More than 90 Indigenous men and women have come up with their own plan to deal with family violence in their community on Elcho Island, off the Arnhem Land coast.

The community of Galiwin'ku is proposing a new approach to community policing, with a local authority of clan groups to be the first point of contact.

Yolngu woman Yirrininba Dhurrkay worked on the plan, with staff from ARDS Aboriginal Corporation, and said young people were the focus.

"Most young people are lost," she said.

Space to play or pause, M to mute, left and right arrows to seek, up and down arrows for volume. Listen Duration: 4 minutes 34 seconds 4 m 34 s 'Fix this together': Arnhem land community devise new plan to deal with family violence ( Felicity James ) Download 8.4 MB

David Suttle from ARDS Aboriginal Corporation and Yolngu woman Yirrininba Dhurrkay worked on the family violence plan. ( ABC News: Felicity James )

"They are walking into a place where it's foggy and they are blinded, they cannot see their way out."

The Yolngu community authority would function like the old village councils of the past, Ms Dhurrkay said.

The plan is set out in the "Galiwin'ku community statement to prevent family violence", which compiles information from more than 30 meetings with community members in 2015 and 2016.

"The group would need to be treated with dignity and respect by balanda [non-Indigenous people] and resourced properly," the statement read.

"The Yolngu community authority could, where possible, oversee alternative punishments for Yolngu offenders that bring them back to their foundations and remind them that we must all live together.

"In many instances, jail makes the problems worse and young people come out and return to causing problems."

Community wants to choose who comes to the island

The plan proposes when police respond to an incident of violence, they first contact the authority so the correct clan and kin of both offenders and victims can become part of the response

This could include intervening to calm tensions at the outset, then taking a role in follow-up mediation and education, as well as deciding on appropriate discipline.

Galiwin'ku community members said they also wanted the right to choose which police officers come onto their island and an opportunity to educate them about Yolngu law and culture.

"So for any police working in a remote setting, they fundamentally need to understand the way the Yolngu think and the way that Yolngu live, and they need to have a respect for that," Ms Dhurrkay said.

She said misunderstandings about Indigenous and western legal systems were part of the problem, so targeted legal education in the lead-up to court dates has been included in the plan.

Interpreters at court hearings have little time to explain the process on the day, Ms Dhurrkay said, leaving those involved often bewildered and confused.

She said the next step would be sitting down with Galiwin'ku's young people to explain the plan.

"See how much they know about the balanda and non-Indigenous law and how much they know about our law and culture," she said.

"Because today when young people talk, they don't know what they're talking about."

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