Anti-violence campaigners in Central Australia are increasingly concerned that cultural practices, such as payback, are being distorted and used to commit acts of terrible violence.

There were 455 violent assaults in the first three months of this year, and in the past six years assaults in and around Alice Springs have almost doubled.

The murder rate is very high and payback is being used as an excuse for endless feuds between individuals and groups of young men.

Bob Durnan has been working in Central Australia for 33 years and says payback has become a major problem for the region's communities.

"Young fellas who drink get all fired up about the need to avenge some real or imagined slight or sorcery, or whatever, and go and assault and often stab people who are trying to sleep or lead a normal life," Mr Durnan said.

"You get case after case going through the courts and cycles going on in the communities of payback for that kind of activity.

"A lot of them end up in jail now [and] there's quite a few in the cemetery."

The chairwoman of the Northern Territory Government's Indigenous Affairs Advisory Council, Bess Nungarrayi Price, says what is known as next-of-kin payback is out of control.

"If they don't find the right person that they want to carry out the payback on, or the revenge out on, they get the next person, which is either your sister, brother, uncle, nephew," Ms Price said.

"It just happens out of the blue if you're the person in the wrong place at the wrong time."

One Aboriginal woman, Abi, says: "Payback now is more revenge, more of who's going to be the dominant family. Don't tell me it's the Aboriginal way, because that is rubbish."

The senior psychologist at the Ingkintja Men's Health Centre in Alice Springs, Malcolm Frost, has treated hundreds of perpetrators of violence.

"What has evolved is a culture of violence whereby things are not done according to traditional Aboriginal law," he said.

"But when the offenders are pulled up on it they will use traditional law as a justification, which is a really poisonous thing for all concerned."

The recent riots at Yuendumu had issues of payback at their core.

The family that fled to South Australia is now returning and the community will attempt to solve problems without further violence.

Suicide, which was unknown in Aboriginal societies 50 years ago, has also become part of the cycle of payback.

The last person to see someone alive must take responsibility and accept punishment for their death.

Now even threats of suicide are used as a method of extortion or bullying. Young people are threatening suicide unless an amount of money is paid to them.

'Stop the Violence'

A campaign by Indigenous men in Central Australia to do something to stop the endless cycles of misery caused by violence is having some early success.

Recently hundreds of Aboriginal men marched through Alice Springs under the banner of Stop the Violence.

"All of us are sick and tired of violence," said John Liddle, manager of the Ingkintja Men's Health Centre.

"We're sick and tired of going to funerals, sick and tired of sorry business. People are constantly in the sorry mode."

Central to the Stop the Violence campaign is the Inteyerrkwe statement from 2008, which apologises to Aboriginal women and families for the harm caused by men's violence, which is usually fuelled by alcohol.

The Inteyerrkwe apology says: "We the Aboriginal males from Central Australia... acknowledge and say sorry for the hurt, pain and suffering caused by Aboriginal males to our wives, our children, to our mothers, to our grandmothers, to our granddaughters, to our aunties, to our nieces and to our sisters. We also acknowledge that we need the love and support of our Aboriginal women to help us move forward."

Ingkintja is also running a media campaign in several languages, funded by the Commonwealth Government, asking men to seek help for their behaviour and learn other ways to solve their problems.

The Ingkintja campaign is running parallel with a Northern Territory Government media campaign. Last year the Territory Government introduced a world-first law making it mandatory to report domestic violence.

The new law requires all adults to report domestic violence if they believe another person's life is in danger or they believe a person has caused, or is about to cause, serious harm to another person in a domestic relationship.

The Government advertisement stresses the requirement to report the abuse to police, but there are concerns it is at odds with the Ingkintja message.

Psychologist Malcolm Frost says the advertisement is counterproductive.

"This has the effect of pushing the problem underground," he said.

"We want men to come to our service and say they are behaving violently and not feeling too good about it and asking: 'Can you help me?' And we can."

Mr Frost says Aboriginal people do not want their families broken up.

"Aboriginal women are terrified that if they report to the police, welfare will come along and family and children's services will come along and steal their children," he said.

The tension between the two approaches is not helpful at a time when the community is trying to solve its own problems.

Mr Liddle says the Ingkintja approach is also about restoring men's pride.

"The guts of our program is to try and empower men, reinforce their roles and give men something to live for, something positive," he said.

"At the meeting I used the words 'not all men are bastards', and by that I mean please don't judge everyone from a few that are misbehaving.

"We want to reinforce the role of the good guys. Let's try and help them."

- A two-part series on payback and violence in Central Australia begins this Sunday, November 14, on Radio National's Background Briefing following the 9:00am news.