Ongoing fighting involving crossbows, spears and axes in an outback Northern Territory (NT) town divided by clan rivalry is exasperating police amid calls for people to be relocated to tribal homelands.
Cars have been torched and police vehicles damaged during brawls in Wadeye that involved more than 100 people, including children as young as eight.
The social unrest in the township, 395 kilometres southwest of Darwin, has been going on for weeks, prompting the deployment of extra police.
Officers have made multiple arrests and seized crossbows, spears, bows and arrows, boomerangs and hatchets.
A 34-year-old man was shot in the arm with a crossbow in Wadeye on Jan. 7 and flown to Darwin with non-life-threatening injuries.
Wadeye, a township of nearly 2,000 people, comprises 28 clans and seven language groups living on Kardu Diminin traditional lands.
Long-running clan disputes have fuelled the social unrest in the town, formerly the site of the Port Keats mission.
In April 2022, violence erupted between family groups, with one man killed in the fighting and hundreds of residents forced from their homes due to arson attacks.
Police recently responded when large groups in Wadeye started fighting with makeshift weapons, including window louvres.
Attempts to disperse them, including using pepper spray, were ineffective as the groups reformed and continued to fight and damage property, police said.
“It is clear that law enforcement alone cannot address the underlying causes of these senseless acts,” Acting Commander Terry Zhang said.
He said a collective response involving families and community leaders was essential to end the violence.
“Ongoing behaviour of this nature places the broader community, innocent people, and essential services at serious risk and could ultimately result in the loss or disruption of critical services.”
NT Chief Minister Lia Finocchiaro has urged the Wadeye community to come together to find a resolution to the disputes that continue to “wreak havoc in that community.”
Deputy state Opposition Leader Dheran Young said community leaders in his electorate were working hard to ease tensions.
The Labor member wants the NT government to back a plan to enable families to return to their tribal homelands to live on their own country and ease clan tensions in Wadeye.
A report advocating the plan following consultations with all 22 traditional owner groups in the town has been handed to the government.
“It clearly and specifically states in there that a movement back to the homelands will help ease some of those tensions within Wadeye,” Young told reporters.
“We’re not going to fix this overnight, we need a 10-year plan to look at people moving back to their homelands and Wadeye being a service hub.”
