Ingetje Tadros This is my country

THIS IS MY COUNTRY Say No Aboriginal Community Closures 2016

Photographs by Ingetje Tadros

Kennedy Hill is an Aboriginal community in the remote town of Broome in the Kimberley, in the North West of Australia. The community exists in the shadows of Western Australian Premier Colin Barnett’s commitment to close down approximately 100-150 Aboriginal communities in Western Australia. There are more than 270 remote Indigenous communities in Western Australia, home to 12,000 people. 

Aboriginal Elders and Leaders are shocked and feel closing down communities is a big threat to their people. They believe the impact of such a move will be devastating. Communities are based ‘on Country’. Closing down communities means losing connection to the land in which ancient stories are etched. These stories inform about morals, values and relationships, and are reinforced in Language through song and story at times of ceremony or travel through that Country –there used to be 250 Aboriginal languages before White Invasion. By closing down communities, ancient knowledge that has been passed down through generations will get lost and peoplewill be lost because of this disconnection that nurtures them physically, emotionally and spiritually. Consequently, poverty, disadvantage, alcoholism, unemployment, etc. –which are contained within communities because of ongoing cultural connection– will be relocated and intensified and brought to the bigger towns. History is repeating itself.

Australian award-winning Photojournalist Ingetje Tadros has spent four years working with Aboriginal people and has been documenting their confronting daily lives within their communities. Her concerns for Aboriginal people and their communities stretch from the old uninformed line that demonises Aboriginal men by insinuating that Aboriginal women and children are under great threat by the men in the communities, to a lack of affordable accommodation. Over seven per cent of the Kimberley population is homeless and ninety per cent of this homelessness is made up of its First Peoples. 

Kennedy Hill, or as the locals refer to it, ‘The Hill’ is significant to Indigenous people in the area. The presence of a large shell midden immediately adjacent to the community is testament to this significance. It has been a living area and a sacred place since before White Invasion, since time immemorial.

Aboriginal people all over the Kimberley are now in fear of losing not only their homes but of losing significant connection to their land and sacred sites.

The question now remains, which Aboriginal communities will be closed?