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Between fear and hope: invasion by Stealth 2007 to H.C. (Nugget) Coombs: Nonie Sharp reflects upon the now vanquished Howard government's northern invasion, its meaning for indigenous autonomy, and the legacy of H. C. Coombs.

Article Excerpt
I. An Ear to the Wind

The intervention rolled in, its entry was in silence, documents pasted on the door, done in stealth. There was and still is no communication about why or how or what else is to happen. People sit and wait. One elderly woman said, 'We have seen it all before'. Her sister proclaims, 'Our fighting for citizenship, our fighting for country our fighting for family have all been made rubbish'. Canberra is a long way away but people are angry with Canberra because that is where the silence has come from, the silence that has a power and authority to once again rule the lives of people that are statistical evidence, not human, merely black and therefore in need of 'help'.

The scene is a camp in a northern township and John Bradley is with the old people he's known for thirty years; they're talking together in language about the latest hunting trip. They're in conversation too about the Northern Territory National Emergency Response Act 2007 (Cwth) as it unfolds for the clans of one coastal community.

People are against it because of the way it was done, the stealth in which it was introduced and the denial of any response. As one elderly woman said: 'Well my kids and grandkids they didn't know welfare days, but now they do, and now they know what they have to fight, what's changed is nothing. We are still just the black people with no brain!'

They're talking about the return of that 'sinking feeling', of the 'two sticks of tobacco, two blanket' days. Will a new humiliation drive people to despair? Make worse a sorry situation the intervention is purported to put right?

Despite its imposition by stealth and its 'denial of any response', by 25 October 2007 the Commonwealth legislation finds a highly spirited response. On that day, a High Court challenge is brought by one traditional landowner and a community organisation of the township of Maningrida on the coast of Arnhem Land. Their writ disputes the right of the Commonwealth to take over traditional lands recognised in law according to the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act 1976 (Cwth) and the Native Title Act 1993 (Cwth).

In suspending the plaintiff's rights to land under the intervention, the Commonwealth has the right to exclusive possession, use and enjoyment of all traditional land within the Maningrida township, including sacred sites, for five years. As of 17 February 2008, power won by members of this community in 1976 when the Land Rights Act became law is suspended. As Mal Brough and the Australian government know well, should this legal challenge succeed, it will put an end to a key element of the intervention.

Notwithstanding its stealthy beginnings, one strand of public response to the intervention begins at the ANU's Darwin outpost on 21 June, the day of its announcement. Jon Altman and Melinda Hinkson are at 'Nugget's Place' listening to a national emergency declaration imposing martial law in seventy-three Indigenous communities in the Northern Territory. An 'emergency we didn't have to have', they reflect in the weeks ahead. In the book Coercive Reconciliation, Jon Altman sums up the terms of...

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