This book is a compendium of 'Musical Dispatches from the Front'. These dispatches cover a wide range of subjects and riff on the irreconcilable contradictions between the Warlpiri world view and the government agencies that attempt to manage its manifestations.
Just as in the 2023 referendum, a majority of Australian voters were persuaded that to give Aborigines the opportunity to have a say in matters that affected them was a bad idea, so too in 2007 Australian society was convinced "something had to be done" about alleged dysfunction and depravity in Northern Territory Aboriginal communities. In both instances these beliefs and preconceptions were exacerbated by politically motivated campaigns of lies and propaganda.
In 2007 the Australian Federal Government set in motion the Northern Territory Emergency Response, the so-called Intervention. Starting with a military incursion into Mutitjulu, the Aboriginal community at the base of Uluru (Ayers Rock), the Intervention was quickly rolled out to 73 'Prescribed' communities. No Alcohol No Pornography signs festooned the countryside, army tents sprung up to carry out compulsory medical checks on Aboriginal children and NT Aborigines were subjected to 500 pages of stigmatizing legislation.
The Intervention was the latest manifestation of the colonial imperative to conquer Aboriginal Australia. Yuendumu is at the front-line of this invasion.
My refusal to remain silent in view of this police backed cultural ethnocidal onslaught prompted me to launch the Musical Dispatches from the Front into cyberspace.
The dispatches chronicle the often farcical and mean-spirited bureaucratic barrage of the Intervention and its aftermath.
Assimilation is ongoing, and so are the Musical Dispatches.
Frank Baarda, Yuendumu, 2025.
Frank Baarda was born in 1943 in Holland. He spent his primaryschool years in Argentina. When he was twelve years old his familyreturned to the Netherlands and after two years emigrated to Australia.He spent most of his teenage years in Moe, Victoria. He met his wife atthe University of Melbourne where he studied geology. He worked as afield geologist in Australia during the 1960s nickel boom, then inCanada and the Canadian Arctic as a well-site geologist. They returnedto Australia by road to Panama and then by ship across the Pacific. In1973, after two years in Darwin, Frank and his family arrived at theirpredestined Yuendumu.The cultural, geographic and linguistically diverse background toFrank's life has given him a distinctive perspective on and appreciationof Yuendumu and its people.
