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A video which appears to show an off-duty police officer stoning a wombat to death has left Aboriginal elders divided over traditional hunting methods.
Key points:
- The video shows a man chasing a wombat while throwing rocks at it
- Elders are divided on whether the incident was appropriate
- Aboriginal people are allowed to hunt for food or for cultural reasons
The video, which was posted by the Wombat Awareness Organisation, shows the man — identified as Waylon Johncock — chasing the wombat along a dirt road while throwing rocks at it on South Australia's far-west coast.
Aboriginal people are currently allowed to hunt for the purpose of food and culture under South Australia's National Parks and Wildlife Act.
A petition calling for laws to be changed, which would see Aboriginal people also investigated under the Animal Welfare Act, is close to reaching its goal of 150,000 signatures.
Kaurna elder Jeffrey Newchurch likened the petition to colonisation and said Mr Johncock should not be condemned.
"We will always make mistakes, Aboriginals and non-Aboriginals," he told ABC Radio Adelaide.
"This has been highlighted where maybe it's gone out of the context, but to have 120,000 signatures signed against us, Aboriginal people, is what was done to us at the start of colonisation, where bang, 'we don't like what the Aboriginal people do, you come be a Christian'."
Mr Newchurch said calls for Mr Johncock to lose his job were "cruel".
"I can't judge this young man because I feel for him and I feel for his family because now it's put the name of Johncock on the firing line," he said.
"How cruel in this day and age that you can go that far, where a man who has served our state and served the force that he works for 'no we don't want him, take him out', how can you make that judgement?"
He said it was time for Aboriginal communities and government departments to sit down together and reach some "common ground" on traditional hunting methods.
"I've hunted wombats that way with stones with my nephews and all that because we haven't got the weapons and we haven't got the guns," he said.
"Come with us and experience that, that's what you've got to do rather than take people's comments."
'This is absolute cruelty'
Major 'Moogy' Sumner, a Ngarrindjeri elder, condemned the video.
Mr Sumner told the ABC Mr Johncock and the man filming the incident were not showing the animal any respect.
Wombat Awareness Organisation founder Brigitte Stevens, who started the online petition, said it was "unacceptable" that it was being considered as a traditional hunt.
"So it's actually coming from the elders and the people within the region saying that this is absolute cruelty," she said.
"It's taken me 10 years to actually start developing good relationships within the Indigenous community, because obviously we do see things very differently, however my understanding was that when they do go out to hunt, it is done in a respectful manner and the wombat's killed quickly and humanely and there's no disrespect to the animal."
SA Premier Steven Marshall said he found the footage "gut-wrenching" and he "abhorred the glorification of animal cruelty".
"There is a police investigation underway and I'm not going to pre-empt that investigation … but I make it very clear that the public dissemination of acts which glorify cruelty to animals is completely and utterly unacceptable and abhorrent," he said.
"I have spoken to some Aboriginal leaders in the past 24 hours, their position is very clear — animal cruelty is animal cruelty."
Communities 'could lose the right to hunt'
Wombats SA president Peter Clements said the viral video could see changes in the law and local Aboriginal people could be "in danger of losing their right to do this hunting in a traditional way if they are going to behave like this guy did on video".
"[Wombats are] a protected species and the special dispensation that's given … because of cultural issues I think is in danger of being taken away from them if they allow this sort of behaviour to continue," he said.
"I respect most Aboriginal cultural beliefs, but I think this one that does need to be reviewed, especially if it's going to broadcast like this on the internet."
Topics: police, crime, law-crime-and-justice, indigenous-other-peoples, indigenous-culture, indigenous-aboriginal-and-torres-strait-islander, community-and-society, adelaide-5000, port-lincoln-5606, yalata-5690, sa, australia