that munanga linguist

I've been reminiscing lately and had a read through some of my blog posts from years back when I would post really regularly. (Okay, not so much reminiscing as procrastinating from study, perhaps). The blog posts that got the biggest responses were about the first community meetings after the Intervention was announced (see here and here ). I still regard the Intervention as one of the nails in the coffin that caused me to burnout and leave Ngukurr after three years of successful work. It was so demoralising to have something so huge dumped on you from 'above'. And I wasn't even an Aboriginal resident! The issue of the Intervention is ongoing. Many feel it is contributing to town-drift which is in turn leading to worsening homelessness, crappier housing situations, increased crime etc. The NT Government's silly 'Growth Towns' policy and neglect of outstations/small communities is also to blame, in my opinion. Oh, and check out Ngukurr mob talking ab...

It's been said before but life in remote communities is tough. I've been helping the language gang at Ngukurr to establish themselves as an independent organisation to re-start the language revitalisation activities they were carrying out for years under the auspices of the now-crippled Katherine Language Centre. The Ngukurr group have held meetings and taken all the right steps to get established. Next on the list is to open a bank account. At a meeting, they decided on signatories and chose ANZ as their preferred bank (one of three major banks with branches in Katherine), all sensible and following the right processes. So today I went to ANZ to get the account-opening process started. The good news was that the Ngukurr mob have done everything right and have everything they need. Just one "simple" step that actually wasn't simple at all and really pissed me off... "So the signatories just need to come in to the branch and then we can set up the account...