A New Voice in Ntaria

“We need to help our youth become strong through speaking out about health, learning their language, and becoming strong in their culture.”

My name is Kevin Ungwanaka. I was born in Alice Springs, but I am a Western Arrernte bloke from Ntaria (Hermannsburg), about 120 kilometres west of Alice Springs.

Two weeks ago I started a weekly radio show in Ntaria for CAAMA, the Central Australian Aboriginal Media Association. Each week I deliver news and community information in language, as well as playing al sorts of different music. After two weeks, I was lucky to be invited to the Remote Indigenous Media Festival on Thursday Island to learn more about radio from other Indigenous people from across Australia. Before working as a broadcaster, I worked in primary care health – for 13 years I looked after my community, dealing with injuries, health checks, testing and many other kinds of problems.

I want to use my radio show to talk about the important things affecting the young people in my community.

Every day, I see how drugs – particularly marijuana, is affecting youth – smoking all day and all night, wasting their money, ruining their mental health.
Many become depressed, maybe leading to suicide because of their addictions.
Often, the teachers and other people in charge of looking after our youth don’t do a good job of dealing with addiction, bullying and other issues that lead to depression.

We had no radio in Ntaria for a couple of years since our local presenter passed away, so I thought maybe I could do that. I loved working in health, but after 13 years I was ready for something new.

How do we help our young people with their problems?
What can we do to make our young people stay strong in community?

We need to help our youth become strong through speaking out about health, learning their language, and becoming strong in their culture.
It is important we have community media like radio to talk about the problems our youth are struggling with and spreading the message amongst our people.

Community radio networks hold our remote communities together – without them, it’d be nearly impossible to organise our communities to address and solve the issues that cause so much harm.