Control is the Oldest Reflex

From custody to culture to the page, the state still decides who gets to speak, survive, and be seen - even during reconciliation week.

The state has always reserved its tightest grip for First Peoples. Control is its oldest reflex. Over land, over language, over culture and over bodies. When it begins to lose control, even slightly, it reacts. Swiftly. Brutally. Predictably.

This month, that control has worn three faces. In Mpartwe, young Warlpiri-Luritja man, Kumanjayi White died under police restraint inside a supermarket. On the Burrup Peninsula, gas expansion moves closer to destroying rock art that holds the memory of millennia, a place like no other on the brink of becoming as extinct as some of the fauna carved into the rock. In Brisbane, a First Nations author was stripped of a literary fellowship for expressing solidarity with Palestine.

These are not separate events. They are branches of the same fault line; cracks in a country that recoils at the presence of Aboriginal sovereignty, voice, or survival unless it can control the terms.

These three stories are not equal in measure, but they all sit in the same dark, cramped space within the Australian psyche. A place where things are seen, heard and then forgotten; only to be felt as a dull unease when events like them happen again, and then the cycle continues.

All the while, the calendar tells us it’s Reconciliation Week.

A time, we are told, to officially reflect. To acknowledge the truth of this place, and reckon with it. But what are we to reflect, when these are the truths laid bare? When the weight of history is made immediate; tangible on a supermarket floor, in the whir of a gas plant, in the silence that follows a rescinded award?

What are we to reckon with, when a 24-year-old Warlpiri man dies in restraint, under state guardianship, ‘he was hungry, not a criminal’, his Grandfather Ned Jampijinpa Hargraves said of the young man in who was living in supported accomodation. Somehow, that still wasn’t enough to keep him safe. If that isn’t the question at the heart of this country’s reckoning, then what is?

What are we to remember, when memory itself is being eroded off the face of the earth? On the Burrup Peninsula, home to more than a million petroglyphs carved into rock over tens of thousands of years, the air itself is corrosive. These carvings aren’t relics; they are living links to country, kin, story, and spirit. And yet, the federal government has indicated it will extend key environmental approvals for the giant North West Shelf project, effectively greenlighting one of the country’s largest new fossil fuel developments for another 45 years.

This decision, signed off by newly minted Environment Minister Murray Watt, ensures the project can proceed, despite its impact on the climate and cultural heritage, placing even more pressure on a region already buckling under the weight of industry. Expert reports have been rushed, critical concerns ignored.

Under the haze of emissions, the stories carved into stone begin to dissolveWhat is being lost cannot be measured in dollars or deadlines. It is memory, culture, and belonging.

What are we to celebrate, when a writer is punished for refusing to look away? Karen Wyld, a Martu writer and commentator known for her work amplifying Aboriginal perspectives, had written a manuscript, a multi-generational story tracing the enduring trauma of the Stolen Generations, had been selected for the black&write! Fellowship; a national program housed at the State Library of Queensland, judged by First Nations peers and designed to amplify Indigenous voices and stories. But just hours before she was to formally accept the award, it was stripped away.

The reason? A now-deleted tweet from months earlier, in which Wyld expressed solidarity with Palestine. That was all it took. The state moved swiftly and predictably. A journalist got in touch before the library did. The ceremony was cancelled. The work, once championed, was recast as a liability. It was astonishing in its speed, and yet, entirely unsurprising. A familiar choreography performed the moment a Black voice moves beyond the script set for it.

Wyld’s story is being framed as a controversy, but it’s something older and more familiar: punishment for refusing silence. In Parliament, the Queensland Arts Minister said the state should not fund those who "justify terrorism." The facts of her manuscript, the years of writing behind it, the truth it carried—none of that mattered. What mattered was the discomfort her voice triggered. The message to other writers was clear: the terms of recognition are narrow, and easily revoked.

That is the quiet machinery at work. The calibrated response of a state that meets Aboriginal presence not with respect, but with control. Whether it's a writer, a sacred site, or a young man in custody, the same cold logic applies. Violence is not always visible. It comes dressed in procedure, cloaked in policy. A name disappears from a program, folded out of the schedule with bureaucratic precision. A permit clears the desk, indifferent to the humanity it threatens. A life ends in custody and is promptly filed under investigation, bracketed by statements and silence.

Each of these decisions are presented as reasonable, each loss rationalised, as though stories, places, and people were mere administrative obstacles; unfortunate but necessary casualties in the operation of the nation.

But the stories don’t disappear. Not really. They hang in the air. They speak through ceremony and protest and testimony. They are carried by aunties and cousins and colleagues who refuse to let the names be buried under official language. They remind us that this country is not post-colonial. It is actively colonial, still.

This Reconciliation Week, the slogans bounce off the public square; familiar, rehearsed, and ultimately hollow. Bridging Now to Next, they say, as though the path is even and agreed upon, as though there’s been a crossing and not just a deepening of the divide. But whose bridge is it? And who decides what counts as the "next"?

A voice that must ask for permission, that is judged for its discomfort, or that is dismissed when it speaks too plainly, is not a voice at all; it is a warning, issued softly. And a reconciliation that tolerates only obedience and forgets too quickly is not a bridge, it’s a wall with a new name.

The state has made clear it will only reconcile on terms it can control. It recoils from grief that lingers and resists memory that refuses to be smoothed into narrative. Solidarity that stretches beyond borders is punished. Truth that will not be edited to fit the nation’s mood is declared too much, too soon, too inconvenient.

Still, the stories persist. Karen Wyld’s manuscript continues its journey, held now by those who see it clearly. The carvings of Murujuga remain, though they grow fainter under a sky of sanctioned destruction. In Yuendumu and across the country, names are still whispered and shouted, remembered and honoured, no matter how many reports close the file.

These are not metaphors. These are not symbols for reconciliation breakfast speeches or strategic plans. They are the living, enduring presence of people and places the nation would rather render silent. What they demand is not applause or permission, but justice, truth, and time.

So we end this Reconciliation Week mourning another young life lost in custody. His death is not an isolated tragedy; it is part of a shameful legacy. Nearly 600 Aboriginal people have died in custody since the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody handed down its recommendations over thirty years ago. In his case, the police, as they do, have ruled out an independent inquiry into his death; this is where control and silence meet in a clinically brutal alliance.

Uncle Ned asked: "Where is the justice for my grandson? Where is the truth for our people?"

We must carry these questions with us. Not just for this week, but always. To honour him, and every other name that has been written into the long and painful record of this nation’s failure to protect Aboriginal lives, we must keep speaking, keep pushing, keep remembering. Because silence is what the system depends on. And memory held loud, stubborn, and unrelenting, is our refusal.