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in the limited sense of conveying the wishes of the Mob, partly
because of their command of English, but also because of the trust
*
placed in themɪ.
4
, At Noonkanbah a young Aborigine with a command of English, but
without tribal status, was appointed by the tribal elders to convey
the community’s wishes to the Amax Mining Company, to governmental and
other authorities. He could not speak for himself, nor can the
Principals. Their assigned role, in specific circumstances is to
communicate on behalf of the people what the people themselves have
decided.
The people maintain the values of their vision of their ’world’
of autonomy as a group, their right to self-determination. White
people’s law does not meet their needs. Self-appointed white people
cannot speak for them. Nor can their spokesmen be Aboriginal people
who are western-oriented, their background a different ’world* which
does not share the same meaning systems as that of the tribal
people.
,Bush' meetings were set up in the seventies by government agencies
in an attempt to de-bureaucratize decision making processes and involve
Aboriginal people in decision-making. They are not seen as appropriate
by Aboriginal people because of the constitution of such meetings
which do not observe correct authority structures, and because of
the method of making decisions and communicating decisions. These
meetings are not seen as effectively conveying the wishes of the people.
They are for this reason disregarded by those responsible for
communicating decisions.
Politically, the leadership of the group remains within the group.
At the same time, the Mob is politicised in the narrower sense of
interaction with party politics.
ɪhe white teachers also have a distinction, not granted to the marta
marta; they have a place in the kinship groupings. However, the white
teachers reject the notion that they are ’spokesmen’ in any sense. They
have no right to add or subtract from their message or modify it in any
way that is based on their own interpretation of the situation.