Day 9 – Monday 12/1

It's week two and Nadia James and I feel like we’re getting into the swing of things. We spent this morning in the CUCRH office where I conducted an interview with Anne Sibosado – a local woman who attended the World Indigenous People’s Conference in Melbourne (December 08). I spent a long time talking to her and got a general feel for what it was like for her and her colleagues at the conference. I will definitely need more information to write an article about it though, and Anne gave me the contact details of Helen Pianta – manager of the Pundulmurra campus of Pilbara tafe and one of the Pilbara women who attended the WIPC. After the interview Nadia and I drove to the campus but Helen was on holidays. I picked up her card and will contact her when I can.

Later this morning Nadia and I visited the rubbish tip, following up a lead from Wayne (community radio) about a crime story Nadia and myself are working on. We spoke to a worker about their experiences living in South Hedland and the general impression we got was that it is a pretty scary place to live. We then headed to the Last Chance Tavern to speak to the manager about the levels of crime in and around the tavern. We discovered that the crime had decreased there due to a crackdown on disrespectful behavior. One of the main ways the management eradicates aggressive behavior is by enforcing life bans on people who violate the rules.

A burnt out car outside the rubbish tip

At around lunchtime we headed over to the Telegraph and asked Mark if he would be interested in us writing a story about Rosi – the netball scholarship recipient. He said he would like us to do the story and with that confirmed Nadia and I visited Rosi and conducted a short interview and took a few photos. Nadia and I decided that we will need one more source for the netball story, preferably a family member of Rosi’s, so we got her Mum’s contact details.

In the afternoon Nadia, James and I went to Wangka Maya Language Centre, accompanied by Trudy (our cultural awareness facilitator). We were shown around the place and taught a bit about the Indigenous Languages in the area. There are about 30 Aboriginal languages spoken in the Pilbara region and about 700 across the whole of Australia. Many of these languages are dying out though and it is the purpose of Wangka Maya to restore these through employing linguists to create written records of these languages.

After Wangka Maya, we went back to CUCRH where Trudy gave us a quiz about Aboriginal culture and I got 19/33, which I was fairly happy with. The purpose of the quiz was to give an idea of what it’s like for Aboriginal people who are expected to know about white man’s culture, having to take citizenship tests etc.

Tonight our housemate Joe took us along to his boxing class, which we thoroughly enjoyed. It was nice to exert my body instead of my brain! Once I got home I transcribed the interviews I did earlier. Today was a long day but highly satisfying – I think we have the right idea getting interviews done early in the week.