Funerals and Pay Days

In June, 2004 I travelled through Arnhem Land and was priveledged to visit an outstation south of Nuhlunbuy. This came to mind this last night when watching Lateline (transcript not available yet) where one of the contributors, talking about cultural difficulties in employing young aborigines in the mining industry, mentioned funerals as a particularly difficult point in employment and cross-culture problems. My writings from that trip illustrate why.

We went down to an outstation and witnessed the setting up of a funeral for an elder that had just died. The locals build a new purpose-built village with shade and a centre mourning hut to accommodate the deceased elder. Due to respect for their traditions and customs I decided not to take photos but the expense, effort and time taken to farewell elders was enormous. Water reticulation and power are supplied. Builders and other tradesmen are busy around the site and all the clans-people are involved in the build-up. The clan is tied up for two weeks. Kids at boarding schools down south (the chosen few) miss school. Commerce normally conducted by the clan ceases to operate (if there is any) and a two-week sit-down phase starts.

My co-traveller, a teacher in a school with Aborigine boarders has difficulty reconciling this event with his need to play his part in preparing the young for the future. It impacts severely on education as in large clans there are a lot of funerals per academic year. I’m the first to demand and expect respect for our elders and ancestors but when my Father died I was as saddened as any man and although I grieved for a long time, and still do, it never occured to me to stop working for two weeks to commemorate his passing. The world goes on… kids need feeding and mortgages need paying. Therein lies the problem. It is the white society that provides the commerce and employment. Cultures need to change to fit a developing society and the fact that the Australian Aboriginal society hasn’t grasped that yet is their problem and not ours. We can only advise, and yes, I know it’s a quantum leap for them but it has to be made. Pat Dodson, a good man witha difficult job, spoke on the ‘sharing’ tribespeople where one in work shares the wages with others not working…extended family stuff. The program mentioned this as a problem and suggested, maybe, that locals employed by a mining company might like to have their money depositied directly into a bank account to avoid the old problem of ‘what’s mine is yours’ when the worker got back to his clan on payday. Pat lost me when he stated that this simply didn’t happen and it was just a story put around by people putting down on his people. Pat, it does happen, Ive seen it and it is a problem. Denial is no answer. Howard moves along, ignoring calls for an apology and in doing so has moved the debate on from mere words to action where win-win outcomes for both tribes, white and black, are more likely.