Utopia, Northern Territory
Its people have expressly repudiated any municipal establishment, and instead live in about 13 (or up to 16) outstations (homelands) or clan sites, each with a traditional claim to the place.
The land is also differently identified as five Countries, which are reflected in Aboriginal place names, which were created by ancestors: Alhalpere, Rreltye, Thelye, Atarrkete and Ingutanka.
By 1872 the Overland Telegraph Line between Darwin and Alice Springs had been completed, which gave access to Europeans through many traditional lands.
[3] As the telegraph station to the south at Barrow Creek was constructed and inhabited, conflict between the local Kaytetye people and Europeans occurred.
Alyawarra people displaced by the violence during European dispossession fled in significant numbers across Wakaya country to Soudan and stations on the Barkly Tableland, later moving to Lake Nash and to refuges in the east in Kaytete lands and beyond.
[4] The first European in the Ampilatwatja region was surveyor Charles Winnecke, who travelled through in 1877 and whose expedition needed help from the Anmatjerre to find water.
[5] European occupation of the Sandover region began in the early 1880s, around the southern Davenport Ranges, the Elkedra and the Bundey Rivers.
The settlements did not have access to a good supply of surface water; most were abandoned by 1895 because of drought and conflict with the Aboriginal people in the area.
Around 1910, freehold title leases were granted by the federal government in order to establish cattle stations on Alyawarr land, aiming to bring white settlers and development to this part of the continent.
Many Aboriginal people worked on Utopia and other nearby stations, with men employed as stockmen and women as domestic servants.
The name is said to have originated with German settlers, brothers Trot and Sonny Kunoth, who acquired the pastoral lease in the 1930s, but others have suggested that it could be a corruption of Uturupa, meaning "big sandhill", referring to an area northwest of Utopia.
[12] Prior to 1 July 2008, Urapuntja Aboriginal Corporation was the local government authority responsible for service delivery to the people who live on the Angarapa and Alyawarra Land Trusts.
The community has had some success in mitigating the clinical disorders associated with transition to sedentary life, and minimising the advent of destructive behaviours and intoxicants.
In addition, they have maintained a strong commitment to traditional practices and customs, which support identity in the face of coercive change.
[24] A series of population health surveys carried out between 1986 and 2004 showed that Utopia people were significantly healthier than comparable groups, particularly their rates of mortality.
[27][28] While there was dispute by authorities about the extent of the water shortage[29][30][31] the Northern Territory government eventually agreed to fund the bore repairs, and money raised by a crowdfunding campaign was transferred to the Urapuntja Health Service.
This project culminated in the exhibition Utopia: A Picture Story, in which 88 artists contributing (all women, except for two and which was shown in Adelaide, Sydney, Perth and Melbourne and then travelled to Ireland, Germany, Paris and Bangkok.
[6] Utopia's Aboriginal artists have been remarkably successful, and continue to produce distinctive works that are collected by people in Australia and all over the world.
The style is distinctive and different from most other Aboriginal artists, marked by their application of fine dots, and "often bright and child-like figurative depiction of the land".
