Photo Series: The Kids of Keep River   (Northern Territory 2009)

After spending time working in a remote community on a water rights project near the border of WA we found the predicament for several indigenous communities hard to comprehend, and even harder to justify. Communities were displaced from their ancestral land after a legal dispute defined that they no longer own the water on their native title – effectively rendering the land useless as those upstream exploited the water source until the river ran dry. Families were split, a sense of purpose shattered, as tens of thousands of years of cultural expertise is displaced with them.

The only people who do not yet understand this burden are the children. Their world is still one of naive joy; singing, dancing, running, playing football; no different to kids anywhere around the world. The difference is what they are about to face, as they look to find a place in a world which seems stacked against them. Many thanks to the Ord Valley Aboriginal Health Service.