The authors of the Little Children Are Sacred report found that overall levels of dysfunction were higher in Indigenous communities where traditional law had significantly broken down. They argued that is more likely that Indigenous people will respond positively to their own law and culture than to laws imposed upon them.
"This is the first time in a long time that Balanda (European) and Yolngu laws have worked together like this. Yolngu are not asking for a separate system. This is about creating a dialogue between the two systems."
Another day in the office for a journalist on the Arnhemland beat. "The corrugated iron is covering a litter of dead puppies ..."
"The film cannot rightly be called ‘documentary’ or ‘journalism’ if those words are still to have any standards attached to them. It does not ask questions, other than ones Pilger thinks he knows the answers to ... "
"I do not want to imagine a country where decisions that impact on our most vulnerable and disenfranchised groups are made purely on economic or political reasons, nor do I want to see policy created based on ideology that does not have its roots in best practice or better outcomes for the community."
In Kununurra for example, 14 teacher support positions are to be lost in 2014 across the two schools. Now, rather than aspiring to be teachers, maybe they can look forward to careers as truancy officers.
On the afternoon of the 26th of January 2012 Rebecca Healy and Rosalie Kunoth-Monks were both on the lawns near to the Aboriginal Tent Embassy across from Old Parliament House in Canberra and far from Tennant Creek. What happened next would see them on opposite sides in the Supreme Court of the Northern Territory.
Mrs Kunoth-Monks: "I feel an enormous sense of vindication and relief. I have always been about bringing people together and not pulling them apart. Having a national story that stated otherwise hurt me deeply."
“The fucking cops are chasing me down the main street of Katherine with a summons. I can’t go to fucking Berrimah [jail]. I can’t read or write.”
Everyone assumes that grog is an exclusively Aboriginal problem. That is simply untrue. Around 50 per cent of Aboriginal people don’t drink at all. If the Northern Territory were a nation, we would have the third highest per capita consumption in the world.
