AP

Review of Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, with Sue Smethurst, Matters of the Heart: A Memoir, Australia: HarperCollins, 2025.

            Complete with a Foreword by John Howard, Jacinta Nampijinpa Price has written her life story, at least up the present day, albeit excluding the 2025 election defeat for the Coalition, Jacinta’s defection from the Nationals to the Liberals, and her apparent demotion in the shadow ministry. Jacinta has proved to be a contentious figure, but needs to be appreciated and taken seriously. At times the language is disappointingly coarse and unnecessary (e.g. pp.84, 125, 149, 185, 191, 202, 204, etc). Bad language ceased to be ‘colourful’ decades ago, and now is just tiresome.

Jacinta was born to David (of Irish background) and Bess (an Aboriginal) on 12 May 1981. David Price was raised a working-class Catholic, and still married when he fell in love with the outback (p.32). At Yuendumu his task in life was to teach deaf Aboriginal children. Bess was also married when she became attracted to David Price. Such a rearrangement of relationships could have led to death (p.46).

Neither the past nor the present is covered up

It will not do to romanticise what the eighteenth century fantasied as ‘the noble savage’ or the modern activist sees as the longest-lasting civilisation in history, maintained through its closeness to nature. ‘It’s … high time we stopped romanticising “the world’s oldest living culture”’ (p.348). There is infanticide to be faced. Jacinta’s grandmother, Clara, left Bess (Jacinta’s mother and the 9th of 12 children) to die in the desert in October 1960, but Bess’s grandmother, Old Maude, rescued her (p.13).

Jacinta is regarded in some circles as some kind of antipodean female Uncle Tom. Actually, she is quite adept at criticising all sides in the ‘frontier wars’.  She tells of the Coniston Massacre which took place in the Northern Territory in 1928 after the murder of Fred Brooks, a white dingo-trapper. Mounted Constable George Murray led a series of terrible reprisals over two months. The death toll was between 31 and 100, with 60 being widely accepted now (pp.16-17). As a result, the Warlpiri people scattered in fear.

According to Christ, evil penetrates every human heart, and Jacinta portrays the sins of the indigenous people. One of the most disturbing and revealing stories concerns Marion, a younger cousin of Bess, who ‘disappeared’. Jacinta fills in the context for such a sad event. Young girls can be promised to old men, and the threat of being married off is very real (p.83). Speaking of respect to elders and spirits misses the reality of what takes place. Jacinta tells of one revered elder and lawman who was in fact a rapist (p.87). Little has changed: ‘I am of the belief that promised marriage is still being practised throughout the Northern Territory’ (p.89). Rather laconically, Jacinta recalls that she grew up hearing stories of rape, domestic violence, and the murder of young girls, and adds: ‘I’d have preferred the fairytales of kings and queens and princes and princesses’ (p.90). Aboriginal men are still able to hide behind a culture of violence.

Like the post-Christian West, Aboriginal society is suffering from a lack of a clear and coherent sexual and social ethic. At 17 Jacinta became pregnant to a schoolfriend, Simon Castle. She explains that it had little to do with moral grounds, but ‘terminating my pregnancy wasn’t something I ever considered’ (p.154). Leiland Castle was born, and all seemed well as Jacinta was ‘so in love’ (p.163). Raising a child meant she grew up quickly, as she learned that her time was not her own (p.166).

There was a special smoking ceremony for the baby (see pp.167-168). On 4 October 1999 Jacinta and Simon married in a traditional Christian service, with a nod to Aboriginal and Mauritian customs. In January 2001 Ethan was born, to be followed by a third boy, Declan, who arrived with a broken collarbone, which entailed more care than most. Sadly, the marriage with Simon was falling apart, and Jacinta left him.

After another failed relationship, Jacinta took to parties, drugs and alcohol – in a Jekyll and Hyde existence (p.214). Finally, she entered a drugs and alcohol rehabilitation program. ‘I was, and still am, very proud of myself for taking the steps to get help’ (p.217) – which seems a jarring and misleading way of describing something that clearly was associated with much good.

Music was an outlet for Jacinta, and indeed more than that. Her stage name was Sassy J, and the band’s name was Catch the Fly. They went on a roadshow in 2011, with strong messages for the children of the outback (see pp.228-231). Colin Lillie, reformed from alcohol and drug addiction for three years, wrote and sang songs. He came from the north of Scotland where he also  knew violence and too much alcohol. He had a son, Kinkade. But love was in the air. This was to lead to their marriage on 10 January 2023, as Colin, says Jacinta, wanted a wedding before God (p.316).

The story of Colin resonated with that of Jacinta: ‘He had loathed himself for drinking, but eventually he recognised how his self-loathing had harmed him, and he forgave himself’ (p.238). In addition, ‘Colin taught me that it’s okay to have a past, but it’s important to live in the present’ (p.238). There are surely better ways to understand what Jacinta and Colin had gone through. In November 2013 Jacinta’s album Dry River was released. Such were Colin’s musical talents that he appeared on The Voice Australia. Ironically, Jacinta was to help lead the campaign against the political Voice.

In times of grief, Colin was present, and he came to the Alice Springs morgue to identify Stephanie, Jacinta’s cousin who had been killed in a wild car accident. Colin brought order to Jacinta’s household – which was ‘Colin-ised’ (p.255). Colin banned humbugging which is the practice of relatives descending on a house on the lookout for handouts (p.179). In Jacinta’s view, ‘Humbugging is one of the greatest causes of tension in Aboriginal communities’ (p.257).

Her spiritual outlook needs some biblical corrections

From the Christian angle, the work is a mixture – Catholicism, the Dreamtime, and Baptist missionaries are all present. She dedicates the book to all the little ones who seek to find their own path: ‘The path of freedom of choice.’ This is understandable in her context but rather too open to whatever lies before the beholder.

Jacinta was named after the girl who supposedly witnessed the apparition of the Virgin Mary in Portugal in 1917 (p.6). At the same time she speaks of crocodiles being sacred in her culture, and having embraced ‘my crocodile spirit from a very early age’ (p.9), at Milikapiti in the Tiwi Islands. ‘Today, my spirits and my Dreaming are still very much at the heart of who I am’ (p.10).

After World War II a native settlement was set up at Yuendumu, and the Baptist Union was given permission to establish a mission. Rev. Laurie Reece and Rev. Phillip Steer laid an aerodrome, sank a bore, planted gardens, and built dormitory accommodation. In 1950 Tom and Pat Fleming took over, and Jacinta’s grandfather became a churchgoer, ‘raising his children to respect both Warlpiri and Christian law’ (pp.22-23). It is significant that the redemptive work of Christ is not mentioned.

The Price family has known terrible affliction. Jacinta’s half-brother, Linawu (the son of Bess, but stepson of David) was sadly struck down with leukemia in 1983, and treated in Adelaide. He went into remission, but it returned, and he died, aged ten, in 1985, when Jacinta was aged four (pp.94-99). Aboriginal custom included a sorry camp, and the women would cut their hair, and the men would gouge their thighs. Furthermore, women had to remain completely silent until a male relative released them. For widows, it is more painful, as they are expected to remain silent for a period of years, and resort to Rdaka-rdaka, a form of ‘hand-hand talk’ or sign language (p.38). To return to Linawu’s cae, after two weeks at a sorry camp, his body was released to be buried.

In a custom that could only add to the grief, women are not allowed to attend the funerals of their own children or husbands. Most poignantly, David constructed a fence around Linawu’s grave, and crafted a headstone: ‘He left us on the whisper of wings, his face shone like the sun, to rest in the arms of the God of love, and dream the dream of peace. Wapirrakurlu ka ngunami – he rests with God.’ It was a decade before Bess could look at photos of her son.  To add to the sadness, his name became Kumanjayi, which means ‘no name’ (see pp.100-103). Jacinta holds to the traditional view that the spirit of a departed loved one is right through any relatives and cannot be separated from them (p.104).

When Bess became sick, she believed black magic was at work because she had not mourned in the traditional way (p.107), notably she had not moved house and sold her car. A Catholic fella who specialised in black magic was brought in to help Bess (p.112). Such a confused approach has resurfaced many times over the last 250 years or so. Two deaths in 1952 were attributed to black magic, but the long-lived Presbyterian elder and missionary doctor, Charles Duguid, attributed them to a lack of nutrition (p.113). Jacinta comments that ‘Sorcery and black magic are far from a thing of the past and are still practised in some communities’ (p.113). Yet she feels the spirit of her ancestors (p.349), and speaks of ‘the crocodile spirit in my blood’ (p.350). How much of this is metaphorical and how much is spiritual, or both, is never clear. She admits to being not very religious, but she draws on the deeply moving Prayer of St Francis (pp.351-352). That is not the final word, which apparently is the claim that all belongs to the Jukurrpa Dreaming (p.364).

Her political approach is more straightforward and realistic than most

Jacinta specialises in raising concrete problems, and looking for concrete remedies. ‘Glue ear’, for example, was and still is a problem (p.37). A quarter of the school at Yuendumu suffered from hearing impairments as a result of this malady (p.39). A waterhole could not be used after Jacinta’s father, David, found a dead horse in it (p.71). She describes Alice Springs as full of dirt, danger, and disrepair, while the dusty Todd River bed attracts drunks and druggies (p.133).

In 1996, at the age of 15, Jacinta took up kickboxing, and used it to great effect with a black girl bullied Jacinta’s friend who was white (p.134). ‘Problem solved.’ (p.134) Typically, it was an earthy approach, which could be more effective than bureaucratic reports and recommendations. Not surprisingly, she is committed to small government aided by a limited bureaucracy (p.359).

From the outback of Australia, Jacinta was nevertheless privileged to be able to visit Europe, and take in something of its rich and terrible history. She comments that the Colosseum saddened her; but the Sistine Chapel left her spellbound (pp.126-127). Like Bill Cooper in the 1930s, she feels a certain kinship with the Jews. Pinkas Synagogue in Prague taught her that we must never forget past atrocities but must not be defined by them. ‘We need to look forward, not back’ (p.131).

In 2007 the Commonwealth intervened in the Northern Territory in an attempt to curb alcohol and pornography, and to change how welfare payments were made (pp.195-196). Jacinta’s parents were lifelong Labor supporters, but considered that the Intervention had an immediate effect for good (p.196). Bess gave it strong support, as she considered that the most glaring problems were grog, gambling, pornography, violence, and child abuse, not racism and colonisation (pp.246-247). Bess had become frustrated by ineffective bureaucracy, but she often received vile abuse for her troubles. To look ahead, after the alcohol bans were lifted in 2022, violence in Alice Springs increased (p.319). The bans had been reasonably successful, but neither the Coalition nor the ALP committed to extending them.

The unpleasantness associated with an increasingly binary culture was replicated during Jacinta’s campaign for the ‘No’ side during the Voice plebiscite. During the campaign, Jacinta received several hundred threats on a slow day (pp.328-329). She was particularly hurt by Marcia Langton’s attack on her, as something ‘nasty, spiteful and childish’ (p.283). Australia Day is not a concern for Jacinta, as she considers that too much of the Aboriginal population spends its time being perpetually aggrieved (p.292). For example, during the Voice campaign, the Coffs Harbour and District Local Aboriginal Land Council tried to deplatform her. That probably helped her cause, as the event in Coffs Harbour was a sellout (p.293). On 14 October 2023 the Voice was voted down, and Jacinta’s campaign was successful, but she regarded the outcome as both a triumph and an anticlimax (p.340).

Some concluding remarks

            The book is full of helpful information and many insights. Jacinta wants Aboriginals to retain their spirit, their Dreaming, their intrinsic connection to country, and their incredible art and music. On the obverse side, she wants to get rid of women’s submission to men, promised marriage, self-harm during mourning, and familial retaliation and retribution (p.289).

The culture warriors are not attracted to her. To begin with, she does not speak the language of Cultural Marxism: ‘High rates of youth incarceration are not caused by systemic racism – that’s a convenient untruth. They are caused by poor parenting, child abuse and neglect, poor school attendance, lack of education, and unemployment.’ (p.290) She laments that Aboriginal youngsters in some communities are not being taught English (p.289).

Unintended consequences abound in modern political life, and nowhere are they more obvious than in Aboriginal policy. The National Apology to the Stolen Generations, for example, was issued in 2008 by Kevin Rudd. It led to foster care for indigenous children only being available to Aboriginal carers. Safety was not the issue (p.299). In short, matters were made worse in some areas.

Two main solutions are suggested, and they are predictable: more job creation (even overruling some bureaucratic land councils) and more education. ‘We need to remove the layers of bureaucracy that currently stifle entrepreneurial activity’ (p.291). There is an epidemic of violence and sexual abuse, and the cry of ‘Racism’ on every street corner has hindered attempts to deal with this.

One must cringe at some of the jingoism to which Jacinta descends: ‘We are one of the, if not the, greatest nation (sic) on the face of earth, and it’s time for Australians to believe that once again, to be proud to call ourselves Australian’ (p.336). Overall, she does far better than that, and one can be more convinced by her starting – and ending – point: ‘It’s time to accept the good and the bad of our past’ (p.349). ‘Accept’ might not be the right word; ‘Face up to’ is better. And ‘our past’ needs to be balanced by working on the good and evil in the present. Jacinta defies the stereotypes, which is not the beginning of wisdom, but certainly a help.

– Peter Barnes