The moment coroner Elisabeth Armitage finished speaking about Kumanjayi Walker’s death in Yuendumu, nobody seemed to know what to do.
There was a silence, an air of uncertainty. Some people gave a few short claps, including a young boy, before realising this was not an occasion for applause.
That is often the way with inquests, and particularly inquests about the deaths in custody of Aboriginal people – it is not the findings themselves, but what comes next, that matters. Too often what comes next has been: more preventable deaths.
Armitage sets forth a course over 683 pages, with 33 recommendations, to stop more deaths like Walker’s. He was shot three times by Zachary Rolfe, then a police constable, at house 511 in Yuendumu, a town 300km north-west of Alice Springs, during a bungled arrest in November 2019. The house is barely 400 metres from where Armitage handed down her findings on Monday.
The murder charge that Rolfe faced and was found not guilty of more than four years ago centred on 3.1 seconds between when he shot Walker the first time and when he shot him twice more.
But Armitage was working in centuries, tracing back the impacts of colonisation on the Warlpiri, expanding on the link between the horrors they had faced from police and governments for generations.
“The memory of the 1928 Coniston massacre, the last recorded state-sanctioned massacre of Aboriginal people, which occurred not far from Yuendumu, remains enormously significant today,” Armitage said.
“Many stories are still told of who hid where and who was killed.
“Warren Williams, who was born 28 years after the massacre, and was a grandfather to Kumanjayi, said that his old uncle had ‘put himself into a hollow and he got burnt out like a rabbit and he took off to Mount Theo, as others had done’.”
Armitage’s recommendations for the NT government included mandatory drug and alcohol testing for police after a critical incident, as occurs in every other jurisdiction in Australia. She also recommended creating a 10-year plan for youth in Yuendumu, an expanded night patrol in the remote community, a review of the availability of youth services, including the provision of on-country rehabilitation and diversion services, and possibly a leadership group for Yuendumu.
She said NT general duties police should no longer openly carry AR-15 semi-automatic assault rifles, as Rolfe’s arrest team had done in Yuendumu. The only exceptions would be with documented prior approval by a senior sergeant (or above), in an emergency, or “for the lawful destruction of an animal”. There should be clear procedures for specialist units using the same weapons.
It should ensure that the force’s cultural reform command should have a similar structure to domestic violence and youth commands, in that it is led by an assistant commissioner, who has power to issue directions.
It must also ensure there are clear investigative structures and procedures for when criminal and coronial investigations run side by side.
Of the multitude of failings uncovered during the inquest, many of which led to other failings, Armitage found not enough was known about the problems Walker faced growing up, and that if they were, perhaps police could have had a better strategy for arresting him.
From the age of around 13 years, Walker engaged in substance abuse, including using cannabis and sniffing alcohol, petrol and solvents. In early 2014, he was identified as a “high-risk youth” by the Warlpiri Youth Development Aboriginal Corporation (WYDAC).
A plan was developed with the families who were caring for him, and he took part in a four-week diversion program at Mount Theo, back where his ancestors fled during the massacre decades earlier.
“They were looked after, and guided, by elders and a youth worker or counsellor and he did well there,” Armitage said.
He was dead before he was 20, having spent about half of every year between 13 and 18 under some form of restraint.
“I have little doubt that Kumanjayi’s behavioural problems as a teenager and young adult stem from his exposure to alcohol in utero and the trauma he experienced as a young child, largely because of his exposure to violence, alcohol and neglect,” Armitage said.
“There is a growing body of evidence about the long-term negative impact on children from exposure to trauma, particularly domestic family violence, during their formative years.”
She recommended that NT Health “in an effort to both prevent and address trauma experienced by young people like Kumanjayi” strengthen its developmental screening programs for children under five years.
Armitage also recommended NT Health should only remove staff from remote communities, as they had in the days leading up to Walker’s death, as a last resort, and should strengthen recruitment and support of Aboriginal staff.
Armitage, her team of lawyers assisting, senior police including acting commissioner Martin Dole, other lawyers, including one representing Rolfe, and media, all started arriving in Yuendumu in the morning.
They drove the same way Rolfe came, along the Tanami Road, the only paved road into town.
Armitage and her team went back the way they had come soon after the verdict, with the rest following, back towards Alice Springs, and accommodation at a roadhouse about an hour away, in Tilmouth Well.
As they did, the house Walker was killed in lay silent, as it largely has since being turned into a makeshift shrine in the days after his death.
A large Aboriginal flag has been painted on one wall, and plastic flowers, in vivid colours, have been strung outside. Occasionally, a desert breeze got up, giving them a flicker of life, before they fell still again.
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
