginal socio-political affairs. In fact the polar opposite is true – the Traditional Aboriginal Lawmen and women are the key to not only all their people’s genuine self-empowerment but also the key to ending the crisis of suicide still running at an incredible 100 times the national average in some remote communities. Native Americans have succeeded in eliminating suicide where young people are conversant with their own languages and cultures which is well documented, Mr Scullion.
Also concerning are your views that an amendment to the Australian Constitution recognising First Nations, perhaps just in the preamble, will somehow confer empowerment upon them – this is quite clearly nonsense, not just because that document is allegedly illegal (Aborigines never having ceded their sovereignty) and currently being challenged in an International Court, but also because your government’s assimilationist, ie culturally genocidal policies will continue on exactly the same. Please listen and read carefully and then re-envision your policies to respect and correctly value Aboriginal people and their unsurpassed knowledge and wisdom.
Maureen Brannan: Murgon.”

The Co-Chair of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Mental Health and Suicide Prevention Advisory Group and Co-Chair of Reconciliation Australia, Dr Tom Calma has also stated concern over the Minister’s comments.

The Federal Government was adopting an ideological fixation on education and jobs as the way to end the suicide crisis that would not solve the problem on its own, Dr Tom Calma has warned. The comment was made after Indigenous Affairs Minister, Senator Nigel Scullion stressed his emphasis would be on jobs and education in the fight against depression and suicide.

“What we do know is people are far less likely to suicide or suffer from depression if they’ve got a job, they’re far less likely to suffer from suicide or depression if they’ve got a good education, so we have to build those fundamentals,” Senator Scullion said.

Dr Tom Calma has however rejected Senator Scullion’s assertions warning they were not accurate and “these sorts of views were not based on any evidence”.

“I must say I think the evidence and the profession will clearly show the Minister that his assertions are not accurate,” Dr Calma said. “It is naive to believe this only has to do with low socioeconomic people, or people who are out of employment, or people who don’t have an education. That’s the danger when we express these sorts of views that are not based on any evidence.”

“If public policy is being developed because of an individual’s personal thoughts, be they biases, stigma or whatever, then that doesn’t bode well and that’s what, in the whole mental health sector, we are trying to educate the community to understand a lot more about what we do know and a lot more about what we don’t know,” Dr Calma said.

Studies in sociology clearly demonstrate suicide comes from anxiety which, when untreated, can become depression. The major cause for this anxiety is living with uncertainty through a breakdown of traditional values and identity as stated in (Inventing Adulthoods, 2007), a major study in youth transition.

In the past, public agendas have tended to concentrate on the implications of young people’s pleasures for those around them, while the emotional and psychological pains of the young people themselves have been relatively neglected. In recent years, however, the media has began to present young people as more of a health concern, and being under rising pressure in competitive education and work environments (Inventing Adulthoods, 2007).

There are further studies that show “a perceived rise in psychological disorders among young people has been linked to late modern uncertainty and anxiety arising from: an expansion in possibilities, choices and decision-making including the extension of education and financial pressures on students” (Rutter and Smith 1995).

The Inventing Adulthoods study as well as another study (Hawton et al, 1995) clearly demonstrated the highest rate of youth suicide in England over a 14 year period was higher among students at Oxford University than among people of similar age who were not students. So long-story short – by adding to the pressures of young people, by creating more demands and external obstacles such as work and education rather than increased self-esteem and confidence through connection and identity which are seen as crucial elements in wellbeing you increase anxiety and fear of failure which builds towards greater risk of youth suicide.

As Tom Calma quite rightly explains, these are polices not developed on the run on the opinion of personalities but rather based upon statistics and research. It also shows what is known to work is the complete opposite of what is happening within government.

For the Minister to now attack Traditional Owners and Culture only leads to more uncertainty and loss of identity and belonging Ð again crucial elements that contribute to youth suicide.

I have been relatively quiet on this issue wanting to do some research before I wrote on the subject and the research I have found shows the solutions are the exact opposite of what we are being told by this present government. It’s disgusting what is happening.

Another study states the following: “Social attitudes towards grief and mourning and the specific way in which these are experienced by young people as involving a relative lack of power combined with a sense of exclusion from the decisions being made” (Ribbens McCarthy with Jessop, 2005).

Again the above statement is of real concern when Senator Scullion openly admits not only is he not listening to our people on the ground and refusing to let them control appropriate programs, he is actually dismissing what they do have to say.

Dr Calma is right when he said we need to solve the suicide crisis but for that to happen it needs to be done from a basis of research and evidence, not “simplistic solutions”.

“The first premise is that getting a job is not going to solve mental health or prevalence of suicide,” Dr Calma said. “We try to force people to formal education systems when those formal education systems aren’t appropriate or aren’t attractive and if they don’t participate then that is also part of the undermining of their self-esteem, their dignity and that’s what we have to turn around.”

It’s a point made also in the film Charlie’s Country, which is the third film in an informal trilogy of collaborations between writer/director Rolf de Heer and actor, David Gulpilil.

The film made its International premiere at the Cannes film festival just last week with David Gulpilil winning the best actor award.

In the film Charlie (Gulpilil) lives in a remote Aboriginal community in Arnhem Land where he and the other men of the community struggle with cultural ties in a world dominated by white law and institutionalised racism though the Northern Territory Intervention.

Within the primarily white police force, Charlie is seen as a gammon fella fooling them into thinking he is an expert tracker. He uses cultural misunderstandings to his advantage but then is obligated to heed white laws; his lovingly crafted hunting spear is confiscated for being a weapon. We follow Charlie as he moves out of the community and tries to live in his Country. Like his ancestors, he builds a shelter, paints bark and carves a new hunting stick with which to catch barramundi in the river. But he is lonely. Separated from his community and with ancestors long gone, the world Charlie wants to exist no longer does.

The film asks its audience to experience and reflect on Charlie’s life and this complex clash of cultures. When Charlie is indicted it is for a crime he did indeed commit but it is a white man’s law and we see the endlessly complex, unsupportive and disparaging circumstances that led him to that point.

The film is far more informative and useful as a reference for what’s happening on our communities rather than listening to comfortable middleclass businessmen and woman and politicians sitting around a table listenting to hand-chosen blackfellas who have lost connection with the values Gulpilil’s character demonstrates in the film. It’s in Gulpilil’s performance where the film finds its power. Charlie is searching for something he can’t fully know or identify, something stolen, something missing, filled with sadness yet kept alive through community and connection with family and Culture.

The narrative is shown through a number of prolonged shots resting solely on Gulpilil’s face where we have an intimate relationship with this man. As the heaviness of the world takes its toll on Charlie, Gulpilil’s eyes deepen in their sadness. David Gulpilil actually wrote the film with director Rolf de Heer, which shows you just how important this story is to him.

The film has a clear message, Mr Scullion. It is Culture and traditional values that will save our children, and one of Australia’s greatest living performers, and cultural teachers to our wider population, David Gulpilil, together with one of our most awarded directors in Rolf de Heer, are voices none of us can afford to dismiss.

Dr Woolombi Waters is a Kamilaroi language speaker and writer and a lecturer at Griffith University. He writes a weekly column for the National Indigenous Times. E-mail: woolombi.waters@nit.com.au