Homeless Aborigines evicted

Homeless Aborigines evicted

DARWIN — At sunrise on May 29, police raided a camp of homeless Aboriginal people occupying bush land at Lee Point. The group — who had camped there for 18 days in defiance of eviction orders from the minister of lands, planning and environment — were woken by a convoy of paddy wagons and government vehicles.

Nine campers, including two children, were surrounded by burly police enforcing an eviction order from vacant crown land under the Trespass Act.

Two weeks earlier, the group had ignored a notice under the act to leave the site within 24 hours and had forced the department into talks after invading its offices in Darwin. Their actions defied the policy of chief minister Shane Stone to drive homeless Aborigines from land required for tourist developments.

Although the land is under a native title claim by the Larrakia people, the nine Lee Point protesters have been banned from entering the area for 12 months. Bill Day, an anthropologist working with the group, was arrested and charged with two counts of trespass.

From GLW issue 278