KEY POINTS:
Walk around the sprawling community of Wadeye and you will be assailed by children, quick to spot a stranger in town. They crowd around to talk in broken English but also chatter in Murrinh-patha, the indigenous language of this former Catholic mission.
Six other languages are spoken here,
all of them endangered, making Wadeye a laboratory for linguists.
"Language is our identity and if we forget our identity, we are nothing," says Patrick Nudjulu. A patriarchal figure, with white beard and a leg withered by leprosy, he points to his grandchildren playing nearby. He says speaking in their mother tongue will keep them connected to their culture.
But he encourages the children to go to school to do their sums and to learn how to speak in English. "You need to be able to talk to the white fella," he says.
Wadeye, pronounced Wad-air, sits on the edge of the Daly River Reserve, 280km south-west of Darwin in Australia's Northern Territory. The country's largest indigenous community, it has a population of 2700, comprising 24 clans, seven tribes and three ceremonial groups.
The ethnic mix is a throwback to the thirties when missionaries persuaded indigenous groups to live together.
Cut off by road for up to five months of the rainy season, any visitors come in by air. The flight is over forests and woodlands, towering cliffs, vast wetlands, paperbark and mangrove swamps. It is wild and beautiful country. The few outsiders permitted to come here arrive at the airstrip on the edge of the township and find a settlement resembling a shantytown. At first glance, it seems a picture of dysfunction. There is litter everywhere and none of the niceties of life that white people in suburbs of Sydney or Canberra take for granted, such as shops and cafes.
Many of the buildings are boarded up and covered in graffiti. A glance inside finds most are largely unfurnished, apart from cookers, a few chairs and mattresses, televisions and stereos, many of which blast out music at all hours.
There are no well-tended gardens and people can't help but bring in mud and dirt, especially in the wet season. Overcrowding is rife and an average of 17 people live in each house, following the Aboriginal tradition of living in family groups. Some of the tenants, who are clearly depressed and lethargic, do not seem to notice the squalor that they are living in or the smells around them.
There is high unemployment in Wadeye. Most people exist on welfare payments. There are also endemic health problems associated with overcrowding, poor hygiene and a lack of education. Dr Pat Rebgetz, the only doctor serving this community, says health care has been under-funded for decades and there is only so much he and his team of community nurses can do. Residents suffer high rates of heart disease, rheumatic fever, skin sepsis and nephritis. Some 20 to 30 per cent of children have perforated ear drums due to chronic infection while others are malnourished. There are about 80 births a year, some to 13- and 14-year-olds.
"This is happening because of decades of neglect," says Rebgetz. "I feel the politicians think these people are not worth it. They largely believe Aboriginal people have brought all this on themselves. There are a lot of gentle, good people here who have been beaten down by their living conditions. The grandmothers are the backbone of this community. I am in awe of how they can survive among all this dysfunction.
"If you want to improve the health of people here, you have to improve their living conditions. The basic problem is overcrowding and the lack of hygiene."
Wadeye is an alcohol-restricted community. "There are a lot more Aboriginal non-drinkers than there are drinkers," says Rebgetz. "But all Aborigines get tarred with the same brush."
As alcohol is proscribed, a lot of young men spend their dole money on cannabis. "A lot of young men in their twenties and thirties haven't had an education and don't have anything to do. It's hard to apply Western values but there's an Aboriginal style of child rearing that lets kids do what they want.
"What chance do these kids have? The Government has a A$13 billion ($14.3 billion) surplus this year but there's an about A$3 billion deficit around Aboriginal communities for housing and infrastructure. Why aren't they spending it on these people? They're citizens of this country too."
Wadeye had waited two years for a donga, a portable building, to use as a men's clinic and it has only just arrived but when the police asked for a similar building, it arrived in three weeks. "I'm a total cynic but I'm not cynical about these people," Rebgetz says.
The people of Wadeye are wary of journalists because most of the headlines about the town have been about riots that broke out in 2005 - between two gangs called Judas Priest and Evil Warriors. Most young people seem to belong to gangs of some kind, seemingly harmless. A group of giggling girls say they belong to the Tina Turner gang and apparently there is one named after Celine Dion. At the dongas where visitors stay, food bought at Wadeye's only general store was stolen a few hours later. Children of 12 or 13 had been hanging around but they took crisps and biscuits, leaving a gold chain and a computer. With so few resources here, it does not seem surprising bored young people form gangs and that violence inevitably erupts every now and then.
Local people play down the riots but they gave Wadeye a reputation for lawlessness. The town now has strong leadership in the form of Thamarrurr Council, made up of representatives from each of the clans. It is working hard for the common good, developing ways to bring employment such as a commercial fishing scheme and training young men to be bush mechanics. Other projects include building houses - more than 200 are needed - developing recreation grounds, improving roads and installing street lighting.
"We're trying to normalise the town," says spokesman John Berto.
"I think this community is doing fantastically well. It's only 80 years since they had contact with the white man. Of course, there are a lot of problems but there are also good things; the culture and the language, the closeness of families, the strength of leadership in men and women."
Once visitors begin to look past the distressing living conditions, they find the people of Wadeye are sustained by their culture, which is kept alive through songs, legends and stories. Retaining their traditional language is part of that. Murrinh-patha, the language of the Kardu Diminin clan that owns the land on which Wadeye stands, is spoken by everyone while the other languages, spoken by only a handful of elders, are in danger of becoming extinct.
At Our Lady of the Sacred Heart School in Wadeye, children are taught in Murrinh-patha and in English. But teaching staff have an uphill struggle. Activists say one of the reasons so many Aborigine children do not speak English competently is a lack of resources and a shortage of teachers qualified to teach English as a second language.
Another reason is the dismal school attendance figures among Aborigine students. At Wadeye, 600 children are enrolled at school but only 300 attend regularly. The picture is the same at other Aborigine schools and this has prompted Prime Minister John Howard's Government to float the idea of diverting welfare payments from parents whose children do not attend.
The reasons for non-attendance are many. Some Aboriginal parents did not have happy experiences at school and do not believe it is important to send their children.
In many communities, including Wadeye, schools have been so under-funded that there are not enough classrooms or teachers. Inevitably, children and their parents become disillusioned.
On my last day in Wadeye, the Nudjulu family took me to their outstation at Kuy, 40km away. Patrick rested in the shade while his wife, Mona, and grandchildren went hunting for mud-crabs in the mangrove swamp for eating later.
Patrick, who speaks several Aborigine languages, as well as English, told me he was educated at Wadeye in the early mission days and put up in dormitories with other children.
"I was born here, in the bush," he said. "I used to run away and walk back here." He laughs heartily. "I'm happy to be here still."
- OBSERVER
