Indigenous leader Noel Pearson has criticised “selective outrage” over the Northern Territory juvenile detention abuse saga, saying Indigenous people need to take some responsibility.
Pearson says more focus is needed on preventing children from entering the justice system and Aboriginal people need to take more responsibility for the welfare of their children.
“We should be outraged about those things that are driving the large numbers of those tragic juveniles, who were once little babies, who were once little toddlers and who have ended up with a bag over their head being abused in an institution,” he told ABC television.
Pearson said Indigenous communities needed more empowerment.
“We’re united in relation to the outrage about the end consequences, but we’re divided over the question over whether Indigenous responsibility is a crucial part of the solution and I say it is,” he said.
Meanwhile, an intellectually disabled Aboriginal man has been strapped to a restraint chair in an Alice Springs prison 17 times since 2012, the ABC reports.
The man’s guardian, Patrick McGee, said guards lack the skills to manage him.
“A maximum security prison is the wrong place for people with intellectual disabilities and he should be in the care and treatment of the department of health, their office of disability,” he told the ABC.