This commitment to law and order in a society that has deep roots in discriminatory justice practices—overtly legitimated under the NT Intervention in 2007—signals another four years of the state’s punitive management of Aboriginal children.
The death of Kumanjayi Walker - the Northern Territory as police state 'Three shots were fired.' The acting deputy police commissioner of the Northern Territory thrust three fingers into the air as he addressed the crowd of grieving and angry residents who gathered on the Yuendumu basketball courts two days after Kumanjayi Walker had been shot and killed by police.
In the Northern Territory (NT), all children in youth detention are Aboriginal and their numbers have been steadily growing over the past decade. This article examines the transcripts of the Royal Commission into the Protection and Detention of Children in the Northern Territory (2016-17) (hereafter the Royal Commission) to uncover processes and discourses of exclusion of Aboriginal children who have been rendered by the state surplus to humanity. It draws attention to the state's practices…
Almost ten years after the Northern Territory Intervention was rolled out, the federal government was made aware of Aboriginal child abuse. It's not the kind of abuse that ostensibly precipitated the Intervention. It's more a symptom of the Intervention. The abuse was broadcast on the ABC's 'Four Corners' in July 2016 and included images of large, stocky white men beating Aboriginal children, spraying tear gas in their faces and all over their bodies, caging them…