Dave and Bess Nungarrayi Price – presented to the Aboriginal Employment and Training Summit, Milennium Hotel, Sydney 28 – 29 April, 1999.

Introduction: Who we are and how we work together.

Since we come from such different cultural backgrounds, after twenty years of marriage, we feel that we must know something worthwhile about cross-cultural communication. For us coming to grips with what are known as cross-cultural issues is a matter of day-to-day, nitty-gritty necessity. Successful marriage and family life can’t be based on prejudice and stereotype, whether positive or negative. You cannot afford to either demonise or romanticise your spouse or your in-laws and expect to stay married. You have to relate to them as real people, warts and all. It is a matter of survival rather than politics or ideology. Most of all it must be based on mutual respect and a willingness to continue to learn from each other.

If we have a basic philosophy in trying to deal sensibly and sensitively with the cross cultural issues in our lives it would be pretty close to the five principles outlined by Martin Krygier in the 1997 Boyer Lectures, “Between Fear and Hope: Hybrid Thoughts in Public Values”;

• “Society is complex,

• life is hard,

• value what works,

• you’re not that smart,

• be careful.”

Explaining to somebody of a different culture ho your own works is not easy. It is like explaining how your language works to somebody who doesn’t speak it and whose own language works very differently. We are programmed as children to soak it all in from our family, friends and neighbours, the adults and older children who love us and surround us. Like our language we take our culture for granted. It permeates our very being, it sits in our bellies rather than our heads. It is just there, taken for granted, in our subconscious. It is much more about emotions and feelings than about rational thinking.

So we have been interpreters and translators for each other, of language, of rules of behaviour, of world views. For both of us it has been challenging and exciting, sometimes enchanting, often downright frightening. WE continue to make mistakes, of course. It is only the individual born and raised in a culture who knows and lives it thoroughly. But we continue to learn.

Fortunately, it is quite possible, with the right amount of effort, to build up a working knowledge of another’s culture. Aboriginal people have been better at this than whitefellas because they haven’t been given a lot of choice. They have been bombarded by the dominate culture and the English language. Whitefellas can go right through life in blissful ignorance of Aboriginal culture unless motivated by an uncommon level of interest or the need to know in order to get a job done. Thankfully the work place is not as complicated and sensitive as the marriage and family life – except perhaps for somebody like the current President of the United States. Through our work we try to offer some insights into how the two cultures interact and bounce off each other in the every day world of work and leisure.

Beyond the ‘cute factor’ – languages and cultures really are different.

Currently there is a world wide interest in indigenous cultures, partly because the world has finally recognised that they have been given a very raw deal and partly because the West is trying to rediscover its soul and indigenous peoples still seem to have theirs. This has resulted in what a good friend of ours, also married into an Aboriginal family, with twenty years experience in Aboriginal education, has called the “Cute Factor”. Aboriginal people are “Victims” and whatever problems they face are caused by the dominant culture, they are deeply “spiritual” at “one with the Earth” they spend all of their time communing with nature, doing dot paintings with deep mystical significance and hunting and gathering “bush tucker”. And it the rest of the world could be like them there would be no more wars, poverty, strife or pollution.

These positive stereotypes are at least a better alternative to the open racism and bigotry that used to be much more common and overt and are still a potential danger not very far below the surface of our public life. But they are still stereotypes that ignore the wonderful complexities of Aboriginal humanity. They are human beings first and foremost. They range across all the possibilities of any human group. They are saints and sinners, sages and fools, strong and weak, lovers and fighters, proud and humble, courageous and fearful. It is the recognition of this common humanity, in all its variety that must be the basis of the mutual respect that makes learning from each other and working together possible.

So these are the two essential points that we emphasise in our work over and over again.

• Aboriginal people share a common humanity with the rest of the Australian and world community, but

• They express their humanity in very different, indeed, often opposite ways, to what is conventional and acceptable in the ‘mainstream’.

Why are they so different? Imagine a world without cities, governments, armies, towns, planes, cars, or any vehicles, or even wheels, no beasts of burdens. No TV, radio, computers, fast food, shops of any kind, hospitals, pubs, clubs, schools, universities, churches, libraries, no books, no writing, no numbers, no geometry. Imagine a world with no houses, no concrete, bricks, mortar, timber, corrugated iron, plastic, no cloth. There are also no concepts of such things, no memories, they have never existed. Imagine yourself in that world. Naked. Just you and your family naked on the landscape.

The landscape is one of the world’s harshest and driest. Sand and rock, clay and salt pans, tough, dry grasses, shrubs, and large trees only where the water collects after rare rainfall. The temperature reaches 45oC+ in Summer for days on end. In Winter it regularly falls to below zero and sometimes plummets to –10oC at ground level just before dawn after a clear, still, dry, freezing night. You can’t get off the ground. You have no clothes at all, except perhaps a thin belt of human hair around your waist and a small tassel in front, also of human hair. There are no shoes on your feet. No hat on your head, no block out, no moisturiser, no artificial protection at all for your bare skin. You have no bed, no sheets, no blankets.

To feed yourself and your loved ones you have five or six tools you, or other family members have made, maintain and replace from available materials. Your only shelter comes from nature or small temporary constructions you’ve made yourself from local materials that you will abandon when you need to move, which you do often. There are babies, children and aged relatives to feed as well as those in their prime. You are born, grow up, marry,. have children, raise them, become a grandparent, sicken and die in this world. It’s all you know. Family and landscape and nothing else.

You need to put all of your courage and intelligence, all of your intellectual and creative abilities, into living in this world. But not just to survive. You expect to enjoy yourself as well. You need to express yourself artistically. Spiritually, as a complete human being and you do this through your relationships to all you know in your world – to the landscape and to your kin.

If you can imagine living in this world then you should be able to appreciate that people who, until very recently, did so have a very different way of thinking from the average contemporary, urban Australian about almost everything in their lives. If we think of the world’s cultures arranged along a continuum from technologically complex, hierarchically ordered, materially wealthy and large scale at one end and technologically simple, egalitarian, materially basic and small scale at the other then modern, industrial, urban Australia and traditional Desert Aboriginal culture would be at opposite ends of that continuum. You can’t be more different.

A significant proportion of the Aboriginal population of Central Australia were living in the world I described and you have just been imagining three or four decades ago, during my own childhood and adolescence, some only two decades ago. All of them lived that way in the childhood of my grandparents. Bess’ father and mother lived that way as children and adolescents. They had clear memories of their first sight of a whitefella. Now their daughter lives in the suburbs with one of those strange whitefellas, has acquired a degree in Applied Science from Curtin University and works as a consultant to government and industry. We believe that few other human groups in the whole of history have been forced to undergo such drastic and sudden cultural change. And all enforced cultural change hurts.

Another very significant reason for difference is linguistic. World views are encapsulated and preserved in community languages. In the mid seventies a survey of the NT came up with over 100 languages still spoken by Aboriginal people. There would be fewer now but there are still dozens that are the first languages or a significant proportion of the Aboriginal population of Northern Australia. There are still a lot of older people, those who hold traditional authority in bush communities and who are the living depositories of the culture. Who speak no, no or very little English. Many use English as a second, third, fourth language. Most of those who speak English use a dialect that is very different from the standard. This simple, obvious and vital fact is often ignored by the mainstream that insists on communicating in English. In fairness, Aboriginal languages are complex. Difficult and very different from European languages. Interpreting, and translating, are highly trained professional activities and there are very few around for the dozens of languages used. There is nothing easy about coping with the problems, but ignoring it doesn’t make it go away.

As I keep saying, both cultures do the same kinds of things for their members, both have areas of immense complexity and others of comparative simplicity, both are the inventions of human beings. Now at this time in our shared history we are all undergoing rapid cultural change. Aboriginal people have unique expertise in surviving such change. We now have a wonderful opportunity to learn from each other.

‘Looking after you own’ vs. nepotism – the problem of conflicting ethical systems.

One of the problems with the ‘Cute Factor’ is that those who hold naïve views of Aboriginal people and their culture are too easily disillusioned. Naïve veneration easily turns to cynicism and frustration with the sudden realisation that these people who ‘can’t do anything wrong’ are operating on a different system of values some of which are ‘unacceptable’ in the ‘mainstream’. We may know that ethical and value systems are a cultural invention but it may take coming up against the practical consequences of this fact in the real world to make it really sink in.

I once asked an Aboriginal manager of a small community enterprise what was her biggest problem as a manager. Her reply was ‘getting the workers to work’. I asked why. The answer was ‘because they aren’t related to me the right way and won’t do what I sake then to do, I don’t have authority over them Aboriginal way’. I then asked her what she intended to do about it. ‘I’ll put pressure on them until they leave and then I’ll recruit young people from my own family who will work for me because I can tell them what to do’.

There is a very heavy emphasis in Aboriginal culture on the avoidance of public and open conflict and the autonomy of the individual. The right to supervise and to instruct is granted in terms of kin relationship and traditionally sanctioned authority. There is also a high expectation that people in positions of power and influence will use that position to benefit the members of their extended family and that of their spouses. These are some of the ethical imperatives of small scale, hunter gatherer societies. They have helped to ensure the survival of these societies for millennia. They worked.

In the Desert there was only family. All of the social functions and transactions that are performed by modern, corporate, professional organisations, all the way from the United Nations down to your local child care centre are performed by family. They are still based on the complex web of mutual obligations determined by kin relationships. Kin is so important that most Aboriginal people in Central Australia relate to all others, including whitefellas, as if they are kin. Everybody is related to everybody else. Outsiders are adopted into extended families, in some cases, given a name, called a ‘skin name’, which makes them part of the kinship system. There is usually genuine affection involved but for Aboriginal people it is also a practical necessity. They relate to the whole world on the basis of kin relationship and regard the whitefella idea of ‘unrelated friend’ as bizarre and probably uncivilised. They may be mystified equally by the notion of professional detachment and objectivity. So in Aboriginal terms our manager was behaving quite ethically and with practical common sense.

In the mainstream we call blatantly favouring friends and family in the work place nepotism, it is considered unethical and in some contexts illegal. It is not acceptable in modern administration and enterprise management and is essentially problematic in the contemporary workplace. Aboriginal people working in the mainstream face ethical dilemmas like this every day of their working lives. Those who try to ‘do the right thing’ by the system’s rules are criticised by their own for ‘acting like a whitefella’. They are breaking their own culture’s rule. As a result talented, qualified people who want to use their skills often go elsewhere, marry out and work in other communities to avoid the restrictions, conflicts and the ‘tall poppy syndrome’ of their own communities. When asked for a reason, they often reply with reference to ‘too much humbug’ or ‘too much backstabbing’. In other words there is too high a social price to pay for ‘acting like a whitefella’. Of course whitefellas also act nepotistically but have learnt be very circumspect about it because in their world it is not ‘the right thing to do’. Aboriginal people are quite open and up front about it because in their world it is ‘the right thing to do’.

There are other substantial cultural differences in attitude to work and career that have to be addressed. Traditional Aboriginal people will frankly state that they do not have the same attitude to work as European Australians and are not interested in a lifelong career conferring the ability to acquire and accumulate material wealth. People work at a job until they get tired of it, then wither withdraw from the workforce to give somebody else a turn or go into a different job. This attitude is certainly valid in the context of traditional lifestyle and should be a matter of choice for the individual in a liberal democracy. It does, however, militate against the success of long term strategic economic and community development planning, real Aboriginal control of the administration of their own communities and self management in the current economic climate. It also drives bureaucrats generally, and the representatives of government funding agencies in particular, crazy.

Attempts to establish an economic base for remote communities invariably involve the need for high levels of competence in non-traditional areas as well as uncommon levels of imagination, flexibility and creativity. In the area of enterprise development and project management generally, world recognised best practice models are usually directly antithetical to the traditional aboriginal world view and moral and ethical imperatives. Attempts to come up with an Aboriginal way of running a business in a traditional sense in our part of the world often founder on the sharpness of this conflict. In order for Aboriginal people to take part effectively in the mainstream economy they have to accept an ethical system and adopt a set of behaviours antithetical to their traditional culture. This is not an impossible request and is not always disadvantageous as these ethics and behaviours may be of benefit to contemporary Aboriginal communities in many ways in relation to improvement in health, housing and community development generally. It is. However, very difficult to make it work ‘on the ground’. Whitefellas have developed their way of doing things over centuries of trial and error. They do it that way because it works. Aboriginal people have been doing things their way for thousands of years for the same reason. Aboriginal people are now living in a different world and many of the old ways no longer work. New ways need to be found to make things work in these circumstances.

Aboriginal people cannot afford to stand still. One of the chief problems in employment in Remote Communities is the lack of job opportunities. There is very little market for traditional skills. Where there is a market for such skills and knowledge, cultural and other factors combine to restrict Aboriginal access. Traditional economic activities are not seen as ‘jobs’ even in the CDEP situation which theoretically has the flexibility to include traditional economic activity as paid employment. Hunting and gathering are usually considered as leisure activities although they were of crucial economic significance traditionally. Attempts to make them economically viable activities in the contemporary economy require non-traditional skills to administer funding and support as well as uncommon degrees of imagination and managerial skill.

Other cultural activities such as song, dance and the plastic arts have to be converted from spiritually oriented activity to secular entertainment in the tourist industry or to production for the contemporary, urban based art market. Community services such as enculturation, education, child and aged care, health care and so on have been professionalised and removed from the context of necessary day to day family activity. They are often carried out in ‘Centres’ receiving grants that need to be administered by those with financial management skills as well as competence in the particular professional activity.

Professionalisation involves formal training, modern management and administration practices, professional ethics and so on that are specific to the culture of the profession and therefore removed from the cultural sphere in which Aboriginal people feel competent and confident. Skills and knowledge that have given Aboriginal people the ability to survive and prosper in extremely harsh environments for millennia become marketable and therefore of value and utility in the contemporary economy only after they are offered to clients and consumers in a social, cultural and ethical framework completely removed from that in which their value and utility were immediately obvious, and which was completely controlled by Aboriginal people. This process removes the management of traditional knowledge and skills from the control of the original owners and can further marginalise Aboriginal people although offering short term benefits to some groups and individuals. In a situation where traditional practices and skills are automatically, if not deliberately, devalued Aboriginal people quickly come to believe that there are many things that only whitefellas can do and that is not appropriate or even possible for Aboriginal people to do effectively. It takes time, dedication and hard work to overcome such an attitude.

On the other side of the equation Whitefellas are obliged to work within a particular set of unavoidable constraints applied by law and the marketplace. Neither private enterprises nor government agencies are free to be as flexible as they may wish to be in dealing with remote communities. Unless there is a greater level of flexibility than there has been in the past however there will not be any improvement in the difficult situation that these communities find themselves in.

Making principles explicit – learning from each other in a meaningful way.

What is Jajirdi trying to do about all this? Firstly, we are concerned to increase understanding and mutual respect across the cultural and linguistic divide. We try to avoid making moral judgements in relation to the clash of cultures. Our interest is not in what is better in a moral sense but rather in what ‘works’ for both Aboriginal people and Whitefellas in an ever changing world. We find much of the public debate on Aboriginal issues shallow, fragmented and unhelpful to this approach. We avoid taking political or ideological stands leaving such matters to the consciences and good sense of our clients.

For us the purpose of cross cultural training is to better equip us to communicate and interact effectively with colleagues and clients of cultural backgrounds different from our own. As colleagues, managers and supervisors we have to continually make judgements on which to base effective decision making. Objective judgements in relation to sets of prescribed standards are pretty straight forward. But we are also concerned about professional development, about communication and the effective operation and interaction of teams of people. Therefore we are also obliged to make subjective ethical judgements. We cannot do this well unless we understand that some of those we are judging are operating by a different set of rules. We need to be able to decide if behaviour that seems bizarre to us is the logical product of a different set of rules or is just dysfunctional or unwise. To do that those rules have to be made explicit to us.

In our courses we present to those working with Aboriginal people a basic understanding of some of the factors which explain cultural difference and which cause breakdowns in communication and mutual understanding. We concentrate on basic information on the reasons for difference;

• A description of life in the desert before contact.

• An outline of recent local contact history and a discussion of how this has affected community relations.

• An explanation of the Aboriginal relationship to the land and other aspects of Aboriginal spirituality.

• A list of the main languages in our region, using examples from Warlpiri to show how they differ from English and how and why Aboriginal English differs from the standard.

• A discussion of kinship and how it operates in Aboriginal society and impacts on everyday communication.

• A discussion of the rules of politeness and communication generally and how and why they differ between the cultures.

Much of our presentation of this material is aimed at giving Whitefellas practical information on how Aboriginal people interact with each other. We want the tow groups to be able to communicate effectively and to do this they have to appreciate the differences in each other’s world views, use language and rules of politeness. One obvious and practical example we use relates to eye contact. To Whitefellas sustained eye contact is normal and polite in conversation. If the person we are speaking to doesn’t use it then we call him or her ‘shifty eyed’ and that person can’t be trusted. On the Aboriginal side such sustained eye contact indicates aggression, envy, arrogance and the person who uses it can’t be trusted. The eyes are averted to show respect and polite embarrassment in dealing with strangers. Such opposite approaches to everyday communications cause not just a breakdown in communication but also mistrust and hostility when those involved don’t appreciate what is going on.

In our longer course we try cover the above in a little more depth plus we look at many of the issues of contemporary community life that could have an impact on the workplace:

• Gender issues and relations between the sexes.

• The causes and varieties of addictive behaviour and how it is handled in the two cultures.

• Present attitudes to work and how they have developed.

• Differences in attitudes to violence and implications for conflict management.

• The operation of prejudice and stereotyping especially in the workplace.

We frankly present our views on all of these issues. Most are hesitant to discuss several of them in public because of their controversial nature. But they are issues that need to be addressed for very practical reasons. We are aware that there are many strongly held views in relation to them that are different from and opposed to our own. What our clients get are the frankly stated and agreed views of two people – an Aboriginal woman born into her culture with the linguistic expertise of a speaker of one Desert language, an intimate knowledge of Whitefella ways and a deep desire to improve the lot of her own people and, a Whitefella who has probably been around too long with a burning interest in languages and cultures and also a concern to make the world a better place for his wife’s people, his daughter and his grandson. So we encourage open discussion. In every group we work with there is always a wealth of cultural and linguistic variety and of experience working with Aboriginal people. These groups often include Aboriginal people as well and we actively encourage them to participate. Once such groups are up at their ease and realise that we genuinely do encourage them to put their views and we are not going to make moral judgement on every word they say they are always very pleased to try to make sense of the issues.

We are aware that we try to cover an awful lot in our courses and often feel that we are merely scratching the surface. It is challenging work. Much of Aboriginal culture is complex and difficult to come to grips with. In the words of the American linguist, Ken Hale, who first worked on Warlpiri back in the sixties and seventies:

Aboriginal Australia has produced a good number of true monuments to the human intellect, many of which have gone unnoticed and unappreciated by non-Aboriginal observers precisely because they are products of the mind, accessible only through the language in which they are expressed and often requiring strenuous effort on the part of a learner who seeks to uncover or master the principles which inhere in them.

Ken Hale, Remarks on Creativity in Aboriginal Verse.

It is challenging to try to get an appreciation of these ‘monuments to the human intellect’ across to average folk, public servants. Tradesmen, miners, who know just one language and culture and are easily bamboozled by the intricacies of the world’s most complex kinship system and a language and world view totally different from their own. Judging from the feedback we get we are invariably satisfied, however that each session has been worthwhile.

There was the young white woman whose husband is Aboriginal who told us that she felt that she now understood her in-laws much better after one of our sessions. There was the young, swaggering ex-ringer from Western Queensland whose own stories on working with Aboriginal stockmen on the Barkly Tableland brought real empathy and humour to the discussions. An Aboriginal woman who had been brought up in the city and now worked in the public service thanked us for giving her insights into her own heritage. A Whitefella from country New South Wales told us that he had been taught the prejudices of his part of the world but now felt much more empathy for Aboriginal people. We had sparked a real interest in Aboriginal culture for him and he wanted to know more. We are often told by public servants who have worked with Aboriginal people in the Centre for years, in some cases decades, that ;they wish they had been given this information at the beginning of their careers. It would have avoided years of heartache and confusion for them.

It is feedback like this that makes us feel we are achieving something. Work places are about people. We find that the majority of Aboriginal people want a better life and are prepared to work for it if given the chance and if the world generally is prepared to show some compassion and understanding. The majority of Whitefellas are confused by the public debate on Aboriginal affairs and want to know what it is all about in human terms and what it all means for them locally in the world they live and work in. They want to understand their Aboriginal neighbours and work mates but are often confused and affronted by much of the public debate.

On the Whitefella side cross cultural training should encourage confident action rather than paralyse the well meaning with an exaggerated fear of offending and worsening the situation. It should also be genuinely ‘cross’ cultural, aimed at both sides of the equation. Aboriginal leaders and managers and workers as well should be given frank training in the principles behind the legislative and ethical basis as well as the practical detail of modern administrative and business practices. A comparison with the principles informing the rules of traditional Aboriginal social structures and mores is practically useful for both sides.

If there is some understanding on both sides then there is a chance of mutual respect being established and a workable arrangement being negotiated. There can only be informed choice os the one doing the choosing has been fully informed. Because of legal constraints as well as those imposed by the need to maintain levels of efficiency and productivity there are some values that have to be imposed. That process has a chance of succeeding if the Aboriginal worker appreciates and accepts the reasons for that need even if the values involved contradict the traditional values of his or her own culture. In all of the work we do directly with Aboriginal people we try very hard to explain to them what Whitefellas are about. This is also not particularly easy because Whitefellas can be a pretty mysterious and confusing lot. They are hard to pin down.

In the Centre we use the terms Blackfella and Whitefella in English because that is what we call ourselves. Generally these terms aren’t offensive. Increasingly, however, we are talking to groups of people who are not Aboriginal but who are also not Whitefellas. What we call the ‘mainstream’ is complex and fluid. Aboriginal people can and do rise to this challenge. After all post-contact Aboriginal history largely been the history of adaptation to enforced change. Lack of intelligence is not a problem. Watkins tench came to New South Wales with the First Fleet. He made the following observation not far from this very spot:

“I do not hesitate to declare that the natives of New South Wales possess a considerable portion of that acumen, that sharpness of intellect, which bespeaks genius.”

We can safely make the same observation about the rest of the indigenous population of Australia.

As a Whitefella I try to present my own people honestly, warts and all to Aboriginal people. And, after twenty years of marriage to me, Bess has no problem identifying a few warts as well. Whitefellas need to be painfully honest and be willing to reveal our own confusion and vulnerability. Most I know don’t feel like they rule the world and aren’t exactly carried away with the power they are supposed to wield. I once went to a conference on petrol sniffing representing the Commonwealth of Australia. I was meant to offer support and encouragement to Aboriginal parents trying to cope with the tragedy of childhood substance abuse. As I was on my way down to the community where the conference was being held I heard on the radio the voice of my boss’s wife, Hazel Hawke telling the world that her daughter was a heroin addict and she didn’t know what to do about it. Her husband, our Prime Minister, was later to cry on television over his daughter’s plight. It struck me at the time that Aboriginal people were asking for help in dealing with their children’s substance abuse from an organisation whose Chief Executive Officer had, basically the same problem and didn’t seem to be coping too well.

The world is a dangerous place, changing too quickly for a lot of us to keep up with. We should be dealing with cross cultural issues in in an honest partnership of equals. We are all in it up to our necks. We have things to learn form each other.