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Alice Springs was a delicate patchwork of emotion at the weekend.
At one end of the town, wails and sobs sounded out from the side of the Stuart Highway, as hundreds of mourners gathered in pink to farewell Kumanjayi Little Baby at a funeral service themed Jintangka – the Walpiri word for “together as one”.
Later in the day, after the five-year-old girl was laid to rest among family and friends, the community’s pulse began to return.
Over on the banks of the Todd River, locals dressed up as Vikings, set off confetti cannons and cheered their friends as they tripped over themselves in makeshift boats as part of the Henley on Todd Regatta.
At the oval, spectators screamed themselves hoarse at the local football, as two teams battled it out in the first round of finals for the Central Australian Football League.
All the while, rain continued to fall across the desert – for some, representing a cleansing as the town attempts to cope with the horror that came to their doorstep in April.
Kumanjayi Little Baby’s death and her life in Alice Springs became a lightning rod for a national conversation – but for the locals, it was about reckoning what they had all just been through together.
Alice Springs Mayor Asta Hill said what her town had gone through in the last five months was a “collective trauma”.
“Something that I think is really unique to this place, which is, in my view, the most beautiful thing about this place, is the solidarity that we share with one another and the way that we go out to bat for one another,” she said.
“And that played out through the search, but also the collective holding of breath that we felt in the community over that time, and then the collective despair and then grief after she was found.
“You don’t find that everywhere.”
It was called out at the time by Northern Territory Chief Minister Lia Finocchiaro, who described how locals had stood together in buffel grass in soaring temperatures to comb through the bushland in search for any sign of the missing girl.
Hill remains extremely proud of her community, and how they have coped with an uncomfortable national spotlight since – but she said it was important the rest of Australia knew Alice Springs was more than just the sum of its worst parts.
“It’s really noteworthy that a family in the depths of grief and despair – in an experience that is incomprehensible to the average human being – have found the space in their hearts to consider the experience of the broader community through this,” she said.
“It’s disempowering for a community to have its own experience described for it, and this is a really proud and connected community.
“We saw some of the best of our community in the very worst of times … we need to keep talking about all of these wonderful things about our community and how we support each other.
“We have no interest in the rest of the nation telling us otherwise.”
It is a reflection shared by the family of Kumanjayi Little Baby, who spent much of their eulogy and funeral service on Saturday thanking the broader community for their support and help in mourning their little girl.
In the weeks leading up to the funeral, op shops donated jumpers and jackets to family coming in from Alice Springs’ surrounding remote communities for the service. Outreach organisations helped put them up with places to stay, and businesses around town put on buses to help people reach the church.
Kumanjayi Little Baby’s grandfather Robin Granites thanked the community again and again on Saturday – both in English and in Walpiri – and said he wanted everyone around Australia who donated to the family’s fundraiser to know their money had been well spent.
“You come because you are one of our family,” he said.
“You are from here, and we need you because we both cried at that same time.”
And for a family who had been so generous in their grief, Kumanjayi Little Baby’s mother Jacinta said her daughter should not be defined by her death.
“As is written in Isaiah, what is barren can be transformed into something,” a pastor read on Jacinta’s behalf on Saturday.
“Touched by grace and restoration, the wilderness and the dry land shall be glad, and the desert shall rejoice and blossom like the rose.
“It will be forever remembered that the life of this little one united us all together.”
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