Senator Jacinta Price explores chilling cold case in new documentary

Aboriginal teenager Marion Nelson – Senator Price’s aunt – is the subject of a new documentary, ‘Yimi Junga’, that has been produced by the prominent Indigenous politician.

On January 10, 1982, 15-year-old Marion Nabarula Nelson was seen getting into a car with five men at the remote Aboriginal community of Yuendumu, about 300 kilometres northwest of Alice Springs.

The car drove about 50km southwest, towards the Western Australian border, where it ran out of fuel.

According to police, Marion ran away from the group and into bushland as they waited on the side of the road for help. She was never seen again.

The Aboriginal teenager’s disappearance is the subject of a new documentary, Yimi Junga, which will air on Sky News on Sunday at 6pm AEST (5.30pm NT ACST)

The film was produced by Northern Territory Senator Jacinta Price.

It follows her story as she attempts to find out what happened to her Aunt Marion more than four decades ago.

“To suggest that a girl of that age in the early ‘80s simply ran away and decided to make a life for herself elsewhere in this country, I don’t think is a believable narrative,” she says.

Senator Price prefers the “whispered narrative” that has been spoken about in hushed tones since Marion was last seen on that hot January day.

“She was killed by a man who was known as her promised husband,” Senator Price said.

“Women in my family tell me that she didn’t want to marry this man.

“What 14-year-old-girl wants to be forced into a marriage. Plus, he had murdered his first wife and had done jail time for that murder.”

15 year old Marion Nabarula Nelson was last sighted in Yuendumu Community on Sunday the 10th of January 1982. Marion was seen getting into a vehicle with five males known to her. The vehicle Marion and the males were traveling in ran out of fuel approximately 50 kilometres south west of Yuendumu.

Marion’s disappearance was reported to Yuendumu police on January 12, 1982, two days after she disappeared.

Police and community members conducted a comprehensive search but she was never found. There were subsequent sightings of Marion reported in neighbouring communities and towns, but none were ever confirmed to be her.

Senator Price’s mother, Bess Price, a former Northern Territory cabinet minister, was born and raised in Yuendumu. She remembers when Marion went missing.

“She was promised to a man who already had a wife,” she says.

“They were both taken to an outstation where the family left her with him. She ran away and hasn’t been seen or heard from.

“They’ve said to me: ‘Because she ran away from her promised husband she disrespected her promised husband’ and what people have said is that they killed her and left her buried out there in the country south of Yuendumu.”

Yimi Junga, a Warlpiri phrase which means to speak the truth, uses Marion’s story as a window into the shocking rates of violence and abuse suffered by Aboriginal women and girls, and examines the role traditional culture plays in contributing to this violence.

Bess Price recounts the trauma of teenage girls fighting against promised marriages.

She recalls one incident she witnessed when she was 11 years old, involving a relative’s daughter who had been promised to an older man.

“One of the nights he came looking for her,” she says.

“Got hold of her and grabbed her. She was kicking and screaming and didn’t want to go. I could hear her screaming. I was so young I was just wondering, because I was scared for her, worried for her.

“Everybody just accepted that was the norm. If you have a promised wife, you have the authority to do what you have to do with her.

“So she’s dragged off during the night and I woke up the next morning and saw her drag marks all the way to where he lived.”

The incident changed her.

“I was saddened by it. It made me realise that if that’s what promised husbands do, I don’t want to be part of that,” she says.

“I was more interested in going to school. I didn’t think it was a good idea.”

According to the Northern Territory Coroner, 81 women have been killed by violent partners in the Northern Territory since 2000.

Seventy-six of those victims have been Aboriginal women.

In a speech delivered last year to a gathering of female lawyers, NT Supreme Court judge Judith Kelly noted the cultural component in this “epidemic” that is often ignored.

“There is still, in some quarters, a view that the use of physical violence to ‘discipline’ wives (and others who have done the ‘wrong’ thing) is justified and is lawful under customary law,” she said.

Yimi Junga explores this theme, and the potential consequences women face for speaking out.

It tells the story of a young woman who reported her father to the police for repeatedly raping her when she was aged 13 to 16.

Senator Price says the young woman’s aunt, who help her report the matter to police, was subjected to payback.

“She was attacked by the perpetrator’s brother, who was the uncle of the victim,” Senator Price says.

“And it was his mother who encouraged this attack. The grandmother of the victim that encouraged this attack on my cousin because she dared bring her son to justice for the crimes he committed against his own daughter.”

Yimi Junga was filmed last year, before Senator Price was elected to parliament and long before she became the most prominent figure in the campaign opposing an Indigenous Voice to Parliament.

The referendum is not mentioned during the hour-long documentary.

But the film gives an insight into what is driving a woman who has become one of the most powerful figures in Australian politics.

Senator Price speaks of her own experiences of violence and sexual assault, and of how she became a mother when she was just 17.

“It’s not just my personal experiences but my mother’s personal experiences,” she says.

“And I know that for the both of us we’ve not experienced justice. But there are so many people that I love in the same boat as us who have not experienced justice for what we’ve endured and to know that every so often, it’s almost weekly, there’s another story that comes out … of a child who’s been raped or a woman that’s been killed.”

A missing person’s report for Marion Nabarula Nelson was filed last year, more than 40 years after she disappeared.

Matt Cunningham is the Sky News Darwin Bureau chief and the North Australia correspondent.