Woman of courage: US lines up Bess Price for award

ON Monday, two US consulate officials flew from Melbourne to Alice Springs to see Warlpiri woman and newly elected NT MP Bess Nungarrayi Price.

Bess Price

ON Monday, two US consulate officials flew from Melbourne to Alice Springs to see Warlpiri woman and newly elected Northern Territory MP Bess Nungarrayi Price.

For a while they talked Northern Territory politics, not that unusual a topic given Ms Price has long dealt with US officials and met US President Barack Obama in Darwin last year. The conversation soon took a surprising turn when they said they wanted to nominate her to become the first Australian woman to receive the US International Women's Courage Award.

Ms Price, a firebrand campaigner for change in Aboriginal communities, was floored. Here were two US State Department officials saying to a Warlpiri woman born and raised in a humpy, "We think you are an amazing woman".

Ms Price told The Australian yesterday she was deeply honoured to have been nominated for the award, which still needs to be confirmed by Washington. The award is presented annually to women around the world who have shown leadership, courage, resourcefulness and willingness to sacrifice for others, especially for promotion of women's rights.

Another maverick indigenous campaigner and now NT Minister for Aboriginal Advancement, Alison Anderson, told The Australian: "I think it's fantastic. I'm very proud of her and I think we should have a thousand Bess Prices.

"She is a very brave woman and we need more brave women like Bess Price around the country to lift women's status and to move women forward."

Recently elected to the NT parliament for the conservative Country Liberals after a lifetime of voting Labor, Ms Price has argued controversially and defiantly for strong and long intervention in NT Aboriginal communities, on the basis that it is aimed at protecting women and children.

When critics, including former prime minister Malcolm Fraser, condemned it as racist, she replied: "They don't know anything about our people who live out here with the mangy dogs.

"They're 'sophisticated' people. They think they know us and they think they can tell the rest of the world what is best for us."

She has said: "You need to listen to the voices that are usually drowned out by the strong, the noisy and the powerful. You need to find a way to listen to those who don't speak English, who are the most marginalised and victimised in our communities. If you really want us to have human rights, then you have to find ways to protect the victims of black crime as well as white crime."

Ms Price was attacked on social media last year by indigenous academic Larissa Behrendt, who tweeted: "I watched a show where a guy had sex with a horse and I'm sure it was less offensive than Bess Price."

Professor Behrendt, who later unreservedly apologised for the slur, did not comment yesterday.

The International Women's Courage Award was established in 2007 by then US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice.

Recipients have included women who have been imprisoned, silenced, tortured, kidnapped and raped for speaking out for women's rights, social justice, peace and democracy.

"Despite the risks they face, despite the hardships they endure, these women carry on - because they know that they are fighting not just for their own rights and freedoms, but for the rights and freedoms of so many others," US first lady Michelle Obama said at this year's awards in March.