Linda's Reviews > The Intervention: An Anthology

This is an important book, one that every Australian (and non-Australian interested in the rights of First Nation peoples) ought to read. Since Prime Minister John Howard launched the military-led Intervention into Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory in 2007, there has been intermittent discussion of its methods, consequences and ongoing effects in the Australian media, but until now, it has been difficult for even sympathetic outsiders to understand the full range, import and impact of this complex, neo-paternalistic policy on life in the NT. Rosie Scott and Anita Heiss have edited an anthology that includes historical background, statements by Aboriginal community and other leaders,official statements eye-witness accounts and more by both Indigenous and non-Indigenous contributors and powerful poetry on the subject by the award-winning Aboriginal poets Ali Cobby Eckerman and Samuel Wagan Watson. I have read Eckerman's epic 'Intervention Payback', in which she takes on the voice of an older man in the community where she lives four times: '...Mal Brough/he come with the army/we got real frightened true/thought he was gonna take the kids away/just like tjamu and nan bin tell us/I run my kids in the sand hills/took my rifle up there and sat...' This crowd-funded book will shake you and move you and make you ask: what can we do to change things?