Janine Cooper

Nauiyu, NT

My name is Janine Cooper.

I am from Nauiyu community, Daly River. I’m an Ngen’giwumirri woman from the Fitzmaurice region. I was born in Darwin and raised and grew up in Daly, and I have spent most of my life here.

I went to primary school at St Francis Xavier school in Daly River and then went to boarding school in Katherine, St Joseph’s College. I stayed there for 5 years for my schooling up to year 11. After that I came back home to Daly where I had to look for work. I started working at the school as an AT for 2-3 years, then I went over to the Arts Centre and worked there for a year. I worked at the childcare for about 6 months as an early childhood educator, then went back to the school again for around 2 years.

Now I am currently a supervisor at Ironbark, the CDP program. As a supervisor I work mostly with the ladies in the community on the jobseeker program, to help them get a head start when they are looking for a job, or with their Ochre card and ID. This is part of my engagement work at Ironbark. I also work closely with other stakeholders, organising community events.

I organised a football round robin focussed on suicide prevention and men’s mental health in honour of my nephew. We got a medal with his initials on it to give to the best player of the event, and it helped the community to come together.

I am also a founder of the Nauiyu Woman’s Group. I started that because of the conflict that was happening at the time in community where it was divided into two. Myself and other strong women in community came together to put an end to this, as it was going in for too long and we wanted it to stop so we could have peace and a better community. We met and had lunch together with both sides of the conflict, also with Anna and Melissa from the CJC. We talked about healing and trauma, with the ladies there.

The women’s group continues to meet every Thursday, and we talk about things that are happening in the community and what we can do to change things here. We also do camps and trips with the ladies. Since starting the group we have had 3 or 4 camps already this year. One of them was to attend the ‘No woman left behind’ conference in town, for which Ironbark is one of the proud sponsors. At that conference they talked about family and domestic violence, and Toni Childs spoke as an ambassador for that event. The camp after that was on the Tiwi islands

As part of the women’s group I collaborated with Red Dust, and just last week they asked if I could facilitate the camp out at Wadeye for the festival. I took the kids out there, and Zippy was a helper. When we were our there, I helped William Parmbuk and Thamarrurr Art Centre to paint the mural on the shop wall.

For my work with the women’s group I was nominated for the Australian Citizen award for the community, and I won that award. It was presented here in the community.

As well as this other work, I care for my cousins through Kinship Care. This is important work, helping them to grow up in right ways.

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