Dog Ear Café: How the Mt Theo Program beat the curse of petrol sniffing.

This week Alice Online will publish short excerpts from Dog Ear Cafe by Andrew Stojanovksi, which is to have its Central Australian launch at Witchetty’s  in the Araluen Art Centre on 5th August at 3pm. You can get the book there and then,  or at Dymocks bookstore. All Andrew’s author royalties go to the Mt Theo Program at Yuenndumu.  Andrew described the book as  ”the story of a collective of people, the whole community of Yuendumu.”

“So the stories are collectively owned,” he says. “I’m just the conduit for the story.”

This short introduction was written by Maggie Brady, author of Heavy Metal , the only anthropological study of  petrol sniffing.

This is a personal memoir with a difference. The author, Andrew Stojanovski, was in a unique position to write this book because he was a protagonist in – and largely the sustainer of – the Mt Theo petrol sniffing program of which he writes. He tells the story of what has become a well-known ‘outstation’ based program, which succeeded in curbing the practice of petrol sniffing among young Aboriginal people at the Central Australian community of Yuendumu. There are some profound insights here that demonstrate how a frontline worker can actually make a difference to petrol sniffing – which has to be one of Australia’s most intractable and challenging drug issues.

The Mt Theo program is quite a triumph, but the program met with many trials and tribulations along the way. His description of these tribulations is full of humour and is disarmingly honest (qualities that clearly must have helped him to thrive and survive as a bush youth worker). But the book is also a narrative telling of the author’s personal journey, how he found his way to Yuendumu in the first place, and his internal (at times almost spiritual) struggles to fulfil responsibilities both to his Aboriginal friends and kin as well as to his partner and later his family.

The author manages to thread another theme through this account. As someone who studied anthropology and who also had first-hand experience with government bureaucracies, Stojanovski is in a position to provide interesting interpretations of the social worlds of Yuendumu and of the departmental staffers who either impede or assist the program. He does this in a remarkably unpretentious way by using real incidents or conversations to explicate complex traditions of kinship and avoidance and of joking and flirting relationships. He writes of his role as having ‘diplomatic immunity’ from kinship obligations, and illustrates how important such neutrality can be. These concepts and examples of the social norms and expectations of daily life are at the very core of an anthropological world view, but instead of weighing the reader down with academic theory, he brings this ‘anthropology’ to life. It becomes real.

There is also solid policy advice in these pages for those who care to read between the lines. Personal relationships are paramount, both on the ground, and between the grassroots and the bureaucracy. Valuable programs can be threatened by petty officials. Stojanovski describes many incidents, developments and improvised solutions to problems that seem to run counter to accepted ideological or bureaucratic wisdom. For example he questions the widespread assumption that petrol sniffers are ‘addicted’, when he knows from experience that kids who sniff in one place will refrain from doing so at another place where sniffing is not the ‘done thing’.

He shows how offering and sharing tobacco is a way of building rapport and managing crises. His accounts of how he dealt calmly with threatening behaviour from time to time are masterful pieces of advice on defusing aggression and avoiding violence.

I found this a compelling read. As the author states in the introduction, by writing it he is fulfilling a cultural responsibility to pass on his knowledge, and there will be many who want to learn from the experiences documented here. Many ordinary Australians, as well as those more directly involved with Indigenous policy or service provision, have heard about Mt Theo despite its isolation and size. I believe the book will find an audience among both groups, as well as it being of great interest to those involved in youth work, juvenile justice and drug and alcohol prevention. Stojanovski’s account will also make an excellent primer for new frontline workers and for young anthropologists entering the field.