The 90 leaders of the powerful Central Land Council, representing dozens of remote communities in central Australia, have issued an extraordinary joint statement rejecting the views of Northern Territory senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, saying she “needs to stop pretending we are her people”.
The CLC’s 90 members, elected by their communities to sit on the council, represent around 24,000 Aboriginal people across 777,000sq km, and represent more than fifteen different language groups in central Australia.
The delegates said that Price “neither speaks for them nor listens to them”.
In a statement from a meeting this week at Atitjere (Harts Range), council members say they are “community leaders and senior cultural men and women” who speak for the communities who elected them.
They say they are sick of Price’s continued attacks on land councils and other peak Aboriginal organisations in the NT.
“She needs to stop pretending we are her people,” said CLC deputy chair Warren Williams, who is a former assistant school principal and chair of Yuendumu’s Warlpiri youth development corporation.
“We are tired of her playing politics with the grass roots organisations our old people have built to advocate for our rights and interests,” Williams said.
Williams invited Price to the council’s next meeting to air her “grievances” with the CLC, and said it would welcome anyone able to work with them to improve lives of Aboriginal people in communities.
“We have many good men and women who are trying hard to make our communities better places, who are desperate to be heard, and Senator Price’s divisive approach isn’t helping,” he said.
The Country Liberal party’s senator for the NT, Price, a Warlpiri-Celtic woman, was appointed the opposition spokesperson on Indigenous Australians on Tuesday, after Julian Leeser quit to the backbench in order to campaign for the voice to parliament.
Price, a vocal anti-voice campaigner, has called for a federal takeover of child protection, saying foster parents have told her Indigenous children are being put back into the hands of abusers.
Price levelled serious accusations against the NT’s child protection agency in a televised appearance on Sunday as she reiterated her opposition to enshrining an Indigenous voice in the constitution.
“The only sort of referendum I would support right now is if we put the lives and the responsibility of children into the federal arena,” she told the ABC.
Price said she had heard from foster families that children were being placed in the care of abusers: “I have no reason to believe that these concerned parents are making these stories up, especially when I’ve heard them over and over again.”
Price was with Peter Dutton during the opposition leader’s visit to Alice Springs last week, where he claimed that young Indigenous children “are being sexually assaulted still on a regular basis” in the town.
The NT police minister, Kate Worden, and prominent Aboriginal Territorians reacted angrily to those claims, saying Dutton should report any wrongdoing to police for further investigation.
The CLC members said these claims were hurtful and untrue.
“Our kids are the apples of our eyes,” Williams said. “We are not abusers. We love our children. We’d like to know where she got her information from. It is mandatory to report such evidence to the authorities.”
Lajamanu community leader and Warlpiri elder Valerie Patterson said Price was misrepresenting the support for the voice in remote communities.
“I am a Warlpiri woman and I will vote yes because I believe that having the right to be heard by the parliament and the government will open a door for our children,” Patterson said.
“Senator Price should support us, not tell lies about us.”
Price declined to comment.
