Association of South Asian and South East Asian Universities and Colleges Conference. University of Notre Dame Australia- Broome Campus

Transcription

1 1 Association of South Asian and South East Asian Universities and Colleges Conference University of Notre Dame Australia- Broome Campus Keynote Address, 26 August 2016 Peter Yu, CEO Nyamba Buru Yawuru Ltd I know that you have been graciously welcomed to Yawuru country by Maxine Charles and Judy Edgar during this week of discussions, explorations and reflections. As Chief Executive Officer of the Yawuru Corporation I would like to warmly welcome you to Broome and to Yawuru country on behalf of the Yawuru Corporate Group. I would also like to acknowledge Professor Juli Coffin, Head of the Broome Campus, University of Notre Dame Australia Father Denis Edwards, the next keynote speaker Professor Celia Hammond Vice Chancellor of the University of Notre Dame Australia Representatives from the Association of Southeast and East Asian Catholic Colleges and Universities, And representative from the International Federation of Catholic Universities It is indeed a great honour to have such a diverse group of people representing Universities and Colleges throughout the Asian region visit Yawuru Country for the purpose of this conference. And I would like to congratulate the University of Notre Dame Australia for its superb organisational effort in bringing this conference together. I know what it s like to organise large bush meetings involving Aboriginal communities from throughout the Kimberley region. I can imagine the logistical challenge to coordinate so many people from so many nations throughout South Asia and East Asia. I would like also to commend the conference organisers on such an inspired and relevant conference theme Valuing Indigenous Cultures and Traditions in the Care for Our Common Home.

2 2 I certainly hope that what you have observed and learned in Broome and Beagle Bay this week will resonate with the conference theme. I feel very humbled to address you today. I have been asked to frame my address as Indigenous perspectives on Laudato Si or as you would all know Pope Francis s second Papal Encyclical which was released publicly in May last year. I must confess at the outset that to speak to this subject is a daunting challenge for me. The Pope s Encyclical, sub-titled On Care for Our Common Home, is a profound historical and philosophical critique of modern humanity s disconnection from our physical environment and related social disintegration. It challenges society s growing, obsessive consumerism, reliance on technology and emphasis placed on the individual as opposed to the needs of the community as endemic poisons that are imperilling our planet Our Common Home. It sounds like a depressing read but the truth is that Laudato Si is an uplifting document because it offers hope and moral guidance for a better world. At a time of impending global crisis which some informed commentators describe as an emerging perfect storm global warming, mass refugee population movements, widespread mental illness, sporadic wars and a global economy that concentrates wealth in the hands of a few the Papal Encyclical inspires us to enter into a dialogue with all people about our common home. Although I have grown up in the Catholic community of Broome with an outlook on life which has been largely shaped by Catholic traditions of social justice I am not a theologian and will not presume to provide religious or spiritual commentary about the connection between Laudato si and the Indigenous world. My objective in this address is to leave you with some challenging thoughts and ideas. I have been a political advocate for the rights of Indigenous people of the Kimberley, nationally and at international levels for almost 40 years. Throughout my adult life I have worked to empower Indigenous people so that our communities can negotiate a just relationship with Settler Societies. My work and experiences have given me a sense of what is common to Indigenous people throughout the world.

3 3 On this basis I can say with absolute confidence that Laudato si speaks to the overriding concerns of Indigenous people degeneration of our lands and seas which nurture us spiritually, culturally, socially and economically; social and political alienation; and rampant industrial development and greed. We, the Indigenous survivors in the post Columbus epoch are fighting determinedly to preserve the cultural traditions of our ancestors so that they can be inherited by future generations. But more than its content and tone, Laudato si resonates with Indigenous people because it so eloquently describes values that are at the heart of Indigenous people s lives and belief systems When Pope Francis draws on Catholic tradition to state that everything is interconnected, and that genuine care for own lives and our relationship with nature is inseparable from fraternity, justice and faithfulness to others, he speaks to the essence of the Indigenous worldview. When he describes the natural environment as a collective good, the patrimony of all humanity and the responsibility of everyone, he speaks to the heart and soul of Indigenous people. There are many values and beliefs that are universal to all Indigenous peoples but it is important to understand that there is no such thing as one Indigenous perspective. Indigenous individuals have no licence or authority to talk for others. One can only speak from the perspective and experience of the community in which we belong. I intend therefore to frame this keynote address around the story of Yawuru and Broome and in doing so draw out the compelling linkages between the Yawuru story and wisdom and insights of Laudato si. But firstly let me tell you a little about myself and the community that has raised me. Like many Indigenous people of this town I have Aboriginal and Asian heritage. My mother, who is now 83, was born in Beagle Bay mission. Her mother was a Bunuba woman, who

4 4 with her sister had been taken away from her mother by government officials from the Fitzroy Crossing area in the central Kimberley. Most Aboriginal families in Broome have been affected by past government policies of forcible removals; what is generally called the stolen generations. My mother s father was a Yawuru man whose traditional country is just to the south of Broome. At a young age my mother moved to Broome and lived in the Holy Child Orphanage. As a young woman she met my father, a Chinese man from Kut-O, a small island near Hong Kong who had come to work in the pearling industry in the North of Australia - something common to many people from various parts of Asia during the 19 th and 20 th century including Japan, Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore, and Timor and other islands in the Indonesian archipelago. The pearling industry made Broome a unique Australian community. Nowhere else in Australia did Asian people live in such big numbers over many generations. I am sure you are aware that Australia had a restricted immigration policy from the time Australia federated as a nation in 1901 until the early 1970s. It was known as the White Australia policy which sat along-side a formal policy of denial of Indigenous rights. Not just the rights to our lands and the right to practice our culture, we were denied basic human rights, normal citizenship entitlements. For much of the twentieth century a European centric settler culture of exclusion and entitlement prevailed in Australia. It was a nation steeped in racial discrimination that was committed to extinguishing Indigenous culture supported by laws enacted by the National and State parliaments and given the full force of legal validity by the Australian Constitution. For much of the twentieth century Australia was not grounded in the principles of the Common Good that are so eloquently described in the Papal Encyclical. Pope Francis says in Laudato Si that society as a whole, and the State in particular, are obliged to defend the Common Good. The State Government s segregation and child

5 5 removal laws and policies were relentless attacks on families which Pope Francis describes as the basic cell of society, and pivotal to the Common Good. My parents loving union spanned a period of almost 40 years that produced nine children. For much of that time their union breached Western Australian laws and my father was once arrested for cohabitating with a native. It was only much later in their lives that they were allowed to be formally married in the Church. My parent s story was hardly unique. An institutional system of surveillance and control attempted to manage a multicultural labour force that served the pearling masters and western colonial power in Broome. The Aborigines Act of 1905 was the key legal instrument used to control Broome s majority population of Aboriginal and Asian residents. As Broome s population became increasingly entwined, as loving unions and growing families flourished, the State s interventions to maintain its control through segregation increased accordingly. Relationships between Aboriginal and Asian people unsettled Western Australian colonial society and consequently Broome became the first town in Western Australia to be prescribed for segregation under the 1905 Act. Reserves were established at the edge of towns where Aboriginal people could live in concentrated and controlled settlements. A fence was erected around Broome, known as the Common Gate, which signified the town boundary. At Sundown Aboriginal people who did not have status to live in Broome had to be on the other side of the fence. The Common Gate remained in use until the late 1960s and the 1905 Act was finally repealed in 1972 Throughout this period of unrelenting State control over the lives of Aboriginal people, Asian men, the majority of whom were indentured labourers, lived with insecurity that their contracts could be revoked at any time without appeal and be transported back to Asia. Despite this oppressive colonial regime, the legacy of which is still painfully felt, Broome people demonstrated a proud capacity to defend the Common Good against the State.

6 6 Broome s history is a demonstration of the power of humanity s goodness over an inhumane system of racial discrimination. What evolved in Broome was a remarkable fusion and coexistence of Asian and Yawuru and other Indigenous cultures. Connected by the different facets of the pearling industry and living in a Common Home, people shared skills and knowledge such as hunting and fishing, music and entertainment, romance, food and education. Broome became a peaceful and stable place to raise a family. Despite some glaring injustices I look back on my childhood and teenage life in Broome with happy memories. In a nation that excluded Asians and denied Indigenous peoples their right to be both Indigenous and human beings with freedom, the unique community of Broome bonded to assert the Common Good against a State Government determined to diminish the Common Good. In my view the glue that bonded our complex multicultural community has been a deep appreciation of the concept of respect. Over the generations we have learned to respect each other s language, cultural and religious practices and life styles as fundamental to living in a connected community; a community that supports all of the diverse groups that make up all its complex parts The Broome community s ethos for supporting one another was demonstrated over a controversial incident a few years ago involving a documentary film called the Cove which won the Academy Award in The film was about the wholesale killing of dolphins in the small southern Japanese town of Taiji. It just so happened that Taiji sent thousands of Japanese men to Broome to dive for pearls in the first half of the twentieth Century. Approximate two thousand died in that horrendously dangerous industry and are buried in the Broome cemetery. There is a Broome club in Taiji and members of Broome s Japanese community regularly visit friends and family in Taiji and vice versa. Broome and Taiji have a sister town relationship. The Cove had its premier showing in Broome which was accompanied by a global coordinated cyber campaign aimed at pressuring the Broome Shire Council to sever its sister relationship. The Shire wilted under

7 7 pressure and cut its formal ties with Taiji. At the same time Japanese graves at the Broome cemetery were desecrated. That Broome s precious heritage relationship with Taiji was used in an international animal rights campaign mobilised the old Broome community in support of the Japanese community. Critical to the campaign, which reinstated Taiji s sister town relationship was the leadership role played by the Yawuru native title holders or traditional owners of the Broome region. The Yawuru people were recognised as the Native Title holders of the lands and seas around Broome in 2006 after a long court case. As a result of that determination by the Federal Court of Australia we were then obliged to negotiate a wide ranging agreement with the State Government and the Broome Shire so as to accommodate the future orderly development of the town that had been established a century before on our traditional land. This Global Agreement was formalised in Yawuru s status as traditional owners of the Broome region is critical to our town s future. Along with the Broome Shire Council, the local Government entity for this region of Western Australia, Yawuru are now firmly embedded as part of Broome s civic leadership. Like all Indigenous societies Yawuru people have inherited the wisdom of our ancestors to manage our natural environment. In a landmark book published in 2011, titled The Greatest Estate on Earth, eminent historian Bill Gammage details the practices of the traditional land owners in maintaining Australian ecosystems that supported a huge bounty of animal and plant life. Through acquired wisdom and knowledge over thousands of years Indigenous land managers nurtured the environment through fire management, sustainable hunting and nurturing plant life and water holes. When Europeans first encountered Australian landscapes in the eighteenth and nineteenth century they saw stunning diversity of grasslands, traversable forests, wetlands and rain forests without appreciating the relationship that Indigenous people have with the environment that made it this way.

8 8 The dispossession of Indigenous people from their traditional lands in favour of a private land owning regime that views nature solely for profit and gain has had catastrophic ecological consequences. In 200 years of European occupation of Australia the loss of habitat and species has been alarming. Laudato si reminds us that what is happening in Australia must be seen in a global context. The Pope inspires us to appreciate that the rich biodiversity of our planet is an interconnected system that is our Common Home. It is a Common Home for all humanity that transcends the concept of sovereign nation states. The Holy Father states we are faced not with two separate crises, one environmental and the other social, but rather with one complex crisis which is both social and environmental. Strategies for a solution demand an integrated approach to combating poverty, restoring dignity to the excluded, and at the same time protecting nature. With that in mind I would like to focus for the remainder of this address on Yawuru s developmental agenda to reconstruct our community and to transform Broome into an inclusive, respectful and just society. When Pope Francis draws on Christian tradition in Laudato si to say that nature is a gift from God and that people living today are contemporary stewards of that gift to bequeath to future generations, it resonates with Yawuru. Our creative force is the Bugarrigarra; time before time which created our world and is a living being that continues to nurture all living things in our interconnected world. All our laws and customs flow from the almighty Bugarrigarra. When Francis talks about the importance of a communion between humanity and nature, it parallels with Yawuru s understanding of Buru or Country. For Yawuru Buru means far more than just land or our place on our land. It means the relationship we have with every living thing on our country; the trees, the animals, birds, insects and fish. Our connection to Buru embodies our links to our ancestors and to those whose lives have not yet commenced. We too are the stewards who have a responsibility to care for and protect our Common Home for both our ancestors and for future generations.

9 9 Pope Francis understands well the responsibilities of Indigenous peoples. In Laudato si he writes; for them land is not a commodity but a gift from God and from their ancestors who rest there, a sacred place with which they need to interact if they are to maintain their identity and values. When Francis talks about the tragedy of alienation that people experience from families and communities, a pervasive sense of lacking purpose and compulsive individualism highlighted by addictions to greed and consumerism, Yawuru relate to this as Liyan. We strive to have good liyan; we call it Mabu Liyan a sense of deep positive wellbeing and good feeling in one s heart and soul.. Mabu Liyan happens when we are on country with family fishing or hunting, when our families are connected, when we feel respected and our country is protected and when we feel empowered and not threatened by interventions of State power. As you could imagine for a people who have been colonised and experienced institutionalisation and domination over generations there is a reservoir of inherited grief and trauma. In this situation achieving Mabu Liyan is the key benchmark measurement of the success of our native title rights. The pivotal themes highlighted by the Holy Father in Laudato si have a parallel in Yawuru culture and cosmology. These matters were the key platforms of evidence which we used to assert our native title rights in the Federal Court to show that the cultural practices and belief systems of our ancestors remain fundamentally important to Yawuru people today. The State argued ruthlessly that Yawuru s rights had been extinguished because our contemporary culture was different to that practiced a few generations ago by our apical ancestors. They argued that our native title rights had been washed away by the tide of history. By this they meant that too many Yawuru children had been institutionalised in circumstances where no Yawuru language could be spoken or Yawuru culture practiced. They presented evidence that many Yawuru people had been pressured to live some distance from Yawuru country and evidence that showed pervasive assimilation practises in school and other areas of everyday life.

10 10 The State argued that Yawuru culture and therefore our native title rights could not have survived the relentless interventions by the State over much of the twentieth century. The Judge of the Federal Court of Australia who heard the case disagreed with the State s contentions and found in favour of Yawuru as did the three judges of the Federal Court who heard the State s appeal. From my perspective I have always found it personally unsettling that the State Government could use its past policies of discrimination, intervention and assimilation as the basis of its case against Yawuru. These policies are now universally reflected on as unconscionable and described by some as attempted cultural genocide and yet they were used by the State in a modern Court to argue that they achieved exactly what they had intended. Four years after the native title determination, Yawuru negotiated a wide ranging agreement with the State Government and the Shire of Broome. The Agreement is one of the most innovative native title contracts between Indigenous land owners and a State Government and a local government ever negotiated in Australia. The agreement was negotiated on the basis that Yawuru would be independent of Government s control and domination. As part of the compensation package that Yawuru negotiated with the State for the illegal acquisition of some Yawuru land title and land title that Yawuru agreed to surrender for Broome s residential and commercial expansion, Yawuru were returned over 3000 hectares of developable land to generate income for our community benefit and long term sustainability. But the pivotal concerns for Yawuru are protecting our country, making our culture strong and building our social capital. And in advancing our agenda we intend to build the Common Good in Broome and this time with the State Government as a vital partner. This new partnership with the State Government is critically important for managing and protecting the extraordinary ecology of Broome and its surrounds. Next year the Yawuru Conservation Estate will be formally gazetted as an interconnected system of reserves and parks that will cover both land and sea. It incorporates rare and unique animals and plant life and has an ecological diversity of global significance.

11 11 Yawuru and our partners employ teams of land and sea rangers and country managers who play a vital role in managing and protecting Yawuru s natural environment. And we are acutely aware that in looking after Yawuru Country -Our Common Home -that we act as stewards not just for the Yawuru community and future generations but also with responsibility as global citizens. The migratory wader birds who fly between the lower rims of the Arctic Circle to the coastal mud flats of Roebuck Bay are part of the Yawuru family of life. They come here every year and the challenges that they face on their annual pilgrimages are constant reminders of how precious and fragile is our Common Home. The Yawuru are in agreeance with the Holy Father when he writes that technological innovation is not the answer to solving the ecological and social crises that are imperilling our Common Home. Technology is useful only when it is in the hands of people who have a communion with nature and have an embedded sense of humanity s Common Good. The Yawuru have built many partnerships in our endeavours to sustain our Common Home. In particular our partnership with the Australian National University through the Fenner School for Environmental Sciences has enabled the Yawuru to develop geo spatial mapping capacity that combines western scientific geographic data analysis with the intricate cultural knowledge of Yawuru people. Our maps give a complete interconnected picture of the cultural, social, ecological and economic values of Yawuru country and have become a vital tool for Yawuru decision making and land use planning. In tandem with the evolving immersion of Yawuru cultural wisdom with western science and technology has been a renaissance in Yawuru cultural practice. Young and old people are working together on country and recording stories. Dancing, singing and tool making are being re-discovered. Most importantly the Yawuru language is being revitalised and taught in schools and kindergartens in Broome. We are committed to building a contemporary Broome Yawuru society where our people are happily engaged in cultural activities and at the same time participating in the modern economy.

12 12 We believe that a flourishing Yawuru Community can achieve a sense of spiritual oneness and happiness Mabu Liyan - that our forebears would have experienced before western colonisation. In another dimension of our partnership with the Australian National University we are drawing on their economic and demographic expertise to develop a scientific measurement of Liyan. A couple of weeks ago we launched the first part of the project; a report called Community Wellbeing from the Ground Up; The Yawuru Example. It is a report of a survey of more than a 100 Yawuru people about their cultural and social activities and how they affect wellbeing. Yawuru are committed to an evidenced based approach in the development of the Common Good so that we can make wise decisions about investing our own resources as well as the resources of our partners. I should mention that the Liyan economic evaluation project has already facilitated a creative dialogue between Yawuru and the State government about the prospect of public funds being invested in an innovative Yawuru healing and wellbeing centre which will combine Yawuru understandings of wellbeing with western medicine. By way of conclusion and in the spirit of Pope Francis s call for renewal and dialogue I ask that you take home with you some thoughts concerning future dialogue about advancing that values of Indigenous Cultures and Traditions in the Care for Our Common Home. Yawuru s commitment to building research partnerships for practical application incorporates a range of matters such as geo spatial mapping, the economics of community wellbeing, cultural and ecological tourism, developing a native fruit industry, cultural education, social impact investment and innovative town and landscape planning - to name just a few ideas. This is a serious agenda which will benefit not just Yawuru people but many others who look to Yawuru as innovative leaders committed to building a society which has a communion with nature and building the Common Good. This agenda can be enormously advanced through an expanded collaboration between universities and colleges who have a shared interest.

13 13 The Broome campus of the University of Notre Dame Australia could act as a niche hub for universities and colleges interested in exploring the potential collaboration between Indigenous cultural knowledge and western science and technology. Yawuru would be open for a dialogue on this subject as I think ANU would. I will leave that challenging thought with you. Galiya