As the sun starts to fall over Yuendumu, boys descend on the football oval. They take miraculous shots at goal from the boundary, puffs of orange dust sent into the air with every kick.
Earlier that day, with the desert sun still high in a cloudless sky, the Northern Territory coroner, Elisabeth Armitage, spoke in the centre of a semi-circle of plastic chairs about another Warlpiri boy, Kumanjayi Walker.
She spoke of how his struggles in childhood led to trouble as a young man, trouble that led constable Zachary Rolfe, who knew none of the hardship of Walker, but had been shaped by his experiences nonetheless, to Yuendumu.
“The life experiences of Mr Rolfe are far removed from those of Kumanjayi Walker, the young man he killed during the ill-fated arrest,” Armitage said on Monday.
“That is part of the reason why neither understood why or how the other would react that day.”
From the middle of the local oval you can see the red house, house 511, where Walker was shot three times by then-NT Police constable Zachary Rolfe in November 2019. Rolfe was found not guilty in March 2022 of charges of murder and manslaughter relating to Walker’s death.
Yuendumu is processing the coroner’s 683-page findings from the inquest into Walker’s death, while dealing with the death in custody of another of its young men, Walker’s cousin, Kumanjayi White.
White, 24, lost consciousness in the Coles supermarket in Alice Springs, surrounded by juice and chocolates, after off-duty police officers restrained him on the ground. His death is being investigated by NT police, despite calls from his family and the federal Indigenous affairs minister for an independent inquiry.
Like Walker, who Armitage found was disabled, White too had disabilities and was an NDIS recipient.
‘We have the first solution’
The remote community is trying to stay strong, buoyed up by the future – and the possibility, as outlined in Armitage’s recommendations – of moving closer to local autonomy, such as community leaders say existed before the Howard government’s 2007 intervention.
“The coroner talked about the racists in the Northern Territory … she has told the truth,” Ned Jampijinpa Hargraves, senior Warlpiri elder and the grandfather of White, said.
“In future, when we work with the police, it needs to be two ways of working and understanding.
“The First Nations, Indigenous people, we have the first solution. We need to take back our rights, our rights to run the community and to have peace … and run business … ourselves.”
Sitting to Hargraves’ right as he spoke to visiting reporters was Samara Fernandez-Brown, Walker’s cousin. While the pair spoke briefly on the day the findings were handed down, they spoke at greater length the next day.
“We are in a really interesting position now, where as a community we can move towards the future. And like Ned was saying, it’s now our opportunity to take back control,” Fernandez-Brown said on Tuesday.
“There were recommendations around reforming authority within Yuendumu that existed prior to the intervention that stripped our community of its power.
“We look forward to having those conversations and seeing … how community is going to thrive under control of Warlpiri again and that’s something that we really, really look forward to.”
The pair spoke in the grounds of PAW Media, a community organisation.
Shortly before they started, local kids filled the air with keyboards and drumming, jams starting again and again in the music room underneath the large antenna in the centre of town.
“No music for a little,” Hargraves shouts over his shoulder before the press conference, which he started in Warlpiri.
“We’ll only be really quick. You can rip the guts out of it later.”
As they spoke, loud bangs echoed through the town. It was one week after Territory Day, the only day Territorians can buy fireworks, and some that were left over were being ignited.
There were also events for Naidoc week, which fell during school holidays this year. Local girls showed off new fake nails from a hair and beauty clinic that had been held in town, and makeshift games of basketball and cricket went on outside the local stadium.
The Warlukurlunga Gallery, on the eastern edge of town, teamed with women painting. Others came and went, checking on their work, and showing it off, or proudly pointing out the canvases of their daughters.
Institutional racism, not one bad apple
Armitage recommended creating a 10-year plan for youth in Yuendumu; an expanded night patrol in the remote community; and a review of the availability of youth services, including the provision of on-country rehabilitation and diversion services.
She recommended that the Northern Territory government consult with the Yuendumu community to determine whether there is broad support for the establishment of a single, elected, remunerated, leadership group in Yuendumu as a means of providing community control over the provision of services. The model was proposed by the Parumpurru committee, made up of Yuendumu residents, who were represented at the inquest.
If the creation of a leadership group was supported by the community, then Armitage recommended that the NT government implement it, including by providing governance training and support, and consider specific requirements for good governance. It should also work with the group’s elected leadership to co-design its terms of reference.
The NT’s Country Liberal party, which won government last year after a campaign marked by promises to crack down on crime, said it “welcomes the conclusion of this lengthy process, which has taken a significant toll on the community and the NT Police Force”.
“The government will now take the time to consider the findings and recommendations, noting that much has changed over the last six years,” a government spokesperson said.
Deep in the coronial findings were also several matters that helped the family reckon with the shooting that night.
This included a finding from Armitage that she was “firmly satisfied that the account given by Mr Rolfe about Kumanjayi’s hand being on his Glock cannot be accepted”. This was the account Rolfe had given for the first time during his murder trial, and had again given evidence about during the inquest, in which he alleged Walker had touched his gun shortly before he fired it.
The findings that Rolfe was racist, and not a “bad apple”, but rather part of an organisation infected with institutional racism, also gave the family some comfort, even if Armitage could not clearly say Walker died because of this racism.
Armitage noted, with some irony, that after Rolfe resisted racism being part of the inquest for two years, he then gave evidence which uncovered “grotesque” racist awards within the force’s tactical officers.
Rolfe, for his part, released a statement via his lawyer, Luke Officer, saying he “does not accept many of the findings” and suggesting the NT supreme court should consider the proper scope of inquests, accusing the coroner of going beyond her remit. He specifically rejected her finding that he was racist, saying: “Insofar as some may hold a view to the contrary, this was never about race”.
Counsel for the NT Police also argued against the breadth of the inquiry, writing in their final submission that the coroner did not have powers to conduct “a roving royal commission”. Armitage wrote that the Coroners Act required her to make recommendations to prevent future deaths in similar circumstances, and granted a “broad discretion as to the matters to be considered”.
The family were concerned, however, that Armitage did not make specific recommendations to reform police accountability, given her findings about Rolfe’s previous uses of force.
She was satisfied that on at least five occasions, he used a level of force that was unnecessary, had concerns about the force used on a further two occasions, and found there were other instances where the use of force was avoidable.
“There were instances where Mr Rolfe used force without proper regard for the risk of injury to persons, all of whom were Aboriginal boys or men, and significant injuries were caused to suspects because of his use of force,” Armitage found.
More than three years ago, when Hargraves spoke outside the tall white walls of the NT supreme court in Darwin, after Rolfe’s acquittal, he shouted: “When are we going to get justice? When?”
On Tuesday, he said it was hard to know if he was any closer to justice.
“We were coming that close to end it,” he said.
“But again, something happens. Another one gets killed.”
In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Indigenous Australians can call 13YARN on 13 92 76 for information and crisis support. Other international helplines can be found at befrienders.org
