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These Australian islands had one of the highest suicide rates in the world. Bernard made it his mission to help
Bernard Tipiloura has spent years trying to create change on the Tiwi Islands in Australia’s Northern Territory after a chapter that saw them record the highest suicide rate in the world. It’s work that has seen him nominated for the Senior Australian of the Year.
Published 23 January 2023 5:54am
By Laetitia Lemke
Source: SBS News
Image: Bernard Tipiloura (SBS News / Laetitia Lemke)
It’s Saturday morning in the Aboriginal community of Wurrumiyanga and the streets are quiet. A small boy rides past on a scooter unchaperoned, eyes fixed on an adventure ahead.
The Tiwi Islands, home to about 2,500 people across the two islands of Melville and Bathurst, lie about 80 kilometres north of the Northern Territory’s capital Darwin and are only accessible by plane or ferry – except for when it storms. Most - 86.5 per cent - of the people who live here identify as Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander.
Heavy wet season rains have damaged the already well-worn roads to outstations and homelands, keeping many people close to town over the school holidays.
Across the street, a family carrying fishing gear meanders past on their way to the beach.
Armed with fishing gear a family heads out onto Apsley Strait in their boat Source: SBS News / Laetitia Lemke
(some who had left the islands). The majority of those who died were men aged 18-40.
It’s the heroic efforts of Tiwi Island leaders who volunteered to reduce suicide and self-harm on the islands that are being celebrated this year with one of the Elders involved, Bernard Tipiloura, awarded the NT Senior Australian of the Year.
Bernard Tipiloura explains the Tiwi Calendar he helped design that lists the foods and seasons of the islands Source: SBS News / Laetitia Lemke
He’s worn many hats; he’s been a teacher, a Northern Territory Football League player and umpire, as well as an actor, playing a role in the 2019 romantic comedy Top End Wedding.
But he’s most celebrated locally as an Elder who is there to help.
“I have had a good life, I have done some good things here,” he says.
One of the Tiwi's first teachers
Most Tiwi Islanders are Catholic, but Bernard Tipiloura is devout. He speaks with great pride of his brother Theodore Tipiloura who was a leader in the community and Deacon in the church.
It’s difficult to talk about the Tiwi Islands without also discussing Catholicism, a religion inextricably linked to the colonisation of both Bathurst and Melville islands. The Bathurst Island Mission was established by the Catholic Church in 1911, with a second mission for children of the Stolen Generations established on the neighbouring Melville Island 30 years later.
Survivors of abuse at the Tiwi Islands Garden Point Mission on Melville Island were compensated in 2021 and offered an apology by the Catholic Church and federal government.
The life Bernard Tipiloura describes at the Bathurst Island Mission is very different.
The Senior leader says he moved from his homelands on Melville as a child to be nearer the Bathurst Island Mission and reflects on it as an idyllic time.
A photograph at the Patakijiyali Museum on Bathurst Island shows Bernard Tipiloura (second from the right) as a school student with Catholic Brother Andy Howley. Source: SBS News / Laetitia Lemke
“We washed in the sea … we slept there,” he says pointing, “near the beach”.
The local girls were taken from their families to live in a dormitory run by nuns from the international congregation Daughters of Our Lady of the Sacred Heart (OLSH).
Children riding and fishing along the red pebbly beach of Wurrumiyanga on Bathurst Island Source: SBS News / Laetitia Lemke
“That was our sport, we enjoyed paddling, sailing, we enjoyed swimming in the sea, we enjoyed mud mussels and damper and that’s how we lived, we had to look for food every day.”
He says the luxury of a local supermarket has changed the way people live, and with a litre of milk costing $8, it’s a comfort that comes at a high price.
Bernard Tipiloura is passionate about reviving canoe carving skills on the Tiwi Islands Source: SBS News / Laetitia Lemke
“What about bush food? It won't cost you nothing, just some muscle.”
A 'cheeky crocodile' that's been damaging fish traps and stalking the coastline in Wurrumiyanga Source: SBS News / Laetitia Lemke
“The young boys looked up to Bernard,” nun Anne Gardiner says.
Bernard remains firm friends with OLSH Sister Anne Gardiner, who was celebrated with the Senior Australian of the Year Award in 2017 for her work contributions to the island through education and the development of the Patakijiyali Museum. Bernard Tipiloura was first her student and then her colleague.
“He took it seriously and he was a great teacher because he had the knowledge handed down to him from the older people, and that's what he's always tried to do, to pass knowledge on,” Sr Anne Gardiner says.
A photograph of Bernard Tipiloura as a teenager, teaching a class of students on Bathurst Island hangs on the walls of the Patajikiyali Museum in Wurrumiyanga Source: SBS News / Laetitia Lemke
A statue of Mary stands facing Apsley Strait, a memorial to the Tiwi Islanders who died crossing the fast flowing water between Bathurst and Melville Islands Source: SBS News / Laetitia Lemke
“My people keep on saying, ‘oh government don't use us much’, but it's our young people don't train much to get the jobs that is available, that’s what we are missing.”
Tiwi people need better qualifications to start filling higher-paid roles and setting an example to children in the community, he says.
Children walk through the community of Wurrumiyanga Source: SBS News / Laetitia Lemke
He says the challenges his people continue to face are the massive shifts in culture over the last hundred years, and the ongoing problems with ‘Wupunga’ (marijuana) and alcohol.
A dark history
It’s Bernard’s life-saving work connecting young people to culture that has put him in the running for the Australian of the Year Award.
He was part of a grassroots suicide prevention response by Tiwi people to reduce staggering rates of self-harm and suicide in the late 90s and early 2000s.
Bernard Tipiloura says the success of the program was in sharing traditional knowledge, linking people to their skin group, clan and homelands.
Bernard Tipiloura points to a black and white photograph displayed at the Patakijiyali Museum in Wurrumiyanga that shows Tiwi Islanders performing the war dance Source: SBS News / Laetitia Lemke
“Teaching kids their father’s Country, their mother’s Country, and their mother’s dance, their father’s dance.”
The program that was founded by Tiwi Elders, in 2004 was known as the Tiwi Skin Group. Coordinated by the Tiwi Islands Regional Council, leaders ran interventions with young people and families considered at risk of suicide.
Recognising drugs and alcohol were a big part of the problem, the NT Liquor Commission was also engaged, which locals say inspired alcohol limits of six mid-strength beers a day, restrictions that continue in Wurrumiyanga.
A statue of Jesus outside the old community health clinic in Wurrumiyanga, a building that is no longer in use Source: SBS News / Laetitia Lemke
The Northern Territory’s Executive Director of Mental Health says it’s work that informed the the NT Suicide Prevention Strategy, with grants to support local solutions.
“The work that Bernard did continues to this day,” Cecelia Gore says.
The school that Bernard Tipiloura attended and later taught at was held on the dirt floor underneath this old church in Wurrumiyanga on Bathurst Island Source: SBS News / Laetitia Lemke
Suicide rates are no longer reported for individual islands or communities, so a direct comparison to the 2002 crisis isn’t possible, but the state based rates published by the (AIHW) and the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) show the Northern Territory figures remain the highest in the country.
Suicide remains the leading cause of death for children in the Northern Territory, .
NT Indigenous leader Dr John Paterson, who is head of the Aboriginal Medical Services Alliance in the NT Source: SBS News / Laetitia Lemke
“Why we experience so much unrest in communities these days is because that self-determination, that governance structure of local Aboriginal traditional owners and other Elders in making decisions for their communities has eroded and now we've got either governments or other third parties making decisions on behalf of Aboriginal communities and I think that's wrong, that needs to change, “ Dr Paterson says.
NT Senior Australian of the Year Bernard Tipiloura sits at a life size cut out of himself at the Patakijiyali Museum's language garden designed to help children learn their language Source: SBS News / Laetitia Lemke
Far from defeated, he is amplifying his efforts, embarking on what he says could be his most important work yet; helping Tiwi children learn how to carve traditional canoes, a skill that has been lost on the island.
“I pray every day that I might live a bit further because I want to help more young people stop suicide,” he says.
Bernard Tipiloura stands with a dugout canoe at the museum in Wurrumiyanga Source: SBS News / Laetitia Lemke
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