‘Family is going to vote Yes so I’ll vote Yes’: understanding the remote Indigenous vote

Information on how, when and where to cast a ballot in the Voice to Parliament referendum failed to reach many remote Indigenous communities in the Northern Territory, but so too did the big question of what it is.

Local Indigenous members of multiple central Australian communities told Crikey and reporting partner Indigenous Community Television (ICTV) that they’d either not heard of the Voice or didn’t know much about it.

“They know it’s about Australia, but they don’t know what it’s going to really do,” Traditional Owner and Yuelamu Community Development Program (CDP) chair Cliffy Tommy said.

“Some family I know, they don’t speak English, they just vote. They listen to other families — ‘This family is going to vote Yes so I’ll vote Yes’ — but it’s better to tell them properly what it means in language, for the Yes and for the No. You start talking language, these mob will understand what it’s all about.”

Although the official date for the referendum is just over a week away, remote communities have the opportunity to vote (albeit limited by poor planning and communications) in the three weeks before October 14.

Crikey and ICTV spent three days driving up the Tanami trailing remote voter services in Yuelamu (Mt Allen) and Laramba (Napperby), as well as a visit to Yuendumu in anticipation of the vote yesterday and today (October 5 and 6).

In Yuelamu, CDP senior coordinator and team leader Taylor Whitbread told Crikey and ICTV that she’d had many conversations with local community members to gauge if they had enough information on the referendum itself, what the vote was for, and what voting Yes or No meant.

“A lot of the responses I got were, ‘I’m confused. I’m not sure how it will make a difference or what difference it would make’,” she said.

Whitbread reiterated that providing information in Indigenous languages over English (which for many is a “third, fourth, fifth or sixth” language) is essential, especially when dealing with anything government-related. For many Indigenous peoples, she said, it’s often accompanied by underlying feelings of uncertainty and fear.  

Judy Napangardi Dixon, Yuelamu presenter for PAW Media (representing the Pintubi, Anmatjere and Warlpiri people), said she voted Yes following conversations with family: “Family make me happy. They helped me write Yes.”

Also stationed at Yuelamu was NT Attorney-General and Arrernte and Gurindji man Chansey Japanangka Paech. The community is part of his electorate of Gwoja and also his family. Paech told Crikey and ICTV that there’d been “lots of good questions” about the changes, what it meant, the ins and outs of the constitution, and what a future with Voice looks like for mob in the bush, but he said these conversations were limited to people “coming up, sitting down, talking” to one another in language within community.

“The only conversations that I have seen happening is local community people talking to their community in language — asking and answering questions on both sides, Yes and No, and talking to people about the options,” he said.

“As a proud Aboriginal person known as Japanangka in my communities, I have been talking to people on the telephone, on Facebook, on Messenger. Aboriginal people, we are smart people, we’re intelligent people, we’re on all the social media apps, we know how to communicate.”

Crikey and ICTV spoke with people coming and going from polling booths in both Yuelamu and Laramba. At each location, the majority vote was Yes.

“All my other families and next-door neighbours like Ti Tree and Laramba, I think they’ll be voting Yes. We’re all part of one nation — Anmatyerre country — so we’re all voting Yes,” Tommy said, adding that the resounding reason was that “they reckon it’s better to vote Yes for the bush people”.

“It’s different for us mob, we live out bush. Those other mob are living in the city or big towns. You need someone’s voice from the outside, from the communities, to go down to Canberra and speak up,” he said.

It’s a different story in Yuendumu, where polling is currently underway. The Warlpiri and Anmatjere community is the cultural home to No lead, Country Liberal Party Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, as well as other prominent progressive No voices (part of the Blak sovereign movement) including Ned Jampijinpa Hargraves. He told Crikey and ICTV that his people are “truly confused” and don’t know what they’re meant to say Yes to: “We want to know what we are signing. If I gave you something in Warlpiri, would you sign it?”

Speaking in Warlpiri through a translator, Hargraves said that the Voice pitch to Kardiya (non-Indigenous people) does not translate to Yapa (Indigenous people).

“What do we hear? What do Kardiya hear? I know that Kardiya say it’s good — ‘You’ll be in the constitution’. What is the constitution?” Hargraves said.

“Our constitution is about how we think and speak.”

Back in Mparntwe (Alice Springs), Crikey and ICTV roved around town to speak with other Warlpiri mob in the lead-up to their vote, either back in community or in the town camps. Two voters confirmed they’d never heard of the referendum, and a third said they found out via Facebook and TikTok.

During each interview, ICTV Warlpiri translator Theresa Napurrurla Ross framed the concept of a Voice in language: “I want to explain to you about this Voice to Parliament. They will be choosing a woman and a man, two each from all over Australia for this Voice to Parliament.”

“Well, some of us don’t know anything about that, nothing,” Warlpiri man Anthony responded.

He said he planned to vote No because he believed a Yes vote would allow government to “rush onto Country” and mine sacred sites. Pointing to the track record of governments past, Anthony was clear that nothing would change his mind.

“The government always say, ‘We will do this, we will do that, if you vote for us. But there’s no good outcome, nothing happening. For me, I will say No because government are lying. I don’t believe what they say.”