WHO IS HELPING WHO? THE MARLPA TRADITION IN PITJANTJATJARA CULTURE AND TWO-WAY LEARNING

My purpose here is to highlight the importance of the cultural tradition in education, cross-cultural engagement, and the establishment of trust relationships as enabling conditions for two-way learning and better service outcomes in remote practice.

The key issue underlying this focus is the perennial one: how do remote community organisations and services harness the same energy and engagement that remote communities demonstrate in cultural business in sustaining government-funded programs and services that rely on community engagement and participation to survive? This question is more pertinent than ever in the post COVID 19 recovery phase of community life as people and organisations struggle with the impacts of the pandemic on people’s well-being. Regardless of the specific circumstances communities face we know the perennial issue is the relationship between frontline workers and community members that are created and sustained to improve service outcomes in community.

I doubt whether many readers would take exception to the idea that shared meaning and understanding are fundamental to establishing and maintaining trust relationships and mentoring through cross-cultural engagement. The trouble is that meaning is socially constructed through language and mediated by cultural practices that both reproduce and transform behavior in and through human interaction. We are, whether we like it or not, caught in a complex interplay between changing the world through our agency and a need to interpret the behaviors of others as a given in relationships that inform our identity. As intentional subjects and helping professionals our business is to navigate this difficult terrain with cultural respect and sensitivity.

From an organizational perspective, learning new skills and competencies in a dynamic cross-cultural setting is a good thing. Make no mistake, self-management and self-determination is an imperative, the most important goal in community development. However, with a focus on self-determination there is also a common racialized proposition that, dependence on non-Indigenous staff is a bad thing; the idea being that Anangu are more likely to achieve an acceptable degree of self-management and autonomy if a community minimizes reliance on non-Indigenous staff and overcome dependence on outsiders. I have heard reports of senior bureaucrats in the public service denounce self-determination as fantasy; an unrealistic goal in a situation where complex administrative and governance system of government procurement and use of public money is thwarted, and public funds are channeled to non-Indigenous contractors and organisations based on the rationale that there is no local capacity or willingness to run with opportunities when they emerge.

Aside from the problem of prescribing cultural and social boundaries [who is an outsider], the racialized discourse around self-determination and self-management as constructs suggests that, once Indigenous self-management is realized, the need for cross-cultural engagement, two-way learning and cultural awareness is contained and managed as an insider-outsider relationship between racially discrete, bounded and segregated groups. In extreme cases, forms of racial segregation are reinforced as an outcome of this separatist thinking and binary logic. In its most palatable local form, a similar logic supports our accepted view that local governance and positions of authority within indigenous corporations ought to be managed by local community members, not whitefellas. Personally, I see this as the most desirable trajectory and future in organizational governance, the goal being to employ as many Anangu within indigenous corporations as possible.

Like Peter Sutton, in his book “The Politics of Suffering: the end of the liberal consensus”, I take exception to the view that the transition from dependency to autonomy is easy or simple. A common argument has been that it is simple; it is just that whitefellas won’t let go of power and control over local affairs. I find this argument naïve as it conveniently ignores the need for people living in remote communities to work effectively across cultural boundaries and manage dependencies in relationships with others. Nor does the proposition deal adequately with the economic dimensions of life in remote communities as if cross-cultural engagement and two-way learning were not conditions of living in any modern pluralist society!

All cultural transformations, as Marshall Sahlins famously put it, involve cultural reproduction, simply because the concepts, language and the customs we use in practice have conventional meaning but, as often happens, undergo ‘revaluation’ and continual readjustment or realignment to remain meaningful and relevant in different contexts. Cultural Relevance in this sense must be understood and acknowledged as important by both parties in a cross-cultural relationship.

Like Sahlins, I consider Eurocentric dichotomies between past and present sustain the illusion that Indigenous traditions are in fact historical, and therefore lose relevance in the contemporary context, particularly in the administrative domain where, on the face of it, everything seems non-traditional, new, or so far removed from a traditional hunter gatherer desert existence the talk of maintaining traditions appears naïve or problematic. Accepting this proposition, that our common distinction between past and present hides continuities, we can then appreciate how these traditions acquire new value and meaning at an organizational level in a training and cross-cultural education framework.

Cultural Respect and Marlpas in Two-Way Learning

Here, I discuss the Marlparrara tradition and its importance in fostering cultural respect through cross-cultural engagement with Pitjantjatjara speakers in Tjuntjuntjara, a remote Aboriginal community in the Great Victoria Desert region of Western Australia. The tradition is relevant in other remote communities throughout the central desert region and beyond. Having access to a Marlpa [Anangu mentor, friend, or companion] has been, and continues to be, fundamental to establishing and sustaining relations between Anangu [local Pitjantjatjara speakers] and non-Indigenous staff in Tjuntjuntjara,

In Tjuntjuntjara, the Marlpa tradition of mentoring was successfully adapted and applied in the post-contact period to engagement with walypellas who sought relationships with Anangu as a way of fitting in. Known as a Marlpararra, a reference to the importance of a Marlpa, a friend or companion, in establishing a two-way relationship of learning and cultural respect. The Marlpa custom involved assigning an Aboriginal friend or assistant to instruct Whites in the local Pitjantjatjara language and cultural lore.

It would be an oversimplification to reduce this custom to a self-assigned Aboriginal mentor or assistant without reference to its cultural origins. It’s not the same relationship, for example, as one established between an assumed educational or training mentor in a patron-client relationship with a student; the communication is two-way and the whole point of the tradition is to establish some form of reciprocity or ngapartji–ngapartji. Ngapartji-Ngapartji refers to the type of balanced reciprocity one expects of kin in a balanced relationship. As Sahlins points out it’s quite different from the unbalanced relationship between asymmetrical or hierarchical kinship relationships (e.g. mother-son or uncle-nephew).

In this sense, the term Marlpararra, roughly translates as working hand in hand with a friend or companion and is the preferred way of describing a designated relationship between a senior knowledgeable Elder [tjilpi] who takes on the responsibility of working with a walypella who, without help, would pose a risk or fail to understand local needs, and no doubt lose sight of the importance of two-way cultural awareness and learning in cross-cultural engagement. It’s an approach to cultural mentoring described in the Ngaanyatjara Pitjantjatjara Yankunyatjara Women’s Council’s outline of their approach to their Child Nutrition Program [http://snaicc.org.au/_uploads/rsfil/02699.pdf].

As a cultural mentor, a Marlpa plays a critical role in mediating cultural boundaries and managing risks in interaction between the different domains of cultural competency and knowledge. Moreover, it’s important to acknowledge here that Whites and Anangu must respect and sometimes bridge these cultural nuances and differences through trust relationships and effective communication.

It should come as no surprise that, in the administrative domain, the Marlpararra tradition and approach to working cross-culturally, often gets misunderstood or reduced to a one-way skill development or teaching process. Well-meaning walypellas may, for example, and particularly if they have not received any cultural induction or awareness (competency based) training, impose their own view of mentoring in the workplace, as a way of teaching Anangu didactically; in the sense that teachers instruct students in transferring knowledge and skills to empower Anangu as skilled workers in vocational terms.

The Problem of Dependency

Like many remote Aboriginal settlements throughout the desert regions of Central Australia, Anangu depend heavily on externally sourced non-Indigenous staff to support the complex administration underlying community capacity and Indigenous service delivery. The fundamental impediment to self-management and Indigenous employment in senior management and core program roles remains the complexity of operational requirements and the work skills required for reporting, compliance and development. Within this complex administrative and operational environment, White fellas bring specialist skills and qualifications that are not always available locally. The real tragedy is that the investment in adult education and training that is needed has never been made available by the State or the Commonwealth to the extent needed; indeed, the need for permanent and ongoing local investment in adult education and training facilitation escapes the mindsets of politicians and policy makers who generally tie short-term thinking on training pathways to “real jobs”, rather than sustaining a vision around long-term investment in creating learning communities that are constantly upskilling and driving their own economic futures through local capability and social enterprise.

The fundamental premise of community development theory and practice is that non-indigenous staff should be working in a way that makes their presence in the community redundant. Their primary role, in other words, is to empower, upskill, mentor, train and foster self-determination and management among residents so Anangu can do their job. Dependency on whitefellas, however, is a feature of community life and exceedingly difficult to alter this fundamental reality without determined effort and an understanding of operational requirements and the normative dimensions of cross-cultural engagement and learning. There are very real barriers to change in a busy complex dynamic community that is constantly faced with challenges that get prioritized based on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Often, the time required to train others is viewed as an additional requirement that is beyond the scope of position descriptions and the limits of staff qualifications and competencies. Notwithstanding, education and training are specialist programs that require structure, industry-based competencies, outcome measures and, above all for teachers and instructors, time to plan, co-design and implement group learning activities to achieve accredited training outcomes.

Firstly, to begin the broader conversation around overcoming dependencies, I thought we might ask who is helping who in the broader scheme of things. I know Tjuntjuntjara is doing quite well relative to many other communities in relation to community development, local capacity and infrastructure improvements. The social impact of these changes, however, has never really been assessed. Over $30,000,000 in capital works over five years has impacted on the community. As the organization responsible for running the town, Paupiyala Tjarutja Aboriginal Corporation (PTAC) adopts community development principles in its staff recruitment process and in the workplace generally. However, there is a lot that can be done to improve things, including the process of cultural awareness and induction prior to work and routinely in the culture of the organization’s work programs.

As a rhetorical question, the focus on who is helping who in a cross-cultural service relationship underscores the importance of reversing the paradigms of dependency based on local knowledge, hierarchies, and power relationships. Similarly, a concerted focus on cultural mentoring, as a critical element in the induction of non-Indigenous staff and their workplace orientation, seems eminently sensible. From a purely practical standpoint, organizational integrity and development outcomes depend heavily on cross-cultural awareness and mutual respect, particularly in establishing rapport and working together.

Given the importance of building rapport to foster two-way learning, my aim here is to outline the cross-cultural dimensions of mentoring, ideally from different cultural perspectives. Hopefully, this will shed light on how important it is to harness helping traditions and practices with deep historical roots to prioritize two-way learning not as an option or an add-on to busy work schedules, but as a routine and fundamental element of organizational behavior and workplace culture. It may help here briefly discussing my own cultural baggage and work routines as a senior manager and anthropologist working in challenging conditions. Ethnography, or writing culture within the discipline of Anthropology, carries its own theoretical and conceptual baggage. Anthropologists have spent a great deal of time and effort within the Discipline refining concepts of Culture; how do we write culture if there is limited agreement or shared understanding about the terms meaning? I use the royal “we” here to reflect the fact that this conversation is taking place now with friends and work colleagues. In this sense, it is not a remote conversation at all. It is, in fact, a very personal and meaningful discussion for those of us who seek clarity around what it means to work effectively in a cross-cultural context where mutual respect and relationships are essential for learning in the workplace.

An Anthropological Perspective: the Aporetic risks in Language and Cross-Cultural Relationships

In another post on this site, I write about emics and etics in anthropological practice and writing, particularly as far as it relates to outsider views of culture and social distancing.

In the Social Sciences, particularly in the discipline of Anthropology, a commitment to writing ethnographically carries a certain gravitas. This is because the subject is usually some Other; someone else, a group, a society, or another culture where there is a real risk of adopting an aporetic stance in the relationships that sustain culture and language as tools for shared understanding. To be at a loss; to not know how to talk to someone in their own language; to face insurmountable barriers in communication; to be a stranger in a community where familiarity is the norm; to be an outsider, non-kin, persona non-gratis because one has no social identity grounded in place. These are very real considerations for non-Indigenous staff or training facilitators who have no local knowledge or remote-area experience. And if knowledge is socially constructed (Berger and Luckmann 1967) and social distancing is common then the gulf between those facilitating learning and students can become a significant barrier to two-way learning and engagement.

Social Science, as we know, ought to be evidence-based and objective in relation to barriers to communication and cultural understanding, in the sense no-one wants to listen to the incoherent, unhinged ramblings of a person who isn’t speaking from experience or who can’t distinguish their own culturally specific or personally-biased opinions from a commentary that is grounded in lived experience or the cultural and linguistic competencies that are emic and stand the test of critical analysis. Pure subjectivity, without circumspection, or a broader understanding of other people’s perspective, worldview, lived reality or subject position, may well be enlightening if we are writing biographically or autobiographically, but it hardly fires up the social imagination [Mills 1959] in remote practice. Writing autobiographically or descriptively, in this sense, is an entirely valid genre, but it doesn’t cut the mustard if we want to engage in a broader conversation that references public opinion or the views of those who can and do influence policy in Australian Indigenous affairs.

Ethnographic writing and anthropological discourse always run the risk of becoming socially irrelevant, particularly if the language and ideas anthropologists apply in academic writing do not connect, in any meaningful way, with the conversations and practice of those whom the discipline seeks to inform. Practical knowledge [Bourdieu 1977] is important and there is always a risk that academic language becomes so esoteric or rarefied that the key messages in the conversation get lost in translation. This is true of any discipline that distances itself from the field or lived reality of the very people whose behaviour and culture we seek to understand. It is one of the saving graces of anthropology that its principal methodology requires both immersion and participation within a group or society and some well-honed observation skills to maintain an element of objectivity in making sense of our observations and experiences. In this case, the geographical isolation and remoteness of Tjuntjuntjara has a kind of double entendre within the discipline; there is a good deal of ambiguity and quixotic appeal in the fact the place is remote from mainstream and challenges those who distance themselves from the lived reality of being there. Ethnography, or writing culture within the discipline of Anthropology, carries its own theoretical and conceptual baggage. Anthropologists have spent a great deal of time and effort within the Discipline refining concepts of Culture; a valid question is how do we write culture if there is limited agreement or shared understanding about the terms meaning?

This is a gap I hope to address in a partial way without offending the sensibilities of friends and work colleagues. Typically, it is through writing ethnographically, albeit within restricted codes, that we attempt to bridge a knowledge gap and manage the risk that our ideas and commentary get lost in translation. A sense of audience is important, as the conversation is pitched squarely at those who want to embrace two-way learning and support culture as a valuable resource in education and training. I hope we can stimulate a conversation about the nature of reality and remote possibilities [Rowse 1992], the ideas we share become part of a larger conversation that resonates among a wider audience that confronts similar dilemmas in organizational practice, education, and training delivery in other remote communities.

As the great Welsh poet David Whyte says: “we need to put down the weight of our aloneness and ease into the conversation”. Often, the conversations that matter occur, reflexively, through reflective listening and mindfulness, because we are interested in a larger game: building relationships with others that make change possible. Making a difference as they say goes beyond the status quo. Sometimes it is a casual discussion among friends and work colleagues; sometimes the conversation manifests in those chats over coffee; in workshops or through public speaking; sometimes through writing or, more often, simply through community engagement and reflective listening, with shared purpose and understanding. Close and familiar relationships, I believe, are the key to sustaining conversations that guide our thoughts and practice in the field. Change management, from an organisational perspective, is difficult in this sense, being caught up in the habits and exigencies of finance, corporate governance and reactive workplace cultures that exist in survival mode. In this business, humility, and two-way learning, along with ngapartji-ngapartji [balanced reciprocity], is everything. Being a student learning from Anangu Marlpas is the greatest joy and best practice from a cultural safety and competency perspective. Hence the polite conversations over the nature of the “problem in remote communities” around dinner tables within Australia’s urban fringe. Partly cosmopolitan and surreal, these conversations are often polite (in the sense of being socially distant and disinterested) and idealistic (in the sense that a problem has been identified that needs fixing in advance of a solution that can only be found in a distant place where cultures collide).

Relationships informed by two-way learning, in this sense, are enabling conditions that make conversations between people of distinct cultural backgrounds possible. And conversations, like the relationships that sustain them, evolve and shape our understanding of what is possible; a bright idea may coalesce into something more substantial. Coalitions of like-minded people and partnerships emerge around a sense of what can and should happen. People can and do mobilize around community aspirations. Structure and process then develops as a recurrent pattern of behavior; a form of conduct, creating order out of apparent chaos. Wicked problems simply become challenges dressed in work clothing. Why cannot Tjuntjuntjara and other remote communities access the resources and skills that are needed to sustain a healthy, strong Indigenous workforce that helps sustain the complex and specialized interface between different domains of learning.

It is this process, the creative process of human agency, co-design and socially constructed pathways in cross-cultural engagement and two-way learning, that community workers and anthropologists may seek to explain, as both a condition and product of history and their lived experience, what works. It is the constructed nature of reality and how we navigate between and across wide boundaries of Difference that interests me here. Co-design is the coming together part of the puzzle – the construction of pathways to learning that enable students to craft content and a shared understanding of what it means to be ninti or knowledgeable in Pitjantjatjara culture and language. The fact that the Tjuntjuntjara Remote Community School’s motto is ninti purlka [lit. big knowledge or to become knowledgeable] says it all; a reflection on the importance Anangu place on education and learning.

There are significant local barriers to achieving this vision. The idea that communities determine their own futures in education and training creates the illusion that they are free to create the world as they see fit or change the status quo without resistance from those who don’t share the vision or simply operate in a space that is not accountable to community. The trick I believe is to make this accountability a non-negotiable feature of engaging with remote communities.

In this post I am more interested in indulging in a conversation about the reality I inhabit with my friends and work colleagues, as a colleague working for a remote community-controlled organization committed to making things better. The relevance and utility of this conversation, in a broader sense, is a matter of opinion. I am simply putting it out there; to share ideas and continue a conversation that may help others navigate difficult terrain.

NEGATIVE STEREOTYPES: LAZY THINKING AND BUSY PEOPLE

So, what is new here? Stereotypes and preconceptions can be useful as simple categories that lazy or busy people use to make sense of other people’s behaviour. A stereotype is a generalization, for sure, and human beings everywhere apply categories and preconceptions to make sense of the world. However, there is a big difference between applying labels or categories that help make sense of other people’s motivations and behavior and the lazy use of negative stereotypes the mask reality and delude people into thinking they are accurate characterisations. Negative stereotypes distort reality and create the illusion that a person or group is other than they are. Occasionally, I have heard white fellas who have serious limitations in their ability to engage with Anangu resort to negative stereotypes, such as “they are lazy” or “you can’t trust them with vehicles they don’t look after them”. My immediate reaction to such comments is usually to make some corrective remark or motherhood statement to the person concerned about politically correct thinking and not making generalisations. I like other staff may be a little too complacent about these comments, and as senior managers, we don’t always appreciate the racist logic embedded in these attitudes and language, or the fact that it reflects a lack of sensitivity and cultural awareness. And when we do pull someone up or call someone out for using negative stereotypes, there is no shortage of justifications in response. A lack of attendance in a Work for the Dole activity can be used as justification for global statements about a “lazy person or job seeker”, attitudes that can lead to overly stringent compliance actions that are unreasonable and designed to punish rather than engage or address barriers to participation. The truth is to call Anangu lazy or untrustworthy without justification hides a bigger story about a lack of cultural awareness, social connection or more importantly a lack of meaningful engagement and relationships with Anangu beyond the administrative domain or bureaucratic encounters. Marlpas and friends simply do not talk to one another like that.

The problem it seems is what one commentator calls categorical discourse as a part of people’s attempts to position themselves and Others within a dominance hierarchy or framework. Here is a snapshot of that definition:

The weakness of categorical discourse is twofold. First, categorical discourse understates or even suppresses the existence of complexity, contradiction, and paradox within its categories…Categorical discourse is thus congenial to a drift toward essentialism [for example]- the notion that women and men have an inherent, universal “essence” that can be captured and described. Efforts to capture this essence, I have argued, end up coding the theorist’s own biases and assumptions as essential.’ Second, categorical discourse is conducive to telling stories that are all middle, with no beginning or end.

So language can and does encode and sometimes reflect practices that sustain social distance as a condition of dominance in different domains; the stereotypes become a given truth and relationships can be shaped by letting these negative and racial stereotypes go unchallenged.

KARDIYA ARE LIKE TOYOTAS

Time and again I am reminded that some whitefellas [kardiyas or walypellas], as Mahood [Mahood 2012:1] points out, are a bit like broken down Toyotas; some simply leave the community feeling disenchanted and used up; others don’t want to stay long or dig deep enough to keep an open mind or learn why Anangu do what they do or don’t do what they expect them to do:

“There are many reasons why kartiya [whitefellas] break down. Some break themselves, bringing with them baggage lugged from other lives, investing in the people they’ve come to help qualities that are projections of their own anxieties and ideals. Eager and needy, they are prime material for white slavery, rushing to meet demands that increase in direct proportion to their willingness to respond to them. They create a legacy of expectation and dependency, coupled with one of failure and disappointment…there don’t appear to be any recognised training programs for people who aspire to work in a community, or screening criteria to weed out the mad, bad and incompetent who prowl the grey zone of Indigenous service delivery. The remote community is a kind of parallel universe, where career paths, if they exist at all, travel laterally or downwards. The famous quip about mercenaries, missionaries and misfits has a lot of truth in it, and each type covers a spectrum, from highly functional through incompetent to downright destructive. Under pressure, both strengths and weaknesses become exaggerated, and what, in normal circumstances would be merely a character trait (stubborn, orderly, conscientious, volatile, flexible, timid) can become the quality that makes or breaks you. [Mahood 2012:1].”

The problem is that many whitefellas working in remote communities think there are sound reasons for applying negative stereotypes when under duress, often because people appear true to type – they fit the bill as it were. But this is lazy thinking too: fostered by a reactive workplace culture where staff burn out because there are gaps in services and resources. Quick and nasty judgments are informed by character flaws exacerbated by certain conditions, some self-inflicted, that certainly not informed by observations founded on a sympathetic appreciation of the context in which Anangu live out their daily lives. Negative stereotypes, in this sense, are not useful if they obscure reality and limit our understanding of things or people as they are or, in a more positive sense, can be. My point here is simple. Negative stereotypes are inherently discriminatory, and it is unfair, even bigoted, to apply preconceived notions of what a person, or a group of people, are like in in lieu of any meaningful relationship and engagement. Not knowing someone is perfectly acceptable but applying a negative stereotype to a category or population without understanding is simply wrong and antisocial. Likewise, choosing who we are or what we want to be is fundamental to being human. Fortunately, we are not simply a product of our past or the identity that others ascribe. Nor can our character, social behaviour or identity be reduced to a social archetype or stereotype (e.g. he’s a missionary and a misfit not a mercenary). The categories themselves are given in the scheme of things as preconceived notions or stereotypical evaluations that, once ascribed, “simplify, codify and ‘selectively screen’ (Allport 1954:104) from the diversity of attributes and dispositions staff exhibit, certain qualities and character traits that are palpably at odds with accepted norms of social behavior [Townley 2001:221].

What makes all this interesting is the potential for change and the dynamics of dependency, in the possibility, as Mahood [2012] puts it, that:

“… the white population has consisted of mature, sensible, capable people who co-operate with and support each other, and the difference in the mood and function of the community is dramatic. And occasionally, when the planets are perfectly aligned and whatever unpredictable entity that rules the universe is in a benevolent mood, a group of exceptional people gathers, works together with skill and generosity, and achieves remarkable outcomes. Several times now I have had the good fortune to be part of such a team, and it’s the one thing, apart from the resilience and humour of the Aboriginal people, that allows me some optimism for the future.”

Mahood is right. Sometimes the planets do align. We, after all, get to have a say in how we behave in the company of others and how we conduct ourselves. And, in this sense, the glass may be half full when it comes to managing change and behaviors in any workplace.

This brings us quite nicely to what it means to apply a strength-based approach to changing organisational dynamics and development practice, as subsets of a two-way mentoring and learning process. In remote Aboriginal communities like Tjuntjuntjara, cultural respect and mentoring are two sides of the same coin – they are, in a practical sense, the key to cross-cultural awareness and relationship building. The local concept for this approach entails ngapartji ngapartji [balanced reciprocity]; the idea that give-and-take, compromise, two-way learning, working together and mutual obligation may converge in and through relationships that mean something. When relationships are founded on commitment and a dogged determination to meet halfway, Mahood’s metaphorical and utilitarian association of Whites with burnt out and abandoned Toyotas, may give way to a different reality, where the traditions of care and responsibility converge and create a well-oiled machine. I would argue the so-called mechanics in this process are aware of how important it is to keep the Toyotas well maintained and on the road.

This conversation about helping others and working cross-culturally may be viewed as both interpersonal and intercultural, as it ought to be aimed at getting some shared understanding across wide boundaries of difference. Here, the boundaries and differences are real between walypellas working for Aboriginal Corporations and Anangu, as the traditional owners and custodians of Spinifex Country. It never helps when well-meaning advocates assume that culture is a “thing” (like an artefact) Aboriginal people have and non-Aboriginal people don’t. I once heard a local official comment at a NAIDOC flag ceremony in Albany that she was envious because “you people [addressing Noongar people gathered] have a strong culture and we don’t” [identifying as European settler]. This comment, made publicly, underscores why it is important to view culture as a concept, rather than conflating culture and identity in a racial sense through color coded language or in black and white terms.

Conceptually, this intercultural space is like the intersection of two bounded worlds or domains where varying degrees of separateness and cultural difference exist, often as perceived barriers to community empowerment and development. As often happens, particularly for those caught up in making a Difference in remote communities, a passion for getting things done often gets in the way of a more nuanced understanding of what others need, want, or consider important. When coupled with an awareness of need, taking time out to help others is a worthy motive, as a way of sustaining relationships. But, as we know, developing shared understanding, listening to others, demonstrating empathy and being mindful of a person’s situation or personal circumstances can be overridden by a drive to maintain accountabilities and fix problems in a reactive workplace. It was Joseph Stalin who asked “what must be done” – and we know where that ended. And the values and significance we ascribe to any exchange are not always shared across the language divide. But there is one problem of our own making that we can and should change: the mindset that puts organizational policy and procedures above people, to the extent that a person-centered approach in service delivery becomes of second-order importance to infrastructure and community development.

THE PARADOX OF FREEDOM AND SELF-DETERMINATION

As helping professionals, we know, deep down, that we are, in many ways, a product of the many relationships and conversations we have with Others. The paradox, here, is that the choices we make professionally, as in life generally, create a type of pattern and order; and like Others we are not always masters of our own destiny, often enabling archetypes of past practice and the assimilationist logic of past policies without questioning the origins of our own identity and subject position, or why we do what we do. In a social and temporal sense, the expectations we hold, and have, in relation to others present again, down the line, as a constraint or limitation on our conduct and choices in life. People expect certain things. And our character, as they say, is formed, in an ethical sense through our lived experience, and enlivened when we walk our talk.

As Berger and Luckmann point out reality in this sense is socially constructed. Just as meaning can be construed or understood through interpretation, the roles that people play and the relationships that people form become habituated or institutionalized over time. It is not hard to see how the role of the teacher, or a nurse is reflected in their manner of speaking or behavior; how a person who has been employed as a policeman, nurse, or teacher in the past acts at times as if they are the same, even though they may have moved on and chosen a different job. Most of us recognise the character of a person in relation to what they do or have done, whether we see this in the way they conduct themselves in the company of others or infer it in applying stereotypes that fit our preconceptions.

From a practical standpoint, this conversation around remote practice is also needed because there is a fundamental paradox in community development work that is entrenched in the motivational plumbing of helping professionals. Often referred to as “the paradox of freedom” (c.f. Jacob Talmon) in the liberal democratic tradition, this paradox manifests, and in some way mirrors, the dilemmas of choice and dependency that arise when individuals or groups rely on the expertise of others as a way of achieving their development aims.

Remote Aboriginal communities are no different than any other community in this respect. It matters little if the paradox is racialized or aligned with forms of identity that are strange or seemingly exotic: as the paradox revolves around relationships that exist as a result of our aspirations and willingness to engage with others in making a Difference. Hamilton puts this paradox of freedom succinctly when he says human beings “are deprived of our inner freedom by our very pursuit of our own desires.” (http://clivehamilton.com/books/the-freedom-paradox/#sthash.5Ef3K8I4.dpuf). The humanist response to this paradox has typically centered on personal and collective choice: the simple principle that we choose our poison and live with the consequences.

Undoubtedly, the struggle for Aboriginal self-determination runs up against dependencies that are, in effect, the result of informed choices and well-intended interventions. At stake are the ethical foundations of liberal interventions designed to change the status quo in making a Difference; wherein the State and its agencies invest considerable resources in programs and infrastructure. Make no mistake, those that propose a radical pull-back of financial support are drinking too many Chardonnays over those polite and distant dinner conversations about “the problem” in remote communities. More government investment in housing and essential services is sorely needed, but it would be wrong to color code the problem and reduce the complexities of cross-cultural engagement to issues around race, identity and white patronage, as if dependence on skilled outsiders is THE essential problem.

From this simplified and racialized perspective, the underlying contradiction at the heart of the freedom paradox centers around relationships of dependency – reliance on highly skilled non-Indigenous outsiders and the desire for better services and infrastructure limits Indigenous autonomy. In remote communities, one could argue that government assistance, welfare and public subsidy simply herald or support forms of cultural assimilation; creating administrative dependencies that undermine Aboriginal cultural traditions, even though many of these well-intended interventions are designed to improve community safety and well-being.

In this sense, the freedom paradox results in a trade-off for Aboriginal Corporations: employing skilled non-Indigenous staff may bring benefits, however the resulting dependencies may, and I stress may, fuel resentment or feelings of powerlessness within a community. The consensus, and middle-ground, here is noteworthy: where non-Aboriginal staff are not bilingual or have little awareness or respect for Aboriginal culture and traditions, the resulting dependency relationships can and do undermine community self-management.

Paradoxes are statements or propositions which, despite an apparent appeal to Reason, lead to conclusions that are logically unacceptable or self-contradictory. Rogers (2015 online), however, argues that dynamic organisations manage these inherent tensions and contradictions, not by resolving the underlying tension or problem through top-down interventions and leadership, but in an informal and relational way by changing workplace cultures through sharing, dialogue and conversation.

One of the key insights that arise from the informal coalition’s perspective is that culture is not an object that can be designed and built by managers. This is in stark contrast to the way that cultural change is dealt with in their various n-step change models; or in approaches that see leaders as all-powerful “drivers” of cultural change. Instead, organisational culture is understood as the ongoing process of shared meaning making, which happens continuously in organisations, as people perceive, interpret, evaluate, and share what’s going on. Culture then exists not so much “outside” people as “inside and between” them – within their internal dialogues and through the conversations that they have with each other.

Amen! Inevitably, the use of concepts of culture as a reified abstraction around the past or a people’s identity creates a false and misleading notion that neglects cultural practice as a dynamic interplay between people as agents of change. The most liberating aspect of this view of organisational change is shared meaning making, a process of communication and mutual respect fostered through learning and recovering old ways of business as a way of meeting new challenges. There is no greater way of showing respect for culture and language than by asking someone who is bilingual to help one gain competency in Pitjantjatjara as a window into a much larger cultural landscape. From an anthropological perspective, language and culture are intertwined, simply because the words and categories Anangu speak are like markers or thresholds to busy people who unconsciously walk into their world without the necessary language skills or bookmarks to find their way. Our hope is that we put aside any anxieties we may have in crossing these thresholds by making speaking Pitjantjatjara a norm rather than an exception in the workplace.

I doubt whether many anthropologists would take exception to the idea that shared meaning and understanding are produced and reproduced through relationships and effective communication. The trouble is meaning is constructed through language and mediated by cultural practices that both reproduce and transform human behaviour, in and through human interaction.

Indeed, why not mandate language learning as a professional development exercise and have done with it? For example, digital inclusion efforts and policies could be universally co-designed to support these vocational competencies in remote communities; making language learning part of a broader human resource strategy to filter out the ethnocentric and implicit racism that exists among some of the mercenaries and misfits that seek work in remote areas.

From a strictly organizational perspective, within Aboriginal Corporations, learning new skills and language competencies in a dynamic cross-cultural environment is a good thing. Another commonly expressed view is the idea that, the less outsiders or walypellas there are employed in remote communities the better; the idea being that Anangu will achieve a greater degree of self-management and autonomy if reliance on walypellas is minimised or non-existent. However, this proposition has some shortcomings and suggests that, once self-reliance or non-dependence on relative outsiders is achieved, the need for bilingual and cross-cultural engagement in community work diminishes. A form of racial segregation can emerge in this simplified and reductionist logic, something that is less than desirable under the circumstances.

METAPHORICAL FLIGHT AND UTILITARIANISM: ARE WALYPELLAS REALLY LIKE TOYOTAS?

Let’s be clear. There is nothing wrong with helping disadvantaged people, particularly when the intended beneficiaries request help. What is patently wrong, however, is the type of help and service that, if repeated, degenerates into a form of entrenched dependency and non-Indigenous patronage that disempowers through kindness or manipulative transactions; where help is not sought or asked for but is made conditional on a client’s willingness to change their behavior and ‘toe the line’. The latter tendency is reflected in over two hundred years of colonization and White paternalism in Australia.

To fully appreciate and come to terms with this colonial legacy, paternalism in its modern variants needs to be replaced with a deep and abiding respect for cultural practices that value help when it is sought and received in good faith. The key Pitjantjatjara concept here is kanyini [holding or looking after others] as social value, as it makes little sense to interpret acts of help or service in purely subjective or utilitarian terms, simply because help is deemed by the donor as needed or required. Looking after someone is not paternalistic per se. In most cross-cultural situations, it is difficult to argue or document ethnographically that there is, in fact, a shared and objective measure of social value or social worth underlying helping behaviors in a cross-cultural sense; at least not without continual reference to the relationships in which help is interpreted and assigned worth by parties to the transaction (c.f. Sansom 1988a:159). Sansom outlines this ethical dilemma succinctly; the value of help is interpreted subjectively, and it matters little how the giver perceives value proffered if the true test of worth is in how the help is interpreted by its beneficiaries. The existential dimensions of this are more akin to Bertolt Brecht’s play, the Good Person of Szechuan – the title has many English-language variants, including The Good Person of Szechwan and The Good Soul of Szechuan, but it’s the same ethical conundrum. Being kind and surviving in disadvantaged remote communities are two different trajectories here, especially when the needy swamp givers with requests for help that literally and metaphorically leave them feeling overwhelmed by unresolved ethical dilemmas and competing demands on their time. Willet (2009) writes:

“A simplistic viewing of the philosophy in the play [Brecht’s] would lead one to understand that Brecht is a “moral essentialist…believing that mankind is naturally good (Shen Te is the ‘authentic’ person), but social conditions make people bad (she has to play Shui Ta).” (Willett, 2009: lvii) It could also be viewed in that Brecht is a “moral relativist, believing that morals depend on social conditions and may change through history.” (Willett, 2009: lvii).”

The same ethical dilemmas abound in remote communities where social and economic conditions are enormously challenging. Being a moral relativist and pragmatist seems to be essential in this context, as conditions change and we adopt a performative approach to change management; the community Board and members are in charge and social conditions, let alone demographic shifts, change over time.

There are so many traditions and Islands of History [Sahlins 1985] to visit as we recover and strengthen the performative orders of remote practice in conversations that are transformative. As Ortner (1985) remarks:

“The general point of ‘Islands of History’ is that the historical process – social and cultural continuity as well as social and cultural change – is ”structural”: it is organized in terms of cultural programs. At the same time, structure (or culture) is historical; that is, it is not a set of transcendental and virtually immutable forms, but a historically generated and socially changeable system.”

In other words, systems and structures change over time when people, as agents of history, adapt and modify programs and practices, conscious of the need to bridge two worlds and two languages by listening and learning from Anangu on what to do and why.

Kim Mahood’s essay: Kartiya are like Toyotas: White workers on Australia’s cultural frontier essay is an ethnographic eye opener. The article describes, in colorful language, Aboriginal responses, and the psychological impact, of what might be called the “revolving door” of whitefellas working in remote communities. The turnover of non-Aboriginal staff, who often come and go after one to three years, makes the utilitarian metaphor or comparison between Whites and Toyotas interesting and somewhat tragic. I agree, Whitefellas, like Toyotas, are indeed useful. However, like most people, remote workers are no exception, they may need a lot of maintenance, help and frontline support to work effectively. By likening whitefellas to Toyotas, Mahood’s Western Desert informant expressed a cold, hard utilitarian assessment (Sansom calls it Hobbesian) of their worth to Aboriginal people; namely, that the whitefellas were either good or bad depending on the extent to which the employee provided good service and took people where they wanted to go. Those whitefellas that helped people when asked were like a good Toyota; an asset that served its owner well. On the other hand, and this is common, there are those that are high maintenance and continually break down or fall short of community expectations. Being of limited value, they may be more trouble than they are worth and are let go, just like the many burnt-out Toyotas that litter the access roads to remote communities.

What an instructive way of understanding the value of those who work for others but who don’t really “belong in country” or identify with them in a culturally appropriate way! For Mahood, and no doubt her Aboriginal informants, Whites, like Toyotas, are not bad per se; they are simply assets or tools that are good or bad depending on attributions of their worth and the extent to which they serve the wants and needs of others.

It makes little sense to reduce this “Whites are like Toyotas” metaphor to the absurd proposition that most, if not all Whites are simply replaceable and used up without respect for their well-being or recognition of their worth to the community. Mahood’s point, if I read her correctly, is that we need to understand different ways of working and Aboriginal responses, if only to understand how we engender respect both ways. The key to this two-way learning relationship is respecting the cultural traditions that underpin its meaning and significance. That means we are obliged to look to both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal helping ideologies and behaviors to better understand the synergies and adaptive behaviours that make working cross-culturally possible.

Later in this article, I touch on the need for a Charter of Cultural Respect; what that might look like in a corporate sense, specifically about recruitment, cultural orientation, induction, mentoring and personnel management. Any condition of employment predicated on giving up culture or identity is going to run into problems. In this sense, I disagree with Mahood (2012:3) that by simply being there Whites disempower Anangu per se. Much depends on what counts as empowerment. What are needed are case studies in cross-cultural engagement and professional practice, based on mentoring programs that make sustaining culture and empowerment a condition of remote area service.

Balancing external and internal accountabilities is integral to understanding how we might encourage and support ways of working that avoid withdrawal from interaction that makes two-way learning possible. For Mahood, this precarious balancing act involves tradeoffs between social interaction with Anangu and acquitting official duties, often ending in despair as Whites become physically and emotionally exhausted by mounting pressures and withdraw to the privacy of their homes or leave the community for greener pastures. But losing a good Toyota (aka whitefella) is neither desired nor a fait accompli. Eventually its better to deal with retention and staffing problems through due deference to community governance and empowerment than losing valuable helpers who can, over time, make a real difference in delivery services and overcoming disadvantage. The net result of this reliance on people recruited outside of the community, however, is an inordinate amount of attention given by Managers to staffing issues, often an unwelcome distraction from the main game of building capacity or empowering Anangu in the workforce through two-way learning, training, or community work for the dole programs (known as CDP).

The difficulty I have with Mahood’s appraisal of Aboriginal responses and dependence on Whites working in remote communities is that it does not address the personalities and depth of character or motivational plumbing that makes things work cross-culturally. For every interaction and response there is what might be called a “tipping point”, a trigger mechanism where things go one way or another. The point I would make here is that humility, cultural respect, and cultural awareness (and toughness of character) goes a long way toward nurturing and sustaining relationships. Learning how to listen, observe and stand back, while showing due deference to Anangu and encouraging participation is often challenging. Work pressures build to the point where staff burn-out is common. Mahood describes this well but the protective instincts of White patrons, coupled with the unending pressure of external accountabilities to bureaucracy and government and internal accountabilities to Anangu in a social and obligatory sense, create a vice like grip on the psychology and mindset of staff under pressure:

“The remote community is a kind of parallel universe, where career paths, if they exist at all, travel laterally or downwards. The famous quip about mercenaries, missionaries and misfits has a lot of truth in it, and each type covers a spectrum, from highly functional through incompetent to downright destructive. Under pressure, both strengths and weaknesses become exaggerated, and what, in normal circumstances would be merely a character trait (stubborn, orderly, conscientious, volatile, flexible, timid) can become the quality that makes or breaks you (Mahood 2012:2).”

Mahood is critical, quite rightly, of the paucity of training programs and screening criteria applied in the recruitment of non-Aboriginal staff working in remote communities. Typically, the essential criteria of remote area experience and vocationally specific qualifications and work experience, override a closer inspection of the psychological profiles that may “weed out the mad, bad and incompetent who prowl the grey zone of Indigenous service delivery” (ibid: 2).

My point here is that recruitment is code for a limited and often truncated staff employment process that is insufficient to guarantee success and retention. Post-employment mentoring, induction and capacity building are needed to set new employees in remote communities on a good path from the outset. And the point at which the character traits and psychological responses of Whites articulate with Aboriginal practice is a complex adaptive process in itself; often achieved through long-term engagement, the development of mutual respect and communication skills developed under the guidance of Aboriginal mentors. Busyness in the administration of service delivery often gets in the way of social sensibilities, and learning language takes time.

If Mahood’s paper teaches us anything it is that, in under-resourced communities, the pressures of external accountabilities limit the time staff can allocate to understanding the personal circumstances and social priorities of community members, many of whom struggle at times to effectively communicate the obligations and ethical dimensions of their own circumstances and traditions as a way of supporting whitefellas in their work roles.

As Fred Myers ably points out, nurturance is not only a Western Desert ideology centered on Aboriginal spirituality and kinship relations within a discrete or distinct Aboriginal cultural domain, but also a social skill applied in establishing and maintaining cross-cultural relationships that are the bread and butter of community development. Witness the routine generosity of Aboriginal social behavior and the philosophy underpinning interaction in a knowable and familiar community of trusted family, friends and companions; the visitor-host rituals accorded relative outsiders from other communities during Law Business; the hand holding by Elders of visiting politicians; the friendship and good humored joking relationships that aid in cross-cultural communication; the ethos driving resilience, deference and humility shown by long-serving Whites working in remote communities. In all these instances, you will get some sense of the enormous potential for sustaining cross-cultural relationships and retaining skilled workers in remote communities like Tjuntjuntjara.

What is important here is the significance of Aboriginal mentoring in making two-way learning an empowering process for remote communities, not a de facto form of cultural assimilation.

When we ask who is helping who in this context we get to the heart of the underlying tensions and issues that constrain organizational change and limit Aboriginal workforce participation; namely, the nature of social value, status hierarchies, power, authority, culture, and identity manifest between people in their everyday interaction and communication. No doubt all these warrant attention from an ethnographic standpoint, however Indigenous Corporations are complex adaptive organizations that can and should be founded on relationships of good will and mutual respect in the workplace; in organizational cultures that foster Aboriginal mentoring and cultural safety in brokering solutions across wide boundaries of Difference.

BECOMING A CULTURAL APPRENTICE

In Tjuntjuntjara, this conversation around the need to build capacity around two-way cultural induction and orientation, with the resulting increase in Aboriginal workforce participation, is well underway. There are around 25-30 Anangu employees out of a total of fifty staff working for Paupiyala Tjarutja Aboriginal Corporation (PTAC) and Pila Nguru Aboriginal Corporation (PNAC), the two community-controlled non-profit organizations managing local services and native title interests. The challenge now is to strengthen and reinforce this diverse workforce committed to supporting the Spinifex People’s development aspirations by weaving the Marlpa tradition into the fabric of community administration and Adult Learning. This is no small feat, as the measure of effectiveness we apply goes to shared understanding and competencies around two-way learning and language skills; competencies that are hard to develop within a busy administration focused on external accountabilities and improving community services and infrastructure. The outside world, in a sense, is refractory, imposing constraints on development through its stubborn refusal to see culture as a valuable resource essential to economic development. Our goal is to back the right horse in the race to embed cultural respect in everything we do. And this respect goes both ways; preserving corporate integrity at the same time as supporting training, adult learning and complex adaptations of time-honored traditions like Marlpararra.

The risk here is that training, the universal solvent as Rowse called it, is the well-intended means by which instructors go about the business of defining their supervisory and didactic role as designated teachers or mentors [read staff] responsible for ensuring that Aboriginal “students” [read Adult Anangu community members] learn employment skills and vocational competencies in a classroom or workplace. This teacher versus student dichotomy in meetings can be intractable as, despite the community’s mixed workforce, the identification of whites=staff and Anangu=community is preserved at times by some in racialized discourse and distancing terms; sometimes degenerating into the “us” and “them” split that reflects an underlying dis-ease with mixing up (refer Trigger here). This makes accepting advice from a Marlpa difficult, particularly when the walypella is new to the community and doesn’t have the remote experience, character, humility and respect to demonstrate due deference for local customs and knowledge. But we know good process and practice in training is much more than so-called teaching – the term facilitating learning is a more appropriate phrase; the bonus occurs when the Adults enrolled in structured training become both educators and students in a learning framework with two-way communication at its core.

Here, we may well ask, once again, who is going to help who in training and workforce development? Cynics will argue that language competencies or cultural awareness is a professional development cost not worth bearing in the rush to get on with the main game of upskilling. For some this is too academic or “excess to requirements” in the pressure cooker we call remote community work. No wonder many communities don’t make it a mandatory requirement: why would you when you can get skilled staff who don’t want to be challenged to learn new language skills; or, for that matter, don’t want to undertake cultural competency-based training as a prerequisite for working safely. But Anangu see through this racket: if learning culture is a cost, rather than a resource and an opportunity, then what does that say about the value of local knowledge and the logical trajectory Whitefellas have in mind for Anangu’s job futures. Is the Marlpa helping the whitefella understand Aboriginal cultural practice and traditions to infuse those practices in the administrative domain, or is the mentoring designed to strip away local language and culture and replace those practices with competencies needed in office administration or in a vocational sense the jobs non-Aboriginal people hold? The mantra is we [walypellas] are here to do ourselves out of a job [whitefella/outsider speaking].

The reality on the ground is more complex and it behooves all of us to ask who is helping who and how our service role is defined or understood in terms of maintaining culture and service relationships without unwarranted patronage; ideally non-Indigenous staff are employed to help Anangu develop competencies that are a prerequisite for employment in community administration and industry, but what of the traditional practices that mesh two worlds in ways that build on cultural strengths? And, if there is not enough investment in cultural maintenance and two-way learning, at what point does the maintenance of culture and language become a burden in the main game of vocational education and job creation in an administrative sense?

I tested this theory one day in the community office with one of my Aboriginal work colleagues. We sat together at the computer in the CDP (work for the dole program) office and recorded an emailed voice message in the local Pitjantjatjara language about a planned community cleanup day prior to a visit by government officials looking into housing needs. The recorded audio recording or message was then sent to all staff by email. The response (or lack of) by staff was telling; not just the confusion and lack of response to a message in another language, but in the studied disinterest and annoyance among some who couldn’t understand the message at all. Why would someone feel comfortable communicating if they know the recipient of the message can’t understand a word of it? You might well say as the English do “when in Rome do as the Romans do”. Cultural respect and learning Pitjantjatjara is clearly important here and embracing the Marlpa tradition will require a community-wide acknowledgement that many community members speak English as a second language. And should non-Indigenous staff be required to learn that language to a reasonable degree of competency.  While the younger and middle-aged community members are typically fluent in English through education and schooling, it’s often as a second language and most local residents are often more comfortable speaking Pitjantjatjara. I imagine one day that this requirement to demonstrate competencies in Pitjantjatjara, or at least a commitment to learning the language, will be written into the organization’s selection criteria when recruiting new staff. For now, we are busy developing a Charter of Cultural Respect, cultural awareness and a two-way model of adult learning.

When I began work at Coonana in the later 1980s as a Community Development Officer I was fortunate in having a self-appointed Marlpa to assist me in learning Pitjantjatjara and helping me settle in. For a recent honours graduate in Anthropology, my old friend made the task of navigating the difficult cultural terrain in the community much easier. I was given no formal cultural awareness training or induction by the government agency that employed me or the Corporation representing the community at the time. I remember my Marlpa’s first approach when he visited my caravan and gave me a language book that he worked on as a language translator at Cundeelee Mission. Noting my enthusiasm for learning Pitjantjatjara, he set about teaching me on a regular basis: being a graduate Anthropologist I interpreted this mentoring relationship as good step toward establishing rapport and learning the local language. In textbook style I could be both a participant and observer of Pitjantjatjara culture safely supervised by a volunteer Marlpa who was sufficiently senior and knowledgeable of walypellas from his time at Cundeelee Mission to keep me safe.

Having a friend or companion [company] who works Marlparara way is the secret to engaging with Anangu in a culturally safe and respectful way. In a tradition-oriented community like Tjuntjuntjara in the Great Victoria Desert, the Spinifex mob have long since understood the importance of managing risk across wide boundaries of Difference. As Myers points out Western Desert people value ‘relatedness’ and companionship as essential elements of familiarity. But they also have gravitas and a refined sensibility developed during the post-contact period around managing walypellas who can potentially undermine their authority and become a burden rather than helpful. This skill, manifest in their welcoming demeanour to visitors, has been honed through endless cross-cultural encounters, from the time they first met Whites during the Maralinga era, the Mission period, Coonana and nowadays after their heroic return to Spinifex Country and settlement at Tjuntjuntjara in their own Native Title area.

I cite the example of the support I received from my Marlpa as a form of cultural orientation and induction – if only to make the point that not all non-Aboriginal staff are or were as fortunate as me in having a Marlpa to support my learning. Having sad that, I was trained as an anthropologist, and the one thing we do know as anthropologists is that learning culture is not something you can do in a short cultural induction or awareness course; over a week or a few days. Doing participant observation and gaining an insider’s view of another people’s way of life requires a certain willingness to cross boundaries; to see things from the Other’s point of view; and, in a limited sense, to put aside our Eurocentric worldview, to see things in context and try and understand other people’s views and behaviours from a relativist perspective. Little wonder my good friend and colleague says I have no boundaries – it’s a fair comment too as boundaries shift and mesh at the intersection of two-way learning! I was taught in University that cultural boundaries are fluid and stepping across the cultural divide is like signing up to an apprenticeship in cross-cultural awareness. Tempering our egos and a good dose of humility in honoring and learning more about Aboriginal mentoring is a good starting point in any reconciliation process.

Here I have in mind a way of working based on Marshall Sahlin’s notion of the “structure of the conjuncture”: where individuals from different walks of life, each with their own interests and cultural baggage, develop relationships and express ‘relatedness’ in different cultural terms. The form these bridging interactions take can only be understood ethnographically, in an emic sense, through a narrative and exchange that is a conversation about two worlds meshing in an interstitial space where customary ways of learning are solutions to problems of a contemporary nature. Every community has these stories of successful cross-cultural engagement and it is the job of anthropologists and commentators to witness the essential nature of the human condition that makes working cross-culturally possible. When we ask who is helping who we are asked to explore these narratives and describe in cultural terms what it means to be of help and to help others in a spirit of cross-cultural collaboration. Not a bad outlook really. Mulapa [true enough].

Here there is another narrative that makes sense. Respite from one domain creates a space for recovery in both. Finding the next Rockhole is a journey Anangu appreciate in a cultural and historical sense: some paths like excessive drinking and drugs lead to oblivion and the elders have always promoted healthy lifestyles and healthy choices. But when the wisdom of traditional lore is challenged by time, by the demographic shifts that leave a population threatened by historical changes that erode the relevance of cultural norms as the foundation of personal strength and community resilience (e.g. when the elder’s authority is not respected), there is a real risk is that the “we” empowered by old ways gets replaced by the “I”. All is not lost here as there is always hope in recovering the situational and linguistic foundations of social engagement and cultural respect based on what worked before colonization.

Take, for example, the simple but critically important act of camping in country with family and friends; of leaving the settlement for a trip out bush with others to enjoy the respite from troubles in community, sitting around a campfire yarning and learning from Marlpa’s about survival or how to behave in ways that build a common purpose and shared sense of identity. Technology is all well and good but there is nothing like camping with family out bush, with no internet, mobile phone or TV as distractions, to heal old wounds, rebuild relationships or discover the rich cultural resources and language skills that can and should help rebuild a sense of “we”; particularly important for those of us that are grieving from the loss of elders and family, or dealing with drinking and the impact of COVID 19 on social and emotional well-being.

As part of Tjuntjuntjara community’s interest in implementing a Federally-funded LLND Pilot Foundational Skills Training program for employment and Adult Education we are participating with partners like the Commonwealth Government [https://www.employment.gov.au/foundation-skills-your-future-remote-community-pilots], Australian Literacy and Numeracy Foundation (ALNF), Indigenous Consulting Group and Corporate Culture, TAFE and other stakeholders to co-design Language, Literacy, Numeracy and Digital training in the community. The work we did in flagging a Pilot program did not lead to Commonwealth funding but that effort helped us clarify the relationship between LLND training and co-design principles at a community level:

Co-design is a big term and can mean different things to different people. Sometimes it might be called participatory design, generative design, or co-creation. To keep it simple, co-design is a process where the people who are going to use a service are involved in how the service is delivered. In the context of this pilot, that means that the people who will be using your teaching services to learn or improve their literacy, language, numeracy and digital skills would be involved in the way that your teaching is designed. However, these training participants are not learning in a vacuum. They are supported by businesses and services within the local community and beyond – and they deserve to be involved too.

Co-design is about working together

We could spend a lot of time figuring out how this pilot program will work, but if we are not working towards the collective goals of the community, then there is no point. There are many aspects of this pilot and they involve all sorts of people. It’s important that we design our programs with our training participants, our local businesses and employers, our support services and partners, and our staff and community supporters.

Our local businesses are the people who best understand what their employees need to be trained in. Our support services, such as health and housing, are the people who best understand how employment and education fit in with their services. 

Our training participants are the only people who know how they are best supported to be successful.

For us to design a pilot that works for everyone, we need to include everyone when designing it. This process doesn’t have a start or end – it will keep evolving as our community does. The great thing about co-design is that we can keep trying new things all the time. [Ref: LLND Co-Design Tools]

Based on these and cultural factors, there are some basic local principles in co-design that are well-received and likely to work well in Tjuntjuntjara; namely:

• Design the learning program from the outset based on two-way learning models, mentoring and advice from Anangu – the participants and creators of any needs-based efforts. Co-design is about two-way learning and meeting expectations – the program itself has to be wanted, needed and structured around a commitment by participants to a process they have agreed to and support;
• Always ask your community leaders and Marlpas for advice on skin groups and avoidance relationships so groups are structured around cultural and social norms; e.g. don’t ask a mother-in-law and son-in-law to study in the same group or training room when you know that’s not going to work with avoidance relationships;
• Allow for differential learning styles so people study and learn at their own pace and within their capabilities
• Curiosity is a big motivator: understand what motivates a student to want to learn something! Make whatever you do interesting!
• Make language the centerpiece of communication and design your courses around cultural and linguistic competencies so the student becomes the educator from the outset, contributing what they do know to the learning process and guiding others in the process;
• Allow scope for cultural business and sorry business as timeout instead of structuring nominal hours of training and sessions around institutional course requirements – no point asking someone to disregard their social or cultural obligations as a condition of learning and passing a course;
• Climate adaptations – follow Anangu’s lead in relation to seasonal work patterns as the hotter it gets in the desert the less likely students want to learn in the heat of the day unless they are in appropriate indoor spaces. An alternative is learning or working in the evening –  a smart high school educator observed that the patterns of energy among youth are structured around evening activity after dinner and our Bingo nights at the CRC run by our Youth Worker are successful as an adaptation to youth wanting to engage in the evenings in the cooler time in a game that brings LLND (mainly numeracy) skills to the forefront as well as reflecting the social dimensions and benefits of customary card games, where many women sit around a blanket on the ground in the shade and play an engaging and social game of cards. And there are some innovative approaches cropping up in Australia for Indigenous card games. Ref: https://www.sbs.com.au/nitv/article/2016/09/06/heres-australias-first-indigenous-card-game

For numeracy Ref: http://www.whatworks.edu.au/upload/1251412304661_file_NumIndigComm.pdf

Card games can be extremely popular in many communities and can be played on a regular basis. Some communities have well organized processes in place where ‘the game’ (can be concurrent games played at the one time) is hosted in someone’s house. Organization can include:

• with whom you can play cards
• people moving from one game to another
• 3-4 scores / games going at the one time
• the ‘main game’ which is usually in the kitchen as you can fit more people around the kitchen table
• ‘fast games’ where participants play quickly.

Interestingly, it came out throughout these conversations that many people are leaving the pokies and returning to the card games because they have realised there’s more chance of winning with cards and that the money stays in the community. A good example of critical numeracy at work!

The same for Bingo nights, photobooks with family histories and projects that seek to preserve and protect cultural heritage. The list goes on but it’s the start of a conversation in the initial stages of any two-way learning program that focusses on code switching in language learning – writing and reading in English and Pitjantjatjara! From a competency-based learning perspective the principle here is simple: bilingual education and language learning helps participants to connect the dots and understand the cultural and social significance of the concepts and words that are the foundations of cognitive development for all aged cohorts. There is plenty of research and evidence on the benefits of bilingual education [https://aiatsis.gov.au/publications/products/gaps-australias-indigenous-language-policy-dismantling-bilingual-education-northern-territory#:~:text=For%20Indigenous%20communities%2C%20bilingual%20education,honoured%20place%20for%20Indigenous%20teachers.]:

 In many ways, the Indigenous bilingual programs of the Northern Territory have been a successful venture in providing an appropriate type of transfer for learning English. They have also been a successful means of maintaining Indigenous cultures and languages as well as bilingualism itself, which brings with it social and cognitive advantages. They have given Indigenous teachers a valued place and have brought greater involvement of communities in schools (Egginton and Baldauf 1990). Indigenous teachers and scholars have been able to excel in careers which combine their own knowledge systems with those taught in Australian schools, and to develop their own ‘two way’ philosophies to assist others in the difficult cross-cultural encounter (Marika 1998).