This link to the Central Land Council site will show you the broadsheets that are now on display in the Council office here. Please read it. There was a big meeting here yesterday called by the CLC so now everyone knows the reality that is about to get much worse. The most positive thing about the intervention is the degree of politicising and unity that is beginning. There is now a National Aboriginal Association which will go some way to filling the gap caused by the abolition of ATSIC.
We went for another picnic yesterday evening, have been every day since Tuesday and plan to camp tonight. It's lovely, we take food as well as digging sticks and if we don't find any maku (witchetty grubs) or rumiya (goanna), we fill our bellies and sit by the fire and come home pleasantly tired and relaxed at sunset. Natasha who is staying with me wanted to go to her mum's outstation afterwards so we piled a few young people into the troopy and found her family sitting outside and her dad with a guitar in the balmy warm night. We talked for a while about how truly awful these new laws are. I slept badly all night because I feel so bad to be leaving and so powerless to do anything much while I am away - not that I would do much here except keep the women centre going. I just have to hope that the woman who will take my place is competent and humane. And that I can do some activist work from a distance and keep in touch with people here - and return some day.
On Sunday I went mountain-climbing in a frivolous display of insanity - it was 35 degrees, hot even for out here at this time of year. But the company was great, people who work with CSIRO at Desert Knowledge. We talked about the prospects of working to create a camel-meat mustering business out here to harvest some income from all the feral animals (like this beautiful stallion protecting a herd of hundreds). 
It was heartening to be reminded that there are still good people working to make good things happen. And while there is nothing in the new laws about job creation, the work for the dole schemes may help to inspire and train people to get to work. Linda was talking last night about how when she was young there were huge gardens and orchards at Papunya - and they weren't run by the govt. 
I leave you with this image of a daisy growing on the mountain despite no rain for months.
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