Aborigine Maisie Austin sits in the dirt under a tree hearing the grievances of aboriginal elders who have invited her to their "country" as she campaigns in the Northern Territory outback for Saturday's Australian elections.
Mainstream poll issues like economic management, national security and the Iraq war don't rate high in remote black settlements. The big issues in these shanties are poor health, overcrowded housing, substance abuse and domestic violence.
Australia's 400,000 Aborigines are the nation's most disadvantaged group, with a life expectancy 20 years less than white Australians.
Black Senator Aden Ridgeway was elected in 1998 to become only the second Aborigine to sit in the national parliament.
At this election around 16 indigenous candidates are standing, including Ridgeway, hoping to give black Australia a greater political voice to end decades of inequality.
"Indigenous people realise they can have a say and it's time to stand and be counted," said Austin as she campaigned for the seat of Lingiari, Australia's biggest black electorate, covering 1.35 million sq km (520,000 sq miles) in the Northern Territory.
Prime Minister John Howard's conservative government and opposition Labour, running neck-and-neck in opinion polls, both promised to end the cycle of black despair when they launched their indigenous policies in Darwin, the Territory's capital.
Child mortality among Aborigines is 2.5 times higher than the rest of the population, only 38 percent of aboriginal children complete school, unemployment is three times that faced by white workers and Aborigines make up 20 percent of the jail population despite being only 2 percent of the 20 million population.
Black Australia distrusts Howard's 8-year-old government, charging it with dismantling racial reconciliation, especially with the axing in April of the country's main black body, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC).
Howard said the "experiment" in black-elected representation had failed, bringing little improvement in living standards despite ATSIC's expenditure of billions of dollars.
Howard has also angered Aborigines by refusing to offer a government apology for past injustices since white settlers first landed in 1788. Thousands were massacred by whites or evicted from their land in what Aborigines call "the invasion". "This is inherently a discriminatory government," said Aborigine Richard Frankland, founder of black party "Your Voice".
Aborigines remain suspicious but more accepting of Labour, which backed the axing of ATSIC but has offered to create new black-elected regional bodies in its place. Labour leader Mark Latham has also vowed to say sorry to Aborigines.
Frankland is standing for a Senate seat in the southern state of Victoria and his platform is more political than indigenous candidates campaigning in the outback where most Aborigines live.
Frankland wants a bill of rights to recognise Aborigines as the first owners of Australia. "Our identity as a nation should come from the 500 aboriginal nations and tribes," he said.
Ridgeway believes only a "treaty" between white and black Australia will lead to true racial reconciliation.
"Until our political leadership tackles the underlying racism in Australian society and embraces indigenous self-determination we will not be able to reconcile our history and our future," Ridgeway said.
Aborigines have long shunned mainstream politics, distrusting the country's white politicians. Their political voice has traditionally been heard from megaphones at makeshift Aboriginal tent embassies. The most symbolic has stood on the lawns of Australia's old parliament house in Canberra since 1972.
But in 2004 the bulk of black candidates are representing mainstream parties, even prime minister Howard's Liberal party.
"I think there is the realisation that you cannot win from outside, but must become part of the system," said Barry Cheadle, editor of The Koori Mail, Australia's national black newspaper.
Ridgeway, campaigning for re-election as a senator for the small Australian Democrats party in New South Wales state, is encouraged by the rise in indigenous candidates.
"Indigenous affairs barely rate a mention in this election campaign. There is such a lack of political leadership at the moment that indigenous people need to step up and be visible in parliament," he said.
Austin has always been a conservative voter, so it was natural she stand for the Country Liberal Party in Lingiari, where more than 36 percent of the population is indigenous.
Labour, the traditional party for Aborigines in the Territory, won Lingiari in 2001 by snaring all the black-dominated remote polling booths, but the seat remains marginal and Austin hopes her aboriginality will woo black voters away from Labour.
"I have been brought up under some of the same conditions. We lived in poverty and we had the sharing family system which Aborigines have today," Austin said.
But other aboriginal candidates have decided not to contest the election in outback seats with their high percentage of black voters, but to bring the struggle for aboriginal rights to white Australia and stand in unwinnable seats as a protest.
Aboriginal sheep farmer Michael Anderson is standing as a candidate for the Greens in the seat of Gwydir in northern New South Wales, held by Deputy Prime Minister John Anderson.
"My intention is to shorten this man's stride," said Anderson, a ceremonial leader of the 3,000-strong Euahlayi clan.