Stop the Violence!

Dave and Bess Nungarrayi Price of Alice Springs

A 30-YEAR-OLD Aboriginal woman has sustained horrific injuries during one of the most vicious pack rapes ever reported in the Northern Territory.

Sources in Tennant Creek say the woman was dragged from a street in the town centre into a small dark park in the early hours of August 19, when the rapes and beatings started.

The attackers - locals say there were at least four - then dragged her to a nearby oval, where she sustained more horrific injuries.

Attackers are believed to have used bottles in the savage attack, which left the woman with severe internal injuries. A police patrol is believed to have heard her screams for help after she staggered from the oval.

The extent of the woman's injuries shocked medical personnel who treated her. She was flown to Alice Springs Hospital, where she remains in a deeply traumatised state.

Police have charged a 26-year-old Aboriginal man with causing serious harm, aggravated assault and having intercourse without consent.

He is being held in custody and will appear in an Alice Springs court on September 25.

Police spokeswoman Chelsea Rogers said investigations were continuing into the attack.

The woman apparently did not know her attackers, who are believed to have come into Tennant Creek, 1000 kilometres south of Darwin, from a remote community, sources say.

Residents fear revenge attacks in the town where alcohol-fuelled violence has been a problem for years.¹

We have just found out that the victim of the rape described above is a daughter to us. We saw her on crutches in Alice Springs hospital and she told us that she was 'nyurnu', that is 'sick'. She smiled with the unbelievable stoicism and courage that hide the pain that Aboriginal women suffer, the stoicism that convinces the superficial observer that there's no problem. Then, the ones who smile slowly suicide with the grog. We found out this weekend that a couple of days later her mother, Bess' sister, was murdered. Dave taught this one as a teenager. Because she was Bess' sister she teased him and demanded money from him with that magnificent, broad smile and self-deprecating humour that only desert women are capable of.

Less tragically, but equally tragically for the future, we found out today that Bess' cousin's house has just been trashed by three pre-teen kids who call her and Bess 'grandmother', our own flesh and blood. Bess' cousin was at a funeral at the time, the funeral of a woman who died of breast cancer. This woman's husband, a man who had been very active to the benefit of his community, had died a couple of months before. Bess' cousin has been an early childhood teacher in a bilingual/bicultural program at Yuendumu for decades. These kids are all students in that program. She fed them, taught them, and loved them. She even tried hard to educate them in a system that doesn't allow real education to happen. But there are those who would try to convince you that all is well in these communities and there is no need for an Intervention.

We are accused by white professional protestors and recently arrived, now expert, white lawyers, of taking all this personally and being too emotive in relation to the issues. We are accused of supporting the Intervention because we make money out of it. We have to put up with Aboriginal Territorians with a vested interest in the chaos telling the world that our government is racist because it treats all this as an emergency and takes drastic measures to deal with it. They have managed to convince the UN Special Rapporteur. We have to put up with Pat Dodson and other leaders telling us that the chimera of Reconciliation is more important than the lives of our loved ones. We are told that these problems just don't occur on the eastern side of the Stuart Highway where the real issues are blocked up toilets and not enough houses. Two of our daughter's assailants came from communities on that side of the highway. Bess has to put up with the old 'you think yourself whitefella' accusation. Dave is regularly told by whitefellas that he can't claim this mob as family because he's white and they're black. Many of those who think they are anti-racist want an 'Apartheid of the mind' here in our country. We are accused of encouraging racists by telling the truth. We will now have to put up with white male lawyers arguing that this rape is justified under traditional, old man's law. We will have to put up with white academics telling us that the non-education dished out to our kids is necessary to preserve their culture and language. That culture and language are the primary concerns, not children's safety, dignity or their very lives.

We are typing this with tears in our eyes and pain in our guts. We are struggling to put the sort of rational argument together that will convince the theorists, the ones whose kids are safe. We, all of us, must put the lives of the innocent ahead of all other considerations. We must stop the blood bath first. How many more Aboriginal women must be slaughtered on the altar of 'culture' and politics? How many more of our children must be raped to maintain a culture? Are Aboriginal women and kids not Australian citizens with rights equal to the white women who march in protest waving their banners, and the rights of the white male lawyers who work to keep their assailants out of jail? Do they not have the right to life because white people are telling us their culture is more important? Do we not speak up for them because we might just be encouraging racists? How much longer do we pretend that this nonsense we call education is working for Aboriginal kids?

The culture of the old people was all about dignity and learning, about protection of those closest by blood and affection. Bess' father and old promised husband were men of honour who never hurt their wives and kids, who loved them and nurtured them. They would have put their lives on the line and they would have killed to protect their loved ones. What is happening now is a gross affront to their culture. It is based on lies and a grotesque parody of traditional culture. How long would a traditional culture that allowed the destruction of their women at the rate that is going on now have lasted? NO MORE! For God's sake and the sake of the innocent it MUST STOP!

1. 'Rape victim's injuries shock hospital staff.' WA Today, Darwin, 7 September 7 2009.