¹ Hansard, House of Representatives, June 21, 2007, vol. 8, pp. 73-4.

² Rex Wilde and Pat Anderson, Ampe Akelyernemane Meke Mekarle, Little Children are Sacred, Report of the Northern Territory Board of Inquiry into the Protection of Aboriginal Children from Sexual Abuse 2007, (Northern Territory Government). Although the Report was commissioned and had been received by the Territory government, its response was sluggish and delayed.

³ For Australia in general the unemployment rate (2007) is less the 5% and alcoholism is not universal.

⁴ At a large town where I was present an Intervention team was visiting to test the children. It had set up its own operations separately from the existing clinic. The findings of the team did discover a high degree of deafness (something well known already) and poor teeth (a dentist attended once a month, but the waiting list was long). At one time the town's water had been fluoridated, but that practice had been discontinued, perhaps through simple carelessness, and the children's teeth had suffered decay. Sexual abuse was not publicly discussed, but then the team would respect privacy of local people since sexual abuse of children is regarded as something which very wrong.

⁵ In his June speech the, Mr. Howard, the Prime Minister in June (Cf. Hansard, June 21, 2007, vol. 8, p. 74) spoke of banning the sale, possession, transportation and consumption of alcohol on Aboriginal land for six months; medical examination of all children under 16 years of age; control of townships for five years; introducing work for the dole programs; scrapping the current permit requirement to enter Aboriginal lands and blocking x rated pornography.

⁶ Individuals were now allowed to buy a limited amount (up to $100.00) provided they gave their names and signed a statement saying it would not be consumed in a place which was designed as dry. One town like Tennant Creek banned off-license sales on one day a week. One result of the Intervention was to force Aboriginals to drive longer distances to find a pub or shop to serve them and risk longer drives back home. Some individuals simply walked to the outskirts of a town to drink there in less supervised and more dangerous situations.

⁷ An example of crossed cultural signals can be found at the inquest recently concluded in Darwin concerning a police officer who fired into a group of Aboriginal men at the sportsfield in Wadeye, killing one person. The policeman was accused first of murder, but then downgraded to doing a dangerous act. The Officer had only arrived on the scene six days before and he had presumed that some sort of full scale riot was going on at the sportsfield, and so it was reported in the press. Riot itself is a cultural term which means one thing in newspapers in Darwin, in Los Angeles and quite another on the sports ground in Wadeye. For a fuller account of this tragic incident, cf., Death in a Community on the Edge of the Law by Ashley Wilson in The Australian,‘Weekend Inquirer,’ p 29, Oct. 13, 2007.

⁸ The Oxford Handbook of Global Religions, ed. Juergensmeyer, M. (Oxford Univ. Press 2006)CrossRefGoogle Scholar “Australian Aboriginal Societies” John Hilary Martin, pp. 575-585.

⁹ An outcry from police and local residents will probably lead to reinstatement of the permit system, especially since both police and parents fear the movements of individuals who might molest children or be involved in the sale of drugs.

¹⁰ Cf., Hansard, The House of Representatives, Families, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs (Emergency Response Consolidation Bill), vol. 8, p. 2

¹¹ Kidd, Rosalind, The Trustees on Trial, (Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press, 2006)Google Scholar speaks about Queensland but parallels with the N.T. are unmistakable.

¹² Cathy Small reports a similar type of economy that has developed in the island kingdom of Tonga where money is provided externally by remittances from family and friends living overseas in New Zealand, Australia and America. She analyses the decline of local culture. Small, Cathy A., Voyages, Ithica and London: Cornell University Press, 1997Google Scholar.

¹³ The first model is the lease negotiated with the Tiwi at Bathhurst Island, the second is that of Galarrwuy Yunupingu at Gunyangara, and the third which is pending in Wadeye. (Wadeye's initial request for lease to an Aboriginal entity was knocked back).

¹⁴ For a quick overview of U.S. government policy and toward its indigenous and their present legal position, cf., Pevar, Stephen L., The Rights of Indians and Tribes, 2^nd ed., Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois Univ. Press, 1992; S.L. Tylor, A History of Indian Policy, Washington D.C: The Government Printing Office, 1973, pp. 95-104, and its extensive bibliography. Admittedly there is a significant difference here since leases are from and to the aboriginal community where the American scheme amounted to sale of freeholds. Businesses run collectively by Indian tribes in the U.S. have been quite successful but that is another story.