Central Land Council

ABORIGINAL CONTROL NEEDED FOR DANGEROUS COLLECTION

Protesters called for Aboriginal control over the Strehlow Research Centre and it's collection of 1200 sacred Aboriginal objects at the Centre's official opening in Alice Springs last month. "There's tjuringas in there and other sacred objects that are owned by Aboriginal men in Central Australia so there should at least be an Aboriginal majority on the board," said Central Land Council Chairman David Long.

The Centre was built by the Northern Territory Government as part of an agreement with Professor Strehlow's second wife, Kathy, who gained control over the collection after the famous anthropologist's death in 1978. Under the Northern Territory's Strehlow Centre Act, which includes a secret agreement between the Territory Government and Mrs Strehlow, control over the collection is now in the hands of the Strehlow Centre Board.

The Board is made up of Mrs Strehlow and six academics and public servants - but no Aboriginal people. One board member, Garry Stoll, the superintendent of the Finke River Mission, was nominated by Western Arrernte people from Hermannsburg, but many custodians are angry at their lack of representations and at the involvement of a woman in managing men's sacred business. "Mrs Strehlow shouldn't be on the board," said Mr Long. "She's a woman and these are sacred, sacred Aboriginal objects - Aboriginal men's business."

Central Land Council members were angry to hear that the Aboriginal Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC) had voted to provide $1.5 million of Aboriginal money to help the Territory government pay for the centre. The CLC has repeatedly called for a review of the Strehlow Act to ensure that the collection is controlled by Aboriginal people and that it is managed according to Aboriginal beliefs.

The ATSIC funds were approved despite assurances from successive Aboriginal Affairs Ministers, the (then) Department of Aboriginal Affairs and ATSIC that these issues be resolved before any commonwealth funding was given to the Territory Government for the Centre.

"The Strehlow Centre is breaking Aboriginal law and ATSIC has given them Aboriginal money to do it," said David Long.

"That money could have been used to help Aboriginal people. To buy land for our people. To support our culture. "The ATSIC Commissioners aren't doing their jobs. They're supposed to represent Aboriginal people, but they've listened to the white bureaucrats and the Northern Territory Government which is always fighting against Aboriginal people, against the Land Council and even against ATSIC.

"The Land Council represents traditional land owners. We told them what they should do again and again, but they haven't been listening to us. They joined up with the Law breakers who are trying to turn our culture into something dead, something to stick in museums."

Max Stuart is an Arrernte man whose life has been closely linked with the life and work of the late Professor Ted Strehlow. Mr Stuart says he was known to Professor Strehlow from when he was "a babe in arms" and grandfather worked for Strehlow as his camel driver. The Professor testified on Mr Stuart's behalf and worked to have him cleared of a wrongful murder conviction in South Australia.

But at the opening of the Strehlow Research Centre, Max Stuart joined protesters opposing the new museum. He told Land Rights news that although he was close to Professor Strehlow and respected his work, the objects in the collection should be under Aboriginal control.

"I don't think Strehlow would have liked this museum. My grandfather taught him all about objects and ceremonies. I think if he was alive he wouldn't have built this thing. This is only Kathy Strehlow and the Strehlow Foundation mob. All the men should get together - not in a museum, but way to of town - to talk about the ceremony and everything. Bring them mob from the Board to listen to us. Might be a couple of days. Just straighten thins up between ourselves. We need those things. We need them for ceremony and schooling our younger generation. And after, when they learn, they can school their young ones. All Aborigines need them things to be put in our sacred sites and not in a museum. To use it and put them where they used to be. Those objects aren't just from Hermannsburg.

"They're from Papunya right up to Alcoota and right down to the South Australian border. Those objects, they're from country side. If you get those objects in a bodgy way you might as well buy yourself a coffin. The minute you get that thing put in you suitcase you might as well open the coffin and say: "Goodbye, see you mob later." It's too dangerous to keep in the museum. We need them. We can look after them.

"We can look after our things. They can keep the books but the objects they must give back to us. Our culture never dies. We might die but that things always there. See, we don't get things always there. See, we don't get things and hang them up on the wall. In our culture we use them when we want to. When I feel lonely I just start singing my songs that my Grandpa taught me and I'm happy. But objects are always on my mind. I can take a couple of young fellas out bush today and there'd be no woman and no kids. That's our law. We've got strong law.

"Whitefella laws are weak. They change the papers around. We don't change the paper. We've got it in our mind, in our caves - there's a whole book lying there. Our law must have been made thousands and thousands of years before Captain Cook ever landed in Australia. What are we going to get if we don't get those objects? What's going to happen? The old people and the old people after me, they'll be very lost like an old mob of sheep just roaming round the country without nothing, nothing to show their kids. "