King Brown Country by Russell Skelton

The Betrayal of Papunya

Background
Walkley award-winning journalist Russell Skelton presents a devastatingly revealing portrait of Papunya, a Western Desert community that once showed such promise, now a community in severe crisis. Set with the backdrop of Papunya, a Northern Territory Aboriginal community whose history showed so much promise but whose dysfunction is now more prominent that its famous artwork, King Brown Country is a book that has to be published. It goes to the core of Indigenous issues today to expose unmitigated misery, shocking levels of domestic violence and sex abuse and extreme alcohol and substance dependency. But above all, it reveals how a powerful fiefdom was allowed to rule unchallenged and unchecked to the great detriment of a once secure community and explains why the intervention was necessary, and why it may not work. King Brown Country is a powerful and shaming portrait of a community in crisis. Papunya remains an emblem for the failure of all Australians to come to terms with the continent's oldest inhabitants.

Review

In the main this book deals with the failure of bureaucracy to check on the failings and use of government money by the indigenous community running Papunya.  It names and provides details of a number of individuals who used the money to their own advantage, and at the same time doing nothing concrete to help the communities they are supposedly looking after.  While this happening the government agencies charged with the oversight just turn a blind eye. The book made compelling reading was well written and I got through it in pretty quick time.
4/5