@Aqua - speaking of Arukun .. another 2 page spread for there in the Courier today.
I reckon they ought send Mothballs there to sort it out seeings she's such an expert & so educated on matters regarding ATSI peoples.
Quote:WE CAN’T SEND KIDS TO SCHOOL
SPECIAL REPORT - LUKE WILLIAMS
Parents have stopped sending their children to school in a remote Indigenous community because they fear attacks, as local leaders question how $140m in government funding is being spent in the town without a doctor, dentist or counsellors.
Aurukun elders have spoken out about ongoing issues in the community,
including escalating inter-family violence involving crossbows, threats of
harming children and the marking of territorial “enemy lines”.
Traditional owner Stanford Ngakyunkwokka said parents had stopped sending their kids to the local government-run school because they were
scared they would be attacked.
He said young people had been caught between longstanding family feuds and were often awake until early hours of the morning.
“People nearly get killed,” he said. “They use crossbows and archery.
Heaps of people get into these fights at once.
“They say if we see your children at school tomorrow, we will get them.
“So the parents are scared to send their children.”
Several elders who spoke to The Courier-Mail made similar claims.
Aurukun, 800km northwest of Cairns, has a population of 1200 people.
Aurukun State School has 219 students from prep to year 12. But only 29
per cent of enrolled students attend, with just 1 per cent attending 90
per cent or more of the time, according to data from the Australian
Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority.
Text messages from the Queensland Teachers’ Union shown to The Courier-Mail reveal the union recently discussed temporarily closing down
the school because of ongoing safety risks.
Teachers who spoke anonymously said they were leaving the school because students were
threatening teachers with sexual violence and pupils as young as five were
coming to school armed with large knives.
Mr Ngakyunkwokka said several clans had “enemy lines” drawn around the town.
He said fighting had escalated in the past two weeks with several doors broken down, and one house nearly set alight. Arrows had passed through the night sky in his neighbourhood nearly every night.
“If you go past those enemy lines at night, then look out,” he said.
Sitting with his grandson Alan Pambyan on his knee, Mr Ngakyunkwokka fears for his future.
“Go out at night and you’ll see it all for yourself,” he said.
At the same time, outgoing Aurukun Mayor Keri Tamwoy wants to know
how $140m in government funding is being spent in her remote Far North
Queensland community without a doctor, dentist or counsellors.
Ms Tamwoy, co-founder of the Wik Women’s Group and a supporter of the failed Voice to Parliament, says there is no shortage of money coming into the community.
In the past financial year the community received $142m in federal and
state government funding across 126 government and non-government organisations.
Only a handful are controlled by the Aurukun community.
“We don’t know what the money is being spent on. The money is not going to us in the community. It is going to these organisations. So we can’t say why it isn’t working,” she said.
“But every time this issue of money being spent and there not being results comes up.
“It’s Indigenous people who get the finger pointed at them – it’s us who get the blame.”
Her calls come after the Albanese government’s attempt to constitutionally enshrine an Indigenous Voice to parliament was voted down in October’s referendum.
At the time, Cape York leader Noel Pearson said governments had been
telling Indigenous people what policies should be, which had failed communities. The Voice, he believed, would change that.
Ms Tamwoy said her community would have asked for service providers to be examined had the Voice referendum been successful.
“The Indigenous people in this town do not know what service providers are funded and what programs they are running here,” she said.
Ms Tamwoy, the cousin of the Prime Minister’s inaugural Indigenous Advisory Council member Bruce Martin, who was fatally stabbed in
Townsville last year, said she still grieved for him.
“I don’t have anybody to talk to about his death. I have only my children,” she said.
With more than 40 deaths in the town last year, Ms Tamwoy says there are
no counsellors to provide help.
“There are no bereavement counsellors in town. We don’t have trauma counsellors,” she said.
“A lot of people carry around a lot of trauma, a lot
of unaddressed trauma, and we are seeing trauma in younger children because it’s passed on. Children become what they see. It’s all that pentup trauma.”
Ms Tamwoy said the fly-in fly-out model from service providers was not working.
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