One of the lasting images in my mind of the eternal absurdities in Aboriginal affairs comes from the Jigalong community, about 1500 kilometres north east of Perth and about as remote as can be.
This community, on the Canning Stock Route, was in 1977 about 400 people strong, comprised mostly of people who had come in from the desert to the north and the east, and their children and grandchildren. It had, for a time, been in the charge of an Americanised evangelical mission, and there was not a good deal to show in the way of creature comforts, or even basic items such as running water.
Among the kids, evidence of respiratory disease, trachoma, middle ear infection and skin infestation was virtually universal, and about a sixth of the people aged 60 or more were legally blind, generally from corneal disease and cataract. The only discernable source of water was a tap near an administration office.
But there were some things of which it was not short. On the wall in the admin office was one of a host of attractively presented posters prepared by the Western Australian Department of Health. One should wash one's hands after going to the toilet, it said.
I was discussing this, years later, with a (white) former denizen of those parts, who remembered visiting the community about 10 years later, delivering water by truck as a gesture from a nearby (300 kms away) mining company. In the same admin office, he said, was a delivery of mail which had just arrived, containing an unsolicited Gold American Express card for virtually every resident.
Had these been enthusiastically used to build up a massive pile of debt all over Western Australia, I think I would have cheered, but I very much doubt that the marketing exercise cost American Express much. There are not a great many Amex-taking businesses in those parts, or, for that matter, not an enormous number of people who can sign their own name.
It's quite a while since I've been back to Jigalong, but I would be prepared to bet a fair sum of money that there has not been a lot of discernible material or spiritual progress in the lot of its inhabitants. Sooner or later, however, a man from the Government will be along to offer them what will appear on its face the equivalent of the Amex card, together with