Liam Jurrah - A tale of two conflicting cultures

LIAM Jurrah is cause for enormous pride among his people of Yuendumu. Nothing about his recent arrest will change that. It only reinforces that Jurrah’s tribal beliefs remain strong and inviolate.

The Northern Territory has produced many fine footballers. Maurice Rioli and Michael Long, who belong to the Tiwi Islands, just north of Darwin, are the obvious names. And there are many more.
But no central Australian tribal Aborigine from the bush has ever played in the AFL apart from Brisbane’s Daryl White, who was not strictly a bush boy.

Pulling a bush kid to the national game was a breakthrough, not for central Australian Aborigines, who always knew their boys were up to it, but for the AFL.
The AFL always knew that these boys who sometimes played bootless on red-dirt grounds were different. They instinctively knew that tribal matters - which is really just another way of saying “extended family” - ran deep.
It wasn’t just about the homesickness the players felt. It ran deeper. It was about the responsibility and worries an initiated young man such as Jurrah felt about leaving his family unprotected to the jealousies and rivalries of other clans in these small and sometimes vicious towns.   Those jealousies and rivalries are a 60,000-year-old tradition.  

Jurrah's recruitment to Melbourne became the source of great celebration to the people of Yuendumu - whether or not they supported the Melbourne Football Club. Whether or not they were part of Jurrah’s clan.
This community, some 300km north-west of Alice Springs, has been wracked with issues, from governance problems to the petrol sniffing which caused such terrible problems from the 1980s on.
Yuendumu is dirt poor. There is no private land ownership. Many of the citizens live in real hovels. There is no alcohol allowed, but it still gets in. Tension is real. But Liam Jurrah was - and is - proof that this AFL-mad, far-flung community has something to say, something to offer.

Whatever the white court system might say about him, Jurrah’s “tribal voice”, as Yothu Yindi once put it, is more telling than the lights of the MCG.
No matter the outcome of his prosecution, no matter the ugliness of this tribal dispute, there is one thing that Liam Jurrah’s arrest tells us: Aboriginal culture is still alive.
Lawyers have for decades been arguing that Aboriginal law, which is our country’s first law, should receive some recognition on our statutes. All the talk has come to nothing.
Now that we have a true star facing court, for tribal reasons, perhaps we’ll think again what it means to drag a tribal person to a white court.

By Paul Toohey - Herald Sun 9/3/12

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