Inside the plan to create an Aboriginal-led ‘academy’ that would house and educate at-risk kids

COULD a new youth academy based on the ethos of Indigenous Norforce soldiers be the solution to youth crime? A new plan is set to offer troubled youths a better option than prison

A NEW plan to tackle youth crime and anti-social behaviour involves establishing a youth academy modelled on the ethos of Indigenous Norforce soldiers.

The Green Skin Academy will offer an alternative to prison for kids who “start mucking up and stop attending school”, according to one of the men behind the proposal, Keith Gregory. The academy would be a secure facility, but Mr Gregory stressed it would not be a detention centre.

The pilot program aims to establish an academy at Bees Creek.

“It is a place of cultural learning and cultural nurturing,” he said.

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“Elders will sit down with the kids and work out what their passions and capabilities are, and then they will charter education pathways according to that.”

The academy would incorporate both Western education and traditional cultural learning, facilitated by the appropriate elders.

Mr Gregory said the problem with existing youth diversion programs was they weren’t holistic enough. “You send a kid out to a cattle station, but what’s happening to their education and their emotional growth?”

Mr Gregory said it was absolutely critical the academy be Aboriginal-led. “The idea is you use Aboriginal ways of engaging with kids and nurturing them,” Mr Gregory said.

“The non-Aboriginal way of doing things puts people into boxes. The Aboriginal way is more fluid and is more sensitive than the Western tradition.

“So this program is more focused on creating positive pathways for children rather than just telling kids ‘get your act together or we’re going to stick you in here for 6 months’.

“Jail just doesn’t work. Trust me. It doesn’t.”

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Mr Gregory is currently seeking $180,000 in funding from the Territory and federal governments to fund a business study of the plan, which KPMG has agreed to conduct.

Mr Gregory said he had received “100 per cent” support from the Aboriginal people he spoke to during a survey.

“Mothers who had had children in Don Dale said that if they’d had the (Green Skin) academy their kids wouldn’t have gone to jail. That group really wants this program.

“All Aboriginal people are saying is ‘we have the solution. Let us drive the solution, let us be the solution’.”