Working with Martu
WORKING PARTNERSHIP
On behalf of Martu, JYAC holds native title rights and interests, including the right to exclusive use, occupation, and possession of 136,000 square kilometres of land across the Central Western Desert. Today, approximately 2500 Martu live in and around their determination area within the established communities at Jigalong, Punmu, Parnngurr (Cotton Creek) and Kunawarritji (Well 33).
The Fulcrum Agency has worked with JYAC on many projects over several years. We are incredibly proud of the longevity of this relationship, which has allowed us to develop a rich understanding of the cultural qualities, natural environment, and built infrastructure unique to Martu ngurra. We work alongside community leaders, providing technical advice in exchange for cultural knowledge. These projects offer a snapshot of this work.
TFA and JYAC staff and community members have built up strong working relationships over several years, working across the breadth of Martu ngurra.
Housing for Culture
Community led discussions with Martu around how housing can suit cultural needs and work better for families. The house ‘tiles’ are part of an engagement process developed by The Fulcrum Agency to test housing layouts, and understand how people actually live in their homes.
Martu Community Co-Design Project Martu, WA
Having languished in poor and increasingly overheated housing, the Martu of the Western Desert, led by JYAC, developed a targeted approach to addressing community challenges, including designing a new vision for their townships, focused on the intersection between housing and community infrastructure.
The project took several years and involved a holistic review of three communities. The communities steered this work and stamped it with the spirit of ngurra (Country). Martu were clear that any new housing needed to address past mistakes, not simply focus on materials, orientation or speed, and respond to requirements around culture, family and community.
The housing process can be led by tenants or family members, and be recorded through interviews and final tile arrangements to input into housing designs.
The Martu Community Co-Design process determined a realistic plan to accommodate future growth and new sustainable, culturally appropriate housing. Most importantly, it placed Martu people at the centre of all design and decision-making and provided an exchange of knowledge between the technical experts and the community.
“The co-design process allowed the community to lead. When we have the opportunity for ownership, we take it by the hand and nurture it. We need to get communities to a state where they are liveable and where they can grow.”
Terrance Jack, Martu community leader
Ngurra Palyamaniny Fixing Houses for Better Health
Homes in the Martu communities of Punmu, Kunawarritji and Parnngurr were barely habitable, crowded and hot. The communities had not received housing maintenance and repairs funding for many years.
As the Martu trustee corporation for Martu native title rights, JYAC received a grant through the WA Government’s Social Housing Economic Recovery Package (SHERP) that would enable the urgent repair of properties across the three Martu communities.
TFA acted as Project Manager, developing the grant application, the scope of work documentation, coordinating the repair and maintenance team, managing budgets, ensuring work was completed on schedule and to standard, creating clear social media posts to notify community members of project timelines, and eventually, acquitting the grant.
Community participation, employment, training, and environmental health knowledge were critical. These projects work most effectively in an engaged community where local people understand and support the intent.
Any required fix work is carried out immediately by local teams. Specialist trades follow the next day.
RIGOROUS METHODOLOGY
The Survey Fix model tests 300 items within a house to ensure they are functioning.
SURVEY WITHOUT FIX
NO
LOCAL DELIVERY AND TRAINING
Ngurra Palyamaniny is a program co-led by JYAC and The Fulcrum Agency working with Healthabitat’s “Fixing Houses for Better Health - Survey Fix” model. Local Survey Fix team in Parrnngurr, 2023
CONNECTED IN COMMUNITY
Martuku Jijiku Maya
Martu Boarding School, Newman
The West Australian Government funded a new boarding school for Martu secondary students in Newman. Jamukurnu Yapalikurnu Aboriginal Corporation (JYAC) owns the facility and was gifted the three properties by BHP.
Martuku Jijiku Maya allows young Martu people to access a broad education whilst remaining close to their families. Students will be educated in Martu lore and the modern Australian curriculum – allowing them to walk successfully in both worlds.
TFA developed a great concept by Broome-based practice, Engawa, consisting of a shared house for social activities and two separate houses for boys and girls.
The facility design is domestic in scale and feeling, using colour to distinguish between the buildings. There are also plans for a native bushtucker garden, a basketball court, and a shaded recreational area.
A
Emergency Isolation Accommodation
TFA oversaw the installation of 10 temporary accommodation units (ex-mine site ‘dongas’) across 6 Martu communities - Strelley, Warralong, Kiwirrukrra, Kunawarritji, Parnngurr and Punmu.
These units allowed the communities to better respond to COVID-19, providing a safe place for people to isolate and reducing the impact of increased housing occupation due to people returning to Country from other settlements.
TFA worked with a range of agencies - including the Department of Planning, Lands and Heritage, the Department of Biodiversity, Conservation and Attractions, the Shire of East Pilbara, and the Department of Communities - to develop an approval and compliance framework for the units.
We consulted closely with community members and organisations to maximise the economic opportunity for refurbishment, installation and repairs for the units, along with identifying future uses to support community activity post-pandemic.
A SAFE PLACE TO STAY
number of donated ‘donga’ units were installed across Martu ngurra.
Three houses have been re-purposed to form a connected, safe and welcoming place for Martu youth attending Newman High School.
Hot Mess
In 2022 I attended my first Garma Festival. It was equal parts electric and emotional. To be under the shade of a large tin roof, in view of the Gulf of Carpenteria, whilst our newly appointed PM outlined the referendum questions that would enshrine the Voice in our Constitution. I recall the sense of connection, optimism and hope.
At Garma, I even got to ask a question on Q&A. For my family, it was my career highlight, but in truth, it wasn’t the question I had hoped to ask. I submitted two questions but the more pressing one wasn’t selected by the show’s producers. The rising crescendo of the Voice debate smothered everything, and missing from Garma’s forums and the Q&A panel was any discussion of the impact of rising temperatures on culture and community and the viability of inhabiting Country across Australia.
After failing to get traction in my one shot on national television, I have been testing my concerns in smaller forums. I returned from Garma and spoke with John Singer, Executive Director at Nganampa Health Service on the APY Lands. John described how cultural practice is changing to deal with the increasing heat; ceremonies and activities are either taking place in the evening, reduced in length, or not being done at all.
“Retreat, hell! We’re not retreating, we’re just advancing in a different direction…”
If the science holds and the situation worsens, what is the future of cultural practice on a Country that is being irreversibly changed as a result of the warming planet? John noted (with irony) the Government’s acknowledgement of the impact of the climate crisis on our Pacific Island neighbours, without recognising the crisis that’s occurring in our own country - displacement, forced migration, loss of culture, community and the ability to care for Country. He questioned whether the Government would acknowledge that ‘climate refugees’ exist here in Australia right now.
The standard definition of the term ‘refugees’ refers to people fleeing across national borders. People displaced inside a nation are generally not considered refugees under international law. If we think of Australia as made up of numerous First Nation-states, then the movement of people across First Nations borders aligns more closely with the UNHCR definition of a refugee. That is, “persons displaced in the context of disasters and climate change.” We must acknowledge the multitude of nations that make up the continent we now call Australia and the real and challenging impact of movement across these nation-state lines for Indigenous people.
Human comfort is the result of the right mix of factors, in particular the balance between temperature and humidity. A critical measurement is known as the ‘wet bulb temperature’ (shown in degrees Tw) and indicates the temperature of a thermometer after a wet cloth has passed its surface. With higher levels of humidity, less evaporation occurs to cool the surface. Humans rely on sweating to cool their bodies and wet bulb temperatures of 31.5Tw have been described as the upper limits of human survivability.
Several places around the world have recently recorded wet bulb temperatures of above 31.5Tw and this includes sites in Western Australia and the Northern Territory. So far, these temperatures are unprecedented (and brief in occurrence), but most climate experts predict that wet bulb temperatures above 31.5 will occur in more locations and for longer periods as vulnerable regions are increasingly affected by the climate crisis.
It is bitterly unfair that the impact of the climate crisis is felt most by poor and vulnerable populations. Think of the people without insurance in Lismore or farmers in Pakistan flooded by unprecedented monsoonal rains. Our neighbours in the Pacific Islands are experiencing ongoing inundation and coastal erosion while rural populations in Europe have been ravaged by wildfire. Those with the least are hit the hardest, and this, of course, includes many First Nations communities around the world.
Migration due to the climate crisis is happening across all populations, with many people in wealthier communities around the world participating in what’s known as a ‘managed retreat’. In Australia, the search for better climates is often part of a midlife tree or sea-change, made easier by digital connectivity, improved regional infrastructure, and the accumulation of wealth as a result of generous tax incentives focused on housing.
Our government is acutely aware that most voters view housing supply as a wealth-creating asset, not as a human right or societal responsibility. This is especially relevant to First Nations communities, where people have been dispossessed of land, ‘resettled’ into reserves, pushed off Country and had their traditional lands acquired, denying them inter-generational wealth accumulation through land ownership afforded to the settler state.
There is also vast inequity between Australia’s urban towns and cities and our regional and remote communities. Access to clean drinking water, reliable power, adequate telecommunications, safe roads, and appropriate waste removal varies significantly depending on where you live. The divide between remote communities and mainstream Australia is stark and well-documented.
And let us also consider the inequity of mobility. The movement of people for seasonal, cultural, or social reasons, has always been problematic for governments who like to be able to ‘see’ their subjects at a known fixed address. It is interesting to contrast this problematising of mobility in Indigenous populations by the State, with the subsidisation of mobility in wealthier cohorts, such as holiday house owners through taxation systems and infrastructure investment.
So how can we address this lack of equity? And, perhaps more importantly, is there even the desire to do so?
The sixth Assessment Report by the IPCC suggests that we only have a very small window to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions, and even then, substantial global warming is inevitable. For people already living on the edges of climate survivability, this has dire consequences, and it is not something we have started to meaningfully address.
For many First Nations communities, the impact of rising temperatures does not need to hit the extremes to make a real difference to an already over-stressed health system and individual vulnerabilities. Community infrastructure has been neglected for decades – power outages or disconnections are commonplace, air-conditioning often doesn’t work, insulation is lacking, and buildings offer no shade or thermal control – all amplified by the negative effects of crowding.
In Indigenous Affairs, reform has been a word rolled out across successive governments, Ministers, and bureaucrats. Despite their zeal, genuine action and meaningful change have been glacial in pace. And thus, communities have become adept in the art of waiting. A large part of this waiting can be seen in the ‘testimony’ of housing adaptations. Building ‘hacks’ are commonplace, including the removal of louvres to install cheap wall air-conditioners, the use of tarpaulins, aluminium foil and shade cloth to protect inhabitants from climatic or privacy pressures, or the re-alignment of living/sleeping spaces.
Governments have paid little heed to this testimony. While tenant involvement in Indigenous housing design is often recommended, it seldom takes place in practice. Demand for housing continues to outstrip supply, and in rental situations, it can be difficult for tenants to have a say about the design features that would improve everyday life. Each hack holds clues that would help architects, planners, builders, and policymakers to deliver housing and refurbishments in harmony with tenant needs.
Instead, Indigenous tenants occupy the space between ‘take what you can get’ and ‘no money for appropriate designs.’
Hot Mess
Despite research and community advocates who repeatedly recommend Indigenous-led housing design processes, Indigenous tenants in social housing are usually represented by organisational brokers, and if consulted directly, will be asked questions about their likely household composition/demographic profiles. These ‘briefing sessions’ reduce people’s agency to a function of bedroom and bathroom allocations. Tenancy Agreements forbid tenants from making any structural changes to their housing and design responses fail to address basic needs.
I was trained in the value of passive design – responding to a site’s climate by seeking opportunities for natural ventilation, effective shading to shield summer sun and welcome winter rays and orientation that assists all the above. Air-conditioning was seen as a design failure, an inability to design sensitively to your context, to ‘touch the earth lightly’. One could think of this approach as a kind of ‘thermal moralism’ – design judgments that believe natural systems are inherently better than mechanical (or man-made) ones. Design responses that took advantage of the site’s natural attributes, buildings that ‘breathe’, ensuring its occupants were in harmony with nature were celebrated as exemplars of the architectural discipline – positioning itself against the mindless housing of the mass market, which was closed and shockingly reliant on air-conditioning to maintain thermal comfort.
What is our design response when the temperature outside becomes lethal? Are we positioned as a profession to care about challenges such as cyclical maintenance, crowding and mobility, dust and corrosion that have left so many architect-designed ‘remote houses’ derelict without the ongoing maintenance support that is needed? Architects have ‘declared’ it’s a crisis, but in what ways are we acting?
And what then about the impending challenge of ‘managing the retreat’ of communities away from Country due to human-induced climate warming. Are we ready for the moral, ethical and logistical requirements to move people off Country, far away from their homelands? Again. Are our regional and peri-urban centres ready for this forced migration; places already feeling the squeeze of the housing crisis and impact of tree/sea changers? And how will we, as a nation, grapple with the shame of forced migration due to climate warming - an ideology of neglect - not only of the planet, but of the First Peoples who are disproportionately affected by it? Can governments and agencies adapt quickly enough to support seasonal or continuous mobility without penalty to tenants?
As always, there are pockets of hope. Places where communities are taking control, driving towards their own localised vision of community infrastructure, appropriate housing, responsive and culturally safe policy. There are innumerable advocates pushing for change –from Tangentyere Council delivering cogent arguments against government energy policy, or rental calculations, to practical demonstrations like Norman Frank Jupurrurla’s practical activism against energy poverty and for improving housing standards.
We need a massive investment in housing upgrades to make them thermally effective, to install air-conditioning, to change the system of power supply in community, and support ongoing planned and cyclical maintenance. We need new housing to be built in a way that is mindful of the impending future, to have climate boundaries drawn on maps not by policy makers seeking to simplify the lives of building certifiers, but in an accurate response to the changing climate. We need better tenancy
policy to enable mobility and supporting people to move between regional centres and homelands. We must ignore the likely comments in news sites calling out the perceived unfairness of Indigenous peoples ‘being given two houses’. This is an issue of equity, justice and the re-distribution of wealth.
This is complex, messy and challenging terrain. We must be open to this conversation, not harden after the failed referendum, but be promoters of greater community control, for a handing back of land and assets. This shouldn’t be done by retuning places devoid of liveability, the creation of a new form of Terra Nullius – a land nobody can survive in. John Singer and the countless others calling for a response cannot be left waiting any longer. For tens of thousands of generations, culture and community have not just co-existed, but thrived across this continent, nourishing through intimate connection to Country, ceremony and law. We are facing the very real possibility that this could be lost within the next two. In 2017 the Uluru Statement called for Australians to walk together. By my reckoning, we needed to start running years ago.
NOTES ON THIS ESSAY
Oliver Prince Smith (October 26, 1893 – December 25, 1977) was a U.S. Marine four star general and decorated combat veteran of World War II and the Korean War. He is most noted for commanding the 1st Marine Division during the first year of the Korean War, and notably during the Battle of Chosin Reservoir, where he said “Retreat, hell! We’re not retreating, we’re just advancing in a different direction.” He retired at the rank of four-star general, being advanced in rank for having been specially commended for heroism in combat.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_P._Smith
https://www.unhcr.org/en-au/climate-change-and-disasters.html
Wet Bulb Temperature: The Temperature of Evaporation
The wet bulb temperature Tw (or tw) or isobaric wet bulb temperature, is the temperature an air parcel would have if adiabatically cooled to saturation at constant pressure by evaporation of water into it, all latent heat being supplied by the parcel.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/engineering/ wet-bulb-temperature#:~:text=2A.&text=The%20wet%20 bulb%20temperature%20T,being%20supplied%20by%20 the%20parcel.
Wet bulb temperature: The crucial weather concept that actually tells us when heat becomes lethal - https://www. salon.com/2021/07/18/wet-bulb-temperature-climatechange/
See: https://theconversation.com/managed-retreat-doneright-can-reinvent-cities-so-theyre-better-for-everyoneand-avoid-harm-from-flooding-heat-and-fires-163052
https://www.shelterwa.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/HousingHealthWealth_Summary_ Oct2020_SUMMARY.pdf
Chris Bowen’s comments as Minister for Climate Change and Energy such as at the Electric Vehicle Summit on 19 Aug 2022: ( https://minister.dcceew.gov.au/bowen/ speeches/address-national-ev-summit )
“As we acknowledge our First Peoples, I’d like to acknowledge two truths: Firstly, that there is no inequality that climate change doesn’t make worse. This includes Indigenous disadvantage, whether it be people in sub-standard remote housing or the people of the Torres Strait dealing with the impacts of climate change on their beautiful island homes that I visited recently. And secondly, First Nations people must be partners in charting the way forward. “
The IPCC finalized the first part of the Sixth Assessment Report, Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis, the Working Group I contribution to the Sixth Assessment Report on 6 August 2021 during the 14th Session of Working Group I and 54th Session of the IPCC.
Hot Mess
Kieran wong Partner
Kieran is a co-founder and partner at The Fulcrum Agency, a BCorp and Social Enterprise practice of architects, project managers and grant writers who support First Nations-led projects across Australia.
Kieran uses his skills as a registered Architect to advance social justice in Australia across housing, infrastructure, and community planning. He invests 50% of company profits back into projects that empower communities.
Kieran has worked with communities from many First Nations including Warnindilyakwa, Martu, Nyoongar, Yawaru, Miriwoong Gajerrong, Kardu Yek Diminin, Warlpiri and Kuku Yalanji and understands the complexities of remote project delivery.
Kieran is the current Chair at Shelter WA, the peak body for housing and homelessness in WA; a Director at Communicare; an Adjunct Senior Research Fellow at Monash University; and Industry Partner for the University of Sydney’s Health Habitat Incubator.
Get in Touch
0412 978 971
Kieran@TheFulcrum.Agency
heather macrae Associate
Heather is an Associate and Registered Architect at The Fulcrum Agency, where she brings considerable experience in community-led projects in remote locations across the NT and WA.
Heather believes in the potential of design to enhance lives and empower communities. She has led a series of award-winning housing and community infrastructure projects on Groote Eylandt in the NT, where she formed close professional relationships with young women and female Elders across the Archipelago.
Heather has also recently completed a major community-led planning project for Martu in the East PIlbara,WA and led an intensive vision and planning process with Kardu Diminin in Wadeye, NT.
Get in Touch
Heather@TheFulcrum.Agency
Fremantle/Sydney
+61 (0)8 6111 0949
info@TheFulcrum.Agency
Fulcrum Agency
The
