On 7 July, NT Coroner Elizabeth Armitage delivered a long-awaited report on the death of Kumanjayi Walker, a 19-year-old Warlpiri man shot dead at point-blank range by former NT Constable Zachary Rolfe in the remote community of Yuendumu in 2019.
The findings come as the Yuendumu community is still reeling from the death of another young Warlpiri man, Kumanjayi White, who was killed by off-duty police in Coles in Alice Springs on 27 May.
Armitage’s report lays bare the “entrenched, systemic and structural racism” at the heart of the NT Police including “normalised” usage of racist, violent language that paints Aboriginal people as subhuman.
Rolfe himself routinely used such language and often bragged about his violent arrests of Aboriginal people, showing off body-worn footage to his mates.
Rolfe was involved in 46 reported violent incidents before shooting Kumanjayi. Despite some incidents being under investigation, he had faced no consequences and indeed won acclaim from senior officers.
Rolfe served in the ADF in Afghanistan and carried this “us and them” military mindset into frontline policing in the NT. He had been rejected from the Queensland police for lying about previous offences but was welcomed in the NT.
Rolfe described working as part of the paramilitary-style Immediate Response Team deployed to remote communities as “a sweet gig” where “you just get to do cowboy shit with no rules”.
He led the lethal raid on the house where Kumanjayi was staying against the arrest plan made by local police. Another former ADF soldier involved in the raid guarded the back door with an AR-15 assault rifle.
Armitage’s findings about “systemic racism” were welcomed by the Justice for Walker campaign, representing Kumanjayi’s family and Warlpiri community leaders.
A host of Aboriginal, legal and human rights organisations signed onto a statement from Justice for Walker, demanding the NT government implement Armitage’s recommendations for increased resourcing of community-based programs and authority for Warlpiri people.
But despite her damning findings, Armitage did not make any recommendations that would deliver accountability for anyone responsible for Kumanjayi’s death.
Rolfe was charged with murder soon after the killing but found not guilty in 2022. Not a single Aboriginal person served on the jury and evidence of Rolfe’s racism and violence was disallowed in the trial.
Movement
Murder charges following a death in custody are virtually unheard of. In the case of Rolfe, the charges came after an unprecedented wave of protests at police stations across remote NT communities.
On the night Rolfe was charged, hundreds of Warlpiri people were making their way to Alice Springs for a mass march on the police and solidarity marches were being held across Australia. The murder charge defused this explosive momentum.
But a grassroots protest movement needs to be urgently rebuilt to stop continuing deaths in custody, escalating incarceration rates Australia-wide and a tidal wave of racist “law and order” policies being enacted by the NT government.
Snap protests of thousands of people across Australia in June responding to the death of Kumanjayi White show there is a real mood to fight back.
Chief Minister Lia Finocchiaro responded to the Walker inquest report with contempt, threatening to cut funding to the Coroner’s office and change legislation to limit its powers.
On 31 July, the Country Liberal Party rammed through changes to the Youth Justice Act to lock up children as young as ten, remove limitations on the use of force by guards, reinstate the use of spit hoods and allow deployment of attack dogs in youth prisons.
Forty-five NT based paediatricians wrote to Finocchiaro opposing these reforms, only for her to dismiss their opinions as a “waste of time”.
But anger is growing. A number of these doctors spoke at a protest outside the Palmerston watch-house outside Darwin, organised by the grassroots campaign group Justice not Jails (JnJ).
JnJ is calling on the federal government to “sanction the NT”—cut off funding to the NT government until it respects Aboriginal rights and redirects funds to Aboriginal organisations.
At a media conference following a historic joint meeting of the four NT Land Councils on 24 July, Central Land Council Deputy Chair Barbara Shaw condemned the government’s “disgusting racist policies” that were “stacking and racking” Aboriginal people in prison.
Shaw tabled a letter from Ned Jampijinpa Hargraves at the meeting, grandfather of Kumanjayi White, calling on Land Council delegates to join his family and other supporters and community leaders in a major march on the NT Parliament when it sits in October.
By Paddy Gibson
