Aboriginal Voices on the NT Intervention

Collected from recordings from public meetings and demonstrations in Alice Springs, Darwin and Canberra. Transcribed by Holly, Scott and Anita. For copies of the recordings please contact studentsforsovereignty@gmail.com


Greg Eatock, Aboriginal Rights Coalition, Redfern
“We must end this racist legacy of the Howard government, and we must end it immediately. People are dying from it. It’s an apartheid system. We all know what apartheid is, and that’s what people are living under in the N.T. This is just the beginning of the campaign, and we will be organising on the 13th of each month around the country. What we’ve gotta do is get people mobilised again, we’ve gotta stand up and be counted. This is happening because of a lack of respect and recognition of Aboriginal sovereignty in this country.”


Walter Shaw, Mount Nancy Town Camp, Alice Springs
“We want this intervention squashed and we want the Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and his Minister for Indigenous Affairs to come down to all Aboriginal communities and do it properly. There’s a right way of doing business and there’s a wrong way. And this is wrong.

“When you look at a systematic approach, a paternalistic approach, it will not work with Aboriginal people. They’ve tried it! This is another government policy, it’s an ideology from people living 3000 kilometres away that aren’t in touch with the people who are affected by the consequences of their advice.

“We’ve always worked with police. We’ve worked with problems to do with our own communities, but because these police have got so much powers, they can go into your house, they can look under your pillow, they can go in your fridge, they can go anywhere on your town camp and look for anything.“
“This intervention was done from a child sexual abuse report by the Northern Territory. Once the Federal Parliament got hold of this sexual abuse report, a lot of sexual abuse reports were done on a national scale. There are small pockets in any community in suburbia or metropolitan areas that have people who are offenders in terms of sexual abuse. This intervention is racially vilifying all Aboriginal men as paedophiles.

“Once this Bill was passed, we had a rally in Alice Springs. A whole group of Aboriginal communities and town campers rallied on the front steps of the Northern Territory’s Chief Minister’s office. A symbolic gesture was made where all of the Aboriginal women shredded the 500 page bill and burnt it, simply because our women raise our children. Last year was supposed to be a commemorative year for all of us Aboriginal people in this country, our country, we celebrated the 1967 referendum and we celebrated NAIDOC, and yet last year and this year we are still fighting for our future existence.”


Stan Strantham, Papunya
“In Papunya there’s a policeman there who waits at the hospital. People coming in from miles away with an unregistered car are booked straight away. They charge you for driving in town, and that’s not a town area. No way. All the policeman just get in the motor car, all of a sudden just grab the driver and lock them up. That’s what they do, everybody, everywhere. Alice Springs, there’s a policewoman, pulled out a gun to shoot people in the creek: ‘Get out you black bastards!’ That’s how the policeman act in treating black people today. So please, we need help. And there’s a lot of people today in Alice Springs. People are treating people like dogs. So come on, lets chuck them dregs to one side, it’s an invasion! Not anything else.”


Christopher Poulson, Yuendumu
“We know Australia because all these countries have an Aboriginal name. You know, hills they got an Aboriginal name, our language name. Trees, the river, they got a name all around, Aboriginal name, and we come from this place. We know this country belongs to us and we will stand strong, we’ll fight together with words. It is important that sometimes we must stand together.”


Pat Turner, Arrente and Gurdanji woman, Head of National Indigenous Television and former administrator of ATSIC
“We have known about the issues in our communities for several generations and governments have done nothing... We know what the situation is like, we live it every day... We have to stand up to this Government and we have to say “if you want to do anything to us, you negotiate. We’re not interested in consultation, you negotiate. We have rights and we are not about to sacrifice them for anybody… We have, on Aboriginal land, inalienable freehold title. And we will keep it.”


Aunty Kathy Mills, Senior Traditional Owner of Larrakia Nation, Darwin
“Our status of traditional ownership is under attack, like never before. The Wild / Anderson report was intended to improve living conditions for Aboriginal people. Aboriginal people continue to suffer under starving wages, crowded living conditions, high cost of living, isolation from major health and services supply outlets, and inadequate travel service provisions.”


Leslie
“My name is Leslie and I actually work for an Indigenous job network. And June 2007, the government actually slashed our town services which actually operate or help the Indigenous people with employment. And when they did that, they basically kicked us in the guts for the town services. And what I am seeing out in the remote areas, it’s really, really heartbreaking. Because what I see is a lot of confusion with people out in the communities. Once they’ve cut out the CDEP, a lot of people are just sort of walking around in a daze. They don’t know what’s happening. If these people don’t work they get cut. Eight weeks of no money whatsoever. So these people on quarantine, their money get cut because they’ve been forced to do some sort of training or look for some bloody job out on these communities that have barely got jackshit. And that’s unfair.


Eileen Hoosan
“Under the Act the Commonwealth Minister now has the same powers as the N.T. Minister to administer, forfeit, breach or resume a town camp lease. He can cut our leases off us. And the Commonwealth Minister has additional powers to compulsorily acquire town camps without additional notice or process and vet the freehold title in itself. So the leases we fought for thirty years ago, that we fought the government for, we got those leases in our community name, they can come and falsely take that lease off us! We live in fear of government coming in and taking our lease. Cos we’ve been there, you know.“


Barbara Shaw, Tangentyere Council, community and health worker, and resident at Mt Nancy Town Camp in Alice Springs:
In Alice Springs, July 2007:
“I’m proud to be a town camper. All my great grandfathers and grandmothers they fought for these town camps for years and years and years. And we’re gonna hold onto them, no matter what. No matter what colour you are, where you come from, and where you live; today all Aboriginal people are being painted by the same brush, with one colour. Aboriginal people are being jammed between a solid wall and a hard rock....

“In regards to welfare reform, Aboriginal women have had these programs already running out of their resource centres, for their children and their families. These programs worked for our communities. It made women stronger and gave them control in their communities... So let’s put the lid back on the paint tin and toss it. This big fight and struggle is not going to stop here, because it’s going to carry on in the generations to come. Let’s take a stand in solidarity today.”

In Canberra, February 2008:
“You see those men, those men over there, they are ‘prescribed area’ men. They look after their children and they look after their women. They’re not paedophiles. They are men of the communities, leaders. Everybody looks up to them. When there’s a problem in our communities, we deal with it.

“As soon as CDEP got scrapped, the enterprise went down and our men were unemployed. Now our men gotta line up at Centrelink and wait for their wages, and they’re getting wages out of our cards. We’ve got ration cards, and they are gift cards. All of our people are lining up at Centrelink. And Centrelink is not sending information out on time so our people can be fed on our communities.

“In Katherine during Christmas time people travelled all over 300 kilometres to go and get there store cards from Katherine centrelink, their ration cards. In the end there was 500 people there and they ran out of store cards. So people with kids, old people they went without. They went without whole Christmas, without anything because of Centrelink, because Centrelink ran out of ration cards. We don’t want to be paid in vouchers or rations anymore! This takes us back to 1890 when they started the ration days. We scrap this intervention. We focus on the real things: that’s the health, housing and education.

“We sit in front of Parliamentarians all the time when they come out to Alice Springs, but it goes in one ear and out the other, from one community, to the other, to the other. Round in circles. They’re not listening to us. We get up and say as much as we can in Alice Springs, that is why we travelled over 3000 km to get here to ask you mob for help.”


Mitch, Eastern Arrernte/Luritja woman from Alice Springs
“My family are coming to me because I live in the suburbs. I’m under the welfare quarantine stuff. I’m not under the other stuff. I don’t have to put a card in at the moment, so every fortnight when i go to put my form in I beg them to put me under, because I’m feeding thirty extended family members on my pension with two kids.

“So this intervention stuff has already divided us in our communities. I live in Alice Springs after coming in from bush because we had no high schools. We’ve heard this word sovereignty. I learnt about sovereignty in school. We’ve come here to gather that strength under that sovereignty word so we can take that back to our elders and discuss that.

“We’ve stood up and we explained exactly what we’ve implemented in Alice Springs. Our own grog and rehabilitation centre. Our own children’s centre, where they can go and play safely. All those things we’ve fought long and hard for, people have chucked their pension money in to keep these things going. We’ve had cake stalls. Now the government is withdrawing all of that funding. So i don’t know how in all of this our children are supposed to be safe.”