Australia: Aboriginal residents of Ampilatwatja walk out over housing conditions

About 100 residents from the remote Aboriginal community of Ampilatwatja walked out of their settlement last month, protesting both the intolerable housing conditions and the so-called Northern Territory Emergency Response (NTER) or “intervention”.

Ampilatwatja, with a population of 450...is one of the many remote communities that were taken over by the federal government as part of the “intervention” launched by the former Howard government in 2007 and extended by the Labor government of Prime Minister Kevin Rudd...

Initiated on the false pretence of trying to protect Aboriginal children from sexual abuse, the “NT Emergency Response” saw soldiers and police mobilised to assert control over settlements and town camps across the Territory — many of which occupy potentially valuable mining, pastoral or tourism land...

Earlier this year, the Rudd government and its NT Labor counterpart deepened the pro-business intervention by freezing funds to remote settlements and providing basic services to only 20 larger townships, designated “economic hubs”...

The Ampilatwatja protestors, including Alyawarr Aboriginal elders, are calling for better living conditions and an end to the NT intervention. Outmoded and inadequately maintained septic tanks and chronic overcrowding — some of the houses are tin sheds — have led to raw sewerage overflows in several homes, creating ongoing health problems.

Angry at both the federal and NT governments, residents have set up camp four kilometres from Ampilatwatja, on traditional land. The protestors say they will maintain their action indefinitely and are calling on other Aboriginal communities to follow their lead and walk out.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/aug2009/ampi-a21.shtml


"Our people are demoralised and hurt; we feel like outcasts. In the intervention all the men are categorised as sexual abusers, rapists and murderers. All the blue signs that they have put up outside our communities—that there is to be no alcohol or pornography — this is just embarrassing. We are being victimised and put down. In the rest of society you have the same issues and problems but no signs are put up — it’s just the black communities."

"The young people saw that the elders no longer had any power. They resent this and don’t want to be a part of this controlled way. A lot of them are drifting out of the communities into the towns and caught up in a cycle of drugs and alcohol abuse..."