THERE is a sense of the surreal from working in Alice Springs observing indigenous communities and their living conditions. As The Age has reported recently, some of the conditions are as bad as anything you will find in Asia's worst slums.
I have worked for aid agencies both in Australia and overseas for many years and know the slums of Mumbai, Jakarta, Delhi and Lahore.
Here, like there, there is grinding poverty, frustration and helplessness that leaves you with an overwhelming sadness at the way in which people are surviving. Alcohol, violence, racism and all the usual factors present in developing countries also exist here. The real shock is that this is not somebody else's country I am working in or somebody else's community. This is my country and these are my people.
While working in a refugee camp in Peshawar on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, I held children whose starving bodies were like fragile twigs inside a fine skin casing. Here in Alice Springs, I have held children and babies severely undernourished and covered with scabies.
But only to describe this is to continue to perpetuate the same incomplete snapshot of indigenous communities. I have had the privilege to meet and learn from a diverse range of committed, passionate and well-informed individuals in Alice Springs. These have included Aboriginal women from remote communities in town to discuss developing health sessions in the bush and Aboriginal clients who use our services and are incredibly generous in sharing their stories with me and gently reconstructing my down-south perspective.
We have worked very positively with indigenous communities and organisations on projects identified by the communities as priorities. These have included developing a health training model for Aboriginal health workers and an Aboriginal women's clinic.
The Government's latest response to the problem of Aboriginal disadvantage is Shared Responsibility Agreements — under which communities are required to meet corporate-style performance standards in return for assistance. They are not the answer. At best, they present some kind of transparent attempt to reconstruct the community development model, but power remains with the Government. At worst, they not only hold communities to ransom over basic health and social issues but also, more importantly, blame the victim when key performance indicators are not met. If the agreed objective of the Shared Responsibility Agreement is not met, it is deemed to have failed. In the community development model, there is opportunity to re-evaluate and be more strategic in project planning with communities.
These agreements are not about giving communities the right to determine priorities. They are punitively driven contracts in which lip service is paid to community control.
There is no quick-fix solution to the problems of indigenous communities. However, I believe the community development model is the only way for us to begin to progress towards becoming one community that truly embraces diversity. It is also the most difficult model to put into operation, given how easy it is for people to simply talk the talk.
We are all very familiar with the notion of hierarchy, and historically tend to value those with academic qualifications and so-called expertise in any given area. Encouraging people to relinquish this power and embrace a model that inverts the pyramid of traditional hierarchy is often regarded as threatening, both personally and professionally.
This is what community development is, in essence, about. Managers, team leaders and self-appointed experts form the bottom rung of the pyramid, with the community and representative workers from these communities at the pointy end. This is a challenge for most bureaucrats and health professional experts, but must be embraced if this model is to be successful.
The community development model empowers communities. It embraces devolution and place management, values social capital and mutual respect, rejects traditional hierarchies and is driven by and responsive to community determined priorities and direction, interwoven with the social and cultural norms that make up the discrete social fabric of all indigenous communities.
The model values skills and experience not traditionally recognised in our workforce and emphasises how integral cultural etiquette is to developing strong and meaningful relationships, which truly incorporate trust and mutual respect. Working for harmonious collaboration between the funding body, service provider and community enables enhanced mutual understanding in achieving good governance in project management and outcomes.
The debate about housing conditions in indigenous communities is a graphic example of how unsuccessful the current model has been. Historically, it has been nearly impossible for us to grasp the notion that other communities don't endorse our European lifestyle and values. The indigenous culture embraces family, both immediate and extended, and it is normal for several generations to live together. Whereas we tend to place our elderly in residential care, for their own good these communities value their elderly as an integral part of the family network. I remember discussing this with an Indian man in Himachal Pradesh who told me it was an honour and a privilege to be chosen by his elderly mother as her primary caretaker.
Listening to communities is not rocket science. Community development projects are an accepted and highly successful model all around the world. Aid agencies I have worked with such as Australian Volunteers International and the United Nations Development Program collaborate all the time with communities in developing such projects.
We need to listen to Aboriginal communities, rather than impose solutions — and accept the process will take much longer than we are all comfortable with.
Developing trust between a community and outsiders takes as long as it takes.
Kate Bean is regional manager, Family Planning Alice Springs
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