Bettina Danganbarr: Creating a safe place to change a culture

The work of Indigenous women in remote and regional communities is a feature of the Australia Day awards this year.

Senior Yolngu woman Bettina Danganbarr is being honoured for her work with Aboriginal women in northeast Arnhem Land and other remote communities. Picture: Rebecca Parker

Bettina Danganbarr was learning a new job as an Aboriginal community police officer in her remote community of Galiwin’ku when women began asking her for protection.

“I guess they saw my house as a safe place,” she said. “They would come and ask me if they could stay there; in the end, I started having women over until we could find them a safe place to go to.”

The arrangement worked until a terrifying episode brought her children face to face with an intruder. “One time a very angry husband followed his wife and another cousin – they both were running from him,” she said. “We forgot to lock one door. He … then walked in and threatened us.

“I realised it could have turned out worse for me and my family. My kids were in the house.”

That day, Ms Danganbarr began a decade-long quest to establish a women’s shelter in her community on Elcho Island, population 2500, off the coast of northeast Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory. What followed is giving her hope. Yolngu women of Galiwin’ku now meet regularly to talk about their experiences, who is in danger and how to help them.

At Ms Danganbarr’s instigation, influential local men are taking the first steps towards forming a group of their own where there will be help and support for those who want to change.

“We can do all these programs for women but in the end, some of these women they love their husbands and they want to go back to their husbands, which in most cases they do,” she said.

“So what we are trying now is to build other partnerships … try to create a men’s group that can help the men as well. When our women are coming though to the shelter, we are sending them back hopefully to a safer place.”

For her significant services to the Indigenous community of Arnhem Land, Ms Danganbarr has been made a Member of the Order of Australia. The 47-year-old grandmother is proud of her honour but says it belongs to everyone who works with her in the community she loves.

The work of Indigenous women in remote and regional communities is a feature of the awards this year. In Fitzroy Crossing in the far north pastoral region of Western Australia, Emily Carter is made a Member of the Order of Australia in the general division for significant service to the Indigenous community through social and economic advocacy.

Ms Carter was among local Aboriginal women who blew the whistle on the tragic consequences of decades of alcohol over­supply and abuse in communities of the Fitzroy Valley.

Goori woman Gail Garvey from NSW is made a Member of the Order of Australia for her significant contribution to Indigenous health and cancer research.

Professor Garvey was among the first medical researchers to quantify cancer’s impact on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians.