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Dormitories ‘needed’ for indigenous kids

COMMUNITY-RUN child dormitories should be established in remote indigenous communities in the Northern Territory to ensure children are fed, clothed and bathed, former Australian of the Year Galarrwuy Yunupingu says.

Dormitory-style accommodation with cooking, showering and sleeping facilities should be built near schools, Mr Yunupingu told Fairfax.

“The missionary days were good. The missionaries looked after the kids much better than the government does today,” he said.

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Adolescents as young as 12 in his Arnhem Land town of Nhulunbuy were still vulnerable to sexual abuse and manipulation by men selling alcohol, drugs and pornography, despite federal intervention in NT indigenous communities, Mr Yunupingu said.

“I see intervention people running around trying to fix doorknobs and broken windows,” he said.
“What has that got to do with the kids? It’s not filling up their stomachs.

“There are thousands of kids waking up to no breakfast in these communities … you can’t turn a blind eye to it.”

Mr Yunupingu is in Melbourne to address an economic and social outlook conference being held at Melbourne University, where he will say 60 elders of his own people in Nhulunbuy had decided to take a stand against those who had been reportedly abusing the town’s indigenous youth.

The NT’s Little Children are Sacred report, which prompted the federal intervention, alleged a rampant sex trade in an unnamed community where non-Aboriginal mining workers gave Aboriginal girls aged between 12 and 15 alcohol, cash and other goods in exchange for sex. The community was Nhulunbuy, Fairfax said.