Northern Territory Senior Australian of the Year, Bernard Tipiloura, Tiwi Islands

Bernard was born on Melville Island, lives on Bathurst Island, a devout member of the Wurrumiyanga parish.

From the SBS story

It was through his connection to the mission that Bernard became one of the first teachers from the Tiwi Islands almost 70 years ago. “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 lighter moment, Bernard featured as Miranda Tapsell’s grandfather in the 2019 film, Top End Wedding, much of it filmed on Bathurst Island.

Now one of the islands oldest residents, Bernard is still sharing that knowledge today.

“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.

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.

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.

“Teaching kids their father’s Country, their mother’s Country, and their mother’s dance, their father’s dance.”

A poster for the documentary on Bernard (a segment of it available on Youtube)

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.

Deacon Theodore Tipiloura, with his twin brother, Eustace.

Deacon Theodore Tipiloura was born in 22/9/1946, one of twins, with his brother Eustace. He was ordained as deacon in 2003 by Bishop Ted Collins, the first Tiwi deacon on the Island. He worked in Milikapit, Melville Island as a deacon for a few years, and died of a heart attack in Royal Darwin Hospital on 27/12/2012. 

And further, a Tipiloura family story - Bathurst Island, St John's College, Monivae College, football and politics.

Stanley Gabriel Tipiloura (2 September 1957 – 20 September 1992) was an Australian politician. He was the Labor member for Arafura in the Northern Territory Legislative Assembly from 1987 until his death in 1992.

PHOTO: TITEB

Tipiloura was born on Bathurst Island. He attended primary school there, before studying for two years at St John's College, Darwin and two years at Monivae College in Victoria. He worked for the CSIRO in Darwin after leaving school, and was a successful amateur footballer with St Mary's Football Club; he also played a stint for South Adelaide Football Club in South Australia in the late 1970s. He returned to Bathurst Island in 1975, where he worked in various roles, including for the Nguiu Council, of which he would subsequently be elected president. He returned to Nguiu permanently in 1980, where served as a police aide and then officer at Nguiu from 1980 to 1985. At the time of his election to parliament, he was also the president of the newly elected local branch of the Labor Party.

He was elected to the Legislative Assembly for Arafura at the 1987 election. Tipiloura's election made him, at the time, one of the parliament's only Aboriginal members. Upon his election, he was appointed shadow minister for local government, administrative services, libraries, conservation, museums, and police, fire and emergency services.

In recognition of his accomplishments and career promise, in 1988 he was selected to travel to the United States with young political leaders from other countries to study the U.S. national elections in November of that year. Organized by the American Council of Young Political Leaders, Tipiloura was a vital member of the group that traveled the breadth of the State of Michigan studying both voters and political campaign methods.

He contracted kidney failure shortly after his election, and spent some time on dialysis before his uncle donated a kidney in 1990. He was re-elected at the 1990 election from his hospital bed, and was made shadow minister for Aboriginal affairs after the election. However, the disease did not rescind and he died in Melbourne in 1992, aged 35.