Indigenous Boy's Coffin Remark Highlights 'Closing the Gap' Failures in Remote Australia

In the tiny community of Baniyala in East Arnhem Land, I sat next to a 13-year-old boy on the porch of a donga that served as a community centre for the day.

The taps in the kitchen have been running constantly because there is no hardware store or tradesman there to fix them.

The boy was funny, charismatic and deeply proud of his home.

He was carrying around a sea rights flag, designed after his elders took their case to the High Court to establish the first native title claim over the coastline of north-east Arnhem Land.

He told us confidently that it was his flag to fly.

He told me he had brothers and sisters he loves to tease, including one who had passed away just a few years ago.

And then he asked me to guess what colour his coffin was going to be.

It was as casual as if he had asked me to guess what footy team he supported, but it pulled me up short.

On the one hand, this young boy knows and lives his culture with confidence.

On the other, he has seen death so often he has his coffin colour picked out.

Righting the wrongs of the past

Death has brought me to Baniyala. At a remote burial ground, nine Yolŋu ancestors taken from the Northern Territory by an anthropologist almost a century ago were laid to rest in a repatriation ceremony to help heal the "wrongs of the past".

Before the Garma Festival began, I travelled almost 200 kilometres to the homeland the way most people get there, via small charter plane. To drive from Nhulunbuy takes more than three hours, mostly on dirt roads.

Baniyala is home to about 150 people, mostly members of the Maḏarrpa clan, almost all of whom attended the ceremony I was there to observe.

While the community is strong and their country is beautiful, their lives are tough.

It is not new that those living in remote communities do without so much that we in the cities take for granted — like a hospital, major supermarket, or even phone service.

As a visitor, I could see that they are resilient and adaptive in ways most Australians do not have to be and do not really understand.

'Killing our people and our future'

From Gulkula, in north-east Arnhem Land, the beauty of the land and the pride of Yolŋu people is everywhere.

They are strong in their culture and identity, which sits at the centre of life here in the territory.

But their lives and the lives of so many Indigenous Australians are harder, shorter, and poorer.

Leaders like independent territory MP Yolŋu elder Yingiya Guyula lay the blame for so much of the struggle here at the feet of governments he says do not listen to communities.

"Even though I have been sent by my people to be their voice and fix these problems, each time the [Country Liberal Party] passes these laws, they take part in a slow genocide of our people," Guyula told the Garma Festival.

"Each law is another step on the path to killing our people and culture."

The gaps that have not closed

Closing the gap in health, wealth and life expectancy has long been the ambition of state, territory and federal governments, and it has been the subject of many conversations at Garma Festival over the past three days.

But despite an overhaul to the agreement in 2020, the gap persists, and there is now renewed focus on how to make the national agreement work for Indigenous people.

Like many discussions in this space, opinions are divided.

Palawa activist Michael Mansell believes the agreement is "corrupt".

Others, like National Children's Commissioner Sue-Anne Hunter, believe accountability for the failure to meet targets is key.

"Who's accountable for these targets? Who answers for these targets not being met? When it doesn't, whose heads roll? At this point it doesn't seem that anybody is accountable for those targets," she told me.

Others fall somewhere in the middle, like Shadow Indigenous Affairs and Education Minister Julian Leeser, who wants to change the focus of governments around the targets.

"If we are going to shift the dial, we have to understand whether federally funded interventions are achieving their intended outcomes and if they are not, why not. Unfortunately, the Closing the Gap data does not tell us that story," he told the Garma Festival on Friday.

But the common ground between these varied viewpoints is clear: the clock is fast running out to meet targets by 2031, and something needs to change soon.

Because we can all recognise it is not normal for kids, like that young boy I met in Baniyala, to be thinking about the colours of their coffins.

He told me his coffin will be white and his little sister's will be green.