Colonialism has an insatiable appetite - it is forever hungry, it can never be satisfied, and it recruits both unwitting as well as willing emissaries from the vast ranks and ever-growing number of colonised Aboriginal people.
The documents show the Centrelink account balances of many residents of Yuendumu whose welfare payments have been quarantined under the federal indigenous intervention.
The traditional relationship between Aboriginal people and dingoes as companions and hunting aides has changed and many communities are have real problems with non-dingo dog health and numbers...but there are some that are really taking steps to do something about these problems...
Greens Senator Rachel Siewert has labelled the NT intervention safe house initiative a “massive stuff-up.” 15 months after Former Indigenous Affairs Minister Mal Brough’s promise to provide safe houses at part of the NT intervention, not one of the 16 shipping-container based safe houses has opened its door for clients and no staff have been [...]
As I walked up the road yesterday morning to get some milk, I spotted Peggy Napaljarri Brown, Jenny Macklin’s best new friend and Valerie Napaljarri Martin sitting in the shade of a tree outside the ramshackle office of the Yuendumu Mining Company. Next to her sat Harry Jakamarra Nelson. They all have better things to [...]
Peggy Nampijinpa Brown & Jenny Macklin “I’ve found a friend!” Federal Indigenous Affairs Minister Jenny Macklin tells Crikey as she walks arm-in-arm across the dusty main street of Yuendumu with Peggy Nampijinpa Brown. Jenny and Nampijinpa have just been to visit the several hundred people who have come down from their sorry business [...]
When Stipendiary Magistrate John Birch’s Court caravan rolled into Yuendumu late last week he bought a new model of the law into town with him. Community Courts, as distinct from the regular Magistrates Court being held in a community, have been around in the Territory since 2005 but until last week had only been active [...]
The NT Magistrates Court rolled into Yuendumu for its bi-monthly visit late last week. Leading the 4 wheel-driven caravan was Stipendiary Magistrate John Birch, with an assortment of defence lawyers, police prosecutors and staff from the Central Australian Aboriginal Family Legal service in tow. Add the eight members of the Yuendumu Mediation and Justice Group, [...]
I really wanted to like Paul Toohey’s Quarterly Essay 30, Last Drinks – The Impact of the Northern Territory Intervention, and I did like it – on the first read, and at a sitting. It read like a punchy crime novel set in the NT and, while I had a number of moments for pause [...]
There are few enough success stories here in the desert, but surely the Kurdu-Kurdu Kurlangu Childcare Centre at Yuendumu must qualify as one of the best. It provides real jobs, and real, accredited national-standard, training, to 14 local women. But maybe not for much longer – it appears that those jobs are at real risk [...]
