Dreaming Tracks & Digital Futures

But my visit here has ended prematurely. This morning, my research assistant, Ivy Toby, politely explains that an important person on the island has passed away and that a mourning period has begun. It means that everyday life on the island will shift to support this important ritual observance. Ivy is my key contact here — as well as the local radio broadcaster — who has been introducing me to everyone we encounter on our walks around the island over the past three days. It is an effective 'chance meeting' approach to gathering information about community perceptions of mainstream television and its impact — my primary reason for being here. Although initially, I'm disappointed that several days of research time will be lost, it's a salutary reminder of the nature of cross-cultural research: I'm the outsider here, invited into the community as a guest and am obliged to conform to community expectations.

The next day dawns fine but with thick, billowing cumulonimbus clouds, heavy with rain, boiling above Papua New Guinea. The sound of an aircraft. A single-engined Cessna. I watch the pilot circle the airstrip before dextrously negotiating the slippery runway — a perfect landing. I've already farewelled my friends on Boigu and within minutes, I'm aboard — the only passenger — and we are flying low along the Papua New Guinea coastline before turning due south towards Horn Island Airport — the service centre for the Torres Strait and northern Peninsula region of Queensland — 150 kilometres and about 90 minutes' flight time away. I look back through low cloud at Boigu — a tiny island nestled on the edge of the Arafura Sea — and wonder what the future holds for its 250 permanent residents.

The arrival of representatives of the London Missionary Society in 1871 is celebrated on July 1 each year throughout the Torres Strait as the 'Coming of Civilisation' or the 'Coming of The Light'. Christianity has had a profound effect on Torres Strait Island people: every single inhabited island has a monument commemorating the event; no aspect of life in the Torres Strait is unchanged by the coming of religion (Schnukal, 1987).

Some see the coming of television as a possible saviour of Torres Strait Island culture while others view it as the intrusion of western values into Islander society — potentially the last nail in the coffin. Mainstream television arrived in these remote islands in 1987 and my first visit to Thursday Island 12 months after this had been at the invitation of one of the key members of the Torres Strait Islanders Media Association, Aven Noah. My aim was to explore some of the perceived impacts of mainstream television on island life.

There's a gale warning and gusty SE winds raise dust clouds across the festival grounds amidst the throb of diesel generators. A man walks past with a T-shirt reading Dinki Di TSI as a huge speaker crackles and the ABC News blasts through the public address system set up on the school oval. Technically, the switchover from ABC Radio Cairns to Radio Torres Strait is hardly noticeable but the content, following on from the 3 p.m. edition of the ABC news-in-brief, could not have been more different: a few minutes of Island news — read, not in English, but in Torres Strait Creole or Broken — followed by a selection of locally-recorded, locally-produced songs from some of the 200 or more islands between Cape York and the southern coastline of Papua New Guinea.

For two hours each weekday afternoon, life on the 14 inhabited islands virtually grinds to a halt as Radio Torres Strait goes to air.  But this afternoon is special — the broadcast is live for the first time from the Second Torres Strait Island Festival. As Islander voices echoed around the oval, people seem to smile more, the children's activity seems even more frenetic and groups in the stalls at the festival grounds begin to sing along. It is undoubtedly their radio, their voice (Meadows, 1988).

Mainstream television reached the Torres Strait two years after the launch in 1985 of the Australian telecommunications satellite AUSSAT and 13 years after its Canadian equivalent, ANIK. Both caused a similar degree of concern amongst remote First Nations communities.

Virtually overnight, English-language television broadcasts were perceived to threaten existing Aboriginal languages and cultures (Molnar and Meadows, 2001). My first visit to northern Australia confirmed that the arrival of satellite television in the Torres Strait had already impacted negatively on communities, shortening working hours as people became transfixed by TV soaps. Children had begun to emulate their 'TV heroes' by carrying knives and getting drunk, and community meetings had become all but impossible to organise because people preferred to stay home to watch the box (Meadows, 1988). But at the launch of the multilingual Radio Torres Strait during that same visit, Torres Strait elder Getano Lui Snr observed:

'Before, we sent letters to the other islands. Now it's instantaneous. Now we send songs… The younger people who could write letters, that was the only contact they had with the other people but now, they can hear and listen as somebody is talking and not only that, but it also educates our younger people to speak, how to pronounce words — it's very good, it's part of education.'

An audience study 15 years later revealed that, despite the power of mainstream television, Indigenous-controlled community radio continues to provide a first level of service to communities across the Torres Strait and throughout Aboriginal Australia (Forde, Foxwell and Meadows, 2009).

Aven Noah's patient guidance helps to shape my understanding of First Nations media research and to identify methodologies that I subsequently apply over the next three decades — aligning visits with community time frames. He knows that the Torres Strait Cultural festival is an ideal opportunity for me to observe and explore various dimensions of Islander culture, as well as having the chance to speak to a wide range of people from the outer islands who traditionally gathered on TI — Thursday Island — each year for the event. An interview on Torres Strait Radio plays a critical role, informing everyone listening that I was there at the behest of TSIMA (Torres Strait Islander Media Association) and thus 'authorising' my presence. Later research with Christine Morris reinforces the same elements of actively engaging with communities but with an added dimension — reciprocity. It entails seeing research activity as an exchange rather than an information-gathering exercise and it challenges us all to consider our place in the research process. What can we give back to the communities who are giving us the information we seek?

I return from the Torres Strait in 1988 with many unanswered questions about the role of media but later that year, my pathway into academia takes a decisive turn when I enrol in a research Masters at Griffith University.

It was then I meet visual anthropologist, Eric Michaels. He is already ill from the debilitating effects of HIV but at our first meeting, he hands me his only copy of a monograph he has recently published — Aboriginal Invention of Television: Central Australia 1982-1985. He suggests that I read it and then come back to discuss my project. We meet just once after that when sadly, his illness becomes more acute. Although too ill to supervise my emerging study, his shared insights inspire me to pursue a similar trajectory. His ideas seem to engage with my growing list of unanswered research questions more than any other academic work I have read to that point and it becomes an important framework for my subsequent studies.

A cold Saskatchewan wind outside is cruel and cutting. I can feel it creeping through cracks in the Khombi and my breath is frosting. I've never felt so cold. The sun is about 20 degrees above the SW horizon and I can't get used to it being in the south. The van is buffeted as we drive into a sunset of delicate pink and orange. The temperature is falling further and the Khombi's windows are starting to frost up. Despite sitting inside a sleeping bag, my legs are numb and have been for about an hour. This is the North in winter.

Next morning, we mercifully manage to hitch a ride on a Sask-Power Super King Air flight to the remote northern township of La Ronge, set beside a huge frozen lake. The snow squeaks underfoot as we walk from the aircraft. It's minus 28 degrees and it's there I meet Nap Gardiner, a La Ronge Cree who is deeply involved in the Native Communications Society — a First Nations organisation that supports Native broadcasting across the country. I made contact with Nap by letter from Australia, months ago, and he's invited me to visit his Cree radio station. The first thing he wants to tell me is about his experience he had a few weeks ago, driving back alone to La Ronge late at night in a blizzard. He turned on CBC Radio and heard a didgeridoo playing. 'I heard everything in that sound,' he explains. 'It nearly knocked me through the roof of my car.' He wants to connect with Aboriginal broadcasters in Australia and talks about possible program exchanges. He already knows that Aboriginal people in both countries share many cultural dimensions. Here in La Ronge, he and his team maintain a regular radio program in Cree, keeping local communities informed of important news and information. To them, it provides a first level of service — it was a term I was to hear again and again across the North. But equally, it is how the station management is configured that is crucial — representatives from across the region ensure that the communities’ voices are being heard.

Most of the inhabitants here are Inuit — a diverse people with eight ethnic groups, speaking five dialects across the North. Although Inuit have lived in parts of the Arctic for around 4000 years, some were forcibly moved to more northern and remote areas during the 1940s to strengthen Canada's claim on land in the Arctic. It forced previously nomadic people who moved according to the availability of food resources like caribou to become sedentary and many of the early remote settlements bordered on starvation for years until they became accustomed to their enforced new environments. Like First Nations people further south, Inuit children, too, were removed from families and sent to residential schools as part of Canada's assimilation program. This resonates strongly with the treatment of Aboriginal people in Australia and echoes the impacts of the Stolen Generation. Indeed, one of my research contacts, Ray Fox from the James Bay Cree, told me a story of how he and several of his friends were lured aboard a government light plane that had landed on a lake one day at his village in northern Alberta. He was finally reunited with his mother almost two decades later. The horrors of the residential school system have recently re-emerged with the discovery of hundreds of unmarked graves of children who died while in State 'care'.

I meet Inuit Broadcasting Corporation producer Blandina Makkik who talks excitedly about a new pan-Arctic television service for Aboriginal communities — Television Northern Canada (TVNC). The Native Communication Societies have already set up five production centres across the North, each designed to uplink video to the new channel during prime time because of Canada's five time zones. She describes Inuit television as 'different' to what you might see on the only other broadcaster here, the CBC. Smaller communities like Igloolik and Rankin Inlet — in the high Arctic — produce 'Inuit-style' TV: time pauses, programs that are slower in pace and which feature more traditional subjects like Shamanism. She tells me about her recent trip to meet the Siberian Inuit. Initially compelled to use a Russian government translator, she gradually realised that she could understand then dialect spoken by her Siberian brothers and sisters — and they were able to speak to each other directly, much to the chagrin of the government official. She gestures towards a map of the world on the wall of her office. But this circumpolar perspective is one I’ve never seen before. Taken from above the North Pole, looking down, it reveals the tips of continents that stretch into the high arctic — a geographical and cultural bond that transcends political boundaries.

Five years after its implementation on the mainland, a scheme called BRACS (Broadcasting for Remote Aboriginal Communities Scheme) has been rolled out across the Strait. It's essentially a basic media switching centre, allowing communities to interrupt incoming satellite mainstream television signals and, if desired, insert their own locally-produced video and/or radio programming — in theory!

But when I visit, most of the units installed on the islands are either inoperative or damaged or both. A lack of funds for maintenance and training has meant that only a handful of communities support a local broadcaster to operate what is potentially their local community radio or TV station. There's frustration expressed at the waste of a potentially valuable cultural resource and stories of poor communication and inappropriate siting of BRACS units are common. On Murray Island, for example, the BRACS unit is located on top of the highest point on the island, about as far away from the village as possible, meaning that few people have ever made the steep climb up to be interviewed or to participate.

On most of the island BRACS units, a lack of a basic air-conditioning filter has meant that almost all suffer from salt air corrosion. The list goes on. But despite these setbacks, several of the islands are producing quality programming for their communities. On one island, a videotape of a tombstone opening ceremony was broadcast locally, replacing the mainstream television signal. Such important events are usually held two years after the death of an island resident and typically involve everyone on the island. In this case, the same video was broadcast non-stop for two weeks until an island elder politely suggested that perhaps it was time to resume mainstream programming.

My Torres Strait visits confirmed that like Canada's North, community life here had changed with the arrival of mainstream television. Attempts to provide communities with an alternative had largely failed although there were signs that creative efforts by some and the formation of a representative Indigenous media organising body were about to impact on the future. Torres Strait Radio is already well-established and Aven explains the importance of including representatives from the three main island language groups — to ‘authorise’ the content being produced.

I'm visiting this community of 1100 at the invitation of Peter Toyne who is manager of the Tanami Network — a compressed videoconferencing system that links 12 linguistically similar groups in remote Central Australia. Designed initially for business use in the mainstream, the Warlpiri have appropriated it to enable face-to-face communication in real time across the vastness of Central Australia. The communities quickly embraced the technology and have used videoconferencing to sell their iconic dot paintings to international dealers and galleries. But the Tanami Network is much more than that, with around 30 different applications identified by its designers, including monitoring crime in the community, health management, education, providing local information, organising social ceremonial work, dealing with 'sorry business' (deaths), and strengthening family ties. The network is managed according to an existing community social structure that includes all of the skin groups that represent its diverse audience base (Meadows, 1994). I watch school children receiving a lesson via videoconferencing from Alice Springs and health administrators in Darwin delivering a training program to local health workers.

It's also connected with the pioneering Warlpiri Media Association, set up in 1984, having already produced around 1000 hours of original, local programs. I spend a day in front of a TV monitor watching some of the videos that the Warlpiri have 'invented'. Virtually all of those I see are shot in 'real time' with little or no editing — similar to the style adopted by the remote Inuit communities above the Arctic Circle in Canada's North and by communities in the Torres Strait. It seems to suggest a common First Nations' philosophy which is able to incorporate every aspect of landscape and life, including communications technology.

A week later I'm sitting in the late afternoon sunlight with a group of about 20 Warlpiri women, the camp dogs and a handful of non-Indigenous workers to observe some important 'finishing business' . It's for a senior Warlpiri woman who passed away two years before. It's the final of four nights of farewell rituals that pass on the spirit and responsibilities to her kinship group.

Through the rays of the setting sun they dance: children, teenagers, young women, old women — the Kudungurlu (workers, police) and the Kirda (bosses, owners of the stories).

They dance in skin/country groupings between two decorated digging sticks stuck upright in the sandy ground. It had been meticulously swept beforehand by two women using rakes and branches. The two sticks are joined by a hand woven ochre coloured string with feathers attached to it. The wind increases in strength and the temperature falls. Dust is everywhere and there's thunder in the air. Several of the many dances that ensue involve only one or two women. Between performances, they sit together, painting each other's bodies, accompanied by low-level chanting and murmuring — laughter and jokes intermingle with serious discussion. A Warlpiri woman sitting next to me explains in a whisper what each of the dances is about and she illustrates it by drawing with a stick in the red sand. The ceremony continues throughout the night and in the bitter cold of a desert sunrise, the women throw branches onto the fires that surround our circle and join for the last three dances of the cycle. Then they are crying and laughing and as they do, a local female community worker captures it on video — another recording for the Warlpiri Media Association's vast media archive. Then one of the Kirdu comes over to us and says simply: 'Finish.' Everyone smiles, knowing that obligations and responsibilities have been met. The cycle is complete.

On my way back to Brisbane, the Yuendumu experiences haunt me. I cannot pretend to fully understand the iconography used by the Warlpiri filmmakers but I can recognise that the videos they produce represent a powerful cultural resource reflecting a process that operates in many First Nations' communities. It is more obvious here at Yuendumu but it serves to reinforce what I’ve observed and experienced in Australia and Canada in my years of field visits: the programs being produced are not necessarily the main objective — it is the social organisation of how they are produced that defines them and it is evident in the absence of a barrier or boundary between producer and audience. As one Warlpiri video worker remarked; 'The audience are the producers here.' It is a crucial dimension — regardless of whether the program is in Broken, Meriam Mir or Kalaw Lagaw Ya in the Torres Strait; or in the languages of Canada's remote North — Chippewa, Cree, Ojibway, Dene, Inuktitut; or features programs broadcast across Central and Northern Australia in Arrernte, Pitjantjatjara, Warlpiri, Yolgnu; or in the English language programs produced by urban and regional First Nations communities across Australia.

And so this visit that I initially thought might not be necessary, confirms the inescapable conclusion that has emerged from countless conversations and observations since I started this journey — it is the process that defines cultural production, rather than the content or the media themselves. When I think about it, I can see how this notion defines every successful First Nations production centre I have visited.

It is during this time that the idea for a joint book — Songlines to Satellites — begins to crystallise. I'm not sure if ATSIC's reluctance to publish the Digital Dreaming report is a catalyst, but we soon put together a book proposal and submit it to Pluto Press in Sydney. It is eventually published in 2001 but sadly, Pluto Press disappeared from the publishing scene in Australia around 2010 and Songlines goes out of print. But now it has a new life — on this very website!

For the next five years, I direct my research efforts into community broadcasting. Joining with colleagues Susan Forde and Kerrie Foxwell-Norton — and later, Jacqui Ewart. Susan, Kerrie and I, in particular, create a vast database of information around the Australian community broadcasting sector — its history, policymaking challenges, program formats and most recently, its audiences. Working with these two wonderful women is the highlight of my academic career. The idea for an audience study has been haunting us for a decade or more, particularly in relation to exploring the nature of the producer-audience barrier. Was this any different in community radio and television? How did this concept apply in Indigenous and ethnic communities? And how could Indigenous media production be defined? It sounds like a huge project — and it was. Kerrie is project manager and somehow manages to pull it all together. From the start, we establish clear lines of communication with our research collaborators and set up an advisory committee that meets each month with between 11-15 representatives from our research partners. And it works brilliantly (Meadows et al, 2007)! We are running over-budget but I insist on continuing with our plan as I know a project like this will probably never be repeated.

My primary responsibility is the Indigenous component of the study. I know from past experience that I will have to fit in with Indigenous community timelines and demands and although interviews and focus group discussions in the broader community broadcasting sector begin almost immediately, it is 12 months before we settle on a timetable for visiting First Nations communities. I’m starting to feel a little concerned that time is ticking away but have to trust in our sector representatives. Negotiations are crucial — unless Indigenous communities involved agree to the terms of the research processes, it is destined to fail. I recall vividly the icy day at a Melbourne conference in mid-2005 when the Chair of the Australian Indigenous Communication Association, Ken Reys, calls me up to a meeting with his key sector representatives in his hotel room. They look relaxed when I walk in. He turns over an envelope and on the back, draws a very accurate map of Australia. Two minutes later he’s sketched out the plan — which communities will be most suitable to visit and suggests timing around events, festivals etc. It is an agreement — and on the back of an envelope! The field visits can begin.

From the air, it looks like a tropical paradise. 'Palm' is part of a group of continental islands off the far North Queensland coast that have spawned a collection of exclusive — and very expensive — tourist resorts. Within sight of Palm Island is the high-end resort complex of Orpheus Island, ironically separated from Palm by the notorious Fantome Island — a detention facility used for Indigenous people diagnosed with Hansen's Disease (leprosy) between 1940 and 1973. The Djagubay name for this island is Eumilli. Palm Island was declared an Aboriginal Settlement by the Queensland Government in 1914 and four years later, Indigenous people from across the State were forcibly sent here as it was considered to be a penal settlement for the first two decades of its life. People from around 60 different Indigenous language groups were forced together, creating inevitable tensions. Residents use the name 'Bwgcolman' for the island, which means 'one people from many groups'. This time I'm with Kombumerri research assistant Christine Morris. Because of the mostly negative media coverage Palm Island has received for decades, any non-Indigenous strangers are quite understandably treated with suspicion and Christine suggests that we ease our way into the community by simple 'being seen'. So we sit outside the main island store and our interviewees come to us as she has predicted. Once people satisfy themselves as to our bonafides they open up and willingly share their views on the importance of Indigenous-controlled media.

The events of November 2004 remain fresh in everyone's mind. It was the death in police custody of a young island man that sparked fury on the island. As mainstream media sensationally branded the incident 'a riot', Indigenous voices on local radio 4K1G in Townsville spoke about 'the resistance' with a Cairns-produced (Bumma Bippera Media) and nationally-broadcast talkback program, TalkBlack, providing listeners with views other than those from sources such as State politicians and the police — in short: 'black voices and black issues'. The program subsequently was judged best coverage of Indigenous Affairs at the 2006 Queensland Media Awards. One listener observed (Meadows et al, 2007):

'I think the only tool the community has to use is using places like 4K1G [Townsville] to make sure that what was being brought out of the Palm [Island] community as a whole was projected in the right manner, not in a negative manner. That's only one part of the importance of Murri media or Indigenous media. It provides places like Palm, Woorabinda, the Cape [York] and other Indigenous communities, particularly the Indigenous population in the mainstream, with a voice, a balance, projecting our stories, our culture, our language the way we want to hear it but giving it to the wider audience too, people who live in the mainstream, people who don't often come in contact with Indigenous people.'

Our methodology has been working well — following a timeline and structure set by the communities themselves has enabled us to be accepted and 'authorised'. The red sand drifts seem much the same but at one point we pass a camel that has wandered out onto the highway. It doesn't seem quite so far this time and in our well-equipped 'Troopie' [Toyota Land Cruiser Troop Carrier], we are self-contained — an important consideration when visiting remote communities where resources are scarce and expensive. When we arrive, Derek talks about our project on PAW (Pintubi Anmatjere Warlpiri) radio so that everyone will know who we are and how we fit into the community social structure. My research contact in Yuendumu and I have prepared a list of possible interviewees and when we meet one of them the moment we step out of our vehicle, I'm curious as to why our local host does not suggest we do the interview here and now. As we move around the community, it gradually becomes apparent that the order in which I must speak to people is determined by a cultural hierarchy — the Warlpiri way. It's another reminder of the existence of a parallel First Nations universe that becomes invisible when we return to our own (Valaskakis 1993) — and of the social structure that defines the Warlpiri world, including their media. For some reason, this realisation affects me deeply. Is it because of the extraordinary privilege extended to me by this community, allowing me access to their world? Or is it the level of trust shown in sharing knowledge that I seek? Regardless, it strengthens my resolve to complete this project. It's another moment that helps to confirm why this research is important.

The changes in the country are noticeable the moment we turn off the Lasseter Highway about 100 km east of Yulara (near Uluru) — brown corrugations change quickly to red sand and then to hard-packed clay with accompanying vegetation changes. Across a flat sandy plain into a salt pan and into a drift of fine orange ochre dust. Bouldered hills and escarpments emerge from the low scrub. The hills are higher as we approach Pukutja-Eagle Bore but the only guidance are signs scrawled on abandoned car bonnets — Ford Falcons. Maybe they were written decades ago, preserved in this dry environment. One sign proclaims 'Ernabella Sports Weekend' with an arrow still pointing, long after the event has come and gone. Maybe it's always been there. Tracks to outstations peal away from the main road on either side and disappear into the scrub. The road winds through a valley ringed with steep-sided red ochre coloured hills pockmarked with clumps of spinifex and granite tors. The Mitchell grass flourishes were rain has recently fallen but it's mostly a tinder dry dull grey colour — a reminder of the harshness of this environment. Then we reach bitumen — a sinuous black strip which seems entirely out of place. Pukutja? But there are no signs. And not a single vehicle in four hours. We cross a treeless plain, the flatness stretching into my imagination. A line of hills hovers in a mirage above the horizon. Mesmerising. A huge flock of galahs rises from the open plain beside the road, settling in some dead trees as we thunder south. The road goes on and still there are no signs. I'm using a dated road map and navigating on instinct each time we reach an intersection — following the path most travelled seems to be the best choice. Abandoned car bodies by the roadside increase in frequency as we pass Indigenous communities I know are there — from the map — but they remain invisible. Abandoned and rusting Ford Falcons still seem to be the car of choice, stripped of anything remotely re-usable/recyclable. There's the occasional abandoned 'Troopie'. We miss the turnoff to Umuwa and make a 20 km detour before our instincts kick in — we've travelled about 300 km so we must be close. We turn around in the slippery red mud, the road waterlogged following a recent thunderstorm — and then we see 'Umuwa' scrawled in white paint across an old tractor tyre, half-buried in the sand by the side of the road, facing away from the direction we had just travelled.

We are here because the APY communities and their media have arguably played as important a role in shaping remote Indigenous communication as Yuendumu. Nearby Pukutja (formerly known as Ernabella) experimented with pirate community television in the late 1970s-early 1980s at the same time as Yuendumu, but received far less attention (Rennie and Featherstone, 2009). Community media production and technologies have advanced significantly since those pioneering early days but many people still call their local community television channel 'EVTV'. We are visiting at a sensitive moment — the announcement of a National Indigenous Television service is imminent but how it will impact on local communities remains unknown. It is our last planned remote community visit in an audience study that has seen us cross-cross the continent several times and drive upwards of 5000 km.

And like all of the other festivals we have attended, the APY Annual event is an ideal opportunity to speak to listeners and viewers — the audience. Some have gathered here from remote communities as far as 500 km away. It crosses my mind that my very first field trip to the Torres Strait, 18 years ago almost to the day, was to a festival. And for the very same reason. We spend three days talking to whoever is willing to speak to us, mediated through our local research assistant — someone who everyone knows and trusts. Most of the remote community people are too shy to give us more than a sentence or two but we are getting a very strong message about the importance of local television here. We are standing by the roadside as a long line of four-wheel drive vehicles files into a makeshift carpark when a lively middle-aged Anangu woman winds down the window and hails us from the passenger's seat: ‘Are you those fellas who doing this research about our media? I've got something to say to you!’

As we walk apprehensively towards her, all of the criticism of insensitive researchers visiting Indigenous communities come flooding back to me and I wonder if I am in for a dressing-down. She asks her driver to switch off the engine and introduces herself as a Pitjantjatjara woman, Mandatjara Isobel Wilson:

'I heard that national people from national capitals, they want to take away that culture from the land. EVTV, that's for the Pitjantjatjara people in the lands and we don't want to lose this one. This is our culture and we are teaching our children and we know that they've got a different culture. Northern Territory got a different culture. In New South Wales they've got a different culture. Here, in the Pitjantjatjara lands, we got a lot of children here. We are teaching our children. That's why we fight for land rights and we've been given that land rights back because we've been teaching the children to dance, to sing and keep our culture going. We don't want to give our culture to someone else to run this one. This is the Pitjantjatjara lands and Pitjantjatjara people are holding their own culture here. We want this one to keep going. We don't want to lose it. I'm talking strongly because this is the land and this is the culture of the Pitjantjatjara people. We started EVTV long time ago, really long time ago… This is our TV, this is our children's and we don't want people to run this one. Pitjantjatjara school and Yankunytjatjara schoolchildren they go to the college in Adelaide and they're learning about a different, different, different TV. And they're looking at what's happening to whitefellas on the other side of the world in that TV. That's no good for them children, that's really no good, you know. We want to have our children to learn from our culture and I'm supporting this one for children not for old people, that's for young people. And when we die, the young people know that; they can feel it; they can say, 'Oh my grandmother, Oh my father, he bin run this one. I can do that too!' We are showing the children that. Thank you very much, that's all I'm going to say to you.'

Her impassioned statement seems to sum up the policy failures being devised in Canberra at that very moment — a policy decision that will see ICTV displaced by the new National Indigenous Television, NITV, in 12 months' time (Gosford, 2007).

The brief meeting with Mandjatjara on the edge of the Great Victoria Desert was another defining moment in my research experience because her words echoed similar pleas from First Nations people around the world. The frustration in trying to facilitate change is expressed by all who work out in the communities. Just when one set of bureaucrats is educated and trained-up so they understand the issues involved and the context, they move on to other jobs — and a new person steps in, meaning that the process starts up all over again. The speed of personnel change in Canberra is described by some as like a spinning door, it happens so quickly (Featherstone, 2021). It is one reason why community voices are muted and policy change is infinitesimally slow. A senior government bureaucrat — who has spent many years at the highest levels in the Department of the Prime Minister — admitted that policymaking was more like Russian Roulette than a predictable process. She said that for significant policy change to occur, the 'stars would have to align'. Practically, it means that Indigenous media organisations must always be ready to present submissions or to make application for specialist project funds at the drop of a hat — when bureaucrats decide that the time is right: they set the agenda. It is a savage indictment on the processes of government but particularly cruel and insulting when it is extended to a sector of Australian society that struggles for its very existence.

The audience study of the Indigenous media sector was completed in 2007 and confirmed the central role being played by Indigenous radio and television across Australia, where they have been successfully incorporated into community social organisation. Where media are strongly linked to the local, audiences report that their media offer an essential service and play a central organising role in community life; they help to maintain social networks; play a strong educative role, particularly for young people; offer an alternative source of news and information; help to break down stereotypes and create opportunities for cross-cultural dialogue; and offer a crucial media for specialist music and dance (Meadows et al 2007). The evidence for these findings is compelling.