We arrived in Alice Springs on 28th July for a four night stay. It's very hot here and it's lovely after so many damp and cold days. The Todd river is dry and has been for some time. People use it as an alternative route to walk into town. The town relies on tourism and there are lots of shops and galleries selling aboriginal art. In the early 70's an art teacher called Geoffrey Bardon encouraged the transfer of dreamings onto canvas, previously these had been in sand or on rocks. Although in the 1930's there had been other aborigine artists selling their work in watercolours.
Aborigines make up about 17% of the population of Alice Springs (compared to about 2% in Australia overall) , they usually reside in the suburbs, on special purpose leases - town camps or further out at Amoonguna to the South and on the small family outstation communities on Aboriginal Lands in surrounding areas. We were warned by Ken, our guide to Uluru, that most of the people we'd encounter in town would be the ones who had lost hope; in town to collect their welfare cheques and not to confuse these with the majority of aborigines. From walking around town, I really got the feeling of there being two sides here; an uneasy co-existence. It's clear to see that the influx of white settlers here changed the aborigine way of life beyond all recognition. And what we witness in Alice Springs is the fall out from that. There is obviously a complex history behind all of this and I don't have the knowledge or experience to comment and neither is this place to do so. If you want to learn more about the stolen generations, the film Rabbit-Proof Fence is a good place to start.
No comments:
Post a Comment