Tilmouth Tracker - Tracker: stories of Tracker Tilmouth

TRACKER

ALSO BY ALEXIS WRIGHT

PLAINS OF PROMISE

TAKE POWER (AS EDITOR)

GROG WAR

CROIRE EN LINCROYABLE

LE PACTE DU SERPENT ARC-EN-CIEL

CARPENTARIA

THE SWAN BOOK

ALEXIS WRIGHT

Tracker

STORIES OF TRACKER TILMOUTH

FIRST PUBLISHED IN 2017

FROM THE WRITING & SOCIETY RESEARCH CENTRE

AT THE UNIVERSITY OF WESTERN SYDNEY

BY THE GIRAMONDO PUBLISHING COMPANY

PO BOX 752

ARTARMON NSW 1570 AUSTRALIA

WWW.GIRAMONDOPUBLISHING.COM

ALEXIS WRIGHT 2017

DESIGNED BY HARRY WILLIAMSON

TYPESET BY ANDREW DAVIES

IN 11/15 PT GARAMOND 3

PRINTED AND BOUND BY LIGARE BOOK PRINTERS

DISTRIBUTED IN AUSTRALIA BY NEWSOUTH BOOKS

A CATALOGUE RECORD FOR THIS

BOOK IS AVAILABLE FROM THE

NATIONAL LIBRARY OF AUSTRALIA

ISBN: 978-1-925336-33-7 (PBK)

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

NO PART OF THIS PUBLICATION MAY BE REPRODUCED, STORED IN A RETRIEVAL SYSTEM OR TRANSMITTED IN ANY FORM OR BY ANY MEANS ELECTRONIC, MECHANICAL , PHOTOCOPYING OR OTHERWISE WITHOUT THE PRIOR PERMISSION OF THE PUBLISHER .

9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

FOR THE TILMOUTH FAMILY

CONTENTS

LIST OF ACRONYMS

ABA Aboriginals Benefit Account

ACF Australian Conservation Foundation

ACTU Australian Council of Trade Unions

ADC Aboriginal Development Commission

ALP Australian Labor Party

AMSANT Aboriginal Medical Services Alliance Northern Territory

APG Aboriginal Provisional Government

ATSIC Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission

CAAMA Central Australia Aboriginal Media Association

CAAPA Central Australian Aboriginal Pastoralist Association

CAAPU Central Australia Aboriginal Pastoral Unit

CAEPR Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research

CANCA Combined Aboriginal Nations of Central Australia

CAO Combined Aboriginal Organisations of Central Australia

CDEP Community Development Employment Program

CFMEU Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union

CLC Central Land Council

CLP Country Liberal Party

CRA Conzinc Riotinto of Australia Limited (now Rio Tinto)

DAA Department of Aboriginal Affairs

EBA Enterprise Bargaining Agreement

ERA Energy Resources of Australia Ltd

GMAAAC Granites Mine Affected Areas Aboriginal Corporation

IAD Institute for Aboriginal Development

IBA Indigenous Business Australia

ILC Indigenous Land Corporation

ILUA Indigenous Land Use Agreement

IPA Indigenous Protected Area

JCALM Joint Council on Aboriginal Land and Mining

KLC Kimberley Land Council

NAIDOC National Aboriginal and Islander Day Observance Committee

NAILSMA North Australian Indigenous Land and Sea Management Alliance

NARU North Australia Research Unit

NITV National Indigenous Television

NLC Northern Land Council

NTER Northern Territory National Emergency Response (the Intervention)

PUP Palmer United Party

SIHIP Strategic Indigenous Housing and Infrastructure Program

TO Traditional owner

Introduction

Alexis Wright

How do you tell an impossible story, one that is almost too big to contain in a single book? A hunter of words might pace around the countryside in an endless quest like Nabokov with his butterfly net to get closer to the real thing, but writers of stories know that some distances are too great and might never be crossed, and will remain a mystery if the rare thing does not want to be caught, does not want to give up all of its secrets.

In all honesty, an Aboriginal writer would admit to being hard-pressed to understand all the nuances and depths of differences, or what is really in the heart of another countrymans or countrywomans song, the deep inner spirit of their traditional country, and its full significance in our world. You cannot. Too much has happened. Too much about this country is never resolved, and this is also what has shaped us. And we learn to guard what we know too much.

The big question for us now is what our era represents. What kind of people are we? We are becoming more complicated. Were we ever more individualistic in spirit than we are today, even though we remain strongly connected traditionally, culturally, socially, economically, or by colour, identity, race politics, or by any of the characteristics observed when others look at us, and on our behalf, either to separate us, or to define us as one people? This is a country where you always hear that Aboriginal people are like this, or like that but were we ever one homogenous mass, with exactly the same thoughts, the same ideas, goals, ambitions? What are the border lines? Where are the transgression points precisely?

Only the holders of these inner truths will know what is truly on their minds. This is why it will always be difficult to capture, with any great deal of confidence, the full human complexities of the contemporary Aboriginal world our hearth, and our heart, of where we are at in our contentious time where the survival of our culture continues to be challenged, and we deal with each and every challenge.

In 2015, on the sad occasion of Tracker Tilmouths memorial in Alice Springs, he was described by his good friend, the Central Australian Aboriginal economist Owen Cole, as the champion of the have-nots. Tracker would not have called himself a saint, nor would he have believed that he was Gods gift to humankind, but he was regarded as one of the most influential and selfless Aboriginal visionaries of his time. He was an Eastern Arrernte man who was born in 1954. He was the sixth child in a family of eight children who were removed from their father Roy Tilmouth and family in Alice Springs after their mother, Betty, died in the late 1950s. Tracker was about four years of age. His five older brothers and sister the Nayda children of his mothers first marriage, whom the authorities deemed were lighter skinned were sent south, and into institutional care for so-called half-caste Aboriginal children in Adelaide.

The dark ones Tracker and his two younger brothers, William aged three and Patrick who was a baby were sent north, to Croker Island, a thousand kilometres away from Central Australia. The official reason for creating so much distance was so the families of the children would never have any influence over their upbringing. Tracker and his two younger brothers would spend the next decade growing up on Croker Island, and did not know that our older brothers and sister existed. They were adults when they were eventually reunited with their siblings on the Nayda side of the family. This system, where government authorities had enormous power to remove Aboriginal children from their families and to place them in missions, state-run reserves or foster care, was part of the unsuccessful policy of assimilation that had operated across Australia for many decades.

Whatever happened to Tracker in life, he never saw himself as anyones victim, nor would he allow anyone to treat him as a victim. He became a force to be reckoned with. Everything about him was epical. His mind was shaped through the influence of books, observation, and dreaming of what lay beyond his stolen-generation childhood on the Croker Island Mission. When he was a young man living back in Central Australia, his mind was shaped by powerful Aboriginal men and women of his fathers generation, such as Bess Liddle and the late Arthur and Milton Liddle, and through the deep cultural knowledge and influence of senior law men, the feared red ochre men of the Western Desert traditional domain who joked and laughed with Tracker as he drove with them around their country.