Yuendumu: Running scared in an outback town held hostage by violence
Theresa Napurrurla Ross is speaking out, but knows she could be hurt – or even killed – for revealing what really goes on in Yuendumu.
Theresa Napurrurla Ross is speaking out – but she’s scared.
The 54-year-old Warlpiri woman, who has lived in Yuendumu all her life, knows she could be hurt – or even killed – for doing so.
“If I get into trouble and they say they’re serious, yes, they’ll kill me,” the translator and artist told The Weekend Australian. “That’s why I’m being careful what to say and all that, because I know someone will see this.”
Yuendumu, a town 330km northwest of Alice Springs, was thrust into the spotlight in 2019 when policeman Zachary Rolfe shot and killed Indigenous man Kumanjayi Walker during a botched arrest.
Walker was wanted by police after threatening two local officers with an axe, resulting in Northern Territory police’s Immediate Response Team being sent in from Alice Springs. Rolfe was found not guilty last March of murdering Walker, but since the shooting, the community has struggled with unrest and violence between families.
Ross says dozens of families fled the violence for larger towns such as Alice Springs in the later months of last year, with many failing to return.
Alice Springs is now facing major social issues, with police statistics showing property offences increasing by almost 60 per cent over the past year, assaults rising 38 per cent and domestic violence assaults by 48 per cent.
Ross, a linguist, studied English and Warlpiri, and can understand seven dialects, which comes in handy for her job as an interpreter at the Aboriginal Interpreter Service, where she often works in the justice system.
“I can only speak them after a few beers,” she says with a laugh.
Sitting on the red dirt ground on the outskirts of Yuendumu – and well out of sight of any locals – Ross explains how her community has struggled with decades of fighting within families. “This is Yuendumu, it’s always been a violent place, and always will probably be a violent place,” she says. “Since I was small, I’ve seen it; I grew up looking at violence.”
The small town of 740 is desolate. A few children walk along the street; some adults sit outside their homes, but apart from that, it is silent.
“It’s not normal,” Ross says.
“Usually there’s kids running around and people walking around everywhere, people sitting under the trees.”
She gives a graphic description of the violence she sees.
“When they fight, they not only box, they beat each other up with knife and everything, machetes, everything, axe,” she says.
Her sister Lizzie was killed, she says, following a family dispute in 2016. Others in the community say it was grog that finally killed the 44-year-old, the violence she experienced probably a contributing factor.
It’s a familiar story in communities like this, where alcohol and violence go hand-in-hand. A cause of death may be difficult to establish, but doesn’t stop the recriminations.
“Yes, my sister’s gone. She didn’t die for no reason, she got killed. Women have no power here, man have power here,” Ross says.
“But I have to learn to keep my mouth shut, or else I’ll be dead too. When a man says to you, ‘you, you’ll die, we’re going to do something to you,’ they mean it.
“I’m the only daughter my mother has left and I have two daughters, I have five grandkids, so I’m gonna try and be strong.”
Others in the family have also experienced shocking violence.
“My mother, she’s a 73-year-old woman, she got beaten up on the head by this woman that still got this job at night patrol,” Ross says.
What’s the violence about?
“People fight when there’s jealousy going on, that’s when people get hurt, that’s how domestic violence starts, and through alcohol” she says.
She says people will return to Yuendumu from places such as Alice Springs if “the fighting stops completely”.
Ross, who films our drive on a phone, anxiously lowers the device as we pass a house with residents out the front.
“They’re looking,” she whispers. After we pass, she raises the phone with a chuckle.
Driving down one of the main streets of Yuendumu, she says it would “look like a war zone” during a fight.
“People have been fighting with machetes, iron bar, axe, everything, fire, all sorts, you name it,” she says. “People fight at night too, at midnight, daylight, four, five o’clock in the morning.
“It’s because of the grog, alcohol; if alcohol stops, then maybe there won’t be any more domestic violence or family violence.”
Ross says women are not listened to or respected in the community “because we’re women”.
“We go through culture, we go through pain and everything, still we’re nothing. It’s the men that are more higher, mighty,” she says.
“Men should respect women these days now, we’re living in the 21st century, men should stop fighting with women.”
Ross says there is a culture of covering up domestic and family violence in the community because “the mob will come after you”.
“We do see fighting, (but) when the police ask us ‘what did you see?’ you didn’t see anything,” she says.
“It’s saving our lives. We don’t want to go to the witness box in the courthouse and then come back home and then get beaten up for being a witness.
“I hope it stops, I hope it stops.
“I bet you somebody’s gonna see this and then they’re gonna complain about it. Let them complain, I don’t care.”
