The local indigenous - a Westerner's perception

I had written down a bunch of my thoughts on things earlier in a notebook and didn't really write it well enough. So I will try to get it down a bit better now.

People have various reasons for working remote. Mostly it's money driven. I'm not going to lie; the money helps, but I won't say it's the most important thing.

That title belongs to the people I surround myself with on the job.

Be it workers, locals or blow-ins of various sorts, my job is not money driven, nor is it even having an interest to build things. It's working with people, and doing something to give benefit for others. Call it cliched, call it whatever, but it is honestly true.

So, the real reason for me to be in an area such as Wadeye is to see how indigenous people live and to involve myself as much possible. Meeting Gerald in the office was a great start. What a nice bloke! When he realised I had an interest in learning the language or even just to speak with him, as an outsider, he took the time to teach me how to say 'good morning'. It was interesting to learn it phonetically; certainly not a way I had ever learnt languages at school. But I finally got my head around it the following day, just in time to go out into the community to actually interact with the local indigenous families.

After going out into the communities the other day and seeing what work needed to be done, I discovered a few things that I had not previously thought or known. I realised the various members of the community are very humble, very proud and perhaps even quite shy. Overall, they were also quite nice, which is not to say that I thought they wouldn't be, but I guess as a blonde haired female Westerner, I was a bit apprehensive of what they would think of me.

They are very intelligent in their own way, their own culture. It actually made me wonder, why force Western ways upon them if they have a system that had worked for so long prior to Westerners? I guess that then depends on individual thoughts in the community, what they prefer, because putting it bluntly, that would mean no footy, and indigenous communities Australia wide loooooooove their footy.

All I know is that when I made an effort to speak a little to them in their houses, saying 'good morning' in the one word of Murrinh-Patha I knew, waving to the kids and pulling faces at them and making them smile, talking to the women in the house saying they are lucky to have many cooks because it was only myself and Dale at home, to see them smile and share a joke, to have the patriarch break from a stern look (given typically men and women wouldn't normally interract with one another like Westerners do anyway) into a smile when I said 'good morning' in his own language, to hear another patriarch have a joke that the women always force food down his throat after I said it smelt fantastic (because I was getting hungry by that stage), and having a chat with one of the younger men in the house about playing football for the local community, that's the sort of thing I get out of this job.

I disagreed with a lot of things I saw, but I know that they would think the same thing of things we as a Western society do as well.

So long as I continue to interact as best as possible with the local indigenous, and learn as much as possible, that is when I will feel that I have got something out of working in Wadeye.