Kathleen Ngale
Utopia? Kathleen Ngale is 85 years old and living in conditions I can only describe as hell
Marcus Woolombi Waters – Jan 24, 2017 – The Guardian
Four years after the John Pilger film lifted the lid on outback communities, what has changed? The horrors are still with us
In 2013 John Pilger’s documentary Utopia opened to rave reviews internationally, CineVue referred to it as “an examination of injustice” and “essential viewing”. Metro stated that the film was “confrontational” and “eye-opening”.
Utopia documented Aboriginal families living in the most adverse poverty you can imagine in one of the wealthiest countries in the world. A number of government officials were interviewed looking to find how such travesty can be allowed to continue. No one was willing to take responsibility.
Internationally the film was described as a “must see”, its core arguments “compelling” and “shameful” but in Australia Utopia did not have anywhere near the same reaction where we still struggle with our relationship with Aboriginal people.
Over the summer break I journeyed out to Utopia with colleague, social justice campaigner and suicide prevention researcher Gerry Georgatos, after being invited by locals to witness the living conditions of Aboriginal people.
Less than three hours drive out of Alice Springs is Camel Camp, one of the 16 Utopian communities funded by government. Nothing prepares you for the aged care witnessed there – any thought of race politics was out the window. This was a disconnection from humanity – the only question was how was this allowed to happen. Kathleen Ngale is 85 years old and living in conditions I can only describe as hell.
Gerry Georgatos wrote: “There was no ventilation, no air-conditioning, no in-house services, no anything, only dank concrete, decrepit and filthy – it is however visited by government ‘services’ and some food drop-offs, pitiful. People lay on the concrete swatting flies, holding together resilient while denied dignity and the respite that their years on this Earth should have accumulated. Indeed, sadly, I have seen better ‘aged-care facilities’ in the poorest regions of third-world nations.”
Kathleen has lost 5kg in the last month. She has a mattress on a concrete floor and her blankets look as if they have never been cleaned. I sat next to her speaking ever so quietly in my own Aboriginal language watching her melt into Ngarla Kunoth-Monks with so much love it was devastating. I was angry, confused and most of all in utter disbelief, finding myself wanting to cry.
I went outside looking for solace and, surreally, found myself in a makeshift shanty church its red earth floor swept clean. This was neglect, abuse and segregation.
I sat next to the 2015 Naidoc person of the year, Ngarla’s mother Rosalie Kunoth-Monks as we drove from one community to another in oppressive heat. Watching this strong Arrernte women, now 80 years-old, her eyes welling as once again she was forced to reveal herself to people from the outside, showing the living conditions of her people in defiance of those who wished she would stay quiet.
It was no different on the other communities we visited – the poverty, together with the alienation and scorn they face from outsiders managing their affairs, outsiders living in newly built houses and numerous satellites on their roofs with air conditioning, surrounded by high fences, some who live only 100 metres walk from the locals living in developing world conditions.
These same managers tell us the situation is so complex we can’t understand or, even worse, simply not true as you stand there in disbelief: the segregation is right there before your eyes. As if we were talking to people who are somehow blind or just refuse to see.
Meanwhile, there are locals doing what they can. ‘George Club’ who leases rubbish bails which he empties once a month in Alice Springs; ‘Freddy Dixon’ who has a front-end loader license and heavy machinery; ‘Dennis Kunoth’ who runs a local shop selling supplies.
These people have capacity, they have vision and they know what they want for their community. What they do not have is support funding and control.
The real problem in Australia is that segregation still occurs whether we accept it or not, and no matter how obvious the segregation, neither side appears willing to meet half way and start a dialogue of inclusion. You are either one or the other, right or left and we never look towards compromise. No one is willing to meet in the middle.
Talking to non-Indigenous locals in Alice Springs you hear things like “blacks receive too much money, millions from the government, they get services for free and assistance with jobs and education”, which is a common sentiment heard throughout Australia.
One local I spoke to went as far as saying,
They live like animals, worse than animals. My daughter works at K-Mart and the abuse she has to put up with the violent language and spitting from these kids and always stealing you just can’t have them in the shop… they just don’t care and are out of control. It’s frightening.
Rosalie Kunoth-Monks has another opinion.
The horrors of the past and our trauma today – generations of public service and government neglect, lies and lack of services allowing us to live in poverty – maintain this violence with impunity. We are reliving the pain of our people over and over again, generation to generation.
In Pilger’s film Salil Shetty from Amnesty International made the point:
Australia is one of the richest countries in the world. When you consider that the total Aboriginal population of the Northern Territory is under 50,000 people, to suggest you can’t solve this problem after so many decades and with all Australia’s resources you can only assume the problem is somewhere else.
What I do know is that four years after the release of the film little has changed. Here Australia’s relationship with its Aboriginal people is lived out in extremes where you have one group not from the community living in comfort managing the lives of others living in absolute poverty. Something must be done.
Utopia: Aboriginal elderly sleeping on ground with dogs amid calls for improved aged care
By Neda Vanovac
5 Jul 2017 – ABC NEWS
Ms Ngale, aged about 87, lives at Camel Camp where she was born, an outstation in the remote Utopia region of Central Australia, about 260 kilometres north-east of Alice Springs.Her paintings have been exhibited in Paris, London, New York, Tokyo and Milan. But in her old age, renowned Aboriginal artist Kathleen Ngale lives on a mattress outdoors, unable to walk, kept warm during cold desert winter nights by about a dozen dogs who sleep alongside her.
“I sit here hungry sometimes, and we sit here with nothing,” she said in Anmatyerre via an interpreter.
“My leg is no good … I just wait for little bits of food … and I can’t go and wash myself when I feel like it.”
Her relative Rosalie Kunoth-Monks has deplored her living conditions and is calling for improvements to be made to aged care for the elderly Aboriginal people of the region.
“She is lying with the warmth of the dogs on that mattress,” Ms Kunoth-Monks said.
“How she’s living now, you would not put your worst enemy through that … It’s a slow death.”
She said Ms Ngale was rarely able to shower or have her bed linen changed, and her husband, aged also in his 80s, was her primary carer.
Ms Ngale’s granddaughter Denisa said she was occasionally visited by a nurse from the Urpantja Clinic, located about 50 kilometres away, and that there were weekly deliveries of soup.
“If there is aged care, this old lady should be able to have a wheelchair, she should be able to have her clothes washed,” Ms Kunoth-Monks said.
“There should be a laundromat here where they can wash, they don’t mind putting in two dollars or whatever and doing that.
“But we are at the absolute lowest level of poverty here at communities like this.”
The Federal Government funds the Barkly Shire Council, headquartered in Tennant Creek about 400km away, to provide aged care services in Utopia, a region consisting of 16 homelands and outstations spread out over several hundred kilometres.
The service chiefly consists of meal deliveries, which are provided daily in the main homeland in Arlparra, but drops off to once every few days in the remoter areas, as there is only one full-time worker and a few part-time local staff funded to cover the region, acting CEO Chris Wright said.
“Not just aged care, but all the services we’re expected to provide in that particular community are just not adequate,” he said.
“Our base problem is just simply the nature of the community — it’s big, it’s widespread, there’s huge distances to travel, and the conventional funding models don’t fit that particular community.
“I guess the opportunity is to figure out, ‘okay, how can services be more adequately provided to a community of outstations that are as far as 150 miles apart?'”
There are about 15 aged people effectively sleeping rough in the community, including a 92-year-old woman living in a humpy, said Michael Gravener, CEO of the Urpantja Aboriginal Corporation.
“It’s total impoverishment, total disempowerment, and they should be honoured as some of the greats of this country, being the oldest-surviving owners of this amazing country,” he said.
“It’s just sad that we’ve neglected those people.“
‘If you haven’t got the basics, you’re not going to get anywhere’
Mr Gravener said entrenched poverty and a lack of funding made it difficult to improve circumstances for Utopia’s residents.
“We’re dealing with people who are told to get up and work, to get on with their lives, who live in absolute poverty, absolute homelessness, chronic overcrowding, and we’re [saying], ‘hey, you’ve got to get your act together and come and live like us’,” he said.
“The reality is, if you haven’t got the basics to start with, you’re not going to get anywhere.
“Things like housing, food security, someone caring decently for them. They’ll criticise people like the carers for Kathleen … but if you’re impoverished yourself, how are you going to do that?”
He said Aboriginal people living on homelands had been found in studies to be in better health than those living in cities or regional hubs, but said they needed more support to continue to do so.
“Homelands have never been given an opportunity to survive or to grow because they’re always being given little bits of funds, and you can’t do that,” he said.
“You can’t keep playing catch-up when you want to develop into a productive, sustainable, economically viable, socially viable community.”
He said Ms Ngale’s living conditions needed no embellishment: “It’s shocking enough as it is, she shouldn’t be like that,” he said.
“She should be living in the homeland, she should be given the best of care and respected for the person she is. She’s a unique Australian.”
‘People have their choices’
Mr Wright said the elderly of Utopia were living where they wanted to be, on country.
“I understand [Ms Ngale’s] living on the veranda, that’s where she wants to be, that’s fine. People have their choices and apparently her choice is to live in the way that she lives,” he said.
He said there was “definitely” the opportunity for her to be brought to Arlparra to spend time at the aged care centre.
He said that despite its issues, the region was unique, and services should be bolstered for the homelands rather than centralised in hub communities.
“It’s a stunning place; I can understand why the elderly want to stay on their homelands, because it is special,” he said.
“We’re talking about Australia’s original people, I think they deserve the respect and the resources to be able to continue to live on what is their customary land.”
