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In the Northern Territory, where prisons are overflowing and rates of violent crime have reached despairing highs, one elder believes the answers to these urgent challenges lie out in the territory bush.
Key points:
- The NT is facing record rates of crime and prison populations
- Yingiya Guyula wants remote community elders to play a role in disciplining offenders
- He says criminal assaults are not part of Aboriginal culture or law
Violent assaults are at their highest rates in at least 15 years in the territory, and prisons in Darwin and Alice Springs are seeing their highest ever populations – 85 per cent of which are Aboriginal.
Yingiya Guyula, an independent politician and Yolngu traditional owner, wants to see Aboriginal people convicted of crimes be allowed to return to their country for discipline by elders, and to heal.
"That's what happened for a long, long time, for many generations in [my] area," Mr Guyula said.
"They go and serve their time on country, so they get healed, it gives forgiveness, so that they're not always feeling angry, upset, where they can come back and create another problem.
"There is a way."
Mr Guyula said elders should be given authority to set up raypirri camps – a traditional method of discipline, where offenders learn respect and self-respect by studying the ways of their forefathers.
The north-east Arnhem Land politician also wants to see more rehabilitation options offered in the bush to help addicts recover surrounded by traditional Aboriginal knowledge and support.
"I can tell you, lock-ups or remands, or Don Dale, or prison camps, they will not solve any issues at all," Mr Guyula said.
"We need to make a space in communities and on country for our children – we need to give Yolngu elders [the authority] to set up a raypirri camp … to help children learn to be givers. To learn respect.
"We can feel the land is crying for us to come back home – the land is crying and it wants to nurture.
"The land wants to educate, the land wants to discipline."
Violent assaults 'are not in our culture'
The Northern Territory has been in the grips of a crime crisis for months, culminating in Darwin in March, with the stabbing death of 20-year-old bottle shop worker Declan Laverty.
A 19-year-old man, Keith Kerinaiua, has been charged with murder over the incident.
Following Mr Laverty's death, thousands of people gathered outside NT parliament, calling for urgent action from the government to tackle the crime problem.
"When I heard there was a killing that happened … it was really upsetting," Mr Guyula said.
"That's not our culture. That's not our law. That's not what we do."
Mr Guyula was also touched by the recent death of a relative in Darwin allegedly due to assault, after a 39-year-old man died after an incident in a car park in Rapid Creek earlier in March.
"People come in [to Darwin] and live in alcohol-fuelled [situations] and there hasn't been much raypirri camps, or discipline camps, when we need to be on country," he said.
"So these are some of the crimes that we are seeing happening in [urban] communities, because we are not back on country, and we are not on areas that we really need to be who we are."
The NT government announced new bail law changes this week, which give the presumption of bail denied to anybody charged with offences relating to certain weapons.
Mr Guyula said he believed the laws were "rushed" and wants to see the government now return to the table with traditional owners to discuss the path forward on the situation from here.