DARWIN — An Aboriginal protest camp on vacant Crown land in the northern suburbs has ended tragically after the sudden death of one of the protesters.
Bob Bunduwabi died on January 22 after two months of defying repeated attempts by the NT Department of Lands, Planning and Environment to forcibly evict him from his campsite. He had camped on the Lee Point site for five years until July last year when the camp was closed as part of a campaign by the city council and NT government to drive homeless Aborigines out of the city. There are massive development plans to make Darwin "another Singapore" and the Aborigines are not wanted.
On November 24, Bob Bunduwabi led a small group in a return to his Lee Point site. As a young man he had been incarcerated in the East Arm Leprosarium. After many years segregation from his people and country, (the Blythe River region of central Arnhem Land), he was sent, with other patients, to survive in the bushland fringe camps of Darwin when the leprosarium was closed in 1982. He claimed he was treated "like wallaby, like dingo", hounded from place to place like vermin. Having lost both feet and all his fingers during his institutionalisation, Bob was dependent on his extended family for support.
Last September, Bob lodged a complaint with the Anti-Discrimination Commission of the NT, claiming that he had lived in the city for more than 20 years and had a right to be represented. He also cited the government's failure to provide enough town camps for Aborigines who chose to live in Darwin.
The complaint was accepted and had almost reached the hearing stage when Bob Bunduwabi died. An interim order to stay the eviction had been issued by the commission, but the complaint has now lapsed with Bob's death.
Bill Day, an anthropologist working with the group, claims that the NT Anti-Discrimination Act 1992 is discriminatory because it does not allow representative complaints. "Aborigines are more likely to suffer discrimination as a group, as this case shows. Now Bob's people must start the complaint process from the beginning, although they have been living in atrocious conditions without sewerage or water since being moved from Lee Point last year.
"There are likely to be more deaths before any new complaint can be heard. Although there is a continuing succession of people prepared to come forward in Bob Bunduwabi's place, to do so would be like volunteering as targets in a shooting gallery, to be shot down one by one. Whatever they decide to do, Bob Bunduwabi's death has made the people even more determined. If there ever was a martyr, he was one."
[Green Left Weekly received permission from Bob's family to print his name.]