A South Australian peak housing organisation is under fire for a pamphlet that advises Aboriginal people how to care for their houses the "whitefella way".
The brochure, which was produced by Shelter SA, contains advice including 'always pay your rent', 'look after your garden', 'put out your rubbish bins' and 'don’t let friends or family drink or argue in the street'.
Pitjantjatjara woman Keima Forbes told SBS she was so outraged by the brochure that she called Shelter SA to complain.
"I told them that pamphlet which you got is racist," she said. "No matter which way you look at it.
"Half the things in there are derogatory, half the things in there are very discriminative, and for you to be putting it out as a 'whitefella way' in itself is very discriminative."
"'If you don’t know how to clean, let us show you?' I said that's wrong, I said these people know exactly what they need to do to maintain a house. [Would they] question if a white person can't clean? I don’t think so."
Reconciliation South Australia co-chair Peter Buckskin agreed, and said the fact that the brochure was run past some Aboriginal people did not excuse its content.
"I just think it's disrespectful," he said. "Aboriginal people want to live as Aboriginal people; they don’t want to live as white people."
"Half the things in there are derogatory, half the things in there are very discriminative"
The Chief Executive of the Aboriginal Legal rights Movement, Cheryl Axelby, said the advice itself was unreasonable.
"Some of the things about…trying to control people on the streets, that's an unreasonable expectation and it's not expected of anyone else that would live in a tenanted housing," she said.
"I know Shelter SA does a lot of engagement and work with Aboriginal people, but 'How to look after your house like a whitefella?' I find that offensive.
"You would not see this in the same context for non-Aboriginal Australians. Maybe there was a lot of goodwill and good heartedness in trying to get a message across in an English context, but it’s very negative."
The community reaction has surprised and dismayed Shelter SA's Executive Director Dr Alice Clark, who said the document had been in use since 2009.
"It's been around for a very long time and we've only ever had really positive feedback, so while I felt personally devastated about receiving a complaint, I was also surprised that this was the first time anyone had said they didn’t like it," she said.
Dr Clark said she withdrew the material immediately from the organisation’s website and advised service providers not to use it any more.
"It's been around for a very long time and we've only ever had really positive feedback"
She told SBS she hoped the incident wouldn’t compromise Shelter SA's 40-year history of strong advocacy work for Aboriginal people.
"We were the first the first peak body in South Australia to develop a Reconciliation Action Plan, so that is seen now as a good standard for [housing] organisations like ours, other community organisations, in fact governments as well," she said.
"I hope that it doesn't detract from those other positives that we've achieved and that we’ve established in the community."
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