The Wire

In the wake of this week’s shocking expose of the connection between petrol sniffing and child abuse on at least one indigenous community, indigenous elder Mona Tur decided to send he own message of sadness and support for the elder who spoke out on the program. Mona has worked for more than thirty years on the problem of petrol sniffing and she says governments still try to solve it by bringing in experts rather than working with the communities themselves. Lillian Holt who has worked in aboriginal eduction for three decades says the media tends to either romanticise or demonise indigenous issues without really tackling the entrenched racism which she says is the heart of the problem.