Elder Bella Bropho, at the gate of the Swan Valley Nyungah Community. Image – www.inourcommunity.com.au
Perth’s Swan Valley Nyungah Community, closed down eleven years ago, their homes bulldozed by order of the Premier of Western Australia earlier this year, are now grieving the loss of another of their own on the streets, this time a baby. Since the Government closed down the once thriving community, many were made chronically homeless. Several have died on the cold dank streets of Perth in that time, including two sisters in consecutive winters.
Now a young homeless mother, who once had a home in the community, has lost her newborn baby.
The people of the Swan Valley Nyungah Community had never endured a total disconnection with their Country as have just about all of this continent’s First People in the regions of now major cities from colonialisation onward. In one way or another they had hung on to a sliver of their Country whether by being ‘allowed’ to live side by side with the colonialists, or by buying back their own Country – 20 hectares of it – and then by a long struggle of protests for the right to live on it in a community setting. In 1993, Governor Michael Jeffries handed them back their land with a complement of rights and declared it an Aboriginal Reserve. In 1997, Premier Richard Court supported their right to build homes and facilities, a road and a school in the community. In 2003, because of allegations of sexual abuses which were never contained to individuals, then Premier Geoff Gallop orchestrated a rushed Act of Parliament, closing the community and inducing a homelessness for which he should forever hang his head in shame.
For eleven years the Community’s Elders and former residents have stayed solid in calling for the return of their Land. But on March 18, in a clandestine act of defiance by the Government, without any notice, just as the campaigners were building momentum in the call for the reclaiming of their land and homes, Premier Colin Barnett ordered the demolition of the homes – a crack of dawn exercise. The former residents turned up to the site as word spread of the razing to find they had arrived there too late.
The Government has never acknowledged the homelessness they induced nor the deaths on the streets, such is their racism. Racism comes in veils and layers.
Community Elder, Bella Bropho was broken hearted by the loss of the baby, who was her grandniece.
“Our niece, our deceased sister’s daughter, who was homeless, has lost her first baby, just after birth in Joondalup Hospital where she was taken from the streets.”
She was the daughter of one of Ms Bropho’s two sisters who died on the streets.
“She was living on the streets of Perth before the baby was born, but her home had been at the Swan Valley Nyungah Community. Her home is the bulldozed Swan Valley Nyungah Community,” said Ms Bropho.
“What choice did she have?”
Ms Bropho said that decisions made by the Government of the day led to “tragic consequences.”
“Two sisters of ours lost, one brother lost, and a horrific accidental death of another niece, now a newborn baby lost – all of them made homeless, all of them homeless.”
“Many of our homeless Community members living on the streets endure severe health problems – they are at risk.”
Ms Bropho lamented all the hard work and toil over decades for the building of the Community, the 1977 protests and the Swan Valley Aboriginal Tent Embassy. “Our houses that we designed and built – from 1998 to 2002 – to be warm and safe on our sacred land were bulldozed earlier this year.”
“It was wanton destruction by this Government when so many of our people are still homeless, sick and suffering. Our Community and the houses were designed to prevent the homelessness, sickness and premature deaths.”
Ms Bropho laments that the Government will more than likely transform the 20 hectares into an ‘Aboriginal’ park. But there is talk that a juvenile detention centre proposed nearby the former Community may actually be built on or include the 20 hectares – that insult would outrage the Swan Valley Nyungah Community. But officially, there is a rezoning application on the table for the Aboriginal Reserve to be turned into a park. What a waste. Till March 18, there had been eleven environmentally sensitive rammed earth homes, several other buildings, a school, with very high attendance rates, till the closure in 2003 in an otherwise very green, very natural environment.
But the Swan Valley Nyungah Community is not alone in Western Australia in having their homes swept away by the control freaks in Government. To the north, in the Kimberley, the Government wiped out a small township. A couple of years ago it closed down the many homes and services of Oombulgurri. For a time many of the residents lived squalid in any building they could find, including a toilet block, and a majority of them in nearby marshes – becoming known as the Marsh People – till many of them went itinerant to nearby Wyndham and across the Kimberley, most of them homeless to this day.
The Kimberley has one of the world’s worst homelessness rates. Seven per cent of the Kimberley is homeless, with 90 per cent of that homelessness comprising First Peoples. This in Australia’s wealthiest State.
“We have heard today, that the Western Australian Government of Premier Barnett have bulldozed all the houses of another Community – Oombulgurri,” said Ms Bropho.
“Do they know what they are doing?”
“We of the Swan Valley and the Oombulgurri people are human beings too.”
But the Swan Valley Nyungah Community will not give up on reclaiming its Land. They continue to hold the weekly vigils – every Monday from 10am to noon – at the Gates of their Community, and have done so for eleven years. On July 5 and July 20 they will hold two public meetings, one in Perth city, and the other more local to the Swan Valley Nyungah Community, hoping that the truth will matter to people, and the next steps will be announced after the forums.
For now, they mourn the loss of a baby who barely saw the light of day. We were not put on this earth to bury our children. Nor should we tolerate the trust expected of us in our Governments to be betrayed.
– For those in Perth, the forums are Saturday July 5, 2pm, Alf Faulkner Hall, Eden Hill and Saturday July 20, 1pm, Citiplace Community Center, Perth Train Station complex.
