LEADERS CALL FOR ACTION ON INDIGENOUS INEQUALITY

THE end of the Intervention should not be met with silence, Yolgnu leaders say, calling for substantive action against Indigenous inequality in the Northern Territory.

Speaking at the Garma festival, elder and NT parliamentarian Yingiya Guyula called for the damage of the Intervention to be addressed directly and proactively to fix the “crisis” within remote communities.

“As we come to the end of the Intervention and the end of Stronger Futures, we have barely survived another wave of colonisation,” he said.

The 2007 Intervention temporarily suspended the Racial Discrimination Act, native title and the NT’s Self Government Act, among others, to bring in a suite of policies directly aimed at Aboriginal Territorians.

Alcohol and pornography bans, welfare ‘quarantining’, increased policing and the deployment of army troops were rolled into remote communities.

“The Intervention was shameful. It was systematic dehumanisation of all people,” Mr Guyula said.

“And the end of the era must be about the assertion of our sovereignty through diplomatic conversations between the federal government and those First Nations who want to create treaty.”

Mr Guyula said it was not enough to let Intervention policies “lapse”, as they did recently on the alcohol bans.

“We need to feel the roll back of the Intervention,” he said. “We need to feel it the same way we felt the Intervention pushed over the top of us, suffocating us.

“We W now need dt to feel f l the th pressure being removed rather than a silence of policy lapsing – we need to see a better way. We are fighting for ourselves, for our sovereignty to be recognised and respected.”

Mr Guyula said the relationship between his two worlds as a Yolgnu man and the government was one of “violence”. “It continues to be violent; the high rates of pov

erty, incarceration, overcrowding, unemployment, l t suicide, i id family violence, community violence, school refusal, early deaths and deaths from preventive diseases,” he said.

“Our communities are in a state of crisis. That is about survival.”

This month, alcohol legally flowed into about 400 previously dry communities across the Territory for the first time in 15 years.