Stolen Faces, Stolen Stories: Darwin Community Members Speak Out on Duplicate Image Misuse

Photographs of Aboriginal Territorians are being copied, reposted and repurposed across social media platforms and government-funded publications without the knowledge or permission of the people pictured — and community members across the Darwin region say they have had enough. The practice, known broadly as duplicate image replacement or image misuse, has become a recurring source of distress in remote and urban Aboriginal communities alike, drawing fresh attention this week as concerns escalate ahead of the annual Garma Forum in north-east Arnhem Land, scheduled for August.

The issue matters now for a specific reason. A cluster of complaints lodged with the Northern Land Council and the NT Anti-Discrimination Commission over the past six months has brought the problem into sharper focus. Community members describe discovering their own faces — or those of deceased relatives — being used in promotional materials, stock image libraries and online campaigns they never agreed to support. For many Aboriginal families, the reproduction of an image of a deceased person carries profound cultural weight and can cause serious harm under customary law.

From Bagot to Berrimah: A Problem Close to Home

The complaints are not abstract. Residents connected to the Bagot Community, one of Darwin's oldest Aboriginal communities located just off Trower Road near Ludmilla, have described finding photographs taken at community events appearing years later in unrelated third-party marketing. The Danila Dilba Health Service, which operates across Darwin and provides primary health care to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, has previously worked to develop its own internal image consent protocols, though the broader digital environment remains largely ungoverned.

At the Casuarina Shopping Centre on Trower Road — a regular gathering point for families from surrounding suburbs and visiting community members — people spoken to by The Daily Darwin this week described a shared frustration. One woman, a senior Larrakia woman who asked not to be named, said she had recognised a photograph of her late sister being used in a government-funded health brochure more than two years after her sister's passing. The experience, she said, left her family distressed and without any formal avenue for immediate redress. The Daily Darwin is not attributing specific quotes to unnamed sources as the basis for factual claims, but the pattern of concern is consistent with documented complaints at the institutional level.

The NT Anti-Discrimination Commission received 47 formal complaints related to privacy and image use in the 2024–25 financial year, according to its annual report tabled in the Legislative Assembly. While not all involved Aboriginal community members, advocates say Aboriginal Territorians are disproportionately affected given the volume of documentary, research and government photography conducted in remote and urban communities over several decades.

What the Law Says — and Where It Falls Short

Australia has no standalone federal image rights law. The Privacy Act 1988 covers some aspects of personal data but has well-documented gaps when it comes to photographic likeness, particularly for individuals who are not customers or clients of a regulated organisation. The Northern Territory's Information Act 2002 offers limited protections. Legal aid services including the North Australian Aboriginal Justice Agency, based on Smith Street in Darwin's CBD, have fielded inquiries on image misuse but note that pursuing cases through civil channels is costly and slow — barriers that disproportionately affect remote community members.

The Garma Forum in August is expected to include sessions on digital sovereignty and data rights, areas that advocates have been pushing onto the national agenda since at least the 2023 Voice referendum campaign, when images of Aboriginal Australians were widely circulated in political advertising without always obtaining explicit consent.

For families navigating this now, the most practical step available is a formal complaint to the NT Anti-Discrimination Commission, which can be lodged by phone or in person at its offices on Cavenagh Street in Darwin. The Northern Land Council also maintains a media and cultural protocols unit that can assist members in issuing takedown requests to platforms and publishers. Neither process is fast. Community members say what they want, ultimately, is a standing right — not a complaints queue.