NT Coroner Elisabeth Armitage at NT police HQ. Photo: Melissa Mackay, ABC In January 2012 Crikey published a piece I wrote ($) looking at the concerns expressed by an Aboriginal law and justice support group from the about-as-remote-as-you-can-get NT community of Lajamanu—800 kilometres southwest of Darwin and 900 hundred north-west of Alice Springs—in reaction to [...]
Concerns about the Northern Territory Police triple-0 communications system have been around for a while. This is a re-post of a piece I wrote for Crikey in January 2012 on problems with police communications in a very remote community in the Northern Territory. To see how little has changed since that time see this piece [...]
In June 2023 the four Northern Territory Aboriginal land councils met to sign the Barunga Declaration which addresses all Australians and urges them to support a Voice to Parliament. More than 200 representatives of the Northern, Central, Tiwi and Anindilyakwa land councils gathered on the traditional lands of the Bagala clan group at Barunga, south-east [...]
Photo: University of Arizona Recent news that the good folks at the University of Arizona’s Institute for Resilience have extended their Southwest Monsoon Fantasy Forecast game for a third year got me thinking about how a local fantasy weather competition based on Top End weather might work. After all, Australia’s Top End has—arguably—some of the [...]
I have lived my song cycle … In remembering this extraordinary Aboriginal leader it is difficult to forget the meaning of his family name—Yunupingu—which in the Gumatj dialect of the Yolngu Matha language family means “the rock that stands against time”.Across so many decades, Yunupingu’s deeds and actions in the struggles for lands, seas, language [...]
I find it hard to put into words just how much this great Yolŋu man achieved and how much we owe him. When he first became Chair of the Northern Land Council in 1977, the Fraser Government had only just passed into law the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act 1976. He would be Chair [...]
The Hon Mark Dreyfus KC MP delivering the second reading speech for the Constitution Alteration (Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice) Bill 2023 This is the Second Reading Speech for the Constitution Alteration (Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice) Bill 2023 as delivered by Attorney-General The Hon Mark Dreyfus KC MP earlier today, 30 March [...]
Last week two Aboriginal men—Matthew Ryan and Ross Mandi—filed a complaint to the Australian Human Rights Commission (the AHRC) against the Australian Electoral Commission (the AEC) alleging that the AEC has effectively suppressed the Aboriginal vote in remote areas in the Northern Territory.
It was not until 16 August 1975 that negotiations with Vesteys, owners of the Wave Hill lease, were completed, and the lease for the Gurindji tribal land at Wattie Creek was handed to Vincent Lingiari, leader of the Gurindji.
It was late November 2010, one of those red-hot November days that only the Western Desert can turn on. Over six hundred people travelled for days from far and wide to bury young Jampijinpa at the small town of Nyirripi, a four-and-a-half hour dusty drive west from Alice Springs on rough dirt roads.
