Aboriginal Leaders To Target Traffickers

[Oz]

Aboriginal leaders will co-operate in identifying traffickers in alcohol, drugs and petrol in South Australia's Anangu Pitjantjatjara lands, the area's new service delivery co-ordinator, Bob Collins, said last night.

 

After talks with a women's council in Alice Springs this week, Mr Collins said he wanted to make the lands safer for those who lived there. About 50 attended the administrative centre of Umuwa last night with stories of social breakdown.

 

"Services on the lands are bogged in the sand up to the axle and I plan to get them unbogged, I can promise you that," Mr Collins told them.

 

The Pitjantjatjara Lands are Australia's oldest self-governing tribal lands.

 

Punch Thompson told the meeting that two years ago he lost a son to petrol sniffing. He said ATSIC had done nothing to help improve life on the lands by tackling petrol sniffing and drinking problems, which were endemic to the area.

 

He said he had moved his family out to the homelands - isolated tribal settlements away from the community - far from the scourges of petrol and marijuana.

 

"ATSIC was not working for the Anangu (the people), not looking after the Anangu because there were not enough services," Mr Thompson said.

 

He said people wanted to help South Australia's Premier Mike Rann and Mr Collins to work through the problems.

 

Mantatjara Wilson said dealers from Alice Springs and Port Augusta were bringing alcohol, petrol and drugs into the lands and young people's lives were being destroyed.

 

"That's why in the communities it's getting worse and worse," she said. "Young people hanging themselves and drugs getting worse."

 

By Penelope Debelle

Source: The Age