Death in Yuendumu

by Steven Schubert

Where everything is black and white and nothing is - a haunting true story of death and survival in a remote outback community

Genres: True Crime, Nonfiction, Audiobook

416 pages, Paperback

Published October 1, 2025

Reviews

[EmG ReadsDaily · Rating 5 out of 5]

I appreciate the nuanced and clear insight into this very important story.
This is essential reading for all Australians, in my opinion.

This was an audiobook listen for me, and I will definitely be listening to this again in the future.

[Valerie, a bookeater]

A must must must read. And like Elder Ned Jampijinpa Hargraves said, “I do have a message. Cease fire.”

[Jess M · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very important read for Australians. Whilst it was a bit confusing keeping up with all of the different people, the story made its way through and the racism of the NT Police is deplorable. Though I doubt it’s only in the NT. Too many First Nations deaths in custody and by police! Something has to change!!

[Dulcie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Steven Schubert has written a nuanced and balanced work covering both the events of the murder and it's aftermath.
He also acknowledges the many small decisions that turned Yuendumu and the many other remote communities from vibrant self supporting centres into abandoned poverty traps.
The list of disgraceful characters that populate the book only start with the highly unpleasant Rolfe family, the scum of the legal profession that enabled them, a judge who should have been struck off for his instructions to the jury and the many many thugs who wander in and out of the NT police.
How did the murder of a young man in his own community become fodder for the white trash of Newscorp?
This whole event could have been prevented so many times from the 1900's onwards and yet we ended here.

[Annemarie · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was not an easy book to read. Death in Yuendumu tells the story of the death of Kumanjayi Walker, a Warlpiri young man who was just 19 years old when he was shot three times in his own home by a Northern Territory police officer attempting to arrest him. Even writing that sentence feels heavy.

At times I cried reading this book. At other times I felt physically sick. It’s confronting in a way that doesn’t let you skim or detach from. You feel pulled into the detail and there are moments where you almost want to look away — but you can’t and probably shouldn’t.

Steven Schubert, a white NT journalist, brings together an enormous amount of material: the criminal trial, the coronial inquest, witness accounts, expert evidence. He also places the death of Kumanjayi Walker within the much longer and uglier history of colonisation in this country — massacres, dispossession and the ongoing exclusion of Aboriginal people from legal and political power. The book makes it very clear that what happened in Yuendumu wasn’t a one-off tragedy. It sits inside a system that has been failing First Nations people for generations.

The racism and misogyny within the NT police force is genuinely shocking. Some of the text messages that were read out still make me feel like vomiting. And this is not in a “bad apples” kind of way. It comes across as cultural, entrenched, and normalised. That was one of the hardest parts to read — the sense that this is not an aberration, but business as usual.

What I did respect was how even-handed Schubert is in his treatment of the young police officer involved. Despite everything, he doesn’t turn the book into a simple morality tale. He doesn’t flatten the complexity or pretend there are easy villains and heroes. That restraint matters. It also makes the whole thing more disturbing, not less.

Here's one statistic from the book: since the 1991 Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, more than 600 First Nations people have died in custody — at three times the rate than before the Royal Commission. So much for Royal Commissions eh? Also the new conservative NT government has lowered the age of criminal responsibility to 10. Just let that sink in for a moment.

This is not a book that will make you feel hopeful or proud of the country we live in. It will unsettle you. It will make you angry. It may leave you feeling helpless. If you read it, do so slowly, and with plenty of self-care. This is an important book — but it takes something from you when you read it.

Thanks to Libraries ACT for a lend of the audiobook, well read by the author himself. I will, however, purchase a copy because I think the author deserves some royalties for this one.

I think I now need to read something that will remind me that there are human beings out there who are good and kind. Any recommendations?

[Pamela P · Rating 5 out of 5]

A gutting and comprehensive report of the killing of Kumanjayi Walker from an ABC reporter who was on the case from day one, with a history on the Yuendumu area, Walker's background, the police in the Northern Territory and its structure/inner workings, then follows the events pre-shooting, on the day, at trial and in the coronial inquest. Paints a vibrant and complex image of the character of each individual, from Kumanjayi Walker himself, to Frost, Rolfe and his lawyers, and the community. Would highly recommend to anyone interested regardless of knowledge level and how much they have kept up with the trial itself.

[Dave · Rating 4 out of 5]

A sad and outrageous account of the killing of a young man by Police in the Aboriginal community of Yuendumu in the Northern Territory of Australia. Absolutely disgraceful.